The Postcard
A postcard that was published by the Photochrom Co. Ltd.
The card was posted in Worthing on Monday the 11th. July 1955 to:
Miss Eileen Perrett,
Room 212,
Ministry of Housing and
Local Government,
18, Chester Terrace,
Regent's Park,
London N.W.1.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Well here I am - and
it's hot.
I hope it continues like
this - I am doing nothing -
it's rather difficult at first.
Kind regards -
From A. A. B."
The Photochrom Co. Ltd.
The Photochrom Co. Ltd. of London and Royal Tunbridge Wells originally produced Christmas cards before becoming a major publisher and printer of tourist albums, guide books, and postcards.
These mainly captured worldwide views as real photos, or were printed in black & white, monochrome, and color.
They also published many advertising, comic, silhouette, novelty, panoramic, and notable artist-signed cards in named series as well. The huge number of titles that Photochrom produced may well exceed 40,000.
In 1896 they took over Fussli’s London office established three years earlier, and began publishing similar photo-chromolithographic postcards after securing the exclusive English licence for the Swiss photochrom process.
This technique was used to produce a great number of view-cards of both England and Europe. While they captured the same fine details as the Swiss prints, their colours were much softer and reduced.
Apart from their better known photochroms, they produced their Celesque series of view-cards printed in tricolor.
One of the largest unnamed series that Photochrom produced was of view-cards printed in brown rotogravure. Many of these cards were simply hand coloured with a dominant red and blue, which gives these cards a distinct appearance. They are similar to cards produced in their Photogravure and Velvet Finish Series.
Photochrom postcard series include:
-- Night Series - Line block halftone over a blue tint depicting London.
-- Carbofoto Series - Black & white real photo cards.
-- Sepiatone Series - Sepia real photo cards.
-- Grano Series - View-cards printed in black & white.
-- Exclusive Photo-Color Series - View-cards printed in colour.
-- Duotype Process Series - View-cards printed in two tones.
Neil Armstrong
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 11th. July 1955, future astronaut Neil Armstrong began work as a test pilot at the High-Speed Flight Station of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), located at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Neil transferred there from the NACA's Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio.
Alma Cogan
Also on that day, the Number One chart hit record in the UK was 'Dreamboat' by Alma Cogan.
Alma Angela Cohen Cogan, who was born on the 19th. May 1932, was an English singer of traditional pop in the 1950's and early 1960's.
Dubbed the "Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice", she was the highest paid British female entertainer of her era.
-- Alma Cogan - The Early Years
Alma was born in Whitechapel, London. She was of Russian-Romanian Jewish descent. Her father's family, the Kogins, arrived in Britain from Russia, while her mother's family were refugees from Romania.
Cogan's parents, Mark and Fay Cogan, had another daughter, the actress Sandra Caron, who went on to play "Mumsey" in The Crystal Maze. They also had one son, Ivor Cogan.
Mark's work as a haberdasher entailed frequent moves. One of Cogan's early homes was over his shop in Worthing, Sussex.
Although Jewish, Alma attended St. Joseph's Convent School in Reading. Her father was a singer, but it was Cogan's mother who had show-business aspirations for both her daughters (she had named Alma after silent screen star Alma Taylor).
Alma Cogan first performed in public at a charity show at the Palace Theatre in Reading, and at the age of eleven, competed in the "Sussex Queen of Song" contest held at a Brighton hotel, winning a prize of £5.
At the age of 14, she was recommended by Vera Lynn for a variety show at the Grand Theatre in Brighton, and in July 1947 she appeared there for a week with Max Miller.
In November 1947, she appeared in the show "Dick Turpin's Ride to York" at the Grand, Brighton.
At 16, she was told by bandleader Ted Heath:
"You've got a good voice, but you're far
too young for this business. Come back
in five years' time."
Ted Heath later said:
"Letting her go was one of the
biggest mistakes of my life."
Alma also found work singing at tea dances, while also studying dress design at Worthing Art College.
-- Alma Cogan's Career
Alma was soon appearing as a chorus girl in the musical High Button Shoes at the London Hippodrome in November 1948, and in a revue called Sauce Tartare at the Cambridge Theatre in London in May 1949.
Alma became resident singer at the Cumberland Hotel in London in 1949, where she was spotted by EMI producer Walter Ridley, who became her coach and signed her to HMV.
Cogan's first release was "To Be Worthy of You" / "Would You", recorded on her 20th. birthday. This led to her appearing regularly on comedian Dick Bentley's BBC's radio show Gently Bentley, and then becoming the vocalist for the BBC Radio comedy programme Take It From Here, replacing Joy Nichols, from 1953 to the end of its run in 1960.
In 1953, whilst in the middle of recording "If I Had a Golden Umbrella", she broke into a giggle; she then played up the effect on later recordings.
She was soon dubbed "The girl with the giggle in her voice".
Alma's voice was often compared with Doris Day's.
Many of Alma's recordings were covers of U.S. hits, especially those recorded by Rosemary Clooney, Teresa Brewer, Georgia Gibbs, Joni James and Dinah Shore.
One of these covers, "Bell Bottom Blues", became her first hit, reaching no. 4 on the 3rd. April 1954.
Cogan appeared in the UK Singles Chart eighteen times in the 1950's, with "Dreamboat" reaching no. 1.
Other hits from this period include "I Can't Tell a Waltz from a Tango", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", "Sugartime" and "The Story of My Life". Cogan's first album, I Love to Sing, was released in 1958.
Alma Cogan was one of the first UK recording artists to appear frequently on television, where her powerful voice could be showcased along with her bubbly personality and dramatic costumes.
Her hooped skirts with sequins and figure-hugging tops were reputedly designed by herself and never worn twice. Cliff Richard recalls:
"My first impression of her was definitely frocks –
I kept thinking, how many can this woman have?
Almost every song had a different costume. The
skirts seemed to be so wide – I don't know where
they hung them up!"
Cogan topped the annual NME reader's poll as "Outstanding British Female Singer" four times between 1956 and 1960.
-- Too Square for the 1960's
The UK musical revolution of the 1960's, symbolised by the rise of the Beatles, suddenly made Cogan unfashionable; in the 1991 BBC documentary Alma Cogan: The Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice, Lionel Blair said she was perceived as "square".
Alma's highest 1960's chart ranking in the UK was no. 26 with "We Got Love", and most of her successes at this time were outside the UK, notably in Sweden and Japan.
She was especially disappointed that her 1963 cover of the Exciters' US hit "Tell Him" did not return her to the UK charts, according to singer Eddie Grassham.
However "Tell him" was a hit in Sweden: it spent seven weeks in the best selling record chart "Kvällstoppen" and peaked at #10.
In 1964, Cogan recorded "Tennessee Waltz" in a rock-and-roll ballad style; this version was no. 1 in Sweden for five weeks. "Tennessee Waltz" also reached the top 20 in Denmark, while a German language rendering reached no. 10 in Germany.
Alma had another number one hit in Sweden in 1965, "The Birds and the Bees". When she toured around Sweden in the mid 1960's with popular local pop bands, whose members were some ten years younger than her, she got the playful nickname "popmormor" (pop-grandmother).
Cogan also wrote some of her own songs. She co-wrote her 1963 record "Just Once More" which peaked at no. 10 in Sweden in October 1963.
Alma's 1964 single "It's You" was also a Cogan composition.
Paul McCartney played tambourine on "It's You". Cogan recalled in 1964 that The Beatles had been recording in the adjoining studio when she was working on the song:
"The boys started making suggestions on how
to improve the recording. We took their advice
about double-recording my voice to sound as
though I was singing a duet with myself, and
then Paul came up with the idea of putting in
a tambourine.
All the musicians had gone home, so he went
upstairs, found one, and played it while we
dubbed the sound onto the tape."
There have also been suggestions that Ringo Starr performed on "It's You", but Cogan did not mention this in the 1964 quote above - she did, however, suggest that all the basic tracks were completed when The Beatles heard the song.
Alma continued to be a popular figure on the UK showbusiness scene, being offered the part of Nancy in Oliver!, appearing on the teenage hit-show Ready Steady Go!, and headlining at the Talk of the Town.
-- Alma Cogan's Personal Life
Cogan lived with her widowed mother in Kensington High Street (at 44 Stafford Court) in a lavishly decorated ground-floor flat where she frequently entertained other celebrities.
Regular visitors included: Princess Margaret, Noël Coward, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Michael Caine, Frankie Vaughan, Bruce Forsyth and Roger Moore.
John Lennon once recalled that, when he was a teenager, he used to mimic her savagely during his time at the Liverpool College of Art. Lennon's wife Cynthia also recalled:
"John and I had thought of
Alma as out of date and unhip."
However after Lennon had actually met Cogan on the TV pop show Ready Steady Go! in 1964, they became close friends, so much so that Cogan's sister Sandra later said that the pair had a serious romance that had to be kept secret because of Alma's family's strict Jewish faith.
Alma Cogan was close to the other Beatles as well, especially Paul McCartney, who first played the melody of "Yesterday" on her piano. The 1987 compilation album A Celebration includes a testimonial from McCartney:
"When the Beatles first came to London, Alma
was lovely to us... welcoming us with open arms.
All my memories of that time are very special to
me. Her high spirits made being with her great
fun. I will always remember Alma and her sweet
music with great fondness."
-- Alma Cogan - The Later Years
Cogan tried to update her image by recording some Beatles numbers and a spin-off from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ("Love Ya Illya").
However by 1965, record producers were becoming dissatisfied with Cogan's work, and it was also clear that her health was failing.
Her friend and colleague Anne Shelton attributed this decline to some "highly experimental" injections she took to lose weight, claiming that Cogan was never well again after that.
Cogan embarked on a series of club dates in the North of England in early 1966, but collapsed after two performances and had to be treated for stomach cancer.
Alma made her final TV appearance in August 1966, in a guest spot on International Cabaret. The following month she collapsed while touring Sweden to promote Hello Baby, recorded exclusively for the Swedish market.
Alma died of ovarian cancer at London's Middlesex Hospital on the 26th. October 1966 at the age of 34.
In deference to family custom, her death was observed with traditional Jewish rites, with burial at the Jewish Cemetery in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
-- Alma Cogan's Legacy
The novel Alma Cogan by Gordon Burn presents an imaginary middle-aged Cogan still alive in the 1980's and looking back on her life and fame.
Based on true events and real people, aside from the device of denying her early death, it won the Whitbread Book Award in 1991.
The BBC Radio 4 series Stage Mother, Sequinned Daughter (2002) by Annie Caulfield was partly adapted from this novel. However Cogan's sister Sandra felt that it misrepresented both Cogan and her mother, and tried unsuccessfully to get it banned.
Eventually the Broadcasting Standards Commission ruled that the BBC should apologise to Sandra for failing to respect the feelings of surviving family members.
The romantic comedy In Love with Alma Cogan is a film starring Roger Lloyd-Pack. He is an aging manager of an old-fashioned Pier Theatre. It leads to a flashback to his encounter with Alma Cogan, who performed at the theatre in his youth.
A blue plaque commemorating Alma Cogan was installed at the entrance to Stafford Court, her longtime residence, on the 4th. November 2001.
A second Blue Plaque was unveiled at Cogan's old home 29, Lansdowne Road, Worthing in September 2017 by the entertainer Lionel Blair, who had been a close friend of Cogan's. The plaque was organised by Cogan's fans together with the Worthing Society.
