Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, who both had shows coming up at the Paramount Theater, appear together on a call-in radio show
(Martha Holmes. 1949)
Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, who both had shows coming up at the Paramount Theater, appear together on a call-in radio show in 1949. Photo: Martha Holmes, Time/Life Pictures
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Hilda Simms and Lena Horne in the late 1940s. It drives me crazy that I have not been able to find a legitimate source/photographer behind this photo. It’s one thing to find it on a random website (like I did last year) but it’s another thing to share it and properly credit it for a wider audience. Sigh…
Hilda Simms, the pioneer Minnesota-born actress best known for her starring role in the first all-black production of Anna Lucasta on Broadway, in a glam shot circa 1947. You are not going to believe the awesome pictures I have found of her for the book! Photo: Denis De Marney/Getty Images.
Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis compare notes, and the tools of their respective trades, on June 14, 1946 during Mr. Robinson’s visit to Mr. Louis’s training camp in Pompton Lake, New Jersey. It was 66 years ago today, on April 15, 1947, that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Photo: Bettman/Corbis.
At the White House screening for the new “42” movie, Michelle Obama had this to say about Rachel Robinson, wife of baseball legend Jackie Robinson: “She’s a woman of strength, of courage, conviction; a woman who paved the way for me, but she paved the way for millions of Americans all across this country.” I am attending a private screening of the movie tonight in Manhattan and I could not agree more! In this September 23, 1947 photo, Mrs. Robinson is with her husband in Brooklyn as he accepts keys from the legendary dancer, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, to a car he won just before a game against the San Francisco Giants. Photo: Bettman/Corbis.
Happy Easter! I hope you are enjoying the day if you celebrate. This Ella Fitzgerald photo was taken by the legendary William Gottlieb in November 1946. Lars Gotrich added the bunny ears for a 2011 NPR story on Easter and Jazz. Photo: The Library of Congress
Nat “King” Cole and Maria Cole dance at their wedding reception 65 years ago today, March 28, 1948, which happened to be Easter Sunday. The Coles were married at Harlem’s famous Abyssinian Baptist Church by Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the legendary Harlem congressman. According to Michael Henry Adams, author of the beautiful coffee table book, “Harlem Lost and Found,” Ms. Cole wore a $700 ice-blue satin dress designed by none other than VBG fashion designer legend, Zelda Wynn Valdes! Photo by Lisa Larsen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
A model wears Art Smith’s “Modern Cuff” Bracelet, circa 1948. Art Smith (1917-1982) was a modernist jeweler born in Cuba to Jamaican parents who eventually emigrated to Brooklyn. He opened his first shop on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village in 1946 - no small feat. According to the Brooklyn Museum (host of a 2008 exhibit of his work) he was one of the leading modernist jewelers of the mid-twentieth century. Along with being covered by magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Smith, an avid jazz lover, once made cufflinks for Duke Ellington which included some notes from Mr. Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.” Mr. Smith was also a supporter of early Black modern dance groups and an active supporter of Black and gay rights. Art Smith was quoted in the 1969 catalog for his one man exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft: “A piece of jewelry is in a sense an object that is not complete in itself. Jewelry is a ‘what is it?’ until you relate it to the body. The body is a component in design just as air and space are. Like line, form, and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the basic inspirations in creating form.”
Sarah Vaughan, born on this day in 1924 in Newark, NJ, in her dressing room in Chicago, 1948. I wonder which fragrance she was using? Photo: Ted Williams.
Blanche Dunn, the chic Harlem Renaissance-era actress, photographed in Morningside Park in Harlem by her friend, Carl Van Vechten, in 1940. Ms. Dunn was essentially an “It” girl of the era: a mainstay at Van Vechten’s legendary parties and, as noted by the legendary Harlem Renaissance writer, painter Richard Bruce Nugent, “at all the Broadway first nights. A party was not a party, a place not a place, without Blanche”. Photo: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Muriel Smith, photographed in 1944 by Carl Van Vechten as “Carmen,” the role she originated on Broadway. In 1956, she turned down an offer from Samuel Goldwyn to star in the film version of ”Porgy and Bess,” stating, ”It doesn’t do the right thing for my people.” After a successful career overseas, particularly Great Britain, the New York-born Ms. Smith taught voice at Virginia Union University before her death in 1985.
Baseball legend Jackie Robinson was born on this day in 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. In this 1947 photograph, Mr. Robinson is holding his contract to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was 66 years ago this April that Mr. Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Photo: Bettman/Corbis
