The Glamour of Stockings

The Age of Glamour - Stockings 20s to the 50s
Clips courtesy of Prelinger archive

Ann Miller

Ann Miller colorized 19 years old as a blonde
Ann started when she was 14 years old.She was the fastest tap dancer in films. This is highly rare photo of her as blonde.

At the age of 13 Miller had been hired as a dancer in the "Black Cat Club" in San Francisco. The following year, Miller was offered a contract at Columbia Pictures.
Miller invented pantyhose in the 1940s as a solution to the problem of continual torn stockings during the filming of dance production numbers. The common practice had been to sew hosiery to briefs worn by Miller. If torn, the entire garment had to be removed and resewn with a new pair. At Miller's request, hosiery was manufactured for her as a single pantyhose.
She starred on Broadway in the musical "Mame" in 1969, in which she wowed the audience in a tap number created just for her. In 1979 she astounded audiences in the Broadway show Sugar Babies with fellow MGM veteran Mickey Rooney, which toured the United States extensively after its Broadway run. In 1983 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.

1950s Hollywood Glamour

Ziegfeld Girl

Set in the 1920s, the film tells the parallel stories of three women who become performers in the renown Broadway show the Ziegfeld Follies.

It was intended to be a 1938 sequel to the 1936 hit The Great Ziegfeld, and even recycled some footage from the earlier film.

Glamorous 'Sweater Girl'

She reached the height of her fame in the 1940s and 1950s. During World War II, Turner became a popular pin-up girl due to her popularity in such films such as Ziegfeld Girl, Johnny Eager, and four films with MGM's "king of the lot," Clark Gable . Lana even had a B-17—the Tempest Turner—named after her.[5] After the war, Turner's career continued successfully with the release, in 1946, of The Postman Always Rings Twice, which co-starred John Garfield.. The now-classic film noir marked a turning point in her career. Reviews of the film, and in particular, Lana's performance, were glowing. While not exactly giving up her pin-up credentials, Lana established herself as a skilled actress.

During the 1950s, Turner starred in a series of films that failed to succeed at the box office, a situation MGM attempted to remedy by casting her in musicals. The first, Mr. Imperium, was a flop, while The Merry Widow was more successful.

She gave a widely praised performance in Vincente Minnelli's 1952 film, The Bad and the Beautiful, and later starred with John Wayne in the adventure film The Sea Chase. She was then cast in the epic The Prodigal, but the film and her performance in general were not well received. wiki

Vintage corset lingerie

Josephine Baker - The First Black Superstar

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture, to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer.

She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States , for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de Guerre.

Josephine Baker Danse Sauvage

Olympia 1968

retro moda

Nancy Sinatra

In the late 1950s Sinatra began to study music, dancing, and voice at the University of California in Los Angeles. She dropped out after a year, and made her professional debut in 1960 on her father's television special with Elvis Presley, home from the army. Nancy was sent to the airport on behalf of her father to welcome Elvis when his plane landed. On the special, Nancy and her father danced and sang a duet, "You Make Me Feel So Young/Old". That same year she began a five-year marriage to Tommy Sands.

These Boots Are Made For Walking (1966)

Nancy Sinatra began her career as a singer and actress in the early 1960s, but initially achieved success only in Europe and Japan. Then she had a transatlantic number-one pop with "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'", which showed her provocative but good-natured style, and which popularized and made her synonymous with go-go boots. The promo clip featured a big-haired Sinatra and six young women in tight tops, go-go boots and mini-skirts, and is considered[by whom?] a classic example of high camp. The song was written by Lee Hazlewood, who wrote and produced most of her hits and sang with her on several duets, including "Some Velvet Morning". In 1966 and 1967, Sinatra charted with 13 titles, all of which featured Billy Strange as arranger and conductor.

In 1967 she paired with her father for her second number-one single, "Somethin' Stupid". She also co-starred with Elvis Presley in the movie Speedway.

Sally Rand

She continued to appear on stage doing her fan dance into her sixties. Rand once replaced an ill Ann Corio in the stage show This Was Burlesque during the 1960s. Rand appeared at the Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco in the early 1970s. Later, would appear Tempest Storm and Blaze Starr.

Sally Rand dances

New Burlesque

A new generation nostalgic for the spectacle and perceived glamour of the old times determined to bring burlesque back. This revival was pioneered independently in the mid 1990s by Billie Madley "Cinema" and Ami Goodheart's "Dutch Weismanns' Follies" revue in New York and Michelle Carr's "The Velvet Hammer Burlesque" troupe in Los Angeles. In addition, and throughout the country, many individual performers were incorporating aspects of burlesque in their acts. These productions, inspired by the likes of Sally Rand, Tempest Storm, Gypsy Rose Lee, Dixie Evans and Lily St. Cyr have themselves gone on to inspire a new generation of performers.

Today New Burlesque has taken many forms, but all have the common trait of honoring one or more of burlesque's previous incarnations, with acts including striptease, expensive costumes, bawdy humor, cabaret and more. There are modern burlesque performers and shows all over the world, and annual conventions such as Tease-O-Rama, New York Burlesque Festival, The Great Boston Burlesque Exposition, and the Miss Exotic World Pageant.

Today's Burlesque revival has found homes throughout the United States and the world, with the largest communities located on the East and West Coasts of the U.S. On the East Coast, New York City boasts the largest community (where select nightlife venues have been inspired by the trend—several notable troops and venues include The Slipper Room, Le Scandal Cabaret, Pinchbottom Burlesque, Starshine Burlesque, Wasabassco burlesque, and, during the summer, Coney Island's Burlesque at the Beach); in Greensboro, NC, burlesque revival performances by Foxy Moxy and her "Cabaret Risque" troupe have been incorporated into the Greensboro Fringe Theater Festival; in the Pacific Northwest, the Burlesque scene is centered in Seattle—home of Miss Indigo Blue, Miss Trixie Lane—The Queen of Shame, Miss Kitty Baby, Ravenna Black, Paula the Swedish Housewife, Vienna Le Rouge, The Atomic Bombshells, Burning Hearts, The Von Foxies, Glitzkrieg Burlesque, and Sinner Saint Burlesque, to name a few; in California, the largest communities reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of the largest monthly burlesque and variety show (the Hubba Hubba Revue), and Los Angeles.

There are also thriving Burlesque scenes in Canada, the UK, France (Rendez-Vous Van Paris) and Japan. SPAG Burlesque was voted best Detroit based burlesque show by Real Detroit Magazine in 2009. wiki

Dita von Teese - Queen of Burlesque

It was during this time at the strip club that she began some glamour modeling, before she eventually became a fetish model. Her retro pin-up look, frequently emulating Bettie Page in photo shoots, set her apart from most other fetish models.

Von Teese was featured in Playboy magazine in 1999, 2001 and 2002, with a cover-featured pictorial in 2002. Dita says that it is her appearances in Playboy that finally won her father's respect for her profession.

Fifties pin up look

Betty Grable

Images of the famous 'Pin-up Girl'

As the 1930's ended, after small parts in over 50 Hollywood movies throughout the 1930s – Grable finally gained national attention on stage for her role in the Cole Porter Broadway hit Du Barry Was a Lady (1939).

Grable's later career was marked by feuds with studio heads. At one point, in the middle of a fight with Zanuck, she tore up her contract and stormed out of his office. By 1953, Zanuck was grooming Marilyn Monroe to replace Grable as the Fox's resident sex symbol. Far from feeling threatened, on the set of How to Marry a Millionaire Grable famously said to Monroe, "go and get yours, honey! I've had mine".

Pin-up models from the 20s

This video presentation of the pin-up stars from the 20s to the 60s.

Pin-up girls or pin-up models are either models, fashion models or actresses whose mass-produced pictures enjoy wide appeal as pop culture.

Irish McCalla

Nellie Elizabeth "Irish" McCalla was an American actress and artist best-known as the title star of the 1950s television series Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

McCalla was already a popular pinup model by 1952, when she and other models appeared in the film River Goddesses, consisting of several voluptuous young women frolicking in the Grand Canyon.
Following the one-season Sheena, McCalla appeared in five films from 1958 to 1962, and guest roles on the TV series Have Gun — Will Travel and Route 66. Additionally, she formed McCalla Enterprises, Inc.

Cheesecake

The term "cheesecake" is synonymous with pin-up photo. The earliest documented print usage of this sense of cheesecake is in 1934 [1], predating pin-up, although anecdotes say the phrase was in spoken slang some 20 years earlier, originally in the phrase (said of a pretty woman) "better than cheesecake." In the 1950s, for example, there was a magazine called Cheesecake that had a young Marilyn Monroe in a yellow bikini on its cover in 1953

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Vargas Girls. The most beautiful of all the pin ups.

Retro Fitness

Physical Fitness is important! These 40's gals show you how it's done in heels and panties! Reaching, stretching, bending , whew!

Bend Down Sister

1940s pin up Hollywood girls

40s glamour is exquisite. Considering the sad and tragic fate that befell some of Hollywood's most beautiful stars, you almost wish they'd disappeared off the face of the earth long before they had the misfortune to grow old.