Animated Architecture: The Fun Pad

It was a retro-future spin (pun intended) on a traditional amusement pier and was inspired in just about everything but name.  The Fun Pad just seemed too generic for a Jetsons-era entertainment complex.  It was one of the destinations of Judy Jetson and Jet Screamer in The Jetsons episode, "A Date with Jet Screamer."

An amusement park is a near perfect subject for a space age-Googie makeover.  Rollercoasters, ferris wheels, and spinning rides are easily adapted to "space age designs that depict motion," one of the fundamental components of Googie design as cited in Wikipedia.  Hanna Barbera background artists Art Lozzi, Bob Abrams and Lee Branscome effectively brought those concepts to a successful realization.  I especially like the the very practical lower level parking decks.

The Fun Pad had a real life counterpart of sorts.  Astro Land, located on New York's famed Coney Island, was advertised as the nation's first "space age" amusement park when it opened in 1962.  The Jetsons, coincidentally, debuted on television that very same year.

The Mystery of the Missing Space Station

My Mom still pleads ignorance on this particular subject.

At some undetermined point in my youth, likely prior to my tenth birthday, my Major Matt Mason Space Station vanished.  I'm sure I didn't notice it immediately.  I was the type of kid that cycled through my toys.  I would focus on Johnny West for a couple of weeks at a time, dust off the Strange Change Machine about once a month, go on a board game kick for a few days, not to mention heading down the street and working my way through my best friend's inventory as needed.  So the date and time of this crime will forever remain a mystery.

Again, the item in question, as pictured here--the Major Matt Mason Space Station.  Yes indeed, the holy grail of the Major Matt Mason toys.  This was the top of the line.  Your Mom or Dad didn't let you casually toss this one into the shopping cart in say, May or September.  A toy of this caliber, this level of cost, this degree of complexity, required a prerequisite special occasion.  Either your birthday or Christmas.  I landed mine on the latter.  And bear in mind, this wasn't just any Christmas present, this was the main event.  The Major Matt Mason Space Station was, allegorically speaking, my official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle.  Collector Keith Meyer christened his Major Matt Mason website The Space Station and noted on its history page, "The Space Station was perhaps the most impressive toy of the entire collection. It stood just over two feet tall, with towering girders and impressive 'Solar Shields". Many a youngster fell asleep in a darkened room, lit only by the purple glow of the Station beacon."

Major Matt Mason was introduced to the world in 1966, and proved popular until Mattel retired the line in the mid-1970s.  His tenure in the toy chest coincided with much of NASA's peak years, epitomized by the first lunar landing in 1969.  It was quite likely that there was a MMM toy nearby in my bedroom when my Dad woke me up to watch Neil Armstrong take those famous first steps.

The standard MMM figures were notorious for their lack of durability.  Made of rubber, their internal wire skeletons were prone to breaking at the joints, leaving Matt and his crew with sadly dangling arms and legs.  Your average young MMM enthusiast typically had a box full of "crippled" astronauts and a disgruntled parent tired of driving to K-Mart to purchase replacements.  I have often wondered if this in fact was the potential motive behind the aforementioned Space Station crime.

I owned numerous other Major Matt Mason toys and accessories.  The Space Crawler was the one that received the most playtime.  Of the other crew members, I did possess multiple Sgt. Storms, but regrettably, astronauts Doug Davis and Jeff Long never made it into my collection.  The oversize Captain Lazer arrived on another Christmas morning accompanied by the Firebolt Space Cannon Super Action Set.

The mystery of the missing Space Station remains unresolved to this day.  It was last seen near the laundry area in the basement of my childhood home.  My mother, the prime suspect in the case, has never wavered through four decades of questioning.  Her typical response:  "I have no idea what you're talking about.  You expect me to remember a stupid toy from forty years ago?  You're crazy, you know that?"

Sure Mom, sure.  It's a wonder you can sleep at night.

Windows to the Past: Leslie Brooks at the Hollywood Canteen

Columbia Studios starlet and pin-up girl Leslie Brooks gets help from a serviceman outside the soon-to-open Hollywood Canteen in this photograph from fall of 1942.  The gentleman is Yeoman Seymour Rice of the Coast Guard.

The Hollywood Canteen was located on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood.  It operated during the war years from 1942 to 1945 and featured free food and entertainment for servicemen and servicewomen.  The Canteen was the brainchild of stars Bette Davis and John Garfield, and they enlisted the entire entertainment industry to donate labor, materials and services to construct and operate the venue.  By the time it closed on Thanksgiving Day 1945, it had served nearly three million military personnel.  In 1944, Warner Brothers released the film Hollywood Canteen which drew inspiration from the actual nightclub.

Brooks was twenty years old when she signed with Columbia Pictures in 1942.  Her career in Hollywood lasted less than a decade.  She played secondary roles for Columbia before being leaving the studio in 1948.  Her personal life at the time was marred by a troubled marriage to ex-marine and struggling actor Donald Anthony Shay that ended in a divorce and a bitter custody fight over their daughter Leslie Victoria.  She would go on to marry land developer Russ Vincent in 1950 and effectively retire from show business.

Fresh Up!

Two words that were associated with 7-Up adverting campaigns for nearly a decade.  It was certainly an odd slogan, though I suppose derivative of the word refreshing that was of course used frequently in soft drink ad copy.  The slogan ultimately gave birth to a cartoon mascot named Fresh Up Freddie, a hyperactive bird created by Walt Disney's little known commercials production unit.  For more information on Freddie, check out this recent post on our companion site, 2719 Hyperion.

Still 10¢

Apologies for the lack of content here these past few weeks.  As always, real world obligations trump online hobbies.  Hopefully we'll get back on track over the next week or so.

I've been rediscovering of late my love of comics from the so-called Silver Age era.  Here's an advertisement for DC Comics that reminds us just what a dime would buy in those days.

The Return of Tom Corbett - and More!

eBooks are quickly becoming fashionable, and more importantly, accessible, thanks to the recent wave of eReader software programs and devices that have become available.  While most consumers embracing the various eBook formats are likely to head to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to download the latest Stephen King or Nora Roberts tomes, I have found myself instead exploring the lesser known but still very notable public domain repositories such as Project Gutenburg, ManyBooks.net and epub Books.  Their collected resources are quite extensive, and most notably--free.

If you are familiar with these various public domain archives but think they really only house the likes of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, think again.  I recently made a discovery at ManyBooks that was a true Boom Pop! revelation.  There, available in eBook editions were all but one of the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series of books published by Grosset & Dunlap during the early 1950s.  The books were adapted from the well known Tom Corbett radio and television programs and are shining examples of mid-20th century outer space pop culture.  I had over the years managed to collect three of the eight books that were published, so to find four other titles immediately accessible was very exciting.

The Tom Corbett titles available at ManyBooks are:

• Stand By for Mars!
• Danger in Deep Space
• On the Trail of the Space Pirates
• The Space Pioneers
• The Revolt on Venus
• Treachery in Outer Space
• Sabotage in Space

The final book in the series, The Robot Rocket, remains under copyright protection and is not yet available in an eBook format.

ManyBooks also has an extensive selection of vintage mid-20th century science fiction novels and stories.  You can find some very obscure titles and authors, but also discover material from significant names such as Andre Norton, E. E. Doc Smith, C. M. Kornbluth, Robert E. Howard, Harry Harrison and Lester del Rey, just to name a few.

Weeki Wachee's Biggest Fans

What to Don Knotts, Roy Rogers and rocket scientist
Wernher Von Braun all have in common?

They appear to have been very enthusiastic fans of one of Florida's most famous pre-Disney tourist attractions: Weeki Wachee.  This according to our latest artifact from Tony's Attic, a Weeki Wachee tourist brochure, dating from sometime during the early 1960s.  Bob Hope and Arthur Godfrey were among a few other celebrities who also endorsed the Gulf Coast attraction.  Godfrey in fact called it " . . . one of the Seven Modern Wonders of the World."

In early 1964, the world premiere of Knott's feature film The Incredible Mr. Limpet was held in the park's famous underwater theater.

Greetings From - Manhattan's Classic Skyscrapers

It seems that the romance of skyscrapers has diminished greatly over the last few decades.  But that romance was certainly alive and well when the Manhattan Post Card Publishing Company showcased these two classic buildings.  The small print on the reverse side classifies each image as a "Colourpicture Publication."

The captions:

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

Empire State Building, the world's tallest structure, located at 5th Avenue and 34th Street, rises 1250 feet above the sidewalk.  Observatories are open to the public on the 86th and 102nd floors.

CHRYSLER BUILDING

A modernistic Georgia Marble and Indiana Limestone building which rises 1046 feet above the ground to the top of the steel mast.  A truly great achievement of modern architecture.

You'll Remember the Westinghouse Building as Long as You Live

The Middletons were a wholly fictitious family created by Westinghouse Electric to promote the company and its pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair.  While their most famous showcase was the fifty-five minute commercial film The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair, Mother, Father, Grandma, Babs and Bud also featured prominently in a series of magazine advertisements that appeared throughout the spring and summer of 1939.  This particular installment comes from the July 10, 1939 issue of Life magazine and features one of the Fair's most popular and iconic attractions--Elektro.  A comic strip illustrates A Lesson from Elektro--the Moto-Man.

The text shown on the right side of the advertisement is as follows:

In the Hall of Electrical Living, the Middletons are entertained by Elektro, the amazing Westinghouse Moto-Man. It's lots of fun, especially for Babs and Bud. And the older folks in the family appreciate the serious side, too — how electricity has lightened housekeeping burdens and made more time for living in the modern home. You, too, will enjoy every minute of your visit to the Westinghouse Building at the New York Fair. Be sure to see Elektro, as well as the many other features offered by this "fair within a fair." Don't miss "The Battle of the Centuries," the Microvivarium, the Junior Science Laboratories, and the Television Show. You'll remember the Westinghouse Building as long as you live.

The movie of The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair is especially significant in that it preserves on film an actual demonstration of Elektro at the Westinghouse pavilion.  The film can be found online at the Prelinger Archives at archive.org.

We will feature more adventures of the Middleton Family at the World's Fair on future Boom-Pop! posts.

Can War Marriages Be Made to Work?

War marriages were very much the stuff of Hollywood romance during World War II.  The most shining example would likely be the 1945 MGM classic The Clock, starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker as a young woman and a soldier who meet and fall in love over the course of a few days and quickly rush to the alter (or in their specific case, a New York City  Justice of the Peace.)

There was certainly a reality behind these whirlwind movie courtships, so much so that the War Department produced a pamphlet in 1944 urging soldiers to demonstrate caution and good judgment when considering any such hurried decisions involving near spontaneous matrimony.  The 32-page booklet was entitled Can War Marriages Be Made to Work? and was classified as War Department Education Manual EM30.  It was part of the G.I. Roundtable series, a series of pamphlets that were also designed to be the basis of potential discussion groups attended by servicemen.

The pamphlet quickly poses the question, "Why War Marriages?"  The answer:

Many war marriages are hasty marriages. Many are made while men are on leave or furlough. Often the time of the marriage is determined by the approaching end of a short leave.

Military promptness and the speed-up of work in war plants tend to hasten marriage. Entrance into service is an abrupt change Of status. Why not, some argue, make an abrupt change from single to married status? If war can change life overnight, why not make the change more complete by marrying? If the Army is going to snatch you away from civilian life, why not strengthen your ties with that life by leaving a wife behind you? And for many a girl who watches the boys going away from the home town, the "dates" of the hectic hours before they go may seem the last chance for marriage.

Courtship, no matter how disguised, is competition. To the soldier marriage offers, among other advantages, a device to ward off the competition of rivals while he is away.

In war nothing is certain but uncertainty. Even an unwise marriage may give a feeling of certainty for a moment. Unconsciously it may seem to offer an escape from doubts and confusion.

Many war marriages come about through loneliness or fear of loneliness. A soldier returns to his home town on leave; his old friends are gone; many things have changed. Or a girl takes a job away from home and is separated from her family and friends. Both to the girl away from home and to the soldier on leave, marriage is an intimate relationship that seems to offer escape from loneliness. Absence makes the heart grow fonder—if there is nobody else. And there may be nobody else in time to prevent a marriage that might never have taken place under normal conditions.

Though very much rooted in the culture of the 1940s, Can War Marriages Be Made to Work? provides some surprisingly progressive advice by way of its concept of the 50-50 marriage:

The "fifty-fifty" marriage, the kind in which neither husband nor wife orders the other around but in which they share equal authority and parallel responsibility, seems to have the best chance of success. There are persons who like to be bossed and others who enjoy bossing. If such individuals happen to pair off, the marriage may be a success. But in general American women are not by temperament or by training inclined to play the role of door mat in marriage any more than American men.

In fact, a couple's attitude toward equality in marriage relationship may be as important as the actual division of authority and responsibility between them. One recent study showed that husbands opposed to rights for women were somewhat less likely to be happily married than those more tolerant on the subject of equal rights and responsibilities for women. Many happily married couples assert that a "fifty-fifty" meeting is not enough—that each must be ready to go more than half way and provide, -in a "sixty-sixty" arrangement, a wide area for compromise.