Jerry Curl

Life has a great write up on Josephine Baker today, 37 year after she passed: No American public figures — not Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, not Louise Brooks, not even the inimitable Louis Armstrong — embodied the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s more perfectly than Josephine Baker, the Missouri native who became a legendary performer in Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. In fact, for millions of people (Europeans, for the most part, but also others all over the globe) who read about, heard about or saw the “Bronze Venus” on stage or in movies at the height of her career, Baker was the Jazz Age — a gorgeous, pyrotechnic talente who, in the words of none other than Ernest Hemingway, “was the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” Years after her greatest popularity, but when she was still a beloved singer and dancer in her adopted France and elsewhere in Europe, Baker returned to America — specifically, to Broadway — in 1951, and was a smash hit decades after she left home for less Puritanic...

My little nostalgic heart be still! The Hollywood Reporter reports : Teen Nick began re-airing their hit shows from the '90s at midnight Monday and into Tuesday morning -- and fans couldn't get enough! And who can blame them?! Going forward, the network will air '90s reruns from 12 a.m. EST to 4 a.m. ET from Monday to Sunday in a block called The 90s Are All That . Shows include Doug , The Adventures of Pete & Pete , All That , Clarissa Explains it All , Double Dare , The Ren & Stimpy Show and Salute Your Shorts . In announcing the decision to rebroadcast the shows, Keith Dawkins, senior VP and general manager of TeenNick, said earlier: "At the time, we were completely devoted to that audience ages 9, 10, and 11. It was ground-breaking and for the young viewers, a powerful and pivotal time in their lives. Those kids who are now 22, 23 and 24 want to bring that back.” Below is the totally tubular promo featuring Kenan Thompson:

Photo caption: Andy Warhol and Divine at Studio 54. Scholar and former DJ Alice Echols has given disco three-hundred pages of consideration in her absorbing, entertaining book Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture . Echols blends the scholarly with the appreciatory: she is here to praise disco, not to bury it. She sees it as playing an important role in the important social transformations in the 1970s. Disco comes straight from the places of America’s biggest cultural anxieties: the feminist movement, race relations, and especially gay liberation. “The central paradox of disco,” she says, “is that, for music so lyrically slight—‘get down tonight’ being typical—it packed such a cultural, social, and political wallop. Disco destabilized racial, gender, and sexual conventions and rules, yet unlike so much '60s music, it did not strain to be meaningful.” But behind the music, other things were happening. “Disco offended people across the political spectrum,” Echols s...

Actress Mary Wickes plays a dance instructor who tries to get Lucille Ball into proper ballet position in this classic scene from I Love Lucy . The episode, appropriately titled "The Ballet," first aired on February 18, 1952.

Life : Legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt as Camille in La Dame aux Camelias .

Life : These pictures hark back to a time when entertainers had the pipes to carry on a whole show without the use of LCD screens and pyrotechnics . Here we have Dean Martin walking up on stage to join the legendary Judy Garland. 1958: Dean Martin performing with actress Judy Garland and fellow Rat Pack member Frank Sinatra.

Life : Actress Marlene Dietrich in 1928 while sitting at table alone during Pierre Ball.

[ Editor's note ] We at Jerry Curl are big fans of all things vintage. Whether it's wine or films, clothes or records, furniture or hairstyles, we can't get enough of the old stuff. What's more, we love to share our knowledge of all this great old stuff with people who don't know but can certainly appreciate it. In that spirit, we're pleased to introduce a new section to the blog titled Retrospectives. Here, we hope to bring you cool videos and photographs of decades passed. To kick off the new section we bring you this delightful gem from 1945. In it, actress Joan Crawford holds a lit cigarette while chatting with artist Salvador Dali. Her 3rd husband, actor Phillip Terry looks on while they sit at table enjoying cocktails in a nightclub at the Del Monte resort. (Via Life )