CELEBRITIES

First as the trans-Pacific record holder liner, then serving during World War 2, followed by being renamed the Empress of Scotland on the trans-Atlantic run and then finally sailing under the German flag. It was ironic, the allied ship used during WW 2 to fight the Nazis, was sold to Hamburg America Line and rebuilt as the Hanseatic for cruise ... Read More »

“Elvis who?” Photographer Alfred Wertheimer recalls uttering that very question in early 1956. A publicist from RCA Victor Records had contacted him, asking if he was available to photograph a young singer named Elvis Presley. “I’d never heard of the man,” Wertheimer told TIME Magazine in an article 40 years later. “He didn’t have a gold record yet.” (By the ... Read More »

Star of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, Janet Leigh is ready to board the famous SUPER CHIEF and Virginia Leith, star of A KISS BEFORE DYING shows us the all-Pullman train during the 1950s in a promotional film. Even the characters from TV’s MAD MEN may have been aboard the train all through the 1960s. A lot of executives would take the ... Read More »

Besides “crossing the Pond” on Cunard, Elizabeth Taylor sailed to Europe on the French Line’s SS Liberte, cruised to the Mediterranean aboard Cunard’s RMS Caronia and Mauritania. Liz sailed to the Caribbean and South America on the Grace Line’s SS Santa Rosa. She loved ships and the sea. Taylor had sailed a number of times on the RMS Queen Mary with her mother, ... Read More »

Argentina was the only South American country to operate regular long-distance intercontinental ocean liners following World War 2, although always with ships of moderate size and speed. Alberto Dodero is a completely forgotten name in today’s world, but in the mid-20th century, he was the major shipping tycoon in South America. Eva Peron (Evita) with the British Ambassador, Sir John ... Read More »

British pop legend, David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), who starred in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, had a long-standing fear of flying. Bowie sailed aboard Cunard’s QE 2, the Italian Line’s Leonardo da Vinci, P&O-Orient Line’s Oronsay and Canberra along with many other ships.   So while other superstars would take the Concorde or ... Read More »

As the SS LIBERTE, the liner became the stop gap flagship for CGT French Line as a replacement for the legendary SS NORMANDIE that had been lost during the Second World War. If the time before the Second World War is indexed within the annals of history for its aspirations of achievement and advancement of technology and design, then, the ... Read More »

Greta Garbo was a Swedish actress during Hollywood’s silent film period and part of its Golden Age. Regarded as one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars ever produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Hollywood studio system. She traveled many times onboard the Swedish America Line from New York to Sweden throughout her career. Rare newsreel footage of Greta Garbo arriving ... Read More »

“Elvis who?”   Photographer Alfred Wertheimer recalls uttering that very question in early 1956. A publicist from RCA Victor Records had contacted him, asking if he was available to photograph a young singer named Elvis Presley. “I’d never heard of the man,” Wertheimer told TIME Magazine in an article 40 years later. “He didn’t have a gold record yet.” (By ... Read More »

Star of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, Janet Leigh is ready to board the famous SUPER CHIEF and Virginia Leith, star of A KISS BEFORE DYING shows us the all-Pullman train during the 1950s in a promotional film. Even the characters from TV’s MAD MEN may have been aboard the train all through the 1960s. A lot of executives would take the ... Read More »

The magic of the Super Chief – “the train of the stars” – is now just a memory. From the late 1930s to the 1950s, Hollywood adopted the Super Chief as the primary mode of travel as well as the subject of novels and motion pictures. In MGM’s The Hucksters, a brutal satire on the ad industry, Clark Gable says ... Read More »

Reliving the 1950s AND 1960s … When Stars and Celebrities sailed Cunard’s great liners… President George H. W. Bush and wife Barbara are back home in the US after fulfilling their ambition to cross the Atlantic by sea. Bush, who also took daughter Dorothy and grand-daughter Gigi on the trip, said of the voyage when he arrived on board: “I’ve ... Read More »

 SS President Roosevelt.  The SS President Roosevelt was a passenger liner of the United States Lines that was involved in a famous heroic rescue of the crew of the British ship Antinoe in the Atlantic Ocean in January 1926. The captain of the ship, George Fried, was given a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan in honor of his heroism. Helen Keller ... Read More »