The Golden Age of Aviation: Beautiful Covers of Flying Magazine in the 1950s

First published in 1927, Flying magazine has established itself as the world’s most widely read aviation publication, serving as a vital resource for pilots and enthusiasts alike.

For nearly a century, it has chronicled the evolution of flight, from the early days of prop planes to the cutting-edge technology of modern business jets and electric aircraft. The magazine is renowned for its rigorous “Pilot Reports,” where expert aviators provide in-depth reviews of new aircraft, and its technical columns that offer invaluable advice on safety, navigation, and weather.

Beyond the mechanics of flight, Flying captures the soul of the cockpit through breathtaking aerial photography and storytelling that celebrates the freedom of the skies. Whether for a student pilot or a seasoned captain, the magazine remains a cornerstone of the aviation community, bridging the gap between historical legacy and the future of aerospace.

Take a flight back to the 1950s through these stunning vintage covers of Flying magazine. From the sleek lines of early jets to the vibrant art of the mid-century, these covers capture the excitement of an era when the sky was the ultimate frontier.

Flying magazine cover, August 1950

Flying magazine cover, May 1950

Flying magazine cover, October 1950

Flying magazine cover, February 1951

Flying magazine cover, November 1951

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Fascinating Photos of Val Kilmer and Meg Ryan on the Set of “The Doors” (1991)

Directed by Oliver Stone, the 1991 film The Doors remains one of the most visually striking biopics of the era, famously starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison and Meg Ryan as his longtime companion, Pamela Courson. While Kilmer received near-universal acclaim for his “eerie” transformation, the pairing of these two actors on set represented a fascinating collision of two very different Hollywood trajectories in the early 1990s.

Kilmer’s dedication to the role is legendary in film history. To prepare for the part, he lived like Morrison. He spent a year dressing in Morrison’s clothes and frequenting his old haunts on the Sunset Strip. To achieve Morrison’s look, Kilmer lost weight to play the younger version and later gained significant weight to portray the singer’s later years. He also reportedly burned a mole off his face for better resemblance.

Kilmer spent a year training his voice and learning 50 of the band’s songs. He sang all the performance vocals in the film himself. His voice was so close to the original that the surviving members of The Doors reportedly had trouble distinguishing his recordings from Morrison’s.

Val Kilmer was famously immersive in the role, refusing to break character between shots. Meg Ryan later noted that his intense, “electric” performance often made her feel as though she were working with the real Jim Morrison rather than an actor. After filming wrapped, Kilmer famously sought therapy to “get Jim out of his system” because he had lived in character for so long.

At the time of filming, Meg Ryan was the reigning queen of romantic comedies following the massive success of When Harry Met Sally... (1989). Her role as Pamela Courson was a deliberate attempt to break away from her “girl next door” image. She swapped her feathered blonde bob for long, fiery red hair and Bohemian “hippie” fashion, though critics at the time noted her look still felt very “1991 trying to be 1969.”

The Doors was released theatrically by Tri-Star Pictures on March 1, 1991 and debuted at number 2 at the box office. The film grossed $34.4 million in the United States and Canada on a $32 million production budget. The film received mixed reviews from critics; while Kilmer’s performance, the supporting cast, the cinematography, the production design and Stone’s directing were praised, criticism was centered on its historical inaccuracy and depiction of Morrison.

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The Tragedy Story of Mary Mallon, aka “Typhoid Mary”

Mary Mallon (1869–1938), better known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever. An Irish immigrant and talented cook, she spent nearly three decades in forced isolation after being linked to multiple deadly outbreaks of the disease.

Mallon (foreground) in a hospital bed in 1909.

Born in Ireland in 1869, Mary Mallon immigrated to the United States in 1883. She was a talented cook for wealthy families in New York, a profession she took great pride in. Between 1900 and 1907, she worked for several households; in almost every one, family members and staff fell ill with typhoid fever shortly after her arrival. What made Mallon unique was that she never showed symptoms. While her employers suffered from high fevers and delirium, Mallon appeared perfectly healthy.

In 1906, after an outbreak in a vacation home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, a sanitary engineer named George Soper was hired to find the source. Soper eventually linked the various outbreaks to one common denominator: the cook.

Soper famously deduced that Mallon’s peach ice cream was likely the culprit. Because the dessert was made with raw fruit and not heated, the bacteria she carried (Salmonella typhi) remained alive and was passed to those who ate it. When Soper finally confronted Mallon, she was outraged. To her, a woman who had never been sick, the idea that she was a “walking germ factory” seemed like a malicious lie or a religious persecution.

Poster depiction of “Typhoid Mary” (1909).

Mallon did not go quietly. When health officials and police arrived to take her for testing, she reportedly fought them off with a carving fork and had to be physically restrained. Tests eventually confirmed she was shedding massive amounts of typhoid bacteria from her gallbladder.

Mallon was forcibly quarantined on North Brother Island in the East River for three years (1907–1910). She was eventually released by a new health commissioner under one strict condition: she must never work as a cook again. However, she struggled with the low wages of laundry work and remained unconvinced of her “carrier” status. She disappeared from the authorities’ radar and returned to cooking under the alias “Mary Brown.” In 1915, she caused a major outbreak at Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan, infecting 25 people and killing two.

Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, sits fourth from right among a group of inmates quarantined on an isolated island on the Long Island Sound.

After the hospital outbreak, public sympathy for Mary evaporated. She was returned to North Brother Island, where she remained in forced isolation for the rest of her life, another 23 years. She was quite active until 1932, when she suffered a stroke; afterwards, she was confined to the hospital. She never completely recovered, and half of her body remained paralyzed.

On November 11, 1938, she died of pneumonia at age 69. Mallon’s body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in at Saint Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx. Nine people attended the funeral. Some sources claim that an autopsy found evidence of live typhoid bacteria in Mallon’s gallbladder. Soper wrote, however, that there was no autopsy, a claim cited by other researchers to assert a conspiracy to calm public opinion after her death.

Jacqueline Bisset: The Timeless Icon of International Cinema

Jacqueline Bisset is an acclaimed British actress who became a quintessential symbol of elegance and natural beauty in the late 1960s and ’70s. Rising to international stardom with roles in films like The Detective and The Sweet Ride, she quickly proved to be much more than just a screen siren, showcasing remarkable range and depth.

Bisset is perhaps most celebrated for her performance in François Truffaut’s masterpiece Day for Night (1973), which cemented her status as a favorite among European “auteur” directors. Throughout her career, she seamlessly transitioned between Hollywood blockbusters and sophisticated art-house cinema, working alongside legends like Paul Newman and Audrey Hepburn.

Known for her magnetic screen presence and a career that spans over five decades, Bisset remains a revered figure in the film industry, embodying a rare blend of classical grace and contemporary strength.

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See Polaroid Shots of Supermodels Before They Were Famous

Douglas Perrett is a renowned New York-based casting director (founder of COACD) who became a cult figure in the fashion industry for documenting the “raw” beginnings of some of the world’s most famous supermodels. In 2012, he released a limited-edition book titled Wild Things, which compiled his personal collection of casting Polaroids taken between 2000 and 2010. These photos capture models at their first “go-sees” – often makeup-free, unretouched, and long before they became household names, including Miranda Kerr, Chanel Iman, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Candice Swanepoel...

These Polaroids are highly regarded for showing models in a neutral vision of their appearance, stripped of the professional hair, makeup, and lighting of later editorial shoots. The collection serves as a visual record of the “casting era” before digital photography fully replaced the instant physical Polaroid as the primary tool for casting directors.

The book is famous for showing the “before” versions of models who later defined the 2000s and 2010s fashion eras. Only 250 copies of the book were originally printed, making it a rare artifact of 2000s fashion history.

Abbey Lee Kershaw

Adriana Lima

Arizona Muse

Ataui Deng

Barbara Palvin

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18 Amazing Photos of a Young David Lynch in the 1960s and 1970s

David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025) was an American filmmaker, actor, painter, and musician. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, with his films often characterized by a distinctive surrealist sensibility that gave rise to the adjective “Lynchian.” In a career spanning more than five decades, he received numerous accolades, including a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival, an Academy Honorary Award, and a (posthumous) Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.

Lynch spent the mid-1960s moving between art schools, eventually landing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia in 1966. He described the city as a place of “violence, hate, and filth.” The gray, industrial, and often terrifying atmosphere of 1960s Philly became the primary aesthetic for his future films.

In 1967, while staring at a painting of a garden, he felt a “wind” coming from the canvas and wanted the image to move. This led to his first film, Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times), a one-minute looped animation projected onto a sculpted screen. He followed this with The Alphabet (1968), a nightmare-fueled mix of animation and live action starring his first wife, Peggy Reavey. The film was inspired by his wife’s niece reciting the alphabet in her sleep during a nightmare.

The 1970s was a decade of intense financial struggle and singular focus as Lynch moved to Los Angeles to study at the AFI Conservatory. The 34-minute short film The Grandmother (1970) helped him earn a scholarship to AFI. It further refined his use of disturbing soundscapes and tactile, organic imagery. What was supposed to be a short student project took five years to complete The Eraserhead Marathon (1971–1977)

Lynch famously lived on the set, a series of disused stables at the AFI’s Greystone Mansion. To keep the project alive when funding dried up, Lynch delivered The Wall Street Journal on a paper route. During a lull in filming, he shot a short called The Amputee (1974) simply because AFI wanted to test two different types of black-and-white film stock.

Released in 1977, while initial reviews were mixed (Variety called it “sickening”), Eraserhead became a staple of the “midnight movie” circuit. Its success caught the attention of Mel Brooks, who hired Lynch at the end of the decade to direct The Elephant Man (1980), propelling him into mainstream Hollywood.

Below is a collection of 18 amazing photos of a young David Lynch in the 1960s and 1970s:

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Gérard Albouy: The Artist Behind the Avant-Garde Hat Designs

Gérard Albouy (1912–1985) was a prominent French artist and milliner who left an indelible mark on the world of mid-century fashion and visual arts.

Best known as one-half of the celebrated millinery duo “Gaby et Gérard,” Albouy transformed hat-making into a form of high art. His creations were far from traditional, they were sculptural, avant-garde masterpieces that graced the heads of style icons and appeared frequently in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

Beyond fashion, Albouy was a deeply talented painter, known for his ethereal and melancholic portraits that often blended classical techniques with a dreamlike, surrealist quality. His work frequently depicted elegant, elongated figures, reflecting his obsession with grace and the human form.

Whether through the curve of a felt brim or the stroke of a paintbrush, Albouy’s legacy remains one of refined eccentricity and poetic sophistication.

Sophie Malgat in hat by Gérard Albouy, photo by Clifford Coffin, Paris, February 1948

Barbara Goalen wearing en elegant afternoon dress in black wool with small cape effect and a wide patent leather belt that holds the lapels in place by Mad Carpentier, hat by Gerard Albouy, photo by Clifford Coffin, Vogue, October 1948

Barbara Tullgren in cool shirtwaist dress in natural silk pongee by Larry Aldrich, straw tricorne, a copy of Gérard Albouy, made to order at bergdorf Goodman, photo by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, April 15, 1948

Bettina Graziani in hat by Gérard Albouy, photo by Philippe Pottier, 1948

Betty Bridgers is wearing a round visored buttoned little schoolboy cap by Gerard Albouy made to order at Bergdorf Goodman, cover photo by richard avedon, Harper's Bazaae, February 1948

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