Blonde insurance - publicity photographs of Sheree North

(The color in almost all of these images, as I found them, was much altered and distorted by age; they'd gone very magenta. It was tough work adjusting them, trying to restore some semblance of what was probably their original appearance. And they still don't quite match up from shot to shot, sets of images that were clearly taken at the same time. The above is the only one that appears to have - somehow - retained its original color balance.)

Compare the color of the pink satin here with the color of it above.

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Sheree North (born Dawn Shirley Crang; 17 January 1932, Los Angeles – 4 November 2005, Los Angeles), American actress, dancer, and singer. Dancing in USO shows at ten, married at sixteen, a mother at seventeen, she won a Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut at the age of twenty-one. The following year she was put under a four-year contract with 20th-Century Fox, mostly with the thought of using her, should the need arise, as a replacement for the studio's increasingly uncooperative leading female star, Marilyn Monroe. She was given the whole studio treatment, and when Monroe was put on suspension, North was put into the role in How to Be Very, Very Popular that Monroe had refused to play; the news made the cover of Life magazine. She continued to make films, but the studio gradually lost interest in her. By the time her contract expired in 1958, Fox had already signed Jayne Mansfield, more than eager to be their "Marilyn insurance." She went on to do much work in television and film and on the stage, becoming known as a fine dramatic actress; she was nominated for two Emmy awards. Her last role was as Cosmo Kramer's mother on two episodes of Seinfeld. Married four times, the mother of two daughters, she died during surgery at the age of seventy-three.

In the studio office of designer Travilla - best known for creating Monroe's most iconic costumes - with Monroe's dress form...!

Conspicuous display - ten full-length portraits by William Larkin

Traditionally called Dorothy Cary, later Viscountess Rochford, but now thought to be Elizabeth Cary, née Tanfield, Viscountess Falkland, circa 1614-18.

Catherine Lyte Howard, second wife of Sir Thomas Thynne, 1618.

Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, 1613.

Catherine Howard, née Knyvett, 1st Countess of Suffolk, circa 1614-18.

Diana Cecil, later Countess of Oxford, circa 1614-18.

Susan Feilding, née Villiers, Countess of Denbigh, circa 1616.

 Lucy Russell, née Harington, Countess of Bedford, circa 1610s.

Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset, 1613.

 Isabel Rogers, née Rich, later Lady Smythe, circa 1614-18.

Mary, Lady Vere, née Tracy, formerly Mrs. Hoby, circa 1615.

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William Larkin (circa 1580s, London – April or May 1619, London), English painter known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England, paintings which capture in brilliant detail the opulent finery worn by the aristocracy during the Jacobean era. Born in London in the early 1580s and active from 1609 until his death in 1619, little is known of his life. And although he was recorded as a portrait painter in contemporary documents, no surviving works were attributed to him until the 1950s. Since then, about forty portraits have been identified as being by his hand (and his studio.)

Männer, die vom Himmel fallen - German "aviators", World War I and interwar periods

But sometimes you can't even make it up into the fake sky....

The artist, not the art - photographs of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso

It was only this: I had an image that I wanted to include in one of my vast "Randomly" posts, and I Google Imaged it to see if there was anything/anyone I should make note of. When I discovered that it was a Portuguese painter I'd never heard of, I Googled him further and found all these wonderful photographs; such a face, such character. Then, naturally, I was very curious about his paintings; would they be as visually interesting as the artist himself? Hmm, well... oh, but that face!

Domingos Rebêlo, de Souza-Cardoso, Emmérico Nunes, Manuel Bentes, and José Pedro Cruz, Paris, 1908. A parody of Velazquez's "Los Borrachos."

De Souza-Cardoso (at right) with friends at the studio of Emmérico Nunes, Paris, circa 1907-09.

De Sousa-Cardosa (center) with Alves Cardoso and a friend.

At the Château de Keriolet, Brittany, 1912. (Four images.)

Emérico Nunes, Manuel Bentes, de Souza-Cardosa, and unknown (misidentified as Alexandre Ferraz de Andrade), Paris, circa 1907-09.

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Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (14 November 1887, Mancelos – 25 October 1918, Espinho), Portuguese painter who, influenced by Cubism and Futurism, is considered one of the first modern Portuguese painters. From a wealthy rural family, one of nine children, at the age of eighteen he entered the Superior School of Fine Arts of Lisbon and one year later - on his nineteenth birthday - he moved to Paris. He intended to continue his architecture courses but soon quit to focus on painting instead. Financially supported by his parents, he rented a series of studios and socialized with other Portuguese émigrés. But he eventually drifted away from his compatriots, becoming close friends with many of the multi-national writers and artists - Modigliani, Gris, Severini, the Delaunays, Brâncuși, Archipenko, Max Jacob - who were gathered in Paris prior to the First World War; for a time he rented a studio next door to Gertrude Stein on the rue de Fleurus. In 1911, his work was shown in the Salon des Indépendants. Two years later, he participated in two seminal exhibitions: the Armory Show in the USA, which traveled to New York City, Boston, and Chicago, and the Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon at the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin; he was among the most commercially successful of the exhibitors at the Armory Show, selling seven of the eight works on display. With the outbreak of war the following year, he was forced to return to Portugal. There, he reestablished his artistic connections and friendships, and he also married. But he died only four years later, one of the countless victims of the Spanish Flu pandemic. He was less than a month shy of his thirty-first birthday.