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Jackie Kennedy's Response on Buying American, 1960--Rarity.

ITEM: two Jacqueline Kennedy items (described below) one with extensive annotations in Mrs. Kennedy's hand.  Rare.  2 items:  $2000.00

Some years ago I purchased a small archive of documents relating to the public appearances of Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of President John Kennedy.  The material is all pre-inaugural, almost all 1960, and  loaded with interesting unpublished nuggets.  One such bit is this telegram sent by the Kennedy camp to Mrs. Kennedy's first (?) social/press secretary (who did not follow the Kennedys to the white House), Gladys Uhl, the content of which was to be reorganized and matured by Mrs. Uhl  for public distribution.  The subject here was Mrs. Kennedy's coming fashion sense, in general, and of her inaugural gown, in particular.

And what is interesting here is that "when Jacqueline Kennedy moves into the White House she will wear only American clothes and she is looking forward to it".  A fine sentiment; a bolder one too for today if Mrs. Obama decides to follow suit.  It will be much more difficult though for that to happen in 2009 than it would have been in 1961:  this is an age when even some of the most classic "\American" brands of clothing have been moved offshore, made for the USA in China (or Indonesia, or Pakistan, or Vietnam, or wherever the work can be delivered cheaper.  Mrs. Obama has said something about wearing simple clothing, as from a store (chain) like J. Crew--it would be nicer if she were to decide to go with another New York-based clothing store whose goods weren't made in China, though.  I could cozy up to that.  I could also cozy up to the "American Owned" supermarket that I bounce into every other day if that had more American-made products.  I can understand off season veggies and such, but does good-old Motts Apple Juice really need to be made from apple concentrate imported from China (for crying out loud?)?  I remember on 9/13/01 that the Giant Foods supermarket in my neighborhood in Cleveland Park, D.C., started selling American flags--all made in China.  This was just so entirely wrong that a protest was waged, the flags were removed, and then replaced days later with flags made in the USA.  But it is difficult to find American-made clothing in stores--even a so-called "iconic" Appalachian "general store" and landmark in Asheville, a store that wraps itself in folkiness and homespun regional taste, has, I would say, less than 5% American-made goods. 

 

But I digress. I really just wanted to talk about Jackie Kennedy and her inaugural gown and her interest in 'buying American".  In another piece from this modest archive, Jackie sends back her response to Mrs. Uhl's questions, and one in particular about color.  Seems as though Lyndon Johnson's wife, Lady Bird, was going to go shopping at Nieman Marcus for her inaugural gown and wanted to know what color Mrs. Kennedy was going to wear so that she could avoid buying that same color.  Jackie responds at the bottom:  "My Inaug gown will be White--so I'm sure that anything Mrs. Johnson picks will go with it".  

There are other interesting items in this collection that I'll get to soon--several of which are Mrs. Kennedy's copies of some scripts for television commercials for her husbands campaign.  They're actually pretty interesting, and a nice insight into the packing of the President in 1960. 

 

 

 

Odd Person Out--Large Crowds and the Singular Person in Photographs

1) The Composition of Relief and Happiness--Minus One.  Free France, 1918 . 

Original photograph, 8x6 inches, 1918.  Good condition,  $350

This remarkable photograph shows the joy and relief of the townspeople of Saudemont, France (20 kilometers south-east of Arras), after just having been freed from German occupation after four years of captivity. 

Saudemont had evidently suffered greatly over the four years, and seemed as though the population of the entire town was going ot be removed along with the Germans--but they weren't, and teh town was simply abandoned, found and recaptured by these Canadian forces.

The images of overwhelming joy are (almost) everywhere:

Except of course for the man at the fulcrum of the image (and the woman behind him), who remained, well, stolid:

But so far as everyone else is concerned:

(2) In this second photograph, taken of American troops at a ceremony at the cemetery of St. Marie, Havre, France in November 1918, the massive crowd (the largest funeral service held in France) is almost entirely focused on the proceedings--except this one serviceman in front, lathced onto the photographer.

Original photograph, printed 1918.  9x6 inches, good condition.  $250

(3)

Another extraordinary image of pressed-together humans, of a human sea, a carpet of hatted men.  And believe me, every person in this image of (I'd say) approximately 5000 men has got a hat on.  There are hundreds of folks in the photo who re aware of the photographer and who are looking right at the camera, but there is only *one* person who is lifting his hat to the photographer. 

Women in World War I--Rare Photographs, 1918, Part II

This is another in a series of posts on images from my News Service Photographs of WWI collection.  All thousand or so of them were made in the last half of 1918, in the last months of the grueling conflict, and were intended to be used by newspaper and magazines to illustrate stories about the war. An editor would send off a request to one of these agencies for, say, a photograph of marching American nurses, and the agency would send one back (for a fee) along with a caption.   There's really no way for me to determine if these photos were ever published, and there is never an attribution for the photographer. 

Most of the images have an accompanying descriptive text--this was to be used by whomever published the photograph, along with the attribution for the source of the photo. 

In almost every case I supplied a detail of the image, hopefully of something that you'd want to see a detail of. 

ORIGINAL photograph, 1918. 8x5 inches.  Ushers at ballpark, 1918. Very good conditon.  $150

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  8x6 inches.  Very good condition.  $150

 
ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918. 8x6 inches.  BVery good condition.  $150

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  8x6 inches.  Very good condition.  $150

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.The only woman in the French Army.  $200

ORIGINAL photograph, 1918. King and Queen of England at Munitions Factory. 8x6 inches.  Good condition.  $125

The detail comes from the sweeping woman at right, taking care of some debris in a munitions factory in October 1918, sweeping as the King and Queen of England stroll by on a visit/inspection.  I suspect she was instructed to say nothing and to not look up from her work.  She doesn't look nervous to me, though--her hands aren't tightly gripped around the broom handle, and her face looks relaxed...

 

 

ORIGINAL Phoptograph, 8x6 inchces, 1918.  Good condition.  $300

WRAF in track and field exercises, Kent.  This is the third-place finisher, running while leaning back, trying to keep everything in place, mouth closed, arms down--pretty good results from such an awkward and highly-mannered style of running.  Also, the woman to her right is a dead-ringer for Alan Turing (if you've ever seen the Enigma Man running at track, I think you'd have to agree.)

The great Alan Turing

The full image of the race:

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  Steno pool.  7x5 inches.  $125

I just liked this woman from the typing/steno pool.

 

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918. 7x5 inches.  $100

 

Detail of the image of the Forestry Corps of the Women's Land Army of England, working at cutting telegraph poles on some great-looking draught horses.  (The horse on the right--ears back--looks big and unhappy.)  I love that this woman is wearing a tie.

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918, 8x5 inches.  $125

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 7x5 inches, 1919.  $75

Detail from "Soldiers' children being care for by volunteer nurses, Berlin, June 19, 1919".

  xcxc

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918. Nurse.  Dissected photo, background removed, excised for publication.  A very interesting image in spite of all faults.  $75

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918--American actress entertains the troops.  $125

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  British women at work in glass factory.  8x5 inches.  Good condition.  $125

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  Workers in Italy.  *x5 inches.  Good condition.  $125

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  Children getting school instruction in wine cellar, Rheims.  8x6 inches.  Good condition.  $125

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.WOmen folding in the Pants Kingdom.  8x6 inches, good condition. $150

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918. American Red Cross in France.  7x5 inches. Very good condition.  $75

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918. AMerican YWCA entertainers, France.  7x5 inches.  Good condition.  $75

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918. 7x5 inches, good condition.  $75

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  7x5 inches, good condition. $75

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  7x5 inches, very good condition.  $95

ORIGINAL Photograph. 1918.  Size 7x5 inches.  Very good condition.  $75

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.  7x5 inches.  Very good condition.  $135

 

ORIGINAL Photograph, 1918.

World War I--Women in the War, Vermeer of the Tars, 1918

8x5 inch original photograph, published in 1918.  Good condition.  $150

 

In England, women were welcomed to the (paid) workforce during the years of the First World War (1914-1918)—their employment in traditionally male positions enabled those they replaced to go out to the front and die for their country.  Thus the women seen here in the News Photo Service Agency photograph (taken in 1918), working at spraying tar in the streets of London, were appreciated, and tolerated.  For women in England the War blasted away the contrivances of formally scheduled employment:  something like 12% of fall women in England were working as servants and house cleaners.   Come the War, women were offered jobs of revolutionary stature in a wide range and variety of work.  The Civil Service employment for women went from 33,000 in 1911 to 102,000 in 1921, and trade union membership rose 160% (357,000 in 1914 to 1,000,000 in 1918 (with men showing a 44% increase at the same time); for the most part, though, employers took advantage of the situation, and the women still generally earned less than half of the salary as comparable male workers did (or the men they replaced). 

When the end of the War came, so did the appreciation for the women replacement workers—there was bitter feelings in the post-war period because of the weak British economy and a scarcity of jobs.  So the women who took the jobs of men to help the country’s war effort and free up hundreds of thousands of men for war service became an atavistic action, “taking” the jobs of men who had gone out to fight for their country. This of course cost many women their jobs, but the damage had already been deeply done to the pre-1914 British world of the sexual politics of business-being-done, though it would take World War II to really ingrain the appearance of women in the workforce into the national psyche.

I've liked this photo for a long time, seeing things differently in it over the years.  It struck me just yesterday that the woman in foreground-right--whose close-up reminds me too of a Madonna, a Mona Lisa of the Tars--looks like a Vermeer character from 400 years ago.  Or at least the position of her body does.

 

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