Marilyn Monroe 1950

Marilyn Monroe, 1950 (by Earl Leaf)

Marilyn Monroe at agent Johnny Hyde’s home 1950. Last time we saw Marilyn here.

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Angela Greene & Turkey

Angela Greene (1921-1978)

Angela Greene (Dublin, 1921 – Los Angeles, 1978) was an Irish actress. At the age of six she was adopted by her uncle Eddie Greene and moved to Flushing, Queens. Starting out as a model, she became a popular WWII pin-up girl and her image graced the nose of the US bomber Skipper 2, which flew 25 missions over North Africa and Europe.

Despite her looks and talent, Greene was too independent-minded for a starring career in Hollywood. She once turned down a Paramount contract because she objected to being called a "starlet", claiming "Girls given that label get stuck with bit parts, pin ups, and wolves".

Nevertheless she played in many movies like Hollywood Canteen (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Day of the Locust (1975) and Futureworld (1976). She co-starred with Johnny Weissmuller in Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land (1951) and she was one of Elvis Presley's amours in Tickle Me (1965). She also appeared in dozens of TV shows like The Cisco Kid, The Donna Reed Show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Batman, The Waltons, and Baretta.

Angela Greene (Hollywood Canteen press photo)

During the early 1940s she was one of John F. Kennedy’s girlfriends when he was a naval lieutenant. She married businessman Stuart Martin and had three children. Greene later took up painting seriously and had several exhibitions of her work. She died of a stroke, just two weeks before turning 57.

Riverside Inn, Saranac Lake, N.Y

Riverside Inn, Saranac Lake, Adirondack Mountains, N.Y (ca. 1909)

 Excerpt from a photo found on Shorpy.com.

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City Wall Buren

City Wal, Buren (Netherlands) (photo by RfA)

side note: US President Martin Van Buren descended from Cornelis Maessen of the town of Buren in the Netherlands, who had come to America in 1631 and purchased a plot of land on Manhattan Island; his son Martin Cornelisen took the surname Van Buren (source: wikipedia).

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Captain Henry William Verschoyle

Captain Verschoyle, taken at the Crimea by Roger Fenton, 1855 (Art Institute Chicago) 

Captain Henry William Verschoyle served during the Crimean War with the Grenadier Guards. . He served the Eastern campaign of 1854-55, including the battles of Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman, siege and fall of Sebastopol, and was wounded in the trenches on the 5th September, 1855. 

Captain Verschoyle, Grenadier Guards (by Roger Fenton, Crimea, 1855)

‘Captain Henry William Verschoyle served through the whole of the campaign and carried the regimental colours at Inkermann, when surrounded by the enemy.’

‘A continued struggle, and hand to hand combat, now ensued, the men fighting with the desperation of those who know there is no support if they fail, and being often at such close quarters, that having no opportunity of reloading, they would make use of the butt-ends of their muskets...

(source).

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Theodore Roosevelt visiting the south

Theodore Roosevelt, who had begun his presidency on reasonably good terms for a half-northerner president, had infuriated the South by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine in the White House. Consequently, he waited a few years until the episode blew over and finally saw Bulloch Hall for the first time while visiting the South in 1905.

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The Four Elements

The Four Elements: Fire (left wing), Earth and Water (center panel), Air (right wing).
By Adolf Ziegler,  1937 (Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlugen).

This was one of Hitler’s favorite paintings, and he famously kept it hung above his fireplace in his apartment in Munich.

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The Bones of the Romanovs

The bones of the Romanovs, murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918, on display in Yekaterinburg before their reburial in St. Petersburg.

Exactly eighty years after Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed by Bolshevik troops on July 17, 1918, their remains were buried in an official state funeral in St. Petersburg, the old imperial capital. The remains of the Romanovs had been discovered in Yekaterinburg almost twenty years earlier, under railroad ties on a country road where they had been hidden by their assassins. Their whereabouts were kept secret until 1991 when tests were ordered to authenticate the bones. Six years of examination and DNA- testing established the remains as those of the last imperial family. Thousands of Russians paid tribute to the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg where their bones were put on display.

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Barbara Stanwyck Day!

Happy birthday to Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) 

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Happy Birthday Amersfoort

Today is Amersfoort's 757 birthday as a city!

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The King-Crane Commission

Interactive map: How the King-Crane Commission envisioned the Middle East
(Karl Sturm and Nick Danforth) (www.theatlantic.com)

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson, a believer in national self-determination, dispatched theologian Henry King and businessman Charles Crane to explore possible political arrangements for the former Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Their assignment was to find out how the region’s residents wanted to be governed. Their report shows the dilemmas involved in the drawing of borders. And it was all for nothing, secretly the French and the British had divided the region among themselves in the Sykes-Picot agreement of May 16, 1916 (today exactly 100 years ago).

The King-Crane Commission at the Hotel Royal, Beirut, July 1919.

Seated at table commissioners King (left) and Crane (right) (Oberlin College Archives)

next episode: Aleppo

Liberation Day

(source: national archive)

On Monday May 7th, 1945 the Canadian Allied forces entered Amersfoort. In the background the Kamperbinnenpoort. Nationwide Liberation Day is celebrated on May 5th (and on May 4th the victims of World War II are commemorated).

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daguerreotype

daguerreotype 6th plate (ca. 1850)

next episode: Rügen

blog birthday

'drop' 

Today I celebrate the 7th anniversary of this blog!

Help yourself to some 'drop' (liquorice)...

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Cabinet Card

cabinet card (from my own collection)

The cabinet card was a type of photograph mounted on a card.

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Wanda Hawley

Wanda Hawley

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Maude Fealy Day !

Maude Fealy

March 4, 1883 – November 9, 1971

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The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds

Georges de la Tour - The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds (1635, Louvre, Paris).

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Syracuse, New York

Genesee Street, Syracuse, New York ca. 1904.

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CDV (19th Century)

Carte De Visite, Carthage, Illinois, by J.A.W. Pittman Photographer (from my own collection)

The carte de visite (CDV) was a type of small photograph the size of a visiting card.

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The Garden of Earthly Delights

Jeroen Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights (Prado Madrid)

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych by Jeroen (Hieronymus) Bosch (aka El Bosco in Spain), created between 1490 and 1510.  There will be a large exhibition at his place of birth Den Bosch since we're living 500 years after his death in (you guessed it) 1516.

Visit this link to have more info about the painting and to see it in very close detail:
https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en (with sounds).

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Joan Clarkson

Joan Clarkson, 1920 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Actress Joan Clarkson (IMDb), who we last encountered in this post. She played in several revues, a.o. 'Cochran's 1930 Revue' by the London theatrical producer Charles Cochran, who called her "his beautiful English rose".

The White Dress - a Portrait of Joan Clarkson, 1935,
by the Hungarian painter Philip de László (1869-1937) (Bridgeman Art Library)

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Die Karlskirche im Winter

Die Karlskirche im Winter. Vienna, 1912. Watercolor aquarel by Adolf Hitler.

Karlskirche, Vienna. 2010, Photo by RfA.

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New York Times Square Building

Times Square with the New York Times Building, New York ca 1908.

 Excerpt from a photo found on Shorpy.com.

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President Roosevelt negotiates a peaceful settlement

President Roosevelt (center, with Russian and Japanese diplomats) negotiates a peaceful settlement of the Russo-Japanese War, 1905 (Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University)

On December 10, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win a Nobel Prize, awarded for his work surrounding the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War.

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Her Mother’s Voice

Her Mother’s Voice by William Quiller Orchardson, 1888 (Tate Gallery, London)

The widower in the foreground looks up as he thinks for a moment that he hears his late wife's voice as his daughter, whom he cannot see, begins to sing.

The picture was exhibited with lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Break, break, break:

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

The poetic quote underscores the deeply sentimental nature of this painting (source: Tate).

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Happy New Year !

Loretta Young and Paul Vincenti

A happy new 1928 2016 to all my readers!

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