Blog - Page 2 of 4 - Ghosts of Time

Jessie Mathews, the Dancing Divinity

Post author By basilisksam
Post date June 29, 2024
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Jessie Mathews was a very popular dancer/singer/actress of the 1930s in the UK. Dirk Bogarde said she was a much better dancer than Ginger Rogers and I think he was right though her style was different. A collaboration between Jessie and Fred Astaire was planned but Jessie’s UK work schedule would not allow it to proceed. One of her choreographers was Buddy Bradley who was an influence on Busby Berkeley.

Jessie was a dancer on stage long before she became a film star and had been a professional dancer since the age of 12. She was often referred to as The Dancing Divinity.

Just like stars before and after her time she was featured on many postcards which have become very collectable.

She was a very versatile dancer able to cover all styles from modern ballet to tap, jazz and expressive.

Jessie was also regularly featured in film magazines of the 1930s.

Original photographs of Jessie often sell for in excess of £100 though I was lucky to obtain this 8/10 original for much less. On ebay some sellers present photos of her as if they were original prints though they are clearly reproductions. This is a common problem to avoid for any collector of such material.

Like today the studios were keen to place stills of their stars in magazines at every opportunity. Such clippings are also collectable.

Luckily many of Jessie’s films are available on DVD and they are sometimes shown on Talking Pictures TV though I don’t recollect seeing them elsewhere. If you like Fred and Ginger I’m sure you’ll enjoy her films.

Long after her film and stage careers were over Jessie found fame as Mary Dale in Mrs Dale’s Diaries on the radio after replacing the original Mrs Dale played by Ellis Powell. She was featured on This Is Your Life in 1961. She died in 1981.

Tags dance, photography, postcards

Colors photography

My Evil Doppleganger

It’s not happened recently but I’ve been plagued by my doppleganger for many years. People have offered to fight me in pubs because I denied knowing them – it must have been my double they met before. Even my mother met my doppleganger in her house though I was miles away at the time.

From time to time I’ve imagined my evil twin and what he might be capable of doing.

I’ll probably be arrested or banned for including the knife in this picture but remember it’s in the hand of my evil twin, not me.

It’s dangerous around my house.

This one was inspired by Park Chan-wook’s film Thirst.

Seriously though, creating these images in Photoshop is fairly easy to do using layers. I’ve still got at least one doppleganger out there but I can’t say whether they’re really evil or not.

Tags photography, Photoshop

Edwardian photography Social history

Gladys Cooper the first postcard superstar

Post author By basilisksam
Post date June 15, 2024
No Comments on Gladys Cooper the first postcard superstar

According to Sheridan Morley, one of Gladys’ grandchildren, in his biography of her over 400 different postcards of her were produced between 1905 and 1920. Each postcard would have had many thousands of reprints. You can get an idea of her popularity and longevity as a celebrity by looking on ebay. When I checked today there were 1700 listings for postcards of Gladys and I would expect to see similar numbers on any day of the week.

You can find postcards of Gladys in black and white, colour, hand tinted. partially tinted, on greetings cards and so on. Often her distinctive signature is shown on the cards.

This pair of postcards are indicative of the many variations of postcards that were produced. She’s wearing exactly the same clothes in both but the colouring and orientation have been changed.

Gladys was often photographed with her children. Here she is with daughter Joan. Note Joan’s signature on the right hand photo though I doubt her handwriting was so similar to her mother’s.

Postcards were only a sideline for Gladys. She was an actress appearing in many stage plays from the 1920s and later had a career as a film actress. You can see her in Hitchcock’s Rebecca for instance.

If you want to see more Gladys Cooper postcards you’ll find them with a simple online search. My own modest collection can be seen here.

Tags celebrity, Edwardian, photography, postcards

photography Social history Victorian

Maids: real and theatrical

Post author By basilisksam
Post date June 14, 2024
No Comments on Maids: real and theatrical

This is probably what most people think of when imagining Victorian maidservants.

“Parlour maids” is written in pencil on the back of this cabinet card but that was probably added recently. I suspect they were a mixture of different types of maid from a household as servants each had different functions – scullery maid, chamber maid etc. The two girls seated at the front look rather young but girls started in service as young as eight.

This is rather more Downton Abbey (not that I’ve ever watched it) and again what you’d expect. Note there’s a dog amongst the maids too.

Being a maid was not a glamorous job. The hours were long, the jobs dirty and demanding and women in service would be miles away from their families and rarely given time off to visit them. Nevertheless some families thought well enough of their maids to have them photographed.

Troupes of “maids” were a popular entertainment in the music halls though they bore little resemblance to real maids.

For some reason there was a mania for dressing as dairymaids.

Maids on stage are popular to this day. Hard to date this one but probably the 1930s or 40s.

And here’s Gladys Cooper attended by her maid in the play Excelsior from 1928. I’ll write about Gladys in a later blog. She was arguably the first woman to exploit her image on postcards and sold hundreds of thousands of them. It was said that nearly every soldier in the first world war trenches had a postcard of her in his tobacco tin.

[There’s a whole subculture of Victorian working women such as pit brow women. There’s also a fascinating book on Victorian Working Women by Michel Hiley which covers pit brow women, women miners, fishergirls, milkwomen, gymnasts etc]

Tags black and white, History, maids, photography, Victorian, working women

photography Social history spooky Victorian

The Book of the Dead

If something was called The Book of the Dead I’d expect to see something scary like this ventriloquist and his dummy. (If you’ve ever seen the film Dead of Night you’ll know why this scares me!)

What I wouldn’t expect is to see a Victorian photo album like this:

Photo albums, with or without themes, were very popular in Victorian time. This Tennyson themed album has lots of cut outs to contain CDVs and cabinet cards. This one’s rather charming I’d say.

I mention this because some time ago I attended a commercially organised “ghost hunt” which took place overnight. It was at the school I’d attended as a teenager so I was already familiar with the place and had not been aware of anything particularly spooky associated with it. As it turned out the whole event was rather silly with the facilitators trying hard to conjure up supernatural events, cold spots and the like. To put it kindly it was utter nonsense.

At one point in the night I found myself in a small room with several other participants trying to make contact with “spirits”. The organiser of this session gave out roles to each of us. She asked for a volunteer to sit with the “book of the dead.” As everyone else was wary I volunteered only to find that the book was actually a Victorian album full of cabinet cards and CDVs. I was delighted of course and could see nothing negative about sitting with this album. My frustration was that because we were operating in very dim lighting I couldn’t see the contents properly. No spirits were contacted or harmed during the seance.

For the most part I find nothing creepy about my interest in old photographs. I see the process of collecting and preserving these photos as a valuable and worthwhile activity, hopefully ensuring that other people can see and appreciate these wonderful social documents. I am perplexed when my partner or other people think there is something creepy about my hobby and refer to it as collecting photographs of dead people. I think those people should be remembered and celebrated not discarded and forgotten.

On the other hand there are some creepy items in my collection though I suspect what I find creepy is not what everyone finds creepy. The photo at the head of this blog for instance is creepy to me as are all films and photos of ventriloquists and their dummies.

Dolls are another thing that can be disturbing. I know I share this with many other people from the feedback I get but sometimes I see a photo featuring a girl and a doll and think it’s creepy whereas others find it delightful. The massed dolls with at girl at the centre is a good example. Creepy or endearing? Only you can decide.

This on the other hand is definitely creepy.

Sometimes the subjects of photographs have a rather haunted look about them. This could be caused by the fact that early photographic techniques required the subjects to be still whilst the exposure was taken but sometimes the subjects look haunted anyway. Taken in Malta this military man and his daughter have a decidedly haunted look.

And sometimes there’s just something wrong or odd about a photograph that makes you wonder what was really going on.

Does the man behind the children look menacing to you?Haunted or cute?

Considering most of these photographs come from the early nineteenth century it is almost certain that the subjects are all now dead but I prefer to think of these old photographs not as items in “The Book of the Dead” but as a celebration of people’s lives.

Tags black and white, History, photography, spooky, Victorian