The year is 1956, and Old Compton Street, Soho, is pictured in the Netflix series ‘The Crown’. The series was the costliest ever for Netflix and has been praised for its high production values.
The Golden Era
1990 ‘People try to put us down …’ BBC documentary on teds, rockers, mods and skinheads
A 17-minute BBC Manchester educational documentary of Producer Marilyn Wheatcroft who was later to become head of BBC Education between 1995 and 2000. Many parts of ‘People try to put us down …’ are found on a 38-minute edited documentary put up on YouTube in 2016 by ‘Trashville Productions’ (attributed to Marleigh and Rushgrove).
1962 Square Saint Lambert, Paris
1962RTF documentary on Square Saint Lambert, where the ‘blouson noir’ phenomenon was born 4 years earlier. What a young bloke likes: “Le madison, le twist, le rock, tout ce qui est à la mode” ‘Tout naturellement on va au cinéma, tout naturellement on choisis les films de violence” 0:31 Armés de barres de fer et… […]
Hector, the French Sutch
Is there such a thing as a Screamin’ Lord Sutch in any other country but England ? Apparently, yes, and in France he went under the name of Hector, his backing band being the Médiators. Of course, both Lord Sutch and Hector were inspired by the original schlock rocker, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Born in Paris […]
Americanisation, processed food and obesity since the 1940s
In the present day, using body-mass index (BMI) measurements, the medical profession distinguishes between classifying human bodies which are described as ‘fat’ in everyday speech as technically – in ascending order – as ‘overweight’ > ‘obese’ > ‘morbidly obese’. In 1962, only 13% of Americans were obese, by 2016 that figure had increased to over […]
1956 ‘My Teenage Daughter’
Opening in May 1956, the British film ‘My Teenage Daughter’ was Britain’s answer to ‘Rebel without a Cause’. It was considered a hit at the time but is a much tamer affair and has less to say about teenage culture in general than its. Director and producer Herbert Wilcox whose wife Anna Neagle) would also […]
