Clémentine Clattaux was born on 5 March 1865 in Chamousey near Charmes in Lorraine, Eastern France. During the late 19th and early 20th century she was one of the most famously celebrated “bearded ladies” in Europe.
In 2005 her private memoirs were discovered in a garage sale and were bought for “a very modest sum” by Roland Marchal, a second-hand dealer and collector from Bellefontaine in the Vosges. Written in violet ink in a school exercise book and decorated with spectacular photographs and press cuttings from the period, Clementine, who was believed not to have been able to write very well, dictated her memoirs to Pol Ramber, a reporter from the local newspaper, La Libert de l’Est, in the 1930s. The text is written in his hand and is signed by him.
The 50-page document provides a fascinating insight into the life of an extraordinary woman who, far from suffering from her generous abundance facial hair, took great delight in it and used it to her advantage.
Clara Gordon Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) was an American actress who rose to stardom during the silent film era of the 1920s and successfully made the transition to “talkies” in 1929. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname “The It Girl”. Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.
Bow appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including hits such as Mantrap (1926), It (1927), and Wings (1927). She was named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930. Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured investors, by odds of almost two-to-one, a “safe return”. At the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month (January 1929).
Two years after marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. In September 1965, Bow died of a heart attack at the age of 60.
The Empire State Building is an iconic office building known as “the Most Famous Skyscraper in the World.” Built during the Depression between 1930 and 1931, the Empire State Building became the world’s tallest office building until 1967.
The design of the building changed 16 times during planning and construction, but 3,000 workers completed the building’s construction in record time: one year and 45 days, including Sundays and holidays.
The Empire State’s construction work and its workers were a magnet for press and magazine photographers, which is how many iconic images of the construction work were created, like these.
Sept. 29, 1930.Sep, 13. 1930. Carl Russell waves to his co-workers on the structural work of the 88th floor of the new Empire State Building.Sept. 29, 1930. Flirting with danger is just routine work for the steel workers arranging the steel frame for the Empire State Building, which will be the world’s tallest structure when completed.Sept. 29, 1930.Sept. 29, 1930.Sept. 29, 1930. An odd photographic trick placed this steelworker’s finger on the lofty pinnacle of the Chrysler Building. This view was taken from the Empire State Building, the world’s tallest building, which is now rising on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. A mooring mast for dirigibles will cap this 1,284-foot structure.Oct. 29, 1930. A construction worker hangs from an industrial crane during the construction of the Empire State Building.Jan. 26, 1932. It may be painful for the ant-like spectators in the street below, but it’s all in a day’s work for these smiling window washers as they go about their precarious work cleaning up the Empire State Building, world’s tallest structure, at dizzy heights of hundreds of feet above the street.Jan. 26, 1932. The startling ‘shot’ was made by the photographer looking down upon the window washers on the 34th street side of the world-famed building. Note the tiny insects that are motor cars and pedestrians.Dec. 2, 1932. A striking silhouette atop the gigantic RCA Building in Rockefeller Center, New York, as workmen light their cigarettes at the end of a working day. The Empire State Building rises dramatically in the background.Mar. 24, 1936. An unusual picture of one of the intrepid window washers working on the Empire State Building, as he pauses in his task to draw a lung-full of clean air at his height. With the oncoming of the warmer weather our skyscrapers begin to look like giant ant-hills as these washers clamber over the faces of the structures calmly doing their nerve-tingling work. Or maybe the fellow pictured here is just issuing an invitation to the cameraman to come a little closer.Sept. 19, 1930. Workmen at the new Empire State building that is being erected on the site of the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel at 34th Street and 5th Avenue. in New York, by a corporation headed by the former Governor Al Smith, raised a flag on the 88th story of the great building, 1,048 feet above the street. The flag thus is at the highest point in the city higher then the Crystler Building. Photo shows the workmen at the ceremonies.Sept. 29, 1930. Erected on the site of the old Waldorf Astoria, this building will rise 1,284 feet into the air. A zeppelin mooring mast will cap this engineering feat.July 30, 1945. Workmen erect scaffolding on the 33rd Street Side of the Empire State Building as reconstruction work on the skyscraper begins. In spite of the damage the structure suffered when a B-25 crashed between the 78th and 79th stories, the world’s tallest building was open today (July 30th), two days after the tragic accident.Feb. 28, 1956. Workmen place one of the new beacon lights in position on the 90th floor of an impressive electronic crown in the form of four far-reaching night beacons. Combined, the four Empire State Night lights will generate almost two billion candle power of light and will be the brightest continuous source of man-made light in the world. Engineers say the beacons can be seen from as far as 300 miles. Cost of the installation is $250,000.
On February 19, 1841 one of Portugals most prolific serial killers was hanged for killing over seventy people. Diogo Alves, or, as he would infamously become known as, the “Aqueduct Murderer” would go on a 5 year crime spree (1836-1840) that would keep Lisbon, Portugal firmly in the grip of fear during that time.
Diogo Alves is considered by many to be Portugal’s first serial killer. He was born in Galicia in 1810 and traveled to Lisbon as nineteen year old to work as a servant in the affluent homes of the capital city. Yet it did not take long for young Diogo to learn that crime paid a higher dividend. He began to drink and gamble and he fell in with an innkeeper by the name of Maria “Parreirinha” Gertrudes. It is through this association that it is believed Alves began his crime spree.
By 1836 Alves had been working for an influential family in a home located on the Aqueduto das Águas Livres, the Aqueduct of the Free Waters. Less than a half a mile long, the waterway allowed city dwellers and rural farmers the ability to traverse the rural landscape from above, making their way into the city of Lisbon.
It would be along this route that many unsuspecting travellers would meet Diogo Alves.
Many travellers were rural farmers going to Lisbon to sell their harvests. It would be on their return trip along the Aquaduct, with pockets full of money, that Diogo Alves would strike. Afterwards, Alves would throw them over the edge of the 213-foot tall structure, sending them falling to their deaths. Between 1836 and 1839, he would repeat this process some 70 times.
By 1840 the deaths along the Aquaduct had ceased. In the beginning police blamed the deaths on copycat suicides, which led to a temporary closure of the bridge. During this time Alves switched focus, and with a gang of murderous felons, began a series of break and enters into wealthy homeowners dwellings. The group was finally caught while killing four people inside the home of a local doctor, and Alves and his group was arrested.
While the murders on the aqueduct remained unproven, the jury sentenced Alves and his gang for other crimes, in particular, murdering the four family members of a doctor. Maria’s 11-year-old daughter, Maria de Conceicao, testified in court against the gang. Her mother was eventually sent to a lifelong exile in African colonies. The group were sentenced to death by hanging.
Alves was hanged to death in February of 1841. He was among the last people to die as a result of capital punishment before Portugal abolished capital punishment in 1867, but he wasn’t the last: Around half a dozen people followed him.
Alves actions did not go unnoticed by the then Medical-Surgical School of Lisbon. After his hanging, in an attempt to study his brain, Alves’ head was cut off and studied. Phrenology,the belief that certain mental or character traits were determined by the shape of one’s skull, was just becoming popular. The results of that study have been lost to time so the results are not known. It seems that they were never able to figure out why he killed so many people.
To this day the head is still preserved in a glass vessel in the anatomical theater of the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Medicine, where a solution of formaldehyde has perpetuated the image of a calm man—quite contrary to what he really was.
Clark Gable and Carol Lombard in “No Man of her Own”, 1932Scanned by Frederic. Reworked by Nick & jane for Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans website: http://www.doctormacro.com. Enjoy!8th December 1932: American actor Clark Gable (1901 – 1960) admiring a photograph of actress Jean Harlow, with whom he co-starred in six films.
Born 1903 in Saint-Mandé, France, American stage and film actress Claudette Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to motion pictures with the advent of sound film. Initially associated with Paramount Pictures, she gradually shifted to working as a freelance actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in It Happened One Night (1934), and received two other Academy Award nominations. Other notable films include Cleopatra (1934) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).
With her round face, big eyes, charming, aristocratic manner, and flair for light comedy, as well as emotional drama, Colbert was known for a versatility that led to her becoming one of the best-paid stars of the 1930s and 1940s. She was a leading lady in Hollywood for over two decades, and has been called “The mixture of inimitable beauty, sophistication, wit, and vivacity”.
During her career, Colbert starred in more than 60 movies. She was the industry’s highest-paid star in 1938 and 1942. By the early 1950s, Colbert had basically retired from the screen in favor of television and stage work, and she earned a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career tapered off during the early 1960s, but in the late 1970s she experienced a career resurgence in theater, earning a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. For her television work in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987), she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy Award nomination.
Colbert sustained a series of small strokes during the last three years of her life. She died in 1996 at her second home in Barbados.
In 1999, the American Film Institute posthumously voted Colbert the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.
Take a look at these charming photos to see the beauty of Claudette Colbert in the 1920s and 1930s.
Portrait of a British soldier taken prisoner by the Germans, April 1918.A fatigue party carrying duckboards over a support line trench at night, Cambrai, 12 January 1917. Portrait of a British soldier captured during the Spring Offensive, March-April 1918.Battle of Estaires. British lightly wounded of the 50th and 51st Divisions awaiting evacuation by lorries. Bethune, 9 April 1918. British soldier taken prisoner by the Germans, April 1918.British soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans, April 1918.Portrait of a British prisoner of war, a soldier of one of the light infantry regiments, captured by the Germans during the Spring Offensive, March 1918.Some Canadian wounded being taken to the dressing station on a light railway from the firing line.Portrait of a British soldier, taken prisoner by the Germans, probably in April 1918.British soldiers play football while wearing gas masks, France, 1916.Three British prisoners captured in Armentieres, 9-18 April 1918.A portrait of a German soldier in uniform, taken at a photo studio.A group of German soldiers. One of them is operating a telephone.A group portrait of German soldiers.German soldier pose happily in the barrel of the long range Paris Gun (Paris-Geschütz) which bombarded Paris during the Spring Offensive, 1 May 1918.German soldiers taking a shower after a spell in the trenches.German troops getting ready for some sleep in their dugout on the Western Front.German troops playing cards and having a rest in St. Quentin. They are mixture of soldiers of the 210th and 212th Infantry Regiments.A German soldier helping Italian women to do their washing. They are wringing out clothes together.1917.A Musketier from 8. Badisches Inf-Rgt Nr. 169 in Feldmarschmäßig or full marching order.29th June 1917 – Black German Soldier in the Landwehr Infantry-Regiment No.25″28th June 1917: Portrait Of A Portuguese Soldier.The Dead ObserverSoldiers in an old trench near Gavrelle playing with their pet dog, 27th June 1917.Women British Red Corss Society, Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) ambulance drivers, Etaples, 27th June 1917. The ambulance was presented by the Owners and Workmen of the Royal Forest of Dean Coalfield.Two Women British Red Cross Society, Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) ambulance drivers. The vehicle is one of the Yorkshire Mine Workers’ Convoy. Etaples, 27th June 1917.In a British Red Cross Society, Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) Dressing Station at Abbeville, 27th June 1917.Romanian soldiers on a railway bridge. One soldier carries a child across.A German disabled soldier learning how to operate a spade with an artificial arm, probably at a school of training for German disabled soldiers at a Westphalian hospital.An invalided soldier with an artificial arm attempting to write while another one is looking on. Note two Australian convalescent soldiers in the background.A doctor takes a plaster cast of the remainder of an amputee’s right leg at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, Surrey, in preparation for fitting a specially made artificial limb.Disabled British soldiers at the workshops of J E Hanger at Roehampton, Surrey, learn to walk again using their newly fitted artificial legs, 1917.Chaplain of 72nd Canadian Battalion talking to a Canadian soldier up the line. April, 1918.French soldiers making wreaths to place on graves. Battle of Amiens. August, 1918French soldiers examining Sopwith 1F.1 ‘Camel’ of the R.A.F. which landed inside Canadian lines near Amiens, France, August 1918Canadian soldiers having a quiet game of cards during the Battle of Amiens. August 1918Soldiers of the 48th Battery walking along the skyline. Toronto, Ont. 12 Apr. 1916Canadian soldier with burns caused by mustard gas. 1917-1918Wounded Canadian soldier in No. 2 Hospital, with visitor and attending nurses. Le Tréport, France. 1916.French soldiers visit their home village and are reunited with their families. March, 1917French soldiers visit their home village and are reunited with their families. March, 1917French soldiers visit their home village and are reunited with their families. March, 1917Canadian soldiers returning from Vimy Ridge. May 1917Goods which can’t be bought. Canadian soldier resting in a shop window on shelled village, telling his friends how the boys made Fritz quit. July, 1917.
John Vachon was a Minnesotan, a graduate of St. Thomas College in St. Paul who moved to D.C. during the end of the Great Depression with dreams of becoming a writer. What he became was a file clerk; actually, it started a bit worse than that: “Well, in 1936 I was looking for a job in Washington. I had been looking for a job for about four or five months. I had been at graduate school at Catholic University until the first of the year. The first job opening that came along through those patronage channels in those days… I remember the title of the job was “Messenger,” but the duties Roy explained to me that day, telling me that they were going to be very dull, would be to write captions on the back of 8 x l0 photographs, the captions being on file cards which I would copy. So I did that for a month, and occasionally would turn the picture over and look at it. And then at the end of the month I was let go, and I was again unemployed in June. I’ve forgotten the exact details, but about six weeks later I came back in the same position. I guess my predecessor left for good.” But Vachon had lucked into a crap job in one of the most remarkable government agencies of the Depression—the Farm Security Administration, working under Roy Stryker, the economist and photographer responsible for some of the most endearing images in American photography, through the work his photographers shot while criss-crossing the country during the Depression.
In the summers of 1940 and 1941, Vachon passed through Chicago, where he put his abilities as a street portraitist across a broad range of people, capturing the elegance and poverty of the central city during wartime.
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Born 1931 in Kulm, North Dakota, American actress Angie Dickinson began her career on television, appearing in many anthology series during the 1950s, before landing her breakthrough role in Gun the Man Down (1956) and the Western film Rio Bravo (1959), for which she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.
In her six decade career, Dickinson has appeared in more than 50 films, including China Gate (1957), Ocean’s 11 (1960), The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961), Jessica (1962), Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), The Killers (1964), The Art of Love (1965), The Chase (1966), Point Blank (1967), Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), The Outside Man (1972) and Big Bad Mama (1974).
From 1974 to 1978, Dickinson starred as Sergeant Leann “Pepper” Anderson in the NBC crime series Police Woman, for which she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and three Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series nominations. As lead actress, she starred in Brian De Palma’s erotic crime thriller Dressed to Kill (1980), for which she received a Saturn Award for Best Actress.
During her later career, Dickinson starred in several television movies and miniseries, also playing supporting roles in films such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994), Sabrina (1995), Pay It Forward (2000) and Big Bad Love (2001).
Through the 1960s and ’70s, she was as popular for her on-screen work as she was for her personal life. A tabloid sensation, she allegedly had affairs with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and John F. Kennedy.
Take a look at these glamorous photos to see the beauty of Angie Dickinson in the 1950s and 1960s.
