Dolores Del Rio and Her Hollywood Home

What can I say?  I love Dolores Del Rio.  She was born in Mexico, moved to Hollywood during the silent era and started working in the movies almost immediately.  She made a couple  of really good silents, especially What Price Glory and Ramona, and then, despite the accent, made an easy transition to sound films, making a few classics along the way.  Right of the top of my head, Madame Du Barry, Flying Down to Rio, In Caliente, and Journey Into Fear.  As the Hollywood parts became harder to get, she returned to Mexico and became a big star all over again, and when she was working, Mexican cinema was in a golden era.  As she aged out of lead actress territory, she came back to the United States and finished up her career with TV and smaller movie parts.  She died in 1983, aged 78. 

Next time I get to the Hollywood Walk of Fame with all the cheesy tourist shops I'll have to check if someone is still making postcards of star's homes.  I doubt it, but you never can tell.

Karsh of Ottawa

It's interesting to see what can be found on EBay.  I was just shuffling through old photographs when this image caught my eye.  It was, of course, a nice studio portrait, but what really drew me in was the printer's mark in the lower right hand corner.  "KARSH OTTAWA" refers to one of the most famous portraitists of the 20th century.

 Yousuf Karsh was born in 1908 in Turkey.  He was a survivor of the Armenian genocide.  In 1923, he arrived in Canada and was taken in by his uncle, a studio photographer who taught his nephew the trade.  In 1932, Karsh opened a studio in Ottawa, the capitol of Canada.  He would eventually land an important client.  Mackenzie King was the Prime Minister of Canada, and he not only sat for portraits of his own, but began arranging for Karsh to take portraits of visiting dignitaries.  In 1941 he took  a picture of Winston Churchill that would become the single most reproduced photographic portrait in history.  In 1945 Life magazine paid Karsh $100 for use of the Churchill portrait  on the cover.  After that, Karsh would receive a number of commissions from Life for other portraits of some of the most prominent people in the world.  Karsh died in 2002.

Take a look at the soldiers uniform and a patch can be seen identifying him as a member of the Dutch army.  The most obvious explanation is that he was in exile from the Nazi occupied Netherlands.  It was almost certainly taken after the Churchill portrait.

More Waitresses of the Great Depression

It looks like these two are in some small town out in the middle of nowhere or in some sort of mining camp.  Then again, during the depression, the government started building huge dams in the western United States.  Whole towns were also built to house workers and their families.  Maybe these two worked in the private towns, full of gambling, liquor, and others vices, that cropped up to provide the less approved activities. 

Waitresses of the Great Depression

I like to think they worked at a rather seedy road house, not unlike the Greek's in The Postman Always Rings Twice. 

Let's Ride

What can I say?  I love bicycles.

Two Women Somewhere In Europe

Another real photo postcard.  There's some writing on the back, but it's too faded to fully make out.  I can tell, though, that it's not in English.  There's part of a date that starts with a day 6, a month that I can't decipher, and a year, 1920. 

Grandpa's Lady

The weird world of real photo postcards.  For those of you who can't read sideways, it says, "Calls herself grandpa's lady."  That is the strangest hat I've ever seen on a child.  At first I thought she was standing in front of something, but after blowing it up, no, it's just the hat.

The Photographist

When I first started gathering up old photographs, I was only interested in cabinet cards, CDV's, and glass negatives.  Mostly, because they were really, really old.  Of course, back then, in the late sixties, World War 2 veterans were everywhere, and I knew quite a few World War 1 veterans as well.  In fact, I knew a lot of people who were born in the 19th century.  I knew people who could tell me about the first time they had seen a car, an airplane; the first time they had heard a radio or seen a talking movie.  Somehow pictures from the recent past seemed far less interesting.  As time passed and as people born in the twenties, thirties and forties became fewer in number, the photographs they took became fascinating to me.  And now, for some unknown reason, I've started looking for really, really old images once again.

It didn't take a lot of research to dig up some info on J. K. Patch of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.  Jonas King Patch was born in 1824 and became an itinerant photographer in the daguerreotype and tintype era.  Eventually he settled down at one location, in Shelburne Falls, and opened a studio.  Jonas died in 1909.  He had several children, one of whom, Henry S. Patch followed in his father's footsteps and took over the studio.  Henry was born in 1856 and died in 1939.  I found a notation that Henry gave up the studio ten years before his death.  I also found a brief notice where Jonas was referred to as a prominent photographist.  A term I've never run into before, but I like it.

Deep Sea Diver

So much for the practice of typing out what's on the back of postcards.  I'm just too lazy to transcribe all of this info.  So, Oscar Griffith was born in 1895, arrived on Catalina, with his parents, at age 13 and became a coin diver.  Tourists, coming to the island would throw coins from the boats, and local boys would dive for the pennys, nickels, and dimes. .  The harbor waters were so clear that tourists could see the kids touch bottom.  Griffith served in the army in World War 1 and was an attraction at the 1934 World's Fair.  I'm sure he must have made the occasional trip to the mainland, but it seems that, other than the war and fair, he never really left the island.

Is Everybody Happy?

The emcee? A stand-up comedian? Someone famous?  If anyone recognizes the man, leave a comment.

Company Town

This one's been sitting in my thrown-in pile of photos for a long time, but after scanning and blowing it up, I'm not so sure I filed it correctly.  Yes, the woman is interesting, but it was the background that has made me question my original opinion.  I grew up in coal and steel country in western Pennsylvania, and when I was a child, it didn't take long to learn the difference between a small town and a company town. 

The classic company town  was built by the coal mine or the steel mill as housing for it's workers.  Most of the houses looked pretty much alike, rent was deducted from your paycheck, and as long as you were a worker in good standing with the company, you had a home.  If you got fired or quite, you were expected to move out in a day or two.  If you went on strike, you'd get evicted.  For some companies, retirement brought a small pension that included your home.  For others, retirement required having a son who went into the mills or mines who took over your home and allowed you to stick around. 

Some company towns were little more than rural slums, while others were quite nice.  I've been in coal towns were the houses were simple, wood frame affairs, that even when they were new, offered little more than dry place in the winter.  Vandergrift, a town not too far from where I grew up was designed by Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot, the same firm that designed New York City's Central Park.  In the end, most of the mills and mines let housing go as a benefit and sold all the houses off.  And if you didn't have the money, well the mine was more than willing to float a lone at an extremely high rate of interest.

So, the houses in the background look similar enough that they could have all been built for company housing, and in most company towns, one house could only be distinguished from another by the street number near the front door. 

Throw-In, In Color

Dated "SEP 69"  Back in the good old days when I still had a full time job, I'd think about leaving L.A. for some small town in the Pacific northwest.  I thought it would be nice to have a backyard.  The big problem was that on my L.A. salary buying a house in rural America wouldn't have been a problem.  But what I could make outside of Los Angeles was so small I'd have the limited space of the city but none of the advantages of urban life.

It's The Hat

When I was growing up, Easter was the time of year when ladies bought new hats.  I still don't know why hats are associated with the Resurrection. Dated "March 1952" 

Standing In Bushes

Well, standing next to a bush and a tree.  Most of the trow-in photos I have are photos of women just kind of standing there.  I think it's because men had the cameras.

In the Backyard

Another one of the throw-ins.  Going by the clothes and the car that can be seen in the right background, I'm guessing mid to late 1930's.

Na-num

I've written about this before.  I quite often buy envelopes of old photographs.  Sometimes they're related by a general theme, women, people with cars, children, that sort of thing.  Sometimes they're just random snapshots.  I'd never buy anything without at least a few images I really wanted, but, more often than not, there are a number of photos I think of as throw-ins.  It's not that I think they're bad pictures, or photos with no interest whatsoever.  They're just photographs I wouldn't have purchased on their own.  So, over the next few days, some of the throw-ins.

Written on the back, "Back door at 2309 Grand Blvd. Cedar Heights, Cedar Falls, Iowa.  Jan. 1st 1940.  Na-num."  A little less than a year before Pearl Harbor.