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30 Wonderful Photographs That Show Everyday Life in Italy During the 1960s
Wonderful Portrait Photos of Helen Menken in the 1920s and 1930s
Helen Menken (née Meinken; December 12, 1901 – March 27, 1966) was an American stage actress.
Menken was born in New York City to a German-French father, Frederick Meinken, and an Irish-born mother, Mary Madden. Both of her parents were deaf, and her early communication came via sign language. She did not begin speaking aloud until age 4. Her sister, Grace Menken, was also an actress. At age 12, she was sent to a school in Brighton, England.
Before she turned 14, Menken performed in vaudeville for a season, primarily playing character parts with her brother-in-law. A dispute when the troupe was in Dallas led to her walking out and joining a Shakespearean company that was also in Dallas.
Billed as Helen Meinken, Menken acted in 1915 in Brooklyn and in 1916 with the Orpheum Players in Reading, Pennsylvania. She made her Broadway theatre debut as a teenage actress in Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1917). Her greatest stage triumphs were Seventh Heaven in 1922–1924 (Janet Gaynor played her role of Diane in the 1927 film version); Mary of Scotland in 1933–1934 as Elizabeth I opposite Helen Hayes in the title role (Katharine Hepburn played Mary in the 1936 film version); and The Old Maid, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that starred Menken and Judith Anderson in 1935. Bette Davis would play Menken’s role as the spinster with a secret in the 1939 film version. Menken’s final Broadway appearance was in an unsuccessful play named The Laughing Woman, which ran for less than a month in 1937.
Menken appeared as the leading lady for the summer stock cast at the Elitch Theatre, in Denver, Colorado, in 1922 and 1924. For the 1924 summer season she appeared in the role of Cassie Cook, a role she originated on Broadway, in the play Drifting. After having appeared in Denver during the summer of 1922, the theatre critic from The Denver Post stated: “We who have watched her for a summer at the Gardens have thought we knew all about her acting, but Sunday night she turned loose things that are beyond anything she ever showed before and much that was superior to her best work in the plays two years ago.”
Her performance as Irene De Montcel, in the first English-language production of The Captive, Edouard Bourdet’s lesbian-themed drama, led to her arrest (along with the rest of the cast) on February 9, 1927. Menken was charged with “contributing to a common nuisance “and “obscene exhibition.” This arrest, reflecting 1920s attitudes about homosexuality, contributed to her lack of a film career and possibly to her divorce from Bogart.
Menken was a major presence behind the scenes in the theater world, especially at the American Theatre Wing. She served as its chairman during World War II and began serving as president of the group in 1957.
Menken was active on radio in the 1940s (starring as Brenda Cummings in Second Husband and notably recreating her performance opposite Judith Anderson in a 1946 radio adaption of The Old Maid).
Menken made a short film in New York City in 1925 for Lee DeForest, filmed in the short-lived DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. The film is preserved in the Maurice Zouary collection at the Library of Congress.
Menken received a Special Tony Award posthumously in 1966 “for a lifetime of devotion and dedicated service to the Broadway theatre.”
The first of her husbands was actor Humphrey Bogart. She was Bogart’s first wife. They were married at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City on May 20, 1926, and she divorced him November 18, 1927. She married Dr. Henry T. Smith on July 12, 1932, and divorced him in 1947, then in October 1948 married George N. Richard who survived her. She had no children from these marriages.
Menken died of a heart attack at a party at The Lambs on March 27, 1966, at the age of 64.
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Amazing Black and White Photos of Gärdet Music Festival in 1970
The party at Gärdet, Gärdesfesten or Gärdetfestivalen was a free music festival that was arranged at Gärdet in Stockholm on two occasions during the year 1970.
The first party at Gärdet was organized between 12 and 14 June 1970, inspired by the Monterey Pop Festival and the Woodstock Festival as a cultural-political manifestation. The festival was organized without applying for a permit. Bands such as Gunder Hägg, Träd, Gräs och Stenar, Solen skiner, Gudibrallan, Love Explosion and Arbete & Fritid played. The party at Gärdet came to function as something of a unifying starting point for the left-wing progressive music movement that has come to be known as the prog.
The second party at Gärdet was organized between 20 and 23 August the same year, and in addition to many of the bands that have already participated in the first party, bands such as Turid, Fläsket brinner, Samla Mammas Manna, Södra Bergens Balalaikor, NJA-group (later Fria Pro ), The Basics of European Dissatisfaction.
These amazing photos show the Gärdet music festival in Stockholm in 1970.
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Frank Sinatra Relaxing at Home With His Dog Ringo in Palm Springs, 1964
Frank Sinatra’s mother did not allow him to have a dog when he was a kid. He made up for it by having many in his adult life. The Sinatras had many different animals — from dogs, to cats, to horses.
“I found a snake in the yard one day and I called the gardener to kill it. Frank said, ‘No, no, he’s a friend of mine.’ So he threw it over the fence onto the golf course. He was very softhearted.” – Barbara Sinatra.
Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the “Chairman of the Board” and later called “Ol’ Blue Eyes”, he is regarded as one of the most popular entertainers of the mid-20th century. Sinatra is among the world’s best-selling music artists with an estimated 150 million record sales.
Born to Italian immigrants in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra began his musical career in the swing era and was greatly influenced by the easy-listening vocal style of Bing Crosby. He found success as a solo artist after signing with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the “bobby soxers”. In 1946, Sinatra released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra. He then signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums. In 1960, Sinatra left Capitol Records to start his own record label, Reprise Records, releasing a string of successful albums. In 1965, he recorded the retrospective album September of My Years and starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music. After releasing Sinatra at the Sands in early 1966, Sinatra recorded one of his most famous collaborations with Tom Jobim, the album Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim. It was followed by 1968’s Francis A. & Edward K. with Duke Ellington. Sinatra retired in 1971 following the release of “My Way”, but came out of retirement two years later. He recorded several albums and released “New York, New York” in 1980.
Sinatra forged a highly successful career as a film actor. After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for From Here to Eternity (1953), he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Sinatra also appeared in musicals such as On the Town (1949), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956), and Pal Joey (1957), which won him a Golden Globe Award. Toward the end of his career, he frequently played detectives, including the title character in Tony Rome (1967). Sinatra received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1971. On television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on CBS in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1983, Sinatra was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra received eleven Grammy Awards including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was included in Time magazine’s compilation of the 20th century’s 100 most influential people. American music critic Robert Christgau called him “the greatest singer of the 20th century” and he continues to be regarded as an iconic figure.
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The Story of the Famous Photograph of Captain Jonathan Walker’s Branded Hand, ca. 1845
The letters “S.S.,” for slave stealer, were branded on the hand of Captain Jonathan W. Walker, an ardent abolitionist, as shown in this dramatic photograph. Walker was born in Harwich on Cape Cod in 1799 and spent his early years between the shipyard and the sea. His life-long interest in the abolition of slavery probably began in 1835 when he went on an expedition to Mexico to assist in the colonization of American Black slaves seeking freedom, and he was also one of the conductors along the underground railroad.
1845 daguerreotype of Walker’s branded hand by photographers Southworth & Hawes. The image is reversed; it was his right hand that was branded.
By 1844, Walker moved to Florida where his efforts for the abolitionist cause met with adversity. In that year, he attempted to assist seven freedom seekers by sailing them from Florida to the West Indies. During the voyage, he became ill. His crew was untrained in sailing and navigational procedures and, as a result, they were “rescued” by a proslavery wrecking sloop and returned to Florida. The freedom seekers were recaptured by their enslavers, and Walker was arrested. He was convicted and sentenced in a federal court, spent one year in solitary confinement, and was fined $600. It was at this time that his right palm was branded with the letters “S.S.”
The event did not deter Walker from spreading the abolitionist word. His fine was paid by Northern abolitionists, and between 1845 and 1849 he lectured throughout the country on antislavery subjects. He settled in Muskegon County, Michigan, where he died in 1878; a monument to him was unveiled there in the same year. John Greenleaf Whittier, the poet and abolitionist, paid tribute to Walker in his poem “The Branded Hand” which first appeared in a book of abolitionist poetry entitled Voices of Freedom in 1846 and included the passage:
Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave!
Its branded palm shall prophesy, “SALVATION TO THE SLAVE!”
The photograph of Walker’s hand was commissioned by Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1808–1892), a Boston abolitionist, while Walker was in that city, probably in 1845. It was taken at the daguerreotype studio of Southworth and Hawes, a prominent partnership famous for its daguerreotypes of renowned individuals, groups, and views of Boston, and it has been called “one of the earliest conceptual portraits in that a body part can stand for the total personality.” Due to the reverse image consistent with the daguerreotype process, the image appears to be the left hand, but is in fact the right.
Josiah Johnson Hawes and Albert Sands Southworth opened their daguerreotype studio in 1843, inspired by an 1840 lecture by Francois Gouraud, Louis Daguerre’s American agent. Hawes, born in East Sudbury, Massachusetts, worked as an itinerant portrait painter from 1829, but in 1841 he began to pursue the commercial prospects of this new permanent photographic process. Southworth was born in West Fairlee, Vermont, and, after hearing Gouraud’s lecture, opened a daguerreotype studio with an old Phillips Academy classmate, Joseph Pernell, in Cabotville. After this business was ruined by Southworth’s experiments, he joined forces with Hawes in 1843. The partnership ended temporarily in 1849 when Southworth left for California in search of gold. His health failed, however, and he returned to Boston in 1851 to resume his partnership with Hawes. Southworth and Hawes received a patent for their invention, the “Grand Parlor Stereoscope,” in 1854. The partnership was dissolved in 1861-1862 but not before the partners created some of the most famous daguerreotypes produced in the United States, some of which are now held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.
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Camille du Gast, the First Woman to Race Consistently at International Level
“The danger of an accident is always present in my mind, though I am never afraid.” – Camille du Gast, Motor Monthly, Dec. 1903.
Camille du Gast (1868–1942) became the first woman to race consistently at international level in 1904. After witnessing the start of the Paris-Lyon road race, the following year she was sat behind the wheel competing in the Paris-Berlin race. She finished around 30th overall in a 20 horsepower Panhard.
Daredevil sportswoman, animal rights activist and feminist Camille du Gast grew up a tomboy in bourgeois Belle Epoque Paris society. Self-described as an “exploratrice,” du Gast’s liberal upbringing and financial freedom allowed her to transgress gendered social norms of her class and pursue sporting and adventure with relative freedom for a woman of her time.
Married at 22 to Jules Crespin, a wealthy department store heir, she was widowed just a few years later with a young daughter and an enormous fortune. Though her husband had been supportive of her adventures, even joining her on multiple hot air balloon expeditions, du Gast’s professional career as a motorist gained momentum after his death. Developing an interest in car racing, du Gast began collecting cars and became one of the first women to obtain a driver’s license. By 1904 she had become the first and only woman official for the Automobile Club de France (ACF). Du Gast was one of a few elite women who participated in car races across Europe for sport, alongside the Duchesse d’Uzes Anne de Rouchechouart de Mortemart and Baroness Helene van Zuylen. She would go on to competitively motor-boat, fence, ski, toboggan and fence in various competitions around the world, drawing attention for her sportsmanship as well as her adherence to women’s standards of dressing, even wearing a corset to some of the most dangerous races of the time.
At the same time, du Gast became involved in diplomacy and political activism. The sensational quality of du Gast’s life was well adapted to the women’s magazines and journals of the time. She used this publicity to bring awareness to causes about which she was passionate. Because of this popularity and her covetable fortune, however, du Gast became a target for her estranged daughter, who attempted to murder her mother in 1910 in an effort to access her fortune. Following this event, du Gast devoted herself to her social and political causes. Helping to provide access to medicine in Morocco, defending animal rights as the president of the French Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and advocating for women’s emancipation as vice-president of the Ligue Francaise du Droit des Femmes. Her outspoken and fearless nature set her apart from her contemporaries and she continued to be active in these circles until her death in 1942.
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“Blown Away Guy”: The Most Iconic Music Image of All Time
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Maxell cassette tape in 1980 created the all-time iconic music image that will last far into the future, the “Blown Away Guy.”
In the 1980s, Maxell became an icon of pop culture when it produced advertisements popularly known as “Blown Away Guy” for its line of audio cassettes. The campaign began as a two-page advertising spread in Rolling Stone magazine in 1980. The photo shows a man sitting low in a (Le Corbusier Grand Confort LC2) high armed chair in front of, and facing, a JBL L100 speaker. His hair and necktie, along with the lampshade to the man’s right and the martini glass on the low table to the man’s left, are being blown back by the tremendous sound from speakers in front of him — supposedly due to the audio accuracy of Maxell’s product. The man is shown desperately clinging to the armrests but defiantly looking ahead at the source of the music through sunglasses, though calmly catching his drink before it slides off the end table.
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Barbara La Marr: The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful For Hollywood
Born 1896 as Reatha Dale Watson in Yakima, Washington, American actress and screenwriter Barbara La Marr spent her early life in the Pacific Northwest before relocating with her family to California when she was a teenager. After performing in vaudeville and working as a dancer in New York City, she moved to Los Angeles with her second husband and became a screenwriter for Fox Film Corporation, writing several successful films for the company.
La Marr was finally ‘discovered’ by Douglas Fairbanks, who gave her a prominent role in The Nut (1921), then cast her as Milady de Winter in his production of The Three Musketeers (1921). After two further career-boosting films with director Rex Ingram (The Prisoner of Zenda and Trifling Women, both with Ramon Novarro), La Marr signed with Arthur H. Sawyer to make several films for various studios, including The Hero (1923), Souls for Sale (1923), and The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1924), the first and last of which she co-wrote.
La Marr appeared in twenty-seven films during her career between 1920 and 1926. She was also noted by the media for her beauty, dubbed as the “Girl Who Is Too Beautiful,” as well as her tumultuous personal life.
During her career, La Marr became known as the pre-eminent vamp of the 1920s; she partied and drank heavily, once remarking to the press that she only slept two hours a night. In 1924, La Marr’s health began to falter after a series of crash diets for comeback roles further affected her lifestyle, leading to her death from pulmonary tuberculosis and nephritis at age 29 in 1926. She was posthumously honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry.
Take a look at these vintage photos to see the beauty of Barbara La Marr during her short career.
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Vintage Photographs of Birmingham, England in the 1960s
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. In the last 200 years, from a market town of Warwickshire, Birmingham has risen into the fastest-growing city of the 19th century, spurred on by a combination of civic investment, scientific achievement, commercial innovation and by a steady influx of migrant workers into its suburbs. By the 20th century it had become the metropolitan hub of the United Kingdom’s manufacturing and automotive industries, having earned itself a reputation first as a city of canals, then of cars, and most recently as a major European convention and shopping destination. Birmingham is commonly referred to as the Second city of the United Kingdom.
As one of the United Kingdom’s major cities, Birmingham is considered to be the social, cultural, financial, and commercial centre of the Midlands. In the years following the Second World War, the face of Birmingham was heavily changed by a major influx of immigrants from the Commonwealth of Nations, with large communities from Southern Asia and the Caribbean settling in the city, turning Birmingham into one of the UK’s leading multicultural cities.
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40 Beautiful Photos of Wendy Barrie in the 1930s and 1940s
Born 1912 as Marguerite Wendy Jenkins in London, British-American actress Wendy Barrie made her screen debut in the film Threads in 1932. She went on to make a number of motion pictures for London Films under the Korda brothers, Alexander and Zoltan, the best known of which is 1933’s The Private Life of Henry VIII, in which she portrayed Jane Seymour.
Barrie moved to the United States in 1935 and made her first Hollywood film for Fox opposite Spencer Tracy in the romantic comedy It’s a Small World, followed by Under Your Spell with Lawrence Tibbett. Loaned to MGM, Barrie starred opposite James Stewart in the 1936 film Speed. In 1939, she starred with Richard Greene and Basil Rathbone in the 20th Century Fox version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and with Lucille Ball in RKO’s Five Came Back. During 1939 and the early 1940s, Barrie made several of The Saint and The Falcon mystery films with George Sanders. She made her final motion picture in 1954.
After appearances in more than 15 films in Britain and more than 30 in Hollywood, Barrie’s contribution to the industry was recognized with a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street, near the corner of Hollywood and Vine.
Barrie died in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1978, aged 65, following a stroke that had left her debilitated for several years. Take a look at these gorgeous photos to see portraits of a young Wendy Barrie in the 1930s and 1940s.
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