65 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. I recognize quite a few of these, and with my enhanced googling skills as well as some local knowledge, I think no. 2, the one with the half-timbered Morris Minor Traveller in it, is South Union Street Dundee, now totally messed up thanks to the Tay Bridge and subsequent remodelling, and with the new V&A at the foot of it. I recognized the building at the top – Mathers Hotel – which I’m sure is the one in this Google Maps image: http://t1p.de/7ahw.

    My brother used to get Bazooka bubble gum. The packs used to come with collectable cards in, I think – American Civil War historical portraits and suchlike, if I remember. … Just had a look. They were around in the mid-’60s. They’re going for ££££ on ebay now – like coming on £70 each! He won’t still have them though. Here’s an image search result: http://t1p.de/3co2. Can’t say I liked the stuff myself much, I only ever used to chew it because my brother only bought it for the cards, and it annoyed my mother, who would threaten me with a painful personal death if I got it on anything while blowing bubbles with it, or stuck dods of the used-up gum on or under the furniture.

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    1. Well spotted, Ed. Union Street it is. Early 60’s maybe?

      I suppose these cards, and cigarette coupons were ways of enticing you to go on buying a particular brand.

      Do they still make bubble gum?

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      1. They still make Bazooka Joe stuff I think. The bubble gum cards about the American Civil War were vividly graphic, just the thing for evil minded little boys. They ranged from a man falling burning from an observation balloon to cavalrymen falling off their horses and being impaled on Cheval de frise, and all had ominous titles like “Being Pushed To His Doom”.

        The spellchecker had a problem with cheval de frise, calling it cheval de fries, which tickled me.

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              1. Ed…..Not sure about trees at the border.
                I was however surprised some time back to learn that the Belgians dip their fries in mayonnaise instead of ketchup.
                I tried it since I like mayonnaise. Tastes pretty good. 🙂

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                1. I put mayonnaise on my chips / fries all the time, and have done ever since I lived in that part of the world – actually before, when I used to go over regularly to be with my bf from Antwerp.

                  The joke is an ethnoculturally based one about Dutch stereotypes of “stupid” Flemings, which it would sully my lips to recount here. Belgian guy with paper cone of frites with mayonnaise on in hand, Dutch guy politely asks him the time … now work out how the frites get on the ground, and the mayonnaise up in the trees.

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      2. The Morris Traveler is “B” registered, which was from 1964, so this is mid 60s. “ASR” was issued by Angus County registrations in Dundee, so it’s local. My first motorbike was a 1960 Matchless which was “XSR”, with no suffix.

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        2. The building that is demolished in the foreground looks to be the old ferry terminal so I would venture it is late 60`s after Tay Road bridge opening.

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  3. A message from Munguin’s resident (self-appointed) motion picture critic:

    Sean Connery was an Edinburgh lad. He’s obviously changed a little over the years, but on his worst day, he was (and would still be) a better James Bond than all the clowns who followed him in the role; from Roger Moore who played it for laughs, to all the unrecognizable young guys named Murray (or whatever their names are) with all their faux dramatic and psychological depth (recently picked up in acting class.)

    In “Dr. No,” Connery’s Bond was a serious young MI6 agent who knew code words and the scheduled times for radio transmissions to London. “From Russia With Love” was the second and best Bond movie. The performances of Lotte Lenya (as Colonel Rosa Klebb) and Robert Shaw (as “Red” Grant) are worth the price of admission.

    It was all downhill after “Russia With Love.” Goldfinger is overrated and was where the James Bond franchise started to go off the rails. “Diamonds Are Forever” was filmed in 1971. It was Connery’s sixth and next to last Bond film which should be seen for its glimpses of Las Vegas in its middle years, almost 50 years ago, which is now largely gone, in favor of gigantic mega-resorts named Murray or whatever.

    In “Diamonds….” the site of the first MGM Grand Hotel and Casino can be glimpsed at the corner of Flamingo Road and The Strip. It was a vacant lot at the time of the filming. The dazzling “Whyte House” in the film was the International Hotel — a large curved three-sided structure on Paradise Road which was re-branded the “Las Vegas Hilton” later that year. In one of these pictures of Sean Connery and Jill St. John on location during the filming, the “International” sign can still be seen on the building.

    The stories about Connery and the filming of “Diamonds….” are the stuff of legend in Las Vegas. They closed off downtown’s Fremont Street (AKA “Glitter Gulch”) for five nights to film the car chase. Fun to see the throngs of tourists on the sidewalks watching the filming.

    https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/christopher-lawrence/when-james-bond-came-to-las-vegas-photos/#!

    An aging Connery played James Bond for the final time in “Never Say Never Again, ” released in 1983, 12 years after “Diamonds Are Forever.”

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    1. PS:
      Found some pictures of “The Whyte House” as it appeared in “Diamonds….”:

      As previously noted, the curved structure is the International Hotel (later, the Las Vegas Hilton.) In the film, nearby structures were obscured by matte painting to make the location look more remote. The high rise building in the rear is a matte painting. The red Ford Mustang is in the Fremont Street car chase.

      Big name stars like Elvis and Barbra and Peggy Lee played the International and Las Vegas Hilton showroom. After much rebuilding and expansion, the Las Vegas Hilton was the largest hotel in world from 1981-1990 (Wiki says.)

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      1. Have to agree. He was the only real James Bond. Roger Moore was awful. And more recently the films have become unwatchable.

        The older ones were a bit of a laugh but had good stories, and I agree. Rosa Clegg is my favourite Bond character.

        Liked the car chase and the sideways move…

        That’s some hotel. I remember reading about the great shows that used to go on in Vegas.

        Ella Fitzgerald said that she could star in a show there, but wasn’t allowed into the casinos as a guest, because she was black.

        What days.

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          2. Derek……Yes the error is at the very end of the chase. The continuity error involved shots made during the five nights of filming in downtown Vegas, which had to be merged with some scenes that were shot at a studio in Hollywood. The problem was a reshoot of a part of the scene by a different stunt driver who flipped the car up on the wrong wheels. They tried to fix it with an interior shot that makes it seem like the car righted itself and then went up on the opposite wheels. But that couldn’t happen in the narrow alley, and it still looks awkward in the final cut.

            The full explanation:

            Continuity mistake: The famous car chase ends with Bond’s car tipping up on its right wheels to fit through a pedestrian path. However, when it emerges the other side, it’s tipped on its left wheels. [When the car enters the alley this was filmed in a studio. When the car exits the alley this was filmed in Vegas. The first few times the exit was filmed the car emerged on the correct wheels but the shots were unusable because of the crowds in the background watching the filming. This shot was temporarily abandoned and eventually re-filmed with a different stunt driver who famously performed the stunt on the wrong wheels. Realising this, the producers filmed an insert shot featuring a close-up of Sean Connery and Jill St John which shows the car tip back onto four wheels and then up onto the opposite two wheels (even though the alleyway would be too narrow to manage this!), which is in the finished film].

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        2. Lotte Lenya made a great Bond villain

          When the International opened in 1969, Barbra Streisand was the opening act in the big showroom with Peggy Lee appearing in the lounge. I think that Elvis immediately followed Sreisand into the big room. He played exclusive engagements at the International/Hilton for the rest of his life.

          For many years, since the black performers were not allowed to stay in the Hotels where they were appearing, they stayed at black places over on the west side of town. Sammy Davis with Sinatra’s help finally broke the racial barrier in Vegas during the Rat Pack days at the Sands.

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          1. Imagine having Streisand and Lee in the same building…

            Not a fan of Streisand myself, but Peggy Lee had a wonderful velvet voice.

            That segregation makes me physically sick.

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        1. After thawing out after the holidays and the latest round of snow, it’s good to be back!

          2019 should be a helluva year on both sides of the Atlantic…

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        1. I love “The Sting,” even though Chicago is a Hollywood studio back lot. God knows, Eileen Brennan’s madam warning Charles Durning’s flatfoot that he’ll be busting in on the chief of police just up the hall was plausible enough back in the day…

          As for a “Man for All Seasons,” does His Majesty approve?

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          1. Jon……Love this:

            Henry Tudor
            ‏@KngHnryVIII
            Jan 8

            Dear America,
            It’s unclear why you’re so focused on a wall. The same peasants who believe in the invincibility of a wall could just as easily be sold on a moat. Or a big ditch filled with quicksand. Or a 1000 mile phalanx of powerful but invisible badgers.

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              1. LOL Tris……I see you’ve not missed the newest Trump insanity about the wall and the wheel.
                He was in Texas on Friday, looking all spiffy in his Make America Great Again cap, yammering about a new “Caravan” which is forming up to storm our southern border, and advocating “medieval” solutions to repel the foreigners.

                Jimmy Kimmel had a lot of fun with the newest Trump gibberish about caravans, walls, and wheels. 😉

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  4. Derek beat me to the bike. My mate had a Harley sportster, we swapped for a run once and after my big square four the v twin just about vibrated my fillings out.
    My big brother was a jazz fiend, from Chet Baker to Nat King Cole to this guy:

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    1. I have a feeling you might be right. I somehow felt that “Toffo” was a kind of “trendy” 60s or 70s name for whatever they had been called in the 50s.

      Anyone?

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    1. An episode of a 1958 TV series called “Trackdown” has been discovered. It’s titled “End of the World,”
      and involves a con-man named Trump.

      This is seriously spooky. 😉

      Excerpts:

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    2. Shamelessly stolen and posted on my fb page.

      As the words came out of someone else’s mouth, I realized (a) the full weight of their offensiveness; and (b), how numbed and blasé I had become when hearing them from the man himself.

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  7. Seguing seamlessly into something completely different, as is my wont, here’s a link to a story, in the Ferret, which will likely come as no surprise to the many alert Munguinites out there. It’s dated 5 January and I only just now picked up on it thanks to Alyn Smith’s latest blog post, which I’d read before but he has now updated the links – at least that’s my impression. It’s entitled “Revealed: the dirty secrets of the DUP’s ‘dark money’ Brexit donor”: http://t1p.de/ebb8.

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  9. a big boy did it all and ran away.
    Hope Nicola raises carless jacklaw’s involvement.
    I remember the outer sheets of not only the Metro but the Extra pushing untruthful’s group, thought that it would have cost money to have printed. Then Johnston press goes into receivership. Dirty money indeed.

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