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.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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