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Vintage Photobooth

Tennis Anyone?

August 31, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
23 Comments

photoboothTennisAnyone?

I adore the fact that this young lady thought to take her tennis racket into a photobooth! I’ve never seen another booth photo that memorialises a sport in this way. The background is interesting for its Egyptian theme of palm trees and pyramids. This is also something I haven’t seen before.

In faded handwriting on the back are these words. . .

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My Spanish is good enough to make out some of the script on the back of this pic, but I am hoping someone out there might confirm that I have it right, or tell me where I have gone wrong!

A mi querida mama con todos el cariño, Julita – To my dear mother with all my love, Julita

The information on the bottom is too faded for me to make sense of. I am assuming it is a place-name and a date, 1945 being part of it?

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Lori and Me – Part 8

August 27, 2015
Lori and Me, Vintage Photobooth
5 Comments
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Donna and Lori – 1972

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Lori and Cheryl – 1972

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Lori and Cheryl – 1972

This is the penultimate installment in the Lori and Me series. As we get closer to the end, I am getting more and more confused about how to group the photos. The top four of Donna and Lori were taken on the same day as the first strip shown in Part 7. However, they are from a different booth that produced miniature, stamp sized photos. Each of the above photos is dated 1972, so I decided to group them with other miniatures of Donna’s friends.

I have enlarged the last picture of Lori and Cheryl to help you to see the detail of Cheryls extraordinary eyeshadow. Although it looks white in the pictures, I imagine that being the 1970s, it would have been a very pale green or pale blue. I think it looks very cool.

Donna is photographed with many boyfriends and girlfriends over a period of 4 years from 1969 to 1973 in this series of photobooth photos. It has been a long time since I started these posts, so if you’d like to review the previous photos, please click here.

Savoy Ballroom 1939

August 26, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
16 Comments

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This subtly hand-coloured photobooth image is so full of history it is hard to know where to begin. The beautiful serene face of the sitter is what attracted me to this picture but the story behind it is what makes it come alive. If I were able to travel through time to any old photobooth location, this one would be my first choice.

The Savoy Ballroom was a famous music venue in New York. It was owned by gangster Moe Paddon who, it is said, was working as a front for Chicago’s Al Capone. It opened its doors on December 14th, 1926 and closed in 1958. It spanned the whole block of 140th Street to 141st Street on Lenox Avenue in Uptown Harlem. 

There were different types of entertainment at the Savoy such as dancing professionals, dancing competitions and the famous “Battle Of The Bands” which pitted one band against the other. Usually Chick Webb‘s band would compete against another famous band, while the professional dancers would pick the winners. This usually brought the biggest crowds.

Many famous musicians and singers started out or performed regularly at the Savoy, amongst them, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Ella Fitzgerald won a singing contest at another venue in Harlem. When she got a job at the Savoy as a dancer, someone told Chick Webb about her wonderful voice. He auditioned her and signed her as his premier singer. After his death, Fitzgerald continued Webb’s band.

The Horace Henderson, mentioned at the top of the image, was an American jazz pianist, organist, arranger and bandleader. His band was known as the Horace Henderson Orchestra and then as the Dixie Stompers. He was a regular at The Savoy. I wonder if it was a tradition to put the bandleader of the night’s name on the backdrop of the in-house photobooth? The image in it is hard to figure out. Could it be radio towers, cranes from a building site or oil well rigs? Please let me know if you have any ideas what it might be.

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Ted’s Girl, Gail

August 21, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
18 Comments

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Two of these photos turned up in the post as a surprise gift from my blogging friend in the USA, Ted. A few weeks later another unexpected envelope arrived but this time from one of my favourite Ebay sellers. I was thrilled to find a note and two more of the same series of photos, which had been sent directly from her, but once again were a gift from Ted.

These charming photos of this smartly dressed young lady would look great as an animated GIF. I did try, but without any success. One day if my concentration improves, I will attempt it again.

These American photos are undated. The sitter is identified as Gail.

I’m Feeling Fine

June 27, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
18 Comments

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This is another photobooth postcard from my collection but one published by Auto-Snaps which, to my knowledge, did not also own or operate any photobooths. I can find no reference to this publisher online and have never seen another postcard designed by them.

This young man’s name is Donald. An adult has filled in the address and message –

Having a nice time Auntie.

He has signed the card himself and added three kisses. (Please see the image below.)

Like the other postcards I have posted in this series of three, the message is written in pencil. Unlike the others, this one has been posted without an envelope. It was sent from the seaside resort town of Rhyl in Wales. It is dated June 1937. It is interesting that Rhyl is also the town where Cyril Astor had one of his booths in the 1940s through to the early 70s. I imagine it possible that this was one of his earliest booths. His offices were situated nearby.

To see the previous posts about photobooth postcards please click here and here.

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A Loving Thought

June 26, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
11 Comments

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Here are three more examples of my Photomaton postcards.

The young lady in the booth photo is wearing fashionable clothes of the late 1920s or early 1930s. She wrote a message on the back, which reads –

Dear Beatie and George. We are having a fine time. Hoping all is well at home. With love from Mayme

The writing is in a childish hand, so the sitter may be a lot younger than she first appeared to me. I had thought late teens but she could possibly be as young as 13 or 14. Her name is difficult to decipher. It could also be read as Mayne. Neither that, nor my first guess are familiar female monikers, so maybe neither is correct.

Below is another example of an unused card. To see some other examples of this type of card please click here.

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I Spent My Last Shilling

June 25, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
6 Comments

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I have a small collection of ephemera related to photobooths and these are some of my favourites.

Wherever a photobooth was situated, which was more often than not in seaside holiday towns, there were postcards and postcard vendors. The photomaton company came up with a way of capitalising on the booth’s popularity as a souvenir and the popularity of postcards by combining the two. They produced empty vignette cards with seaside and country themes which had gummed paper backing, into which one could insert a recently made photo from one of their booths.

The top card must have been delivered by hand or posted in an envelope. Written in pencil on the back is –

Just a little snap of me dear. Sorry my hair is so straight. But it’s not so bad is it? Love from Nancy x x

The second card is of the same design as the first. It is one of four I have, which were never used. Below is another example. They all have twee rhymes that are typical of the sentiments found on other types of greeting cards of the time. They all date from the late 1920s to early 1930s

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Oh, You Are An Odd Girl.

June 22, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
5 Comments

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My one and only photobooth photo from Belgium is a corker! This young lady has a quirky sense of humour. I love her for that. I don’t think I have any other booth photos of anyone in bandages, let alone bandages that are so badly done. I suspect they are just a prop for the photo, but could be wrong. This pic looks even more fabulous enlarged, so please click the image to see it in all its glory.

I really wonder what the rest of the strip looked like and whether there are more mad strips of this girl floating around.

This is a standard sized booth pic that is undated.

Lori and Me – Part 7

June 15, 2015
Lori and Me, Vintage Photobooth
5 Comments

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In the seventh part of this series, we have Donna on two different days with two friends. Each photo is dated 1972.

For those of you who remember, I named this series after one of the inscriptions on the back of one of the pics. For a long time I had it in my head that Lori was the blonde star of these photos. I decided to name this large group of pictures after her, despite my mistake. So, here at last and in the top three pictures, is the “Lori” of the title. Ted, one of my friends, will be pleased to finally see her!

In the second two photos, unfortunately faded, we have Donna and Mona (who we saw before in Part 4) and “Steve’s finger”, that being the cigar-shaped shadow at the bottom right of the second image. Not sure who Steve is, but he is obviously important enough to have his finger mentioned!

Donna is photographed with many boyfriends and girlfriends over a period of 4 years from 1969 to 1973 in this series of photobooth photos. It has been a long time since I started these posts, so if you’d like to review the previous photos, please click here.

A Marcel Wave and Malocclusion

June 12, 2015
Vintage Photobooth
11 Comments

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This photobooth pair look like a very happy couple. This gent has the broadest of broad smiles and a fashionable dress sense. With marcel waves in her hair and prominent front teeth, his young lady would not be considered a beauty, but the smile on his face suggests she has a spark that we, as distant observers, may not be able to see.

Without the benefit of modern orthodontic techniques, I too, would have this same problem with upper palate over-crowding. It is interesting to note that in a person deemed attractive, this dental phenomenon is termed an “overbite”. Those deemed less visually appealing, get the pejorative label of “buck teeth”. The correct dental term is, I believe, malocclusion.

There is a Pinterest board for sexy women with overbites, nearly all actresses who’ve long disappeared from our screens, Alan Alda’s character, Hawkeye, in the third season of the TV series M*A*S*H whistfully mentions Gene Tierney’s overbite as sexy but I doubt we will see anymore thespians with this appealing, characteristic given the universal propensity towards conformity through cosmetic dentistry.

This Germany booth pic is dated September 1935.