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Yo Yo and Friends

March 9, 2016
Photobooth Clowns, Vintage Photobooth
7 Comments
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From my collection

Yo Yo (Bill Alcott) is seen above with a Majorette, which I have just discovered is an American term for a baton twirling marching girl. In Australia we have a different name for this type of performer. We call them  Baton Twirling Marching Girls. Not much linguistic creativity there, Oz! The above souvenir photo is one of many I have seen on eBay, in the past two years or so, where we see Yo Yo posing with a visitor to the carnival or circus. The above photo is the only one that shows somebody in a costume that indicates they were also performers at the event.

My scanner has failed to capture how wonderful this photo is.  There is a depth to the photo that is not visible here. Our marching girl is beautiful. She looks serene and comfortable getting a hug from my favourite clown. I wonder if they were friends?

Below are more photos of Yo Yo with circus goers. Unless otherwise indicated, I do not own them, but copied them from the eBay listing when they were sold.

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From my collection

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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Their Own Starring Roles

November 30, 2012
Movie-Of-U, Vintage Photobooth
13 Comments

When previewing this post on my predominantly monochrome blog, the lurid orange of these gems came as a bit of a visual shock to the system. However, the colour is true to the originals which are in perfect condition.

Presumably a husband and wife (both photos came from the same estate), these are lenticular photos. My one other example of this rare type of photobooth item can be seen in this earlier post.

These 1940 World’s Fair Movie-Of-U souvenirs are made up of three exposures taken in succession on the same frame. The frame is placed under a lined sheet of acetate and when tilted appears to show movement.  In the flat position needed to make a scan of these images, it is not possible to capture the images separately.

When in action, the movement is fluid and really looks like a mini-movie.  In some ways they could be seen as a primitive version of the Graphics Interchange Format (GIFs) I used in earlier posts this month.

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