Sepia Saturday 72: Vintage Air Mail magazines, 1960's

Firstly apologies to regular readers of this blog and Sepia Saturday who may be expecting another vintage Picturegoer magazine, but I've decided to take a break from these for a short time and share some other recent finds. A few weeks ago I came across these vintage Air Mail magazines, which is the journal of the Royal Air Forces Association. The magazines are quite specialist in nature and possibly only of interest to people connected with the Air Force, but some of the covers and adverts will almost certainly have a wider appeal. I think I still have the stamps advertised in the 25th Battle of Britain anniversary edition, although not on a First Day Cover. And for those of you wondering if there's any connection with Friday's Royal Wedding, there's not, although the Queen does feature on the 2nd cover, so that's close enough.

Front cover of Air Mail magazine, September/October 1965

Advertisement for First Day Covers for the 25th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain from Air Mail magazine, September/October 1965

Front cover of Air Mail magazine, March 1963

Back cover of Air Mail magazine, March 1963

As usual, more vintage magazines and vintage postcards on my web site

Vintage Picturegoer magazine - Alan Ladd, c.1943

Down to my last few of these Picturegoer magazine covers to share on Sepia Saturday, and this week's coverstar is US filmstar Alan Ladd. Once again this is not an actor with whom I'm familiar, but I have at least heard of a couple of his films, with his leading role in 1953's Shane probably being the most well known.

Picturegoer magazine, 10th July 1943 - front cover

Picturegoer magazine, 10th July 1943 - inside cover

Regular readers may wonder why I've used adverts from the inside cover rather than the back cover ... well, it seems that someone has cut out one of the adverts, or perhaps some sort of coupon, from this one. What struck me about the advertisements in this edition is that they seem in sharp contrast to each other, with government sanctioned adverts for war time austerity measures sat next to adverts for beauty products. But perhaps this is not hugely different from today when insurance adverts pop up during the breaks in kids' TV programmes.

More vintage magazines can be found on my web site

Sepia Saturday 60: vintage photography booklets

I'm keeping on theme this week for my Sepia Saturday post and sharing some images relating to photography. Below are a handful of Focal Photo Guide booklets I picked up a few months ago. Not sure of the age but would guess early 1960's. The black and white covers with the red borders remind me of books I had as a child, which I'm guessing I must have inherited, where colour was used sparingly.

More vintage magazines on my web site

Vintage 35mm photography magazine, c.1965

Having posted various covers from Picturegoer magazine over the past few weeks, I've decided that today for Theme Thursday's 'face' theme, I'm going to share a cover from a different vintage magazine. This is the 35mm Photography magazine from August 1965. Think it fits this week's theme of 'face' quite well.

35mm Photography magazine, August 1965

More vintage magazines can be found on my web site

Vintage Picturegoer magazine, c.1945, Ann Todd

I'm not theming this week as I had to prepare this posting in advance due to the inconvenience of it being financial year end this week, and all sorts of ridiculousness breaking out at work. My Sepia Saturday post for this week is another from my Picturegoer magazine collection. This week's posting dates back to November 10th 1945, and features Ann Todd as the cover star. Ann starred regularly in films for over 60 years from 1931 to 1992. Some of her more well known films include Perfect Strangers (1945), The Seventh Veil (1945) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). Interestingly (well, to me anyway) was that she also starred in a 1949 film called The Passionate Friends. I remember a great song by the Teardrop Explodes called Passionate Friend from their 2nd album, Wilder, but can trace no link between the two. I did however discover during my research that the film was based on an H.G.Wells novel, so maybe the Teardrop Explodes song links with the novel.

As with all these coverstars, Amazon has a huge range of films featuring Ann Todd

Picturegoer magazine, November 1945 - front cover

And of course, no Picturegoer magazine feature would be complete without a view of the great vintage advertisments on the back cover.

 Picturegoer magazine, November 1945 - back cover

More vintage magazines on my web site

Vintage Picturegoer magazine, c.1943, Anna Neagle

Thought I'd share another of my recent Picturegoer magazine finds. This one is from May 1943 and features Anna Neagle as the coverstar. As seems to often be the case with these 1940's coverstars, I had not heard of her. A quick bit of research showed that actually she was a big name at the time, appearing in 10's of films between 1930 and 1959, including Goodnight, Vienna in 1932, Nell Gwyn in 1934, and Lilacs in the Spring in 1954, the latter co-starring alongside Errol Flynn. It looks like a lot of Anna Neagle's films are available on DVD, so perhaps it's worth having a few on the shelf to watch on a rainy Saturday afternoon in front of the fire.

Front cover of vintage Picturegoer magazine, c.1943

And of course, the vintage advertisements on the back cover of the magazine are also fascinating. There's quite an impressive selection here but my favourite is the one for Odol, top left corner, which reads 'Keep smiling, even if you're running with risks. But don't run risks with that precious Odol smile'.

Back cover of vintage Picturegoer magazine, c.1943

Theme Thursday - Paper

This week's theme, 'Paper', for Theme Thursday was a bit easier for me as I have paper absolutely everywhere. Whether it be in vintage postcards, stamps, books, magazines, I'll have it. In fact to some extent I was spoilt for choice. I eventually decided on a selection of paperbacks relating to another of my passions, Cult TV series from the 1960's and 1970's. Here are a selection ...

Check out my web site for more books and magazines and also vintage postcards