A risque Christmas card from 1937 depicting Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.

:O

(Source: ebay.com)

‘Jumpology’

When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears” ~ Philippe Halsman

The freezing of motion has a long and fascinating history in photography … But rarely has stop-action been used in the unlikely, whimsical and often mischievous ways that Philippe Halsman employed it. [B]ecause of Halsman’s sense of play, we have the jump pictures—portraits of the well known, well launched.

This odd idiom was born in 1952, Halsman said, after an arduous session photographing the Ford automobile family to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. As he relaxed with a drink offered by Mrs. Edsel Ford, the photographer was shocked to hear himself asking one of the grandest of Grosse Pointe’s grande dames if she would jump for his camera. “With my high heels?” she asked. But she gave it a try, unshod—after which her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Henry Ford II, wanted to jump too.

For the next six years, Halsman ended his portrait sessions by asking sitters to jump. It is a tribute to his powers of persuasion that Richard Nixon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Judge Learned Hand (in his mid-80s at the time) and other figures not known for spontaneity could be talked into rising to the challenge of…well, rising to the challenge. He called the resulting pictures his hobby, and in Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book, a collection published in 1959, he claimed in the mock-academic text that they were studies in “jumpology.”

Images: 1. Marilyn Monroe, 2. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, 3. Sophia Loren, 4. Shirley Maclaine, 5. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, 6. Hattie Jacques, 7. Audrey Hepburn, 8. Grace Kelly, 9. J. Fred Muggs.

[Source: Smithsonian Mag | More Images]

Postcards from the Alligator Farm

I had long suspected that these images were merely imaginative artwork, similar to tall tale postcards. Today I learnt that, in fact, they’re halftone photographs with applied colour depicting fun for all the family at the Los Angeles Alligator Farm in the early 20th century:

Originally located in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Joseph ‘Alligator Joe’ Campbell’s Alligator Farm was relocated to tourist hotspot Lincoln Heights, California in 1907. The animals were loaded onto a train and a banner was hung from the side advertising the advent of the attraction.

After paying their 25 cents admission fee, visitors could enjoy the hundreds of alligators, of various sizes and ages, that lived in the back garden - and, as the postcards show, there were opportunities to ride the reptiles. In time, the farm began to supply alligators for the movie industry and feature in such films as ‘King Solomon’s Mines,’ ‘The Adventures of Kathleen,’ Walt Disney’s ‘The Happiest Millionaire’, and numerous Tarzan films.

Most famous was an alligator called Billy. Visitors to the farm would witness Billy sliding down chutes and wrestling underwater with famed alligator wrestler George Link, and, until the 1960s, most of the alligator jaws seen in films belonged to Billy, as he would automatically open his mouth when a piece of meat was dangled above him, just out of view of the camera. Billy was one of the alligators so domesticated that his owners could put a saddle on him and give their visitors a ride. Another highlight was 250lb Galapagos tortoise, Humpy. The owners’ children would put a saddle on Humpy and Billy each and race them around the garden. Humpy would regularly stray off the path but was invariably the winner.

In it’s hey day the farm was the most complete reptile collection in the world, as various other species of snake and lizard were introduced over time, and would entertain 130,000 visitors a year. 

[Mice Chat | Iconic Muse | Image Archeology | Image Sources: 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6 : 7 | More black and White photographs]

Vinegar Valentines

Known as ‘Vinegar Valentines’ these mocking cards, which date from the 1840s to 1940s, were used to tell someone how you did not love them. Yes, that’s right! For almost as long as Valentine’s Day has been an insufferably sappy day celebrating romantic love, it’s also been a day for telling everyone else exactly how much you don’t love them—with an anonymous poem sent via post.

Annebella Pollen, a lecturer in art and design history at University of Brighton, first discovered Vinegar Valentines when she was researching a project on love and courtship … In the back of a stationer’s sample book from 1870, she discovered 44 cheap, single-sheet, insulting Victorian Valentines with a comic sketch and a few lines of verse.

According to Pollen: “often they were sent anonymously. They were to say “Your behavior is unacceptable.” For example, there are quite a few cards that mock men with babies on their laps as being henpecked—the kind of thing now we would think was a man doing the right thing by taking his share of child care. But these cards were specifically designed to make the man seem emasculated and disempowered by being left holding the baby. Or there’d be images of women holding rolling pins, threatening their husbands.

The people sending such cards were usually not either one of the couple. It wasn’t the wife sending to the husband or the husband sending to the wife. It was somebody outside, looking in at their relationship and saying, “This doesn’t conform with what’s expected.” In that way, they did enforce social norms. Sometimes they seemed to be saying, “Change your behavior, or else.” There’s almost this threatening element to them.”

You can see loads more of these, and read a full interview with Pollen, here. See also, last year’s Valentine’s Day oddment.

The Anti-Flirt Club

The Anti-Flirt Club was an American club active in Washington, D.C., during the early 1920s. The club was composed of women who had been embarrassed by men in automobiles on street corners with the aim of protecting them from unwelcome attention in the future. The Anti-Flirt Club launched an “Anti-Flirt” week, which began on March 4, 1923.

The club had a series of rules, which were intended as sound and serious advice. These were:

1. Don’t flirt: those who flirt in haste oft repent in leisure.
2. Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t invite you in to save you a walk.
3. Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes.
4. Don’t go out with men you don’t know—they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.
5. Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.
6. Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know.
7. Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one.
8. Don’t fall for the slick, dandified cake eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.
9. Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers.
10. Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.

[Image Source: 1]

(Source: Wikipedia)

The children of Tsar Nicholas II with their heads shaved after having contracted measles.

From left to right: Anastasia, Olga, Alexei, Maria and Tatiana.

(Source: forum.alexanderpalace.org)