Without a doubt seeing you is always the best part of my day.
This cute photo shows U.S. actress Joan Blondell, who started her showbiz career in Vaudeville, and later made numerous pre-Code films, including The Public Enemy and Blonde Crazy. It was shot when she was making the 1936 film Stage Struck, in which she starred with her husband Dick Powell.
Aquatic quartet finds itself in hot water.
Above, a fun publicity photo made for the 1941 musical comedy Hellzapoppin', beyond doubt one of weirdest and wildest early Hollywood productions, adapted from a musical that ran on Broadway from 1938 to 1941. Basically, the Vaudeville duo of Olsen and Johnson star along with Martha Raye in the tale of a bunch of people sent to hell to be tortured by demons. It would make sense that there are musical numbers in hell, right? We can't visually identify any members of this swimming group, but it was called the Olive Hatch Water Ballet, so let's pretend Hatch is one of the four.
She’s in it to Wynne it. Here you see Vaudeville, Hollywood, and Broadway actress Wynne Gibson, née Winifred Elaine Gibson, who dropped out of school at age sixteen to become a chorus girl, and appeared in the films If I Had a Million, Double Cross, Mystery Broadcast and fifty others between 1929 and 1956. This shot of her with a couple of dead mammals wrapped around her arms dates from 1934.
What's missing from this picture?
During the early 20th century studio photographs were a fad for those who could afford them. When Australian police were confronted with a missing person, or missing friend, as they were called, they occasionally reprinted those studio photos to make tools for law enforcement, or possibly even for public display. This particular shot shows missing friend Rene Flowers, a vaudeville performer, photographed with a “mascot” identified only as Taylor. The image appeared in Peter Doyle and Caleb Williams' 2007 book City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912-1948, and dates from 1929.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed. 2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments. 1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.
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