Sunday 29 December 2019

1242) Grace Gifford

Grace Evelyn Gifford Plunkett (1888 – 1955). Irish artist and cartoonist who was active in the Republican movement. She married her fiancé Joseph Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol only a few hours before he was executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising.
Her sister Muriel was married to another of the future leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, Thomas MacDonagh.

- "The three sisters all had red hair and were very striking and beautiful and could not help but be noticed."  https://www.writing.ie/…/marita-conlon-mckennas-rebel-sist…/




Friday 27 December 2019

1241) Wendy Barrie

Wendy Barrie (born Marguerite Wendy Jenkins, 1912 – 1978). British-American film and television actress.
She made her screen debut in 1932 with the film Threads, which was based upon a play. She went on to make a number of motion pictures for London Films under the Korda brothers, Alexander and Zoltan, the best known of which is 1933's The Private Life of Henry VIII, in which she portrayed Jane Seymour.
In 1935 she moved to the United States and made her first Hollywood film for Fox opposite Spencer Tracy in the romantic comedy It's a Small World.
With the dawn of television, in the late 1940s, Barrie turned to roles in that medium. She is best remembered by U.S. audiences as host of one of the first television talk shows. The Wendy Barrie Show debuted in November 1948 on ABC, then ran on DuMont and NBC, ending its run in September 1950.
She was reportedly engaged to and had a daughter named Carolyn with the infamous gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.


- "While still in her teens, she began pursuing a career as an actress, helped by her red-gold hair and blue eyes."   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Barrie

- "Red-haired, blue-eyed English beauty Wendy Barrie..."  https://books.google.it/books…




Wednesday 4 December 2019

1240) Jeff Donnell

Jean Marie "Jeff" Donnell (1921 – 1988). American film and television actress.
She was signed to a contract by Columbia Pictures while she was active with the Farragut Playhouse in New Hampshire and she made her film debut in My Sister Eileen (1942).
She was not a major star, but she did have a lengthy film and television career in various supporting roles, including the role of Gidget's mother Dorothy Lawrence in Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome. She also played Hannah Marshall in the Gidget television series. She portrayed Mrs. Bennett in the TV series Julia and in 1966 she made five appearances on Dr. Kildare as Evelyn Driscoll.

- "Jeff Donnell was a happy-looking, red-haired American actress..."  http://www.classicmoviehub.com/bio/jeff-donnell/



Saturday 30 November 2019

1239) Maria Montez

María África Gracia Vidal (1912 – 1951), known professionally as Maria Montez. Dominican motion picture actress who gained fame and popularity in the 1940s as an exotic beauty starring in a series of filmed-in-Technicolor costume adventure films. Her screen image was that of a hot-blooded Latin seductress, dressed in fanciful costumes and sparkling jewels. She became so identified with these adventure epics that she became known as "The Queen of Technicolor". Over her career, Montez appeared in 26 films, 21 of which were made in North America and the last five were made in Europe.

- "With reddish hair and only a trace of Spanish accent..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "Red-headed Maria Montez from the Dominican Republic..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "In this movie, Maria danced to a contagious rumba, showing her beautiful red hair, proving that she looked wonderful in colors by the first time."  http://www.mariamontez.org/bio.html

- "The firemen used artificial respiration for three hours in a vain effort to resuscitate the auburn-haired, brown-eyed actress."  https://alt.obituaries.narkive.com/…/archive-obituary-maria…




Thursday 28 November 2019

1238) Ethel Clayton

Ethel Clayton (1882 – 1966). American actress of the silent film era.
On the stage she appeared mainly in musicals or musical reviews such as The Ziegfeld Follies of 1911. These musical appearances indicate a singing talent Clayton may have possessed but which went unused in her many silent screen performances.
Following appearances on screen in short dramas from 1909 to 1912, Clayton made her feature-length film debut in For the Love of a Girl in 1912. Barry O'Neil directed the film, and Clayton would later be directed by William Demille, Robert G. Vignola, George Melford and Donald Crisp in subsequent features film. Like many silent film actors, Clayton's career was hurt by the coming of sound to motion pictures. She continued her career in small parts in movies until she retired in 1948. Her screen credits number more than 180.

- "She has auburn hair and blur eyes."  http://digitalcollections.oscars.org/…/p15759coll11/id/1269/
 
- "Miss Clayton, remembered for her soft gray eyes and light red hair, started her career with the T. D. Frawley stock company..."  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Clayton-5822

- "She is five feet, five inches tall, weighs 130 pounds, has red gold hair and grey eyes."  https://commons.wikimedia.org/…/File:Ethel_Clayton_from_Sta…


1237) Julia James

Julia James (1890-1964). English actress of the 1900s Edwardian era, the leading lady at the Gaiety Theatre.

- "She had wonderful red hair that attracted admiring glances wherever she wenthttps://books.google.it/books…


1236) Marian Marsh

Violet Ethelred Krauth (1913 – 2006), better known by the stage name Marian Marsh. Trinidad-born American film actress and later an environmentalist.
She was seen in a small role in Howard Hughes's classic Hell's Angels (1930) and Eddie Cantor's lavish Technicolor musical Whoopee! (1930). The part in Whoopee! resulted from Marsh's visit to a film studio with her sister. Not long afterwards, she was signed by Warner Bros. and her name was changed to Marian Marsh.
In 1931, after appearing in a number of short films, Marsh landed one of her most important roles in Svengali opposite John Barrymore. Marsh was chosen by Barrymore for the role of Trilby. Barrymore, who had selected her partly because she resembled his wife, coached her performance throughout the picture's filming. Svengali was based on the 1894 novel Trilby written by George du Maurier. A popular play, likewise titled Trilby, followed in 1895.
In the film version, Marsh plays the artist's model Trilby, who is transformed into a great opera star by the sinister hypnotist, Svengali.
Marsh was awarded the title of WAMPAS Baby Stars in August 1931 even before her second movie with Warner Brothers was released. With her ability to project warmth, sincerity and inner strength on the screen along with critical praise and the audience's approval of Svengali, she continued to star in a string of successful films for Warner Bros. including Five Star Final (1931) with Edward G. Robinson, The Mad Genius (1931) with Barrymore, The Road to Singapore (1931) with William Powell, The Sport Parade (1932) with Joel McCrea Beauty and the Boss (1932) with Warren William, and Under 18 (again with William).


- "Her natural hair color was red, before the studios decided to turn her into a blonde."  https://heckyesmarianmarsh.tumblr.com/page/15




1235) Ethel Warwick

Ethel Maude Warwick (1882 – 1951). British stage actress who later appeared in several films.
She became an artists model to help pay her tuition at the London Polytechnic, which led to her meeting Herbert Draper, who used her as a model for several of his paintings.Through him she became a favoured model for several artists, including John William Godward and Linley Sambourne, for whom she posed nude in a series of photographic studies. She was also sketched by James McNeill Whistler.
She began training as an actress at Henry Neville's acting school in the late 1890's, and first appeared on stage at the Grande Theatre in Fulham in July 1900 as Emilie de L'Esparre in The Corsican Brothers.


Hydrangeas, by Philip Wilson Steer

The Lament for Icarus, by Herbert James Draper (Warwick is the woman holding Icarus in her lap)

Study of Miss Ethel Warwick, by John William Godward
Portrait of Miss Ethel Warwick, by Philip Wilson Steer

Convalescent (Ethel Warwick), by Philip Wilson Steer

Monday 25 November 2019

1234) Charles James Martin

Charles James Martin (1886 – 1955). American modernist artist and arts instructor. He worked in a variety of media including etching, lithography, water color, monotype, linocut, woodcut, oil, photography, mezzotint and silversmithing. Born in Mansfield, England in 1886, Martin emigrated to the US as a boy and lived out the remainder of his life as an American. He studied art under Arthur Wesley Dow at Dow's Ipswich Summer School of Art as well as at Columbia University Teachers College, where he became an instructor himself in 1914.
Martin attained professorship at Teachers College in 1923 and continued his work there into the 1940s. Georgia O'Keeffe attended Martin's class at Teachers college in 1914–15 and she considered his instruction significant enough that she continued sending examples of her work for his critique in the period after she attended his class. Martin even had a fan in Winston Churchill.


- "Martin was young and appealing, with flaming red hair and irresistible blushes."  https://books.google.it/books…



Wednesday 20 November 2019

1233) Édouard Vuillard

Jean-Édouard Vuillard (1868 – 1940). French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900 he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior scenes, influenced by Japanese prints, where the subjects were blended into colors and patterns. He also was a decorative artist, painting theater sets, panels for interior decoration, and designing plates and stained glass. After 1900, when the Nabis broke up, he adopted a more realistic style, painting landscapes and interiors with lavish detail and vivid colors. In the 1920s and 1930s he painted portraits of prominent figures in French industry and the arts in their familiar settings.
One of his models was Misia Sert.


- "Vuillard, who had red hair and a long beard..."  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/edouard-vuillards-greatest-a…/

- "... he received the nickname of ‘le nabi Zouave’ on account of his distinctive red hair and long beard..."  https://artuk.org/…/stori…/douard-vuillard-nabi-and-intimist

- "Vuillard, with his high forehead and reddish hair and beard, looks determined and introspective."  https://www.wsj.com/…/SB10001424052702303448404577408681620…




Self-portrait with sister
Portrait by Félix Vallotton



Autoportrait à la canne et au canotier




Sunday 17 November 2019

1232) Michaela Denis

Michaela Denis (1914 – 2003). British-born wildlife documentary film-maker and presenter, working with her husband, Armand Denis.
In order to finance their plans to make wildlife documentaries, the couple travelled to Africa in 1950 to work on the feature film, King Solomon's Mines, in which Michaela acted as Deborah Kerr's double. In 1953 they made a new film together, Below The Sahara, and appeared on BBC radio to promote it. The BBC saw the couple's potential for television work, and in 1954 they produced a pioneering and successful TV programme, Filming Wild Animals. The quality of Armand Denis' film-making, combined with his heavy accent and Michaela's enthusiasm and glamorous appeal, made them fixtures on BBC TV screens in Britain during the 1950s and early 1960s. Accompanied by Armand's commentary, the two would be filmed getting as close to animals as possible, in a style later much parodied. Typically, there would be a trademark moment for Michaela to apply lipstick or comb her hair; she once commented that she could not possibly get into the water with crocodiles until she had put on her eyebrow pencil. The couple made several series for both BBC and ITV, including Filming In Africa (1955), Armand and Michaela Denis (1955-58), On Safari (1957-59) and Safari to Asia (1959-61), which were repeated until well into the 1960s. Michaela Denis also wrote books, including Leopard in My Lap (1955) and Ride on a Rhino (1960).

- "Today Armand Denis is considered to be one of the pioneers of the wildlife documentary, but their contemporary popularity as married adventurers rested largely on the red-haired beauty of Michaela."   https://books.google.it/books…

- "Nonetheless, with her red hair and her shapely trousers, she certainly adds a touch of glamour to the jungle scene in darkest Africa..."  https://books.google.it/books…




Saturday 16 November 2019

1231) William Frank "Doc" Carver

William Frank "Doc" Carver (1851 – 1927). American sharpshooter and creator of a popular diving horse attraction.
Carver was trained as a dentist and hence acquired the nickname "Doc". He migrated to the West in 1872, where he practiced dentistry at Fort McPherson and North Platte, Nebraska. He later attempted to distance himself from his early profession as a dentist, but the name "Doc" clung for life.
He migrated to California in 1876, where he honed his shooting skills.
Later, Carver went into partnership with Buffalo Bill Cody to put a Wild West show on the road. The grand opening of the "Wild West: Hon. W. F. Cody and Dr. W. F. Carver's Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition" was in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 17, 1883. The show was an immediate success, but the relationship between the two showmen, Carver and Cody, was contentious from the beginning. At the end of the season they parted ways and divided the assets by the flip of a coin. Cody then formed a partnership with the promoter and showman Nate Salsbury, and the show continued as Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
After the breakup of his show Carver put together a smaller show, which featured trained animals and shooting exhibitions. His biographer wrote that Carver added the diving horse act to the show in Kansas City, Missouri, in August 1894. Over the next few years the other acts were eliminated, and the diving horse exhibition became Carver's primary endeavor. Included in the touring company were his son, Al, who helped train and take care of the horses, and his daughter, Lorena, said to be the first rider. By the time his future daughter-in-law, Sonora Webster, joined the show in 1924, Carver had two diving teams on the road, each performing in a different city.

- "The six foot four inch Carver weighed some 200 pounds and long red hair fell in well combed ringlets over massive shoulders. Historians often referred to him as the most handsome man who ever held a gun."  https://www.plantanswers.com/topperweins_fabulous.htm

- "His auburn hair was a flowing, wavy mane, and his ruddy face was splashed with a vivid red mustache."  https://www.americanheritage.com/they-were-all-sure-shots

- "A study in thigh-high boots and shoulder-length red hair... https://books.google.it/

- "At six foot four, with flowing red hair and a prominent jaw, he was an imposing figure and natural star..."  https://books.google.it


Friday 15 November 2019

1230) Renée Kisling

Renée Kisling (born Gros, 1896 - 1960). French artist. She studied art at the Académie Ranson, Paris, where she met the artist Moïse Kisling (1891 - 1953). They married in 1917. She modeled both for her husband and for Amedeo Modigliani, who made three sketches of her and two oil portraits.

- "Stranely, I liked her immediately, with her auburn hair cut short, large nose and pointed chin."  https://books.google.it/books…




Portrait by A. Modigliani

Portrait by Moïse Kisling

Portrait by Moïse Kisling

Portrait by Moïse Kisling

Thursday 14 November 2019

1228) Claire Waldoff

Claire Waldoff (1884 – 1957, born Clara Wortmann). German singer and kabarett entertainer.
She made her breakthrough when Rudolf Nelson gave her a job at the Roland von Berlin theatre near Potsdamer Platz. Initially planning to perform antimilitarist pieces by Paul Scheerbart in a men's suit, Waldoff had greater success with less offensive catchy songs written by Walter Kollo. During the next several years in German cabaret, she sang at Chat Noir on Friedrichstraße and at the Linden-Cabaret on Unter den Linden.
Waldoff's success reached its peak in the Weimar Republic era of the 1920s. After the war, she lost her savings in the West German monetary reform of 1948 and from 1951 relied on little monetary support by the Senate of Berlin.


- "Head of flaming red hair tipped slightly back, one eyebrow mockingly raised..."  http://www.fembio.org/…/bio…/woman/biography/claire-waldoff/

- "... she was short and stocky with wild red hair and had adopted the gruff persona and brash slang of a ‘native Berliner’."  http://www.cabaret-berlin.com/?p=114

- "A short, stocky, square-faced woman with bright red hair..."  https://books.google.it/books…



Wednesday 13 November 2019

1228) Margot Hielscher

Margot Hielscher (1919 – 2017). German singer and film actress. She appeared in over fifty films between and 1939 and 1994.
In 1957 she was chosen to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest 1957 with the song "Telefon, Telefon". The song finished fourth out of ten, with eight points.
Hielscher was chosen again to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest 1958 with the song "Für Zwei Groschen Musik" (Music For Two Pennies). The song finished seventh out of ten, with 5 points.

- "Also as a presenter proved the red-haired talent.http://westernboothill.blogspot.com/…/rip-margot-hielscher.…

- "Trade Mark: Red hair.https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0383164/bio
 


 

1227) Rosabell Glass

Rosabell Glass (1880-1971). American history teacher at Ballard High School and Lincoln High School. In 1918 she volunteered with the YMCA to help with World War I in France and was stationed in a YMCA entertainment section in Brest.
After the war, she returned to Seattle to continue teaching. She taught nine years at Franklin High School before becoming the first girl's advisor at Roosevelt High School, where she founded the Aurora Guards, a group composed entirely of red heads. This group was responsible for entertaining visitors and helping new students integrate into the school. Glass was also an associate editor for the pro-women's suffrage newspaper Votes for Women

- "She is quoted saying, "I've got red hair, I know how to rough it..."  https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009860160

- "The group's founder was Roosevelt High School's girls guidance counselor, Rose Glass, a flamboyant redhead..."  https://reunionswithclass.com/Images/Docs/GV2016Spring.pdf…



Monday 11 November 2019

1226) Mary Beth Hughes

Mary Elizabeth Hughes (1919 – 1995). American film, television, and stage actress best known for her roles in B movies.
In 1940 she was offered a contract with 20th Century-Fox. Later that year she landed a role opposite John Barrymore in The Great Profile, a part she later noted as one of her favorites. Fox did not renew her contract when it expired in 1943 and the following year she began appearing in a nightclub act and soon signed a three-picture deal with Universal Pictures.
Her most famous role was as Henry Fonda's former girlfriend in the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Throughout the mid-1940s and early 1950s, Hughes appeared in film and television roles, including the cult classic I Accuse My Parents, Anthony Mann's early noir masterpiece The Great Flamarion, where she co-starred with Erich von Stroheim and Dan Duryea, Wanted: Dead or Alive (episode "Secret Ballot"), The Devil's Henchman, The Abbott and Costello Show, Dragnet and Studio One.

 

- " A natural redhead, Hughes usually appeared onscreen as a platinum blonde." https://ocdviewer.com/tag/barbara-slater/ 

- "After 3 years of using her natural red hair on screen, she colors it blonde, the look preferred by the public and film producers alike."  http://www.glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com/…/M…/index.html



Saturday 9 November 2019

1225) Carmen Gaudin

Carmen Gaudin. French prostitute who modeled for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901), including some of his most famous paintings. Lautrec met Gaudin in 1884 when he spied her and her brilliant red hair while dining in Montmartre with Henri Rachou, his friend and fellow student at Cormon’s atelier. Until the late 1880s Carmen was to sit for Lautrec for at least 13 paintings, as well as some drawings.

Red-haired Woman in a White Blouse

Carmen Gaudin

Photo taken by Maurice Guilbert

Carmen Gaudin

                     La blanchisseuse


Lowered Head

Red-Headed Woman

Portrait of Carmen Gaudin

Femme rousse assise dans le jardin de M. Forest

La rousse avec chemisier blanc

Femme rousse dans le jardin de M. Forest

La toilette

Rosa la Rouge

Friday 8 November 2019

1224) Francis Brooks Chadwick

Francis Brooks Chadwick (1850–1942/43). American painter active in France.
He was born in Boston and studied at Harvard, and to pursue his interest in art he attended the Académie Julian in Paris. He was friends with the painter John Singer Sargent and travelled with him to Haarlem in 1880. The following year he married the Swedish painter Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick and they settled in Grez-sur-Loing, where he remained the rest of his life, though the couple travelled to other summer art colonies on vacation.

Portrait by his wife

 Portrait by John Singer Sargent, 1880