Valley Times photo via the Los Angeles Public Library. Click to enlarge
Here is proof that the Halloween has been a multi-generational event for quite some time. This posed photo was published under the title above in 1961. It documents planning for a party by the “Fun after Forty Club” in Burbank, just outside of Los Angeles proper. The two on the left are married, but you wouldn’t know it from the glances they are casting in other directions.
Although the sheath was coming into style in 1961, the two women wear popular fifties silhouettes with close fitting bodices and fuller skirts. I wish we could see the clasps on the men’s bolo ties better. I’m betting that the one on the left is a skull.
I remember going to a Halloween party for kids and adults, with my parents, in the early fifties. My mother wore a Boris Karloff style Frankenstein mask and one of my father’s old suits with the pants shortened. She refused to speak, so there was much discussion about whether the monster was male or female. Of course, since she had arrived with me and my father, there was no real mystery!