1930s

For first-class passengers aboard ocean liners and cruises, from the 1930s into the 1960s, the menu choices were staggering. On ships like the SS Europa, RMS Queen Mary, and the SS United States, dinner might have had 12 courses, with 8 to 10 options for each course. It is difficult ... Read More »

Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr.’s twin interests in baseball and Catalina Island – he bought Catalina in 1919 and gained a controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs in 1921 – dovetailed nicely when he made the decision to have the Cubs train on Catalina starting in 1921.  In doing ... Read More »

Speaking like BETTE DAVIS, CARY GRANT or FRASIER on “FRASIER”! During the Golden Era of classic Hollywood films, when sound films were first introduced, the silent stars who made the transition to the talkies were given lessons in diction and pronunciation. WATCH THE NEW VIDEO – SPEAKING TRANS-ATLANTIC They were ... Read More »

From the 1930s until his death in 1966, a self-proclaimed hedonist, he was the image of a celebrity. An author, journalist, historian, raconteur, gourmet, and bon vivant extraordinary – this amazing personality was one of the first gay men to have a publicly open relationship.   Columnist Walter Winchell called ... Read More »

Thirty-four years on Market Street, then destroyed by greedy developers and political hacks. Sound familiar? When the Fox Theater was built in 1929, it seemed as if there weren’t enough adjectives to describe the movie theater’s magnificence. The San Francisco Chronicle called the opening “a spectacle of such beauty and ... Read More »

In 1930 the Canadian Pacific’s trans-pacific service reached its zenith with the introduction of the magnificent RMS Empress of Japan. The only way to cruise the Pacific during the 1930s. She was a very handsome ship and had magnificent interiors that now are associated with the Empress liners of the Canadian ... Read More »

The strange tale of the banned World War II Nazi German TITANIC epic on the most famous ship of all time. Before James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster Titanic, the Hollywood Titanic of 1953, the 1958 British film A Night to Remember, and the 1997 Broadway musical Titanic – there was the ... Read More »

Premiere Passenger Trains during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s  were the finest in the world. With excellent meals, suburb Pullman service, dinner in the diner, club lounges, train secretaries, barbershops, cocktail bars, observation cars… trains like the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, and the California Zephyr were world-famous.   New York ... Read More »

Known as “white Flyers of the Pacific,” the sister ships each made four sailings a week. The Yale and Harvard carried 565 First Class passengers at an average speed of 23 knots between the two major California cities. The fast coastal ships provided an overnight cruise on the Pacific. They ... Read More »