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 magnitude that it seemed rather a fancy of one’s mind rather than the inaugural night ... Read More »
ZIM LINES – Israel’s premiere liner and cruise ship company in the 1950s and 1960s
Connecting Israel with Mediterranean ports began after the State of Israel was established in 1948 and for 20 years Zim Lines operated an excellent fleet of passenger ships. Zim provided regular trans-Atlantic, the Caribbean, and Israel/Europe cruise and liner services. The company quickly built a fleet of modern passenger ships. ... Read More »
In the 1950s SUDDEN FEAR film star Joan Crawford heads to San Francisco on the famed California Zephyr.
The streamliner California Zephyr was featured in Columbia Pictures 1952 thriller SUDDEN FEAR starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. Included were exterior and interior scenes aboard the train. Grand Central Station and the Oakland Mole were highlighted where Crawford respectively boards and disembarks to head across the bay to San ... Read More »
The elegant MS VICTORIA cruised out of New York.
Enjoying a long and colorful history, Incres Line’s MS VICTORIA offered Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises with first class service to 600 passengers. The VICTORIA was built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast in 1936 for Union-Castle Line as the DUNNOTTAR CASTLE for the company’s round Africa service from London. She ... Read More »
Clive Palmer’s Titanic II pitch fails to wet the sails…
Billionaire Clive Palmer’s pitch about Titanic II – the ship he is funding to be built before a maiden 2020 voyage – hardly had the imagined grandeur and prestige of the original ship’s build in the early 1900s. The mining magnate and former federal Australian MP featured in a bizarre ... Read More »
Retro Thursday: Gypsy Rose Lee – Burlesque, Hollywood and Broadway Star
While being tops in your field can be exciting, an ambitious or intellectually curious person always looks for new ways to grow. This was particularly true for stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. A national star for years for her creative striptease act, Lee hoped to spread her wings into more respectable ... Read More »
Home Line’s OCEANIC was one of the most beautiful and successful cruise ships of all times.
By the mid-1960s, when jets had killed off all but the stragglers on the North Atlantic, Home Lines introduced the OCEANIC. Home Lines proudly proclaimed that their 39,000 tonner was “the largest ship built exclusively for cruising.” By the mid-1960s, when jets had killed off all but the stragglers on ... Read More »
The luxurious liner Awatea was the “only way to cross” the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand!
Far away from the Trans-Atlantic services – “Down Under” – Union Steam Ship Company operated a fleet of excellent passenger ships between Australia and New Zealand until 1960. In her day the Awatea was regarded as one of the most luxurious and fastest liners of the period. Her history was ... Read More »
Hollywood’s Padre was called “One take Dodd” and performed 300 Screen “Weddings”
In Oscar-winning It Happened One Night, Neal Dodd is just being himself as he prepares to officiate at Claudette Colbert’s garden wedding – even though Colbert jilts her fiancée at the altar to run away with Clark Gable. Dodd was acting in the 1934 film, as he did in dozens ... Read More »
South America’s Chilean Line from New York to Chile via the Panama Canal
Operating passenger service between Chile and New York, the Chilean Line offered First and Tourist Class passenger service from the West Coast of South America and New York during the 1930s. Chilean Line competed with Grace Line with passengers service from New York to Chile and return. In the mid-1930s ... Read More »