Reading Vintage Vogues -- An Accidental Education

Back - and Moved

2015-07-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

Pulled up stakes and moved to WordPress, where An Accidental Education becomes an Intentional Education.

Dennis Hopper Sneaks In

2014-06-20T20:01:00.001-07:00

This Week: Back to the Movies! More Bread-and-Butter in the Back of the Book; we do very nicely with a Leger, but not enough to quit the day job. Dennis Hopper!

Even Vogue has to pay the bills - throwing some meager little bones to the advertisers. . . let's move on.

Well, someone was having fun. First a lot of dresses horizontal, then a lot of dresses vertical. And there isn't much more to say about them. Junior ready-to-wear at major department stores, many of which we are already following on Twitter. $20 watch. Ho hum.

This week's art -

"$200.00 ($1,635.00) Fernand Leger: 'The Well'; color lithograph. This 1943 lithograph, second in an edition of seventy-five, is by a French master who died in 1955. With mat and gold-leaf frame." New Gallery, which is where we got the Gottlieb, but know nothing else about.

Well, here it is, exactly as described in 1959:

Looking very nice indeed and yours for $7,500.00. (Several place online.)

Let's go to the movies!

Oh, my God - they're too young to vote!

* Non-actors Pat Wayne - son of John - and Yvonne Craig front this oddity that appears to be a public service announcement for the American jury system in comedy (?) drama set in California 1848.

* Oscar nominee - Best Song - "Strange Is the Way of Love." Just awful. Same producer as the terrific North West Territories of the same year. What happened here?

* Mexico plays part of California; in an early featured role, Dennis Hopper plays punk gunslinger. Dennis Hopper is terrific. It's hard to even watch him in this sludge of mediocrity.

This is free on YouTube - here is the first 15 minutes of it. I confess that I've paid a good four months' of DVD rental for it to sit in my kitchen until I figured out if I would go on with this. Shameful.

Dennis Hopper in 1959:

Dennis Hopper at Musso & Frank in 1959, presumably before he was fired from Warner Brothers and took off for New York.

According to the very nice Dennis Hopper website, upon the suggestion of his late friend James Dean, he began taking photos of people on the streets of New York. A few years back, I saw the Dennis Hopper show at MoCa in Los Angeles and liked it very much. And if I'm not very much mistaken, I read about it in Vogue. (I won't go into the Hopper/Vogue axis here; we are sure to run into him again.) There were a lot of pictures of our friend Jane Fonda, not wearing a hamster fur skirt:

My favorite Hopper photo:

Hopper selfie:

Next time: another Western, more art, Italian evening gowns.

Short Shorts and Polly Pants

2014-06-08T19:50:00.002-07:00

This time - an unexpected trip to Bermuda.

Continuing along with the sitting-awkwardly-in-the-studio-is-fun! beach news. . . on the left, the ugliest picture I have come across in Vogue:

Weird, cheap-looking cutout, the model is nearly in white face, one foot looks bare, the other in one of those nasty "suntan" color nylons with reinforced toes. The blurbage (which I just remembered I was going to Tweet - sorry, my dear three followers: "Sharp-edged, immaculate -- eel-scrubbed, in fact: American separates-dressing has been throng on these principles for years. What's new, and delightful: the separates-attitude beached." Um . . . I don't think that means what you think it means. "Notable in this neat-on-the-beach era: a current of strict little knee-capping sun dresses." Knee capping? That's really not what you think it means. She's wearing an Omega watch, still alive and kicking and we pick up another member of the Twitter flock. Let's just move on. . .

Much better, but still veering toward Ladies' Home Journal, which is sadly on its last legs. "Instant beach dash - without water: the news of brown and a surprise play of navy blue." Note the shorts: batik! I think of batik as a fabric of the Sixties - as in Madras bedspread-on-the-wall Sixties. I am wrong.

Charles James - of the big exhibition now at the Met - toyed with batik as a beginning designer, before getting underway in 1926 - just spent several minutes trying to attribute that to the article in a recent issue; there is just too much Vogue online. But the grand Charles James did not design these cute little shorts, shorts that would look pretty good today, or anyway, a few months ago - I think we are onto Bermuda shorts at the moment. And this designer just happens to be Bermudan, but not in a short-short mood.

Polly Hornburg was, from the brief amount I can gather, the daughter of a old Bermudan white family, who began designing after World War II. She experimented with African tribal cloth, as well as batik, and she is credited with - and while there is too much of some things on Vogue.com, it is utter crap in other ways because there is nothing about Polly Hornburg thereon. She is credited on various sites with popularizing the one-piece diving suit, the sheath, and the dinner skirt. The diving suit? She was a diver. Also a business woman, who had a string of shops that sound like the Lilly Pulitzer shops - bright, vacation fashions. It's kind of still around in fancy Bermuda hotels. Here is Polly Hornburg in front of her father's house, photo by Slim Aarons. She died at 94, just a few years ago.

More Polly:

Thanks, CoutureAllure.com. They've got this as 1952. Looks right.

Two more pages of Vogue - the gist of which is: Brown cloth!

In researching this, I came across a very interesting, well-done blog about Calypso Couture. You should go visit it.

The photographer for this shoot was William Bell - he seemed to flourish for a few years in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Someone left a note on Vogue.uk that he died in 2012, and was thrilled to see that his work was visible again.

Oh, our Picasso - "The Reappearance of the Bull." Good for the bull. It was one of 50, but I couldn't find this lithograph anywhere on line. Either it appreciated wildly, or it didn't. Best I can do.

But I did find this - Polly Hornburg was once so popular that her Polly Pants inspired a song:

Which Blogger can't find. Here's the link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csnZVUYPzjw

Polly deserves better.

SwimArt - More Synchronicity

2014-06-01T18:45:00.001-07:00

We make a killing in the art market.

Back-of-the-book mishmash. Skipping ahead to kill two birds - the always-anticlimatic b-o-b pages and to get some more art out of the way. Nearly a quarter of the way through!

Are we going to the beach? No. We're going to pretend we're at the beach with our sunlamp and sea-air machine and ridiculously feeble exercise program. And we're going to start by wearing a Christian Dior silk hat.

The hat is not so great here, but gorgeous on the page. I can't stop looking at it. The blurbage:
"Eclipsing almost everything - except the fact that this much hat is a lot of fashion - a hat of bright blue silk shantung and a huge white bow. To wear: not with bathing suits, but in a bathing-suit climate- with, say, a white sliver of a dress for lunch in the sun-country now. " So why not show it with the white sliver of a dress?

It could be found at Lord & Taylor (still around and on Twitter) and the sadly-departed Joseph Magnin, which would have had the best Twitter feed of all. Earrings by Schlumberger of Tiffany. Red Comet lipstick by Germaine Monteil, which is kind of still around, if you count Costco.

Let's talk about some of those "remarkable substitutes" for the beach.

"In terms of good looks gained, tensions lost, and a general rise of euphoria, we know of no more efficient machine than a beach with its irresistible combination of swimming, sun and salt air. Failing the real thing, however, we're pleased to report that what you can do in the way of duplicating the great beach benefits at home or at a salon is: extraordinary. . . . Sun tans, of course, are a cinch to acquire away from the beach- and getting cinchier by the minute."

And it goes on to warn of the hazards of the sun lamp, advising you to start with 30 seconds a day and work your way up to 5 minutes. Now, if this were written in the style of the present day, some poor Vogue minion would have cooked herself horribly and given us all the gruesome details.

After more words of warning about the sun lamp, we turn to the sea-air fakery. "Even the famously potent alchemy of the sea air itself is not, it seems, behind the scope of beauty salons. One fascinating alternate is a treatment called Vapozone, which consists of aerating the skin in a dense mist of ozone and active oxygen. The pot of gold at the end of this rainbow: clearer, cleaner, plumper-looking skin; a definitely peppier complexion. Vapozone comes, like dessert, at the end of a full-course facial, is administered by the Charles of the Ritz Salon in New York, and works this way: After your face and throat have been properly cleansed and gently massaged with a rich cream, icy witch hazel-soaked pads are applied to the eyes. At this point, the Vapozone machine - which looks rather like a particular elegant vacuum cleaner attachment, and has been warming up quietly all this time - goes into serious action. Which is, simply, to deliver at a flick a stream of warmish moist air, and a sensation that a Vogue editor - ah! - who's been through the Vapozone mists describes as floating through the moors. Following this fifteen-minute aeration, a creamy masque to tauten things up; more icy cold cotton pads; a final sloshing of skin-freshener; make-up. . . "

Vapozone is still around! A quick look around Vogue.com reveals that Cate Blanchett sometimes has an oxygen facial. Vapozone? It seems to be a European thing.

And the rest of the blurbage describes some simple Pilates-style exercises that will take you five minutes a day, yet will give you results in two weeks.

Now - cooked, oxidized and almost perspiring, we are ready for that bathing suit!

"Pay-off for the figure that's been swimming steadily for months (possibly via the exercises charted above) - maillot of knitted cotton-and-Orlon in a sunburst of color news: a clear, un-ingenue yellow. This, by Jantzen; about $17. At Bonwit Teller; Dayton's; Roos Atkins. Beach turban: a Wamsutta towel, wrapped at great length. Red with a clear affinity for the new beach-yellow: Harriet Hubbard Ayer's lipstick news - Red Blaze."

The stores - gone, gone, gone. Harriet Hubbard Ayer is new to me - but she shouldn't be. The brand lingers on in Europe. There is a recent biography . . . we'll come back to this. The venerable Wamsutta is still going strong. And, Jantzen, of course. This suit looks so uncomfortable. Wearing an enormous towel wrapped around your head won't help. She looks tense - very un-beachy.

Now, for the art, which I chose before deciding to skip ahead to the bathing suit. Our art could wear our bathing suit! That's synchronicity!

"$400 ($3,260) Lynn Chadwick 'Maquette for Female Dancing Figure,' 1958: iron. By one of England's most spectacular sculptors, winner of the Venice Biennale Sculpture Award in 1956. Big museums, including London's Tate, own his works. 5 1/2 " x 11". Seidenberg."

The least expensive maquette sold at auction went for $19,000 - which appears to have done much better than if we had invested that $400 in the stock market ($9,000).

I had to look up "maquette" - it means the model made to scale. It doesn't mean something you might impale yourself on.

I had, also, to look up Lynn Chadwick. But I'm not the only one, apparently. In rummaging around through the Tate website, I came across this:

A poster for a talk - or the book jacket - by the author of a new book about "England's most neglected" post-War sculpture. Still, our $400 did pretty well. One of Mr. Chadwick's most famous sculptures:

A very short video shot by Mr. Chadwick's grandson:

Next time: more fun not in the sun and our first Picasso.

Licorice and a Cherry

2014-05-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

This time - Adolph Gottlieb - His Imaginary Dessert and His Spangly Dress.

"$165. ($1,344) Adolph Gottlieb. "Imaginary Landcape" " red and black water color. This strong painting is by a well-known American who lives in New York and whose work has been exhibited all over this country, and in India, Japan, and Europe. Charcoal grey mat and grey wood frame, done by Gottlieb, himself. 22 1/2 x 18 1/2. The New Gallery."

First, this looks pretty familiar because it is one of many Imaginary Landscapes. This one I imagine to be a Spanish castle in the snow, especially when it's on its side.

Adolph is a sort of friend of a friend of Reading Vintage Vogues - we just missed him in the September issue, as he was off touring when his AbEx pals sat for a portrait with Irving Penn. Extremely devoted readers will remember seeing the following photo at least eight times:

But we'll see this one even more - the Gottlieb looks just as nice on its side, even more Spanish castley. (This looks fine in iPhoto, but it collapses on the way to the Desktop. Repeatedly.)

If "Imaginary Landscape" were an oil painting, and not a watercolor, we'd have good down payment on a house around here. It's a school night - no time to search beyond the first few search pages for good sales figures - I've seen $9,000 on eBay, but also $1,500. My wild, wild guess would be that this was still a bargain, even at what amounted to $1,300.

I saw a lot of Gottliebs at the AbExRedux exhibition, so feel we've already "done" him. Here is a rather staid chronology of his life by the Gottlieb foundation - dropped out of high school, worked his way to Paris, drew incessantly and went to museums every day, met Barnett Newman, hung out with Mark Rothko. . . I don't have time to get permission to use the photo of my favorite painting - "Dry Cactus," which I read as "Dead Octopus" as it scrolled by. I liked it better as an octopus.

The New Gallery - nothing pops out, except it was at 601 Madison Avenue.

We're running into our friend The Guggenheim everywhere these days - have a nice Eatograph at the Venice branch.

This seems naked without a movie. . . or a dress.

Oh, great and mighty Internet! I asked and you gave -

This came from a very nice, but brief fashion blog called The Strutting Peacock, whose author found it on what I think is a Tumblr site. If you have found yourself here, then you should hurry over there, where there are so many pairings that I couldn't find Gottlieb, but found several Barnett Newmans, who lends himself well to simple shifts. Thanks, Georgina M of Polyvore.

Next - maybe a break from art. Why not? Next - swimsuits!

Just Can't Break Up With My Blog

2014-05-17T18:46:00.004-07:00

This week: Trying to remember how to do this. . .

We left off last July, barely into a dense forest of art history. Why? Some reasons - new Mac and new iPhotos kind of confusing; overwhelmed myself trying to make a perfect Twitter account; the normal problems of life; and, very important, no more alternate work schedule. (Still bitter about that.) But I just can't break up with my blog. I miss it. I miss the joy of discovering forgotten things. And having a sort of reason for poking around and tracking people down. Every time I come across the year 1959, I think of my poor blog. Every now and then I check in on the Twitter account (very tightly curated - RVV follows only and every person on entity appearing in this issue) and am amazed at how alive it all is. Silly, but vibrant. Bubbling along, with recent Tweets from the Jamaica Tourist Board about an upcoming regatta, Elizabeth Arden about spring lipstick colors; the Guggenheim with a very witty post on Bike to Work Day. . . Deep down, I feel that social media, or this "social media stuff", doesn't really exist, or shouldn't really exist, or should be thoroughly ignored. . . yet here I still am.

Some digital house cleaning: The Movies Page will be moving to WordPress pretty soon. Twitter will be the repository for all of the 1959 references that keep popping up. And take a look at "Blogs I Follow" on the sidebar. All still going strong and well worthwhile.

So: here goes.

"$200.00. ($1,630.00 in 2014). African Mask. Monumental in its effect, this high patina wooden mask, from the Dan tribe of the Ivory Coast, now part of Liberia, was worn by a woman. Female masks have round eye holes; male, horizontal ones. 4 3/8" x 8 1/2". Mathias Komor."

When I'm not blogging this page, I barely take any of it in. As I write, though, I ask myself: What can I find out about the Dan tribe? Why are the eye shapes different for men and women, and are they really? Is the gallery still around? The curiosity is visceral - I feel it in my fingers as I write. So, this is why I do it.

The Dan - There are informative videos about the masks of the Dan on YouTube. But here is a dance from some time between 1958 and 1960, according to the YouTube info.

Here is a map of the Dan (or Gio) region stolen from a Christian missionary website that includes prayer points so that the Dan can be converted from their animist beliefs. I do not approve.

Here is a very similar mask in the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Round eyes, so should be a mask worn by a woman, but this one seems to have a beard. I admit I have trouble warming up to most of what is often described as "ethnic art." I feel I have very little in common with anyone who ever wore it. All I can do is acknowledge the distance, which is kind of intriguing in itself.

OK - how much does a Dan mask cost today?

This one sold for $62,000.00 at Christies in Paris in 2004. That was the highest on this list of auction results. Based on the examples, I would guess that a good Dan mask would cost from $5,000 to $10,000.

The gallery that sold the mask in the magazine in 1959? Mathias Komor was an expert in Asian art, who had a gallery from 1941 until 1984 at Madison Avenue and 71st Street.

One reason why I don't do this. Two hours! But I have seen the Snake Girls Dance, and have begun to recognize living people in these masks, especially this one:

who could be starring in a French rap video.

Derainged

2013-07-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today: Some straight-up art history.

Tweeting: "Beale Street Blues," Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, Back to Back.

Oh, we're going to be so sick of these two pages!

Someone this week said I looked as if I were going to a gallery opening after work, which was a nice compliment. Then my one of my shoes fell apart as I crossed the atrium on the way to a sandwich. Only time I ever saw the lead security person crack a smile and I no longer looked as if I were headed to a gallery. Nice while it lasted!

In 1959, I could have been heading to New Art Center to snap up Andre Derain's "Head of a Child" for $300 ($2,400). Blurbage: "This tender sketch is by the notable French painter and sculptor who, with Matisse and Viaminck, formed the heart of the Fauve exhibit in Paris in 1905 and who died in 1954."

Thank you, Vogue, for the tiny art history lesson! Here is Derain's Charing Cross Bridge, from the Musee D'Orsay.

In trying to figure this out, I came across a very interesting account of an auction of French art in 1922. Several of Derain's works were sold, among works by Picasso, Matisse, Courbet and the American artist Arthur B. Davies (never heard of him). The article noted that many of the works were bought by other artists; one of them was the photographer Arnold Genthe, famous for his photos of San Francisco's Chinatown. All had been owned by Dikran Khan Kelekian, a mysterious collector of Islamic art, who apparently scooped up several stacks of paintings, drawings and sketches in Paris at the turn of the century. Also a mysterious death: fell from the 21st floor of a hotel in New York in 1951.

Dikran Khan Kelekian, stolen from Flickr

(Speaking only monetarily, works that went for $100 in 1922 would have sold for $172 in 1959: yet $100 in 1959 became $800 this year.)

I don't think I would have paid $300 for that drawing and I would have been a total idiot because here is a page from his sketch book that a Russian dealer is selling for $5,000.00:

This March, at the same time a Jackson Pollock painting was in the news, this painting by Derain was offered by Christies. Having never heard of Derain, this made no impression - or post impression - on me at all.

This was supposed to go for $15 million dollars, but no one wanted it. Must have been ind of awkward! But, still, whoever was smart enough to buy the little sketch probably did very well indeed.

Andre Derain, self portrait

Next: Number Three in the Art Roadshow.

More Dash Than Cash

2013-07-25T21:28:00.001-07:00

Tonight: First Night of fabulous new game show, "More Art Than Money!" How well did Vogue do?

Oh, boy. Just, oh boy. These aren't the only pages. Introductory blurbage:

In this Vogue annual, its ninth, are twenty-three works of art, all from New York galleries. The artists stretch from living Americans to an unknown Greek sculptor who lived about 600 B.C. The price stretch: $36 to $400 ($289 to $3200)."

Quite reasonable.

Starting with left page, upper center, oblongish blob.

"Henri-Georges Adam: 'Flagstones, Sand and Water, No. 3': black and white copper engraving. By the fifty-five-year-old French sculptor, famous for his engravings and tapestry designs, whose work has been exhibited in Paris (where he lives), and twice here. " At $36, this is the cheapest selection.

Here it is - probably not the identical piece - in the French gallery Galerie Gimpel & Mueller:

Looks better!

You can read a biography of Mr. Adam, in a heavy French accent, at the Champetier website (below). Here's what he looked like:

That is one fine French artist! The hair, the cigarette, the gaze . . .

Another French gallery, Michelle Champetier, sold yet another engraving from this series for 1,000 euros, which would be $1327.

$36 in 1959. 1000 Euros now. Adjusting for inflation and currency: $289 became $1327.

Well done, Vogue!

This was sold at the Staempfli Gallery, which had just opened in 1959. George William Staempfli was a Swiss artist and curator who specialized in artists such as Mr. Adam. Mid level, I'd say.

Not very many of them are going to be this easy.

Tweeting today: more Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges.

Of All Posts, One Must Be Worst, And This Is Probably The One

2013-07-24T22:10:00.002-07:00

So much for blogging every day - today: the last suit.

Now Tweeting: "St. Louis Blues," Back to Back, Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges. Very nice.

Red jersey Ben Gershel suit. Which I like. Cost $190 ($1500). That I don't see. It strikes me as the kind of suit a regular person would buy at Nordstrom during the Anniversary Sale, a sale I shopped very successfully on Sunday. Third time with my shopping lady. I just put myself in her hands and we try to cram as many items into my budget as will fit. Three hours and I'm done. Then I don't go near the place for another year. Works perfectly. This year we were pretty heavy on the Michael Kors, a designer I have always viewed as an old fart. But good enough for government work.

Michael Kors does seem so old - yet he's younger than me. Oddly enough, he was three months old when this issue hit the stands. I wondered about his fashion lineage: pure Bergdorf Goodman, as it turns out. Sprang fully formed from Better Dresses.

I like the photo. I like the lumbering school bus in the background. The model - who is she? - looks impatient. Karen Radkai, photographer.

Who was Ben Gershel? No idea. Seventh Avenue stalwart, that's obvious. During the 1950's, Robert Knox was the house designer for Ben Gershel. Can't find anything at all on him, either. Well, just found something on Vintage Fashion Guild, but I like to use more original sources - not that they aren't good at VFG, I just don't want to lift their research.

Tomorrow: art history.

Doyennes

2013-07-20T22:09:00.001-07:00

Tonight: well, there you see it. Left side; Jane Derby suit, Hattie Carnegie suit. Jane Derby has the advantage of still being alive in 1959.

First - what I forgot to add yesterday:

This woman would have worn Antilope.

"FAVOURITE'S RETURN. Jacket and dress, above left, of wool gabardine. Fresh news here, caramel colour, white linen cuffs. By Jane Derby, in Forstmann gabardine; about $225 ($1,805). Ronay handbag. Both at Saks Fifth Avenue, suit also at Neiman Marcus."

Even Vogue can't get excited about this. Jane Derby was a stalwart "better dresses" designer from the 1940s to the early 1960s. I am simply cribbing from her obituary: a very lady-like designer, she softened the edges of 1940s military look, believed skirts should be no shorter than mid-calf, was from tiny Virginia town that doesn't even list her as a notable native, lived in Manhattan and Bermuda for many years, while managing to raise Hereford cattle.

She gave Oscar de la Renta his start, which makes perfect sense.

Swiped again from that eBay seller.

She looks formidable here, but needs a Yorkie on her lap.

Next up: a red jersey suit that would have looked a lot better in red. Lilly Dache hat; Hattie Carnegie suit. Hattie Carnegie was one of fashion's originals - a completely American success story. Immigrant from Vienna, took fake "rich" name, could not sew and never made a dress herself, fabulously rich in the 1920s. . . but she died in 1956.

So, who designed the suit? I do not know.

Tomorrow: a fine example of fashion photography.

Jacques Tiffeau

2013-07-19T20:53:00.001-07:00

Tonight: New Blood in Fashion

Tweeting the lovely "Fillie Trillie" by Duke Ellington.

I like this suit a lot. I like the gloves, the bag, the hat - although I think she would look better with her hair long and loose. I love the way the sleeves fit. The skirt is an inch too long, but that creates a kind of dowdy elegance. What does Vogue say?

"FLARING SKIRT NEWS. Suit of lacy blue worsted, with wide collar, a skirt that leads a fuller life. This, north or south, now. By Monte-Sano & Pruzan; about $225 ($1,805). Ronay handbag. Cloche: Christian Dior New York. All: Bonwit Teller; I Magnin. Suit, also at L.S. Ayres. Laguna necklace. Kislav gloves."

Bag Lady University has a nice page on Ronay in the 1940s and '50s. Kislav gloves has an intriguing story that we will tell some other time.

This season marked the debut of Jacques Tiffeau as designer for Monte-Sano Pruzan, a decades-old maker of dressmaker suits and better dresses. He won a Coty in 1960 for his two collections for Monte-Sano Pruzan, the same year Rudy Gernreich won for bathing suits - not yet the bathing-suit-whose-name-shall-not-again-be-written: pee you bee kay eye enn eye. (I suddenly stopped getting searches for this, leading me to actually believe that everyone who wanted to see had already tried this blog and turned away, disappointed. In reality, something happened to Sitemeter. I just realized that Blogger is still tabulation away on the old blog, and the top search is for IT.)

The NYT first mentioned M. Tiffeau in a 1958 piece about four recently-arrived French designers by the late Carrie Donovan. How startling it is to see her byline! I had never heard of Jacques Tiffeau, but several sources called him the first celebrity designer. We'll be following him in the issues to come. It was hard to find, but I tracked down and lifted this 1964 photo from an eBay seller:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1964-Press-Photo-Jacques-Tiffeau-partner-in-Tiffeau-Brooks-fashion-design-/350782945042

Oddly enough, the same eBay seller has the only photo of Vincent Mount-Sano and Max Pruzan that I've come across:

It looks like the eBay seller is selling off a newspaper morgue - head on over!

Tomorrow: More suits!

TMI

2013-07-18T22:25:00.001-07:00

Tonight: Not What You Wanted to Know About Christian Dior

Still tweeting Duke Ellington, "Tymperturbably Blue."

She looks so teeth-achingly coy. Daisies and a Yorkie. I almost bought a jacket just like that last year at the Nordstrom sale. Surprisingly becoming, but those sleeves really do need gloves and who's going to wear them unless it is freezing? Blurbage: "The Unexpected Jacket. Suit with a surprise -- the topping of a wool flannel dress with a squarish jacket in camel-coloured wool; the sleeves short. By Maurice Rentner." Maurice Rentner, the "Napoleon of Seventh Avenue" died in 1958. We looked at his obit last issue: ambitious young immigrant, jobber, discovered fashionable dresses sold better, went to France, learned to produce "quietly expensive" dressmaker suits, spent years in lawsuits to protect his - and others - designs from cheap knockoffs. Very worthy, but kind of dull.

The little hat is by Christian Dior. What an elegant name that is! How startling it is to learn that he couldn't keep lovers because he was too plain and liked to chase down a hearty meal with five hot dogs and plenty of mustard.

The normal American of 1959 would have seen some of these photos in Life:

Tomorrow: the mysteries of Monte-Sano Pruzan.

Mother and Daughter

2013-07-16T21:22:00.001-07:00

Tonight: A Fashionable Mommy Dearest

The right side:

I like everything about this suit - well not the puffiness in the lap. Blurbage: "A tireless grey flannel suit with the freshening of grey-checked cotton gingham collar and cuffs. (These are subtractable, and the gingham idea continues as lining.) So it's very versatile at $265 ($2,100). You could buy it at Saks, Neiman-Marcus and Hutzler's. Hutzler's is gone, but the other two are still here; we're following them on Twitter. (But they're not following us! Nor have we heard back from @JaneFonda. Pity.)

Hat by Sally Victor; bag by Nettie Rosenstein; gloves by Fuchs.

The suit is by Pattullo-Jo Copeland. This is the first time we've come across Jo Copeland, which is rather remarkable. Jo Copeland began her career as a fashion illustrator in the 1920 for Pattullo. She became a partner in 1938 and remained until the firm died in 1970. Then she designed scarves and gowns.

She pioneered the two-piece suit worn without a blouse, using her own figure to drape. Like Claire McCardell, she was very much an American designer, designing for the American woman,which usually means less formal.

She married Edward Regensburg of Regensburg cigars . . .

but divorced him in 1953. Her daughter was the writer Lois Gould (died, 2002), who wrote Such Good Friends and other novels in the 1970s, mostly categorized as "women's fiction." (I have a feeling we got her novels from Book-of-the-Month Club; possibly Literary Guild.)

This is a fascinating family to whom I'm not doing any justice in this small space. Lois Gould also wrote a memoir of her mother - Mommy Dressing - A Love Story, After a Fashion.

Jo Copeland and Joan Crawford were very good friends, but that is not the only link to Mommy D - (which doesn't quite work as gracefully evocative as someone must have thought). Book is "on the shelf" at the main branch, so more to come.

This is why I still like doing this - you'd never expect to get all of this from that suit.

Tweeting today: still Duke Ellington, with "All of Me." Very sunny man.

Tomorrow: Suit Three of Seven.

"Plaidness Done Biasly"

2013-07-15T21:52:00.002-07:00

Tonight: Back to business with some "advanced thinking" about suits.

Karen Radkai

How demure she looks. Also, too young for this suit. Some choice verbiage:

"Fort Worth Avenue now or Fifth Avenue under fur -- a slim suit of miniature plaid worsted, etched in black and white. The plaidness, done biasly around the jacket hem."

Fort Worth Avenue, I'm guessing is Miami. No, Dallas. So, probably not a reference to resort wear. That skirt just looks dowdy.

Credits: Paul Parnes suite ($145 -- $1,161 today.) I don't think this looks quite that expensive - even at Vogue prices. Available at Bonwit Teller, I. Magnin, Julius Garfinkel, Montaldo's -- so nowhere now existing. Lilly Dache hat; Fiancees shoes.

I know we've had Lilly Dache before, but I can't remember a thing about her. I know we'll have her again, so, in the meantime, here she is on What's My Line?

Kind of a boring hat, though.

Tomorrow: another suit.

The David Brooks of 1959 Vogue

2013-07-14T16:31:00.001-07:00

Today: A pundit lectures; the glory of People Are Talking About

Well, here it is - the Marya Mannes essay we heard about a page ago.

And what has this mind at work produced? The first paragraph:

"When certain words go out of fashion the qualities they describe ebb with them, or -- if they still exist -- no longer seem to rate high in the public favour. Noble, generous, gallant, largehearted -- who is elevated now for these attributes? They have a soft and antique sound, echoing down the corridors of the past."

The last paragraph:

"I would like to think that if we took a cardiograph of the nation's heart we would find it sound -- sounder, in fact than a dollar. But this noble organ needs a campaign for rehabilitation as the prime factor of our greatness, individual and national." Etc., etc., etc.

And a lot of words in between about the nobility of Henry the Fifth, Abraham Lincoln, how nasty and small minded it is to always "look out for number one." And this very nice paragraph:

"I think it is time we reinstated the heart. The head alone can never solve the affairs of men, whether it is the division of race in our own land or the division of power on earth. Man and woman, labour and management, black and white, capitalism and socialism; between each is a no man's land where the only passport is understanding -- not only in the head but in the heart -- and the only safe-conduct is compassion. . . "

But then this:

"But it is easier -- much easier -- to 'stand firm,' not to give an inch Our society is now so organized that we are free to stand on our rights without acknowledging those of others: and here a reader may notice that she might be saying something that could weirdly apply to the Zimmerman trial, but no -

the right of a bus driver to deny a passenger information; the right of a saleslady not to say 'Ma'am'; the right of a stenographer not to punctuate; the right of a worker not to do a full day's work for a full day's pay; the right of a waiter not to wait; the right of a nurse not to smile; the right of a manufacturer to charge more for cheaper products; the right of a wife to demand more than her husband can afford; the right, in all cases, to take and not to give."

Oh, twaddle. Many similarities to David Brooks. The meandering piffle, the bizarre grievance, the harkening back to more noble days when people knew how to behave - not quite separated at birth, but close.

Enough of her.

A quick recap of People Are Talking About (leaving out the scant bit of fashion on these pages) - (* denotes that I am glad to have met)

All together in one place --

People

Nancy Walker, comedienne

Maynard Ferguson, jazz musician

Jacques Lipchiz

Richard Lippold (To be visited - sculptor at San Francisco cathedral)

Giulietta Simionato, opera singer

Antoinietta Stella, opera singer

Jane Fonda, in her hamster fur skirt

Rufino Tamayo

Shelley Berman

Medardo Rosso, forgotten sculptor

Marya Mannes, pundit

Art Carney

Lisa Bigelow, cover girl * (and Alfred Leslie, husband and artist)

Books

The Light of Common Day, Lady Diana Cooper (To be discussed in a longer post.) *

Hawaii, James Michener

You Come Too, poems for children by Robert Frost (To be discussed later - very briefly)

The Mansion, Faulkner (pretty much ignored here)

Dear Beast, Nancy Hale *

Movies

Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman

The Magician, Ingmar Bergman

The Cousins, Claude Chabrol

Broadway

The Gang's All Here - Bert Wheeler as the "Happy Grifter" in the utterly amazing Harding administration

The Sound of Music - the "odd-faced" children singing songs that are "sensible, amused, right."

Take Me Along - Robert Morse as 17 year old provincial stealing the show

Gypsy - Sandra Church

Bayanihan - National Dance Troupe, Philippines

Heartbreak House, Maurice Evans and Pamela Brown

Places

The Guggenheim *

The Four Seasons

Upstairs at the Downstairs, comedy club

Allen's, a bar on Third Avenue - in New York, what other Third Avenue?

The Bowser Garage, NYC

Miscellaney

". . . The voices on the radio summing up their reactions: 'But, Wow!'"

". . . The three letters that spell a certain New York milieu: WAM, for wit, art, and money. . ."

". . . marching bands playing the Peter Gunn music. . ."

If I were really good at this, I'd put in some more photos and links back to the original posts. But we need a video. So, for no reason except that this is Penn Station in 1959 and that Penn Station is no more, and Vogue might as well be called New York Vogue. . .

Tomorrow: suits for all seasons.

Artist and Model

2013-07-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

Today: model Lisa Bigelow, shortly before her marriage to artist Alfred Leslie.

What did the regular person in 1959 say for fuckin' and shit as all-around-lazy noun? Just wondering. Starbucks: Guy who grew up in Chile, attended conservative private school then attended public school in Hawaii - just plain SoCal accent - fears his Second Amendment rights have been taken away, also that it is illegal to protest. Thinks the CIA helped found Facebook because Twitter is best way to catch terrorists. No longer a Democrat. Outraged that Californians failed to pass GMO prop. Thinks people are spying on him. And they are.

So, failed to post every single day from July 4th to Labor Day. Life. At least this, for now:

Karen Radkai - old friend of RVV

The blurb: "Sweater life, one of the great American fashion biographicals, looks newest now in white, with the added creaminess of beige. Here, a white cashmere hooded sweater, beige flannel skirt, worn by Lisa Bigelow, a new young model find who appears for the first time on the cover of this issue of Vogue. (She lives in New York, has three children in the four-to-six bracket, and -- when she has time -- paints "great big abstractions." Hadley sweater, about $38. Evan-Picone wool skirt, about $20. Bergere bracelets. All, at Peck & Peck. Sweater and skirt, also at I. Magnin."

I. Magnin, gone. Also Peck & Peck. Evan Picone still very much with us. The same old department store stuff that we are still wearing.

We interrupt this post for ---
Goodness - a very fashionable 80-something woman just passed by. Mid-heel black sandals, bare legs - not bad, sleeveless black and green striped jersey dress, some kind of designer sunglasses, red lipstick, chic bag. You don't see that in Berkeley!

It's unusual to learn who the cover model is. I'm glad we do know, because we'll be seeing her for a long time. (Spoiler: same photo is on cover of January 1960 UK Vogue, up next. Next, being kind of elastic.

I don't think Lisa Bigelow had a very long career. In 1960, she married Alfred Leslie, a big-deal artist I just heard of, accidentally because of this. She had a fourth child with Mr. Leslie. They divorced in the mid-1960s. If you google Lisa Bigelow, you find this photo of Lisa and Alfred in happier times (by Richard Avedon.)

That's Mr. Leslie, looking totally not 1959. Some people today try to recreate this photo for their wedding albums. I am not going to embarrass them further by posting their efforts here.

Taking this up later, while trying not to listen to blaring television - challenging.

Alfred Leslie has a very nice website, appears to be still going strong. Here is a 2004 profile in the NYT. In 1959, presumably when he and Ms. Bigelow were dating, Mr. Leslie made an ode to beak-nikery, called Pull My Daisy. That year, he was also featured at the Museum of Modern Art as one of "16 Americans." He had a loft, back when it probably was a loft. It would be interesting to know how it all worked out - artist, model and three kids in the four-to-eight bracket.

The first Mr. Bigelow - I have no idea who he was. I have not much idea of Lisa Bigelow's life. Was she the Lisa Bigelow who married in her freshman year at Smith? The descendent of Parsons of Parsons engineering? Not sure.

Mr. Leslie made a painting of Ms. Bigelow, called "Lisa Bigelow" that ended up at the University of Indiana. I couldn't find a photo, but here is a description.

"Leslie, a 20th-century artist, painted an image of his wife in heroic proportions called "Portrait of Lisa Bigelow." When they then went through a divorce he painted over her jewelry piece by piece until only the wedding ring was left."

On that note - tomorrow, two pages of epic boredom.

Last of PATA

2013-07-10T21:23:00.001-07:00

Tonight: A visit from the future, 1968 and The Future!

The last Claire McCardell garment. Hard to see, but this also has a diaper bottom. Strange. Courtesy of the Met.

Tweeting today: "Medley Toot Suite," Duke Ellington.

People Are Talking About . . . although the party's almost over . . . "The high comedy in which Shaw's Heartbreak House is played, with Maurice Evans silver bearded, his feet shuffling in embroidered carpet slippers, inducing everyone in his odd house to tell all, including the truth." Wait a sec, Vogue, I don't know this play, but from this blurb, all I can think is that people hear the shuffling and break down and confess. Go on. "It is a disconcerting analysis, particularly to his younger daughter, played with shining, rare style by Pamela Brown, who believes that all that is needed for the healthy life is horses: 'Go anywhere in England, where there are natural, wholesome, contented and really nice English people. . . the stables are the real centre of the household. . . .There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.'" Ba BOOM.

We are talking about the little picture above the lyrics (which belong to a blurb some pages back, featuring Robert Morse, which has generated the least interest of anything yet appearing here. It's not one of the worst posts - it has Robert Morse!)

This is a very weird photo -if that's what it even is. First - the man is a dead ringer for my next-door neighbor, hard of hearing, movie mad, who has startled most of my visitors. Conversation stops and we wait for the hill to be stormed, the outpost taken, the steamy sex to run its course. Once it was Sid and Nancy. Now that other neighbors have complained and he uses earphones, I miss the company. I swear that's Robert in the picture.

Well, it's supposed to be Bernard Shaw - or Shaw. If I write Bernard Shaw, it may seem like I think his first name is Bernard, so let's stick to GBS. The play doesn't seem to have been a "high comedy." It's about silly old England going to it's doom and good riddance to the whole pack of ninnies. So-so review.

As soon as I looked up Pamela Brown and saw this photo, I knew exactly who she was (and possibly not the person in the Vogue photo.)

She had a supporting role in I Know Where I'm Going, a Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger movie of 1945. It's sort of like I Capture the Castle, and not just in the structure of the title. Go see it!

At first I couldn't place Maurice Evans. Vaguely figured he was a Shakespearean actor - aren't they all? In addition to the vast amount of American television he did . . . I had the good fortune to see him in this, at the drive-in when it first came out:

I still remember how exciting this movie was. And how shocking. Endlessly discussed around the pool at night. Shivers! Oh, Maurice Evans, of course, is the token orangutan.

Tomorrow: the next page! We did it!

New Aspects of Norton

2013-07-09T21:38:00.002-07:00

Tonight: A Brief Visit With Art Carney

Claire McCardell - courtesy the Met

Just the forced march tonight - Tweeting now, Duke Ellington, Ellington Jazz Party, "Malletoba Spank." Kind of pretty.

Pentultimate PATA. . . People Are Talking About . . . "The thin face, the delicate mimicry of Art Carney, a master comedian on television. . ."

But not worth a picture.

And not on The Honeymooners! In 1959, he had his own variety show, The Art Carney Show. A snippet:

An inexplicable snippet. But wait, there's more -

A pre-historic rap version of "The Night Before Christmas."

Tomorrow: The LAST of PATA.

North and South

2013-07-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today: Why haven't we heard more about Nancy Hale?

Claire McCardell - evening gown, early 1940s. Metropolitan Museum of Art
It doesn't seem that this dress is an evening gown!

Tweeting today: "Flamenco Sketches," the last of Kind of Blue. Overheard today in original Peets: Two guys in their 40s - old farts! People in their 40s are still old farts, even though I'm long past that decade. They just seem old - discussing music that holds up. Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis. One wanting to impress the other going on about a new trove of Davis-iana unearthed recently in Paris. So People Are Still Most Definitely Talking About Miles Davis.

People Are NOT Talking About Nancy Hale, although they should.

Vogue: " . . . Dear Beast, the Nancy Hale novel, intelligent, gay, and mannered, centering (sic) about a Northern girl married into an old Virginia family, a new woman in a town where even new silver is "a delicious, risky vision, not even to be contemplated unless one's pedigree were so watertight that it would be obvious that one possessed ancestral silver"; its action turning on a silly device, a visit from an un-Life-like Life photographer. Miss Hale sees the South's characteristics, through her alien, Northern eyes, as idiosyncrasies, and plays them for laughs."

I disagree. Vogue makes the book sound more like The Egg and I.

I got the book from the inter-library loan and read it shortly after seeing The Help. We are very much in the same white world; Dear Beast doesn't venture over the tracks. Abby, a Northerner, has haphazardly married a Southerner and moved with him to Virginia. Abby, thinking that "when you made a friend in New York, she was likely to be all you would ever know of the complex of her life; you might never meet her sister or best beau, let alone her mother or her father," attends a luncheon, very much like those in The Help.

"She looked up and down the long, oval table, with its centerpiece of white July roses, surrounded by women who had been brought up that it was bad manners ever to allow a silence. Not one of them but was imbedded in layer after layer of relationships -- relationships with connections of their husbands, with friends, with friends of friends, with servants, with the families of servants, with their own families stretching back generation after generation. The life they led consisted of people; people in all colors and degrees, people loved, hated, dealt with, people on terms of familiarity, people held at arm's length. Tradespeople, servants, children, cousins, spouses, friends by the dozens depended from each of these women, as from the myriad udders of an Oriental animal goddess. They moved and breathed within relationships; they never stirred unaccompanied; even their thoughts were group thoughts, family thoughts; they were region thoughts, race thoughts."

And at the same party, a southern woman has gone north, "married General Foods" and attended a charity event. She reports back:

"This particular benefit is for International Orphans Incorporated -- a charity that brings children over from Europe." . . .

"Charity begins at home, I say," Relia Fenn put in. She rang the tiny silver bell, at her right hand, and the two Negro maids in gray uniforms with organdy aprons, reappeared and began to clear away the dessert plates. "I truly do. You can spend your millions of dollars all over the globe on your stark heathen and your coal-black, and it won't do one particle of good if there isn't charity in your heart." Her words were swallowed up by the torrent of generally voiced agreement.

"Abby's eyes followed the colored maids as they passed in and out through the swinging door to the pantry. Her eyes returned to the tableful of ladies. By some association of ideas, she visualized her diary, lying in its drawer beside the bed, at home. Then she allowed herself to swept on again by the avalanche of opinion around her," endlessly debating, who is the better friend of" the niggra?" The hypocritical Northerner or the soft hearted Southerner. . .

The forgettable Life photographer comes to town, consternation ensues, a book is written, Abby goes North.

The New York scenes are the weakest in the book; remarkably, it gains strength and keeps on gaining when Abby returns South to her quintessentially college-sports-mad husband, who, against all odds, becomes a fully-realized human being.

Nancy Hale was another Vogue alumna, like Marya Mannes, writing under a pseudonym in the 1930s. She was also a grand-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe - a fun fact that might be mentioned in a novel about the South!

Then, as now, Vogue uses writers and columnists as a roving cast of characters: not sure what the top photo was about, but in the bottom, Nancy Hale models a halter top made from a dime-store handkerchief, something we were still doing when I wore halter tops. Here is a photo from 1932:

In the Berkeley Public Library, you can still find her books on Mary Cassatt and the intellectual heritage of New England. In 1959, her best-known book would have been her 1942 novel, 700 pages, The Prodigal Women. Dear Beast is mentioned neither in her NYT obituary, or a biographical sketch introducing her papers at Smith College. I'm not sure why this sank out of sight. It didn't deserve to.

Tomorrow: Art Carney and a new album.

Antilope - Fine French Filth

2013-07-07T16:37:00.001-07:00

Today: Bayanihan Dance Troupe and a perfume for black patent leather.

Claire McCardell playsuit, 1940s, Metropolitan Museum of Art

I remember wearing something like this when I was about five, and even then, I wondered, "Why?" They collect a lot of mud if you are squatting in a puddle, not that the Claire McCardell-wearing woman would be doing that. But still.

Tweeting today: "All Blues." Miles Davis. Simply reminds me that I am still fairly jazz-resistant.

Not that Vogue thought them worth a photo, but People Are Talking About . . . "the touring Bayanihan dancers from the Philippines, the women pretty as cherries, the dance patterns oddly arresting, sometimes broken, syncopated by the slapping together of bamboo poles and coconut shells. . . "

Vogue is talking about Bayanihan, the National Folk Dance Troupe of the Philippines, which premiered in Brussels in 1958, and broadcast on the Ed Sullivan Show. And Vogue is right.

The video shows snippets of the repertoire. The Spanish dances are bland; the non-Spanish dances wake you right up again.

There is a point in this Vogue that, once I reach it, I will not go beyond. That is the sanity point. But there are still good things in those last pages, one of which I will fetch up now:

This ad turned out terrible, no matter what I've tried. I'm going to steal two other ads, utterly without context, simply to show that this actually existed - or still does. (Not sure at the moment.) Why on earth would you want to smell like an antelope? And why is this woman practically bathing in it?

I procured a sample of the vintage perfume - either from Surrender to Chance or The Perfumed Court - both fine and dangerous establishments. (Bought myself a half-birthday present of samples of each of the Chanel Exclusif scents. Very nice.) I am not wearing Antilope at the moment because I woke up chilled, with a head ache and sore throat. Antilope would prolong the misery.

Not that it is bad. It is very good. It is as strong as a Buick - a Buick crossed with a gazelle, as Jack Nicholson said about Jessica Lange. It is formidable; it is not casual. You should wear it with a black suit and black patent leather pumps. It is female, without being particularly feminine. The first time I wore it, it kicked in a couple of hours after I put it on - too much - at the checkout stand at Safeway. I nearly jumped back. Apologies to fellow shoppers! The feel of it lingers after the scent is gone. I am guessing that that is the filth, a good thing in perfume.

Now for the research: Created in 1943 or 1946, supposedly an aldehyde floral (like Chanel No. 5), but I didn't get that. I did get the musk, vetiver and leather of the base. I try not to be skeptical about perfume descriptions - the topnote, the base, etc. Perhaps I confuse perfume critiques with wine reviews - I don't get those, either.

Potted research from around the Internet: Weil brothers were furriers who created scents to mask the gaminess of the furs, then developed regular perfumes.

The Weil brothers fled to New York during the war. In 1942, the Vichy government stripped them of their French citizenship. I can't easily find a picture of them.

But I did find this, by accident, in searching for "Weil" and "perfume" in the New York Times. (A magistrate named Weil is mentioned in this 1927 story about a man who was caught selling fake Coty perfume to stores. La plus ca change, etc.)

Tomorrow: We meet some characters from The Help, as seen in 1959.

Nobody Expects the Bowser Parking System!

2013-07-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

How very little fashion there is in Vogue when you put it under the microscope. But how much of everything - and anything - else. Today: The Bowser Parking System. Hence: the continuing series of Clarie McCardell summer fashions.

Filched from the Met

Tweeting today from Spotify: The very lovely "Blue on Green," from Kind of Blue. There is probably a way I could link back here directly, but I haven't figured it out. Back to this:

Let's orient ourselves. Marya Mannes, top left, yesterday; Bowser garage, middle, today.

People Are Talking About . . .

Fashion photographer John Rawlings did a nice job. I wonder if Vogue ever shot a fashion spread there - unless it's William Klein, you don't see much grit in American Vogue of this period.

So: "The Bowser Garage on West 45th Street where automobiles are filed for fifty seconds delivery in eight stories of concrete, open front and back: the mechanics of the process are big swerving elevators that move up, down, and sideways. . . "

For a much better explanation of these garages, the first of which opened in the teeming metropolis of Des Moines, go here. The Bowser garage in New York opened in 1958; from what I can tell, it's still there, now called the Showbiz Garage. You'd think there would be YouTube videos, but haven't been able to find any. Nor can I find an obituary for Virgil Bowser, the Iowan who came up with the idea when he was living in Washington, D.C. during World War II. Mr. Bowser designed prosthetic limbs for returning veterans and was fed up with the atrocious traffic in D.C. So, naturally he got to work on designing an automated parking system. How I admire people like that! Here is his patent, a blurry drawing appears below (So far in this project, we've reviewed patents for bras, girdles, store displays and now a parking garage. Hats off to all of you!)

Oh, I bet you never thought I could tie together any of this. Of course! Reviewing Claire McCardell clothes - here's a more substantial example:

I wondered - and yes, indeed, she took out several patents on her designs. Which refuse to transfer here. Oh, well.

Tomorrow: dancers from the Philippines.

Mourning the Magnovox

2013-07-05T20:35:00.002-07:00

Tonight: A Claire McCardell swimsuit from the early 1950s.

And People Are Still Talking About stuff.

Now Tweeting - "Freddie the Freeloader," by Miles Davis, which sounds a lot like "So What." I am building up a tolerance for both jazz and musicals. Here is one thing that couldn't happen to you in 1959. Let's say you open the lid to your Magnavox to play Kind of Blue. Your Magnavox wouldn't start nagging you about neglecting The Sound of Music. What's it to you, Spotify, if I haven't listened to something for a while? This is worse than if the Magnavox mentioned that my neighbor was listening to Frank Sinatra right now, hint, hint. Or is it? I can't imagine anyone ever bothered to wonder about the musical tastes of remote acquaintances before their selections were constantly dangled in front of us. Nice, safe, steady, non-leaking-of-private-listening-habits Magnavox!

What's the topic for today?

People Are Talking About. . . "Marya Mannes, handsome, thoughtful, who wrote "The Handsome Heart" in this issue,

who is now working with George Voskovec on a satirical musical comedy." That was going to be called Time and Again, according to the NYT, but nothing appears to have come of it.

Having read "The Handsome Heart," and you'll have a chance when we turn the page, I don't think she is quite the right person for a musical comedy, especially a satirical one. Who was she?

A social critic, magazine writer, Vogue alumna, a talking head - her obituary makes no mention of this play, but she did publish a volume of satirical verse in 1958, called Subverse. I can't find an example online. She seems to have been a quintessential public television person and here she is on public television (after a short introduction):

I'm afraid I find you kind of a pill.

But her quotes are all over the Twittersphere! This is the best:

‏@IsisTurpin

24 Nov

People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are. ~Marya Mannes

Agreed! (I have no idea who this Twitterer is - just picked one at random.)

Tomorrow: The Bowser Garage

Onward to Labor Day

2013-07-04T22:05:00.001-07:00

Summer's Resolution: Post every day until from Independence Day to Labor Day.

How has it been more than a month? It just has. RVV has been tweeting away - until blindsided by Song Pop. If ever there is a category for Music Mentioned in December 1959 Vogue . . . Have been tweeting songs from the albums recommended for Christmas presents. And to be extra Meta, they have their own playlist in Spotify. Have also tried to tweet some fashion - Claire McCardell from the Metropolitan Museum of Art most recently. It's quite a nice little Twitter feed. Following whatever and whoever has been mentioned in this issue - including Jane Fonda and Leonard Bernstein, who is dead.

Taking stock: however stalled this blog seems, things have been going on behind the scenes, as it were. I found samples of three of the perfumes advertised in coming pages. The old Mac has been migrated to the new Mac, although everything was left dumped in a heap on the Desktop, just like a real-life move.

Let's go to the movies!

* While waiting for a summons by the king, a troupe of carneys evade the law and wreak havoc among the bourgeoisie.

* Vogue said this about The Magician: Obviously a morality play with no discernible moral - a two-hundred-year-old witch sells rat poison as an aphrodisiac, murmuring such unhelpful aphorisms as 'If fat pigs squeal too loud they may lose their hams.'" In the end, this cost me $30 as it languished week by week on the shelf, little red Netflix envelope disappearing and reappearing under bills and catalogs.

*It was really good! I've never liked Max von Sydow before this, but then I've never seen him this young. Ingrid Thulin, who was the only really good thing in Wild Strawberries, is again the grounding force.

Tomorrow: Something. Meanwhile, Tweeting via Spotify: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue from the what-to-get-someone-for-Christmas list. (Next on the list is actually Cy Coleman, Why Try to Change Me Now, but that's not on Spotify. First up on Kind of Blue is "So What," a song that I used to beat a lot of people on Song Pop in the last week. . . but I'm done with that now. Really.) Also Tweeting: Claire McCardell swimsuits.

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/80096685

American Originals

2013-05-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

This time: Some fashion history. Eventually.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Taking up in the middle of the page. . . People Have Been Talking About Claude Chabrol and Peter Gunn. The conversations turns - improbably, I say - to Robert Frost. "The new book for children, You Come Too, a collection of familiar poems by Robert Frost, whose poetry abounds not only in strong read-along rhythms, but also in those foreboding shadows that properly shiver the minds of youngsters. . . . " I got this from LinkPlus, photographed a particularly apt poem, but can't get at it until after a trip to the Genius Bar. Now, if I had copied it out, we could get somewhere. You were a child with a very solid upbringing if you found this book under the tree. But hard to imagine any child actively delighted by it. And I doubt that whoever bought it thought, "Just the thing to unsettle Junior's peace of mind! Could you gift wrap? Perhaps that Gorey paper?"

In a livelier corner, People Are Talking About . . . The Third Avenue bar, Allen's where the food is pretty good, the walls covered with non-sequitur group photographs, and the juke box plays new records, often too loud." Oh, go home and have some Ovaltine.

I don't know if this was a forerunner of Joe Allen, which I think used to have a branch in L.A., which I think I went to once; it was that time a very short, intense disco-type guy tried to pick up my friend Betty by inviting her to a weekend meditating somewhere - very vague descriptions, possibly UFO involved - and I finally asked, "Well, do you have breakfast, or what?" and he requested that I go outside because I was ruining the vibrations. Tenuous, tenuous.

Somebody is holding forth on William Faulkner. ". . . The cloudy power, like a thunderhead building up, of The Mansion, the last volume of William Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family whose only morality is survival: every Snopes meanly sinful, and each ugly, despicable Snopes surviving, prevailing, and by virtue of this 'equal to any, good as any, brave as any, being inextricable from, anonymous with all of them: the beautiful, the splendid, the proud and the brave, right on up to the very top itself among the shining phantoms and dreams which are the milestones of the long human recording." Played too loud. Vogue and Faulkner inextricably entwined.

Always avoided Faulkner, so this was a good opportunity to give him a go. First, the preface in which he says he's been writing about these people for so long that he's got them kind of mixed up, but he's sure not going to go back and fix things at this late date. Second, the name really is Snopes. I can't read about people named Snopes.

In dinner culottes: Sandra Church

"Dinner culottes worn by Gypsy's Sandra Church, in an everything's-coming-up-roses pink silk. The neckline is halter, and the back bare -- a fashion concession to the fact that in America at home clothes should be compatible with central heating. By Townley. About $120. At Henri Bendel; Neiman-Marcus; I. Magnin." First - it would be about $958 today. But more important, if this isn't exactly by Claire McCardell, who had died in 1958, it was certainly more than inspired by one of her designs.

A few years ago I tracked down her 1956 book, What Shall I Wear? I longed to have the ability to reissue it; someone else had the same idea.

Claire McCardell was kind of the American Chanel and also the anti-Chanel. That's her red dress at the top of the post; go to the Met for 150 or so of her designs, including many versions of the puzzling diaper bathing suit. Don't get that one.

Third, Gypsy? Both Sound of Music and Gypsy in 1959. Not much Sandra Church on YouTube; best we can do:

We may or may not meet the 1962 movie - will any of us live that long, the way this is going? It was one of those movies I watched every time it was on television. I was fascinated by the tenement poverty, the hard luck, the Chinese restaurant, the teenage marriage and utterly mystified at Natalie Wood's transformation. Funny - we started this spread with the utterly repellent Sound of Music and wandered into Gypsy, which I thought was sad in many ways, but rather more moral than Sound of Music.

Next time: the end in sight of PATA.

An Old Friend Makes Good

2013-05-19T12:17:00.001-07:00

This week: a visit to Islamabad; some visits from old friends.

We haven't visited the Sitemeter lately, which is kind of like a bird feeder inside your computer, attracting visitors from all over the world. Or more like the log of a bird feeder, capturing little footprints from afar. Which would make the blog itself the actual bird feeder. With Tweets!

This week - last week, by the now - we had a new visitor from Islamabad, Pakistan who was searching for "gingham print for wedding dress." That led the searcher to this page that has a glimpse of Brigitte Bardot's pink gingham wedding dress. This spring, men, in particular, are be-ginghamed and how very nice they all look.

Sometimes I take the co-ordinates of whatever it is that shows up on Sitemeter, plug it into Google Maps and ask it to find the nearest Starbucks. From the address in Islamabad you get this:

Driving directions to a Gloria Jean's Coffee Beans!

The Islamabad Branch of Gloria Jean's

On the map, near Gloria Jean's you see the Margalla Hills National Park, which kind of looks like Southern California on a smoggy day, except with monkeys.

Co-incidently, today we have Berkeley's best festival: Himalaya Days in the park down the street. Part Berkeley yoga/spiritual/far-away-uncomfortable-travel culture and part chance for every Indian restaurant around to sell stuff, and part county fair for people who come from the Himalayan region - dancing, food, music. I will be looking for the Hugging Guru's Institute - best curry plate and most mango-y lassi.

This is the next page of . . .

A far cry from the Himalayas.

People Are Talking About. . . "Claude Chabrol, the young French triple-play movie man, his own writer, director, producer, whose career has been based on a minimum of money and a maximum of message; his point, corruption everywhere. The Cousins, his second movie, peculiarly flamboyant, glossily decadent, is about to open in New York, shows off the cleverness of Chabrol who used his friends and his village for his first movie, but changed the village for Paris in the second. . . "

William Klein photo - would like to see rest of this shoot

Hey, we know him! We met him in the last issue, a friend of journalist Derek Prouse, who co-wrote The Champagne Murders with Chabrol in 1966. And then we actually saw The Cousins for the Let's Go to the Movies of 1959. Well, maybe we didn't. Very hard to keep up that page - what a mess. Sorry.

Another old friend in the news this week - covered on Twitter - where you'll find all the breaking news.

Barnett Newman, of song and paint - remember him?

Detail of exhaustively blogged Irving Penn photo of AbExs

His big blue painting sold for $43 million bucks, apparently to Miuccia Prada.

I have been thoroughly, accidentally educated on the Abstract Expressionists. Whether I've wanted to be or not. Taking a brief moment to note what I believe to be the difference between information and education: First, I meet Mr. Newmann in the pages of an old Vogue. I find out a few facts about him that I no longer remember. I see his work at the AbExNYMOMA rerun. None of that art sinks in. I forget about him. Then there's a small headline in the paper and I feel all of these connections taking root in my brain. Physically. But I do not understand why someone would pay $43 million dollars for it. I think it is more the case that $43 million dollars does not mean the same to Miuccia Prada as it does for most people; not that this painting is 43 million times better than what I have on my own walls.

People Are Talking About . . . "Marching bands playing the Peter Gunn music. . . "

That's fantastic! We already know that Henry Mancini's Music From Peter Gunn was the Number One album from 1959, although not on Vogue's list. Charming to imagine bands immediately rushing onto fields all over America. As they still do. Everywhere there is a band.

Here's one from Brazil, I think.

So, let's go to the movies!

* Hmmm. I did see this - but what is sticking after a year? Not much. City mouse hipster v. country mouse grind.

* Gorgeous music; beautiful black and white film; great little apartment in Paris.

* Good triple feature with 400 Blows and Pickpocket -- all from 1959.

Next: more, yet more PATA; and then some more and then some more. This week we're Tweeting Benny Carter and Music From Peter Gunn. Daily.