“While we’re looking at people, let’s look at Betty. She and Bogie seemed to have the most enormous opinion of each other’s charms, and when they fought it was with the utter confidence of two cats locked deliciously in the same cage.”
—Katharine Hepburn
Gerald Murphy
Razor, 1924
Oil on canvas, 32 X 36 in.
Dallas Museum of Art
Henry Fonda visiting Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck on the set of Banjo on my Knee (1936)
Fred Herzog,
Three Cars, Portland, 1958
Brigitte Bardot in La vérité (The Truth), 1960
Rick McGinnis
Bullring
Granada, Spain, 2007
On June 12, 1939, baseball legends line up at the first induction ceremony of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Front row, left to right: Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, Cy Young.
Rear row: Honus Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Napoleon Lajoie, George Sisler and Walter Johnson.
A baseball signed by Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Tris Speaker, George Sisler, Walter Johnson, Connie Mack, Nap Lajoie, Eddie Collins and Pete Alexander — in 1939, at their induction ceremony into the Baseball Hall of Fame — just sold for $623,369. Lou Gehrig did not sign because on that day he was on his way to the Mayo Clinic for his ALS.
“I’m notorious for giving a bad interview. I’m an actor and I can’t help but feel I’m boring when I’m on as myself.”
—Rock Hudson
‘The Song of the Shirt’
by John Thomas Peele, 1847
Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany
The night Jean Harlow became a star: The May 24th, 1930 premiere of the Howard Hughes production Hell’s Angels at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. This photograph was taken from the rooftop of a building at the corner of La Brea and Hollywood Blvd. and documents the five block long procession of klieg lights, limousines, movies stars, and movie fans who gathered for the debut screening of the groundbreaking aviation epic. Newsreel footage of the premiere can be viewed here. The premiere was also recreated in the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator in 2004, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes and Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow.
Art Deco Walnut Zenith Stratosphere Radio, 1937
Carole Lombard & William Powell on their honeymoon, 1931. They divorced in 1933.
Eye catching cover art for Dashiell Hammett’s hardboiled novels.
“My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I’m fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn’t make a good suspense film.”
—Alfred Hitchcock
Polish poster for La Parisienne (The Parisian), 1958, starring Brigitte Bardot and Charles Boyer
Edouard Boubat
Children
Montmartre, Paris, 1948
Erwin Blumenfeld
Ruth Knowles
Vogue, c. 1949 © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld
Photo by Ruth Orkin, Tirza on Sinks, Israel, 1951
This 1929 cover of Photoplay gives a good indication how the coming of sound terrified Hollywood. Norma Talmadge, a huge star in the silent era, was not able to make the transition and retired from the movies.
Rabbi Moshe Pesach (front left) with his Sons, Members of the Romaniote Jewish Community, Volos, Greece c.1935, Uncredited photographer.
Livia Yarden wishes all our friends and relatives a peaceful and inspirational Shabbat.
Ed Ruscha, The End, 2003
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
NOTE: Click on video titles inside the thumbnail images, below, to open that video in YouTube
12 Comments
Your grandchildren always have the prettiest smiles! Rick has a good eye for lines and color. Seeing his picture of the bullring in Grenada reminded me of visiting Madrid – at the Plaza del Toros and seeing a bull fight.
It wasn’t want I imagined.
Can you imagine how dreary Paris was in 1948? I think a movie that caught the atmosphere of immediate postwar Germany was The Reader
Three Cars – even in 1958 to see a 40s Packard was pretty rare.
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Nice collection. The photo of the rabbi and his sons is beautiful.
The razor reminded me of my father, he had one just like that in the 1960 when I was a kid.
That baseball seems to have sold for a very low price.
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Here’s a recording of Norma Talmadge’s voice — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSN1_jKgFFY — probably from the 1930s when she was on her then-husband George Jessel’s radio show. Her voice wasn’t that bad, but you could hear some New Jersey. Could be with the newfangled sound they were put off by her voice with the focus on diction and what-all-else, as portrayed in “Singin’ In The Rain.”
Supposedly, she was the inspiration for characters Lina Lamont and Norma Desmond.
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I didn’t find anything wrong with her — natural and light. And modern.
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Nice to see the Gerald Murphy paintings again. I’ve been fascinated by their history, Gerald and Sara , for years. The loss of the two boys was so tragic. The one with TB apparently contracted it on their visit to Hollywood. From a studio driver.
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An interesting article about them in The New Yorker:
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Well… that didn’t go as planned. Here is the link:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/07/28/living-well-is-the-best-revenge
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Calvin Tompkins was a neighbor of theirs and expanded that article to a full length book by the same title, which is in my library. Their daughter, Honoria, who was their only surviving child, has also written a book about them. They doted on their children, especially Gerald.
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Michael, I understand Honoria Murphy Donnelly died twenty years ago, too young, but having cracked eighty-one.
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That Photoplay cover reminds me of the scene in “Sunset Boulevard” when Norma Desmond pushes away the boom microphone that brushes up against her.
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Another awesome lineup, Robert. No Myrna this week, but I’m in love with that Zenith radio, so I’m happy! 🙂
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We had a similar Zenith radio when I was a child and my sister and I used to fight over it. I would be listening to “Sky King” or “The Shadow” and she would come in the room and flip it to music. My music appreciation was not to flower until college.
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