
—Katharine Hepburn

Razor, 1924
Oil on canvas, 32 X 36 in.
Dallas Museum of Art


Three Cars, Portland, 1958


Bullring
Granada, Spain, 2007

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.


—Rock Hudson

by John Thomas Peele, 1847
Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany





—Alfred Hitchcock


Children
Montmartre, Paris, 1948

Ruth Knowles
Vogue, c. 1949 © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld





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.
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.
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.
I didn’t find anything wrong with her — natural and light. And modern.
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.
An interesting article about them in The New Yorker:
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
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.
Michael, I understand Honoria Murphy Donnelly died twenty years ago, too young, but having cracked eighty-one.
That Photoplay cover reminds me of the scene in “Sunset Boulevard” when Norma Desmond pushes away the boom microphone that brushes up against her.
Another awesome lineup, Robert. No Myrna this week, but I’m in love with that Zenith radio, so I’m happy! 🙂
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.