Vintage Photos of the Very Elegant Prima Ballerina Alicia Markova

Dame Alicia Markova DBE (1910 – 2004) was an English ballerina and a choreographer, director and teacher of classical ballet. Most noted for her career with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and touring internationally, she was widely considered to be one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of the twentieth century. She was the first British dancer to become the principal dancer of a ballet company.

With Dame Margot Fonteyn, she is one of only two English dancers to be recognised as a prima ballerina assoluta. Markova was a founder dancer of the Rambert Dance Company, The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and was co-founder and director of the English National Ballet.

Alicia Markova in Giselle, as she appeared for the first time with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas at the Empire Theatre, Paris, on November 21, 1953. Photo by Serge Lido via

Alicia Markova – America’s Nutcracker Suite-heart © Maurice Seymour via

The feisty Markova in Les Masques, 1933 via

Dame Alicia Markova (Lilian Alicia Marks) dans La Chatte (Boris Kochno – Henri Sauguet – George Balanchine pour les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev), ca 1927 via

A Collection of Vintage Photos Feat. Bebe Daniels

Bebe Daniels (1901 – 1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent movie era as a child actress, became a star in musicals such as 42nd Street, and later gained further fame on radio and television in Britain. In a long career, Bebe Daniels made over 230 films.

By the age of seven Daniels had her first starring role in film as the young heroine in A Common Enemy. At the age of nine she starred as Dorothy Gale in the 1910 short film The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. At the age of fourteen she starred opposite film comedian Harold Lloyd in a series of Lonesome Luke two-reel comedies starting with the 1915 film Giving Them Fits. The two eventually developed a publicized romantic relationship and were known in Hollywood as “The Boy” and “The Girl.

Bebe Daniels in Love Comes Along via

Bebe Daniels via

Bebe Daniels in What a Night! via

Bebe Daniels Wedding Dress, 1923 via

Bebe Daniels via

Glamorous Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee (1920s)

Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Clara Bow by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore in Sadie Thompson (1928)

Sadie Thompson is a 1928 American silent drama film that tells the story of a “fallen woman” who comes to Pago Pago on the island of Tutuila to start a new life, but encounters a zealous missionary who wants to force her back to her former life in San Francisco. The film stars Gloria Swanson, Lionel Barrymore, and Raoul Walsh, and was one of Swanson’s better known silent films.

Due to the subject matter, the making of the film was extremely controversial. However, it was a financial and critical success for Swanson. The film was based on the short story “Rain” by W. Somerset Maugham and the 1922 play that was based on the book by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, starring Jeanne Eagels.

Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore in Sadie Thompson directed by Raoul Walsh, 1928 via

Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore in Sadie Thompson directed by Raoul Walsh, 1928 via

Gilda Gray in “The Devil Dancer” by Irving Chidnoff (1927)

Irving Chidnoff, Gilda Gray in “The Devil Dancer” directed by Fred Niblo, 1927 via

Irving Chidnoff, Gilda Gray in “The Devil Dancer” directed by Fred Niblo, 1927 via

A Collection of Vintage Photos Feat. 1920s Street Style

French fashion postcard, 1920s via

Paris street fashion, second half of the decade, 1920s via

A gentlemen tips his hat to a group of ladies, 1920s via

Street style  by the Seeberger Freres agency via

Street style by the Seeberger Freres agency, 1920s via

1920s via

A Collection of Photos by Man Ray Feat. Lee Miller

Lee Miller (1907 – 977) was an American photographer. She is one of the most remarkable female icons of the 20th century – an individual admired as much for her free-spirit, creativity and intelligence as for her classical beauty (source).

In 1929, Miller traveled to Paris with the intention of apprenticing herself to the surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Although, at first, he insisted that he did not take students, Miller soon became his model and co-collaborator, as well as his lover and muse. While she was in Paris, she began her own photographic studio, often taking over Man Ray’s fashion assignments to enable him to concentrate on his painting. In fact, many of the photographs taken during this period and credited to Man Ray were actually taken by Miller. Together with Man Ray, she rediscovered the photographic technique of solarisation. She was an active participant in the surrealist movement, with her witty and humorous images. Amongst her circle of friends were Pablo Picasso, Paul Éluard, and Jean Cocteau (she appeared as a statue that comes to life in Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet (1930)).

After leaving Man Ray and Paris in 1932, she returned to New York and established a portrait and commercial photography studio with her brother Erik as her darkroom assistant

Lee Miller by Man Ray, Solarisation, 1931 via

Lee Miller [hand] by Man Ray, 1929 via

Lee Miller’s neck; Man Ray’s Neck. 2010 MAN RAY TRUST/ARS. COURTESY OF THE PENROSE COLLECTION via

Lee Miller by Man Ray via

Lee Miller via

Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee (1920s)

Eugene Robert Richee (b. 1896) began his career in the silent movie era. He got his job at Paramount in the late teens through his friend Clarence Sinclair Bull.

He started shooting stars while Donald Biddle Keyes was taking portraits in the gallery.  When Keyes left Paramount, Richee took over, and for two decades he photographed the studio’s stars including Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Claudette Colbert, Fredrick March, the Marx Brothers and Carole Lombard.  Lombard so admired his work with Dietrich that she started posing in some of the same ways to get that ‘glamour mysterious’ look.

From 1925 to 1935 Richee took many photographs of Louise Brooks.  Perhaps Richee’s most famous work is a 1928 portrait of Louise Brooks wearing a long string of pearls. Few photos capture better the zeitgeist of the Roaring ’20s. Simplicity is the hallmark of this photograph, along with masterful composition. Brooks stands, face in profile and wearing a long-sleeved black dress, against a black background, her face hands and pearls along illuminated. Her bob, with its razor-sharp line across the white skin of her jaw, was widely copied and became one of the last century’s most potent fashion statements.

Brook’s career had intermittent highs and lows, but she was one of Hollywood’s great portrait subjects and was never better served than by Richee (source).

Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee, 1928 via

Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee, 1928 via

Louise Brooks portrait by Eugene Robert Richee via

Portrait of Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee, 1920s via

Portrait of Louise Brooks for The Canary Murder Case directed by Malcolm St. Clair and Frank Tuttle. Photo by Eugene Robert Richee, 1929 via

Portrait of Louise Brooks for The Canary Murder Case directed by Malcolm St. Clair and Frank Tuttle. Photo by Eugene Robert Richee, 1929 via

A Collection of Photos Of Famous Women Wearing the 1920s Popular Cloche Hat

 

French milliner Caroline Reboux, is considered the inventor of the cloche hat via

Gloria Swanson 1921 in a cloche hat via

 

Josephine Baker wearing a cloche via

A 1920s model wearing a black cloche hat via

Hollywood actress Joan Crawford via

Amazing Vintage Portraits by Madame d’Ora (1910s-1920s)

Dora Philippine Kallmus (1881 – October 28, 1963) was an Austrian-Jewish fashion and portrait photographer who went by the name Madame D’ora. Dora, born in Vienna in 1881, came from a respected family of Jewish lawyers. In 1905 she was the first woman to be admitted to theory courses at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt. That same year she became a member of the Vienna Photographic Society. She trained at Nicola Perscheid’s studio in Berlin, where she became friends with his assistant Arthur Benda. In 1907 she opened a photography studio with Benda in Vienna called the Benda-D’Ora Studio. What followed was  a distinguished career as a salon photographer. In 1925, she moved her atelier to Paris, and during the 30s and 40s rose to international prominence through society and high fashion photography. Both her er studios in Vienna and Paris became fashionable meeting places for the cultural and intellectual elite. In Vienna she had  become extremely popular among the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy.

Her subjects included intellectuals, dancers, actors, painters, and writers, fx.  Josephine Baker, Tamara de Lempicka, Maurice Chevalier, Colette, Niddy Impekoven. These vibrant portraits of twentieth-century artists and intellectuals remain important testaments to European cultural life at the turn of the century and beyond.

According to Jewish Women Encyclopedia D’Ora was one of the first photographers to focus on the emerging areas of modern, expressive dance and fashion, particularly after 1920, when fashion photographs started to replace drawings in magazines. While her photographic technique was not radical, her avant-garde subject matter was a risky choice. D’Ora’s photographs captured her clients’ individuality with new, natural positions in contrast to stiff, old-fashioned poses. D’Ora’s achievements also paved the way for other European women’s careers in photography, an area in which many Jewish women in particular found success.

When the Germans invaded France, Madame D’ora fled to a convent in the country side.  Dora returned to France in 1946 and re-opened the studio.

In 1959 she was involved in a serious traffic accident that left her an invalid. She died in Frohnleiten, Steiermark, Austria, in 1963.

Marie Conte by Madame d’Ora

Fashion study by Madame d’Ora & Arthur Benda. Vienna, ca 1920