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1954 FUTURE KING ''This boy has something that seems to appeal to everybody,'' said Marion Keisker of Sun Records to the Memphis Press Scimitar after a young truck driver named Elvis Aron Presley released his first single ''That's All Right'' and ''Blue Moon of Kentucky.'' The studio
was Memphis Recording Service and the results defined rock & roll as we know it today 1955 Rebel Without a Cause movie directed by Nicholas Ray. Cast including Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo and James Dean who defined teen culture
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50s Vintage Barbie Beach |
Vintage Barbie Daywear |
Barbie Glamour Doll 50s |
Glamour Barbie 1950s |
1959, the first Barbie Doll goes on display at the American Toy Fair in New
York City. The eleven inches tall, with a waterfall of blond hair, Barbie was the first mass-produced toy
doll in the United States with adult features. The woman behind Barbie was Ruth Handler, who co-founded
Mattel Toys Inc. with her husband in 1945. After seeing her young daughter ignore her baby dolls to play
make-believe with paper dolls of adult women, Handler realized there was an important niche in the market
for a toy that allowed little girls to imagine the future. |
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this day in 1955, movie star James Dean dies at age 24 in a car crash on a California highway. Dean was
driving his Porsche 550 Spyder, nicknamed "Little Bastard," headed to a car race in Salinas, California,
with his mechanic Rolf Wuetherich, when they were involved in a head-on collision with a car driven by a
23-year-old college student named Donald Turnaspeed. Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital,
where he was pronounced dead at 5:59 p.m. Wuetherich, who was thrown from the car, survived the accident and
Turnaspeed escaped with minor injuries. No charges were ever filed against him.
It
started out as an assignment and become a legacy. In 1955 the young Magnum photographer Dennis Stock accompanied
James Dean in New York. The photograph would prove to be the best and the most intimate portrait of James Dean.
September 30, 1955 James Dean & his mechanic driving his Porsche Spyder
from Hollywood to Salinas late in the afternoon. A young Cal-Poly student turned left in front of them on his way home to Fresno. The crash
crumpled the Porsche - instantly killing Dean. with The mechanic (who survived)
by being thrown out of the car.
In Hollywood, the suicide toll has been great. Avid James Dean fans still speculate that his fatal car accident was never an accident but a self destructive reaction to the pressures imposed by fame.
Having become sullen after losing his lover Pier Angeli to Vic Damone. "Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse," said Dean who was dead within a month of predicting his own demise.
Pier Angeli never really adjusted to Hollywood or to the death of James Dean. A year later, Pier Angeli was found dead. Her suicide induced by a barbiturate overdose was blamed
as she told an interviewer, "I am still in love with Jimmy" and then blamed Hollywood for the dead of their teen idol |
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February 3, 1959 The day the music died. On this day in 1959, rising American rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza plane crashes in Iowa a few minutes after
takeoff from Mason City on a flight headed for Moorehead, Minnesota. Investigators blamed the crash on bad weather and pilot error. Holly and his band, the Crickets, had just scored a No. 1 hit with "That'll Be the Day."
Tribute to Buddy Holly
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