Year 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.
Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (born June 21, 1986), better known by her stage name Lana Del Rey, is an American singer-songwriter. Raised in upstate New York, Del Rey moved to New York City at age eighteen, where she attended college and began writing music and performing in clubs.
In 2008, Del Rey contracted with an independent label and recorded a self-titled debut album which was briefly available on iTunes in 2010; Del Rey ultimately bought back the rights to the album and it was withdrawn soon after.
In June 2011, she released the song "Video Games" on the Internet, accompanied by a self-made music video that went viral in the following months. The song was later released as a single in October, leading up to Del Rey's major-label debut album, Born to Die, which was released on January 31, 2012 through Interscope Records. Born to Die debuted at number one in seven countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia. The album has spawned two worldwide top 10 hits: "Video Games" and "Born to Die".
Ida Lupino (4 February 1918 – 3 August 1995) was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes. Additionally, she contributed as a writer to five films and four TV episodes.
Lupino was born in 1918 into an English family of performers. Her father, Stanley Lupino, was a music hall comedian, and her mother, Connie Emerald (1892–1959), was an actress. As a girl, Ida Lupino was encouraged to enter show business by both her parents and her uncle, Lupino Lane. She trained at RADA and made her first film appearance in The Love Race (1931), the next year making Her First Affaire. She played leading roles in five British films in 1933 at Warner Bros.' Teddington studios and for Julius Hagen at Twickenham, including in The Ghost Camera with John Mills and I Lived with You with Ivor Novello. She moved to Hollywood at the end of that year.
Glenn Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006) was a Canadian-born American actor from Hollywood's Golden Era with a career that spanned seven decades. Despite his versatility, Ford was best known for playing ordinary men in unusual circumstances.
Born as Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford at Jeffrey Hale Hospital in Quebec City, Ford was the son of Anglo-Quebecers Hannah Wood Mitchell and Newton Ford, a railway conductor. Through his father, Glenn Ford was a great-nephew of Canada's first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. Ford moved to Santa Monica, California with his family at the age of eight, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939.
After Ford graduated from Santa Monica High School, he began working in small theatre groups. Ford later commented that his railroad executive father had no objection to his growing interest in acting, but told him, "It's all right for you to try to act, if you learn something else first. Be able to take a car apart and put it together. Be able to build a house, every bit of it. Then you'll always have something." Ford heeded the advice and during the 1950s, when he was one of Hollywood's most popular actors, he regularly worked on plumbing, wiring and air conditioning at home. At times, he worked as a roofer and installer of plate-glass windows.
Gig Young (November 4, 1913 – October 19, 1978) was an American film, stage, and television actor. Known mainly for second leads and supporting roles, Young won an Academy Award for his performance as a dance-marathon emcee in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.
Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, his parents John and Emma Barr raised him and his older siblings in Washington D.C. He developed a passion for the theatre while appearing in high school plays, and after some amateur experience he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in Pancho, a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he and the leading actor in the play, George Reeves, were spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout. Both actors were signed to supporting player contracts with the studio. His early work was uncredited or as Byron Barr (not to be confused with another actor with the same name, Byron Barr), but after appearing in the 1942 film The Gay Sisters as a character named "Gig Young", the studio decided he should adopt this name professionally.
Carry me up them stairs,
Put my white socks on,
And my pretty song, you like,
My blue nail polish.
"What is all this?", you said,
"The mess upstairs,
Don't be scared"
Daddy dearest, you know,
How I like to take trips.
Pops first stop at the K-Mart,
Buy me my peach lipgloss,
Cigarettes and lolipops,
Mad magazines, and white socks.
All in your car for,
Our trip across the USA.
We gonna party,
Like it's 1949,
We in the Pontiac,
From July to July.
It's a flower motel nation,
Day and night on our last vacation,
We gonna see it all,
Before we say goodbye.
Daddy likes Blackpool,
Pleasure beach and roadstops,
Baby likes some Swiss Apps,
Souvenir giftshops.
Late night, midnight,
Radio show talks,
Daddy, baby,
Big jail break.
Ponytail and lolipops,
Dinerettes and sodapops.
New blue bathing suite,
Ruched tops and cadillacs.
Blue lake car to dunks,
Hop skotch, shit talk,
Alabama hard knocks,
Motel dresslocks.
We gonna party,
Like it's 1949,
We in the Pontiac,
From July to July.
It's a motel flower nation,
Day and night on our last vacation,
We gonna see it all,
It was 1949 and I was just a kid
In that hot southern sunshine
Work was all we did
And that white cotton dust
Would drift around our heels
Them old combines would rust
Just sitting in the fields
I can still see his face old beyond his years
Furrowed and traced with hard work and tears
I watched him walk back from the barn
And saw it shine in his hands
But I knew he meant no harm
He was a good and honest man
Well I guess it was the war
That turned around his mind
Or the fact that we were poor
With nothin' down the line
Or mama's hungry eyes
Every time we went to town
For all the things she'd like to buy
He'd have to turn her down
I guess no one really cared
Cause no one really knew
All the darkness and despair
That he was going through
And now I walk this hillside
With tombstones so pale
And I'm wondering why
I was left to tell this tale
It was 1949