To Alice From Gladys

 

This real photo postcard is inscribed "A Merry Christmas to Alice from Gladys.  Lakeside, ME, 1905"

 

Merry Christmas, Gladys, from the Blog about the Postcards and all its followers!

 

 



Holiday Inn

 

Here's a curious instance of artistic license on a Holiday Inn postcard.  At all the Holiday Inns I ever saw, the "Great Sign" was always out in front of the motel, facing the street, with the arrow welcoming travelers into the parking lot.   That was part of their strong branding and what made them the "World's Innkeeper" for years and years.  I know, as I worked as a porter and desk clerk at a Holiday Inn  (Holidex #056A) for about 7 years, in the late 70's.

 

Now, this illustration has all the pieces in the wrong places.  If the Great Sign is in the right place, then the swimming pool is either across the street or beside the hotel, and that would be wrong, because all the pools were generally in the center of the hotels, in courtyards facing away from the street.  So, the illustration is really a fiction.  The most curious part is that if the illustrator really could arrange his composition any way he wanted, why did he give prominence to a bald overweight guy in the foreground instead of someone more attractive?  What focus group did that pass?