Roadside America: 40 Amazing Photos of 1980s Billboards

These amazing photos capture the bold and colorful world of American roadside billboards during the 1980s. Stretching along highways and city streets, the oversized advertisements promoted everything from fast food and cars to cigarettes, soft drinks, and local attractions.

With their bright graphics, oversized lettering, and larger-than-life imagery, the billboards reflect the commercial energy and visual excess of the decade. These images preserve a vivid record of roadside culture and the advertising landscape that once defined so much of the American travel experience.

Everglades Safari billboard, Route 41, Dade County, Florida, 1980

17 Bar and Club sign, Billings, Montana, 1980

Harvey's Tavern sign, Route 99, Edmunds, Washington, 1980

Heart's Desire Motel sign, Route 19A, Dunedin, Florida, 1980

Kozy Kamp Motel sign, La Vale, Maryland, 1980

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40 Stunning Photos Show Fay Wray’s Glamour Styles From the Late 1920s

In the late 1920s, Canadian-American actress Fay Wray (September 15, 1907 – August 8, 2004) embodied the quintessential classic Hollywood glamour mixed with the youthfully rebellious “flapper” aesthetic. Before rising to ultimate fame in 1933’s King Kong, Wray was a brunette starlet under contract with Paramount Pictures. Her style perfectly captured the transition of the late 1920s (1928–1929), where silhouettes began to shift from the boxy shapes of the mid-20s into more fluid, elongated elegance.

Wray wore classic late-1920s gowns featuring dropped waistlines, delicate silk crepes, satin, and soft pleating. As the decade closed, her wardrobe shifted toward bias-cut gowns that hugged natural curves while maintaining an elongated line.

A staple of her studio portraits, she frequently wore ultra-fitted cloche hats pulled low over the brow, often embellished with fabric flowers or subtle metallic brooches. Her signature dark hair (she went blonde later for King Kong) was styled in tight Marcel waves or slicked close to the head to complement high-collared coats and close-fitting hats.

Paramount studio portraits often styled her in velvet wraps, fur collars, long opera gloves, and Art Deco costume jewelry, such as geometric brooches and layered pearl strands. For off-set photoshoots, she favored tailored day suits with drop-waist pleated skirts, wide-collared blouses, and low-heeled T-strap pumps typical of Hollywood’s “ingénue” studio look.

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The Story of the Ovitz Family, the Dwarfs Who Survived Auschwitz

The Ovitz family was a Jewish family of performers from Transylvania, Romania, who became famous as the Liliput Troupe. Comprising ten siblings, seven of whom had pseudoachondroplasia, they toured Europe performing music and comedy before World War II. When the Nazis invaded, their unique physical characteristics saved them from immediate extermination at Auschwitz, but subjected them to pseudo-scientific abuse.

In May 1944, the Ovitz family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival on the selection ramp, their appearance caught the immediate attention of camp officers, who alerted Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele was fascinated by genetics, particularly hereditary anomalies and twins. He spared all 12 family members (including average-height relatives and pseudo-relatives they claimed as kin) from the gas chambers to research them.

Unlike typical inmates, the Ovitzes were allowed to keep their civilian clothes, grew out their hair, and lived in special quarters with slightly better sanitation and extra rations to preserve their health for experiments. They endured torturous medical procedures, including frequent blood extractions, bone marrow draws, tooth extractions, and invasive tests without anesthesia. Mengele routinely put them on display before high-ranking SS officers as medical curiosities.

Despite the severe physical and psychological trauma, all 12 members of the family survived Auschwitz, making them the largest family group to enter the camp and survive intact. Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. The family spent months in displaced persons camps before walking back to their hometown in Romania.

Finding their home looted, they emigrated to Israel in 1949, where they resumed performing before retiring in 1955. Perla Ovitz, the youngest and last surviving sibling, passed away in 2001.

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Merle Oberon: Exotic Beauty of Classic Hollywood

Merle Oberon (1911–1979) was a glamorous Anglo-Indian actress who became one of the defining beauties of 1930s and 1940s cinema.

Born in Bombay and raised partly in India, Oberon moved to England and was discovered by producer Alexander Korda, who helped launch her career. She rose to international fame in films such as The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935), and especially as Cathy in William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939).

Known for her striking dark features, porcelain complexion, and sophisticated screen presence, Oberon successfully transitioned to Hollywood and remains remembered as one of the most elegant stars of the Golden Age. These vintage photos capture the exotic beauty, elegance, and timeless glamour of Merle Oberon, a true icon of classic cinema.

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Plan of Work for a Small Servantless House, ca. 1930s

This chart, titled “Plan of Work for a Small Servantless House (3 or 4 in family),” comes from Mrs. Beeton’s Everyday Cookery (specifically 1930s to 1950s British editions, updated from Isabella Beeton’s famous 19th-century household management guides).

For decades, middle-class British households relied on live-in domestic staff (cooks, maids, scullery workers). However, following World War I and accelerating into the 1930s and post-WWII eras, economic shifts, rising wages, and new industrial job opportunities drastically reduced the availability of domestic servants. Housewives were suddenly required to manage entire homes single-handedly.

To aid housewives adapting to this new reality, domestic manuals, most famously Mrs. Beeton’s, re-imagined domestic work as a regimented, scientific schedule. Tasks were broken down into strict 10-minute blocks running from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM or later, treating home management almost like factory or office work.

Before central heating was widespread, mornings began at 7:00 AM with manual labor, stoking coal/coke boilers for hot water and lighting living-room fires. Tasks covered everything from vacuuming, mopping, airing beds, sweeping stairs, looking over the larder, to preparing three distinct meals a day.

Below the daily timetable, the “Housewife’s Weekly Duties” section schedules heavy-duty deep cleaning by room (e.g., Tuesday: sitting room; Wednesday: bedrooms; Friday: bathroom and stairs; Saturday: baking and week-end prep). The mention of “carpets with vacuum cleaner” and a “scullery” illustrates the transitional mid-20th-century era, combining traditional scullery work with modern labor-saving devices.

John Onwy: Vintage Poster Artist of the Early 20th Century

John Onwy was a French commercial artist and poster designer active in the early 20th century. Best known for his colorful advertising posters, he created striking promotional designs for products such as Tobler chocolate, King’s Lemonade, and various consumer goods popular in Belgium and France. His work reflects the decorative, eye-catching style of the period, combining bold typography with lively illustration.

Though biographical details about Onwy remain limited, his surviving posters continue to be appreciated by collectors of vintage advertising art for their charm and period character. These colorful vintage posters showcase the lively commercial art of John Onwy, a distinctive voice in early 20th-century advertising design.

Biscuits La Cigogne, Strasbourg, 1920

Café Mirault, Quel arôme!, circa 1920

Chiarini, Élixir Vermifuge contre Vers, Coliques, Convulsions, circa 1920

Glycodont, Roi des dentifrices, 1920

King's Lemonade, circa 1920

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33 Amazing Photographs From the Set of the 1941 Classic Noir Film “The Maltese Falcon”

The Maltese Falcon (1941) is a landmark American film noir that fundamentally birthed the visual and thematic language of the Hollywood detective genre. Directed by John Huston in his brilliant directorial debut, the movie adapted Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 hardboiled novel with razor-sharp fidelity. It transformed Humphrey Bogart into a legendary A-list superstar and remains a definitive cinematic masterpiece.

The story follows a cynical and fiercely independent San Francisco private eye who plunges into a treacherous labyrinth of greed and deception. Private investigator Sam Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, are hired by a mysterious woman named Miss Wonderly. Archer is mysteriously murdered while tailing a man for their new client, leaving Spade as a prime police suspect.

Spade is quickly targeted, bribed, and seduced by an eccentric quartet of international criminals. They are all competing to obtain a priceless, jewel-encrusted 16th-century statuette known as the Maltese Falcon. Spade must navigate a web of dangerous double-crosses, only to discover the object of everyone’s obsession is a worthless lead fake.

Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of Sam Spade defined the hardboiled detective: cynical, morally ambiguous, yet bound by a strict personal code (“When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it”). Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy established the deceitful, manipulative heroine who uses vulnerability as a weapon.

The titular falcon serves as Hitchcock’s classic device, an object driving the entire plot that ultimately proves worthless (lead metal disguised as gold). Huston insisted on shooting scenes sequentially and using low-angle shots showing ceilings, creating a claustrophobic, tense atmosphere inside small rooms.

Though Bogart had appeared in over 40 films (often as a secondary villain), The Maltese Falcon launched him into A-list leading-man stardom, paving the way for Casablanca (1942). At age 61, stage veteran Sydney Greenstreet made his screen debut as Kasper Gutman, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Premiering in New York City on October 3, 1941, the film was an immediate commercial and critical success. It remains widely considered a landmark of the film noir genre, and it is one of the greatest and most influential films of all time. It is frequently cited for its significant contributions to storytelling, character archetypes, and visual style in film noir.

In 1989, the film was among the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry, recognized as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

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