all knowledge

[calimac]

I have another question for the wise minds out there. Never mind for now why I have the photos which I am here showing you scanned versions of (I'm fairly sure that what I have are the only print copies of these specific photos); what I want to know is, who's in them?

I'm fairly sure the photos were taken around 1940. Definitely +/- 10 years. I suspect the people visible in them are movie stars, but I don't recognize them. Well, maybe one, but I'm not saying who I think it is, because I don't want to prejudice other views.

Do you?





Larger copies are here and here

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The woman looks not unlike Ginger Rogers, although neither shot shows her face very clearly.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Maybe Ginger Rogers?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The man on the left looks very familiar from old movies, and the woman not unlike Ginger Rogers.

[(Anonymous)]

I reached out with this question to an acquaintance who's seen a lot more movies than I have, and he tentatively suggests that, left to right, the photos may show Fred Solm (1899-1982), Oscar Shaw (1887-1967), and Marion Davies (1897-1961). I'd never even heard of the first two actors, although Shaw was in the Marx Bros.' "Cocoanuts". Davies now is perhaps best known as the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, although she had a substantial silent film career. Unfortunately, the only film in which the three actors appeared together was the sound version of "Marianne" (1929), which doesn't quite fit your date range. I'm terrible with faces, so comparing your photos to others of those actors on Google isn't helping me. (My first guess for the fellow on the left was David Niven.)

-MTD/neb

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

According to both IMDB and Wikipedia, it was the silent version of Marianne which had those 3 actors. For provenance reasons which I will not go into here, 1929 seems implausibly early to me for these photos, but while the background appears to be some kind of ranch, possibly a movie set considering the glossy appearance of the people (the original photos are larger than the cropped versions I posted), it need not have been taken during a movie production, but may well be of whatever actors just happened to be around at the time. However, since Marianne was Solm's last movie and just about Shaw's last, it's unlikely they would have been doing publicity shoots a decade or so later.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I was reasonably sure the woman wasn't Rogers, but my best guess was Carole Lombard, who died before 1940. Also no photos of her look just like the woman pictured.

Davies seems plausible.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, Lombard died in 1942. Plane crashed on a war bonds tour. Definitely chronologically possible, but my impression is that the face is different.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Right you are on her death date - I had forgotten the war bonds part of her demise. I think she looks way more like Davies than Lombard.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Any update on this?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

My brother ran it on FB and got some suggestions that the woman is Jean Harlow. I don't think so.