Kate Smith Hour CBS

It seems somewhat fitting, as the Memorial Weekend approaches, for my hand to find Kate Smith’s Favorite Recipes, a vintage baking booklet featuring the famous singer & General Foods Corporation’s Swans Down Cake Flour and Calumet Baking Powder — sponsors of Smith’s radio shows.

Why? Because Kate Smith was the one who, on Armistice Day, November 10, 1938, (the twentieth anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I), introduced Americans to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America.

The song quickly became a new, if unofficial, national anthem and if Kate’s introduction of the song, subsequent recording, and continued performances of it on nearly every radio broadcast through December 1940 (during the temporary “ban” of public performances of ASCAP songs) didn’t leave her indelible mark on the song as “hers,” temporary exclusive performance rights to the song sure secured it.

Kate’s rendition of God Bless America also made her a permanent part of hockey history — at least as far as the Philadelphia Flyers are concerned.

Anyway, if Kate doesn’t seem “All American” enough for you, consider the typical qualities of this booklet, copyrighted in 1939. It features the popular singer along with the to-be-expected recipes, baking tips, & true corporate greed — product placements for Swans Down Cake Flour & Calumet Baking Powder in photographs as well as specific recipe ingredients. That’s to be expected, right? But still, there’s something a bit weirder than that…

And I don’t just mean the comedic use of what I call “too many roll-y poll-y Kate heads” to remind the bakers (and now, we collectors) that this booklet was a Kate Smith affair either.

Kate Smith Head

Another Roll-y Poll-y Smith Head

This vintage baking cookbook doesn’t have single pie recipe. That’s weird. At least to me. Until you consider that General Foods Corporation, makers of Swans Down Cake Flour & Calumet Baking Powder, didn’t want folks to think of making pies — and therefore other baking products. Then my Easy Bake oven light goes on.

But still, that’s not as American as things get with this vintage booklet.

Kate was a big catch in this promotional marriage. And I don’t just mean her body size, but her popularity with Americans (millions listened to her radio shows). However, you certainly can’t ignore her physical size either.

“I know I’m fat and I know my hair is straight, but I can sing,” Kate Smith admitted on more than one occasion. That statement was more than acceptance of her non-pinup body-type in a culture which has always placed a premium on looks. Especially with its female pop sensations. Even if radio was the dealio back then. Understandably, Kate didn’t want to be dismissed as the butt of fat jokes — but she didn’t seem to mind making belittling jokes at her own expense once her huge talent was recognized. Even if her big stature was used to milk promotional dollars. …Maybe she just enjoyed the delicious irony of getting paid to hawk what the skinny girls couldn’t?

But you have to wonder how the amply-endowed Smith felt being photographed surrounded by a bevy of baking beauties…

Kate Smith & Baking Beauties

Or how the single Smith felt pandering to “typical female instincts” by posing with her business partner, Ted Collins, with text discussing how to “make men rave” with baked goods…

Kate Smith & Ted Collins In Vintage Baking Booklet

OK, so maybe Kate just had a really good sense of humor. Or a very high tolerance for BS. Maybe she even had both. But you can’t ignore the irony of a woman who would die of diabetes pushing baked goods.

And that, to me, seems to be about as American as it gets. Even Especially in 2009.

True Confessions (originally published by Fawcett Publications in 1922; currently published by Dorchester Media) is a magazine of ‘true confessions’ — still today one of the largest markets for short fiction stories — aimed at a young female readership between the ages of 20 and 35.

The magazines are highly collectible, in no small part due to the gorgeous illustrated covers of movie stars of the age. What’s not to love?

Vintage True Confession Magazine

Even when they used photographs of models, the vintage style hooks me.

True Confessions Magazine From 1942

But I, as usual, like to study these vintage magazines for the articles & the ads; the over-all message of the magazine.

What I’ve found in the vintage issues of True Confessions is a masterful combination of effective manipulation. Here the publishers combine the salacious lure of gossip magazines and tabloids with the traditional women’s publications fare of subtle (ish) & simultaneous pitches for products & lifestyle — a lifestyle which says, literally, that a “a girl’s main function is to charm” in order to “please a male”.

I should be offended — and part of me is! — but I just can’t help falling in love with the grand illustration, the vintage glamour…

Miriam Hopkins On True Confessions

It’s seductive.

Perhaps the publishers win… But not for the reasons they/you think. While I find the issues intoxicating, I’m not (completely?) sold on the beauty & charm in product or lifestyle. What I want to buy is the recipe for such success — and that’s not something they’re selling. So I keep paging through them, looking at each ‘ingredient,’ hoping I can figure it out. And that’s my confession. A real confession, not the short fiction variety.

So I’m flipping through an issue of the National Enquirer from 1979, as I’m wont to do — don’t look at me like that, you’d do it too if you had some.

Women Born From 1905 to 1909 Had The Fewest Children

Anyway, I find this snippet (buried on page 63 of the issue dated February 20, 1979), titled “Women Born From 1905 to 1909 Had The Fewest Children.” And it fascinates me.

You know how I love to read about that feminist stuff — or, as some might say, turn everything into feminist stuff. But there’s just the three scant paragraphs. And it’s the National Enquirer for gosh-sake.

So, being in ‘the library’ (yes, that’s a euphemism for the bathroom) and, still pondering the subject of childless women who were born in the early 1900’s, I reach for whatever other reading material might be laying in the magazine rack.

Through what, again, can only be described as the Serendipity Of The Collecting Gods, my hand finds a back issue of The Keynoter, the Journal of the American Political Items Conservators published by the American Political Items Collectors.

On page 42 of that Winter, 2007, issue is an article titled “I Am For Playgrounds” by Steve Baxley. It describes the story behind the William Howard Taft celluloid button bearing the same slogan.

Taft: I Am For Playgrounds

You, like political memorabilia collector Steve Mihaly, might wonder why this would be a political slogan — after all, who could possibly not be for playgrounds?

Baxley explains how back in the 1890’s urban areas were opening play lots where children could play within urban areas. Baxley writes:

Many women involved in the women’s suffrage movement also became involved in the Mother’s and Children’s Movement, which tried to influence state and local legislators to pass legislation protecting women and child laborers and create schools, kindergartens, and playgrounds to keep children off the street. Though these women could not vote, they were very successful in influencing stare and local government officials in achieving these goals. By 1905, many of the larger cities were providing appropriations for the maintenance of playgrounds.

In 1906 the Playground Association of America was founded. President Taft supported the group’s work as well as appropriations for playgrounds; this is where the button comes from.

What’s all this got to do with the low birthrate among women born between 1905 and 1909 — the very girls who would have played on those playgrounds?

I don’t know. Not really.

But the historian in me must make (educated) guesses.

The women born between 1905 and 1909 were the same young girls who grew up during the years of the women’s suffrage movement in the US. They would have seen the struggle, heard the talk, and knew they could have greater freedom of choice in living their lives. They too would see, if not quite be, part of the flapper movement. Activism and parenting being almost completely at odds with one another, some may have opted not to have children — and at this time, birth control, thanks to Margaret Sanger, was becoming a realistic option.

And, just as these young women were perhaps thinking of starting a family…

Along comes The Great Depression — the one of that started about 1929, not the one some say we are approaching now — and the birthrate fell about one-tenth globally from the rate during the “prosperous” 1920’s. In America, the birth rate dropped below the replacement level for the first time in history.

Pretty good guesses, huh.

But then I have all my ephemera to thank for that.  And my ‘library’ time.

Eve Arnold is known for her celebrity photographs, and perhaps most known for her photos of Marilyn Monroe.  This is how I, as a woman with an obsession with Monroe, discovered Arnold.  After reading my last book on Monroe, I had decided to swear-off my obsession and stop buying more Monroe stuff — at least books.  But then I discovered Eve Arnold’s book of Monroe photographs…

Full of photos — nearly 100, including 48 previously unseen — yes; but it’s the quality, not the quantity.

Arnold’s photographs of Marilyn are unique.  Unusually benevolent, these intimate photos of Marilyn Monroe expose the icon’s personality rather than her flesh.  In these photos we see a person, not a sex object; a human, not any kind of object at all.  And while I could go on and on about them, the important thing to know here is that these photos are different for several key reasons.

One is the all important matter of timing — and developing.  The two met at a party and forged a wonderful friendship that would last a decade.  As Arnold says, “We were both at the beginning of our careers, and I believe that neither of us knew precisely what we were doing.”

At the risk of more bad-pun-making, I’ll say what allowed the friendship to develop was the chemistry between the two.  While many dismiss Marilyn’s intelligence, Eve didn’t.  Both women knew what effect being a woman had on the world around her, and as Eve says, “We could make use of it, or we could let it be.”

Arnold would later say, “I didn’t want to be a ‘woman photographer’. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.” (And more recently confirms this belief, saying in a BBC interview, “No, I am a photographer. And you don’t say, a man photographer. So it seems likely that I am a photographer.”) This certainly puts the the two women on decidedly different paths, at least in appearance; yet it would stop neither’s success.

Arnold was the first woman to be nominated for membership in Magnum in 1951, and became a full member in 1957.  In 1995 she was made fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and elected Master Photographer, the world’s most prestigious photographic honor, by New York’s International Center of Photography; and in 2003, she was awarded an honorary O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) by the British Government.

Looking at her photographs, you can see why.

Through her photos of celebrities, we see more than famous people, more than a time capsule of “us” or “society”.  Even with such famous & familiar faces, we see something — someone — new.

If the mark of a really good novel is that you think of the characters long after the book ends, then photographs of people ought to do the same. Eve Arnold’s photos do that.  Even if you think you know the people in the portraits.

And when you don’t know the people in the photographs?  You long to…

In fact, if I have one complaint about Arnold’s works, it’s that I can’t find out enough.  I know that photographers believe that a photo is worth a thousand words, but often they do not seem to document the details which I long to know…  A perpetual problem for me, I know; but still, why can’t I find out more about Charlotte Stribling aka ‘Fabulous’?  Or Girl Holding Head, Insane Asylum, Haiti 1954?

The titles are stark, in such contrast to such compassionate, deep, rich images.  Perhaps this is by design, so that I, we, move past words and labels into what seeing and feeling.  But I still want to know more about Charlotte and Girl Holding Head.  For now, all I can do is stare at the photos and wonder.

Along with her famous celebrity protraits, there are a few others we can learn more about. Such as the Veiled woman, Muscat, Oman 1969.  She, and others, can (presumably) be seen in Arnold’s 1969 film about Dubai, Behind the Veil. This film is said, not only to capture “a traditional Muslim society just as it begins to become modernized, but also the antagonism between Islamic and Western societies that has been the stuff of news stories throughout the first years of the 21st century.”

I bet it’s amazing.

If there’s one thing I’ve read which seems to sum up the brilliance of Arnold’s photos, it’s this quote from the artist herself: “If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

This is the gift of this talented photographer.  A gift no doubt noticed & appreciated by Monroe, allowing such a friendship, but by all who were before Arnold’s camera.  Indeed a gift she shares with all who see her photographs.

So now I’ll collect Eve Arnold works — likely in books, due to my modest means.  Not because she knew Marilyn; but because she knew how to take pictures of her.  And of everyone she photographed.

PS  Through June 14, the David Gallery exhibits All About Eve, the single largest collection of vintage and period Eve Arnold prints available for acquisition.  I wish I were close enough to see it.  If you go, I’m accepting souveniers.

Sometimes we go hunting for collectibles with empty pockets.  No, we don’t shoplift!  We go with just a few dollars or less just to see what there is to be seen.  Kind of like visiting a museum.

Not too long ago we took one of these field trips to a local antique mall and I took photos of things I was intrigued by, but was too cheap to buy, like this antique postcard.

The concept of a woman proposing due to leap year — via a postcard, yet — had me intrigued.

Clearly, the best way to get a man interested in the notion of marriage was to promote your womanly ways — with a needle. (Darn-it!) I have no idea if this postcard proposal worked, but the cute buttons and socks didn’t move me to spend $5… I’m so cheap, I figured the photo was enough to remind me to research the notion of women prompted to proposing during leap year.

That it did.

According to About.com:

The first documentation of this practice dates back to 1288, when Scotland passed a law that allowed women to propose marriage to the man of their choice in that year. They also made it law that any man who declined a proposal in a leap year must pay a fine. The fine could range from a kiss to payment for a silk dress or a pair of gloves.

Like most About.com articles, this info isn’t documented, or all that fascinating. But this article, The Leap Year Proposal, by Dorothy Dix, published in 1904 by The New York Times, is much more interesting.

In it, Dix begins by saying this:

That woman labors under a great matrimonial disadvantage in not being able to pop the question no one will deny. It forces her to take what is offered to her instead of the thing for which she would ask if she had the privilege, and even when leap year removes the bar against her speaking out in meeting it does her little good, for it finds her with no precedent to guide her, no experience to be a lamp to her feet.

…Of course people will say that this makes no difference, that a woman’s leap year prerogative, like most of her liberties, is merely a glittering mockery that she does not dare to put to the test, but how does any one know this?

The past is no criterion. Women do many things now that they did not do forty or even four years ago. It is not at all impossible that many a discouraged spinster, worn out with waiting for her steady beaux to speak, and many a love-lorn maiden who has heretofore let concealment prey upon her damask cheek, will take matters into their own hands and propose matrimony to the man they love, in this year of grace 1904, so a few suggestions to the leap year girl may not be amiss.

The first one must necessarily be a warning. No one knows as yet just how a woman should propose, but it is to be hoped that when she does undertake to be a lovemaker that she will do it more romantically and poetically than man does. It is true that man’s way works, but this is because he has a monopoly of it. We all burn Standard oil because there is no other kind of oil. Woman have had to take the kink of proposal offered them or do without, and those who have suffered from this — who have seen their dreams shattered and their ideals smashed — who have had love made to them between the jolts of a street car, or across beef steak and onions at a restaurant table or in any other old place, ought to know enough to render their proposals a romance that a man will be glad to remember to the longest day he lives.

This so contradicts the actions of the dear lady who sent this postcard. And it gets worse.

Several paragraphs later, under “Avoid the Fatal Mistake”, Dix continues:

The first impulse of the Leap Year girl will be to propose by letter. This is a fatal mistake, because in the first place her billet doux will reach the man with his business letters, and thus pass over to the cold consideration of his stenographer. No American man is sentimental in banking hours, and during that sacred period of the day no woman may hope to compete in heart interest with the price of stocks or wheat, or lard. Moreover, the long-distance proposal, whether it be made by man or woman, seldom hits the bull’s-eye. It lacks the magnetism of personal appeal, of trembling hands, and anxious eyes, and quivering lips. Besides it is always easier to write “NO” than it is to say it, and the woman who wants a husband instead of somebody to be a brother to her will have to face the music, and make her proposal viva voce.

I now wish I had paid the $5, simply to see the date sent so I would know if the lady could have possibly read Dix’s advice… And maybe research the names on the back of the card to see if I can discover if the lady ever did marry…

I may never know any of that.  But I do know I should have spent the $5 that day.