Cléo de Mérode by Reutlinger

Cléo de Mérode by Reutlinger via

Vintage Postcard featuring American Princess Clara Ward

Clara Ward, postcard via

Princess Clara Ward Postcard

Clara Ward (1873 – 1916) was a wealthy American socialite who married a prince from Belgium. Her main talents were being beautiful by the standards of the time, and being famous. She combined the two by posing on various stages, including at least the Folies Bergère and probably also the Moulin Rouge, while wearing skin-tight costumes.

Postcard of theater star Clara Ward, ca. 1900s via

Beautiful Belle Epoque Photos of Marcelle Lender

Marcelle Lender (1862 – 1926) was a French singer, dancer and entertainer made famous in paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Born Anne-Marie Marcelle Bastien, she began dancing at the age of sixteen and within a few years made a name for herself performing at the Théâtre des Variétés in Montmartre.

Marcelle Lender appears in several works by Lautrec but the most notable is the one of her dancing the Bolero during her February 1895 performance in the Hervé operetta Chilpéric. Lautrec’s portrait of her in full costume, her flame-red hair accentuated by two red poppies worn like plumes, boosted Lender’s popularity considerably after it appeared in a Paris magazine. The painting was eventually sold to a collector from the United States, and on her death in 1998 the painting’s then owner, American Betsey Cushing Whitney, donated it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Marcelle Lender, 1900s french postcard by Reutlinger via

 

Marcelle Lender via

Marcelle Lender via

Mlle Marcelle Lender. Robe de bal par Doucet via

Marcelle Lender via

Vintage Photos of Hungarian Vamp Lya de Putti

Lya De Putti (1897 – 1931) was a Hungarian film actress of the silent era, noted for her portrayal of vampcharacters.

She began her stage career on the Hungarian Vaudeville circuit. She soon progressed to Berlin, where after performing in the ballet, she made her screen debut in 1918. She became the premiere danseuse at the Berlin Winter Garden in 1924.

Around that time German film director Jol Mai noticed her and cast her in her first important film, The Mistress of the World. She followed this success with noteworthy performances in Manon Lescaut and Varieté (1925).

The actress came to America in February 1926. At the time she told reporters she was twenty-two years old. Her ocean liner’s records list her as having been twenty-six. De Putti was generally cast as a vamp character, and often wore her dark hair short, in a style similar to that of Louise Brooks or Colleen Moore.

In 1913, she married Zoltán Szepessy, a county magistrate. They divorced in 1918. The couple had two daughters, Ilona (b. 1914) and Judith (b. 1916).

The following year, De Putti went to Hollywood, but found little success there. Despite working with such distinguished actors as Adolphe Menjou and Zasu Pitts, she failed to make it big, and left the screen by 1929 to attempt to restart her career on Broadway.

Her Hollywood efforts were inhibited by her foreign accent. Later she went to England to make silent movies and studied the English language. Soon she returned to America to attempt talkies.

She died in 1931, aged 34, in the Harbor Sanitorium. She was hospitalized to have a chicken bone removed from her throat, and contracted a throat infection. She left just £800 and a few bits of jewellery. Four years earlier, £800 was her weekly wage. She is interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Lya De Putti postcard via

Lia de Putti via

Lya de Putti via

 Lya de Putti & Eugen Klöpfer in Comedians, dir. Karl Grune, 1925 via

Lya De Putti in “Sorrows of Satan”, 1926 via

Lya de Putti via

A Collection of Vintage Photos featuring Maud Allan the Salomé Dancer

Canadian pianist-turned-actor, dancer and choreographer Maud Allan (1873 – 1956) was born as Beulah Maude Durrant. She spent her early years in San Francisco, California, moving to Germany in 1895 to study piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. She changed her name in part by the scandal surrounding her brother Theodore Durrant, who was hanged in 1898 for murder. Allan never recuperated from the trauma of this event. She abandoned piano-playing and developed a new means of self-expression through dance.

Shortly before she began dancing professionally Allan is said to have illustrated an encyclopedia for women titled Illustriertes Konversations-Lexikon der Frau.

In 1906 her production “Vision of Salomé” opened in Vienna. Based loosely on Oscar Wilde’s play ,Salomé, her version of the Dance of the Seven Veils became famous (and to some notorious) and she was billed as “The Salomé Dancer”. Her book My Life and Dancing was published in 1908 and that year she took England by storm in a tour in which she did 250 performances in less than one year.

Allan is remembered for her “famously impressionistic mood settings”. She was athletic, had great imagination and even designed  and sewed her own costumes. But she had little formal dance training. She was once compared to professional dancer and legend Isadora Duncan, which greatly enraged her, as she disliked Duncan.

Around 1918 Allan’s popularity began to take a turn. In a hope of earning back some of her public adoration she starred in a private performance of the ‘Vision of Salome’ and irked homophobic right-wing nationalist MP Noel Pemberton Billing. Mr Billing wanted Allan’s downfall as there was a rumor circulating that she had a lesbian affair with Margot Asquith, the wife of former prime minister Herbert Asquith. He believed that Allan and the Asquiths were all German spies; which he implied in an article. Allan sued Billing for criminal libel, but she lost the case.

Hence, from the 1920s on Allan taught dance and she lived with her secretary and lover, Verna Aldrich. She died in Los Angeles, California.

Maud Allan, ca. 1906 via

Maud Allan as Salome, ca. 1906 via

Maud Allan as Salome, c.1906 via

Maud Allan as Salome, ca. 1906 via

Maud Allan by Bassano, 1913 via

Maud Allan by Reutlinger, 1909 via

Glamour Portraits of Stage Actress Ellen Baxone by Reutlinger (1905)

Ellen Baxone was an actress, who was living in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century.

She is known for her role in the humorous short film about the world of cinema C’est pour les orphelins (1916)

In 1907 she starred alongside Alice de Tender in the play Imbroglio Princier at La Scala in Paris.

In addition to portraits by Reutlinger, she is also known for a postcard portrait designed by Gustave Brisgand.

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via