The West Coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned ...

Huntington Beach, California. "Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925." Three-panel gelatin silver print by Miles F. Weaver (1879-1932). View full panorama.

        With five models displaying the most modern bathing costumes, Lansburgh & Brother won the prize cup at the first annual style show, held yesterday afternoon at the Tidal bathing beach. The models who represented Lansburgh's -- all local girls -- were Mary Lee, Iola Swinnerton, Thelma Spencer, Hattie Spencer and Julia Cunningham. The suits which they wore were special importations, brought to Washington for exhibition at this show ...

-- Washington Post, 6/26/1921

Washington, D.C., 1921. "Bathing Beach costume contest." At left we have Iola Swinnerton, First Lady of Shorpy in perpetuum; the others are plebeian ciphers spared total invisibility only by the grace of her luminous beauty. View full size.

        The actress, whose witty and graceful performances on two top-rated television shows in the 1960s and ’70s helped define a new vision of American womanhood, died on Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. She had recently turned 80. -- New York Times

Los Angeles, November 1970. "Mary Tyler Moore rehearsing and performing on the set of the Mary Tyler Moore Show." 35mm negative by Douglas Jones for Look magazine. View full size.

April 29, 1925. "Girls from Keith's [vaudeville theater] at Arlington Beach." National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.

March 8, 1913. Wyandotte, Michigan. "Steamers A.D. MacTier and F.P. Jones, sponsors." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative. View full size.

Atlantic City circa 1905. "Come on in, the water's fine." 5x7 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

June 1953. "Activities at the Sun Fun Festival, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Mickey Spillane, one of the beauty pageant judges, on the beach with a woman." From photos by Jim Hansen for the Look magazine assignment "Behind the Scenes -- Beauty and the Beach." View full size.

September 1942. "Substitute materials -- something new in apple containers. To replace nail-bound wooden boxes, a fiber carton has been developed." An innovation known today as the cardboard box. Medium format nitrate negative by William Perlitch for the Office of War Information. View full size.

April 1918. "Five Mack Sennett girls provocatively posed amid serpentine confetti." Winners of the Shoscar® for Best Costume! Photo by Evans, L.A. View full size.

San Francisco, 1928. "Graham-Paige at Golden Gate Park." Especially well equipped with fender-mounted spares. 5x7 glass negative. View full size.

"Washington Tidal Basin Bathing Beach Beauty Contest -- August 5, 1922." First-prize winner Eva Fridell, who is either 17 or 111 years old, depending on your frame of reference. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

        UPDATE: Shorpy member Ben Roundabloc reveals our inscribed ingenue to be the actress Dorothy Appleby, who featured in the theatrical revue "Puzzles of 1925."

January 1925. Washington, D.C. "Man painting woman's back" is all it says here. Who can help fill in the blanks? Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size.

New York, September 1952. "People looking at fashion model Doris Erwin as she walks down Fifth Avenue." From photos by Ralph Ginzburg for the Look magazine assignment "A Young Man's Fancy -- Model on the Street." View full size.

1943. " 'At Ease.' Two soldiers in a bomb storage facility at Camp Pendleton, Calif., admiring portrait of a young woman. Pinup of Susan Hayward hangs nearby." Dye destruction print made in 2002 from Frank S. Errigo's original 4x5 Kodachrome. Exhibited in "American Treasures of the Library of Congress." View full size.

"Acapulco, 1961." Our third and final visit with the cast of this short-lived NBC detective series starring James Coburn and Ralph Taeger. 4x5 negative from the Shorpy Publicity Department archive. View full size.