Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross (1932)

Empress Poppaea’s cat drinks out of her milk bath in SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932)

The Sign of the Cross (1932) Paramount Pictures Cecil B. DeMille

Sally Rand as the Crocodiles' Victim

Beautiful Claudette Colbert in The Sign Of The Cross 1932 ⛲️

Élisabeth Lebas talking about Robespierre like he’s the Messiah or something compilation

[Edgar Degas] told me that, when he was a child, his mother one day took him to rue de Tournon to visit Madame Lebas, widow of the famous Convention deputy who, on 9 thermidor, killed himself with a pistol. When the visit was over, they withdrew with small steps, accompanied to the door by the old lady, when Madame Degas suddenly stopped, deeply overwhelmed. Letting go of her son's hand, she pointed at the portraits of Robespierre, of Couthon, of Saint-Just, that she had just noticed were hanging on the walls of the antechambre, and she couldn’t keep herself from crying out with horror: ”What! You still keep the faces of these monsters here!”  ”Be quiet, Célestine!” Madame Lebas cried out ardently, ”be quiet… They were saints!” Discours de l’Histoire prononcé à la distribution solennelle des prix du Lycée Jeanson-de-Sailly held by Paul Valéry on July 13 1932, cited in Robespierre ou les contradictions du jacobinisme (1978) by Albert Soboul.

I was able to converse, between 1838 and 1839, with a famous parrot who had been the friend of Robespierre. He belonged to Mme the widow Lebas, the wife of the famous Convention deputy who chose to die with Robespierre, and the mother of M. Lebas, Hellenist scholar, who died a few years ago. Mme widow Lebas, a very respectable woman, whom I had the honour of seeing often in her little house in Fontenay-aux-Roses, where she would make the sign of the cross when she pronounced the name Robespierre, adding these words: Saint Maximilien. As for her parrot, when one said "Robespierre", it replied Hats off! Hats off! It sang the Marseillaise with perfect diction and Ça ira like a Jacobin. It was — and perhaps, thanks to its diet of grain, still is — a sans-culotte parrot, the like of which can no longer be found. Mme Lebas recounted with great emotion how she had managed to save this precious psittacus  after Thermidor.  It had been seriously compromised.  After the arrest of Robespierre and Lebas, in the course of a long domiciliary inspection,  every time the name of Robespierre was pronouned the parrot would repeat its refrain, Hats off! Hats off! The government agents had grown impatient and were about to wring its neck, when Mme Lebas, as quick as lightning,  grabbed the bird, opened the window and set it free. The poor parrot flew from window to window, until it found a charitable person to open up for it; a few days later Madame Lebas was able to regain possession of this last friend left to her by Robespierre, the only one perhaps, besides his elderly mistress, who has remained faithful to his memory.  L’Union médicale: journal des intérêts scientifiques et pratiques, moraux et professionnels du corps médical (1861) volume 12, page 258-259.

Finally our providence, our good friend Robespierre, spoke to Saint-Just to engage him to let me depart with [him and Lebas], along with my sister-in-law Henriette. Élisabeth’s memoirs, cited in Le conventionnel Le Bas: d’après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901), by Stéfane-Pol, page 131.

…If you had been informed of my residence, I would have been eager to tell you the truth. The good that you say of our martyrs is not too charged: they were the true friends of liberty; they lived only for the people, for their fatherland; but some monsters, in one day, destroyed everything; in one day they assassinated liberty. Yes, monsieur, a republican like you would have been happy to know those men, so virtuous on all accounts; they all died poor. Note written by Élisabeth a few years before her death regarding ”a work treating the revolution” (l’Histoire des Girondins?). Cited in Ibid, page 147.

Marlene Dietrich at the premiere of Sign of the Cross, Biltmore Theater in Los Angeles, 1932. La Dietrich is wearing a tuxedo jacket and black felt crush hat.

The Sign of the Cross (1932)

Claudette Colbert - The Perfect Star

Claudette Colbert (born Émilie Chauchoin in in Saint-Mandé, France on September 13, 1903) was a French-American actress who became one of the few major actresses during the Golden Age of Hollywood who worked freelance, independent of the studio system. With her impeccable makeup, trademark bangs, and stunning legs, she became known as "The Perfect Star" during her heyday.

At three years old, Colbert emigrated to Manhattan in order for her parents to pursue more employment opportunities. She studied at Washington Irving High School, which was known for its strong arts program and made her stage debut at the historic Provincetown Playhouse. Intending to become a fashion designer, she attended the Art Students League of New York. While studying, she appeared on the Broadway stage in a small role in The Wild Westcotts (1923).

After appearing in plays in Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, and Connecticut and the London's West End, producer Leland Hayward casted her in her first film role in 1927. The following year, she signed with Paramount Pictures, where she made films in both French and English.

Colbert's career was boosted when she played the supporting role as a femme fatale in Cecil B. DeMille's historical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932). In 1933, Colbert renegotiated her contract to allow her to appear in films for other studios. This resulted in her most memorable movie, the screwball comedy Columbia Pictures' It Happened One Night (1934), which won her Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1936, Colbert signed a new contract with Paramount, making her one of Hollywood's highest-paid actress. Colbert spent the rest of the 1930s alternating between romantic comedies and dramas. Still, she found time to volunteer with the Red Cross and participate in the Hollywood Victory Caravan during WWII.

In 1940, Colbert was offered a new contract with Paramount; she declined and continued to work as a freelance artist, securing roles in several prestigious films and television broadcasts in her later years, even winning a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Series in 1988. Colbert also intermittently appeared in Broadway productions, most notable in The Marriage-Go-Round, for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Tony Award.

After retiring from acting in 1987, Colbert divided her time between her Manhattan apartment and her 18th century beachfront home in Speightstown, Barbados, nicknamed Bellerive, where she passed away at 92 years of age after suffering from a series of strokes during the last three years of her life.

Legacy:

THURSDAY HERO: Princess Alice

Amazing story! Princess Alice was an unconventional royal who prioritized helping others over wealth and privilege. She devoted her life to good deeds and spiritual growth, and was notable among European royalty for taking Jews into her home during the Holocaust.

Princess Alice stood out for another reason: she was deaf from birth.

Born in 1885 at Windsor Castle, Alice was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She learned to lip read at a young age, and could speak several languages. Alice was widely regarded as the most beautiful princess in Europe.

At age 17, Alice fell in love with dashing Prince Andrew of Greece and they were married in 1903. Alice and Andrew had four daughters and a son. Their son Philip would later be married to Queen Elizabeth II. Alice communicated with her children mainly in sign language.

Political turmoil in Greece forced the royal family into exile. They settled in a sleepy suburb of Paris, where Alice threw herself into charitable work helping Greek refugees. Her husband left her for a life of gambling and debauchery in Monte Carlo.

Relying on the charity of wealthy relatives, Alice found strength in her Greek Orthodox faith. She became increasingly religious, and believed that she was receiving divine messages and had healing powers. She yearned to share her faith and mystical experiences with others, but instead was dismissed as mentally unhinged.

Alice had a nervous breakdown in 1930. She was committed against her will to a mental institution in Switzerland, with a dubious diagnosis of schizophrenia. Alice did not even get a chance to say goodbye to her children. Her youngest, 9 year old Philip, returned from a picnic to find his mother gone.

Alice tried desperately to leave the asylum, but was kept prisoner in Switzerland for 2 1/2 years. During that time, her beloved son Philip was sent to live with relatives, and her four daughters married German princes. Alice was not allowed to attend any of their weddings.

Finally, in 1932, Alice was released. She became a wanderer, traveling through Europe by herself, staying with relatives or at bed & breakfast inns. In 1935, Alice returned to Greece, where she lived alone in a modest two bedroom apartment and worked with the poor.

The Germans occupied Athens in April 1941. Alice devoted herself to relieving the tremendous suffering in her country. She worked for the Red Cross, organizing soup kitchens and creating shelters for orphaned children. Alice also started a nursing service to provide health care to the poorest Athenians.

In 1943, the Germans started deporting the Jews of Athens to concentration camps. Alice hid a Jewish widow, Rachel Cohen, and her children in her own apartment for over a year. Rachel’s late husband, Haimaki Cohen, was an advisor to King George I of Greece, and Alice considered it her solemn duty to save the remaining Cohen family.

Alice lived yards from Gestapo headquarters. When the Germans became suspicious of her and started asking questions, she used her deafness as an excuse not to answer them. Alice kept the Cohen family safe until Greece was liberated in 1944.

After the war, Alice founded her own religious order, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, and became a nun. She built a convent and orphanage in a poverty-stricken part of Athens. Alice dressed in a nun’s habit consisting of a drab gray robe, white wimple, cord and rosary beads – but still enjoyed smoking and playing cards.

In 1967, after a Greek military coup, Alice finally returned to Great Britain. She lived at Buckingham Palace with her son Philip and daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II.

Alice died in 1969. She owned no possessions, having given everything to the poor. Before she died, Alice expressed a desire to be buried at the Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, but instead was laid to rest in the Royal Crypt in Windsor Castle.

In 1988, almost 20 years after she died, Alice’s dying wish was finally granted. Her remains were sent to Jerusalem, where she was buried on the Mount of Olives.

In 1994, Alice was honored by the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem (Yad Vashem) as Righteous Among The Nations. Her son Prince Philip said of his mother’s wartime heroism, “I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with a deep religious faith, and she would have considered it to be a perfectly natural human reaction to fellow beings in distress.”

Video

Claudette Colbert in "The Sign of the Cross" (1932)

On August 13th 1888 John Logie Baird was born in Helensburgh.

John was the fourth and youngest child of the Rev John and Jessie Baird, he showed early signs of ingenuity by setting up a telephone exchange to connect his house to those of his friends nearby.

His first interest in television came in 1903 after he read a German book on the photoelectric properties of selenium.Baird sailed for Port of Spain, Trinidad in November 1919 and realising that the island teemed with citrus fruit and sugar, he set up a jam factory. Unfortunately the local insect life either ran off with the sugar or landed in the hot vats of boiling preserve.

Baird returned to the British Isles in September 1920, and after a brief spell in business in London, he started to experiment with television. In Hastings in 1924 he transmitted the image of a Maltese cross over the distance of 10 feet.Baird's first public demonstration of television was in 1925, in Selfridge's shop in London.

The breakthrough came in October 1925 when he achieved television pictures with light and shade (half-tones), making them much clearer.He demonstrated these to invited members of the Royal Institution in January 1926. The pictures measured only 3.5 x 2 inches.In 1928 Baird sent television pictures from London to New York by short-wave radio. He also demonstrated television in colour, and developed a video recording system which he called 'phonovision'.

In 1929 the BBC sent out experimental television transmissions. At first Baird had to pay the BBC to transmit his images. A year later the Baird company brought out the world's first mass produced television set, called 'The Televisor'.The BBC began using his system for the first public television service in 1932, before switching in 1937 to the Marconi-EMI version.

In July 1937 the Royal Society of Edinburgh awarded Baird an Honorary Fellowship.

At the age of 43, John Logie Baird married South African pianist Margaret Albu in New York. The couple had two children – Diana and Malcolm.

During the Second World War, Baird continued to fund his own research. His achievements included high-definition colour and 3D television, and a system for sending messages very rapidly as television images.

John Logie Baird died at his home in Bexhill-on-Sea on 14th June 1946, and was buried in Helensburgh.

In a National Library of Scotland poll John Logie Baird was voted the second most popular Scottish scientist from the past behind James Clerk Maxwell.

These are some facts and curiosities about the SS:

• the first SS formation appeared in 1923. In fact, it was in March of that year that the first military formation of the future SS Order was formed, the Strabswache, guard of the headquarters.

• Born to be Adolf Hitler's bodyguard, they swore an oath of loyalty and honor to him alone.

• To distinguish itself from other SA formations, the new formation chose the skull as its distinctive sign.

• On January 6, 1929, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler head of the SS, which at the time numbered only 280 men. With Hitler's approval, Himmler expanded the ranks of the SS and by the end of 1932 it already had 52,000 members. After just one year they had reached over 209,000 men.

• Their motto was "My honor is called loyalty".

• Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, said in his autobiography: The Fuhrer commands, we obey, it was neither a phrase nor a slogan for us. It was a concept taken terribly seriously.

• By the time the Second World War began, the number of members rose to 250,000; the Waffen-SS was formed in December 1940 to fight alongside the Wehrmacht, often with wide autonomy of action.

• Only two institutions were not affected by the SS penetration: the army and the minister of propaganda.

• More than any other organization in Hitler's Reich, it embodied, propagandized and implemented the illusion of the dominant race: The Aryan Race.

• The minimum acceptable number of children for an SS member was four.

• No member of the organization can marry without the permission of the Reichsfuhrer SS (but it's your business, eh Himmler? What a nosy bespectacled hamster)

• A fundamental characteristic of the SS was the (mandatory) tattoo on the inside of the left arm which reported the blood type and the SS serial number

• On September 30, 1946, the judges of the Nuremberg trial court condemned the SS, declaring it a criminal organization. The judges underlined this ruling by declaring that «the SS was used for purposes that were criminal, which included: the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutality and executions in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of the occupied territories, the administration of the of slave labor and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. The ruling went on to state that the suspicion of war crimes would involve all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS… who became or remained members of the organization knowing that it was being used to commit acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the London War Crimes Statute."

•Members of particular note:

Heinrich Himmler: Reichsfuhrer SS

Reinhard Heydrich: Head of the SD

Rudolf Höss: the first commandant of Auschwitz

Josef Mengele: The Angel Of Death or '' Doctor Auschwitz''

Adolf Eichmann: Director of the department in charge of deportations and other “Jewish issues”

Heinrich Müller: ''Gestapo Müller'' the head of the Gestapo

Ernst Kalternbrunner: Heydrich's successor

Theodor Eicke: the first commandant of Dachau

Symbols of the SS:

•The Totenkopf (from the German, skull), made up of a grinning skull and crossed bones, was undoubtedly the symbolic emblem of the SS and the terror associated with it. Referring to the tradition of the military corps of the Kingdom of Prussia first, and of numerous Freikorps later, the SS also adopted the death's head as their characteristic decoration

•Established by Himmler on 10 April 1934, the Totenkopfring der SS ("SS Skull Ring") was one of the most coveted decorations of the SS. It had the value of a very high recognition since it was an indication of the personal merits of the wearer, of his devotion to duty, of loyalty to Hitler and National Socialism.

•Heinrich Himmler, famously passionate about occultism, adopted many of these runes as a symbolic reference for the SS divisions. The symbol with the double Ss, created by placing two Sig - Runen (ᛋ) side by side, was created by the German graphic designer Walter Heck in 1933. Other runes, the Armanen Futharkh, were created by Guido von List and some were taken directly from the ancient Futhark. ( I will do another post about the SS runes)

Sources:

The SS: Wikipedia

SS: the black order of the reich by Enrico Cernigoi

Rudolf Höss: Commandant at Auschwitz

⚠️I DON'T SUPPORT NAZISM, FASCISM OR ZIONISM IN ANY WAY THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST ⚠️

If you don't like it go with your life

Ernst Lubitsch and Claudette Colbert on set of DeMille’s the 1932 film THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

Irene Dunne and Myrna Loy in Thirteen Women (George Archainbaud, 1932)

Cast: Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy, Ricardo Cortez, Jill Esmond, Mary Duncan, Kay Johnson, Florence Eldridge, C. Henry Gordon, Peg Entwistle, Harriet Hagman, Edward Pawley, Blanche Friderici, Wally Albright. Screenplay: Bartlett Cormack, Samuel Ornitz, based on a novel by Tiffany Thayer. Cinematography: Leo Tover. Art direction: Carroll Clark. Film editing: Charles L. Kimball. Music: Max Steiner. 

Myrna Loy was born Myrna Williams in Helena, Montana, but you wouldn't know it from the way Hollywood often cast her at the start of her career in the '20s and '30s. Her role in Thirteen Women is probably the purest example of her work as the stereotypical sinister Eurasian. She plays Ursula Georgi, whom the cop played by Ricardo Cortez scorns as "Half-breed type. Half Hindu, half Javanese, I don't know." (Actually, Cortez himself knew something about crossing ethnic lines: He was born Jacob Krantz in New York, but Hollywood changed his name to capitalize on the vogue for Latin lovers like Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro, and later claimed first that he was French and later that he was born in Vienna.) Ursula seeks revenge on the women who belonged to a sorority at a girls' college and blackballed her when she sought admission. She seeks out a phony seer known as Swami Yogadachi (C. Henry Gordon), whose horoscope readings the girls sought out, and hypnotizes him into sending them poison-pen readings that predict dire events. Two of the girls, the sisters June (Mary Duncan) and May Raskob (Harriet Hagman), have become trapeze artists, and June is so unnerved by the fake reading that she lets May fall to her death during a stunt and goes mad as a consequence. As others fall prey to Ursula's schemes, some of the survivors gather at the home of Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne), who thinks that their hysteria over the deaths is absurd. Laura is the single mother of a son, Bobby (Wally Albright), who is one of those cloyingly cute movie children -- he calls her "Mumsy." But even Laura's calm vanishes when Ursula makes Bobby her next target. In addition to being stupidly racist, the movie is sheer hokum, a cockamamie blend of revenge thriller and police procedural, and it was not much of a success at the box office, even after RKO cut 14 minutes from it after test screenings -- one of the reasons why we learn the fates of only 10 of the 13 women. One of the performances cut to only four minutes was that of Peg Entwistle, who played Hazel, the one who kills her husband and goes to prison. Entwistle was reportedly so despondent about her movie career that she climbed to the top of one of the letters on the Hollywood sign (reports vary on whether it was the H or the D) and jumped to her death. As for Loy, this was her last outing as a Eurasian vamp: The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934) changed her screen image to that of the witty and soignée wife, most often of William Powell.    

Bulgakov Boris Petrovich (1893-1964). Boxers. 1920s.

Paper, etching. Bottom right: "B."

He was born in the family of a coastal navigation navigator P. Bulgakov. In 1902 he was enrolled in the Third Kiev Gymnasium, after which in 1913 he entered the Kiev Imperial University of St. Vladimir; he studied first at the Faculty of Medicine, then at the Faculty of History and Philology. In August 1916, he went to the front as a freelancer. For his participation in hostilities, he received personal nobility, was awarded two St. George's Crosses.

In 1921-1926 he studied at the Second State Free Art Workshops - VKhUTEMAS (in the same course with A. Deyneka and A. Goncharov) at D. N. Kardovsky, N. N. Kupreyanova, V. A. Favorsky.

He lived in Moscow. He worked as a machine tool, engaged in book illustration, ex-libris. Collaborated with the publishing houses Detgiz, Young Guard, Uchpedgiz. I made illustrations for the book "Don't listen to me. Folk Tale" (1927) and others.

Since 1925 - participant of exhibitions. In 1926-1932 - member of the Society of Easel, participant of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th exhibitions of OST (1926, 1927, 1928). He exhibited his works at the exhibition "Russian Book Sign in Engraving" in Leningrad (1925), the exhibition of engraving and drawing of masters of Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine in Kiev (1928) and others. Participant of a number of international exhibitions and exhibitions of Soviet art abroad, including international exhibitions of book art in Leipzig, Nuremberg (1927), Cologne (1928), the exhibition of Russian art in Winterthur (1929), the World Exhibition in Chicago (1933).

In the mid-1930s, he was accused of formalism, after which he focused on his work in the field of book graphics. For many years he held the post of chairman of the Moscow City Committee of Graphic Artists.

Artistic Auctions

The Sign of the Cross (1932) Paramount Pictures Cecil B. DeMille

Claudette Colbert as Empress Poppaea