Coast Daylight

The Southern Pacific (SP) Coast Daylight train made its first trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco on March 21st. 1937 being waved off in style by Hollywood star, Olivia De Havilland. This was a prestige effort with custom-built steam locomotives and rolling stock. At a time when competitors were turning to diesel traction in the early streamline era, the SP kept faith with steam power despite the risk of being associated with obsolete technology. To emphasise the sense of modernity, cosmetic streamlining was applied to the locomotives together with a highly visible colour scheme of red, orange and black quite unlike any of its rivals. Contemporary observers commented that the effect was similar to that of a circus train. The vision of senior execs and Hollywood moguls shuttling up and down the coast in air-conditioned luxury turned out to be short lived as the business travellers soon defected to the airlines. The residual traffic was significantly less profitable and in the post-war years all the special facilities, the tavern car, the coffee shop, the parlour car, the hairdresser and clairvoyant, were gradually withdrawn until the final indignity when the restaurant car was replaced by an automat. The rapid decline in rail passenger travel in the US is well documented and although Amtrak continues to operate this and many other services the original Coast Daylight offered a lustre and glamour that can never be repeated. 

All Hallows’ Eve

Thanks to a sheltered middle class Anglican childhood I grew up with no awareness of the pagan festival of Halloween and when it finally impinged on my consciousness I assumed it was yet another cultural treasure that crossed the Atlantic from west to east to enrich our meagre existence. Not so – as this artwork by the dashingly named Clixby Watson confirms. Just a few months after the war a toothy pumpkin was bathing these juvenile survivors in its warm glow on the cover of Good Housekeeping. Today’s ever-expanding public appetite for the iconography of supernatural forces seems to march in step with the noisy intrusion of religion into public policy. Both have their roots intertwined deep in our collective past and every generation revives and cultivates them in its own way. These examples of mid-century advertising reveal the extent to which Halloween represented a commercial opportunity for the American confectionery industry. 

Dark is the Night

The rising prosperity of the Eisenhower presidency was overshadowed by Cold War tensions and the birth of the Civil Rights movement – full employment and an ocean of tempting consumer goods brought little peace of mind to the American public. Any sense of collective well-being was persistently undermined by anxiety about the Soviet menace infiltrating the American Dream. Public exposure of un-American subversives and the rush to build nuclear shelters were typical responses. Inside the family, parental discipline was increasingly challenged by mutinous teenagers empowered by the musical spirit of Rock’n’Roll – a disturbing inter-racial marriage of Rhythm and Blues and Rockabilly. Public expressions of resistance to the temptations of the flesh supported by a decorous cult of treacly romance were in serious decline - the counter-culture may have been in its infancy but the sense of impending and profound change was very real. The pages of Saturday Evening Post supply a timeline as self-discipline disintegrates into self-indulgence. Illustrators on the fiction pages captured the neurosis and insecurity of the period portraying the victims of a rising tide of violence, under assault in their cars. They also examined the romantic character of the age by representing the rites of passage in courtship – presentation of gifts, a trip to the beach, a passionate embrace. The disposition of light and shade was borrowed from the visual conventions of Film Noir, a Forties genre that enjoyed a significant afterlife in the Fifties, and the spatial organisation of foreground and background elements was equally cinematic. Ambiguous expressions and gestures abound and disconcert. Viewing these examples outside the context of the stories they illustrate brings to mind something that Brian O’Doherty wrote about Edward Hopper’s cinematic compositions and the sense we get of having walked into a cinema halfway through the movie. 

Postcard of the Day No. 57, Grimsby

The town of Grimsby shares the misfortune of Hartlepool, Worksop, Barrow, Smethwick, Middlesbrough, Bootle, Workington, Bridgwater, Merthyr Tydfil, of being lazily stereotyped as a town entirely lacking in merit – an antithesis of Winchester, Cheltenham, Bath, Salisbury, Harrogate, Beverley, Ludlow or Hexham. In every region there’s a tendency for local opinion to agree on one particular town to which everyone residing elsewhere can feel superior. I am instinctively drawn to this sort of town in the certainty that it will possess unsuspected and unappreciated qualities and delights – no place is boring, as Jonathan Meades has written. Back to Grimsby where today’s postcard shows the populace in their finery clambering aboard a tram bound for the seaside at Cleethorpes – there’s an air of Sunday-best about this crowd and a determination to make the most of their brief and hard-won hours of weekend leisure. The second card is a multi-view of Grimsby’s attractions including the famous Dock Tower, Fish Docks and Blunden Park where Grimsby Town, currently languishing in the Conference, once played First Division football. Indeed at the time of this card the Mariners were embarked upon the first of several precipitous falls from the top division to non-league obscurity. In the final card we see a glimpse of the pleasures our tram passengers can look forward to on their arrival in Cleethorpes. 

Havana Deserta

These attractively de-saturated colour postcards come from the first decade of the newly independent Republic of Cuba beginning in 1902. Turbulent times including a disputed election, an armed insurrection and a two year occupation courtesy of the US armed forces. None of this drama disturbs the surface of these untroubled soporific images of thinly populated streets where very little stirs. Postcard photographers were notorious early-risers, anxious to avoid the rush hour crowds whose blurry images could compromise the integrity of their otherwise perfect compositions. An empty city was highly desirable – a rival attraction, a bullfight, a Papal mass or a boxing tournament was just the thing to draw the crowds away. The colonial architecture inherited from the Spanish retains a crisp and well maintained air that would gradually decay as the political fabric was torn apart in a succession of ideological conflicts over the next half century. 

Mr. Peanut’s Last Stand

Today’s visual aid comes from the Cabinet of Commercial Curiosities. Regular readers may recall our monocled friend, Mr. Peanut, dapper brand character in the service of Planter’s portfolio of peanut products from butter to brittle. Mr. P has lent his likeness to this feeble hand-cranked device for the manufacture of home-made peanut butter. Sadly it would need to be a lot more robust to offer any chance of successfully grinding peanuts into paste. Nevertheless it played its part in the long campaign to convince the public that the consumption of ground nuts need not be the exclusive preference of the nation’s pigs. The double page ad from Saturday Evening Post (May 1956) celebrates the Golden Jubilee of Planter’s products and provides a handy history of the company’s expansion. It may have been written in 1956 but the text could easily pass for the present day language of MBA-speak or the clichéd drivel of Dragon’s Den. Anyway the time has come for Mr. P’s transition to a new life in retirement – his next appearance may well be on eBay. 

Living the High Life

What unites this selection of mid-century strip cartoons publicising Camel cigarettes is a focus on high risk activities or occupations. Eternal vigilance and self-discipline in the face of the force of gravity is not for the faint-hearted and each character testifies to the therapeutic value of smoking. The message is that Camel is the choice of the strong and the brave and by association a little of that may rub off on us less adventurous smokers. Beneath that, yet another message is that surely we smokers can show a little courage of our own and not be intimidated by public health fanatics and their alarmist talk of heart, lung and respiratory disease. Today’s smokers are mature enough to know their own minds and handle a little risk, look death in the eye and continue undaunted to enjoy the pleasure of a fine cigarette. These were early days in the epic battle for hearts and minds between the tobacco manufacturers and the medical establishment but the time for civilised discourse had passed and matters were destined to get a lot dirtier. In a later phase, prefigured by the footnote to these ads (More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette), the manufacturers would co-opt and corrupt a small army of doctors to counteract the health warnings of their fellow professionals as we shall see in a future posting.