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Mary Louise Brooks, known professionally as Louise Brooks, was an American film actress and dancer during the 1920s and 1930s. She began dancing at an early age with the Denishawn Dancers (which was how she left Kansas and went to New York) and then became one of the most fascinating and alluring personalities ever to grace the silver screen.
Brooks is famous for her bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career. Thousands of women were attracted to that style and adopted it as their own.
Brooks of her dark haired look and being the beautiful woman that she was, plus being a modern female, she was not especially popular among Hollywood’s clientle. She just did not go along with the norms of the film society.
Brooks really came into her own when she left Hollywood for Europe. There she appeared in a few German productions which were very well made and continued to prove she was an actress with an enduring talent. Until she ended her career in film in 1938, she had made only 25 movies. After that, she spent most of her time reading and painting. She also became an accomplished writer, authoring a number of books, including her autobiography.
Brooks died of a heart attack in Rochester, New York in 1985. She was 78 years old.
Take a look at these gorgeous photos to see the beauty of Louise Brooks in the 1920s.


















































Raped aged seven. Spotted by Conde Nast aged 19. Muse to Man Ray in her twenties. Painted by Picasso aged 30. And the woman in Hitler’s bathtub in 1945, aged 38.
She is Lee Miller, a model who left the world of fashion to become a fearless war photographer during the dark days of the 1940s.
Lee Miller photographed innumerable women during her career, first as a fashion photographer and then as a journalist during the Second World War, documenting the social consequences of the conflict, particularly the impact of the war on women across Europe. Her work as a war photographer is perhaps that for which she is best remembered – in fact she was among the 20th century’s most important photographers on the subject.


















The Reverend Francis Patrick Mary Browne (1880-1960) was a distinguished Irish Jesuit and a prolific photographer. His best known photographs are those of the RMS Titanic and its passengers and crew taken shortly before its sinking in 1912.
In April 1912 he received a present from his uncle: a ticket for the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic from Southampton, England to Queenstown, Ireland, via Cherbourg, France. He traveled to Southampton via Liverpool and London, boarding the Titanic on the afternoon of 10 April 1912. He was booked in cabin no. A37 on the Promenade Deck. Browne took dozens of photographs of life aboard Titanic on that day and the next morning; he shot pictures of the gymnasium, the Marconi room, the first-class dining saloon, his own cabin, and of passengers enjoying walks on the Promenade and Boat decks. He captured the last known images of many crew and passengers, including Captain Edward J. Smith, gymnasium manager T.W. McCawley, engineer William Parr, Major Archibald Butt, and numerous third-class passengers whose names are unknown.
During his voyage on the Titanic, Browne was befriended by an American millionaire couple who were seated at his table in the liner’s first-class dining saloon. They offered to pay his way to New York and back in return for Browne spending the voyage to New York in their company. Browne telegraphed his superior requesting permission, but the reply was an unambiguous “GET OFF THAT SHIP – PROVINCIAL”.
Browne left the Titanic when she docked in Queenstown and returned to Dublin to continue his theological studies. When the news of the ship’s sinking reached him, he realized that his photos would be of great interest, and he negotiated their sale to various newspapers and news cartels. They appeared in publications around the world. Browne retained the negatives. His most famous album has been described as the Titanic Album of Father Browne.















(Photos: Fr Browne SJ Collection—UIG/The Bridgeman Art Library)
The Lodz Ghetto was a World War II ghetto established for Polish Jews and Roma following the 1939 invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of German-occupied Europe after the Warsaw Ghetto.
Shown are some rare color photographs that capture daily life at the Lodz Ghetto in 1943.

















After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, she fled from her husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, and secretly moved to Paris. There, she met Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood, where she became a film star from the late 1930s to the 1950s.
Among Lamarr’s best known films are Algiers (1938), Boom Town (1940), I Take This Woman (1940), Comrade X (1940), Come Live With Me (1941), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), and Samson and Delilah (1949).
Lamarr is also credited with being an inventor. At the beginning of World War II, she and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, which used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers.
Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are arguably incorporated into Bluetooth technology, and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi.
Lamarr was married six times, had two sons and a daughter. She died in 2000 in Casselberry, Florida, of heart disease, aged 85.
Take a look at these glamorous photos to see the beauty of this talented woman from the 1930s and 1940s.























































































The crash of the Hindenburg was one of the most jarring aviation disasters of its day.
On May 6, 1937, the massive German airship caught fire while attempting to land near Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 people aboard, plus one ground crew member. Of the 97 passengers and crew members on board, 62 managed to survive.
The horrifying incident was captured by reporters and photographers and replayed on radio broadcasts, in newsprint, and on newsreels. News of the disaster led to a public loss of confidence in airship travel, ending an era. The 245 m (803 f) Hindenburg used flammable hydrogen for lift, which incinerated the airship in a massive fireball, but the actual cause of the initial fire remains unknown.
Here are 33 historic images of the Hindenburg’s first successful year of transatlantic travel, and of its tragic ending in May 1937.

































(via The Atlantic)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 1966 Italian epic Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in their respective title roles. Its screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone (with additional screenplay material and dialogue provided by an uncredited Sergio Donati), based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone. Director of photography Tonino Delli Colli was responsible for the film’s sweeping widescreen cinematography, and Ennio Morricone composed the film’s score including its main theme. It is an Italian-led production with co-producers in Spain, West Germany and the United States.
The film is known for Leone’s use of long shots and close-up cinematography, as well as his distinctive use of violence, tension, and stylistic gunfights. The plot revolves around three gunslingers competing to find fortune in a buried cache of Confederate gold amid the violent chaos of the American Civil War (specifically the New Mexico Campaign in 1862), while participating in many battles and duels along the way. The film was the third collaboration between Leone and Clint Eastwood, and the second with Lee Van Cleef.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was marketed as the third and final installment in the Dollars Trilogy, following A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. The film was a financial success, grossing over $25 million at the box office, and is credited with catapulting Eastwood into stardom. Due to general disapproval of the Spaghetti Western genre at the time, critical reception of the film following its release was mixed, but it gained critical acclaim in later years. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is now seen as one of the greatest and most influential Western movies.














































A collection of colorized photos from Frédéric Duriez that shows German forces during the First World War.




















































(Photos colorized by Frédéric Duriez)