Bringing You the Wonder of Yesterday – Today
Mustaches and sideburns are to a man, much like make-up is to a woman. Facial hair can range from the very subtle to the very extreme. Of course, it probably goes without saying that plenty of celebrities also made their own personal statement with the facial hair statement.
Sideburns have been called everything from skinny to mutton chops. Women are generally considered more appearance conscientious than men. Don’t be fooled, though, because men are also concerned with appearances.
Known as “The Polka-Dot Girl,” Chili Williams (born Marian Sorenson in 1921) was discovered by a modeling agent in 1943 at Fire Island in New York. The modeling agent’s photographer, Ewing Krainin, took her picture while she was frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean surf, and the series of photos appeared in the September 27, 1943 issue of LIFE Magazine. Krainin had stitched together a black-and-white polka-dot dance-set (which would later come to be known as the “bikini”) for her.
The photos were so well received, that 100,000 fans sent in letters requesting copies, many of which found their way into the hands of homesick GI’s fighting during the final months of World War II. She signed a movie contract in 1944 and moved to Hollywood, California, where she appeared in 17 films, including the wartime favorites Girl Rush (1944), The Falcon In Hollywood (1944), George White’s Scandals (1945), Johnny Angel (1945), Wonder Man (1945), and Having A Wonderful Crime (1945). Chili also joined the Jack Carson USO tour of the Pacific Theater during the winter of 1944-45.
Chili was involved in several scandals including being caught breaking into an ex-boyfriend’s apartment. She eventually quit acting and stayed out of the spotlight until her death in 2003.
Take a look at these glamorous pictures to see her beauty from the 1940s.
After having been fashion photographer, John French’s, assistant, David Bailey begins the 1960s with a contract with Vogue and rapidly becomes a leading figure of the Swinging London scene, chronicling the unrestricted existences of models and musicians.
Although he admits being fascinated by the Renaissance art and the painter, Caravaggio, the British photographer favors minimalist, mostly black and white frontal depictions of his sitters. With images that clearly evoke the sex, drugs and rock n’roll spirit of the decade, David Bailey also finds women he loved in his celebrity pack, from model Jean Shrimpton to Catherine Deneuve but also Anjelica Huston and Penelope Tree.
The photographer continues to mischievously capture contemporary figures such as Kate Moss who has become an illustrious successor of the Swinging Sixties, always revealing a certain kind of eccentricity in them, even when he portrays the Queen Elisabeth II whom we have so rarely seen smile so frankly.
Dufaycolor is an early British additive colour photographic film process, introduced for motion picture use in 1932 and for still photography in 1935. It was derived from Louis Dufay’s Dioptichrome plates, a glass-based product for colour still photography introduced in France in 1909.
Both Dioptichrome and Dufaycolor worked on the same principles as the Autochrome process, but achieved their results using a layer of tiny colour filter elements arrayed in a regular geometric pattern, unlike the Autochrome’s random array of coloured starch grains.
However, the manufacture of Dufaycolor film ended in the late 1950s.
Here below is a rare and amazing collection of dufaycolor photos from The History of Photography Archive that shows daily life near Ostend, Belgium in 1936.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a 1962 psychological thriller-horror film based on the novel of the same title by Henry Farrell, produced and directed by Robert Aldrich and starring two longtime rival actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The film was an unexpected box office success and received widespread critical acclaim upon its release. Not only was it later nominated for five Academy Awards and won one for Best Costume Design, Black and White, it also gave rise to a succession of the psycho-biddy subgenre.
This horror story deals with two faded sibling actresses Blanche and Jane Hudson, who were living together in their decaying Hollywood house. “Baby Jane” was once a well-known vaudevillian child star but as they get older, she lived in her sister’s shadow, who became a successful film actress. After an accident that led to Blanche confined to a wheelchair, Jane began to seize absolute control of her sister. As Jane’s mind slowly went more and more crazed, her imprisonment and torment to Blanche gained ever greater extremes.
The legendary feud between two stars, Davis and Crawford, played a large part in the film’s initial success. Their intense rivalry on the set of Baby Jane went from Davis provoking Crawford by having a Coke machine installed in the dressing room, for her late husband being a Pepsi executive, to Crawford claiming Davis hit her hard in the head enough to require stitches, then her later payback to Davis by making herself as heavy as possible during the dragging scene, knowing that David had back problems. The peak moment of their feud perhaps was when only Davis got nominated for an Academy Award and Crawford actively campaigning hard against her fellow actress. As luck would have it, winner Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker was absent from the ceremony, so Crawford marched past Davis and accepted the statuette on Bancroft’s behalf.
Here are 31 impressive photos of the two stars in the film…
For the mid-Victorian bride (1870s) there was an emergence of middle class wealth, and with it a display of their new riches. Wedding gowns fashioned by Worth in Paris were the ultimate status symbol. And if one couldn’t afford an original, one copied them. Full court trains were now part of the wedding ensemble, as were long veils, a bustle, elegant details and two bodices–a modest one for the wedding and a low one for special occasions.
The late Victorians (1890s) saw the bustle disappear, a demi-train and large sleeves now in fashion. If the bride married in church, the dress must have a train, with a veil of the same length. The veil could be lace or silk tulle. From the mid-Victorian era to the 1890s, the veil covered the bride’s face and was not lifted until after church. The veil was not used as a shawl after the wedding any more, however. White kid gloves were long enough to tuck under the sleeves, and had a slit in one finger to slip the ring on without removing the glove. Slippers were of white kid, satin or brocade and the heels rose to one inch.
For the widow who remarried in the early and mid-Victorian eras, she did not wear white, had no bridesmaids, no veil and no orange blossoms, (a sign of purity.) She usually wore a pearl or lavender satin gown trimmed with ostrich feathers. In the later decades, she was allowed attendants as well as pages, but no veil or orange blossoms. She could wear a shade or two away from white, preferring rose, salmon, ivory or violet.
Born 1939 in Copenhagen, Danish singer, actress and icon Vivi Bach appeared in 48 films between 1958 and 1974; notably known for Holiday in St. Tropez (1964), Soldaterkammerater rykker ud (1959) and Das Rätsel der roten Quaste (1963).
Bach was nicknamed “the first Danish teenager of Denmark” and “the Danish Brigitte Bardot”. She died in 2013 in Ibiza, Spain, where she lived with her husband, the Austrian film actor Dietmar Schönherr, aged 74.
The Vietnam War still remains controversial and people on both sides suffered immense losses and clearly at least some of these pics are staged, but regardless of your feeling on the issue, these pictures provide a historical reminder of the strength of the women who fought alongside their male counterparts but are often not acknowledged and the harsh reality of wartime that didn’t discriminate by gender.
