The Art of the Centerfold #46
Phyllis Sherwood
(Miss August, 1963)
for the series:
Art of the Centerfold
January 31, 2009
January 30, 2009
The City: Miami #7
Original Caption:
Feels Sure
Miami -- Teamsters Union Vice President James R. Hoffa, seeking election as president during the organization's convention here, autographs a placard October 1st for one of a group of women campaigning for him outside the convention hall. (1957)
for the series:
The City: Miami
January 29, 2009
The Golden Age of Publicity #21
Robert Mitchum struggles with man's dual nature in this publicity still for the United Artists release, The Night of the Hunter (1955)
for the series:
The Golden Age of Publicity
Nuns Gone Wild! #9
Original Caption:
Pittsburgh -- Sister Mary Ellen bites her lip as she makes her first try at bowling. The sister's form looked good even though she whispers that the ball went down the gutter to Sister Damian, right. Some sixty nuns of the Vincentian Sisters of Charity bowled for several hours as guests of a bowling alley in Pittsburgh's North Hills. (1961)
for the series:
Nuns Gone Wild
The Art of the Girlie Mag #5
Cabaret
(vol. 02, #5; September, 1956)
for the series:
Art of the Girlie Mag
Annals of Crime #59
Original Caption:
Las Vegas -- Richard E. Hickock, 28, Kansas State parolee, collapses in the hall of the city jail seconds after police said he admitted to the quadruple shotgun murder of the Herbert W. Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, along with suspect Perry E. Smith, 31, both of whom were arrested by Las Vegas police on bad check charges. Holding Hickock are Detective B.J. Handlon and Clarence C. Duntz, of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. (1960)
for the series:
Annals of Crime
January 28, 2009
They Were Collaborators #541
Noel Coward, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
The Art of the Stage #6
The Art of the WPA #15
Macbeth
(Federal Theatre; circa 1935)
for the series:
Art of the Stage,
Art of the WPA
January 27, 2009
John Updike Dead at 76
John Updike, the kind of all-consuming literary polymath for whom the term Man of Letters seems to have been devised, has passed from this mortal sphere today, a victim of lung cancer at the age of 76.
Here is the usual passel of Obits:
The Boston Globe
The Washington Post
The Telegraph
The Miami Herald
for the series:
Obits
January 26, 2009
January 25, 2009
When Legends Gather #496
Premier Chou En-lai and Charles Chaplin
for the series:
When Legends Gather
The Art of Jazz #85
Gerry Mulligan Meets Johnny Hodges
(Verve Records; 1959)
for the series:
Art of Jazz
Tricky: Scenes from a Life #71
Tricky gives his consent (1968)
for the series:
Tricky: Scenes from a Life
January 24, 2009
Action, Now! #8
Original Caption:
Women's Equality March in New York
New York -- A demonstrator holds a sign in Times Square as the location for a statue of feminist and civil rights leader Susan B. Anthony on August 26, 1970. The day marked the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment which granted American women full suffrage. (1970)
for the series:
Action Now
Artists in Action #480
Politicians in Action #32
Original Caption:
New York -- Senator Kenneth Keating is present at the opening of the offices for the "Democrats for Keating Committee", Sept. 28th. Author Gore Vidal stands with the Republican Senator as they survey the committee's poster. Vidal and other Democrats are suporting Keating in his race against Robert F. Kennedy, whom they consider "anti-Liberal". The committee is composed of 100 prominent Democrats and plans to sponsor a rally and TV addresses by the Rebublican incumbent. (1964)
for the series:
Artists in Action,
Politicians in Action
January 23, 2009
Adventures in American Filmmaking #113
Today's Adventure: Howard Hawks sizes up Angie Dickinson on the set of Rio Bravo. (1959)
for the series:
Adventures in American Filmmaking
Collect 'Em All #58
Gloria Stuart
No. 43 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes
Gloria Stuart was born on July 4th, 1910, in Santa Monica, and christened Gloria von Dietrich Stuart Finch. She developed a taste for acting when appearing in the plays produced by the Santa Monica High School, and California University. While taking part in an amateur production she was seen by the scouts of two film companies, and a contest ensued as to who should have the lovely young actress under contract. Universal won, and Gloria Stuart made her appearance in The Old Dark House. Later films include Roman Scandals, I'll Tell the World, Gift of Gab and The Love Captive.
for the series:
Collect 'em All
When Legends Gather #495
Elaine May, Lucille Ball and Mike Nichols
for the series:
When Legends Gather
The Heretofore Unmentioned #50
David Cornwell (aka John le Carré)
for the series:
Heretofore Unmentioned
January 22, 2009
Aftermath: U.S.A. #5
The City: Philadelphia #6
Original Caption:
Philadelphia -- Thousands of workers stream down Benjamin Franklin Parkway after evacuating their offices and factories following an air raid alert during a practice atomic raid in Philadelphia November 23rd. Ther mock Air Raid, called Scream, was a public participation drill. (1954)
for the series:
Aftermath: U.S.A.,
The City: Philadelphia
They Were Collaborators #539
Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Gould and Igor Stravinsky
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
Aftermath: Japan #7
Original Caption:
Hiroshima: Ten Years Later.
Hiroshima -- "I'm Just Waiting For Death." Those are the words of Mrs. Yoskio Nishikawa, 43, bedridden "A-Bomb widow" who lives on $22 a month in charity. Yukiko, 15, one of her four children, cools her forehead with a wet towel as the 70-pound widow rests in their nine-foot square room, part of a frame charity home housing families of 20 widows. A small wooden Shinto shrine, in memory of her blacksmith husband who was killed while riding to work, occupies a place of honor. Mrs. Nishikawa suffers from radiation effects because she combed the city searching for her husband after the bomb fell. She has a bad heart and liver trouble. (1955)
for the series:
Aftermath: Japan
January 21, 2009
P is for Pulp #29
A Dame Called Murder
(by Robert O. Saber)
(A Graphic Mystery; 1955)
for the series:
P is for Pulp
Signs and Meaning in Cinema #12
Signs: The Last Hurrah
(John Ford; 1958)
for the series:
Signs and Meaning in Cinema
January 20, 2009
Welcome to Show Business! #18
Original Caption:
Las Vegas -- Lillian Roth, whose early career was ruined when she succumbed to the lure of alcohol and who then staged a successful battle against mental illness, is shown taking a bow with Lili St. Cyr, famous striptease artist, following Miss Roth's opening night at El Rancho Vegas. A new and exuberant Lillian captivated the audience with songs she made famous during her early years. (1954)
for the series:
Welcome to Show Business
January 19, 2009
Angela Morley dies at 83
Angela Morley, who worked at Philips Records in the 1950's and 1960's and indeed worked with Scott Walker, Dusty Springfield and many others has died.
She also wrote several film and television scores.
Even though it seems she passed away last week there seem to be very few obituaries thus far.
Here is the one from Variety.
for the series:
Obits
Scott #1
The American-born singer and composer Scott Walker had his own series on BBC Television for about ten minutes back in 1969. Actually, the thing ran six weeks (not counting two pilot shows), at half an hour a shot. Imaginatively titled Scott, the program was not a Variety series with glitz and sketches and yuks. No. It was a straight-ahead half hour of music, featuring performances by guest artists and the usual between-number remarks from the host. A completely ordinary affair in most respects, then, but in a sense that short-lived series captured, more starkly than anything he did in those years, every bifurcated, seemingly counter-intuitive impulse that has driven Scott Walker as an artist these last four decades.
He steered away from the hits, for one thing. Much as they may have wished it, his producers (not to mention the great British public at home) wouldn't be hearing Their Scott and the rockin' BBC orchestra crank out those chart busters he'd recorded with The Walker Brothers in days that now seemed a lifetime in the past (in fact it was little less than two years since that group had split). Instead he stuck with an almost defiant menu of Tin Pan Alley evergreens; sharp, spiky Jacques Brel chansons (translated to English by Eric Blau and Mort Shuman), second-tier show tunes and his own compositions: baroque, many-splendored and increasingly eccentric pillow fights of song that were fast coming to dominate those eponymous LPs he was spinning out on the Philips label, one after another, with striking momentum.
As a host, Scott Walker was . . . unusual; and it was here that the show's vague sense of cognitive dissonance became all-consuming. Like so much of the BBC's programming in that era, Scott's visual component was destroyed long ago, but from the audio remnant and the handful of existing stills, it isn't hard to figure out the rest: Rail thin, leaning uneasily on a mike-stand or perched on a stool, a mile-long Isadora Duncan scarf wrapped 'round his golden throat; eyes parked (seemingly for life) behind a pair of black, nothing-to-see-here-folks shades, he frankly looked and sounded as if he were perpetually on the nod; struggling through intros imbued with the kind of stock showbiz blather one would have expected from Sophie Tucker at a 1954 AGVA benefit ("One of the nicest gentlemen in this business . . . "). Either that or he'd wax nostalgic; introducing his song 'It's Raining Today', for example, as an evocation of his adolescent years: being bounced out of schools, hitchhiking 'cross the length and breadth of America, digging on progressive jazz, finding succor in the most transient missions of the flesh.
A swell time for all, I'm sure . . . but what in hell was he talking about? Cross-country hitch-hiking? Progressive jazz?? Back then, the late 1950s, Young Mr. Kerouac was still Scotty Engel of Hamilton, Ohio; recording dead-on-arrival 45s for middling labels like HiFi and Orbit ("A Sound That's Out of This World!"); that is, when he wasn't doing guest shots on Eddie Fisher's NBC series and otherwise working the Teen Idol racket for any errant crumbs of glory it could cough in his direction (the fact that he actually was a teenager at the time, unlike most of his twenty-something confreres in that strange purgatory of show business, did not exactly compel his marginally souped-up treatments of 'Paper Doll' and 'Too Young' to fly out of record stores in any measurable volume). By the early 1960s, the fruits of that first chapter had long since vanished from remainder bins, and he was just another face on the LA music scene, scuffling around town for that much-needed (and in his case, delayed) encounter with fortune. He was apparently a skilled enough bassist to score occasional session work for Jack Nitzsche but, really, beyond that his resume had 'Unexceptional' written all over it, in big letters. To put it another way, if you hurled a rock at the bandstand of any Sunset Strip Twist palace in those days, forty-nine out of fifty times you'd hit a guy just like him.
Eventually he threw in with a fellow pop nomad, John Maus; then another, Gary Leeds. They were called The Walker Brothers . . . and why not? Jesus, one name was good as another; besides, half the allure of show business, then and now, was that whispered promise of redemption through the thousand mechanisms of false identity (just ask Bob Dylan). Their repertoire out of the gate was the standard line of pure white, mod-a-go-go Watusi fodder everyone else was playing ('Land of 1,000 Dances', 'Dancing in the Streets', on and on), but it got them decent club dates around Hollywood, a few television gigs, and one lone appearance in a motion picture: batting cleanup for The Supremes in Beach Ball (Paramount's quadriplegic attempt to cash in on the success of AIP's 'Beach Party' series). Things didn't really get moving, however, until they got to England and signed with Philips. Only then did the hits start rolling out; the girls shriek in deadly earnest; and The Walker Brothers, for a time, got to be as big as Big ever gets.
It lasted a year; year and a half. They flamed-out by the end of '67.
Throughout that period, however, Scott Walker not only carved himself choice territory as the Walker's principal songwriter and default front man, he gradually (and not entirely by coincidence) became Britain's leading contender for the title of Public Fruitcake No. 1. The papers were, literally and figuratively, full of it: Stories of stage fright and public intoxication, increasing reclusiveness, strange utterances, fleeing to a monastery on the Isle of Wight to silence, if only for a moment, the suddenly unending shriek of a now catastrophic success. For the UK's music and tabloid press, jaded scumbags all, this was chocolate-covered Heroin. Little did it matter if there was ever more than a kernel of truth to any of it; the stories virtually wrote themselves, transforming Scott Walker into the first true avatar of a relatively new cultural cliche: the beloved-but-misunderstood pop star, yearning for transcendence and a life lived less publicly (a cliche that would reach a terrible apotheosis of sorts with the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain). As journalistic impulses go, this was utterly reflexive . . . the only thing journalists love more than a bad loser is a bad winner . . . and they could let no moment of the spectacle go unrecorded, even the ones they had to make up.
But Scott Walker was not, as he seemed to so many, just another strange-o with a record deal. More neurotic than all four Beatles put together (and that's saying a lot), he was openly conflicted, even angst-ridden about his ascent. In Stephen Kijak's 2006 film, Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, there's an interview clip of him from the Walker Brothers days . . . a bottle in one hand, the go-find-somebody-who-gives-a-damn shades black as ever . . . rehearsing that old sweet song about burning, inchoate creative longings and how little he cared for the riches and fame now cascading down around them all. It is a line he held with single-minded consistency in that period, regardless of how frequently (and falsely) it had been trotted out by others before him. "I will starve to get something across," he was quoted as saying a few years later, just before everything started to unravel, "I mean that. I've never settled for second best in my life. If it doesn't work, I'll give it all up."
Looking at it in the gray morning light of 2009, and taking into account his full, unfettered embrace of the avant-garde in the last two decades, this makes perfect sense. The better angels of hindsight permit us now to hear in Scott Walker's words the uncompromising intention that came to inform immense (and immensely difficult) works such as 2006's The Drift or his score for Leos Carax's Pola X (2000). But how could he have expected anyone to take him at his word in the mid-1960s?
I mean, please; don't let's be obtuse here, children. Million-selling pop music acts, despite all public ravings to the contrary, rarely sailed far from the loving shores of commerce; and on the few occasions when they did (the most noteworthy being John Lennon and Yoko Ono's traveling art kindergarten and agit-prop freak show of 1969), it looked so much like a gargantuan publicity indulgence that even the fans . . . the ones who, in better days, would buy a record of these artists mowing their lawns . . . started to feel burned. If journalists thought about it at all, they simply took it for granted that Scott Walker was another showbiz narcissist trying to con the world into thinking that he wasn't just in it to get laid like everybody else. And given the alarming frequency with which assertions of integrity in that business assume the color of marketing strategies, that kind of cynicism was more than excusable. How were they supposed to know he was serious? The very notion of someone at his end of the Pop music racket actually charting the ambitious musical course they said they aspired to, as opposed to just talking about it because it sounded good when you read it in Melody Maker, simply beggared the imagination.
So this is what Scott Walker was up against as The Walker Brothers disbanded and his solo career beckoned. There was no way around it; not then. He could have taken out full-page ads in every trade magazine and newspaper in Britain, reading "I'm not kidding!" and it would have availed him nothing. If the music hadn't been so singular, had it not stood just at the line of departure to the undiscovered plain it eventually arrived at after a quarter century's halting journey, I daresay he might only have succeeded in becoming a laughing stock; a punchline; a totem of lofty pretense the whole wide world could have some fun with.
But the music was singular; extraordinarily so. Three LPs in less than two years; each a clear advance over what had come before, each a Top Ten conquest on the album charts of the day. The approach was similar to that of his BBC television series, but while its presentation there came off as wildly inconstant, almost schizophrenic, on record the elements were virtually seamless. For those who harbored even marginal illusions about so-called Easy Listening music, it was impossible to tell if the more traditional offerings on these albums . . . songs by Bacharach & David, Andre & Dory Previn, Henry Mancini and others . . . were meant to establish a context for his original compositions, or if Walker's songs instead were a primordium that enabled the listener to hear the rest with an ear tuned magically anew. This was forward momentum writ large and arranged for orchestra; a speculative Before & After portrait of Easy Listening itself: where it was, and where it could possibly go. For the truly remarkable thing about Scott Walker . . . the achievement with implications few if any have come to terms with . . . is not that he made the trip, turbulent as it was, from MOR crooner to avant-garde chanteur, but that he made it as if there had never been any meaningful distance between the two in the first place.
Beginning now, and for the next two installments of this series, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . will be bringing you the full audio portion of Scott Walker's short-lived BBC program, beginning with the two pilot broadcasts from 1968. The first program, transmitted on the 16th of August, features performances by former Count Basie vocalist, O.C. Smith and then-rising UK songbird Kiki Dee. The second (from December 30) has Salena Jones and Blossom Dearie stopping by to show everyone how it's done . . . in case anyone was wondering. Walker handles the vocal duties for the balance of both programs. The quality of these recordings is not what anyone would call optimal, but it is highly listenable, despite the occasional, seconds-long blemish or two. As always, we hope you enjoy it.
for the series:
Scott
January 18, 2009
Annals of Crime #58
Original Caption:
Find Teen Gang's Victim in River
New York -- Members of the ruthless Brooklyn teen-gang accused of sadistic murders and beatings for "thrills" identify the body of a Negro man found August 19th in the East River as one of their alleged victims. All four of the teenagers identified the body as that of Willard Menter, a father of two children, who police say they tortured and killed August 16th. Identifying the body for Police Lt. Vance Barkinson (kneeling) are: Robert Trachtenberg, 15, (Left, light coat, dark pants); Jack Koslow, 18; (plaid shirt, left); Melvin Mittman, 17 (Center, polo shirt); and Jerome Lieberman, 17, (Behind Lt. Barkinson). Koslow, described as the ring leader of the kill-for-thrill gang, almost fainted when he saw the body. (1954)
for the series:
Annals of Crime
Seminal Image #901
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
(Nosferatu, the Vampyre)
(Werner Herzog; 1979)
for the series:
Seminal Images
The Art of Jazz #84
Brown and Roach Incorporated
(The Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet)
(EmArcy Records; 1954)
for the series:
Art of Jazz
January 17, 2009
They Were an Item #63
They Were Collaborators #538
Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood
for the series:
They Were an Item,
They Were Collaborators
January 16, 2009
Ben Shahn's American Life #20
Campaign poster for Sen. Eugene McCarthy (1968)
for the series:
Ben Shahn's American Life
Fun at Bohemian Grove #37
Another redwood, another Bohemian, another painting (1907)
for the series:
Fun at Bohemian Grove
January 15, 2009
Great Moments in Marketing #18
Sharon Tate for Coppertone
for the series:
Great Moments in Marketing
The City: Philadelphia #5
Original Caption:
Puts Numbers to Work.
Philadelphia -- A magical mechanical brain, the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) goes to work for Uncle Sam at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia, while scientists and government officials look on. The eight-foot-tall electronic wizard, which will be used by the Census Bureau, can calculate in 28 minutes work that formerly took a battery of employees three or more days to compute. Looking on while inventor J. Prespee Eckert operates the equipment, are Dr. Roy V. Peel, director of the US Census; Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer; and Albert Greenfield, president of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. (1951)
for the series:
The City: Philadelphia
Welcome to Show Business! #17
Original Caption:
Hollywood -- Hospital attendants are shown as they transfer actress Susan Hayward from the Hollywood Receiving Hospital to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Miss Hayward was a victim of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills, April 26. (1955)
for the series:
Welcome to Show Business
In the Studio #10
When Legends Gather #493
Eddie Condon, Bing Crosby and Alan Lomax
for the series:
In the Studio,
When Legends Gather
I Like the Christian Life! #9
Original Caption:
Los Angeles -- Christian demonstrators protest outside a punk rock show at the Starwood. They carry signs reading, "Jesus Saves from Hell," and one that implores, "Music is OK . . . but More Bible, Less Music!" (1980)
for the series:
I Like the Christian Life
January 14, 2009
Ricardo Montalban Dead at 88
During his entry into Hollywood Ricardo Montalban lost a part playing a Mexican to John Garfield (in Tortilla Flat), but he never lost his regal bearing, even when hawking coffee and Chryslers. Best known for his work on Fantasy Island and Star Trek, his early career in films was marked by highlights like a turn as an Argentinian polo player in the Esther Williams musical Neptune's Daughter and the fine film noirs Border Incident, directed by Anthony Mann, and John Sturges' Mystery Street, where he played 1950's version of the kind of forensic detective that's currently tromping all over the airwaves.
You can read an obituary here.
for the series:
Obits
Patrick McGoohan Dead at 80
Patrick McGoohan . . . best known to prior generations as John Drake and/or Number Six . . . passed away on Tuesday at the age of 80.
Here is a broader account from today's Los Angeles Times
for the series:
Obits
Nuns Gone Wild! #8
Original Caption:
Milwaukee -- Three nuns, all members of the faculty at Mt. Mary College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, look over one of the models at a viewing of the fall and winter collection of pace-setting designers Ronald Amey and Joseph Burke. The nuns, members of the Order of the School of Sisters of Notre Dame, are Sister Mary Remy, head of the college's art department; Sister Mary John Francis, president of the college; and Sister Mary Aloyse, coordinator of the school's design course. Sister Mary Aloyse had a special intereset in the showing: she helped with some of the stitching, cutting and designing that went into the new collection. (1966)
for the series:
Nuns Gone Wild
January 13, 2009
Great Madmen of the 20th Century #36
Antonin Artaud
for the series:
Great Madmen of the 20th Century
Politicians in Action #31
Pres. Harry S. Truman fills his face
for the series:
Politicians in Action
January 11, 2009
They Were Collaborators #536
Steve MacQueen gets a load of Ann-Margret and Tuesday Weld.
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
Collect 'Em All #57
Anna Sten
No. 42 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes
"Born in Kiev, South Russia, on December 1st, 1910, Anna Sten is the daughter of a Swedish mother and a Ukrainian father who was killed during the revolution. At the age of fifteen she was given a leading rôle in an amateur show, and this won her admission to the state-controlled film academy. Three years later she was in a Moscow repertory company, and then made her film début, winning fame in The Yellow Ticket. Her two films for U.F.A., The Brothers Karamazov and Tempest, won her an American contract, and she appeared after a year's 'grooming' in Lady of the Boulevards".
for the series:
Collect 'em All
Poets are both clean and warm
And most are far above the norm
Whether here or on the roam
Have a poet in every home! #39
Leonard Cohen
for the series:
Poets are both clean and warm
An Illustrated History of Vice #12
The Nation's Nightmare
(Andy Warhol; 1951)
for the series:
An Illustrated History of Vice
January 10, 2009
January 09, 2009
Action, Now! #7
Original Caption:
Gary -- Comedian Dick Gregory is among sign-carrying pickets in front of School Service Center here, during a school boycott called to protest alleged de facto segregation in public schools. Thousands of Negro children attended so-called 'Freedom Schools' instead of attending regular classes in Gary, Indiana's public schools. (1964)
for the series:
Action Now
Fun at Bohemian Grove #36
Bohemians idle under the watchful gaze of Moloch (1924)
for the series:
Fun at Bohemian Grove
January 08, 2009
Welcome to Show Business! #16
Original Caption:
New York -- Ed Sullivan puts his arm around Walter Winchell after they buried a feud that has lasted almost 40 years. Winchell appeared on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' Sept. 10 and took a bow from the audience. "We're friends," they said, and shook hands. (1967)
for the series:
Welcome to Show Business
Annals of Crime #57
Original Caption:
Seat Pleasant -- Nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, 15-year-old Billy Ray Prevatte is shown with police after he was charged with murder and assault with intent to kill yesterday. He is accused of shooting three teachers in Maryland Park Junior High School after he was reprimanded for truancy. One of the teachers was killed, one seriously wounded and the other slightly wounded. (1956)
for the series:
Annals of Crime
Nuns Gone Wild! #7
Original Caption:
Sisters of the Skillet Relax.
Peekskill -- Nuns who do the cooking at the Catholic Youth Organization girls' camp in Peekskill get away from the stoves for a little relaxation and are taking it aboard their life raft in the swimming pool at the camp. Left to right are Sister De Sales, Sister Carmel, Sister James and Sister Perpetua. They are of the Presentation Order, Staten Island. (1950)
for the series:
Nuns Gone Wild
January 07, 2009
The City: Miami #6
Original Caption:
Miami -- Spain's Marquis de Portago concentrates on the engine of his sleek Ferrari as mechanics Giannino Parravicini and Enzo Monari, both of Italy, make final repairs following a recent overhaul. Portago registered the fastest clocked time during warm ups for the Nassau road race, with 2:20 on the 3 1/2 mile runway course at Windsor Airfield. (1954)
for the series:
The City: Miami
Politicians in Action #30
Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) has a meltdown in the snow
for the series:
Politicians in Action
Aftermath: Japan #6
Original Caption:
Hiroshima -- As a mountain range rises angularly in the background, two Japanese misses, one in modern dress, the other clad in a traditional Japanese kimono, pose beside the Peace Bridge in Hiroshima during a day of remembrance, the ninth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima with atomic bombs. Shielding their heads from the sun with parasols, Misses Sakae Okubi, 28, and Mariko Matsumoto, 22, both affected by the atomic bombing of August 6th, 1945, are shown in Peace Memorial Park. Miss Okubi suffered minor burns of the arms and several cuts on her back, while Miss Matsumoto lost her father, grandmother and an uncle, just days before the surrender of Japan of August 14th, 1945. After the formal surrender of Japan, work was begun on the Memorial Park by Japanese-American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi. The formal surrender came on September 2nd, 1945. (1954)
for the series:
Aftermath: Japan
January 06, 2009
Ron Asheton dead at 60
Ron Asheton, here seen in November 2003 at Tower Records in Manhattan has died. Read the NME obituary here.
for the series:
Obits
I Like the Christian Life! #8
Original Caption:
Bronx -- The Reverend C. Lloyd Lee, Pastor of the Tremont Methodist Church in the Bronx, welcomes a worshipper who has arrived for the Sunday service at the drive-in chapel. (1955)
for the series:
I Like the Christian Life
January 05, 2009
Annals of Crime #56
Original Caption:
Pittsburgh -- With her door key for a weapon, Mrs. Hilda Hess of Pittsburgh strikes the fighting pose with which she whaled the tar out of a young thug who snatched her purse. Mrs. Hess, a former barmaid, chased the robber for several blocks, cornered him in an alley and gave him a going over until he returned her property. He then took to his heels. When he had vanished, Mrs. Hess looked in the purse and found that the sixty-some dollars she had in it had gone with the wind. (1947)
for the series:
Annals of Crime
January 04, 2009
Adventures in American Filmmaking #112
Today's Adventure: On the set of Sunset Blvd., Cecil B. DeMille tries not to listen as Billy Wilder gives him direction (1950)
for the series:
Adventures in American Filmmaking
The Art of the Panel: DC #8
from The Rise and Fall of Gangster Rocco
(by Ruben Moreira)
(Gang Busters #20; Feb-Mar, 1951)
for the series:
Art of the Panel: DC
Seminal Image #895
The Thief of Bagdad
(Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan; 1940)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Friends and Family #49
Original Caption:
Chicago -- An exterior view of the Hickory Pit, the South Side restaurant outside of which Alex 'Louie' Greenberg, former financier of Capone mob business ventures, was shot and stabbed to death. Greenberg, 64, was attacked by two men as he and his wife approached their parked car. According to Mrs. Greenberg the attackers claimed to be holdup men, but police doubt that robbery was the motive. (1955)
for the series:
Friends and Family
January 03, 2009
The Art of Jazz #83
Count Basie and the Kansas City 7
(Impulse! Records; 1962)
for the series:
Art of Jazz
The Art of the Girlie Mag #3
Baby Doll
(Vol. 1, #2; November, 1963)
for the series:
Art of the Girlie Mag
Annals of Crime #55
Original Caption:
On Way to Death House
New York -- Tight-lipped and unshaven, mass murderer John Francis Roche is accompanied by a Dept. of Corrections officer as he left the Tombs today en route to await execution. He was sentenced to die in the electric chair for the rape-murder of Dorothy Westwater, 14 year old schoolgirl. Roche has also confessed to four other homicides. (1954)
for the series:
Annals of Crime
January 02, 2009
Politicians in Action #29
Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr (D-NY) is momentarily distracted
from a game of Dominoes
for the series:
Politicians in Action
January 01, 2009
A Happy New Year to All Our Readers
As we begin to wrap up the first decade of the twenty-first century, we here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . would like to take a moment and wish all those who visit us every bit of the best for the new year. 2008 could not have ended on a worse note for me personally, but it was an astonishing year for this blog; and that is as much your doing as it is ours. So please accept our good tidings, friends, neighbors and fellow bloggers; you've earned them several times over.
for the series:
Announcements
Welcome to Show Business! #15
Original Caption:
New York -- Lovely Anna Maria Alberghetti, singing star of the Broadway musical "Carnival," and Rudy Vallee, star of "How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying," twist up a storm at Leone's restaurant during a party, March 5th, to celebrate Anna Maria's first year as a U.S. citizen. Although engaged in the latest dance craze with his beautiful partner, Rudy's stance is more suggestive of the Charleston. (1962)
for the series:
Welcome to Show Business
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