Category: Past Paper

Fresh, nutritious, delicious CANDY

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Thank heavens for the internet.

Twenty years ago, if a motivated collector had put together a stash of 600-plus examples of any given bit of ephemera—beer cans, drive-in movie flyers, Cracker Jack prizes—only his friends and family would likely have been aware of it.

Sure, he might have inspired a little human-interest coverage in the local paper or been given a short spot on the local Eyewitness News, but his renown would have been regional at best, not extending beyond the boundaries of the county or parish he lived in.

Not so today. Today, a collector can display his prized possessions online so that they might be enjoyed by kindred spirits the world over.

The unnamed person (so far as we could ascertain) behind the Candy Wrapper Archive has devoted the past three decades indulging his (or her) interest in and appreciation of candy wrappers, and we, the denizens of the internet, are the beneficiaries of his efforts.

The oldest wrapper in his (we’re going to assume for the sake of this post that our sweets maven is male) collection, a Hershey’s chocolate bar wrapper, dates back to 1908, and he’s got 647 other items spanning the century since that bar was fresh from the factory.

From the familiar (Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, Clark bar) to the obscure and arcane (Chicken Dinner, Cold Turkey, Snow Wonder—what the…??), the Candy Wrapper Archive will keep you happily browsing for hours.

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves

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Today marks the 77nd anniversary of the appearance of the greatest newspaper headline ever—or, at the very least, the greatest headline ever to appear in a trade publication.

It was on this day in 1935 that the front page of Variety blared the following:

Photo of aforementioned Variety headline

We’d always understood that the point of the headline (and the story it touted) was that, contrary to the common wisdom of the day, rural moviegoers weren’t showing an interest in motion pictures that took place in rural and small-town settings; they wanted depictions of big-city life.

But that’s not the whole story. In fact, now that we’ve read the article at Variety.com, we’re not really sure this headline is a particularly good fit.

Still, over the years, that aggregation of words has brought us great joy; it makes us profoundly happy. We’re not certain who penned the headline—some say it was written by Lyn Bonner; others insist it was the work of Abel Green—but we tip our hat to whoever was responsible.

There are certain achievements that ought to give one a free pass for life, and, in our book, the coining of that immortal headline certainly qualifies. Here’s hoping Ms. Bonner, Mr. Green, or whoever else it might have been never had to pay for a drink as long as they lived.

Cladrite Classics: Jack Benny Slept Here

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We were mulling over the other day some of the posts we thought particularly fun that went live in the weeks and months before Cladrite Radio had accumulated much of a readership. Would it be problematic, we wondered, to revisit some of those posts, under the heading of Cladrite Classics?

No, we decided, it would not. Hence the following revisited offering, which first saw the light of day on May 13, 2010:

Though we’re committed New Yorkers, we wouldn’t mind a bit spending a few weeks—perhaps even a few months—a year in Los Angeles. We even find ourselves daydreaming about the City of Angels quite often.

And yet, we came around slowly on L.A. Our first couple of visits were enjoyable enough, but we didn’t find the city particularly engaging. After a trio of week-long sojourns there over the past decade or so, though, we’ve been won over.

We view the city through a movie buff’s eye, primarily, and so spend our time motoring about checking out movie stars’ homes, vintage movie palaces, and locations that were used in the filming of some of our favorite classic pictures (though we’re also happy just puttering through the various old neighborhoods south of the Hollywood hills—we love the residential architecture in old L.A.).

We didn’t snap the photos shared below; we bought them at a flea market some years back. They’re snapshots taken around Hollywood and its environs back in the day. How old they are, exactly, we’re not sure—we’re inclined to think they’re from the late 1930s, but we’re open to guesses from you, gentle readers. (For larger views, just click the images.)


Fred Astaire’s home
Jack Benny’s home
Claudette Colbert’s home

Sam Goldwyn’s home
Norma Shearer’s home
Robert Taylor’s home

Mary Pickford and Douglas
Fairbanks’ Pickfair
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre

Past Paper: All New for 1958!

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Our Folks, around the time of our birthThe piece of ephemera that inspired this post falls just outside the Cladrite Era, but we were so tickled by it, we just had to share.

Our aunt recently presented us with a stack of photographs, letters and other documents that had belonged to her parents (our grandparents), and below is the announcement our parents sent out on the occasion of our birth (to give it proper context, we should explain that our father, who’s still going strong at 83, was, for more than thirty years, a Volvo dealer).

This pleases us to no end, we have to say. It’s so clever, and we love imagining our folks, who were 29 and 25 at the time, working on this together.

A birth announcement
A birth announcement A birth announcement

As always here at Cladrite Radio, you can view a larger version of each of the above images by clicking on it.