A small Pictorama Post for those of you not on Facebook! For those of you wondering where I got to over the past week, please know I haven’t forgotten you, but that my beloved husband Kim had emergency surgery following a trip to the ER on Sunday. Very relieved to report that all has returned more or less to normal in the Butler-Deitch house as of last night. Kim shown in bed above, earlier this morning, with our cats, Cookie (next to him) and Blackie (at his feet) working away on his book. I told everyone he pretty much sat up in the recovery room and started to tell me story ideas! For those of you who have already sent well wishes, thank you!
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s post is of one of my favorite series of photos. All three were purchased on Ebay, tiny photos – sort of 3 inches, smaller than reproduced here. The first two I purchased together, the third considerably later and from a different seller. They all came from Portland (which, as some of you know already, is emerging in my mind as the el dorado for whacky old photo finds) and are so similar – I have to wonder what the story might be.
They are on photo paper, but poorly printed. How can they be so similar and unrelated? If they were some sort of multiple prints what on earth was the reason or the origin? That the first two show the Felix person holding a white cat – and that old car! – well, what more could I ask for? (Love those white Felix cat tummies too!) If memory serves I lost out on a second image of Felix on the car. These didn’t come cheap and I think I was just out of money. I have posted them on FB in the past and the image on the car either circled back to me on the internet, or there are other copies out there. I haven’t ever seen the other two any place else. These photos were the first in my acquisition of strange photos of people wearing Felix masks, and still among the ones I like very best!
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Jumping off on our parade theme from earlier this week, Cats on Parade, I offer these two photos I purchased last year on eBay under the theory, where there are cats, mice will surely follow. There is no indication of date, but there is a Philadelphia studio stamp on the back, For Duplicates of this Photograph order by number which appears on face of this print or on Back, Hood-Weintraub, 501 Keith Theatre Bldg. Phila, PA. [sic] Also scrawled in pencil on the back of the top one, “We posed for this before the paradebegan. Can you find me. don’t we look Cute. see how wet the streets are. it had rained in the early morning” [sic – all and below.] Same studio stamp on the back of the other and this in the same hand, “you surely ought to find me in this. looks how I am stepping out. this was taken on Broad St just below Aunt Edith” Does make you wonder who “me” is – I have spent some time looking at these and contemplating which one me might be.
While this may be Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day parade – evidently the oldest in the country having started in 1920, I vote instead for the Mummer’s New Year’s Day parade. Wikipedia tells us that it is 130 years old and believed to be “one of the oldest folks festivals in the country.” Just because it is really great, I offer here this spectacular snippet from New York’s Thanksgiving parade in 1935:
However, when you see this clip from the 1926 Mummer’s Parade, you’ll see where I got the clue that this is where these photos are from!
(The tail end of this shows an equally good Rose Parade clip from the period – as an aside, Kim tells me his dad, Gene, designed a winning float for one for an ice cream company around 1946 or so!)
While my heart will always belong to Felix and those donning Felix costumes, (see Felix on Parade and Felix Mask-o-Rama) who wouldn’t love these folks dressing up in Mickey clothes? Braving foul weather and sallying cheerfully forward nonetheless. We should all take a page from their book.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I’ve acquired these photos over the past few months and in my mind they somehow are all of a kind. The top two photos (which are postcards) are from the United States, the smaller one on the bottom is a small photo and although I purchased it from someone in the US it has im Garten (in garden?) written on the back. So I guess this could be from Germany.
I love to look at photos of people with their cats in the newspaper or magazines – Sunday morning, reading the Times, me showing Kim a photo in the Real Estate section of a family, “Hey, nice looking cat, huh? Calico.” Kim, “Uh huh.” (He nicely puts up with me.) Clearly, one immediate response to someone taking your photo is to pick up the family cat or dog. (I know I do.) These photos are nice examples of that. Hard for me to say when I think these are from, but I am leaning toward the teens and twenties. Of course the whole point is that we’ve always loved to photograph our beloved cats and to be photographed with them, and to photograph them as part of our family. From blurry tintypes to the several hundred photos I have on my iPhone of Cookie and Blackie today, we love ’em – they are our family and we have always liked to take their picture.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: While clearly not Felix these cats are pretty spectacular in their own right – not to mention the little Shriner-esque fellow driving. This float was honoring the 70th Anniversary, Swiss Settlers Swiss Colony, August 16, 1885-1915, New Glarus, Wis. (I have taken the liberty of checking up on New Glarus and, sure enough, it is still known as America’s Little Switerzland today.) The stand-out supporters of this float appear to have been Hole-Proof Hosiery and Masurys Paints. Sadly the other banners do not appear to be legible, even when I blow this up. The support of these fine businesses now lost to the sands of time.
Before taking note of the year, I thought this card was from a somewhat later period, but date notwithstanding, on closer inspection the car is a very early one and the storefront and house in the background are early too. Seems very much Main Street, USA, circa 1915 except that the cats look like they could be from decades later – with a somewhat alien quality. No joking around on this float – all business I think, driver very serious. And why black cats? I guess we’ll never know. Still, I send a tip of the hat to Glarus – I do mean to stop by if I’m ever in the neighborhood.
Pam’s Pictorama photo post: A Labor Day beauty! This new acquisition seems perfect for the last unofficial day of the summer season. While an in depth look at my Felix photo postcards is pending (they are the unofficial inspiration for this blog – my photos and the prolonged and boring recuperation from foot surgery earlier this summer) I can’t resist considering each of them on their own merits. As I said in Let the Cats Begin when I first saw one of these photos as published in the Felix the Cat bio book, it never occurred to me that I would get to own dozens of them – oh bliss! It was years before eBay was so much as a glimmer in anyone’s eye, and considering I have acquired almost everyone of these from Australia, New Zealand or Great Britain it is truly unlikely that I could have amassed the collection without it. (Oddly however, this one was purchased from someone in Florida. It may be the first I’ve purchased from a US seller.)
All that aside – how wonderful! A waggish Felix is just peaking into this photo – makes me wonder if they had to pay full fare considering. The grandmother (?) such a solid citizen, brooking no nonsense – Felix notwithstanding. The back of the card, shown below, is more or less illegibly scrawled, presumably by the little girl. I have gotten pretty good at reading these, but this one defies my abilities a bit. The little girl is very much enjoying the whole thing however.
I don’t know what it is (a happy past life as a Felix photographer perhaps?), but these cards just make my pulse race. I won’t rest until I own them all!
Pam’s Pictorama Curiosity Post: Pictured above is a bowl and saucer with the jaunty Japanese chacter Norakuro that I picked up on eBay for a song – only because it was listed incorrectly, I’m sure. The amazing thing about this piece is that when you hold the bowl up to the light, voila! – the geisha appears in the bottom! I love this fat cat-like dog and have had an eye out for a stuffed toy of him for a long time, but to date to no avail. The few toys I have seen are astronomically expensive, (at the time of writing this two wooden toys are listed on eBay under Felix for upwards of $800), but one of these days I hope a stuffed one will cross my path when I am feeling flush. I have also included a trading card which I assume is him (although he’s gained weight) or a rip-off similar character. Alas. since I do not read Japanese I cannot say for sure.
Lastly, I have included a link to a specimen cartoon on Youtube. It is in Japanese, but like most cartoons you can get most of the gist of it without understanding the dialogue. He isn’t as clever as Felix and his movements are distinctly Japanese – yet you can’t help but assume that they were looking at those early Felix cartoons. He’s in the army, rather than the sumo wrestler mode here. In the cartoon he practices looking fierce and samurai with his sword in the mirror before going out to drill. He is most charming in his early comic book form. I love to look at them – do wish I could read them!
Pam’s Pictorama Toy Extravaganza Post: Hold onto your hats, this is a huge post! I started this morning with the photo of Jane Withers holding her wonderful Aesop Fable doll, the Princess, shown in a photo grab off the internet rather than a ham-handed photo of my own also rather pristine example – the first to enter my collection several years ago. Jane evidently had an enormous collection which she sold off in recent times. (See http://collectdolls.about.com/od/auctions/a/janewithers.htm for more info.) One can only imagine what toys a child star had the chance to indulge herself in! I like this photo and it is one of the ones in more or less permanent rotation in our tiny home.
But onto the cartoons – and the toys! I never got to see these cartoons as a child. I have to assume that I would simply be a better person if I had been raised on them. I am convinced that their influence is one of the things that made my husband the extraordinary human being he is today. Certainly, they helped lure me over to him. I am including a photograph of his book Boulevard of Broken Dreams, although it wasn’t the first of his work I ever saw (his book Beyond the Pale was so I knew I liked him and it) the original comic books that ultimately made up Boulevard transformed me into a real fan.
So, when I first heard about these dolls I was in love! The only problem – they are about as rare as hen’s teeth and I only ever saw them in old ad photos such as the one above which is a Google image grab. As a collector there are somethings that make your pulse race and blind you to all thoughts except, “I must have it!” These are among them. An expensive habit though. After several years I acquired the Princess through Hake’s auction, paying top dollar. Just in the past year I snatched up the other two – actually both were gifts from Kim. One for my birthday (see me in black dress) and the other, in admittedly poor shape but much beloved, as part of a big art for toys trade he did as a surprise for me in San Francisco last year.
Finally, for good measure, I am throwing in a link to Making ‘Em Move, the Van Bueren cartoon I gather helped inform some of Boulevard and one of my very favorites. Enjoy!
Pam’s Pictorama PhotoPost: A few years ago I hit a streak on eBay where someone was selling a film still archive and I just bought and bought and bought some more – Kim jumped in with me. With the exception of my still from Lazy Bones (which was how I fell into the whole wonderful thing) we just bought photos that were appealing, followed our noses – all photos from films we had never seen, many lost. This one was identified on the back as Jes Call Me Bill, a Will Rogers film from 1920. This is just simply one of the most beautiful stills I have ever seen – hard to imagine the movie could live up to it. The film seems to exist but I haven’t seen it – Kim says he caught a bit of it on the tail end of a bootleg tape years ago. This photo hangs where we can see it everyday and I often spend a few minutes dreaming in front of it. Hope you like it as much as I do.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: The first time I remember seeing a photo paperweight was at my paternal grandparent’s house when I was a very small child – and I was fascinated by it! Those just had boring old people in them – it hadn’t occurred to my grandparents to put anything as cool as a cat or a dog photo in I guess. I just loved them – the heft, the frozen in time quality – I knew I needed to own some of these when I grew up. Then I forgot about them, for decades – until eBay!
Above, the solo cat is one of my prized possesions of an everyday kind and sits on my desk in my office. (For those of you who are ongoing readers, are you starting to get the idea that my office has some pretty cool stuff? You’d be right. More to come.) On a tough day he is always there to cheer me up. I recently rediscovered the dog and cats one on a shelf – love that! – and am thinking I should probably bring it to the office too. The street scene just evokes a slice of everyday life from the past – sometimes that’s all I’m looking for in a photo.
For a while I was buying these as gifts – a particularly nice Niagra Falls (I was obsessed with Niagra Falls photos in paperweights for a brief time) went to my friend Eileen, and my friend Betsy received an especially good one with a dog in it, I think. I just don’t have the space to collect them in large numbers, but would snap up a really good one if spotted. That probably doesn’t surprise you, right?
Pam's Pictorama 