Published in the Aug. 4, 1947, issue of Life magazine, the photo is splashed across nearly two pages and shows teens enjoying the social scene of that era in Tulsa. It’s not a picture from a prom — the photo was snapped at a house party — but the occasion must have been semi-formal.
Boys are dressed in jackets and ties. The girls, some with flowers in their hair, are wearing dresses. Young couples are dancing chest-to-chest to whatever music was popular in post-war America.
You can thank the Tulsa Twins for this specific moment in time being captured like debutantes and squires in amber. Who are the Tulsa Twins? Google “Tulsa Twins.” The search will yield links to stories that have been published about Betty and Barbara Bounds, identical twins from Tulsa who were chosen by Life magazine in 1947 to “star” in a teen fashion pictorial.
The party photo was part of the pictorial. The impact of appearing in Life — at that time the most influential magazine in America — was phenomenal. The Tulsa Twins pictorial ushered Betty and Barbara Bounds into households across the nation and it made them “it” girls locally.
Never mind that the Tulsa Twins issue of Life was published 77 years ago this month, photos of the Tulsa Twins still pop up on web posts and on social media. “I’m just amazed at all this,” Mark Hambric, whose mother, Barbara, was one of the Tulsa Twins, said. Neither of the twins is around to talk about their experiences — and maybe they would .