Bringing You the Wonder of Yesterday – Today
Loves of an Actress is a lost 1928 American silent romantic drama film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Pola Negri. It was produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky with the distribution through Paramount Pictures.
The film had a soundtrack of either Vitaphone or Movietone of music and sound effects. These vintage photos captured portraits of Pola Negri during the filming of Loves of an Actress in 1928.
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Maxwell Q. Klinger is a most unusual character from the MAS*H television series which ran from September 17, 1972, to February 28, 1983. Jamie Farr portrayed this comical, cross-dressing enlisted man who was always trying to get sent home from the Korean War.
According to Farr, MAS*H creator Larry Gelbart based the character on comedian Lenny Bruce, who was discharged from the navy at the end of World War II for, among other things, wearing a woman’s WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) uniform.
The series popularized the use of the term “Section 8,” which referred to a World War II-era army regulation providing for the discharge of personnel deemed mentally unfit to serve. In the mid-20th century, psychologists regularly diagnosed homosexual individuals with mental disorders, and evidence of non-normative gender identity or sexuality could lead to a discharge from military service.
Farr explained that he didn’t need to audition for the part. He had played a small role in F Troop, a slapstick sitcom about a remote army outpost at the end of the Civil War, for director Gene Reynolds. When Reynolds became the producer for MAS*H and read the script with the Klinger character, he reportedly said, “there is only one guy who can play this and get away with it, and it’s Jamie Farr.”
The chance to work on the show came at a critical time for Farr.
“I was really down on my luck. I hadn’t been working, so when they called me, they didn’t even tell me what the part was, they just said you got a part, and it pays $250 for the day,” Farr said. “So, I said to my agent, boy I’ll be there.”
Farr described going down to the studio and being ushered into a trailer where a woman’s WAC (Women’s Army Corps) uniform was hanging. He thought that he was sharing a dressing room with an actress, but then Gene told him that was his costume.
“So I said, ‘what the heck kind of part is this?’ But I put the thing on, and he started laughing because of my hairy, bowed legs and everything, then he took me on this stage, and everybody had a good time laughing.”
Farr only had five or six lines in that early episode, but he made an impression on the producers and the audience.
“It made such an impact that they called me back, and I think I did six more of those first-year shows, and that’s how I got connected with the series.” Originally conceived as a bit part, Klinger appeared in 12 episodes in the second season and became a regular member of the cast by the third season.
“The show was shot in color, but everything, the jeeps, the tents, the uniforms, were olive drab, so I think Klinger’s outfits were the only things that brought color to the show,” he said. “The cheesier and more outlandish the outfit, the better it was.”
The outfits that Klinger wore were culled from the 20th Century Fox wardrobe department, and many had been used in earlier productions. Handwritten on the labels of the museum’s two Klinger dresses are the names of famous actresses who wore them first.
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Born 1926 as Dolores Eartha Loehr in in Los Angeles, California, American actress Diana Lynn was considered a child prodigy. She began taking piano lessons at age 4, and by the age of 12 was playing with the Los Angeles Junior Symphony Orchestra.
Lynn made her film debut playing the piano in They Shall Have Music and was once again back at the keyboard, accompanying Susanna Foster, in There’s Magic in Music. In 1944, she scored an outstanding success in Preston Sturges’ The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. She appeared in two Henry Aldrich films, and played writer Emily Kimbrough in two films Our Hearts Were Young and Gay and Our Hearts Were Growing Up both co-starring Gail Russell.
After a few more films, Lynn was cast in one of the year’s biggest successes, the comedy My Friend Irma with Marie Wilson as Irma, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in their film debuts. The group reprised their roles for the sequel My Friend Irma Goes West, and five years later Lynn was reunited with Martin and Lewis for one of their last films, You’re Never Too Young.
During the 1950s, Lynn acted in a number of films. She also had many TV leading roles during the 1950s, particularly in the middle years of the decade. As a solo pianist, she released at least one single on Capitol Records with backing by the Paul Weston orchestra.
Before filming started on Play It as It Lays, Lynn suffered a stroke and died on December 18, 1971, at the age of 45. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: for motion pictures, at 1625 Vine Street and for television at 6350 Hollywood Boulevard.
Take a look at these vintage photos to see the beauty of young Diana Lynn in the 1940s and 1950s.
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The Federal city of Bonn is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. About 24 km (15 mi) south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany’s largest metropolitan area.
The city is famous as a university city, the birthplace of Beethoven, as well as the capital city of West Germany from 1949 to 1990. It is home to the University of Bonn and a total of 20 United Nations institutions, the highest number in all of Germany.
These photos show what Bonn looked like from between the 1920s and 1940s.
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The product of the fertile imagination of a Professor E. J. Christie of Marion, Ohio, this gyroscopic unicycle was supposedly capable of speeds of up to 400 miles per hour, although at the time of an article from the April, 1923 issue of Popular Science, it had yet to be tested. To be fair, the inventor only claimed “a speed of at least 250 miles per hour, and possibly 400 miles per hour” though this is the sort of uncertainty that suggests he hadn’t a clue what he was about.
Professor E.J. Christie atop a version of his 14 foot monster monowheel in 1923, which may or may not have been tested. Note the smaller model.
The design had a centre wheel of 14-foot in diameter, and weighed 2400 pounds. The “gyro wheels” on each side of the driver weighed some 500 pounds each. The machine, which was reportedly “being constructed in Philadelphia” at the time, was to have been powered by a 250-horsepower airplane motor.
Here is the text of the Popular Science Monthly article:
Will Gyroscopic Wheel Shatter Speed Records?
DOWN the track of a motor speedway a wheel 14 feet high whirls at such a dizzy speed that racing automobiles traveling at top speed––115 miles an hour––seem almost to stand still. So fast does the giant wheel travel that the details of its design can scarcely be distinguished. This is a possibility prophesied by Prof. E. J. Christie, of Marion, Ohio, for an amazing gyroscopic unicycle of his invention, now being constructed in Philadelphia, Pa. The 2400-pound 14-foot model of the speed wheel is almost ready for a trial spin and Christie confidently predicts that it will develop a speed of at least 250, and possibly 400 miles an hour!
In design, the strange vehicle resembles a giant bicycle wheel with an exceptionally long hub, at the end of which supporting spokes are fastened. Attached to the axle, on each side of the center are 500-pound gyroscopes designed to rotate at a speed of 90 revolutions a minute––a speed sufficient to maintain equilibrium.
From April, 1923. Chrstie has numerous automotive patents in his name for inventions or improvements.
Suspended from the axle by a frame, the upper end of which supports the driver’s seat, is a 250-horsepower airplane motor, the power of which is transmitted to the axle through a friction clutch, three-speed transmission, and jackshaft. An additional chain drive in the center of the axle connects the engine transmission with the gyroscopes.
The machine is controlled and operated like an automobile from the operator’s seat immediately above the axle. Here the driver is saved from swinging about the axle by the steadying weight of the engine slung below.
“How can such a strange vehicle be turned?” you may ask.
This problem Professor Christie has solved in a unique way. By means of the steering wheel, he shifts the position of the two gyroscopic flywheels on the axle to the right or to the left. When the center of equilibrium is thus shifted, the unicyle immediately turns in its course, without tilting, the degree of turn depending upon the distance the gyroscopes are shifted. In other words, the farther the shift, the shorter the turn.
The wheel is supplied with a seven-inch rubber tire, the manufacture of which proved a problem in itself. Pressure resistance was found to be so great that several attempts were made before a strong enough tire was produced.
The new gyroscopic unicycle is not the first machine of its kind Professor Christie has produced, although it is by far the most pretentious. He first used a gyroscope to demonstrate the rotation and momentum of the earth.
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Bo Derek had her first major film appearance in 10, a 1979 American romantic comedy film written, produced, and directed by Blake Edwards. It was considered a trend-setting film at the time and was one of the year’s biggest box-office hits. It follows a man in middle age who becomes infatuated with a young woman whom he has never met, leading to a comic chase and an encounter in Mexico.
10 was released by Warner Bros., opening in 706 theaters. It opened at number one in the United States, earning $3,526,692 ($12,174,445 today) its opening weekend. The film went on to make a total of $74,865,517 ($258,442,218 today) in United States, making it one of the top-grossing films of 1979. It received mostly positive reviews from critics.
Take a look at these stunning photos to see glamorous beauty of Bo Derek while filming 10 in 1979.
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Hollywood hardman Clint Eastwood found his favorite pint of beer during his visit to Manchester on June 12, 1967. “I love beer but the froth gets up my nose,” he said. And immediately he blew it off the top of his pint.
The actor had just risen to fame as the “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” of Spaghetti Westerns. He was also well known for playing Rowdy Yates in the TV series Rawhide.
Eastwood was on a UK tour promoting the first film in the “Dollars Trilogy,” A Fistful of Dollars, which also starred Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. The other movies in the series were The Good the Bad and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More.
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Pets are part of many children’s lives. Parental involvement, open discussion, and planning are necessary to help make pet ownership a positive experience for everyone. A child who learns to care for an animal, and treat it kindly and patiently, may get invaluable training in learning to treat people the same way. Careless treatment of animals is unhealthy for both the pet and the child involved.
Children raised with pets show many benefits. Developing positive feelings about pets can contribute to a child’s self-esteem and self-confidence. Positive relationships with pets can aid in the development of trusting relationships with others. A good relationship with a pet can also help in developing non-verbal communication, compassion, and empathy.
These vintage photos capture lovely moments of children posing with their beloved animals.
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Born 1919 as Shirley Levy in New York City, New York, American band singer, Broadway star and actress Carol Bruce began her career as a singer in the late 1930s with Larry Clinton and his band. She sang with Ben Bernie’s orchestra in 1940-1941.
Bruce made her Broadway debut in Louisiana Purchase, with songs by Irving Berlin, who discovered her at a nightclub in Newark, New Jersey. She was the first actress to play the role of Julie in a Broadway production of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat since the 1932 Broadway revival.
Bruce appeared with Abbott and Costello in Keep ’Em Flying (1941). Her first serious film role was in This Woman Is Mine (1941). She had supporting roles many years later in the films American Gigolo (1980) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), and probably best-remembered for her recurring role as the domineering and meddlesome Lillian “Mama” Carlson (mother of the station manager played by Gordon Jump) on CBS’ WKRP in Cincinnati.
Bruce died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, aged 87.
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