Easter and a World of Fairs

Hello folks! Hope everyone had a splendid Easter Sunday! This was the first cold weather Easter I've seen in a while! I had to switch from a light raincoat to my heavy wool overcoat, and normally on Easter it's warm enough that I don't need any kind of overcoat! This year for Easter lunch I went with the pre-war look with my '30s suit and tie paired with my '50s does '30s Dobbs fedora. Though not from the pre-WWII era I couldn't pass up an opportunity to sport my grandpa's '50s-'60s era cufflinks and tie bar.

I also took a hike up to The Museum of the City of New York to see the "Designing Tomorrow: America's Worlds Fairs of the 1930's" exhibit. It was small, but still great! Streamline Moderne as far as the eye could see! Unfortunately no photo's were allowed of the exhibition (grumble), but they did have an "exhibit preview" with some World Fair posters outside the exhibit you could photograph. I tried to dress as close to 1939 era spec as I could with my 1939 union tag suit jacket, '30s tie and '60s (sort of) does '30s fedora.

With all this talk of the 1930's my latest music obsession happens to be from the same period. "Alligator Crawl" performed by Fats Waller in 1934.

TV jacket?

Et tu procrastination? At long last here's the post I promised. I posted this orphan suit jacket a while back, but one day while watching the 2nd season of Hogan's Hero's I noticed one of the extras, a french collaborator having just been given civilian clothes by Hogan's tailor is wearing a suit jacket that is so close a match I thought I had seen a ghost when I first saw it.

                                                                                     The movie extra

                                                                                       My jacket

                                                                                  Close up of detail

      Is it the same jacket? Most likely not, but who knows where these 65+ year old jackets have traveled.

Next I'd like to show another illustration I did. I was inspired by all those cartoony '30s-'40s era pin-up drawings that have been done and reproduced over the years so I decided to take a crack at it.

"Boardwalk Beauty" Ain't she sweet?

On the subject of cartoons, I had the opportunity of meeting animation legend Dan Haskett. A veteran of Hanna Barbera, Warner Brothers and Disney studios, he has been consistently working in the field since 1969 and has worked with many animation legends of the Golden Era. He currently works on Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo and is best known for his character design work on "The Little Mermaid". I was wearing some vintage garb I've posted before, so I need not bore you with repetition ha ha. It's too washed out by the fluorescent lights, but I'm pointing at Hasketts signature under some of my own sketches I drew during his lecture.

                          I have yet more vintage finds to talk about in the next post! Stay tuned!

Not exactly a recording I'm "obsessed" with, but it's the most recent music I've been listening to. "Street Piano Medley" recorded in 1909.