Reminisce

We have a dear friend back for a visit in this issue. Linda Kast, who used to be the brand editor of Reminisce, has written an interesting story tracing the history of artificial Christmas trees. “All That Glitters, but Never Grows,” page 42, looks at the many kinds of fake trees, from early examples out of Germany in the 1800s to the plastic bristle and aluminum versions of the modern era. Linda’s nostalgic trip down Tinsel Lane made me long for the drugstore metallic tree my Aunt Annabelle had in her small house in Toronto’s west end. It always looked spiffy, year after year. It held up much better than the toilet brush–style tree Mum bought in the late 1960s. That thing lost its grandeur early on as the holes…

EVERYBODY CHALYPSO! Dancers on TV’s American Bandstand bop to Billy & Lillie’s “La Dee Dah,” one of several tunes with Latin rhythms that inspire a dance combining elements of calypso and cha-cha. Host Dick Clark, above, dubs it “chalypso.” The dance remains popular for a couple of years before the twist sweeps the nation. MODERN MOVES Alvin Ailey, below, a dancer, director and choreographer, organizes a troupe of young dancers of color to perform for the first time as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Based in New York, the company soon sets out on its first tour, which Ailey calls the station wagon tours because that is the vehicle they use—driven by Ailey’s good friend Marilyn “Mickey” Board. SHINE ON The Hope Diamond, the distinctive and rare deep blue…

HOME ECONOMISTS under Carolyn Campbell devise hundreds of recipes for the 1958 pamphlet Wonderful Ways with Soups. In her introduction, Campbell declares canned soup is handy “for every hour, every purpose; for low-calorie and high-calorie diets; for the 1-year-old and for Gramps.” The 64-page booklet includes recipes for Jellied Tongue Salad, Prune or Apricot Upside Down Cake, Mincemeat Cake, and Chicken and Eggs on Beans. It also has a version of Tomato Soup Cake, a recipe with roots to at least the 1920s that has proved surprisingly resilient. Variations of it on the company’s website get some 65,000 hits every year.…

When director James Cameron brought Titanic to the big screen in 1997, he delivered a blockbuster that earned more than $2 billion at the box office. Despite its groundbreaking special effects and global success, Cameron’s is not the best version of the story. That honor belongs to A Night to Remember. The 1958 British film is a serious and respectful look at the sinking of the legendary liner, spending only about 30 minutes with the crew and passengers before showing the ship colliding with the iceberg. From that point, it hits just the right notes of tension and tragedy. Unlike Titanic, A Night to Remember doesn’t need a gooey romance or a mythical diamond to fabricate dramatic tension. Instead, it makes the most of the real event’s terrifying urgency, with…

Writer Jack Kerouac initially used the phrase “Beat Generation” to describe a state of world-weariness. Later, he said it conveyed a sense of spiritual enlightenment (“beatific”). Adding “nik” (a la Sputnik, Russia’s satellite launched in 1957) to the term, which had come to mean hipster, was the work of San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. The newly invented word conveyed mild derision toward the Bohemian subculture known for rejecting social mores and embracing artistic self-expression. Merriam-Webster added the word in 1958, the year Caen’s column appeared.…

Ross Bagdasarian’s ticket to success came with a little novelty song that jumped to No. 1 on the charts in 1958. He called it “(The Chipmunks Song) Christmas, Don’t Be Late,” and it would go on to earn three awards at the inaugural Grammys and sell 25 million records in those first years. Bagdasarian became the voice of Dave Seville—the band manager with the friendly “OK, fellas, get ready,” and exasperated calls of “Al-vinn!”—and all of his singing Chipmunks. A sound investment Actor and musician Bagdasarian (credits include playing the songwriter in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window) used most of his last $200 to buy a tape recorder for a musical experiment. Chipmunk vocals “Witch Doctor,” his first novelty hit, featured bits of high-speed vocals. Bagdasarian wanted to play with the sped-up…