It’s Never Too Early To Start Smoking Camels
Category: 1920s
Bootblacks Of Yore
What is a bootblack?
As it turns out, “bootblacks” were probably what you think they were–someone who polishes boots and shoes–and they came in every color.
Here is a cute little fella earning his keep. Good thing he has knee socks on.
This kiddo looks pleased as punch to be doing child labor. It’s better than school.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the term. Have you read Ragged Dick?
This Union Station “model bootblack” was schmancified up with two chairs and all-weather cover.
In a state full of bootwearers, I don’t recall ever having seen anyone get his shoes shined, perhaps because people have no pride in personal appearance anymore, or they have no disposable income. It must be a more urban venture. I guess it’s honest work. It seems less degrading than offering your body to a stranger for money, and some places allow that. There are better ways to earn a dollar on your knees, and bootblacking is one. In fact, ICS Learning Systems should get on this asap. It’s got to be more lucrative than TV/VCR repair.
In any event, bootblacking is alive and well. Okay, alive and ailing. But like a person free to choose his own health insurance, a few of them still exist.
A Black And White Woody
I doubt any young man would want to be saddled with the nickname of Woody in this day and age. But in days of yore, it was not uncommon. Most of you remember Woody Woodpecker.
Or this naive, young bartender, Huckleberry Woodrow Tiberius “Woody” Boyd, from Cheers, played by a man named Woody in real life.
Other famous Woodies include folk singer Woody “This Land Is My Land” Guthrie, and Woody Allen, the director/screenwriter who destroyed any of his cred by marrying his stepdaughter (yes, she was, for all practical purposes) Soon-Yi, who is 37 years his junior. Gross, Woody. You disgust me. And I never liked Annie Hall. But I do like this picture. Or half of it, at least.
I wonder if folks called former president, Woodrow Wilson, by his full name? Can you name one fact about this president?
He was actually one of the four presidents who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He received his in 1919 for founding the League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations. You probably know Obama somehow nabbed one as well, but so did Theodore Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter. But I want to leave you with a more upbeat woody–this one from Toy Story.
“What chance does a toy like me have against a Buzz Lightyear action figure?”
Did You Happen To See The Most Beautiful Girl In The World?
Mary looks like she just tossed back the requisite two teaspoons of Listerine and is just holding it in her mouth during the photo shoot, warming it with her saliva, waiting to spit it out.
Dead But Dead, Actually
Sorry.
I had to go there.
Latin is a dead language, no?
I See Dead People
To be fair, all these people are dead. It was 91 years ago that this shot was taken. Little Miss Mary Pickford in her ringlets and sailor dress makes the shot. Sorry if these pics are enormous, but you have to high-res these son-of-a-guns to see the details.
Remember when you were a freshman, and they called you “fish”? Well, evidently that term has been around for awhile.
I love the front-row girl with the double sunflowers.
There were three rooms total of fish in this 1923 class. Most of them are solemn-faced, but I see one with a mischievous smile. I think he’s pulling the hair of the scowling girl in front of him.
You probably think I’m the crazy yearbook lady by now. What do I care about these dead people, long forgotten? Their families didn’t even care to keep their yearbooks. But there is so much history packed into these volumes, young people of every era in all manner of style and economic background. And sometimes the cover itself is so beautiful, I wouldn’t think of setting it at the curb on Trash Day.
Flapper Chic
The quality of this photograph and the confidence of style at this 1920 Howard University Football Game begs the question: Could this really be 96 years ago??
The Great Army of the Bobbed
In 1915, trendsetter and celebrated ballroom dancer Irene Castle debuted her Castle Bob, but it would not be until the next decade that the hairstyle began to catch on. By 1930, college campuses were filled with bobbed young independent women. It was all the rage. Curly or straight, blonde or brunette, it didn’t matter. Locks of Love would have had a field day.
It was quite the departure from the long, high-maintenance tresses of the early twentieth-century Gibson Girl.
And everyone was doing it. Well, almost everyone.
In a 1927 magazine interview, Mary Pickford, one of silent film’s most famous actresses, explained: I think I should never be forgiven by my mother, my husband, or my maid if I should commit the indiscretion of cutting my hair. The last in particular seems to take a great personal pride in its length and texture, and her horror-stricken face whenever I mention the possibility of cutting it makes me pause and consider. Perhaps I have a little sentimental feeling for it myself. I have had my curls quite a while now and have become somewhat attached to them. Besides, there is no use denying the fact, no matter how much I should like to do so, that I am not a radical. (source:http://historymatters.gmu.edu/)
A radical.
Mary Garden, a famous opera singer at the time, however, was very much a radical, as evidenced by her testimony. She equated bobbing of hair to the casting of shackles.
Bobbed hair is a state of mind and not merely a new manner of dressing my head. It typifies growth, alertness, up-to-dateness, and is part of the expression of the élan vital! [spirit] It is not just a fad of the moment, either like mah jong or cross-word puzzles. At least I don’t think it is. I consider getting rid of our long hair one of the many little shackles that women have cast aside in their passage to freedom. Whatever helps their emancipation, however small it may seen, is well worth while.
Bobbing the hair is one of those things that show us whether or not we are abreast of the age in which we find ourselves. For instance, can you imagine any woman with a vivid consciousness of being alive, walking along the street in 1927 with skirts trailing on the ground, wearing elastic-side shoes, a shawl, and also a mid-Victorian bonnet? If you saw such a sight you would instantly put her down as one who had ceased to grow, as one who was passé [out of style] and very far from being an up-to-date woman…
I do my best to be constantly on the alert and up to the moment. On my toes, as the boys say. I could no more imaging myself wearing a long, trailing skirt in 1927 when all the world was wearing short skirts than I could wear long, trailing tresses when all the world (or nearly all of it) had wisely come to the conclusion that bobbed hair was more youthful, more chic, and, if I may say so, much more sanitary.
Keep in mind that Ms. Garden was already in her FIFTIES when she made these comments. But most college-age gals agreed. Not a one of these sorority girls wore long hair. Everyone had hopped aboard the peer pressure bandwagon. Whether Jews…
…or Gentiles.
The yearbook editors had nothing but kind words for the bobbed Miss Jackson, praising her for her “naturalness.”
Of course, naturalness doesn’t win any crowns. Just ask Honey Boo Boo. A little dazzle, a little pizzazz, a little sizzle–pretty much any word with double z’s–would bring the boys calling like cats to shiny objects. Women like these Bluebonnet Belles:
It seems no girls were immune to the bobbing pressure, even ones who had so staunchly been against it. Who wants to be left behind in the fads of the past? Mary Pickford herself had conceded in the aforementioned article, “It is quite likely that some day in frenzied haste, casting all caution to the winds, forgetting fans and family, I shall go to a coiffeur and come out a shorn lamb to join the great army of the bobbed.”
And shorn lamb she was. Mary cut her famous ringlets a year after that interview, soon after her mother died. So famous were her curls, that she even auctioned one for $15,000!
What do you think? Does she look better to you? Should we give in to peer pressure in the name of staying modern? Or should we stay stuck in the past, never evolving?
Pre-Depression 1928 Alcalde
In my years of perusing old yearbook pages, I have found that the students’ portrait demeanors progress from stoic (you’ve seen Civil War era photos) to eternally wasted (beginning in the 60s and moving throughout the 80s). Humor was often saved for cartoons or jokes/limericks in the back of the book. However, the humor is usually so outdated, I can’t follow. And in some instances, just plain crazy.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of this one:
This yearbook belonged to Mabel E. Roberson from Humble, Texas, whom I imagine has since passed on, as she would be over 100 at this point.
Evidently, she did not spell “chaos” correctly, and was mocked for it, and understandably so. Chaos? Five little letters?
Her spelling may not have been up to par, but she did manage to make a “real friend.”
She also spent a happy night under the big bright moon with John C. Sutton.
She must have been too busy with John/Jack to give Kucera the time of day. He still mourned his broken heart.
Another man wanted to put her in jail with a life sentence. Egads, what sort of debt did she owe?
I combed these brittle pages and could not for the life of me find Mabel’s pic. I assume she was a little easier on the eyes than Sue Hill, big pimpin’ in her sparkly hat.
It would have been a hard time to be in college, no? This was during Prohibition. For those of you non-Americans, Prohibition was a nationwide ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcohol from 1920 to 1933. I don’t imagine Italy or France enforced such a thing. It was a time of flapper bobs, mink coats (before PETA threw red paint on fur), and apparently–Harry Potter glasses.
Dancing around the maypole gaily, who could have imagined The Great Depression was only a matter of months away?
I Don't Get It 