Donna Reed

There's a lot on the back of this print, so let's get started with the photo credit stamp.  "KINDLY CREDIT M-G-M, Photo By CLARENCE S. BULL"  I don't often find photos by famous photographers.  Clarence Sinclair Bull was an American portrait photographer.  He was born in 1896 and in 1924 was hired by Samuel Goldwyn as the head photographer for the MGM Studios publicity department.  He worked for MGM for forty years, getting his first real recognition for a series of photographs he did of Greta Garbo.  He was know for having a sure hand with lighting and printing his own photos.  At least the first  photo, which gave the printing staff at MGM guidance for how he wanted his photos to look.  I don't know the answer to this question, but over time the photography studio at MGM had other photographers on staff.  Did Bull take every picture credited to him?  Bull died in 1979.

And the caption, "GLITTER FOR DIM OUT DINNERS.  Donna Reed favors the popular short dinner dress for cafe dinning and dancing.  Here she is seen wearing a gown of black crepe with sequins sprinkled over the softly flared skirt and peplum.  Fushia velvet belt.  Miss Reed's halo hat is black felt highlighted with a sequined ornament.  The Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer actress will be seen next with  Mickey Rooney in "The Human Comedy."

We can date this photo.  The Human Comedy was released in 1943.  Rooney plays a young man who stays home and takes care of his invalid mother while his older brother is in Europe fighting the Nazis.  I suppose, in this day and age, Donna Reed is best known for It's A Wonderful Life, released in 1946, though my favorite Reed Movie is John Ford's war movie, They Were Expendable.  In 1953, she won a best supporting actress Oscar for playing a prostitute in From Here To Eternity directed by Fred Zinnemann with, in addition to Reed, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Ernest Borgnine, and Frank Sinatra. She spent most of the 1950's on The Donna Reed Show, playing a suburban  housewife.  Despite the wholesome image, in real life Donna Reed was quite political.  She was an anti nuclear weapons activist and an early opponent of the Vietnam war.

Donna Reed was born in 1921 as Donnabelle Mullenger and died of pancreatic cancer in 1986.

Heartland

I've had this photo for years, and I didn't think I'd ever post it.  Anyway, while I'm not a big fan of Ken Burns, I've been watching a bit of his documentary series on country music.  It seems to me that if you're doing a series on country music, you'd include more performance footage.  Like maybe an actual complete song.  As I said, not a big fan.  While I was watching tonight's episode I remembered I had this photo in my collection.  It took me a bit to find it.  I've got a lot of boxes with photographs I haven't yet posted.  I looked up Heartland on Google.  I found a band by that name from Huntsville, Alabama, founded in 1996.  I have no date on this image, but the hair styles say seventies or eighties.  Too, the 309 area code is from Illinois, the actual heartland. 

The Band

No, not The Band, the one with Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson.  It's just a photo of one of the many bands that came down the pike, and more than likely broke up a few years down the line.  If anyone recognizes these guys, leave a comment.  Of course I could be wrong.  For all I know these guys are bricklayers.

More June Roselle

Different outfit, different lighting, and a bird cage.  All the June Roselle photos are 4x5 prints made on a double weight, fiber based paper. 

June Roselle

A couple of days ago,  I went on eBay and bought an envelope of theatrical photographs.  Those haven't arrived yet, but it did remind me that I already had a few theatricals sitting on my desk that hadn't yet been added to the blog. 

Written on the back of the top image, and the only one with any information, "June Roselle, daughter of composer L. Crist Carson."  In my search for information, I started with Carson and found absolutely nothing.  I tired the usual sources, IMDB, the internet move data base, IBDB, the internet Broadway data base, and of course, the plain old general Google search.  Then I decided to try the same approach with his daughter.  After all, show business has a lot of multi generational artists.  There wasn't much there, either, but something. 

June Roselle understudied Florence Henderson, on Broadway, in the title role of Fanny.  Fanny ran from 1954 to 1956, book by Joshua Logan and S.N. Behrman  music and lyrics by Harold Rome.  She was listed as having been a replacement for a handful of performances, so she did act on Broadway.  And then, that's it.  Nothing, nada.  No other Broadway  credits, nothing on IMDB, so no movie or television career.  It's as if she just disappeared. 

So, did she decide that show business wasn't for her?  Did she get married and go the family route?  Perhaps she died.