 Enough wattage to light all of Hollywood. 
This promo image features U.S. actress Jane Powell, née Suzanne Burce, who started in show business as a child, as an adult appeared in films such as Holiday in Mexico, Rich Young and Pretty, and The Girl Most Likely, and eventually was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Powell played mostly wholesome good girls, which is why this striking shot of her in a skirt way too short for the period is such an interesting rarity. It was made in 1954.
 Best ever reason to brave crosstown traffic. 
Sultry Puerto Rico born actress Rita Moreno, who many remember from her role as Anita in the 1961 Hollywood adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story, is one of the few performers to have won all four major annual American entertainment awards—i.e. the Oscar, the Emmy, the Grammy, and the Tony. She's also won a Golden Globe, been awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a National Medal of the Arts, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and been bestowed the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. There are even more awards, too numerous to list, and on top of all of them, she was also awarded some awesome genes, because not only is she very beautiful in the top photo from around 1960, but she still looks good today at age eighty-five.
 Each day presents an ocean of possibilities. 
Texas-born actress Mary Martin enjoys some time on the water in this Paramount publicity photo. Though she had no idea at this moment, her film, stage and radio career would profit her two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Yes, you can receive two. Hers are for film and radio, and we assume that puts her in rare company. This shot is from 1940.
 Focusing on what matters most. 
This unusual promo image of American actress Nancy Carroll, née Ann Veronica LaHiff, which features only her face in focus, was made by famed photographer Eugene Robert Richee for Paramount Pictures when Carroll was a contract star for the studio. Carroll appeared in movies like 1928’s Manhattan Cocktail, 1929’s The Wolf of Wall Street, 1932’s The Man I Killed, and dozens of others. Though she’s perhaps not widely known today, she was a blazing star, one of the biggest of her era, until Paramount dropped her for allegedly being difficult. After Paramount she was never an A-list actress again, but she worked until the 1960s and today has a plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This shot dates from around 1930.
 As the leaves fall from the trees, the clothes fall from the femmes.       
Above, French vintage of the best kind—scans from Paris Magazine #27, November 1933, with platinum-coiffed cover star Mary Carlisle, who was born in 1912, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is still alive today. You also get photography from Schall, Zielke, Jean Moral, Studio Manassé, and art from Yves Brayer.
 The best Show in town. 
Above is a March 1943 cover of the American cinema/celeb magazine Movie Show featuring Deanna Durbin, an actress who is little known to people who don’t watch old musicals, but who was a well-regarded performer in her day. She even won an Academy Juvenile Award in 1936 for her role in Three Smart Girls. Although that particular category of Oscar has been discontinued, Durbin hasn’t—she’s still around at age eighty-nine. Though her film career only spanned twelve years, her success was great enough to merit a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Movie Show also features Hedy Lamarr, Maria Montez, Ann Miller, all of whom you see below along with a pretty tasty Chesterfield ad. We’ll have more from this publication later.    
 Kicking ass and taking names. 
Today we have another copy of the tabloid Exposed, this one from March 1957 with a nice shot of actress and dancer Rita Moreno on the cover. The text beneath her claims she battles the cops, and inside she’s referred to as a “cop fighting wildcat.” Why? Because in June 1955 Moreno slapped an LAPD officer three times across the mouth and kicked him because he was arresting her boyfriend George Hormel II for marijuana possession. It’s lucky for Rita the taser hadn’t been invented yet. If it had, we suspect she would have learned the electric boogaloo the hard way. In any case, she got away with it and has gone on to sustain her screen and stage career over five more decades, winning multiple awards and earning a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
 
American actress Gloria de Haven, who earned one of Hollywood's ultimate honors—a star on the Walk of Fame.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1912—Piltdown Man Discovered
A hominid fossil known as Piltdown Man is found in England's Piltdown Gravel Pit by paleontologist Charles Dawson. The fragments are thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilized remains of a hitherto unknown form of early man, but in 1953 it is discovered to be a hoax composed of a human skeleton and an orangutan's jawbone. The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Conan Doyle and others. 1967—Australian Prime Minister Disappears
The Prime Minister of Australia, Harold Holt, who was best known for expanding Australia's role in the Vietnam War, disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria and is presumed drowned. 1969—Project Blue Book Ends
The United States Air Force completes its study of UFOs, stating that sightings are generated as a result of a mild form of mass hysteria, and that individuals who fabricate such reports do so to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity, or are psychopathological persons, or simply misidentify various conventional objects. 1985—Gotti Ascends to Mafia Throne
In New York City, mafiosi Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, paving the way for Gotti to assume leadership of the powerful Gambino crime family. Gotti is eventually arrested by federal authorities in 1990, and dies of throat cancer in 2002 in a federal prison hospital.
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