Early AMG duals

The Kamp brothers were the earliest pair published by the Athletic Model Guild. Next came Gene Meyer and Pepper Gomez, followed by Forrester Millard and John Miller. (The first published trio was Millard, Miller, and Tom Thornburg in Miller’s D catalogue.)

Louis Paul and Joe Bloomberg come next, in Album E, along with Angelo Noto and Joe Cuilla. The E catalogue includes another trio: John Balen, Frank Mead, and Fred Servoss.

Considering Mizer’s fondness for groups, these first five album/catalogues get off to a slow start!

Gene Meyer

and Pepper Gomez

Forrester Millard

and John Miller

Louis Paul

and Joe Bloomberg

Angelo Noto

and Joe Cuilla

Hollywood at home

[William] Clark Gable (1901-1960) by Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896-1979).

More CDVs

Carte de visite by Étienne Carjat (1828-1906) at 56 Rue Laffitte in Paris 1861-65.

Academy Founders 8b

Standing, left to right: Oscar Apfel (1878-1938), camera man for and co-director of THE SQUAW MAN (1914); Max Figman (1861-1952), Lolita Robertson's husband and frequent co-star; Charles Richman (1865-1940); art director Wilfred Buckland (1866-1946); Theodore Roberts (1861-1928), Moses in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923); Broadway transplants Robert Edeson (1868-1931) and Edward Abeles (1869-1919); and Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959).

Academy Founders 8a

N.B. The member numbers follow The Internet Movie Database's list order announcing the Academy in January 1927.

Some of the early actors and staff at the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company in 1913. The studio -- later Famous Players-Lasky and then Paramount Pictures -- was developing THE SQUAW MAN (1914): the film's two directors -- including Cecil B. DeMille (#8 on IMDb's list of A.M.P.A.S. founders), standing at right -- may be seen in this photo. 

Seated, left to right: Lolita Robertson (1888-1959), Jesse L. Lasky (1880-1958, #16 on the list), and Bessie Barriscale (1884-1965).

I will cover the rest of the group in another post.

Martha Graham (1894-1991) and Ted Shawn (1891-1972)

How does a still photograph show movement? In general, once shutter speeds were fast enough to catch motion without blurring, the photo's subject was often captured mid-jump. In the case of Martha Graham and Ted Shawn's tango, they are shown mid-step, with Shawn's jacket canting up as his left arm arcs behind him.

The photo is by Witzel Studio.

Elizabeth Brice

Elizabeth Brice (Bessie Shaler, 1885-1965) by White Studios.

Brice — no relation to Fanny, a Ziegfeld perennial — made her Broadway début in Lee and J. J. Shubert’s THE SOCIAL WHIRL (1906 and 1907); she appeared in the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES of 1913, although the IBDb page for the show does not list her part. 

Her Wikipedia page emphasizes her partnership in this period with Charles King (1886-1944), who would later appear in THE BROADWAY MELODY (1929, where he introduced the song “You Were Meant for Me”), THE HOLLYWOOD REVIEW OF 1929 (“Orange Blossom Time”), and CHASING RAINBOWS (1930, “Happy Days are Here Again”). In 1930, Brice and King recorded a dozen duets for the Victor, Columbia, and Brunswick record labels.

More brothers

Unlike the Kleins, who had their own album and catalogue, Andy and Steve Kozak were part of a variety issue. Still, there are a number of solo shots of Steve here, although obviously not so many (available in other albums and catalogues) as for Andy Kozak. 

Steve Kozak and Andy Kozak

 

The Kozaks and Paul Timcho

Hollywood at home

Cary Grant (Archibald Alec Leach, 1904-1986) and [George] Randolph Scott (1898-1987), photographed in the house they shared between marriages.

Another CDV

Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-1910), from 1901 King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India, etc. Carte de visite by Moritz Unna (1811-1871), who bought the photography studio of [Peter Ludwig] Rudolf Striegler (1816-1876) in 1863. Striegler introduced the CDV to Denmark in 1860, and in 1861 he was the Danish court photographer.

On the reverse of the image, someone has written the date 1869; another hand appears to identify the sitter as the Crown Prince of England in 1870. The image is problematic, though, as it seems to date from several years before, at a time when the prince had not yet grown the beard associated with most of his adult life.

He married Princess Alexandra of Denmark, the daughter of King Christian IX, in 1863, and thereafter made annual visits to Copenhagen to stay with his wife’s parents. The CDV could belong to the period immediately after his marriage, when Unna had just bought Striegler’s studio.

Unna had a rather sad life, failing to succeed as a painter, a bookseller, and, finally, a photographer. (He died in obscurity, after a period of illness that likely affected his photography business.)

More brothers

Arnold Klein appeared with his brother Mel in AMG album/catalogue Y.

Mel Klein

Arnold and Mel Klein

Academy Founders 7

N.B. The member numbers follow The Internet Movie Database's list order announcing the Academy in January 1927.

7. Milton Sills (1882-1930) of the Actors Branch. The photo is by Harold Dean Carsey (1886-1947).

Like Mary Pickford, Sills was an early film star; his career began in 1914. His 1928 film THE BARKER was a particular success, and he was making a steady transition to sound films when he died playing tennis in 1930.

The actress Doris Kenyon (1897-1979) was Sills's second wife. Her third husband was the advertising executive and philanthropist Albert Davis Lasker (1880-1952).

Wayne Roberts

There are certain early AMG models who intrigue me, perhaps because of their seeming rarity — a handful of poses instead of a page or two of thumbnail shots. Wayne Roberts is one, although in his case I bought some unidentified prints and scrambled to find his name. Here he is in Album T, and in three images from the T catalogue. (The precipitating shots can be seen here.)

Dick Cunningham and Wayne Roberts

Wayne Roberts, Don Jaughn, and Henry Wright

Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor (Isidore Itzkowitz, 1892-1964) by George Grantham Bain (1865-1944).

A member of the FOLLIES casts between 1917 and 1920, Cantor returned in 1923 and 1927. A beloved star, he tried and mastered all the performing arts in all the media available to him.

More CDVs

An unidentified gentleman [”J.D.B.F.”] by Alexander Bassano, 72 Piccadilly, London, dated 28 January 1880.

The Royal Academy website lists Bassano at 72 Piccadilly 1870-81. A leading society photographer of the Victorian and early Edwardian eras, Alexander Bassano (1829-1913) was particularly admired for his portraits of the British royal family; his photograph of Earl Kitchener was the model for the World War I recruiting poster “Your Country needs you.”

 

Brothers

Good-looking siblings are an aesthetic treat, unlooked-for but welcome. Bob Mizer featured a number of siblings at Athletic Model Guild, beginning with the Kamp brothers and including the Kozaks and the Manningses.

Joe and Jack Kamp (sometimes Kamphuis?) were in the first AMG album, in 1946.

Shirts Optional 6

Hollywood at play

Conrad Nagel’s yacht TIBURON was a prominent feature in his personal publicity. Here he is with his wife Ruth, their daughter Ruth, Beverly Bayne (the former wife of silent star Francis X. Bushman, and a star in her own right), and Leatrice Joy (John Gilbert's ex-wife, and ditto), in August 1927.

Academy Founders 6

N.B. The member numbers follow The Internet Movie Database's list order announcing the Academy in January 1927.

6. Mary Pickford (Gladys Marie Smith, 1892-1979) of the Actors Branch. The photo is by Edwin Bower Hesser. 

Mary Pickford was one of the earliest film stars: by 1927, she had already been internationally famous for almost two decades. A co-founder of United Artists, it could be said that many aspects of Hollywood's notion of stardom were pioneered by -- and reflected the taste of -- "Little Mary" Pickford. 

She won the 1930 Academy Award for her first sound film, COQUETTE (1929). She was married to three film stars: Owen Moore 1911-20, Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) 1920-36, and Charles "Buddy" Rogers 1937-79.

Helen Broderick (1891-1959) by Strauss-Peyton Studio

She made her Broadway début in the 1907 ZIEGFELD FOLLIES, as a dancer; her roles don’t appear in the IBDb listing for the production. In 1910, she married Lester Crawford, her partner in the vaudeville duo of Broderick & Crawford. As vaudeville wound down, she became a solo player and a lead on Broadway, although she made short films with Crawford in 1930 and 1931. She is remembered today for her acerbic turns in the Astaire and Rogers films TOP HAT (1935) and SWING TIME (1936).

Broderick’s son — named, inevitably, [William] Broderick Crawford (1911-1986) — won the Academy Award for best actor for his part as Willie Stark in ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949).

Photo by Alfred Cheney Johnston (1885-1971)

“Disgraced”

Helen Twelvetrees (1908-1958), (perhaps) dressed by Travis Banton, while filming DISGRACED (1933). 

This image is almost too abstract: the bride in a pool of light, the sinuous column of her dress draped carelessly over the studio step. Even her wedding veil has been dissected and remade.