The most perfect, perfected gentleman - male mannequins by Pierre Imans, circa 1930-40

During this period, the company began making figures without the glass eyes and with molded hair. They were nonetheless often just as full of character.

In 1896 the Dutch-born Imans began producing unconventional, naturalistic mannequins in wax. He had studied with the sculptor Ludovic Durand, one of the chief modelers at the Musée Grévin, the hugely popular waxwork museum in Paris which had opened to the public in the 1880s. But with his own figures, Imans was keen to distance himself from the sort of waxwork grotesques one would encounter at the Musée Grévin; he considered himself not a wax modeler but a sculptor, a statuaire céroplasticien or "ceroplastician".

This figure and the next look to be taken from the same mold, but this one has the full eye and hair treatment, while the next is merely molded.

His figures - male and female - were given carefully painted faces, hair and eyebrows and eyelashes, glass eyes, and sometimes even teeth. What is more, he often gave them names, and in his elegant marketing catalog photographs they were styled to look like glamorous celebrities. Imans refused to call his wax figures "mannequins." He purged the word from his promotional vocabulary and described his figures simply as Les Cires de Pierre Imans, "The waxes of Pierre Imans".

Besides their obvious cost to produce, these wax figures were both very heavy and quite delicate; the hands were especially prone to damage. So, from the Twenties, new wax-like materials such as cérolaque and carnasine - a light plaster composite, a mixture of plaster and gelatine - were introduced to produce mannequins that were lighter and less fragile.

I've been unable to find a single thing about Imans beyond his country of origin. Not his date of birth or death. He started his business in 1896 and it looks like it was still functioning into the Fifties and maybe later. 10 rue Crussol, in the eleventh arrondissement of Paris, the business address included on all these images, is today the location of a vintage dress shop. Which seems rather appropriate, actually. Imans' surviving work can be found in museums around the world, considered important examples of modern sculpture... just as Imans believed it to be.

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The cover of an Imans brochure, circa 1930.

 The Imans showroom at 16-18 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris, circa 1929.

16-18 Boulevard Haussmann today.

I haven't been able to find any period images of 10 rue (de) Crussol, but this is the location today.

Sculptor Clovis Trouille (foreground) and others in the Imans workroom, circa 1920s. Trouille apparently worked for the Imans company for forty-five years.

Actress as actress - Teodora Lamadrid in the role of Adriana Lecouvreur, a portrait by Madrazo, 1852

Teodora Lamadrid (Theodora Hervella Cano; 26 November 1820, Zaragoza - 22 April 1896, Madrid), leading actress of the romantic Spanish theater during the nineteenth century, along with her older sister Bárbara Lamadrid and her rival Matilde Díez, the most celebrated actress of the period. Throughout her career she interpreted some of the most important pieces of classical theater, both in prose and in verse, and even performed in opera and zarzuela.

Performing on stage from the age of eight, in 1832, when she was still only twelve, she moved to Madrid where, along with her sister, she was hired by the famous director and impresario Juan Grimaldi to work at the Teatro del Príncipe and the Teatro de la Cruz. Her career progressed until, in 1851, she assayed her most famous role, that of Adriana Lecouvreur, the tragic story of the early eighteenth century French actress Adrienne Lecouvreur. (Lecouvreur's story is best known from its retelling in Francesco Cilea's opera, which premiered in 1902 and is still frequently performed today.) 

Lamadrid's repertoire was large and, like many Spanish-speaking performers, she toured many of the countries of Latin America. She married composer Basilio Basili and performed in both an opera and a zarzuela that he wrote. She was also an important teacher. She died at the age of seventy-five and is buried in the the cementerio de San Isidro in Madrid.

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A copy of the Madrazo portrait by Manuel Cabral y Aguado-Bejarano, 1853.

An engraving of the portrait.

Another portrait of Lamadrid, by Prudent-Louis Leray, 1856.

Illusion upon illusion - Norma Shearer in color photographs from Marie Antoinette, 1938

Gown by Adrian, coiffure by Sydney Guilaroff, jewels by Joseff of Hollywood.

It's been widely written that M-G-M's lavish 1938 production of "Marie Antoinette" was originally planned to be shot in Technicolor. The late head of production, Irving Thalberg, had already greenlighted the project for his wife Norma Shearer before his death two years previously. But it's said that when the time came to begin filming, with production costs booming, the decision was made to shoot the film - one of the most expensive of the Thirties - in black and white rather than color. Mark Alan Vieira‎ disputes this, though. Photographer, filmmaker, and Hollywood historian, and the author of an authoritative biography of Thalberg, he ought to know. Having reviewed the production memos for the film, he states that there was never any intention of filming "Marie Antoinette" in color.

So what of these color photographs? The story goes that the costume designer, Adrian, asked to have color stills taken to record his work, but that might just be "collector talk." What is known is that these images were restored from 4x5 Kodachrome transparencies by Vieira, himself. Apparently there are hundreds of such slides, though some are so faded as to be beyond restoration. (The two portraits of Norma Shearer were included in Jay Jorgensen's 2015 book, "Creating the Illusion.")

The gambling house scene, with Joseph Schildkraut, Tyrone Power, Anita Louise, Shearer, Reginald Gardiner, and Albert Dekker.

The beginning of the film, with Shearer and Cecil Cunningham.

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It should also be noted that on the evening of 8 July 1938 - exactly twenty years before my birth; please don't do the math - "Marie Antoinette" had its very opulent, star-studded Los Angeles premiere at the Carthay Circle. The gardens around the theater has been restructured and decorated to evoke a resemblance to the gardens at Versailles, and movie fans waited for hours in the summer heat for a glimpse of the film stars. (Most of these images are screenshots taken from "Hollywood Goes to Town", a featurette made to promote the film.)

Norma Shearer and Tyrone Power signing the guest registry.

Some well-known names here. Adrian, who designed the film's costumes, added his distinctive signature at top left.

Tiny, overdressed siblings - portraits of the children of King Sigismund III of Poland by Martin Kober, 1596

Władysław (9 June 1595 – 20 May 1648), reigned 1632–1648 as Władysław IV Vasa, King of Poland.

Anna Maria (23 May 1593 – 9 February 1600).

Sigismund III had twelve children by two wives. His first wife, Anna of Austria, gave birth to five children, three of whom didn't survive their first year, and the fourth died before her seventh birthday. With only one surviving heir, seven years after Anna's death, Sigismund married her sister, Constance, and had seven more children. Of these, two died before their first birthday, while two more had barely attained adulthood before their premature deaths.

These are portraits of two of the first three children born to Sigismund and Anna, his first wife; the second child, Katarzyna, died before she was a month old. The first-born, Anna Maria, three years old in this portrait, would die before she turned seven. But her brother, two years younger, would live to succeed their father and reign as Władysław IV Vasa.

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The parents of the children, by the same artist: Anna of Austria, circa 1595.

Sigismund III, circa 1590.

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Martin Kober (circa 1550, Wrocław – before 1598, Kraków or Warsaw), portrait painter and court painter to several Central European monarchs, mainly active in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.