If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Leonard McCombe’s image that inspired the Marlboro Man campaign is worth over $15 billion.
The photograph above shows Clarence Hailey Young, a foreman at the JA Ranch in Texas. McCombe had set out on assignment by Life magazine to document the real way of life of these cowboys, dispelling the glamorous image of most Hollywood movies at that time for the harsh and difficult work of ranching reality.
Something in that 1949 photo must have caught the eye of legendary advertising executive Leo Burnett who later used it as his template for the Marlboro Man. Young’s wrinkled and unshaven face framed by a large cowboy hat and bandana around his neck looked perfect to the ad executive. The fact that he had a lit cigarette on his lips probably convinced Mr. Burnett to choose the cowboy lifestyle for his advertising campaign.
The campaign for Marlboro was meant to include other macho professions, but the cowboy image emerged to be the clear winner. The choice obviously worked for Phillip Morris as the original filtered cigarettes which were first advertised for women as “Mild as May” became the winning ingredient when one tried to picture the place “Where the Flavor is.” Within two years, sales of the cigarette increased three-fold.
Darren Winfield was the first commercial Marlboro Man, with many other actors and real cowboys following in his footsteps. Similarly, many photographers, including Jim Krantz and Sam Abell were commissioned to make the iconic ads.
While most tobacco companies nowadays have shifted their advertising campaigns away from the cowboy image, the original idea has been considered to be one of the most successful ad campaigns of all time. And to think that McCombe’s Marlboro Man shot sparked the idea that would be worth millions of dollars from what was originally a ladies’ cigarette.
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After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with Colpix Records and recorded a multitude of studio and live albums. Simone became a favorite performer in Greenwich Village after her live album Nina Simone at Town Hall was released. By this time, Simone performed pop music only to make money to continue her classical music studies.
In 1964, Simone changed record distributors to the Dutch Philips Records. She had always included songs in her repertoire that drew on her African-American heritage, such as “Brown Baby” by Oscar Brown and “Zungo” by Michael Olatunji on her album Nina at the Village Gate in 1962.
On her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone in Concert (1964), for the first time she addressed racial inequality in the United States in the song “Mississippi Goddam”. The song was released as a single, and it was boycotted in some southern states. Promotional copies were smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips. It was after this song that a civil rights message became the norm in Simone’s recordings and part of her concerts. As her political activism rose, the rate of release of her music slowed.
In 1967, Simone moved from Philips to RCA Victor. She sang “Backlash Blues” written by Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes, on her first RCA album, Nina Simone Sings the Blues (1967). On Silk & Soul (1967), she recorded Billy Taylor’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” and “Turning Point”. The album ‘Nuff Said! (1968) contained live recordings from the Westbury Music Fair of April 7, 1968, three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She dedicated the performance to him and sang “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)”, a song written by Gene Taylor. In 1969, she performed at the Harlem Cultural Festival in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park.
Take a look back at Simone in the 1960s through these 18 fascinating portraits:
In the late 1930s, photographer Helen Levitt rode the New York City subway system, first as an apprentice to photographer Walker Evans, then snapping photos of aloof passengers wearing fur coats, flat-brim hats, and antique brooches.
Yet for the majority of Levitt’s illustrious career (lasting until the 1990s), she ventured out of the underground to document life on Manhattan streets. She captured authentic moments — children playing on the sidewalk or dressing up for Halloween, a group of women gossiping — in neighborhoods including Harlem, the Lower East Side, and the Garment District.
Levitt spoke about her early pictures shot on the streets in the 1930s: “It was a good neighborhood for taking pictures in those days, because that was before television. There was a lot happening. And the older people would be sitting out on the stoops because of the heat. Those neighborhoods were very active.”
The New York Times, in 2009, described her as: “a major photographer of the 20th century who caught fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quiet drama on the streets of her native New York”.
New York, often called New York City (NYC) to distinguish it from the State of New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of New York State, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world’s most populous megacities. New York City is a global cultural, financial, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. New York is the most photographed city in the world. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, an established safe haven for global investors, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.
Situated on one of the world’s largest natural harbors, with water covering 36.4% of its surface area, New York City is composed of five boroughs, each of which is coextensive with a respective county of the state of New York. The five boroughs—Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County), Manhattan (New York County), the Bronx (Bronx County), and Staten Island (Richmond County)—were created when local governments were consolidated into a single municipal entity in 1898.The city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016. As of 2018, the New York metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of nearly $1.8 trillion, ranking it first in the United States. If the New York metropolitan area were a sovereign state, it would have the eighth-largest economy in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world.
New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in approximately 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under English control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. The city was regained by the Dutch in July 1673 and was renamed New Orange for one year and three months; the city has been continuously named New York since November 1674. New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity, entrepreneurship, and environmental sustainability, and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity.The New York Times has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and remains the U.S. media’s “newspaper of record”.In 2019, New York was voted the greatest city in the world per a survey of over 30,000 people from 48 cities worldwide, citing its cultural diversity.
Many districts and monuments in New York City are major landmarks, including three of the world’s ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013. A record 66.6 million tourists visited New York City in 2019. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world’s busiest pedestrian intersections, and a major center of the world’s entertainment industry. Many of the city’s landmarks, skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world, as is the city’s fast pace, spawning the term New York minute. The Empire State Building has become the global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures. Manhattan’s real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. Providing continuous 24/7 service and contributing to the nickname The City That Never Sleeps, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with 472 passenger rail stations; and Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere. The city has over 120 colleges and universities, including Columbia University, New York University, and the City University of New York system, which is the largest urban public university system in the United States. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the world’s leading financial center and the most powerful city in the world, and is home to the world’s two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. (Wikipedia)
Edo Bertoglio is a Swiss photographer and film director. He received his degree in film directing and editing at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinema Francais in Paris in 1975. He moved to New York City in 1976, where he found work as a photographer for Italian Vogue, and Andy Warhol’s Interview, and other magazines.
He became involved in the downtown art and music scenes of the late 1970s and early ’80s. During this time he was married to fashion designer Maripol, whom he has since divorced. He also took his photography experience and familiarity to rock music to do photographic work for the covers of LPs, completing many assignments for Atlantic, Arista, Chrysalis Records and Warner Brothers Records. He photographed The Bongos for RCA Records and for GQ Magazine. He also worked on Glenn O’Brien’s late night countercultural talk show TV Party.
In 1980, Bertoglio and Maripol secured backing from Rizzoli, through Fiorucci, to produce a film (with rock critic Glenn O’Brien) about the No Wave music scene and the general Lower East Side milieu. The film, titled New York Beat, was directed by Bertoglio, and young graffiti writer and future artist Jean-Michel Basquiat played the lead role, which was written by O’Brien to mirror his real life. The no-wave bands DNA, Tuxedomoon, The Plastics, James Chance and the Contortions, and others appear in the movie, as well as Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Fab Five Freddy, Deborah Harry and others play bit parts. After shooting finished in January 1981 Rizzoli pulled out of funding the project, and footage lay unedited for almost 20 years until it was released under the title Downtown 81 in 2000.
This is the shoe Marie Antoinette lost on the stairs as she was going up toward the guillotine on the morning of her execution on October 16, 1793. She lost her shoe, then she lost her head!
The shoe is now in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, France.
Marie Antoinette (November 2, 1755 – October 16, 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On May 10, 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen.
Marie Antoinette’s position at court improved when, after eight years of marriage, she started having children. She became increasingly unpopular among the people, however, with the French libelles accusing her of being profligate, promiscuous, harboring sympathies for France’s perceived enemies—particularly her native Austria—and her children of being illegitimate. The false accusations of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace damaged her reputation further. During the Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker.
Portrait of Marie Antoinette in court dress by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1778.
Several events were linked to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution after the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789. The June 1791 attempted flight to Varennes and her role in the War of the First Coalition had disastrous effects on French popular opinion. On August 10, 1792, the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly, and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison on August 13. On September 21, 1792, the monarchy was abolished. Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793. Marie Antoinette’s trial began on October 14, 1793, and two days later she was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed, also by guillotine, on the Place de la Révolution.
Preparing for her execution, she had to change clothes in front of her guards. She wanted to wear a black dress but was forced to wear a plain white dress, white being the color worn by widowed queens of France. Her hair was shorn, her hands bound painfully behind her back and she was put on a rope leash. Unlike her husband, who had been taken to his execution in a carriage, she had to sit in an open cart for the hour it took to convey her from the Conciergerie via the rue Saint-Honoré thoroughfare to reach the guillotine erected in the Place de la Révolution (the present-day Place de la Concorde). She maintained her composure, despite the insults of the jeering crowd. A constitutional priest was assigned to her to hear her final confession. He sat by her in the cart, but she ignored him all the way to the scaffold as he had pledged his allegiance to the republic.
Marie Antoinette’s execution on October 16, 1793: Sanson, the executioner, showing Marie Antoinette’s head to the people (anonymous, 1793).
Marie Antoinette was guillotined at 12:15 p.m. on October 16, 1793. Her last words are recorded as, “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès” or “Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose,” after accidentally stepping on her executioner’s shoe. Her head was one of which Marie Tussaud was employed to make death masks. Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the Madeleine cemetery located close by in rue d’Anjou. Because its capacity was exhausted the cemetery was closed the following year, on March 25, 1794.
The 1920s (pronounced “nineteen-twenties” often shortened to the “20s” or the “Twenties”) was a decade that began on January 1, 1920, and ended on December 31, 1929. In America, it is frequently referred to as the “Roaring Twenties” or the “Jazz Age”, while in Europe the period is sometimes referred to as the “Golden Twenties” because of the economic boom following World War I (1914-1918). French speakers refer to the period as the “Années folles” (“Crazy Years”), emphasizing the era’s social, artistic, and cultural dynamism.
The 1920s saw foreign oil companies begin operations in Venezuela, which became the world’s second-largest oil-producing nation. The devastating Wall Street Crash in October 1929 is generally viewed as a harbinger of the end of 1920s prosperity in North America and Europe. In the Soviet Union the New Economic Policy was created by the Bolsheviks in 1921, to be replaced by the first five-year plan in 1928. The 1920s saw the rise of radical political movements, with the Red Army triumphing against White movement forces in the Russian Civil War, and the emergence of far right political movements in Europe. In 1922, the fascist leader Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy. Economic problems contributed to the emergence of dictators in Eastern Europe to include Józef Pilsudski in Poland, and Peter and Alexander Karadordevic in Yugoslavia. First-wave feminism saw progress, with women gaining the right to vote in the United States (1920), Ireland (1921) and with suffrage being expanded in Britain to all women over 21 years old (1928).
In Turkey, nationalist forces defeated Greece, France, Armenia and Britain in the Turkish War of Independence, leading to the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the earlier proposed Treaty of Sèvres. The war also led to the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate. Nationalist revolts also occurred in Ireland (1919–1921) and Syria (1925–1927). Under Mussolini, Italy pursued a more aggressive foreign policy, leading to the Second Italo-Senussi War in Libya. In 1927, China erupted into a civil war between the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China (ROC) and forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Civil wars also occurred in Paraguay (1922–1923), Ireland (1922–1923), Honduras (1924), Nicaragua (1926–1927), and Afghanistan (1928–1929). Saudi forces conquered Jabal Shammar and subsequently, Hejaz.
A severe famine occurred in Russia in 1921–1922 due to the combined effects of economic disturbance because of the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War, exacerbated by rail systems that could not distribute food efficiently, leading to 5 million deaths. Another severe famine occurred in China in 1928–1930, leading to 6 million deaths. The Spanish flu (1918–1920) and the 1918–1922 Russia typhus epidemic, which had begun in the previous decade, caused 25–50 million and 2–3 million deaths respectively. Major natural disasters of this decade include the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake (258,707~273,407 deaths), the 1922 Swatow typhoon (50,000–100,000 deaths), the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake (105,385–142,800 deaths), and the 1927 Gulang earthquake (40,912 deaths).
Silent films were popular in this decade, with the 1925 American silent epic adventure-drama film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ being the highest-grossing film of this decade, grossing $9,386,000 worldwide. Other high-grossing films of this decade include The Big Parade and The Singing Fool. Sinclair Lewis was a popular author in the 1920s, with 2 of his books, Main Street and Elmer Gantry, becoming best-selling books in the United States in 1921 and 1927 respectively. Other best-selling books of this decade include All Quiet on the Western Front and The Private Life of Helen of Troy. Songs of this decade include “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and “Stardust”. (Wikipedia)
Submarine aircraft carrier, 1927.Actress Barbara Stanwyck (“Big Valley”) was a ‘Ziegfeld Girl’ in her early career. (1924)Quaint mobile home, 1926.Lillian and Dorothy Gish, 1924.Keeping cool on the golf course, 1920s.Tallulah Bankhead, 1923.Lee Miller, 1929.Stylish students at Cambridge in 1926.The first African-Native-American female aviator, Bessie Coleman with her plane in 1922.8 year-old chess prodigy Samuel Reshevsky defeating several masters at the same time in France, 1920.The 1924 Winter Olympics at Chamonix in the French Alps.Alfred G. Buckham’s aerial view of Edinburgh – 1920. Buster Keaton hanging from the branch of a tree with his two sons clinging onto his legs, 1928.Café Le Dôme à Paris, 1925.Huntsmen and their hounds in Oxford Street, London, 1920s.A cat wearing headphones to listen to a radio. January 1926.The eight Kennedy Children, Hyannis Port, 1928. (L-R) Jean, Bobby, Patricia, Eunice, Kathleen, Rosemary, Jack, and Joe Jr.The Louisville Slugger factory, shown here in 1929, has been making baseball bats out of ash wood since 1884.Remote islands off Canada’s Newfoundland province became America’s alcohol warehouse during the Prohibition. In this photo, Canadian Club whiskey is loaded onto a rumrunner in St. Pierre, 1922.Rin Tin Tin with his owner Lee Duncan in 1926. The famous canine movie star was rescued as a puppy from the bombed out remains of a German Army kennel in 1917.The Michelin Man mascot stands next to an advertising vehicle used in Santa Clara in 1926.Musical prodigy and jazz sensation, Hazel Scott, at the age of three or four. 1920s Bugatti Type 41 “Royale”, produced from 1926 – 1933, was the world’s greatest luxury automobile of the time.Portrait of Lee Miller, 1929. (Photo by Man Ray)7th and Smithfield, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1929.Dog show, Los Angeles, 1929.Daytona Beach in the 1920s.Shopping in the 1920s.Paris, 1920sBigg Market, Newscastle Upon Tyne, England. 1920 Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel, 1926.Aviator Amelia Earhart after becoming the first woman to fly an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, 1928.Young girl with flowers, circa 1920Montana – Three men stand in front of a plane on the Crow Reservation, 1927Montana – A chief on the Crow Indian Reservation, 1927.A cowgirl shows her sister how to handle the ropes, Fort Worth, Texas, 1929.New York City – A view of Washington Square at Fifth Avenue, 1929. Four tour guides of the Gettysburg battlefield wait for tourists. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1929.1920s Eileen Percy on an Indian Motorcycle in an Ad for Fox Shoes, 1920sWomen lifeguard team at Venice beach, Los Angeles in the 1920sLos Angeles municipal lifeguard, 1926London Bridge, 1925 Charlie Chaplin interviewing a young vaudeville actor to co-star with him in The Kid, Los Angeles, 1920 Women at the beach in St. Petersburg, Florida, June 1929The San Francisco Bay Area in 1920. Dodge auto on boardwalk.Northern California, 1920. Touring car at Yosemite National Park.Baseball legends Lou Gehrig, Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth in 1928. Louise Glaum And Pat O’malley Sit And Stand On A Steamshovel. 1923 San Francisco circa 1923. Buick touring car at Victor’s Dog.
A wall of suitcases, symbolizing the deportation of Jews to death camps, forms part of a permanent exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland. Each suitcase is a family, a life. It looks like a monument to the crime of humanity.
The Auschwitz museum says some of the victims’ 3,800 suitcases have been put into a state-of-the-art protective storage room partly funded by the European Union. Many of the suitcases are signed by their owners.
One is from Else Sara Ury, a German-language Jewish author of children’s books popular in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. She died in an Auschwitz gas chamber in 1943. More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, died at the Nazi death camp from 1940-45 during World War II.
Born 1928 in Jacksonville, Florida, American actress Wanda Hendrix made her first film, Confidential Agent, in 1945 at the age of 16 and for the first few years of her career was consistently cast in “B” pictures. By the late 1940s, she was being included in more prestigious films, such as Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Miss Tatlock’s Millions (1948), and starred with Tyrone Power in Prince of Foxes (1949).
In 1946, Audie Murphy saw Hendrix on the cover of Coronet magazine and arranged to meet her. The two were married in 1949, making the film Sierra (1950) together, but the marriage was short-lived; they divorced in 1950. Hendrix later said that Murphy had wanted her to give up her career, but more significantly, he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder from his service in World War II and during “flashback” episodes he would turn on her, once holding her at gunpoint. In her later years, Hendrix spoke of Murphy’s condition with sympathy.
Hendrix resumed her career, but found it difficult to obtain good roles. In 1954, she married wealthy sportsman James Langford Stack, Jr. and essentially retired from films, though she worked in live television dramatic anthology shows such as Pulitzer Prize Playhouse, Robert Montgomery Presents, The Plymouth Playhouse, The Ford Television Theatre, The Revlon Mirror Theater, and Schlitz Playhouse, and occasionally appeared in later series such as Bat Masterson, My Three Sons, Wagon Train and Bewitched. The couple divorced in 1958. She married Italian financier and oil company executive Steven LaMonte in 1969. They divorced in 1980.
Hendrix died in 1981 in Burbank, California from pleural pneumonia at the age of 52. These gorgeous photos captured portrait of a young and beautiful Wanda Hendrix in the 1940s and 1950s.
Born 1918 in O’Fallon, Illinois, American actor William Holden appeared uncredited in Prison Farm (1939) and Million Dollar Legs (1939) at Paramount. He had his first starring role was in Golden Boy (1939), costarring Barbara Stanwyck, in which he played a violinist-turned-boxer.
Holden served as a second and then a first lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit, including Reconnaissance Pilot (1943).
Holden’s first film back from the services was Blaze of Noon (1947), an aviator picture at Paramount directed by John Farrow. He followed it with a romantic comedy, Dear Ruth (1947) and he was one of many cameos in Variety Girl (1947). RKO borrowed him for Rachel and the Stranger (1948) with Robert Mitchum and Loretta Young, then he went over to 20th Century Fox for Apartment for Peggy (1948).
William Holden was one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. He won the Oscar for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953), and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for the television film The Blue Knight (1973).
Holden starred in some of Hollywood’s most popular and critically acclaimed films, including Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch, Picnic, and Network. He was named one of the “Top 10 Stars of the Year” six times (1954–1958, 1961), and appeared as 25th on the American Film Institute’s list of 25 greatest male stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Holden bled to death in his apartment in Santa Monica, California in 1981, after lacerating his forehead from slipping on a rug while intoxicated and hitting a bedside table, aged 63.
For his contribution to the film industry, Holden has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1651 Vine Street. He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Take a look at these handsome portrait photos to see a young William Holden from the 1930s and 1950s.
