The Swan Gondola

Gazing at silvery, silent-era Hollywood: lost films, lush photography, sublime movie-poster design, flappers, giggle water, illegal gin. Also: the delights & wonders, the art & design, the fashion & trends of the turn of the century/the belle époque/the fin de siècle, featuring magazine illustration, classic typography & advertising. I’m Timothy Schaffert, the author of the novel THE SWAN GONDOLA (Riverhead/Penguin), about a ventriloquist and an actress, set at the 1898 Omaha World’s Fair, "a highly atmospheric entertainment, full of plot twists, historical flavor and paranormal romance," according to the Washington Post. (THE SWAN GONDOLA is an Oprah.com Book of the Week.) [All images from the Omaha Bee are from University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries' Nebraska Newspaper Project, and Library of Congress' Chronicling America.]

[theswangondola]

#39 in movie stars in candy wrapper dresses, ELIZABETH TAYLOR in "A Place in the Sun," gown by Venchi chocolate al latte extra; ... bodice: a bag of glass pearls; ... skirt: polyester fiber fill from Tiffany jewelry box 

[kennethbrangh]

Terence Stamp photographed by Arthur Sidey in London, 1962.

[electronicsquid]

[suckswell500]

nelsoncarpenter:

alpacinoandthevintageboys: electronicsquid: Des Moines. 1945   Photographer: Nina Leen

[oldshowbiz]

Mae West was way ahead of her time. She produced The Drag, a 1927 comedy that treated homosexuals sympathetically and featured a nearly-all-gay cast. The New York Daily News reported “The Drag, now being rehearsed by Mae West, author of Sex, is said to reach the extreme in sex plays. The play concerns twenty or more male captives, as the expression goes, who dress up as women at a party.” 

[oldshowbiz]

Midcentury Carnival 

[gypsyastronaut]

[hanakogames]

[trylonandperisphere]

The First Drag Queen Was a Former Slave

Who fought for queer freedom a century before Stonewall.

His name was William Dorsey Swann, but to his friends he was known as “the Queen.” Both of those names had been forgotten for nearly a century before I rediscovered them while researching at Columbia University. Born in Maryland around 1858, Swann endured slavery, the Civil War, racism, police surveillance, torture behind bars, and many other injustices. But beginning in the 1880s, he not only became the first American activist to lead a queer resistance group; he also became, in the same decade, the first known person to dub himself a “queen of drag”—or, more familiarly, a drag queen.

In 1896, after being convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail on the false charge of “keeping a disorderly house”—a euphemism for running a brothel—Swann demanded (and was denied) a pardon from President Grover Cleveland for holding a drag ball. This, too, was a historic act: It made Swann the earliest recorded American to take specific legal and political steps to defend the queer community’s right to gather without the threat of criminalization, suppression, or police violence.

Source

[vincent-van-gtg]

[fitnessdesire]

Can’t risk it

[laderdesders1]

The duck of creativity. I waited so long for it.

[xo-angel-ox]

I mean worth a shot 😂😂😂

[gahdamnpunk]

White people serve way less for rape and murder. I have no words

[robertocustodioart]

Photo by Frances McLaughlin-Gill 1949

[the1920sinpictures]

Late 1920′s to 1930′s advertising plaster bust of Josephine Baker for her cosmetics line Bakerfix. From America in the 1920′s, FB.

[deadstrangeblog]

In a protest against censorship, photographer A.L. Schafer staged this iconic photograph in 1934, violating as many rules as possible in one shot.

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

Today’s #TinyTuesday book is a treasure you can actually read at home, if you happen to read Catalan. Thanks to our Digitization team, “Missatge del President Wilson”, a 1918 miniature book published in Barcelona, is available in our Digital Library.

What’s it say? It is a Catalan version of the address Wilson gave to U.S. Congress on January 8th, 1918 towards the end of World War I, laying out his fourteen points towards peace.

[raphael-kirchner]

Two in a Car, 1916, Raphael Kirchner

[kristalknobb]

Tête-à-tête by Miguel Mackinlay. 1930 Bushey Museum and Art Gallery

[whataboutbobbed]

why call the movie Moulin Rouge when you can just call it Constance Bennett