Yesterday Today

Inside a Women’s Hair Salon From the 1960s

The 1960s began with the highly formal up-sweep big hair styles from the late 1950s, but as the women’s movement, protest groups and hippies got into full swing toward the end of that decade, hair styles reflected the changes and became more casual and easier to maintain.

The bouffant, or bubble, a formal big-hair up-style popular in the 1960s, was basically just hair arranged high on the head with tendrils falling down the sides. This style created an illusion of a longer, smaller face.

The high-towering beehive, also known as the B-52 for its similarity to the shape of the nose on a B-52 Stratofortress bomber, lasted until the end of the ’60s. Here’s a series of candid shots inside a hair salon from the 1960s.

Early Portraits of Janis Joplin With Guitar in Austin, Texas, 1962

Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and “electric” stage presence.

Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined “She Dares to Be Different.” The article began,
“She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levis to class because they’re more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin.”
While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger.

Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, “What Good Can Drinkin’ Do”, was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student.

In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song “Me and Bobby McGee”, which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of “Piece of My Heart”, “Cry Baby”, “Down on Me”, “Ball and Chain”, and “Summertime”; and her original song “Mercedes Benz”, her final recording.

Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold.

Gangster John Dillinger During the 1930s

When notorious outlaw John Dillinger was gunned down on Lincoln Avenue on a steamy July night in 1934, his death ended a months-long manhunt that captivated the press and the public.

John Herbert Dillinger (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster of the Great Depression. He led a group known as the “Dillinger Gang”, which was accused of robbing 24 banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times but escaped twice. He was charged, but not convicted, of the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout; it was the only time Dillinger was charged with homicide.

Dillinger courted publicity. The media ran exaggerated accounts of his bravado and colorful personality and cast him as a Robin Hood. In response, J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), used Dillinger and his gang as his campaign platform to evolve the BOI into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, developing more sophisticated investigative techniques as weapons against organized crime.

After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded and went to his father’s home to mend. He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and sought refuge in a brothel owned by Ana Cumpănaș. She informed authorities of his whereabouts. On July 22, 1934, local and federal law enforcement closed in on the Biograph Theater. As BOI agents moved to arrest Dillinger as he exited the theater, he never drew a gun but attempted to flee. He was shot multiple times in the back and was killed; this was later ruled as justifiable homicide. (Wikipedia)

John Dillinger, center, is handcuffed to Deputy Sheriff R. M. Pierce, left, during Dillinger’s court hearing in Crown Point, Indiana during the first weeks of February 1934. Dillinger was charged with killing police officer William O’Malley, 43, during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana on Jan. 15, 1934. His trail date was set for March 12, 1934. Dillinger would break out of the Crown Point, Indiana jail on March 3, 1934.

Sgt. Edward A. Grim of the North Robey Street police station with a Dubuque, Iowa newspaper found in John Dillinger’s stolen and abandoned automobile on May 2, 1934. The bloodstained getaway car, found at 3338 N. Leavitt Street in Chicago, had a surgical kit, matches from the Little Bohemia Resort, and the newspaper dated April 23, 1934 with the headline “Dillinger On Rampage.”

Indiana state police surround the house where two of the convicts were supposed to have been from the Michigan City prison break, circa Oct. 1933. On Sept. 26, 1933, ten convicts, lead by John ‘Red’ Hamilton, broke out of the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, using guns smuggled to them by John Dillinger. In the coming days after the prison break, the Chicago Tribune reported over “500 vigilantes, police and deputy sherriffs” searched the farming districts near Michigan City for the felons. Dillinger, who was in a jail cell in Lima, Ohio, engineered the escape of the ten convicts, who became known as Dillinger’s gang. Less than a month after they escaped from Michigan City, several of Dillinger’s gang broke him out of the jail in Lima, Ohio.

John Dillinger, center, is led through the Crown Point, Indiana court building on Jan. 31, 1934 to be viewed by witnesses from the First National Bank robbery that occurred on Jan. 15, 1934 in East Chicago, Indiana. Dillinger had been caught in Arizona and flown back to Indiana to be tried for the murder of patrolman William O’Malley, 43.

John Dillinger arrived back at the county jail at Crown Point, Indiana on Jan. 30, 1934 after being caught in Arizona five days earlier. Authorities were fearful that Dillinger’s gang would try to rescue their leader, so heavily armed guards surrounded the court house and jail. Dillinger was charged with killing police officer William O’Malley, 43, during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana on Jan. 15, 1934.

John Dillinger is handcuffed and guarded as he smokes during a court recess while Deputy Sheriff R. M. Pierce, left, looks on during Dillinger’s hearing at Crown Point, Indiana in the first weeks of February 1934. Dillinger was charged with killing police officer William O’Malley, 43, during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana on Jan. 15, 1934. His trail date was set for March 12, 1934. Dillinger would break out of the Crown Point, Indiana jail on March 3, 1934.

John Dillinger arrived at the county jail at Crown Point, Indiana, on Jan. 30, 1934 after being caught in Arizona five days earlier. Authorities were fearful that Dillinger’s gang would try to rescue their leader, so heavily armed guards surrounded the court house and jail.

John Dillinger escaped from the county jail at Crown Point, Indiana, with only a toy gun on March 3, 1934. Dillinger threatened deputy sheriffs with a wooden gun and then locked up more than a dozen guards before fleeing in the sheriff’s own car. Dillinger was in jail awaiting trial for killing police officer William O’Malley, 43, during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana on Jan. 15, 1934. His trail date had been set for March 12, 1934.

The Crown Point, Indiana, Jail house, right, and County Courthouse, left, after John Dillinger escaped with only a toy gun on March 3, 1934. Dillinger threatened deputy sheriffs with a wooden gun and then locked up more than a dozen guards before fleeing in the sheriff’s own car.

A police officer shows the busted out rear window of John Dillinger’s stolen and then abandoned automobile at the North Robey Street police station on May 2, 1934. The bloodstained Ford V-8 sedan, found at 3338 N. Leavitt Street in Chicago, had a surgical kit, matches from the Little Bohemia Resort, and a Dubuque, Iowa, newspaper dated April 23, 1934 with the headline “Dillinger On Rampage.”

Government men at the Little Bohemia Resort in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, where a gun battle with John Dillinger and his gang took place on April 22, 1934. Leading the group of G-men were federal agents Melvin Purvis and Hugh Clegg. FBI agents had surrounded the lodge, but Dillinger and his gang were able to escape along the shore of the nearby lake.

Max Organist looks at the guns left behind by John Dillinger and his gang on April 22, 1934 at the Little Bohemia Resort in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. FBI agents had surrounded the lodge were Dillinger and his gang were staying, but the outlaws were able to escape along the shore of the nearby lake.

Government men stand by the Ford that was abandoned by John Dillinger during a gun battle between authorities and Dillinger’s gang at the Little Bohemia Resort on April 22, 1934 in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. FBI agents had surrounded the lodge, but Dillinger and his gang were able to escape along the shore of the nearby lake. Two people were killed during the raid, an FBI agent and a local man who was mistaken for one of Dillinger’s gang.

Men carry the body of Chicago federal agent W. Carter Baum, a government man who was killed by “Baby Face” Nelson of John Dillinger’s gang, during a shoot-out at the Little Bohemia resort in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin on April 22, 1934. Two people were killed during the raid, an FBI agent and a local man who was mistaken for one of Dillinger’s gang.

Constable Carl C. Christensen with Mary Levendoski at the Twin City Hospital in Ironwood, Michigan after Christensen was shot by “Baby Face” Nelson of the John Dillinger gang during a gun fight at the Little Bohemia Resort in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin on April 22, 1934. Christensen, a Spider Lake, Wisc. constable, was said to be gravely wounded but survived his wounds.

Eveyln “Billie” Frechette was released from prison on Jan. 30, 1936. Frechette was arrested in Chicago while her boyfriend and fugitive, John Dillinger, watched helplessly nearby on April 9, 1934. Frechette, who had met Dillinger in 1933, was charged with harboring a fugitive in her St. Paul, Minnesota apartment. She spent two years in jail, getting out in 1936. Upon her release, Frechette toured in a theatrical production called “Crime Doesn’t Pay” with members of Dillinger’s family.

John Dillinger and his gang arrive in Chicago on Jan. 30, 1934 after their arrest in Arizona five days earlier. Dillinger had been caught in Arizona and flown back to Indiana to be tried for the murder of patrolman William O’Malley, 43. O’Malley was shot down during the First National Bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana. Dillinger’s trail date was set for March 12, 1934. Dillinger would break out of the Crown Point, Indiana jail on March 3, 1934.

**Copy photos of members of John Dillinger’s gang, circa Dec. 1933. From top left, are Harry Pierpont (11014), Charles Makley (12636), John Dillinger (13225), and Russell Clark (12261).**

Dillinger was shot and killed by FBI agents on July 22, 1934 at the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago after receiving a tip from Dillinger’s friend Anna Sage. Sage, known as the “Woman in Red,” told authorities that she, Dillinger, and Dillinger’s girlfriend Polly Hamilton Keele would be at the movies and to look for her dressed in red. Some reports say Sage was actually dressed in orange.

Anna Sage, nicknamed the “Women in Red”, at the Sheffield Avenue police station in July 1934. Sage, who wore red or orange as a mark for the FBI, had been with John Dillinger when he was shot and killed by the FBI outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago on July 22, 1934. Sage said she made a deal with famous FBI agent Melvin Purvis. In exchange for information on Dillinger’s whereabouts, she would not be deported to her home country of Romania for running a brothel.

People stand around the blood stain from John H. Dillinger, 32, in the alley behind the Biograph Theater in Chicago. Dillinger was shot and killed by FBI agents on July 22, 1934 after receiving a tip from Dillinger’s friend Anna Sage. Sage, known as the “Woman in Red,” told authorities that she, Dillinger, and Dillinger’s girlfriend Polly Hamilton Keele would be at the movies and to look for her dressed in red. Some reports say Sage was actually dressed in orange.

John Dillinger’s body lies dead on a slab at the Cook County Morgue after he was shot and killed by FBI agents on July 22, 1934 at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. According to the Chicago Tribune, Dillinger was “partly covered with a sheet below which well manicured feet protrude, a tag labeled “Dillinger” on each big toe.”

Prof. D. E. Ashworth lifts a plaster death mask off the face of John Dillinger while his students watch on July 23, 1934 at the Cook County Morgue in Chicago. Prof. Ashworth, of the Worsham College of Mortuary Science, had told employees at the morgue the he had permission to create the mask, but didn’t. Ashworth and his students were ousted from the morgue and the partially completed mask was confiscated by the police. Unbeknownst to the FBI, a complimentary copy of another death mask was sent to the bureau from the Reliance Dental Corporation, who also did not have permission. To this day, there is controversy over how many death masks were made of Dillinger’s face and the authenticity of the masks.

Betty Nelson and Rosella Nelson view the body of John Dillinger, 32, while in bathing suits at the Cook County Morgue, located at Polk and Wood Streets, in Chicago. In the days after Dillinger was killed on July 22, 1934, massive crowds lined up outside the morgue to get a glimpse of the notorious public enemy.

John Dillinger’s body leaves the Cook County Morgue at Polk and Wood Streets to be taken to McCready Funeral home at 4506 Sheridan Road on July 24, 1934. Dillinger’s father, John Dillinger Sr., 70, traveled from Mooresville, Ind. to claim his son’s body. Dillinger was embalmed and then taken back to Indiana for burial.

John Dillinger Sr., seated (the father of notorious gangster John Dillinger), signs a contract to appear at the Walk-a-thon at Calumet City, Ill., while Frank Gladdin, general manager of the Metropolitan Vaudeville Agency, watches at the Woods Theater building on Aug. 28, 1934. With Dillinger Sr. are, from left, Frances Dillinger, 12, Doris Dillinger, 16 (both step-sisters of John Dillinger Jr.), Mrs. Audrey Hancock, (John Dillinger Jr.’s sister), and her husband Mr. Emmett Hancock. The Dillinger family, along with John Jr.’s girlfriend Evelyn “Billie” Frechette, toured with a theatrical production called “Crime Doesn’t Pay” after Dillinger’s death.

Wonderful Photographs of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in December 1968

Susan Wood’s work represents a number of milestones in American photography over a period of more than 30 years. Although her most famous magazine cover is an epochal photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono for Look magazine, Susan is also noted for her movie stills. Wood has been represented by Getty Images since 2004 and her editorial work continues to be published around the world in titles such as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The London Times, and Newsweek.

Wood also excelled in developing relationships with other stars, knowing when to push and knowing when to pull back, which resulted in some of the most famous photographs of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

“If they feel that you are pushing too hard, it’s not so good,” she said. “I can only give you the example of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The story was a major magazine, and they wanted to kind of present themselves to the world, but yet when I first met them they seemed to be backing away. The writer was there from the United States. So I said, ‘John, I think you and Yoko may just find this too intense. And Betty is here from the U.S and I promised to take her shopping.’ I had been working for Vogue, so I knew all the shops on the King’s Road. ‘Why don’t we just break today and we’ll pick up again tomorrow. You and Yoko can relax.’ He said ‘just a second’, and then went over to Yoko and whispered to her, and then he came back and said, ‘Can we come too?’ So the ice was broken.”

John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as the founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon was characterised by the rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing and drawings, on film, and in interviews. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history.

Born in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Sometimes called “the smart Beatle”, he was initially the group’s de facto leader, a role gradually ceded to McCartney. In the mid-1960s, Lennon authored In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, two collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Starting with “All You Need Is Love”, his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, the multimedia artist Yoko Ono, held the two-week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace, and quit the Beatles to embark on a solo career.

Between 1968 and 1972, Lennon and Ono collaborated on many records, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, his solo debut John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top 10 singles “Give Peace a Chance”, “Instant Karma!”, “Imagine” and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”. Moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Richard Nixon administration to deport him. Lennon and Ono separated from 1973 to 1975, a period that included chart-topping collaborations with Elton John (“Whatever Gets You thru the Night”) and David Bowie (“Fame”). Following a five-year hiatus, Lennon returned to music in 1980 with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album’s release.

As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number-one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon won the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC history poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and thirty-eighth greatest artist of all time. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1997) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice, as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994). (Wikipedia)

Yoko Ono (born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art, which she performs in both English and Japanese, and filmmaking.

Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York in 1953 with her family. She became involved in New York City’s downtown artists scene, which included the Fluxus group. She became well known in 1969 when she married English singer John Lennon of the Beatles, with the couple using their honeymoon as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War. She and Lennon remained married until he was murdered in front of the couple’s apartment building in December 1980. Together they had one son, Sean, who later also became a musician.

Ono began a career in popular music in 1969, forming the Plastic Ono Band with Lennon and producing a number of avant-garde music albums in the 1970s. She achieved commercial and critical acclaim in 1980 with the chart-topping album Double Fantasy, a collaboration with Lennon that was released three weeks before his murder, winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. To date, she has had twelve number one singles on the US Dance charts, and in 2016 was named the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time by Billboard magazine. Many musicians have paid tribute to Ono as an artist in her own right and as a muse and icon, including Elvis Costello, the B-52’s, Sonic Youth and Meredith Monk.

As Lennon’s widow, Ono works to preserve his legacy. She funded the Strawberry Fields memorial in Manhattan’s Central Park, the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, and the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Japan (which closed in 2010). She has made significant philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace, disaster relief in Japan and the Philippines, and other causes. In 2002, she inaugurated a biennial $50,000 LennonOno Grant for Peace. In 2012 she received the Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Human Rights Award and co-founded the group Artists Against Fracking. (Wikipedia)

(Photos by Susan Wood)

Behind the Iconic Image of Louis Armstrong Playing Trumpet for His Wife in Front of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza, 1961

If there was one legacy, among many, of president Gamal Abdel Nasser that Egypt could have done without – it is the peculiar suspicion of foreigners, to the point of embarrassment, that rode the region’s pan-Arab nationalism wave in the 1950s and 1960s. A problem that still, in various manifestations, continues up until today through institutions, mass media and the public discourse.

Behind the iconic image of legendary jazz musician Louis Armstrong playing his trumpet at the Pyramids – stood an artist that, you would think, had no relation to Egypt’s politics and the Middle East conflict, and infact once stated “I don’t know nothin’ about politics”, was dragged into a mind-boggling controversy.

**Louis Armstrong playing for his wife Lucille Wilson at the Pyramids of Giza, 1961.**

On his visit to Egypt in 1961, Armstrong was standing in a Cairo hotel lobby packed with over 20 news reporters who asked him if he supported Zionism. It must have been like asking Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez visiting Russia as to what he thought of the imperialist forces in the emerging Vietnamese conflict.

An incredulous Armstrong replied “What is that Daddy?” The reporters were surprised that an artist, immersed in his own world, was ignorant of their regional issues, the reporters said: “You helped the Jews a lot.” Armstrong, replied “Yeah, I help them. I help anybody. I help you. You need help? I help anybody’. He continued “I’m going to tell you this. I got a trumpet, and I got a young wife, and I ain’t got time to fool with none of the stuff you guys talking about”

Armstrong just walked off and left them all in the lobby.

It was, however, the incessant suspicions of Armstrong in the lead-up to his visit that raised his ire. In 1959, Egyptian newspapers were circulating rumours that Armstrong was the leader of an Israeli spy network. Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper went as far as to report that Lebanese security authorities uncovered a spy ring that was reportedly working undercover with various artistic troupes. The report stated “Among the leading members of the gang was the famous American Nergro musician Louis Armstrong, who had recently visited Beirut.”

When this was brought to Armstrong’s attention, he responded “I’ve been called many things in my life but this is the first time I’ve ever been called a spy.” When asked to sum up his feelings about the report, he replied “bunk.”

For a while, Armstrong ignored the rumours, but he drew the line when Nasser himself added his weight to the senseless reports. In 1960, the Egyptian president went further and believed that one of Armstrong’s “Scat singing” record was used by the artist to pass secrets during his first 1959 tour of the Middle East. An outraged Armstrong, in Boston at the time, mailed Nasser a copy of the suspect record, with a note rebutting the accusations:

“It’s all Greek to me. They claimed all that junk because I played in Israel. I don’t have to be a spy to earn a living. I have enough money blowing the horn and I have a very happy life doing it. Why don’t you tell these people who are spreading all this stuff to come around. I’ll tell them a few good traveling salesman jokes.”

It is not known how Nasser reacted. However, he did not stop the musician’s visit to Egypt the following year.

The 1959 Middle East tour, that Nasser referred to, saw a prophetic Armstrong when, in Beirut, sitting around with colleagues and reporters, all smoking hashish, was asked “Say, how come you going playing for them damn Jews down in Israel?” Armstrong replied “Let me tell you something. When I go down there, the first thing they going to tell me, how come you play for them damn Arabs over there? Let me tell you something, man. That horn”, pointing to his prized instrument, “you see that horn? That horn ain’t prejudiced. A note’s a note in any language.”

True enough, when Armstrong landed in Israel, the first question he was asked as to why he plays in Arab countries, a furious Armstrong responded “I told them that you guys were going to say the same damn thing. So ain’t none of you no better than the other side. You’s as bad as they are, man”

**“If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it” – Louis Armstrong.**

Poor Armstrong, no wonder why he suffered a heart attack that same year in which his health would only deteriorate from this point onwards.

Of course, this is not to overlook the fact the US State Department sent artists like Armstrong on public and cultural diplomacy initiatives around the world to counter the influence of the Soviet Union in the developing world. Yet this is not the same deal as a “leader of an Israeli spy network.” It was atrocious enough that he suffered from the scourge of racism back home, even at the height of his fame, that he stated to an American reporter in 1957: “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country.” He also told Ebony magazine in a 1964 interview: “I don’t socialize with the top dogs of society after a dance or concert. These same society people may go around the corner and lynch a Negro.”

Yet, he was not even spared, at least ideologically, on the international platform.

The impoverished thinking that unfairly and irresponsibly attacked Armstrong – raised a generation that rules Egypt today, if not the Arab world, and sets the tone for a destructive conspiratorial language that tarnishes, if not sentences, the innocent, disembowels the political public sphere and foments political and social tensions. Armstrong visited an Israel that has since become an increasingly racist, brutal and a militarised state that would make Apartheid South Africa look like a lightweight. Not helped by the same government that sponsored Armstrong’s visit.

Armstrong’s encounter with the Middle East was a microcosmic reflection of the wider cancerous socio-political tumour of denial and scapegoating in the region that just keeps on festering with time. More so, the “What is that Daddy?” responses of Armstrong were refreshingly simple, altruistic and empathetic, in a complex, murky and relentless region where the indiscriminate use of words and charges are prone to lose all meaning.

So a posthumous note to Armstrong, nothing has changed since you left the Middle East, just more of the same, and worse. Someday, the meaning of ‘What a wonderful world’ will be understood and sung. Someday.

57 Rare and Candid Photos of Actress Louise Brooks in the 1920s

Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American film actress and dancer during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as a Jazz Age icon and as a flapper icon due to her bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career.

At the age of fifteen, Brooks began her career as a dancer and toured with the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts where she performed opposite Ted Shawn. After being fired, she found employment as a chorus girl in George White’s Scandals and as a semi-nude dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City. While dancing in the Follies, Brooks came to the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures, and was signed to a five-year contract with the studio. She appeared in supporting roles in various Paramount films before taking the heroine’s role in Beggars of Life (1928). During this time, she became an intimate friend of actress Marion Davies and joined the elite social circle of press baron William Randolph Hearst at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Dissatisfied with her mediocre roles in Hollywood films, Brooks went to Germany in 1929 and starred in three feature films which launched her to international stardom: Pandora’s Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Miss Europe (1930); the first two were directed by G. W. Pabst. By 1938, she had starred in seventeen silent films and eight sound films. After retiring from acting, she fell upon financial hardship and became a paid escort. For the next two decades, she struggled with alcoholism and suicidal tendencies. Following the rediscovery of her films by cinephiles in the 1950s, a reclusive Brooks began writing articles about her film career; her insightful essays drew considerable acclaim. She published her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982. Three years later, she died of a heart attack at age 78. (Wikipedia)

Lady Assassin Lyudmila Pavlichenko Deadliest Female Sniper of All Time

It was June 22nd, 1941 when Hitler cut ties with Stalin and began the ill-fated Operation Barbarossa.

As the German Wehrmacht began pouring across the border, a rather fashionable young woman, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, was studying history at Kiev University, Ukraine. Pavlichenko was determined to put her enthusiasm for rifle shooting into play against the enemy.

Born in a small Ukrainian town in 1916, she later moved to Kiev with her family. In 1930, when she was fourteen, Pavlichenko was working in a munitions factory. She gained a reputation for being confident and outspoken. She didn’t like being told what to do.

**Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Hero of the Soviet Union**

Pavlichenko had been an active member of the Soviet paramilitary youth group, OSOAVIAKhIM, which taught sports and etiquette. She was a natural tomboy and extremely competitive, so when a neighbor’s son boasted about his prowess with a rifle, she took up the challenge.

“I set out to show a girl could do as well. So I practiced a lot,” she was quoted as saying by the Smithsonian. “They wouldn’t take girls in the army so I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to get in.”

**Lyudmila Pavlichenko, before she was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union in 1943.**

Her marksman certificates and sharpshooter badges from OSOAVIAKhIM alone were not enough. It was only her persistence that finally enabled her to prove her worth to a Red Army Commander.

She was taken to the front and handed a rifle. She was told to try and hit two Romanians working downrange with the Germans. Pavlichenko took them both out with ease and was immediately accepted into the Red Army’s Chapayev Rifle Division.

The 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War (an ongoing series of postal stationery envelopes). The 100th birth anniversary of Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916—1974), a legendary Soviet sniper, a hero of the Defense of Odessa and of the Defense of Sevastopol.

**Second Soviet Union-issued postage stamp dedicated to Pavlichenko**

**1943 postage stamp featuring Pavlichenko**

She was sent out to the Moldovan and Greek fronts where she chalked up an incredible 187 confirmed German kills in her first 75 days in live combat. This kind of warfare saw snipers from both sides positioned between enemy lines and well away from supporting units. They had to remain still for hours at a time in order to avoid detection by other snipers.

Pavlichenko was moved on to Sebastopol where she dueled with highly trained enemy snipers, eventually tallying 36 kills of some of the deadliest and most highly decorated of Hitler’s men.

Pavlichenko gained promotion through the ranks due to her fearlessness and extraordinary kill rate. However, it also meant that she became a prime target in battles. The Wehrmacht made her a focus of their artillery and bombing strategies.

Eventually, after eight months and having been hit in the face with shrapnel from a close encounter with Nazi munitions, Pavlichenko was taken off the battlefield.

By then, she had become a key propaganda figure, evoking pride at home and fear abroad. The Nazis had even begun broadcasting personal appeals to her to defect to their side in exchange for comfort and candy.

**Pavlichenko (center) with Justice Robert Jackson (left) and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington DC.**

Instead, she became a sniper instructor for the Red Army. She was one of about 500 surviving female snipers, out of 2,400, who fought for the Red Army during World War Two. Her kill tally of 309 stands as one of the top five tallies. It is likely to have been even higher as confirmed kills had to be witnessed by a third party.

**Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. The delegate from Russia, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, is addressing the convention**

**Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. Russian delegates. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Soviet woman sniper – on the right**

During the war, Pavlichenko visited the White House at the invitation of President Franklin Roosevelt. She was unimpressed by the American media’s apparent over-arching interest in her dress sense and whether she wore make-up when she went into battle.

“There is no rule against it, but who has time to think of her shiny nose when a battle is going on?”

After the war, she returned to her studies at Kiev University, achieving a Master’s degree in History.

Beautiful Portraits of Marlene Dietrich While Filming ‘No Highway in the Sky’ in 1948

Photographer Cornel Lucas was a pioneer of film portraiture. He made his name shooting studio portraits of film stars of the 1940s and 1950s and was said to have done more for the images of many of those he photographed than their performances on celluloid.

His big break came in 1948 when he was asked to photograph Marlene Dietrich, who had come to England to make No Highway in the Sky, but had fallen out with the first photographer assigned to her over lighting. The session did not start off well. There was little that the star did not know about photographic printing, lighting and composition, and she wasted no time in small talk with the young photographer. “She came straight over to me and switched my radio off,” Lucas recalled. “ ‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Lucas,’ she said frostily. I thought it was a terrible start.”

Lucas lit her from several angles, picking out the sharp lines of her cheekbones and illuminating the flawless but icy perfection of her face. Her favorite lighting was from above, a difficult technique for photographers. “When I took her the rough proofs of her photographs to her dressing room the following day, she got a magnifying glass out of her handbag and started drawing on the pictures with eyebrow pencil,” Lucas recalled.

But she was pleased with the results, and Lucas went on to become one of the few portraitists she would work with. She introduced him to many more of his subjects and in subsequent years he photographed dozens of stars.

Marie Magdalene “Marlene” Dietrich (27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992)[2] was a German-born American actress and singer. Her career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s.

In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich performed on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures. Dietrich starred in many Hollywood films including six iconic roles directed by Sternberg —Morocco (1930) (her only Academy Award nomination), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus (both 1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935)— plus Desire (1936) and Destry Rides Again (1939). She successfully traded on her glamorous persona and “exotic” looks, and became one of the highest-paid actresses of the era. Throughout World War II she was a high-profile entertainer in the United States. Although she delivered notable performances in several post-war films including Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950), Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) and Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a marquee live-show performer.

Dietrich was known for her humanitarian efforts during World War II, housing German and French exiles, providing financial support and even advocating their American citizenship. For her work on improving morale on the front lines during the war, she received several honors from the United States, France, Belgium and Israel. In 1999 the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema. (Wikipedia)

Vintage Photos of Men Shaving Their Faces With Axes From the 1930s and 1940s

Believe it or not, there is photographic evidence of men, some who were lumberjacks or loggers, who shaved their own faces, and the faces of others, with an ax.

There were a couple of notable manly men who were known for performing the feat in front of crowds such as Paul Criss whose moniker was the “spectacular axe-man” and Oregon lumberjack Leonard Wallulis. Criss was also a popular pitchman for the Kelly Axe Company. One of the axes in the company’s product line was called the “Perfect Axe” and it would be this weapon of choice that Criss would use to demonstrate the tool’s ability to be used to shave a man’s face. Wallulis, on the other hand, was noted to have entered a Ripley’s Believe It or Not contest in Portland, Oregon in 1936 where he shaved with a double-bitted ax—a daring trick that got him to the finals.

It’s certainly a theatrical way to perform your gender – though we can probably think of safer ways to do it.