Mum and Max Oldaker, the last of the Matinee Idols

In her late teens and early 20s, my mother was an avid theatre-goer. She loved musical comedy, ballet, operetta, theatre and to a lesser extent opera, as the three very full scrap books full of theatre programmes she kept confirm.

These scrapbooks are gems, with the programmes carefully stuck in and occasionally kept companion by newspaper reviews of the performance.

Mum used to go with a group of girlfriends, and it wasn't uncommon for them to go to opening night, last night and sometimes a night in between. The programmes bear testament to that, as there are multiples of some of them. Those young girls stayed good friends all their lives, through husbands, divorces, children, whatever, and met once a year. Mum was the last of them; one by one over the last twenty years they have seen the final curtain.

She used to talk about those old days with love and affection; you could, after the performance ended, take a tram home by yourself close to midnight and feel safe. You might meet for coffee at Repens before the performance. And then there were the stars themselves.

Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh visited Sydney in 1948, and Mum, while she didn't see the play they were in (perhaps it was too expensive, or perhaps it booked out before she could get tickets), she did manage to get their autographs. And George Formby's.

When Mum spoke about her theatre-going days however, the name that cropped up the most was Max Oldaker.

Max who?

Max Oldaker. Tasmanian-born, he was the heart-throb of the theatre in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. He epitomised Tall, Dark and Handsome. He could act, he could sing, and was highly sought after for operetta roles and had a successful career in the UK as well as Australia. He understudied Rex Harrison in London in My Fair Lady, and the night Rex fell sick brought the house down; Rex made a damned quick recovery as Max did the role much better than he. With his fine tenor voice he considered doing serious opera, but it was in roles such as The Red Shadow in The Desert Song that his audience loved him.

What a looker! Max Oldaker as The Red Shadow in The Desert Song with co-star Joy Beattie. 1945

Max Oldaker as The Red Shadow in The Desert Song, 1945

Max Oldaker and Joy Beattie, stars of The Desert Song, 1945. I'd love to know the story behind this pic. Max is in theatrical makeup, Joy isn't, and they're in a bathroom.

Mum and her friends used to hang around the stage door for a sight of Max after the show was over. They made friends with Olga Deane, who ran the Sydney branch of the Max Oldaker Fan Club (sadly no remnants from that in Mum's amazing haul of theatre memorabilia). Olga was one of the Albert family of Albert Music fame, and very well-connected in the world of music and theatre.

She'd invite Mum and the girls to jam sessions at her house in (I think) Rose Bay. You'd go up a set of narrow stone stairs to a house perched up on the hill and see a sign: Here it is! Inside you'd sit wherever you could - on a chair if you were lucky, on a cushion on the floor if you weren't, and musicians would drop in, instruments in hand, after their shows and have an impromptu jam session. You wouldn't know who would turn up (Max never did) but you'd hear music and singing, get up and dance and have a great time. And catch the tram home at some ungodly hour early Sunday morning.

Jack Burgess at the piano with Max Oldaker. Max played the piano beautifully and composed music as well as having a fine tenor voice; a very talented man.

While Max was Red Shadow-ing the Actors' Benevolent Fund of Australia had organised a Popular Man contest to raise funds for charity, and entertainment organisations such as J. C. Williamson put up candidates. Max was working for them at the time and was their chosen man. Olga got Mum and the girls busy, selling buttons and badges with Max's face on them at the Theatre at nights. I don't think it was every night, but Mum certainly did her shift. I can't find any of the badges in the house but I'd be surprised if she didn't keep one.

Max won the contest - not to Mum's surprise - by raising the most money for charity.

By then Mum, aged 20, and the girls were getting on pretty well with Max. With their button-selling status and their 'inner circle' membership of the Max Oldaker Fan Club as friends of Olga, they were allowed into his dressing room, and would wait there while Max was on stage.

"In he'd come at the end of the act or the show," Mum used to say, "In full costume, with his face mask still on, and his cape wrapped around him. He'd fling it open with one arm, very theatrically.  He must have thought us a bunch of giggling girls but he was very nice and friendly to us."

Max gave Mum two signed photos of him being 'crowned' the winner - more about that later on.

Max was gay (a 'confirmed bachelor', as they used to say), but whether the girls knew that at the time I don't know - Mum knew he was gay when she spoke about him to me as an adult, but when she found that out I'm not quite sure. I suspect these young women from very ordinary families thought he was just behaving in the flamboyant and over the top way some actors do.

Max Oldaker clowning around, 1945

Mum followed his career for years, but after she married Dad she'd found a real life 'matinee idol' and the theatre programmes dwindled a bit. Dad wasn't into theatre like Mum was but the more he went with her the more he liked it.

When I was four, Max was playing in Half A Sixpence in Sydney and Mum took me to see a matinee performance. I don't remember a thing about it. I don't remember Mum taking me to the stage door to meet Max, and Max recognising her and greeting her by name after nearly twenty years and being absolutely delightful to both of us.

Several years ago I discovered that writer Charles Osborne had written a biography of Max: Max Oldaker, the Last of the Matinee Idols. I bought it for Mum for Christmas that year, read it after she did and something saddened me. I have just finished re-reading it, and I'm a little bit sad again and wonder if Mum was too. She never mentioned it. In a nutshell, here's what saddens me:

Max, you see, was embarrassed about the whole 'matinee idol' palaver. He had asked that the Max Oldaker Fan Club be wound up in 1944. I quote:

'To his dismay the Sydney Morning Herald in November published "a long and nauseating column which is disgusting - a degrading presentation of childishly adulatory material given to them by Olga Deane."'(Max's words)

In a letter (to his parents? It's not stated) Max writes, 'I've written to her and told her that there must be no compromise and that the whole of this nonsense must stop at once. I really think I should publish my views on the whole thing. I might have known that, for all Olga Deane's kindness, she is a person of no taste. I feel ashamed that I allowed her to start the club, but I suppose I couldn't have known what it would develop into. Now I hate it all. It's really not the sort of publicity I want.'

Ouch! I wonder what Mum thought when she read that, when Max had been so pleasant and welcoming to her and her friends - and Olga?

And as for what Max thought of being the winner of the Popular Man contest - here are Max's own words in a letter to Charles Osborne:

'At 12.30 am the trumpets blared and the ceremony began. Out of the gentleman's lavatory came little Max clad in a rather short regal robe which two attendants attempted to carry. Said robe was surmounted with an ermine collar which had provided a breeding ground and happy home for many generations of J.C. Williamson moths. My dear, the dais shook, the crown wouldn't fit and poor little Max felt most embarrassed. Kathleen Robinson, the actress-manageress of the Minerva Theatre, "kreowned" me, and we were both convulsed when the wretched thing would insist on coming to rest over my right eye as I made my epic speech. Many silly speeches were made about me…  The photographs of the ceremony were devastating, and I look positively repulsive in a crown.'

Max Oldaker, winner of the Popular Man contest, with his badly-fitting crown on 31 October 1945. Also in the photo, Jack Cazabon, Peter Finch and Jack Burgess

Looking rather embarrassed, Max Oldaker being 'kreowned' by Kathleen Robinson, 31 October 1945. Also in photo are Dick Bentley, Strella Wilson, John Cazabon, Wayne Froman, Jack Burgess, Hal Lashwood, Marshall Crosby, Leonard Bullen

The back of the photo above, signed for Mum who had volunteered her time to help Max win the Popular Man contest.

Max must have gritted his teeth when he personally autographed two photographs of the ceremony for Mum.

Max's attitude to his longtime fans mellowed, you'll be happy to know. By the time Mum took me to see Half A Sixpence, Charles Osborne writes about the show, 'In Sydney, he had his old star dressing room back again at the Theatre Royal, and was touched to find so many fans from the forties crowding around the stage door every night.'

If you want to find out more about Max, read the book by Charles Osborne. Max had a real wit and style about him, and was a prolific letter writer who could tell a good story against himself. His letters are a delight. You'll find several copies for sale on the interweb.

Barry Humphries wrote the Foreword in Charles Osborne's book, and I'll share a bit of it here. It's 1956 and Barry is working with Max in a show called Around the Loop:

'"How do you manage, Max," I once asked him, "to smile with such sincerity at the curtain call on a thin Wednesday matinee?"

"Dear Barry, it’s an old trick Noel (Coward) taught me, and it never fails.” He demonstrated, standing in the middle of the dressing room in his Turkish towelling gown, eyes sparkling, teeth bared in a dazzling smile. “Sillycunts,” beamed Max through clenched teeth, bowing to the imaginary stalls. “Sillycunts,” again, to the circle, the gods and the Royal Box. 

“It looks far more genuine than ‘cheese’, dear boy,” said Max, “and you’ve just got to hope that no one in the stalls can lip read.” I couldn’t help thinking of all my mother’s friends at those Melbourne matinees, their palms moist, hearts palpitating as Max Oldaker, the Last of the Matinee Idols, flashed them all his valedictory smile.’

I love it! I have real regrets that I don't remember meeting The Last of the Matinee Idols when I was four.

There's not much on the interweb about Max, sadly.

• A few bio pages.  This one here is quite good: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oldaker-maxwell-charles-max-11296
• Several images - and I have added all that I have from Mum's stash here to share them with the world
• And only one free-to-listen recording of him singing that I can find, from 1929:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S19My765AnY  (Blogger won't embed it - it can't find it!!) If you're in Melbourne the State Library of Victoria has a CD of Max's songs.

Max died of heart failure in his home town of Devonport in 1972 at the age of 64. In nearby Launceston the Princess Theatre has a tribute wall for Max, with memorabilia and photographs.

G and I visited Launceston last year, and while I was in the Princess Theatre looking at the Max wall, I phoned Mum and described it all to her, and took photos to show on my return (they are reasonably rubbish photos, taken through glass, so I'm not posting them here). I'm so glad I did as Mum was gone herself two months later.

Who else remembers Max Oldaker and Olga Deane? Is there anyone out there who went to Olga's place late at night for a jam session, or whose parents did? At the risk of sounding like Olga and upsetting Max's ghost, I think the chap could do with some publicity. He was very talented and a true theatre star of the era. And dammit, he was handsome. That's reason enough.

Colour my world - or at least my mid-century house

This place is dingy. Seriously. A number of the walls are still proudly bearing their original 1960 paint job and while the paint is clinging happily on the internal walls with no sign of peeling, 54 years of wear and tear means there are places I just can't get clean, no matter how much sugar soap I apply. Paint has worn away near the light switches and the poor old place just looks a little underloved.

It's worse outside. The house is red brick, which is a blessing as the walls don't need painting. However all the north-facing windows have peeling paint to an embarrassing extent. Until now we haven't been able to do much about it as we have been saving - or at least G has - for the paint job.

I had a painter out today and if I may digress for a moment, my God he was cute! Dark eyes, dark hair; he had the look of a guy I had a crush on in my teens - a jockey, but he was taller. If I was younger I'd be tempted to try a Mrs Robinson. On looks alone he had the potential to pull me back from my current asexual status (digressing even more, I have been both sexual and asexual during different times in my life). He knew his stuff, too. We chatted about paints and techniques and paint additives, la la la…

So now I'm awaiting his quotes. Three quotes. One for outside, one for the ceilings and stairwell inside, and one for the internal walls in some of the rooms/hall. I'm capable of doing the internal walls myself but a) he'll do a nicer job and leave less mess on the carpets and everything else and b) because I feel obliged to answer every phone call and email I get, I doubt I'll have the time. There are lots of walls. Depending on the price I may have to pull the plug on the internet and put the phone on silent for a few days.

He left me with some colour charts to whet my appetite, and duly whetted it is. I have found colours that more or less match the original 1960 colours in the living room and our bedroom. The living room is the old colour Chartreuse (pale yellowy green) on three walls with an aqua feature wall. It rocks. I'm keeping the colour scheme as it suits the house and looks wonderful with the big stone fireplace. The bedroom is a pale ice green and I'm repainting in a very close colour as it's restful and brings the garden inside.

Our hall and stairway are currently yellow and I'm going for a lighter version as it's dark in the hallway. I'm hoping the colour I've chosen won't turn out looking cream as I detest cream walls. Too 'reproduction fuddy duddy' for me - makes me think of people with reproduction Chippendale antiques and uncomfortable chairs topped with antimacassars. And… too much like the cheap neutral colour you get in rental properties which looks 'dirty' very quickly. The British equivalent is a colour called 'Magnolia'.

The second bedroom was originally pale pink and repainted yellow in 1974. I'm sticking with a yellow as it's on the south side of the house and needs a bright, warm colour. The 50s colour palette was pretty well out there - yellow was a popular colour.

My office originally had pale-ish pink walls too but got a coat of white in the 70s. I like the white. This is a small, dark room and needs light, lovely walls. I'm choosing a variant of white. Not terribly 50s but I need the brightness.

The laundry has yellow walls the same as the hall, and they look odd with grey floor tiles and deep aqua (Amulet Blue as I recall, or Apmat Blue as my Dad used to call them, after a famous pacer of the day) wall tiles. I've chosen a white with a hint of grey/green which will look much fresher.

The bathroom and loo originally had pink walls (Mum LOVED pale pink. I don't) which Mum and I repainted in the late 80s/early 90s in a colour called Beige Shroud. Yup. Ugly name. The colour isn't fab either but we wanted to move from the pink which looked too dark in the room. You still get a hint of pink through two layers of Beige Shroud. That pink doesn't give up a fight easily. Beige Shroud is going though. I'm not heading back to pink but have found an interesting shade of pale green with a hint of mushroom grey called China White by Dulux which will complement the tiles better and look just cracking. It's not dissimilar to some of the colours from a 50s palette. I'll be painting the loo and bathroom myself.

So that's it. The kitchen is fine as I repainted it in the original blue and white 12 years ago and the paint looks fine. I'll redo the white oil enamel on the cupboard doors as they could do with a lift but the walls are fine.

Our plan is to get the outside stuff done this year. Depending on the quotes we may then get Daniel - Daniel….Daniel… those eyes! - to do the ceilings before Christmas too. It's exciting. And I think this house will appreciate the time and money spent on it.

And I suspect that next time I visit a psychic I'll get a message that Mum is relieved I have painted the outside woodwork!

Embracing my mid-century modern heart

In my twenties, I rebelled.

Not in the usual way - the sex, drugs, rock'n'roll way. Nope. I rebelled against the house and furnishings I'd grown up with. Mum's house was firmly held in a late 50s/early 60s time warp. Atomic furniture with little legs that diminished in diameter until they were almost pins at floor levels. Tangerine dining chairs. French polish everywhere. Colourful walls when the world was heading to white. And the bar in the living room - black glass top with yellow vinyl sides - oh no, how horrible! How …. embarrassing!!!

My taste vacillated between the modern - and we're talking 1980s, yikes! - and the more distant past as I hit my 30s. In the 80s I bought some questionable storage furniture from Freedom Furniture which, sadly, I still have as we need the storage facility. By my mid-30s I was into 1920s, Edwardian and art deco, even a jaunt here and there into repro Georgian, which didn't quite fit into this very 1959 property. I tried my best, buying two beautiful Edwardian chairs and a recliner that could have been designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh but I don't think it was. I swapped my bed for one with a gorgeous iron frame. I bought a 1920s maple wardrobe. I created my own little 1920s hideaway downstairs. When I moved out I took the 1920s with me and created a cosy cottage which mixed a bit of Danish with earlier pieces and repro.

Having inherited Mum's house, with its original wall paint, original kitchen, mostly original bathroom and laundry, I have seen my childhood home with new eyes. It rocks.

I love the big stone fireplace in the living room. I love the yellow bar. I love the 1950s pulldown light over the dining table. I love most of the wall colours. I find myself tending the French polished doors and trying to get scratches out of them, and cursing Mum for touching up one of them with varnish that looks bloody shocking in daylight.

Slowly I am trying to refurnish the living room to period furniture - or at least get rid of most of the 80s stuff Mum bought when she was feeling a bit flush and some of my own contributions. You can see by my previous post I have a new dining suite. On the other side of the room there is a hodgepodge of 80s sideboard and repro Queen Anne hi fi cabinet (yes, of course Queen Anne loved a good CD or vinyl) which is going to go when I've saved up enough to buy a period sideboard from the late 50s.

This house isn't the best example of Mid-Century Modern, but it has good bones. Mum was about five years too old to really embrace the Atomic look or go for a mad coloured mural on the wall such as that at Rose Seidler House. Being a child of the Depression, she was thrifty. She may have lashed out on tangerine chairs and a green lounge suite that were the height of fashion in 1960, but the mirrors in this place are early 50s or 1940s, for example. There's a mix of decor which basically ended in 1960.

With the research I've done this year on mid-century modern furniture and decor, I have fallen in love with the simplicity and elegance of it. I think it has been creeping up on me. I used to drool over IKEA catalogues at our old house, loving the simple Scandinavian design with its nod towards the great designers of the 50s and 60s. Now I'm hooked. I get on Pinterest and drool for hours over chairs, sideboards, tables, paint colours and architecture.

I think I've found my life's work: making this house what it should be. A paean to the mid-century modern era.

Now I just need to win the lottery - do you know how much some of this stuff COSTS!!!???

What would my aunt Betty have said?

My aunt Betty could be a bitch. She was a master at the backhanded compliment, or occasionally simply rude and abusive. In particular, her bitchy side came across if my mother (her sister) or my grandparents bought anything new. It could be an item of clothing, or a piece of furniture. Her middle name wasn't 'Jealous', but it should have been.

Betty hated people 'getting ahead' if she wasn't. Her rage at Mum's new car in 1979 was spectacular. Mum's previous car had lasted since 1963 and at that point I took it over and kept it in the family. Mum had been putting money aside for years to buy a new car and was so proud to be able to show it to her sister; she thought Betty would be pleased for her. Betty, of course, was anything but and accused Mum of stealing money from their recently-dead mother's estate to buy the car. Betty's car at that time was early 70s and huge, a big old V8 that gobbled up the miles and the petrol in equal quantities. Until Mum bought her new little hatchback, Betty was fond of jibing in a very superior manner at Mum's '63 Beetle, joking nastily about the size of the engine and little Herbie's hill-climbing abilities, and how much better her big Falcon was.

When I bought my first horse at 16, a heavyset but stunning white grey galloway, Betty was quick to sneer that she was going to buy her daughter "a horse of greater quality".  (It turned out to be an undistinguished bay and in all the photos she sent I never once saw it going properly on the bit.)

In the 1980s interest rates went skywards which was crap if you had a mortgage (Mum didn't) and great if you were trying to save. Mum's term deposits were doing well enough for her to spend a couple of grand on a new lounge suite and dining setting in 1985.  By that time, Betty had been dead nearly four years; her raging bitterness had morphed into an aggressive cancer which saw her in the ground only six weeks from diagnosis. Mum and I were not invited to the funeral.

I thought at the time Betty would have put a hole in the ceiling if she'd seen the lounge suite and new table and chairs. She was probably watching from above (or below!) gibbering with rage.

This week, nearly thirty years later, I have replaced the dining setting with an early 1960s setting which better suits this mid-century house. I bought the table and chairs from two different eBay sellers but thankfully the wood colour is a good match. I have the 1980s one for sale on eBay and Gumtree and nobody seems to want it (bugger).

G and I moved it in yesterday and stood back admiring it. The table is teak and by Parker; it extends to 215 cm.  The chairs are also teak, and the seats and spade-shaped backs are teal vinyl and in great condition; still padded after all these years. As I set them under the table for the first time Betty came to mind. She'd find fault with it or sneer that I bought a 'second-hand' dining suite.

We invited the Whingies to dinner. I told them we had bought some new furniture but wouldn't say what so I would have them intrigued. Mr Whingy, who came earlier in the afternoon to fix a couple of power points for us and install groovy new lights in the hallway, admired the table and said his mother had had one very similar. He loved the quality of the wood.

Whingy herself, however, was rather dismissive. "Oh, what was wrong with the old one?"

"It was out of place in this room," I answered. "This new one is very similar to the original one Mum bought in 1959. It suits the room better."

I was struck (not for the first time) at how very like aunt Betty Whingy is. I didn't need to wonder what Betty would say - Whingy said it! Like Betty, she never seems to be happy if someone ELSE gets something new - but you hear all about it in bold cap type if Whingy does.

Whingy, predictably, hated the chairs. "Oh, they're not as padded as your other chairs. They're very hard on my bottom. What's wrong with the other chairs? Why get rid of them?"

"I found the other chairs hard on my back, as they were very straight-backed. These chairs have a nice curved back," I responded politely, thinking, get some meat on your scrawny arse, you cow, and you won't find the chairs uncomfortable. "And I love the colour of these ones."

"I like the other setting." Whingy pointedly went and sat on the sofa while I dished out dinner, only returning to the 'hard' chairs to eat. I kept filling her wine glass. I find that helps. She's never as sour after a couple of wines.

Two hours later her grumpiness had faded to a grudging cheeriness but I was still marvelling at how like aunt Betty she is. I 'spoke to Mum' as I was cooking pudding - that is, I talked quietly out loud as I believe Mum still hangs around - and shared my thoughts on Betty and Whingy. Mum never really warmed to Whingy and thought she was rather like Betty, but I'd never seen the Bettiness so much in action as last night.

Anyway, I like my new dining setting. It's comfortable. It's beautifully designed and elegant. It makes the room look bigger and makes Mum's early-70s glass fronted teak display cabinet look like it belongs in the room too. I am not a fan of the display cabinet, but now I think I can live with it and it perhaps isn't as hideous as I think it is.

And here are the groovy new lights in the hallway. Whingy didn't find much fault with them; but by then she'd had a few. So I'll never know what Aunt Betty may have thought of them!

The Mid-Century Modern House - the Kitchen

I love a blue and white kitchen - there is something fresh and cool about cooking with restful blue around you. This is the kitchen I have known for most of my life. It was fitted out in 1960 and the only major things that have been replaced are:

• the wall oven - replaced in 1985, and the current one is still working
• the fridge - replaced in the 80s and then in 2002
• the dishwasher - replaced twenty years ago
• the floor covering - replaced in about 1970 with a repulsive golden vinyl with specks of gold glitter in it (which was a bugger to wash and polish), then thankfully thanks to a water leak and a subsequent insurance payout, replaced eight years ago with something much fresher and more classic
• the original extractor fan was replaced with a range hood in the 1980s
• the original in sink disposal unit (which could gobble up pieces of glass, a favourite party trick of my Dad's apparently) died a death and an Insinkerator was installed in the 80s. I have never tried to put pieces of glass through it!

So… I still have the original stovetop:

Here's the stove in situ. I need to repaint all the cupboards and drawers. The cats have scratched the bottom ones here and there, and the colour I chose - Dulux White Birch, because it wasn't stark white - has turned too creamy. I'll repaint in… a stark white!

And look at this! It's the panel for the original dishwasher. We left it there as the middle knob controls the Insinkerator.

Over this side are the posh glasses and dishes in a display cabinet. More posh stuff in the cupboards and drawers below.

The walls had their original paint until 2002 when I repainted them in much the same colours. I used a darker blue on the centre servery. The original paint on the centre column and bar was two-tone, where you paint a dark colour first, then a light colour, and rub off the light colour on the textured bits. I tried that and failed miserably! Here's the centre servery area - the drawer which is pulled out is the everyday cutlery drawer, and it's a two way drawer, so you can load clean cutlery in from the sink side and pull it out on the kitchen table side. Clever thinking from my parents!

  Here are some kitchen vignettes - the original plant stand  - love it!

Here's a wider view of our kitchen dining area. Nice floor vinyl, eh?

My Mixmaster, a perfect retro fit.

This little donkey has been around for longer than I have and has always lived on top of the fridge. You can put a little pot plant in his wagon but we never have. I think he was a gift from my paternal grandmother.

These oil bottles are well cool! Aren't they cute? The cork is a bit buggered on the French one but I can still get it to work. I don't remember Mum ever using them but I intend to for parties etc. They are too good to leave on the shelf.

More funky late 50s kitchenalia, a lovely big salt cellar and more oil bottles. They are made here in Australia. I don't know if they may have been wedding presents in 1950. They are glazed and unglazed ceramic.

We have a number of feature tiles studding the walls, all of Australian native plants. 

More smart design - a pullout chopping board, proudly showing the signs of age. A huge (for the time) utensil drawer is underneath.

I have friends who keep pestering me to get a new kitchen, but honestly we can't afford it and this one still works. True, I have to replace a handle on one of the big drawers as it's broken off, and there is one big corner cupboard we call the TARDIS as it's amazing how much you can fit into it, which needs slamming very hard to close. But hey, I'm used to it. 

All the cupboards and drawers are solid wood. The drawers are dovetailed. The quality that went into building this kitchen, which is built, frankly, like a brick shithouse, is amazing. I couldn't afford to replace it with the same level of quality, even though new kitchens have some fab pantry features. It's lasted 54 years and fingers crossed will last many more. New kitchens are designed to last 25 years at the most, and who needs the expense of replacing a kitchen every 20 years or so?

Like much of this house, the kitchen is original. As I don't intend to sell in the foreseeable future, I can live quite happily with my 1960 world.