L a - b e a u t é - s a u v e r a - l e - m o n d e ~ D o s t o ï e v s k i

L a - b e a u t é - s a u v e r a - l e - m o n d e  ~  D o s t o ï e v s k i



Friday, August 9, 2019

Wrestling for Life in Oklahoma - photographs by Bernard Hoffman for Life Magazine, 1939.



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The February 27, 1939 issue of Life featured a three-page article entitled "'Gibraltar of Grappling' Produces Another Great Oklahoma A&M Team." Only the month before, Life photographer Bernard Hoffman had arrived on campus with several cameras and countless rolls of film and flashbulbs to spend two full days with the team and coach Ed Gallagher. Eighteen months after these images were taken, the legendary coach died as the result of a nearly decade-long battle with Parkinson's Disease; Gallagher is still considered to be one of the greatest and most influential wrestling coaches of all time .




Sunday, August 4, 2019

It all leads to a waltz - Jeanette MacDonald (and Maurice Chevalier) in the Merry Widow, 1934


Four portraits by Elmer Russell Ball.
Three more portraits by Elmer Russell Ball.
Need I even mention that the gowns are by Adrian...?
Portraits by Clarence Sinclair Bull. (Eight images.)
Three more portraits by Clarence Sinclair Bull.

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That famous waltz.
With their director, Ernst Lubitsch.



Friday, August 2, 2019

Fancy-dress brothers-in-law - two portraits by de László, 1928


Philipp, Prince and Landgrave of Hesse (6 November 1896, Schloss Rumpenheim, Offenbach - 25 October 1980, Rome.)
Umberto di Savoia, principe di Piemonte, later King Umberto II (15 September 1904, Castello di Racconigi, Racconigi - 8 March 1983, Geneva.)

Both princes were - at least technically - bisexual, though both made dynastic marriages and each produced four children. (There has been much conjecture as to just how the frankly and notoriously homosexual Umberto may have accomplished that feat.) Philipp, who had had a previous relationship with the poet Siegfried Sassoon, married Umberto's sister, the tragic Princess Mafalda, in 1925 and the couple and their children lived mainly in Italy after that; his portrait was painted in Turin. In 1930 Umberto married Princess Marie José, daughter of King Albert I of the Belgians and his wife, Queen Elisabeth, but the couple led separate lives except when a public appearance was called for, which gave Umberto ample time to indulge his penchant for handsome young army officers.

The brothers-in-law are dressed in early seventeenth century costume, apparently for a pageant commemorating the founding of the house of Savoy-Carignano (?).

I'll let Wikipedia give a fuller report on the dramatic lives of these two complicated fellows:

Prince Philipp of Hesse