France, 1940

Written on the back, "Aout 1940 au Bosquet Ales"  Translated from French, "August 1940, the grove, Ales."  Ales is a town in the Languedoc-Roussillion region of southern France.

One of the things I've learned is that life goes on. By August 1940 France had been conquered by the Germans.  The country had been divided between the occupied north, including Paris, and free France in the south, a fascist dominated government more concerned with pleasing Nazi Germany than the welfare of it's own citizens.  Despite that, there was time for these two ladies to stroll in a garden and pose for a picture.  Life goes on.

Flight

I love this image.  It's from a time when powered flight was still a dangerous and mysterious thing.

At Home and On Occupation

There's a famous story.  Douglas MacArthur,  newly appointed military governor of Japan, arrives at his post, sees the devastation and sends a telegram to President Harry Truman:  "Send food or send guns."

As we've found in the last decade, winning the war is one thing, winning the peace another.  After World War 2,  the United States, Great Britain, and France took an enlightened approach to winning the peace.  First, there was the deNazification program.  While the out right war criminals and major government figures found themselves in the dock, we decided that the minor officials, cultural figures, teachers, and members of the working classes, no matter how enthusiastic they were in their party activities, were dupes, and were allowed to go on with their lives.  And then there was the Marshall Plan, America's commitment to rebuild Europe, no matter the cost.  Any threat of a resistance movement ended, and our post war occupation went smoothly.

The occupation of Germany began right after the war.  Germany was originally divided into four zones of occupation.  The Soviet, British, French and American zones of occupation.  In 1947, the British and American zones were merged, quickly followed by a merger with the French zone.  In 1949, the first post war German government was formed, and the military governors were replaced with a Civilian High Commissioner.  Technically, the Commissioner had governance powers and could over rule the new German parliament, but, by and large, the Germans were allowed to run their own affairs.  On May 5, 1955, the occupation of Germany officially ended.  There are still American military bases in Germany.  

The first four pictures in the column are not labeled in any way, but appear to show our subject through his military training.  The fifth photograph is labeled, "Camp Kilmer, N. J. April 1951."  Camp Kilmer, named for the poet killed in World War 1, was never used as a training camp, but as a mustering point for troops being shipped from the port of New York to Europe.  It opened in June 1942, and closed in the 1990s.  Note that our subject is standing by a car with a Tennessee license plate. Could be coincidence, or could be his home state. The next picture, "Tompkins Barracks, April 1952, Swetzingen, Germany."  This is a misspelling.  Tompkins barracks is outside the town of Schwetzingen, and is scheduled to close in 2015.  The color photo is labeled, Fike Park in Wiesbaden, Germany."  It's also stamped, "THIS IS A KODACOLOR PRINT MADE BY EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY T.M. REGIS. U. S. PAT. OFF. Week of June 2, 1952."  Was their a photo lab on base for the troops?  Too, I think Fike Park might be mislabeled.  I've run a search for public parks in Wiesbaden, and nothing by that name came up.  And the last picture, "Wurzburg-Germany  Bahnhof-train station.  July 3, 1952."  I  wish there were some people's names listed. It's nice to have place names and dates, but being able to identify a person by name is always special.

I wonder what was going through the mind of this soldier.  Was he living the great adventure of his life, using his leave time to explore Europe?  Did he take trips to Paris, the Alps, Berlin, Basel, Switzerland?  (Go back  one post to see a ticket stub from the tramways of Basel sold to American service men on leave.)  Did he learn German or French? Or did he stay close to base, home sick, just putting in time until the end of his service, and a ship's berth back home?  I hope he saw it as an adventure and not a duty to be endured.

The American zone of occupation included Bavaria, Bremen, Hesse, and Wurtemberg-Baden.

The Tramways of Basle

 When I first saw this image, I thought it was a postcard, but when I turned it over I found that it was a ticket stub.  Printed on the back,

"Welcome in Basle!  Switzerland, now being honored with your visit, is but a small spot on the globe compared with the size of  your country.  Yet she has been lucky enough to preserve her freedom and independency  during the war.  Her democracy has been deeply rooted in the people for centuries.  This has always fostered friendly relations with all democratic countries.

We wish all Americans on leave the very best for their trip through this country, which offers lots of beautiful things in a narrow space.

TRAMWAYS OF BASLE,  The Manager.

Ticket Fr. 1-  Serie Ii  No.  8916"

I won't go into the history of Basel, spelled Basle in German.  If anyone wants to delve into the 1600 + year history of the city, they can go online or check out a book from the library.  I will note that the city is located where the German and French borders intersect with Switzerland.

Basel is serviced by the Basler Verkerhs-Betriebe, The Basel Transport Service, the BVB, owned by Basel-Statdt, the city of Basel.  The system operates both trams and buses.   Of course, ticket stubs picturing American soldiers would not be printed on a postcard sized stub for everyday use.  The service must have been offering tours for members of the American occupation forces.  I'm sure, before 1945, they were also offering tours for German soldiers on leave. After all, tourist money is always welcome.  I keep thinking that American G.I.s probably found bits of German graffiti on their tours.  Maybe a Swastika, maybe a bit of pro Hitler doodeling, or perhaps even some anti-Nazi scrawls.  No doubt, the American soldiers left a few choice remarks of their own.

More Nurses

When did nurses stop wearing those funny caps?  When did they stop wearing the starched white uniforms? Well, that's one of the things about collecting old photographs.  If I hadn't picked up these four images, I would have never wondered why.

The first nurses were Catholic nuns.  With the rise of protestant denominations and the missionary movement, other sects got into the act and started teaching young women the basics of medicine.  And then, along came Florence Nightingale.  I've made the point in past posts that, contrary to modern opinion, women did work before World War 2 and feminism.  They worked as farm laborers, servants, and with the industrial revolution, factory hands.  It was upper class women that didn't work.  Nightingale was an exception.  From a wealthy English family, Florence Nightingale felt a calling from God to minister to the sick, so she sought out training and then lead a group of other like minded women to nursing during the Crimean War.  After the war, she decided that nurses needed formal education, and that only respectable women should enter the profession.  In 1860, at St. Thomas Hospital in London, she started the first secular nursing school.  And since it was a profession, she demanded that her graduates wear a uniform.  The first caps were modeled after nun's habits and were intended to do no more than keep hair in place, but as time went by, designs changed.  In some American nursing schools, distinct caps were designed for the exclusive use of their graduates.

Anyway, from what I've been able to find out, the practice of traditional caps and uniforms began to die out in the 1980s.  There wasn't anything significant about the changing tradition.   Scrubs were cheaper, more comfortable, and easier to clean.

No names or dates on the photos, though forties or fifties, I think, would be a good guess.  It looks like our nurse had visiting family, and after they headed back home, she and her friends broke out the gallon jug of Gallo wine and had a party.

Happy Birthday From the Nurse's Dorm

I don't know where this photograph was taken, but I do know when it was printed.  Stamped on the back, "THIS IS A Kodacolor Print MADE ONLY BY KODAK WEEK OF JUNE 1 - 57"  But what's going on?  Going by this young ladies age,  my guess is that she's a nursing student, she's in her dorm room, and her classmates have thrown her a birthday party.

Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties

I'm not going to write much about Mack Sennett.  He was born in Canada in 1880 and died, within my lifetime, in 1960.  He was early cinema's King of Comedy, the producer or director of hundreds of one and two reel shorts.  He also either ran, or was a partner, in several studios, most notably, Keystone, Triangle, with Thomas Ince and D. W. Griffith, and, of course, The Mack Sennett Studios.  There are plenty of articles on the web, as well as the better source, well written books, out there for those who want to know more.

This post is about the Mack Sennett bathing beauties.  Smart business man that he was, Sennett saw the relationship between pretty girls and ticket sales, so in 1915, he recruited his first troop of bathing beauties.  It wasn't hard to find  pretty young women, on the beaches of California,  willing to be filmed or photographed wearing a skimpy bathing suit. (In 1915, the above image was skimpy.  Things do change, after all.)  But while the bathing beauties were about box office, they weren't about stardom.  Sennett did his best to keep them as anonymous as possible.  They weren't credited, and were often replaced by someone prettier or more willing to do anything for a laugh.  Many of them would get their featured bits, or  what even could be considered an actual part, but only a few got out of  the background and into the limelight.

Juanita Hansen, 1895-1961, had the lead or a major supporting role in dozens of silent films, but a problem with alcohol and cocaine addiction ended her career in 1923.  Eventually, she got sober and had a second act as an anti drug and alcohol activist.

Claire Anderson, 1891-1964, made 73 movies, many as one of the bathing beauties, and many as credited lead.  Her last film was in 1926.

Marie Prevost, 1898-1937, was the first of the beauties to become a major star, with the lead in several films directed by  Ernst Lubitsch.   After her mother died in a car accident, and an unhappy love affair with Howard Hughes, she sank into a deep depression and, like Juanita Hansen, developed a drug and alcohol problem.  Her last film was in 1936.  She died a year latter from the long term damage caused by alcoholism, and acute malnutrition.  At her death, her estate was worth less than $300.  If Joan Crawford hadn't paid for her funeral, it would have fallen to Los Angeles county to bury her as an indigent.

Phyllis Haver, 1899-1960, married millionaire William Seeman in 1930, and retired form the screen, but not before starring as Roxie Hart in the first film version of Chicago, in 1927.  Divorced in the mid forties, Haver would die of an accidental barbiturate overdose.

Carole Lombard, 1908-1942.  The greatest of the bathing beauties, Lombard, was one of the great film comedians of the sound era.  She starred in a number of genuine film classics including, Twentieth Century, My Man Godfrey, Nothing Sacred, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and the Lubitsch classic, To Be Or Not To Be.  After America's entry into World War 2, she returned to her native Indiana on a war bond tour.  Her plane back to Los Angeles crashed, killing all on board, including her mother and agent.   Her husband, Clark Gable, joined the army not long after her funeral.

And finally, I've never understood the appeal of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game, but....Kevin Bacon appeared with Colin Firth in Where the Truth Lies, Colin Firth costarred with Claire Bloom in The King's Speech, Claire Bloom was Charlie Chaplin's leading lady in Limelight, and Chaplin had a supporting role in Mabel's Strange Predicament, directed by and starring Mabel Normand, produced by Mack Sennett, .