Curating History
Today Would Be Liberace’s Birthday- “Mr Liberace…is the summit of sex, the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter…This deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling…scent-impregnated…giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing…heap of mother love…is the biggest sentimental vomit of all time” Quote in Newsweek [not by Newsweek], 1959

Today Would Be Liberace’s Birthday-

“Mr Liberace…is the summit of sex, the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter…This deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling…scent-impregnated…giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing…heap of mother love…is the biggest sentimental vomit of all time”

Quote in Newsweek [not by Newsweek], 1959



liberace 1950's

The More Things Change… This mad rush to medicate shows no sign of letup.  In these tense days, many citizens, awed by the miracle cures that drugs have wrought on some of the most feared diseases, often display a dependence on pills that amounts almost to mania. Newsweek  June 16, 1958

The More Things Change…

This mad rush to medicate shows no sign of letup.  In these tense days, many citizens, awed by the miracle cures that drugs have wrought on some of the most feared diseases, often display a dependence on pills that amounts almost to mania.

Newsweek  June 16, 1958



drugs medicine 1950's

Let’s Talk Teen-Agers…The Good Ones “They tool up their cars with triple carburetors, blast off to the drag strip, eat fried broccoli [!] sandwiches, and drink Coke mixed with ginger ale.  They like the lights low, the tempo hot, a real “bop beat” that lets the girls swing out and swirl their skirts.  They cut their hair flattop or pony-tail style, wear leotards and button-down sports shirts, trade bobby pins and football letters when they’re going steady.  It’s Zorch!  It’s crazy!  It’s teen-age life.” Newsweek  November 23, 1959

Let’s Talk Teen-Agers…The Good Ones

“They tool up their cars with triple carburetors, blast off to the drag strip, eat fried broccoli [!] sandwiches, and drink Coke mixed with ginger ale.  They like the lights low, the tempo hot, a real “bop beat” that lets the girls swing out and swirl their skirts.  They cut their hair flattop or pony-tail style, wear leotards and button-down sports shirts, trade bobby pins and football letters when they’re going steady.  It’s Zorch!  It’s crazy!  It’s teen-age life.”

Newsweek  November 23, 1959



Teenagers teens 1950's culture

Happy Birthday William Faulkner!

As a writer, Faulkner’s reputation is equally unique.  His contemporary Ernest Hemingway has bared his chest and beard to the winds of four continents; and Scott Fitzgerald still symbolizes the twinkle of a generation allegedly lost at the business end of a champagne bottle.  But William Faulkner has faithfully stayed up at the top of his literary tree in Oxford, confident of his fame, but never exploiting it, a courtly if rather ironic Southern gentleman who has left several generations of readers to wander through his writings, awed, interested, shocked, and not infrequently a little confused.

Newsweek August 2, 1954



william faulkner books literature 1950's