Customer Reviews

Southern Californialand: Mid-Century Culture in Kodachrome

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the author's second bite of life in Southern California, his earlier book 'Southern California in the 50s' (ISBN 1883318491) was an exuberant looking collection of photos and graphics mixed in with the text. I thought it was rather let down by the less than rigorous image selection. 'Southern Californialand' is a much better offering which I think captures the feel of this fascinating part of the Nation.

For a start 'Southern Californialand' only uses photos and none of them are angled like the earlier book. The design is much more formal too, the photos are large, frequently one to a page or one to a spread, the very detailed captions and headings are not set in period typography either.

The 170 were mostly taken by amateurs but don't let that put you off, there are some great shots in these pages and Phoenix has wisely chosen a wide selection of places, for instance the Eastland Shopping Center, West Covina 1957, the Compton Drive-in 1977, Angel's Flight funicular railway 1956, kids enjoying an Easter party in Palm Springs 1953, Vine Street, Hollywood 1948, tract homes in Highland Park 1958, oil derricks at Signal Hill 1953 and the huge globe at Leisure World 1962.

As well as plenty of places and events there are many showing folks having fun in the fifties (why would an amateur take a photo of someone looking glum?) and some of these are sometimes the most interesting, a super photo on page sixty-eight shows four people having a meal, nothing clever about this at all photographically but it has a wealth of information about fashion, interior decor, furniture, utensils and the food on the table. Pages twenty and twenty-one show a husband taken a photo of his wife sitting on a bench at an intersection, again a real amateur shot (I wonder why this photo of someone taking a photo was taken?) but it is full of detail, commercial strip architecture, their clothing, ads on the seat, and the street furniture. So many of these photos have this kind of detail that you can pore over.

Because these are amateur photos there are a few duds but overall I thought this was a lovely book of photo nostalgia and examples of the pop architecture that commercialism in Southern California did so well. If you lived here in mid-century this is the book to get.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I purchased this book for my husband's 50th birthday and it was a big hit!! He loved seeing many of the sights he grew up with in the San Gabriel Valley. We both grew up in So. Cal. in the 50's-70's and the photographs captured the "feel" of those times perfectly. Looking at them was like going back in a time-machine,just a fun blast into the past!

Like many of the previous reviewers, I grew up east of L.A. during the period of (at least the later decades!) of these Kodachrome slides. We shopped at the same White Front where he met the Brady Bunch. I can attest to Phoenix's knowledge of what he lovingly documents. His often witty, reverent, and informative captions show his scrutiny. For instance, as a native of the Pomona Valley, he knows that a mile-long monorail ride with no windows or air-conditioning at the County Fair would, indeed, be agonizing in Labor Day temperatures for the region!

My favorite factoid: an Arcadia supermarket's interior cornucopia is dated within the week it was shot. How? There's a dimly visible magazine rack in the center of a panoramic composition. Phoenix must have researched the "Time" cover, which he identifies as June 20, 1960. Stephen T. McCarthy in his review (I agree with his China remarks; but I checked this out from the library!) has already admired the Desert Hot Springs pool comments, which I found the cleverest in the book, but I also must nod to the "Perfect Suburban Couple" lounging on a dangerously white-grey loveseat with surrounded by three ashtrays. The city looks-- as it must have been-- far emptier and thanks to the film stock much more colorful and less dusty. Ike and Mamie materialize in Palm Springs, 1962, and as Phoenix marvels, there's a distinct lack of Secret Service around their arrival. A middle-aged crowd of cavorting couples at an Ike-era pool 'n' patio party does look, from the looks on their faces and the empty martini glasses on the table, to be progressingly quite well!

You learn of the fate of the Farmer John muralist in Vernon, how the Cabazon dinosaurs arose, and the how sturdy the demolition team found the ironically named House of the Future at Disneyland. The vanished kiddy parks, the ones that Disneyland helped make obsolete even as they inspired Disney's idea of a theme attraction wonderland, find a place here-- I'm curious how many there were in the Southland alone. Similarly, the demo derby race tracks and drag strips, but not nearly enough of the drive-ins (only Compton's Viking-themed one, which may astonish contemporary fans of that suburb) are shown. I suppose the author must work with what he has from chance finds taken by ordinary folks, but I expected more coverage of iconic edifices such as these.

There's a great snap of the parting of the Red Sea on the set of "The Ten Commandments," which I am not sure was taken by an amateur tourist or was an official souvenir. I'd have liked to have known that, among the considerable amount of fascinating detail that Phoenix provides in his two paragraphs of comments. For non-natives, it'd might have been useful to have a simple map of the region, perhaps a period one, with "pins" stuck where the photos were taken.

This anthology may appeal to those readers, as with me, from the same region as the author, and in the same decades, so my enthusiasm may be tinged by nostalgia. I wish that one of the final photos, that of a location that captivated me, Rialto's Wigwam Village, had a caption-- it's relegated silently to the last page's credits. Still, reliving my boyhood amazement in Tomorrowland's Carousel of Progress at Disneyland, laughing at the author's careful observation of his hometown's Hot Dog Stand's iconography, or pondering how southeast L.A.'s suburbs look so much fresher and innocent then than now in the tracthome postwar boom era does make for a valuable collection that probably could have been three times the length and remained entertaining. I guess that's why he has published his other popular culture image collections.

As Someone Who has 'Lived' This Era, The Book Was Especially
Gratifing! Esp. The 'San Pedro' Pics (Where I Hail From) Everyday
People Capturing Everyday Situations....Makes The Book VERY
Spontaneous! A Winner!

[*Lyric from the song, 'HOTEL CALIFORNIA' by The Eagles.]

I acquired SOUTHERN CALIFORNIALAND by Charles Phoenix just over a week ago in a Christmas gift exchange game. The book is a true celebration of Southern California in its glorious, paradisiacal decades of 1940 through the 1970s. Charles Phoenix who oddly became obsessed with the old 35 mm Kodachrome slides taken by strangers in memorializing their family trips, gatherings, and everyday lives, shares about 150 of his favorites with us in this absolutely charming book. His love and enthusiasm for his subject (SoCal in its glory days) just oozes from every page. Like the author, I grew up in SoCalLand in the '60s & 70s, and so I share his fascination for the magic that it once held.

Enchanting, dreamy, nostalgic, and a tad melancholic (because the enchantment and the dream has been reduced to nostalgia) are words that best describe this picture book. But "surprising" is another word that fits, because I was surprised by the wealth of information to be found in the brief text that accompanies each photograph. Even I - who has traversed so many of these locations - learned some interesting bits of trivia. For example: Did you know that when Vice President Richard Nixon cut the ribbon and became the Disneyland Monorail's first official passenger, unbeknownst to that famous rider, it was the first time the unique transportation train completed a trip without catching fire? Phoenix describes Walt Disney as being very nervous. Yeah, I suppose he was! Did you know that the Luer "Quality Meat" Rocket (a forerunner to the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile) was discovered in a Prescott, Arizona junkyard in 1997, "weathered, but restorable"? (And here I always thought that I was the only good thing to wrench free from the evil clutches of Prescott! I made good my escape in early '94, also "weathered, but restorable.")

I loved perusing the lost details of places where I have traipsed: the famous Brown Derby restaurant and the Pan-Pacific Auditorium; White Front of Anaheim, one of the discount chain of stores fo' po' folks. (My Ma used to drag us to one as children in Orange County. I don't know how many the O.C. boasted of, but this might well be the same White Front.); the Pacific Ocean Park amusement park, which I guarded as a young Police Explorer during its demolition in the Winter of 1973-74; the L.A. International Airport Theme Building where I experienced my first Red Dog beer. The beer wasn't memorable, but the location was.

Phoenix includes insightful, and sometimes funny commentary. When he describes the cover photo (a white, 1955 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible parked near the corner of Walnut & Allen in Pasadena, with palm trees, an orange grove, and snow-capped Mt. Baldy in the background) as "a perfect Southern California shot," he's right on the money! When he writes of the 1954 Mineral Baths photo in Desert Hot Springs, "Hundreds of thousands of acres of beautiful undisturbed desert scenery and someone had to build a wall around this place and paint in [desert] scenery," it's genuinely funny.

This book is a treasure trove for any pre-Hotel California SoCalLand lover. Where else are you going to find a photograph of a 1956 teenager with the perfect ducktail 'do waiting to test Disneyland's Autopia track? Or a photo of President Eisenhower blowing his nose in Palm Springs? Or a photo of Lee and Katie Kellogg eating meatloaf sandwiches in 1955 Alhambra? This book is a vibrant, eye-popping gem of pop culture which I urge you not to buy.

I'd rather you didn't purchase this fun Charles Phoenix book. Why? Because on page 144 we learn that SOUTHERN CALIFORNILAND was "Printed in China." Yes, this is the same China that embraces Communism, a failed economic/social system responsible for murdering approximately 100 million human beings worldwide, and torturing and starving many millions more. The same China that enforces its one-child family policy with forced abortions. The same China that got caught smuggling AK-47s into the U.S. to be sold to Los Angeles street gangs; threatened to nuke L.A. if the U.S. militarily defends Taiwan; kills its citizens who have the audacity to publicly request freedom; sells body parts of executed prisoners to medical facilities; enslaves political opponents & Christians for their faith, and puts them to work in forced labor camps, producing all imaginable types of goods, and printing books, all to be sold to Americans.

Everytime we purchase a Chinese-made product, we are feeding the human rights-abusing monster that has made no secret of its hatred for us - a monster that is increasing its military might at an astonishing rate and will someday overrun its neighbor, Taiwan, and declare war on the United States. Let's have a little foresight for once. Let's stop building our enemies. Let's boycott ALL Chinese products and sleep better at night. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIALAND is a nice book, but until it is being produced in a country that values human life, it's a book that we can LIVE WITHOUT! (Of course, if you're buying a used copy, this is not an issue.)

The novelty of the slides wears off pretty quickly. It's interesting to see these "slices of life" from many years ago, but after awhile the book takes on the tediousness of any great aunt's slide show.

You'd be better off buying a pack of postcards. Pictures are certainly NOT exuberant, lack good explanations, and are not relevant enough--I am a native Southern Californian and was bored and disappointed.