Friday Video: Astaire & Rogers 1933 dancing debut

Loretta reports:

My thanks to the FIDM Museum for this wonderful post about Fred Astaire's shoes.  It included not only a link to a fascinating interview with the great dancer, wherein he discusses his clothing choices in detail, but this clip from Flying Down to Rio—the first film in which Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire danced together.  They appear only for a short time, but the production is a great example of what musicals accomplished—with talented human beings and no computer special effects—in the 1930s.

Illustration:  Detail from City of New York Municipal Airports poster,  courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.      


Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle or square or X where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title of this post.

Friday Video: After Hours at the Bookstore

Isabella/Susan* reporting:

This delightful video is a true labor of love by the owners and staff of Type Books, a small indie bookstore in Toronto, ON. As the YouTube description says, they "spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books," and the results are delightful. Try doing this with an e-book!

At least they say they moved the books.  Who really knows what happens when books are left alone at night?

For more about the making of this video as well as Type Books and a list of all the volunteers who helped create it, here's the link to the YouTube page.


* Wondering why I now have two names? All is explained here. 

Friday Videos: Queen Elizabeth II & the Royal Maundy Service

Susan reporting:

We're offering two videos this week, featuring the same royal ceremony fifty years apart. Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the three days celebrating Easter, and commemorates the events of the Last Supper. In an ancient tradition that dates back at least to the time of King Edward I, the reigning English monarch offers alms, called the Royal Maundy, to a symbolic number of elderly, deserving citizens (one man and one woman for each year of the sovereign's age); the sum of the alms is also the same amount in pence. The sovereign gives each recipient two small leather purses, one red, one white, which are carried in the ceremony by Yeomen of the Guards. In the red purses are modern currency for the purchase of food and clothing. In the white purses are the silver Maundy coins. (For more about Maundy Money, see this post by the Royal Mint.)

The Royal Maundy Service in 1952, shown in the video above, was the first official appearance by Elizabeth as the new queen, only a few weeks after her father's death in February. Because of her youth - she was only twenty-six at the time - the Royal Maundy that she distributed consisted of silver coins totaling twenty-six pence, given to the twenty-six deserving men and women. She was the first English queen to participate in the ceremony since her namesake Elizabeth I, four hundred years earlier.

Sixty years later, the Queen is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee, and when she attended the Royal Maundy Service at York Minster this week, the number of the recipients and the coins were substantially more: eighty-six male and eighty-six female recipients received coins valued at eighty-six pence. Below is video from the service, which took place yesterday, April 5, 2012.


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Friday Video: Buster Keaton in the ring

Loretta reports:

I've incorporated early 19th C gentlemen's fondness for fisticuffs in several of my books.  For an idea of what boxing was really like back then, take a look at Georgian Boxing at Horrible Histories.


Fortunately for the squeamish, we don't have actual Regency era fisticuffs recorded on film—but here's Buster Keaton, my favorite silent film actor and comic genius, demonstrating his brilliance in the ring.

Cruikshank illustration from Pierce Egan's Life in London, 1821

Friday Video: Boarding School Girls at Coney Island, 1905

Susan reporting:

Although it's still March, the temperatures in the Northeastern U.S. this week have been as balmy as early June. It's certainly been warm enough to dream of a jaunt to the beach. Why not join these young ladies of 1905 from Miss Knapp's Select School as they head out for a day at the seaside resort of Coney Island, NY? This silent clip proves that girls do just want to have fun – and manage to have a wonderful time in spite of their elaborate dresses and hats, swimsuits with long socks, and, of course, corsets.

Video posted to YouTube by The Travel Film Archive

Friday Video: A Portrait of the Regency

William Elmes, Triumph of Love and Folly, 1812

Loretta reports:

Usually on Friday, we offer short video clips.  This one, recommended to me by one of our readers, is definitely not short—and it’s only the beginning of a fine series.

But Lucy Worsley, who’s entertained us before, does a marvelous job of bringing history to life, and—perhaps more important for Nerdy History People—she goes behind the scenes, talks to experts, and even dresses up like a Regency dandy (with the aid of Ian Kelly, the author of one of my favorite biographies, Beau Brummell:  The Ultimate Man of Style).

This is Part One of a three-part BBC series: Elegance and Decadence - The Age of the Regency.

Illustration courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.  Please click on caption to view the LOC page.

 Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle or a square where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on this link to the  Two Nerdy History Girls blog.

Friday Video: The Story of 'Keep Calm & Carry On'

Susan reporting:

The slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On" today appears on t-shirts, bumperstickers, and coffee cups, and it's been adapted in countless other ways to promote everything from cupcakes to Bob Marley. I knew that the slogan and poster had originated in Great Britain during the Second World War, but I'd no idea of its story or true significance. This wonderful short video is also an understated advertisement for what has to be one of the most delightful bookstores in the U.K. To us here in America, where independent bookstores are closing at an alarming rate, this shop in an old train station truly looks like a reader's heaven.

Friday Video: History of English in brief

Loretta reports:

Some of us have short attention spans and some do not.  Either species will, I think, enjoy this piece—and probably learn some things.  I did!

Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle or empty square where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on this link to the  Two Nerdy History Girls blog.

Friday Video: Edwardian Fundraising Takes to the Streets, 1912

Susan reporting:

This brief silent film will be a special treat to all of you who've recently "discovered" the Edwardian era through Downton Abbey. Alexandra Rose Day was created in 1912 to mark the 50th anniversary of the arrival to England of Princess Alexandra of Denmark to marry the future King Edward VII. Much like last year's royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, this 1863 wedding was a national celebration that helped make Alexandra into a much-admired figure. Fifty years later, as a widow and dowager queen, she chose to commemorate the anniversary not with a grand, costly procession, but with a fundraising drive to benefit the poor and needy. Artificial roses, made by the disabled, were offered and sold by women volunteers in the London streets. The event was an enormous success, raising the modern equivalent of £2 million for the city's hospitals. The event continues today; click here for more information.

This film clip follows a group of those first volunteers into the streets of the Peckham district of London in 1912, and it's clear that the public is enchanted by these mostly-young ladies dressed in white with their baskets of roses. The quality of the clip is amazingly good, offering a glimpse not only of Edwardian dress (oh, those hats!), but also transportation, shops, and street-life. I was also struck by how good-natured everyone seems to be on this day, smiling and laughing at the camera and with the volunteers. Watching this, it's hard to believe that the devastating nightmare of the First World War is only two years away.

Beau Brummell in motion

Loretta reports:

Since it's so much harder to find fashion plates for early 19th century men’s clothing than for women’s, we tend to rely more upon painted portraits.

But these have limitations, some artists being less interested in fashion detail than in, oh, art.

But the best way, I believe, to understand the sexy elegance of the era is to see real clothes on real men.

Of course, we all know that Brummell was the leader, rather than a follower.  Still, the Kinks' song works.  The clips are from the movie Beau Brummell: This Charming Man, very loosely based on Ian Kelly’s wonderful biography, Beau Brummell:  The Ultimate Man of Style.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle or empty square where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on this link to the  Two Nerdy History Girls blog.

Girls who wear glasses

Loretta reports:

"Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses."  Marilyn Monroe pointed this out in How to Marry a Millionaire, while contriving to look as sexy and glamorous as ever in her spectacles.

Here's advice on choosing the right eyeglasses in the 1950s.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on this link to the  Two Nerdy History Girls blog.

Friday Video: A Fashionable Stroll Down Fifth Avenue, New York City, c 1910

Susan reporting:

After Loretta's recent post on the proper way to walk along a Parisian street, I thought I'd offer video proof of how stylish New Yorkers strolled the streets of Manhattan c 1910. (The YouTube caption says 1900, but from the clothes, I'm guessing closer to the years directly prior to Word War I. Take note, Downton Abbey fans!) At this time, Fifth Avenue was still the grandest street in New York, the address of choice for Vanderbilts and Astors. There's a glimpse of city traffic – a confusing mix of trolley cars, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages – followed by scores of beautifully dressed men and women strolling along the sidewalk in the sunshine in their Sunday best.

Not only are the women wearing spectacular hats, but the men, too, all sport a variety of top-hats and bowlers. True, this is an affluent neighborhood, but I'm still impressed by how everyone, young and old, is dressed with an elegant formality that's impossible to imagine in our modern t-shirts-jeans-and-sweats world.

This is a very short film clip, and completely silent, so please feel free to imagine whatever music you please.

Above: New York City Street Scene Easter 1900 Clip posted to YouTube by historycomestolife.

A Century of Men on Film - in Three & a Half Minutes

One of our most popular Friday Videos was 500 Years of Women in Art. Here we offer equal time to the gentlemen with (nearly) a century of film actors, from silent screen heart-throbs to today's Hollywood stars. From a historical viewpoint, it's interesting to see how what's considered a handsome man has changed – and what hasn't.

Victoria's granddaughter speaks

Loretta reports:


Here's the second part of the series on Victorian ladies, this time featuring a lady from an altogether different class.  I have to admit that these American ears couldn’t catch more than half of what Princess Alice said.

Photograph of Princess Alex of Teck (aka Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone), courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA (editing mine).

Please note: Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on this link to the  Two Nerdy History Girls blog.

Modern Women of the 1890s

Riverside Drive, New York, c. 1896

Loretta reports:


Two voices from the past offer some insight into the thrills and challenges of being a modern woman in the Gay Nineties.

Illustration:  Riverside Drive, New York, c. 1896. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA,  

Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on this link to the  Two Nerdy History Girls blog.

Holiday Break

Loretta & Susan report:

Over the next few days, we'll be taking a break while we enjoy the holidays with our families and friends. If the weather's willing, Susan will again be posting photos of the holiday decorations from Colonial Williamsburg. Look for fresh new posts from us both at the start of the New Year.

Of course, we hope you'll be having too much fun with your own families and friends to notice our absence. We wish you a most joyous holiday season and a New Year filled with many delightful revelations of the historical kind as well as many other good things!

In the spirit of a holiday filled with peace and beauty, enjoy this lovely video clip of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Beautiful!

Many thanks to our twitter friend Denise Brain for sharing this clip with us.

Looking into the future from the 1920s

Loretta reports:

I often wonder what my early 19th century characters would make of my world.  They might have imagined people flying, but what sort of device would they picture?  What would they imagine we'd be wearing?   Could they envision the demise of the horse as transportation?


Though this film was made in the 1920s and 1930s, it does give us an idea of the limitations of our minds as well as the leaps we can make.  And the clothes are pretty interesting.  Note the cantilevered shoes, especially.

Please note:  If you receive our blog via RSS Feed (email), you might see only a black rectangle where the video should be.  To watch the show, please click on the link to our blog.

Friday Video: O Christmas Tree, Horrible Histories-Style

Susan reporting:

With only a few weeks until Christmas, here's a carol for our Friday Video, especially one sung by the Horrible Histories folk. Most people do know that the Christmas evergreen is a German tradition brought over to England by a royal spouse. It's usually Prince Albert who gets the credit, but in fact the first Christmas trees entered the palace celebrations nearly a century earlier, through George III's queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Still, Victoria and Albert did popularize the custom, and Christmas trees have been part of English and American holidays ever since. This year Windsor Castle has been decorated for the season as if Queen Victoria were still in residence. This article includes plenty of photographs of this Victorian Christmas – including Albert's preference for hanging the trees from the ceiling!

Henry VIII' s astronomical clock Part Deux

Loretta reports:

To follow up on my blog about Hampton Court Palace's Astronomical Clock, here's a video from Historic Royal Palaces, with some additional tidbits and a look inside.

Voices from WWI

Loretta reports:

At 11AM on 11/11/11, on the day originally called Armistice Day, many parts of the world will observe two minutes of silence in honor of the men and women of the armed services, past and present.

This short video brings us excerpts from letters written by men who fought in that Great War to end all wars, the war that gave us Armistice Day.