He flew as a military aviator during WWI in the United States, was the winner of an air race and broke aviation speed records between the wars and served during World War II and the Korean War.
He retired as a two star, one of his sons retired as a three star.
Along the way he worked with some historical people, like Billy Mitchell, Lindbergh, Doolittle, and Yeager, and while acting as the Deputy Commander of the Strategic Air Command, gave direct orders to create a cover story for the incident and therefore create what has become known as the government cover-up of the Roswell UFO incident.
Under his command and by his retirement in 1954, SAAMA and Kelly Air Force Base was the largest employer in Texas and the Southwest in order to supply the Army in the Korean War
One of his largest contributions was the mechanization of SAAMA. He became personally involved with an extensive modernization project that brought the machine-age to Kelly Air Force Base. In one such project, General McMullen himself conceived an “aircraft loader.” He sent the blue prints to the Kelly maintenance shop at which point a prototype was built. The loader was placed into use and the result was that it took one-fourth the time to load and unload cargo from aircraft.
He also initiated a "Santa's Express" for the kids of the workers at Kelly AFB
Born Doris Marianne von Kappelhoff, her dancing career was cut short at age 15 when she was in a car struck by a train... yeah, that happened in 1937, way back before color movies, tv, or roller skates.
She married young, and foolishly, as so many young people do... and often, as many people who don't know what the hell they are doing being married in the 1st place often repeat the same catastrophic error. Nearly fatally, as her 1st marriage was to a raging green monster that beat the shit out of her for months, just for receiving a wedding gift. She was already preggers, probably why she got married anyway, and couldn't get rid of the asshole for 2 years. He suicided 14 years later when she became the famous actress we all know.
Her 2nd husband mistake was a 3 year stint, and her 3rd wrecked her financially and got her stuck in contract TV appearances. Day filed suit against Rosenthal, her husbands partner in crime and also the lawyer she'd used to get a divorce from her previous husband, in February 1969, won a successful decision in 1974, but did not receive compensation until a settlement in 1979.
Why she didn't have a close set of friends to steer her through and past all these wretched relationships is a complete mystery. After all, she also had a manager, publicist, etc etc who were looking out for her career and business interests
She was known around the world for singing "Que Sera, Sera"; “Sentimental Journey,” released in 1945, sold more than a million copies... and while singing with the Les Brown band and while performing for nearly two years on Bob Hope's weekly radio program, she toured extensively across the United States.
The bandleader Les Brown, once said, “As a singer Doris belongs in the company of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.” Between 1950 and 1953, the albums from six of her movie musicals charted in the Top 10, three of them at No. 1
In 1950, U.S. servicemen in Korea voted her their favorite star, “the girl we would most like to take a slow boat back to the States with.”
Day wasn’t a glamorous blond enigma like Grace Kelly or Kim Novak — though she did, like both of them, work with Alfred Hitchcock.
She was not a Hollywood bombshell in the manner of Marilyn Monroe or Mamie Van Doren, with whom she competed for Clark Gable’s attention in the 1958 comedy “Teacher’s Pet”.
From 1959 through 1969, she received six Golden Globe nominations for best female performance in three comedies, one drama (Midnight Lace), one musical (Jumbo), and her television series.
She was America’s top box-office star in the early 1960s, starring in nearly 40 movies, fast paced comedies, the perky girl next door, the woman next door, sexless sex comedies, musicals, melodramas, and even a Hitchcock thriller - that brought her four first-place rankings in the yearly popularity poll of theater owners. She co-starred with James Cagney, Kirk Douglas, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, James Garner, Tony Randall, David Niven, Rex Harrison, Rock Hudson, Ronald Reagan, and Cary Grant
Awards:
She was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in 1960
She received three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards, was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame, and in 2010 received the first Legend Award ever presented by the Society of Singers
In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush for her achievements in the entertainment industry and for her work on behalf of animals
The Academy of Motion Pictures offered her the Honorary Oscar multiple times, but she declined as she saw the film industry as a part of her past life.
Day was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1981 and received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement in 1989
Day at 89, became the oldest artist to score a UK Top 10 with an album featuring new material
In 1991 was awarded the American Comedy Award: Lifetime Achievement Award
In 1962, Day appeared with Cary Grant in the comedy That Touch of Mink, the first film in history ever to gross $1 million at Radio City Music Hall.
During 1960 and the 1962 to 1964 period, she ranked number one at the box office, the second woman to be number one four times, an accomplishment equaled by no other actress except Shirley Temple.
She set a record that has yet to be equaled, receiving seven consecutive Laurel Awards as the top female box office star.
But somehow, not learning from all the marriage and divorce drama, she recently hired a new business manager, who fired all her longstanding members on her pet foundation ( Doris Day Animal Foundation ) board and appointed his direct family as the new board members, changed the security staff at her estate, and kept her only grandson (she had one son, who had a hit in the 1960s with "Hey Little Cobra" under the name the Rip Chords, and who worked with the Beach Boys, and one grandson, a realtor in Carmel) from seeing her in her last week.
He designed the coiled cobra on every Shelby Mustang sold today.
He thought the original emblem Shelby was using lacked menace, so he drew, and drew, and redrew, and finally came up with the coiled, fangs-bared symbol that any Shelby fan will immediately recognize today.
He was born in 1928, north of the 38th parallel that would come to divide Korea. The country was controlled by Japan at the time, with Korean culture brutally repressed. By the time Chun was ten, occupying Japanese forces had outlawed even speaking Korean. Then, war in the Pacific.
He emigrated to the US as an engineering student, arriving in Sacramento in 1957. Despite a limited grasp of English, his practical skills impressed instructors, one of whom suggested he enroll at the Art Center College of Design. Tuition was $350 a semester in 1958
He worked a full shift as a mechanic at International Harvester, and later at a GM truck shop. He paid his own way, becoming the first Korean student to graduate from ArtCenter.
Ford, GM, and Chrysler turned him down. But then Fred Goodell, chief engineer at Shelby American, came looking for recruits
Chun sat down at his desk in a converted hangar at Los Angeles airport, and began to draw. He was tasked with coming up with a concept for Shelby's followup to the inaugural Mustang GT350.
He married his wife, Helen, in 1978, and they bought the Chun Mee restaurant in 1986.
John passed away in 2013, the restaurant was full of photos and drawings of the 67-69 GT 500 Shelby Cobra Mustang
These little booklets were distributed by stores, and this one below (Cow and Silver Cream) has the printed address of Rudy's Meat Market in Portland Maine.
Grant was born on April 26, 1902, in Coleridge, Nebraska. When Grant was six years old, his family moved to South Dakota where they homesteaded.
His experiences living on the prairies served as the inspiration for many of the artworks he would create throughout his career. While there he also learned illustration techniques from his beloved school teacher cousin Nellie Grant.
As a teen, Grant moved with his family to California. He studied business law and public speaking at the University of Southern California and, at age 21, enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago.
Vernon Grant was an illustrator best known for his creation of the SNAP! CRACKLE! AND POP! characters for Kellogg's and his whimsical magazine covers for "Collier's", "Ladies Home Journal", and many others. He is only 2nd to Norman Rockwell in the amount of published works
In 1933 he approached the Kellogg’s® ad agency with a clever idea for selling Rice Krispies® cereal. Grant’s idea was to appeal to children who could greatly influence their parents’ buying habits. After receiving inspiration from the Singing Lady’s Rice Krispies radio jingle which had a snap, crackle and pop noise in the background, he drew three gnomes, naming them “Mr. Snap,” “Mr. Crackle, and “Mr. Pop.”
Kellogg’s ad agency, N.W. Ayer, put Grant on an immediate retainer of $5000. The Kellogg Company used Grant’s talents through 1941 and paid him close to a quarter of a million dollars. Although modified from Grant’s original images, Snap!® Crackle! ® and Pop! ® are still used today and are among the most famous images in American advertising.
He soon became the lead illustrator for Kellogg's products, becoming so popular that in 1935 the company sent him on a world tour to promote their cereals.
In 1938, Life magazine ranked Grant as "America's favorite children's artist."
Grant worked with the USO during World War II, entertaining troops with sketches and fast-paced chalk talks.
Grant’s illustrations appeared in print on the covers of national magazines, advertising products, greeting cards and children’s books from the 1920s through the 1970s
When Vernon Grant moved to Rock Hill in 1947 from New York he brought many progressive ideas to this community and region, accepted the position as manager of Rock Hill’s Chamber of Commerce, and helped to lay the ground work for York Technical College
He co-founded Rock Hill, South Carolina's annual spring festival, Come-See-Me, and created it's mascot, Glen the Frog.
http://www.comeseeme.org
ChristmasVille, a holiday festival in Rock Hill, celebrates the magical art of Vernon Grant with festive holiday decorations, santas, and gnomes. http://www.ChristmasVilleRockHill.com
In 1945, at the height of his career, Vernon Grant made $1000 a week illustrating ads for everything under the sun from cereal to automobiles, from chocolates to razor blades, from men’s shirts to electrical appliances. His gnomes, pretty, sexy-looking girls and love-struck couples were on the fronts of America’s top magazines.
Grant continued making art until, in 1985, he felt he could no longer work to his own expectations and was forced to retire. When he died in 1990 at age 88, the Charlotte Observer noted that although Grant's illustrations would delight people for years, "in the long run his greatest gift to the community may be the standard of citizenship he exemplified." As was not uncommon in that greatest of generations that got the world through WW2
But what is striking, is that everything I knew about Delano was only a brief time in his life, and though he was incredibly talented as a photographer, his life - like so many people - was a wide variety of different jobs, talents, and events that had nothing to do with the one view that most people have of a famous person.
for example, Jack Delano wasn't his name, he wasn't Italian, and during WW2 he crewed on a bomber. That really tears away everything you probably regarded him as. It does to me.
It's shocking to me, but I had the impression he was of Italian descent, because of the last name Delano, but he actually was born in Russia, Jacob Ovcharov was his name, and he came from a town in the Ukraine.
His family moved in 1923 to the USA and he was 9 years old, he studied music and art in Pennsylvania, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) from 1928 until 1932, he studied illustration and music. While there, Delano was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship, on which he chose to travel to Europe, where he bought a camera that got him interested in photography.
After graduating from the PAFA, Delano proposed a photographic project to the Federal Art Project: a study of mining conditions in the Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania anthracite coal area. And there you go, Jack Delano became the photographer we all know of and admire.
While there, Delano was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship, on which he chose to travel to Europe, where he bought a camera that got him interested in photography.
After graduating from the PAFA, Delano proposed a photographic project to the Federal Art Project: a study of mining conditions in the Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania anthracite coal area.
In 1941 he traveled throughout Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and in 1943 traveled in Amarillo, and was drafted into the US Army Air Forces. So far, I haven't found out what he did in the Army
In 1957, Delano helped found Puerto Rico's first publicly funded educational television station, WIPR where he also acted as a station producer, composer, and program director
The Year Santa Went Modern, illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. Family Circle, December 1963.
Fujikawa, born in 1908, grew up in California, and studied at Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles. In 1932, her art studies took her to Japan for a year, after which she returned to California to teach at Chouinard, and then to work for Disney Studios on the theater program hand out for Fantasia, among other things. She even made one in Japanese https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/walt-disney-1940s-fantasia-program-50852331
Chouinard became CalArts, which was funded by Walt Disney and became a primary source of new Disney animators and artists. Since she taught at Chouinard, she was one of the big reasons CalArts became what it is today.
After several years at Disney, Fujikawa was lured away to New York as art director for William Douglas McAdams, a pharmaceutical company. (says one source, however, the New York Times says: Disney Studios sent her to its advertising department in New York, where she designed many 25-cent Disney books.)
Unlike her parents and younger brother, she escaped internment because she was living in New York; only Japanese residing on the West Coast were sent to the camps. But Fujikawa traveled frequently, and when people became suspicious of her, she often told them she was really Anna May Wong, the Chinese American actress. According to her nephew, Fujikawa took secret delight in this masquerade.
Another notable aspect of Fujikawa’s œuvre was her work designing U.S. postage stamps. In 1960, she designed a four-cent stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan trade agreement. The image, colored in pink and blue, featured a view of Washington, D.C., with the Washington Monument seen through the cherry blossom trees.
The stamp design gained extra publicity when it was featured at an official welcome ceremony for Crown Prince Akihito, the future emperor of Japan, who praised its “felicitous” design. Shortly after, Fujikawa was commissioned to design a cover for the Saturday Evening Post.
Her design, a picture of a parakeet in a cage pressed up against a window to see the snow outside, received widespread publicity when her original painting was stolen from a car in Washington, D.C. after the reproduction for the cover had been completed. Saturday Evening Post, Jan 1962
After the war, Fujikawa began work as a freelancer, doing commercial drawings and designing Christmas cards. One notable campaign she designed was for Beech-Nut baby food. Fujikawa put together drawings of Mother Goose characters that could be strung together to make a mini book.
Meanwhile, she became active in book design. In 1952, she produced a set of drawings of Disney characters for McCall’s Magazine, such as this appealing, exquisitely colored illustration of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(By the way, there is a blog that has 8 years of Snow White research, and nothing else -
Newsweek, Feb. 16, 1953 (European edition). With front cover illustration, "Valentine...Peter Pan", tied to a review of Disney's just-released Peter Pan movie.
The Disney artwork in the above magazines attracted the attention of the children’s publishers Grosset and Dunlap, who hired her to do illustrations for a new edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” published in 1953.
Its success led the publisher to commission further book illustrations. Her edition of Clement Clarke Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” (1961) and her edition of “Mother Goose” (1968) became particular favorites. Not content with providing pictures for other authors’s work, in 1963 Fujikawa persuaded the publisher to put out two original children’s books she had written and illustrated, “Babies” and “Baby Animals.” The two books quickly became children’s best-sellers. Absorbed by the process of creation, Fujikawa gradually withdrew from commercial art and concentrated on writing and illustrating children’s books.
Magazine illustrations that were advertising, (quite a bit for Family Circle magazine)
and I may be wrong, but I believe this iconic Eskimo Pie kid to be her artwork:
which brings me to the connection with my recent unknown artist who invented the Eskimo Pie kid, Walter Oehrle
In her first two books, "Babies" and "Baby Animals," she proposed showing "an international set of babies--little black babies, Asian babies, all kinds of babies." But this was the early 1960s and a sales executive at Grosset and Dunlap told her to take the black babies out for fear they would kill sales in the South.
Fujikawa, a diminutive, elegant but feisty woman, refused. Today the books have sold more than 1.5 million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages. She is often credited as the first children's author to depict a multiethnic cast of characters.
Fujikawa was the only daughter of an immigrant farmer and an aspiring social worker who started their family in Berkeley, later moving to the San Pedro area. Her father, hoping for a boy, named her after a Chinese emperor. When she was born instead, Fujikawa recalled in an autobiographical sketch, "he was so mad he stuck me with the name anyway."
When looking for information on Gyo Fujikawa, the word Nisei comes up, and so, I had to look that up to learn what it means....Nisei is a Japanese language term used in countries in North America and South America to specify the children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants. The Nisei are considered the second generation.
So does the word Nikkei, it means Japanese emigrants and their descendants who have taken up residence in other countries.
And then, because whoever wrote these articles was writing for the Japanese descendants, another word pops up, Issei - a Japanese immigrant to North America.
Though it's not necessary, I'd like to point out that this post is here, instead of spending time on making a post about cars, trucks, etc, because I love art, celebrate artists, and history, and when I come across an artist that worked at Disney, that I haven't learned of before, it blows my mind. I also will go out of my way to post a fuck you to racists and those that supported the internment of citizens who happened to be sacrifices to politics, during WW2. https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/02/everyones-heard-of-hirohata-mercury.html
Alexey Brodovitch was born in Ogolichi, Russian Empire (now Belarus) to a wealthy family in 1898. His father was a respected physician, his mother was an amateur painter.
During the Russo-Japanese War, his family moved to Moscow, and Brodovitch was sent to study at a prestigious institution in Saint Petersburg, with the intentions of eventually enrolling in the Imperial Art Academy. He had no formal training in art through his childhood, but often sketched noble profiles in the audience at concerts in the city.
At the young age of 16, Brodovitch abandoned his dream of entering the Imperial Art Academy and ran away from home to join the Russian army at the start of WW1. Not long after, his father had him brought home and hired a private tutor to help Brodovitch finish school. Upon graduating, he ran away again on several occasions.
During the Russian Civil War, Brodovitch was badly wounded and surrounded by the Bolsheviks, forcing him into exile, but by good fortune, his brother turned out to be one of the soldiers guarding the refugees, and their father, who had been imprisoned in Saint Petersburg by the Bolsheviks, managed to flee to Novorossiysk in hopes of finding his family. The three were once again together, and arranged for his mother to join them in Constantinople. Finally reunited, the Brodovitchs made their way to France.
Upon arriving in Paris, he wanted to be a painter, and took a job painting houses among other Russian artists who had settled in Paris at the end of the 19th century. This group of artists included Chagall. His connections with these young Russian artists led to more artistic work as a painter of backdrops for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
On nights and weekends he began sketching designs for textiles, china, and jewelry. By the time his work for the ballet had finished, he had already compiled an extensive portfolio of these side projects and was working part-time doing layouts for an important art journal, and an influential design magazine.
While working on layouts, Brodovitch was responsible for fitting together type, photographs, and illustrations on the pages of the magazines. He had the rare opportunity of having influence over the look of the magazine as there was no art director.
He gained public recognition for his work in the commercial arts by winning first prize in a poster competition for an artists' soiree, a drawing by Picasso took second place.
His success with posters led him to art-direct Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958, and teach at Pennsylvania’s University of the Arts. Brodovitch's department came to be known as a 'prep school' for agencies and magazines around the country:
Mary Fullerton, art director of Mademoiselle
Joseph Gering, Brides
Robert Greenwell, art director of RCA Records
Nelson Gruppo, art director at Stage, Promenade, and This Week
Joe Jones, House Beautiful
Allan Porter, editor in chief Camera magazine
Alfred Lowrey, art director at Good Housekeeping, American Weekly, and Newsweek
David Steck of Life Magazine
Victor Trasoff, art director of CBS
Irving Penn of Vogue Magazine
Tony Lane, art director Rolling Stone
In 1971 the Doctor of Fine Arts Degree was conferred posthumously on Brodovitch by the Philadelphia College of Art.
These two posters for Donnet are all I can find of his advertising art. That's a pity.
Not surprisingly, growing up as a son of the Rat Packer, he was living a life of wealth and privilege, but with a rough start... both uncles assassinated, and his parents divorced. He may have had little chance for a sober life, and he zoomed into illegal drugs, then got a law degree, then followed in his dads footsteps to Hollywood's siren song.
his many acting roles included the soap operas General Hospital and All My Children, sitcoms like Frasier, and even Tales from the Crypt. His film work included The Doors, and Thirteen Days
He left Ohio, heading for Daytona Fla, riding a 175cc NSU. He stopped in Atlanta and won the Stone Mountain Enduro on the same bike he’d ridden from northern Ohio.
From there he continued on to Florida and won the Alligator Enduro, then he continued riding the NSU to enduros across the Midwest and continued winning, including earning his first victory at the Jack Pine. Then, upon his return to Ohio, he was challenged by his brother to break the record for transcontinental travel held by the legendary Cannonball Baker. He did it.
Penton was born on August 19, 1925. He grew up on the family farm in Amherst, Ohio. His older brothers had revived their father’s 1914 Harley-Davidson, which had been long forgotten in the corner of a barn, and the Penton boys became motorcyclists and ran a motorcycle shop in while they competed in off-road motorcycle races. John became a championship rider as well as fabricator and mechanic.
In 1949, Penton returned to the Jack Pine Enduro, this time on a B-33 BSA. He finished in second by only a single point to winner Bert Cummings, a Michigan dealer and veteran of the event. That second-place finish stoked the fire in Penton. From that point on, his mission was to find a better performing enduro motorcycle.
He realized the heavy machines like the Harley’s, BSA’s and Triumph’s they all were riding could be beaten by smaller, lightweight bikes, a revolutionary idea at the time.
In the 60s, he served as the eastern distributor of Husqvarna, a motorcycle that revolutionized the sports of motocross, enduro and desert racing in the U.S.
John Penton believed he knew better than anybody what would work best in the world of off-road motorcycles. As it turns out he was right. When everyone else thought bulldogging big bikes through the dirt was the way to go, he wanted to ride a little bike. By the time everyone hopped on board the little bikes, he was thinking about something else – a purpose built off-road bike. He (and subsequently his sons) influenced the way bikes were built, the way they were sold, where they could be ridden, and what people wore when riding them.
When his attempts to convince Husky to produce a smaller, lighter motorcycle fell on deaf ears, Penton created his own design and commissioned KTM, a small moped and bicycle maker in Austria, to build it.
The motorcycle was an instant success in off-road competition and led KTM to expand its efforts in the motorcycle realm, initially in conjunction with Penton and ultimately on its own. Today, KTM is the largest manufacturer of motorcycles outside of Japan and winning championships around the world.
He also founded Hi-Point, a boot and apparel company that for a time boasted over half the sales in the U.S. market.
if any singular rider deserves to have a feature length documentary developed about their life, it’s him, as Penton is largely considered the founding father of modern off-road riding.
The resulting film is a great testament to not only how significant John Penton was, but also how much he is still revered.
10 Autocar quarry working dump trucks were auctioned in Nov 2006, after being removed from the Platt Street quarry, where four had been carefully stored indoors and had remained in decent condition. After being used for more than a decade, the quarry's owner, Joseph "J.J." Fredella, parked four of them in on-site buildings. The rest were left to rust in a nearby field.
Some of the trucks were in restorable condition, thanks to care taken when they were put away. When they were put up on blocks, one truck's four-cylinder engine was filled with motor oil, preserving the parts for future ignition.
The Great Depression had slowed road construction, for which much of the quarried material had been used. So after Fredella died, they mothballed the small fleet in 1932 and shut down the quarry. He was 54 when he died of pneumonia in April 1930
His son Joseph hoped to resurrect the operation when the economy improved , and the masonry company continued operation through the depression years.
But the quarry never reopened, and the trucks continued to wait in a quarry building that was also used to store masonry equipment and supplies.
Men risked their marriages for a chance to bring home one of the antique Autocar dump trucks. A couple of hundred men in workboots, and a handful of women, came out to kick the deteriorating tires of the rusty 1920s vehicles.
One of the trucks even started, after a few slight adjustments, No new parts, or even a fresh bottle of oil, was needed to fire the engine, and Tim Hoover of Saltsburg, Penn., bought that 1931 H-Model Autocar for $10,500, along with 2 other trucks in worse condition for parts.
"All we did was pull the head and clean up the values," he said. "Had an idea when we bought them that we could get one running."
He completely restored in in 7 months of after hours labor, using two others for parts, one of the parts trucks he then sold.
Bud Lacy of Saratoga Springs protested that he was liable to end up divorced if the price kept rising.
The auctioneer was sympathetic, but didn't lay off.
Later, Lacy couldn't remember if he'd gotten the truck for $5,000 or $5,500, and wasn't even sure which of the rusting masses of metal was his. He said his wife was shocked when she learned he'd bought the truck.
Mark Audet and his three children, ages 11 to 17, drove from Rhode Island and bought two decrepit trucks for $200 and $1,600, hoping to combine them into one truck that looks halfway decent, Audet said.
Audet, who said he loves Autocars, was kicking himself for not going higher to get one of the trucks in better condition, but he couldn't cross certain boundaries.
"If you're married and you come in here and buy one of these, you're going to get in big trouble," he said. "That's why I had a limit, because of the wife."
The owner of Hoover Stone Quarry - which has its name emblazoned on the antique dump truck's side - says his interest in the dump trucks was spawned from his business, built around glistening pieces of high-powered equipment.
Hoover said before buying the truck, he had been searching for a similar make and model, but couldn't find one complete enough to be restored until traveling to Wilton. He really didn't expect to find it, even as he made the eight-hour trip to Wilton, either.
Built as speculative housing for Italian immigrant families between 1914 and 1918, the Fredella Avenue Historic District was selected for its proximity to nearby stone quarries offering employment.
The boundaries of the historic district are drawn to include all buildings on Fredella Avenue, formerly Lime Street, named for one of the city’s major industries. The name was later changed to honor Joseph Fredella, a contractor who developed the street. The buildings retain integrity and substantially reflect their type, period, and method of construction.
Joseph J. Fredella was an Italian mason who immigrated to the United States in 1901. By 1912 Fredella had established a successful construction firm in Glens Falls, where he built several commercial and civic structures. Fredella made his reputation as a highway contractor, constructing and paving stone of the first state highways into the Adirondack region during the period between 1920 and 1930.
Fredella's vision in 1912 was to build affordable housing that mirrored the look and feel of his native Italy, according to "Facing the Past," by Nora Nellis.
The architectural style resembles cut stone, but the concrete block and cement materials were less expensive to use.
He built the houses with wide-open porches so people could look around and see their neighbors, and each house had a grape arbor in the back yard.
Fredella made the blocks using more than 30 different cast-iron templates and an early block-making machine, according to a document prepared when the city nominated the neighborhood to be included in a historic district.
"Fredella, building on speculation and employing newly arrived immigrants and family from the home country, was able to sell the houses before their completion, such was the popularity of their construction and style," the document states.
Located in the south-central, Route 32 section of Glens Falls near the river, a group of eight modest Colonial Revival residences constructed of molded concrete block, built between 1914-18 by Fredella Co. Builders as speculative housing.
Built of concrete block resembling ashlar with highly detailed porches cast in iron molds, the houses built by Fredella advertised the architectural adaptability of a novel construction material and the stylishness obtainable in relatively inexpensive construction. Because Fredella's ornate concrete building technology never achieved widespread popularity in Glens Falls after the contractor's death in 1930, the buildings of the Fredella Avenue Historic District are significant as rare examples of sophisticated, vernacular residential design and construction in Glens Falls during the early twentieth century.
The subdivision was one aspect of a diversified business empire that included buildings, highway and bridge construction, a brick and block-making operation and a quarry.
He experimented with making cinder blocks from ash from the coal burner at Finch, Pruyn and Co. before another inventor patented the cinder block-making process, said his great-grandson, Guy Fredella of Naples, Fla.
His company built Big Cross Street School, the Synagogue Center of Shaaray Tefila and a block of commercial buildings at the corner of Park and Elm streets, among other projects.
The company also built a bridge over the Feeder Canal that still exists, another bridge that has since been replaced over the Boreas River in Essex County and the stretch of highway between Port Henry and Westport, Guy Fredella said.
The son-in-law, also named Guy, operated the quarry early on and Joseph Fredella paid him in shares of stock rather than cash, said the younger Guy Fredella, who is the son-in-law's grandson.
Joseph Fredella's daughter, who married Guy, started keeping the company's financial records when she was 10.
"Can you imagine putting that much responsibility on a 10-year-old's shoulders?" asked Fredella's great-granddaughter Barbara.
The son of sharecroppers, Needham was born in Memphis, Tenn., in 1931, and spent most of his childhood so deep in the Ozarks that, as he liked to joke, "You had to pump the sunshine to us."
Dropping out of school after eighth grade, he worked as a tree trimmer in St. Louis before joining the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in 1951. When he left the service he headed west with three pairs of jeans, six T-shirts, a buddy and no particular plan.
The Bud Rocket... it did run on Muroc and Bonneville, it was fast, and Hal Needham owned it.
Needham didn't drive the Bud Rocket though, Stan Barret did, and Barret was Paul Newman's stunt double, and was sparring with Bruce Lee. He also was on the Dean Martin Roast of Ronald Reagan, and since Needham was friends with Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, they starred in the movie Cannonball Run, which we'll get to at the bottom of this post.
His run was witnessed by some famous people who knew about speed... Chuck Yeager, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, and William J. "Pete" Knight, who, to this day holds the all-time speed record for level flight, when he flew an X-15 at Mach 6.7.
Unfortunately, there is no accurate or verifiable way to know what speed it ran. But that's what you get with publicity stunts vs real hardcore attempts at landspeed records. There was no FIA, no SCTA, etc etc to get an accurate high speed, average speed, and they didn't turn around for a return run to get a both ways required run for the international record. But, they really didn't care about all the hoopla. They made money, got rich, caused a hell of a media splash.. and didn't have to hire Evel Knievel.
Paul Newman climbing into the Budweiser Rocket at Bonneville, Newman was responsible for putting together the relationship for Budweiser to be the lead sponsor. After 9 runs at Bonneville, the Budweiser Rocket kept digging into the unstable salt surface which presented a serious safety issue, and Chuck Yeager interceded and got them permission from the Air Force to run at Muroc, now part of Edwards AFB.
It wasn't Needham's 1st land speed vehicle though, the SMI Motivator was. You've probably never heard of that, because it never accomplished anything.
During 1976 Needham tested the Budweiser/SMI Motivator –sponsored vehicle in excess of 600 mph on a huge dry lake located in Oregon. So... credit him that, and give him 2 of those ballcaps that celebrate breaking the 300 mph barrier... or a 400 and a 200. I just don't thing they ever made a 600 mph hat, as only a couple people have ever, or will ever go faster on wheels.
The `SMI Motivator' was made available to two drivers: Needham and the wife of his partner Duffy Hambleton. Kitty O'Neil was a 28-year-old Irish and Cherokee woman from Texas, who was to drive the 'Motivator' to a new women's record, while Hal went for the speed of sound.
Nothing but a publicity gambit.
Needham's sponsor had paid out more than $75,000 to get him the drive, but after a high-speed foray on Mud Lane at Tonopah in Nevada, he run out of lake and into the sage brush on the surrounding desert, vowing never to drive the car again. (I've never heard of a dry lake near Tonopah, and the internet turned up no info)
Lets face it, no one even tries, and if they wanted to, Bonneville probably can't support that if everything I've heard about the condition of the salt is correct.
In May 1977, his movie directorial debut was released... and Smokey and the Bandit which cost 12 million reaped tenfold that amount in less than 6 months. And that was the summer all movies had to compete with Star Wars for ticket sales, which had been released 2 days earlier than Smokey.
Burt Reynolds became the highest paid actor in cinema history up to that point, for this movie, making five million dollars for four weeks work.
Roger Moore never drove an Aston Martin in the Bond movies, but he drove a DB5 in Smokey.
The Ferrari 308 used in the movie belonged to Director Hal Needham.
Ron Rice, owner of Hawaiian Tropic, loaned his black Lamborghini to his buddies Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham.
The moustache worn by Burt Reynolds in this movie was subsequently auctioned for the charity, UNICEF. The auction was held in Geneva, Switzerland, and the winning bid was twenty-five thousand dollars from Freddie Mercury https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082136/trivia
And that's when Needham might be considered to have created redneck buddy movies. He directed, Burt Reynolds drove, and everyone was happy. He created movies with fast cars, car stunts, bar fights, country music and devil-may-care men who’d do anything for a buddy, and for a good time.
Just in time for Dukes of Hazard to catch the wave and ride it to CBS in Jan 1979. It was based on a 1975 movie, Moonrunners, which was identical in every way to the tv show, just not as cute and funny.
The movie was narrated by Waylon Jennings who introduces and comments on the story of cousins, who run moonshine for their widower uncle Jesse who knows the Bible better than the local preacher. He makes liquor, according to his "granddaddy's granddaddy's" recipe, in stills named Molly and Beulah. In the opening, one of the cousins is in the county jail for a bar fight at the Boar's Nest. So, you can see, it's a movie version of the tv show, with a couple character names changed. There's a Cooter, and a county boss bad guy who owns the Boar's Nest and the local brothel. He sells moonshine to yankees. To get at Jesse’s supply, Sheriff Rosco Coltrane harasses the cousins who use bow and arrows because they are on probabtion and can't own guns. There's the whole Dukes of Hazard County in a nutshell.
Anyway.... getting back to Hal Needham.
He was a paratrooper in the Army. No wonder he got a job in Hollywood as a stuntman
As the highest paid stuntman in the world, Hal Needham broke 56 bones, his back twice, punctured a lung and knocked out a few teeth. His career has included work on 4500 television episodes and 310 feature films as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, 2nd unit director and ultimately, director.
Needham wrecked hundreds of cars, fell from tall buildings, got blown up, was dragged by horses, rescued the cast and crew from a Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia, set a world record for a boat stunt on Gator (1976), jumped a rocket powered pick-up truck across a canal for a GM commercial and was the first human to test the car airbag.
He wrote Cannonball Run II, Stroker Ace, Smokey and the Bandit one and two
In addition, he directed Smokey and the Bandit one and two, Cannonball Run one and two, Hooper, Stroker Ace, and others that really aren't important or impressive.
Jackie Chan makes one of his first U.S. film appearance in Cannonball Run, and inspired by Hal Needham's notion of including bloopers during the closing credits, Chan began a tradition of doing the same in most of his movies.
The ambulance used in the movie, is the actual ambulance that Hal Needham and Brock Yates souped up and raced in the real Cannonball Run. It had been upgraded with a hemi, and topped out at 145 mph, and was equipped with 4 gas tanks, and 4 filler holes, so that the max ninety gallons could be pumped quickly from one gas station island. Needham and Yates didn't win the race (the transmission blew in Palm Springs, California) so Needham kept it in storage for several years, until the time came to make this film.
Stan Barret related the true story about how he was the stunt double for Burt Reynolds on the movie Hooper and loaned Burt his Rolex to wear in the movie as Burt played the role of Hal, and they kept passing it back and forth as Stan wore it in the stunt scenes and Burt wore it in the regular scenes. The action movie Hooper was loosely based upon his and Hal Needham's careers as stuntmen.
He invented and introduced to the film industry, the air ram, air bag, the car cannon turnover, the nitrogen ratchet, the jerk-off ratchet, rocket power and The Shotmaker Camera Car to make stunts safer and yet more spectacular at the same time. He also directed the 1980's hit BMX movie Rad.
Needham co-owned a NASCAR race team and was the first team owner to use telemetry technology.
In February 1981 Needham and Burt Reynolds debuted their Skoal Bandit Racing team at the Daytona 500. They intended to run 19 races with (previously featured at the beginning of this article) Stan Barrett at the wheel. The Skoal-Bandit race team was one of the most popular NASCAR teams ever - second only to that of Richard Petty
After running the Bud Rocket and using real time telemetry, Needham decided to employ it on his stock car. With permission from Bill France, it was installed in the car for the Talladega race. Every other team in the pits had a fit because they were getting real time updates in the pits from the car on exactly what was going on. It was the only time France allowed it.
Journeyman driver Harry Gant was enlisted to assist crew chief Travis Carter in setting up the car for Barrett. After Gant, driving for another team, finished second to Cale Yarborough at the Atlanta race, Needham approached Gant about driving a second car for the team.
Gant's first start for the team came a month later at Darlington and he finished second. Halfway through the year Barrett was gone and the team now competed fulltime on the NASCAR circuit. After five more runner-up finishes, Gant broke through and won his first race at Martinsville in April 1982.
After 17 years of racing, most of them in NASCAR's lesser divisions, Gant was a star and his fans that cheered him on the short tracks had a Winston Cup hero. Gant won eight more races and finished in the top-five in points four times before Needham bowed out of the sport after the 1988 season.
Gant credits Needham with being a major force in changing the face of stock car racing. "Hal was the first to dress the crew in matching embroidered uniforms. He had a big hauler with the car painted on it. He brought people from Hollywood to the races. He even had cheerleaders in the pits once."
In 2012, Needham received a Governor's Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The academy, which gives no Oscars for stunt work, cited Needham as "an innovator, mentor and master technician who elevated his craft to an art and made the impossible look easy."
