Question:“What happened on April 30, 1877 in San Francisco, California at 922 O’Farrell Street?”
Answer:“Alice Babette Toklas was born.”
One thing I have enjoyed in this blog is adding photographs of GertrudeandAlice into my posts. Many of them are familiar to GertrudeandAlice fans and are widely featured in books and articles. These are the ones that show up in most Google Image searches or on Pinterest. When I come across unfamiliar photographs of them, it’s as if I’ve discovered an old, dusty, leather bound family photo album in the attic.
Today, on Alice’s 143rd birthday, I’ve compiled an album of pictures of Alice that are less well known. They are taken from a book by L. Arnold Weissberger (1907-1981), FAMOUS FACES: A PHOTOGRAPHIC ALBUM OF PERSONAL REMINISCENCES (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York , 1973.) The 443 page coffee-table book contains 1477 photographs, almost half of them in color, taken of celebrities at parties and various events between 1946 and 1971. The book ends with a biographical index which does go from “A” to “Z.”
l to rt 1st row: Richard Burton, Pearl Bailey, W.H. Auden l to rt 2nd row: Marlene Dietrich, Margaret Rutherford, Rock Hudson l to rt 3rd row: Delores del Rio, Leonard Bernstein, Beatrice Lillie
A friend was once very diplomatic and supportive when I mentioned to him that I was concerned that I posted to my blog so infrequently. “I like your blog because you only write something when you really have something to say. That’s what makes it enjoyable.” Now, that’s what real friends are for!
It is now almost three years since I posted a blog, filling the intermittent years with photos and holiday greetings. And it took our world pandemic and the requisite sheltering-in-place for me to get it together. Some friends from around the world, who I got to know because of our mutual interest in GertrudeandAlice, have kindly hinted that they missed my posts. Once again, thanks is due to real friends for the gentle prods!
I didn’t stop posting because I no longer had anything to say about GertrudeandAlice or my interest in them had lessened in anyway. I just seemed to stop and when WordPress changed the formatting of their program, I just didn’t have the patience to try to learn it – once I did, in the silence of my shelter in place, I discovered it’s very easy and very user friendly.
Illustration by Maira Kalman from the new edition of “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”
Lots has happened in the last three years in the worlds of GertrudeandAlice. Interest in them has not waned and I believe that it’s even increased based on the notices that I continue to receive through my Google Alerts. Productions of Stein’s plays are produced around the world; new works about them in all media are created; research papers just keep coming; and books, both scholarly ones and ones for young, potentially new fans are being published. (Hard to believe that the picture book I produced with Tom Hachtman will be ten years old next year and we’re still selling copies!)
So, I promise to get this blog on track again. Some posts in the next few weeks will serve as exercises in catching up and some will look ahead to the future, something most of us are doing a lot of right now.
I have no idea of the number of readers of this blog there still are, but once you receive this resurrected effort, I’d really like to hear from you at hansg@gertrudeandalice.com.
So, off we go with more questions and answers with Gertrude in the driver’s seat with Alice navigating and Basket II watching the world go by!
