Feature Image: On Saturday, June 7, 1924, Ruth M. Anderson was married in this sleeveless wedding dress (left) to William Noling in Evanston, Illinois. The dress is now on display in the Charles Gates Dawes House in Evanston. Dawes was Vice President of the United States from 1925 to 1929 under President Calvin Coolidge. Author’s photograph (October 2015).
A surviving wedding dress and family home transform a local 1924 wedding into a study of popular culture, showing how the artistic styles and fashions of the Jazz Age reshaped American attitudes toward femininity, modernity, and social convention.
Wedding at the House of the Bride’s family
The Noling-Anderson wedding was held in the house of the bride and her parents, Isak and Jennie (née Johnson) Anderson, at 1035 Ridge Avenue in Evanston. Built in 1914, the house still stands as it did over 100 years ago.
Noling-Anderson Bridal Party Dresses, 1924 in the Charles Gates Dawes House, Evanston, Illinois. October 2015. Author’s photograph. 7.44 mb DSC_0893 (1)
The dress is made of silk satin in an egg shell color. It is accented by an oval medallion with bands also made of silk satin. The medallion is embroidered with faux pearl and other glass beads.
Thoroughly modern flapper style
While her wedding dress was very fashionable for the mid1920’s – sleeveless tops of all shapes and sizes were the rage in 1924 – it probably was not allowed in one of Evanston’s houses of worship. The fact that it was sleeveless and au courant would be deemed by many as risqué for showing too much bare skin inspired by a thoroughly modern flapper style. It was only in 1924, for instance, that the Methodist Episcopal General Conference first lifted its ban on going to the theater as well as dancing though dance music was the radio’s most popular programming.
The bridesmaid dress (right) was the height of women’s style in 1924 – a mainly straight, knee-length skirt gathered slightly or cut with front pleats. Short sleeve and sleeveless tops were the rage in 1924 reflected in Hollywood by the Mack Sennett girls who starred in movies where they pranced on the beach in a chorus line in not much more than bathing caps and short swim suits.
The fashionable bride and her court might have sported the latest style of facial make-up which is hinted at in the display– masklike with garish, even orange, lipstick and heavy red rouge on the cheeks. Popular fashion accessories from 1924 are also evident – pearls knotted at the neck and simple, though elegant, arm bracelets.
Father of the bride was an Evanston banker, local businessman, andSwedish immigrant
The bride’s father, Isak Anderson, was born in Sweden and came to the United States at 20 years old in 1890. In 1891 he married Jennie Johnson and they had Ruth and another child. Ruth’s father was a bank director and partner in a local tailoring business in downtown Evanston at 608 Davis that today is a noodle shop.
The Jazz Age transformed American social customs, fashion, and ideas of modern womanhood, with the bride’s flapper-inspired wedding attire reflecting broader cultural shifts that were fashionable, controversial, and distinctly of their time.
The dance migrated North during the Great Migration. It officially exploded into mainstream American culture on October 29, 1923, when it debuted on Broadway in the all-Black musical revue Runnin’ Wild. The show featured the hit song “The Charleston,” composed by jazz pioneer James P. Johnson, which provided the fast, syncopated 4/4 rhythm that defined the dance. The Charleston was most fashionable during the “Roaring Twenties” (1923–1929), reaching its absolute peak popularity between 1926 and 1927.
It was most popular in major urban centers—particularly New York City, Chicago, Paris and London, where young women called flappers wore short dresses, rolled down their stockings, and kicked up their heels to flout traditional social etiquette
The original Charleston craze effectively ended as a mainstream fad with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. However, it didn’t completely disappear. The Charleston’s fast kicks, hand-to-knee swivels, and loose movements were absorbed into newer, more complex swing dances, most notably, for the Lindy Hop and the Jitterbug in the 1930s and 1940s.
They served “Prohibition highballs”
With Prohibition starting in 1920, guests at the wedding may have been served the latest popular highball whose recipe called for fruit juice and raw eggs. Their morning might have started with a bowl of Wheaties at breakfast, since the cereal of champions made its first appearance in 1924.
Wearing that dress Ruth Anderson married William Noling in this house at 1035 Ridge Avenue in Evanston, Illinois, on June 7, 1924. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 92% 7.81 mb
The bride’s attire reflected contemporary flapper fashion, including higher hemlines and sleeveless styles.
SOURCES: Charles G. Dawes House. Evanston, Illinois. Ernst Wilhelm Olson, The Swedish Element in Illinois: Survey of the Past Seven Decades (Chicago: Peter-Albin-Publishing, 1917), p. 586. Lois Gordon and Alan Gordon, American Chronicle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 230–38. Thomas G. Aylesworth and Virginia Aylesworth, Chicago: The Glamour Years (1919-1941) (New York: Gallery Books, 1986), p. 14.
FEATURE IMAGE: A classic publicity still from the 1940 The Three Stooges short film, A Plumbing We Will Go. In this celebrated short, the Stooges pose as professional plumbers to evade the police, only to completely destroy the infrastructure of an upscale mansion. While working on the upstairs bathroom, Curly proceeds to build a labyrinth of pipes that completely traps him inside the bathtub area. In this specific behind-the-scenes promotional shot, the trio leans heavily into their vaudeville roots, playfully treating their disastrous plumbing gear like show business equipment with Curly Howard using a shower attachment as a mock microphone; Moe Howard holding piping, mimicking an old-style broadcaster or telephone operator; and Larry leaning in to listen in.PHOTO: Jerry (Curley) Howard, Moe Howard and Larry Fine are The Three Stooges. “The Three Stooges” by twm1340 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
A century after their founding in 1922, The Three Stooges remain among the most enduring acts in American popular entertainment, their unique blend of slapstick comedy, physical performance, and anarchic humor transcending generations and demonstrating the lasting appeal of vaudeville traditions in film and television.
A Plumbing We Will Go (1940) is widely considered by film historians and fans to be one of the absolute best entries in the Stooges’ library. Curly Howard himself regularly cited it as his personal favorite out of the 190 shorts they filmed for Columbia Pictures.
Complete Filmography: Every Title Card in The Three Stooges (1934-1959)
Moe and Larry appeared in all of them. Curly in 19; Shemp in 6; and Joe in 1.
The Stooges began in 1922 as part of a vaudeville act called “Ted Healy and his Stooges.” It started with two stooges originally – brothers Moe and Shemp Howard. Larry Fine joined the act in 1925 or shortly thereafter. Their first Hollywood feature (with Ted Healy) was called Soup to Nuts in 1930. The Stooges worked with Healy until 1934. In that time Shemp broke off on his own to work for Warner Bros. Vitaphone and Jerry Howard, Moe’s younger brother, joined the act as Curly.
Between 1934 and 1958 The Three Stooges made over 90 two-reel shorts featuring their ribald comedy. Starting in 1934 and until the end of the 1950s, The Three Stooges had 26 different opening credits.
This title card is from The Big Idea (1934), the fifth and final short film that Ted Healy and his Stooges made to fulfill their studio contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Though often confused with their 1930 Fox feature Soup to Nuts, this specific short marks the exact turning point where the iconic trio finally split from Healy to establish their own legacy.
MGM used this series of comedy shorts primarily to repurpose deleted musical numbers and stock footage from big-budget feature films like Dancing Lady (1933) and Going Hollywood (1933). By the time The Big Idea was released in May 1934, the Stooges had already finished shooting their scenes and were physically walking out the door to start their independent careers.
Shemp Howard was the original third member of the act and the star of their 1930 film Soup to Nuts. He walked out much earlier, in August 1932, because he completely ran out of patience for Healy. His departure opened the door for his younger brother, Jerry, to shave his head and step in as “Curly.” PHOTO: “The Big Idea (1934)” by twm1340 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
In chronological order, all The Stooges’ opening credits from 1934 to 1958.
In 1934 there were 4 updates; 6 in 1935; 1 each in 1936, 1937, and 1939; 2 in 1940; 1 in 1943; and 2 in 1945. The 9th (1935), 12th (1937), and 13th (1939) versions were significant brand updates for the Stooges’ opening credits. In 1946 there were 2 updates – Curly’s last and Shemp’s first. In the postwar years there were less updates – one each in 1947, 1950, 1952, and 1953.
Moe’s brother, Curly, died in 1952 after a long illness. Shemp died suddenly from a heart attack in 1955. Though Curly and Shemp’s comedy styles are very different from one another, they are both equally very funny. Though similar in body type to Curly, Joe Besser brought his own unique comic personality to the act from 1956 to 1958. Joe Besser passed away in 1988.
Shemp in the 1949 The Three Stooges short film, Who Done It? The Stooges play private investigators for the “Alert Detective Agency” who are hired to find a missing millionaire. While searching a spooky mansion, Shemp tries to look through a large vintage bellows camera to check for fingerprints. looking through the lens, Moe steps directly in front of it. Terrified by the extreme close-up of Moe’s face, Shemp screams: “Moe! Larry! Help! There was an ugly-looking thing staring right at me, it was horrible!”.
In Wham-Bam-Slam! (1955), Shemp is suffering from a terrible case of “bad nerves” and a brutal toothache. To help him recover before a big family camping trip, Moe and Larry try out a series of eccentric home remedies—including a cold foot bath meant to soothe his anxiety.
In August 1932, when Shemp left Ted Healy and his Stooges, was it a good move? Free from Healy’s control, Shemp immediately landed a lucrative solo contract at Vitaphone Studios in 1933. He spent the next 14 years becoming a highly successful, stable, and well-paid Hollywood character actor, appearing in major comedies alongside stars like Abbott and Costello and W.C. Fields. He only rejoined the Stooges much later in 1946 out of deep family loyalty to help his brother Moe after Curly suffered a career-ending stroke. PHOTO:The Official Stooges Flickr Photographer In Action” by Larry He’s So Fine is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
While audiences recognize Besser for his short-lived, late-career stint as the third member of The Three Stooges (from 1957 to 1959 replacing Shemp Howard who replaced Curly Howard), classic television enthusiasts frequently cite Joe Besser in his signature role as Oswald “Stinky” Davis on The Abbott and Costello Show as his finest comedic hour. PHOTO: “Joe Besser as Stinky Davis – Abbott and Costello TV show 9367” by Brechtbug is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
In 1959 Columbia Pictures released Three Stooges shorts for the first time on television. TV broadcasts in the 1960’s brought a new generation of fans to The Stooges. In 1970 The Stooges were scheduled for a new TV sitcom series but Larry Fine had a paralyzing stroke in January of that year..
Columbia Pictures’ “Torch Lady” logo is inextricably linked to The Three Stooges, serving as the visual gateway to over 190 classic short films produced for exclusively for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1957. The emblem represents the era that spanned across the careers of all the primary Stooges—Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe Besser—as they built their timeless legacy under the Columbia banner. This particular bronze casting is located embedded in the granite paving of Leicester Square in London, England. Leicester Square is widely celebrated as the historic heart of the United Kingdom’s cinema scene and the primary home for star-studded film premieres. PHOTO: “Hand prints in Leicester Square, London – Columbia Pictures – Torch Lady” by ell brown is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Both Larry and Moe died in 1975. Eight years later, in 1983, The Three Stooges were inducted onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1973, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, Moe is jokingly preparing his iconic two-finger eye poke gesture toward Larry’s face, showing that their classic humor was alive and well. In January 1970, Larry Fine suffered a paralyzing stroke that ended the Three Stooges as a performing act. He moved into the Motion Picture Country House for long-term care. Moe Howard remained a deeply loyal friend and visited Larry constantly at the facility. With The Stooges are members of the Star Trek TV series, “Scotty” Scott (James Doohan) and Klingon Captain Koloth (William Campbell). PHOTO: “Star Trek James Doohan, William Campbell squire of gothos, stooges Moe Howard Larry Fine” by Sal Ami is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
FEATURE image: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), La Revue Blanche, 1895, Paris. Lithograph in four colors.
From Montmartre to Mass Culture: Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s 31 color posters transformed commercial advertising into modern art, using innovative color lithography, bold design, and iconic images of Parisian nightlife to democratize art and shape the visual language of the twentieth century.
By John P. Walsh
The Artist in an Age of Mass Production
The nineteenth century in France brought about a radical transformation of the role of the artist. In place of artwork for aristocratic patrons, artists in all media were increasingly left to their own devices and began creating works of art in their studios and looking to sell them in the open marketplace. Innovative forms, new subjects, and new styles emerged from these changing economic structures brought about by the dawning of the industrial and technological age as well as the growing importance of cities.
In Paris and elsewhere, enterprising artists sought to attract new clients increasingly composed of the urban bourgeoisie. By the mid-to-late nineteenth century the involvement of the public in artistic matters became an irrevocable fact which had been secured by the improved means of mass production. New processes in lithographic and photographic printmaking, for example, made art widely available to a popular audience. The entry of this sort of democracy into artistic production coincided with current aesthetic influences such as a Japonisme movement prevalent in France in the years before 1890. In addition, there was a new understanding of modern beauty that began around 1830 that rejected traditional forms of beauty manifested in classical and later art forms.
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and the Emergence of Modern Poster Art
By the early 1890’s when Henri Toulouse Lautrec (French, 1864-1901) created his mass-produced posters in Paris a new artistic practice had appeared whose idea of beauty was contemporary, sophisticated and subtly realistic. By 1890, Lautrec’s art could react in several ways to the modern art tradition. Toulouse-Lautrec repudiated the bourgeois modernity of the Impressionists from the 1870’s and 1880’s displayed in the drawing-room paintings of Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919) and, owing to cultural spaces that had shifted by the 1880’s to artistic cabarets and literary cafés, Lautrec could also claim to be a direct heir to an earlier 1830’s romantic bohemian and 1840’s flâneur.
Montmartre, Bohemia, and the Public Sphere
There are several interpretations for this cultural shift and its effects on artists and artistic practice in the 1890’s including Toulouse-Lautrec’s mass-produced commercial posters. Building on a rejection of bourgeois art forms, Mary Gluck at Brown University argues that artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec—who with others was a creature of the cabarets and cafés—desired commercial mass media to be the means by which the public sphere would eclipse individual lives which modern society had fragmented. At the center of their art production, Gluck believes, is a distinct vision of modernity identified with a city’s public space as opposed to the private anonymity of bourgeois culture (see Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris, 2005).
To strive to transform the public sphere by way of the legacy of the café-concert about and for which Toulouse-Lautrec created a significant amount of his mass-produced commercial art could only be an ambitious cultural task. These cabarets and café-concerts, mostly centered on and around Montmartre in Paris, were crowded, loud and often rowdy. Its performances and clientele were often unpolished and popular. Small but well-known art movements such as Les Arts incohérents and their Montmartre cabaret Les Hydropathes begin to describe the level of social parody and frivolity to be expected within these establishments.
While Lionel Richard at the University of Picardy attributes these activities to social rebels (see Cabaret, Cabarets: Origines et décadence, 1991), Jerrold Seigel at New York University views it as a calculated new relationship between the popular classes and the bourgeoisie where the aspiring artist, such as Toulouse-Lautrec, could create art for potential customers (see Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930, 1986). For T. J. Clark, the cabaret’s diverse audience as a venue for some form of cultural democracy by way of a mixing of classes is illusory (see “The Bar at the Folies-Bergères,” The Wolf and the Lamb: Popular Culture in France, From the Old Régime to the Twentieth Century, 1977).
Charles Rearick of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, casts an eye on those frivolous aspects of the Montmartre cabarets, dance halls, and literary cafés. His conclusion is that these activities allowed a Parisian to escape modern society’s social constraints of respectability typically found everywhere else (see Pleasures of the Belle Epoque: Entertainment & Festivity in Turn-Of-The-Century France, 1985). Phillip Dennis Cate at The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University viewed the role of cabarets in the artistic context of these bohemian antics being the genesis of what became twentieth-century avant-garde aesthetics (see The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor, and the Avant-Garde, 1875-1905, 1996). It is the affirmation of the values of spontaneous experience and direct communication as an integral aspect of the modern experience and, for the fin-de-siècle bohemian, parodic performances which helped criticize the official art establishment that carried forward into artistic attitudes in the new century.
The Legacy of Toulouse-Lautrec’s Posters
The fruit of reflection for this late-nineteenth-century artistic period in Paris is numerous and diverse. It leads to the observation—whether of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or the variety of subjects in his mass-produced commercial art—that the stereotype of the artist, poet, or performer as bohemian, owing to their psychological nuance and stylistic antisepsis as aesthetic modernity—and possibly its inverse—becomes a source for their estrangement and alienation from modernity—that is, to emerge as an alienated human figure detached from their society and time. With Toulouse-Lautrec’s sixth poster (Divan Japonais, 1893) it is clear that his mass-produced commercial poster art in Paris was making an important impact on modern art in the 1890’s. It was a new art form for its deploying the rapidly developing technique of color printing. It utilized new approaches to composition and subject matter which were created for a mixture of new and popular commercial establishments. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, they became the first regularly displayed art commodity for public mass consumption. Each of these art principles and practices found in Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters of the 1890’s continue to impact contemporary art-making today.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s 31 posters (1891-1900) represent one of the earliest successful unions of fine art and mass-produced advertising.
1. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Moulin Rouge-La Goulue, 1891.
1. Moulin Rouge-La Goulue is a lithograph done in 4 colors: yellow, blue, red, and black. The Moulin Rouge opened in 1889 and, in summer 1891, the poster was commissioned by its owners. It depicts La Goulue (“The Glutton”) who is 21-year-old Louis Weber (1870-1929) and Valentin-le-Désossé (“the Boneless”) (1843-1907). This is Toulouse-Lautrec’s first, largest, and many estimate, most complex and artistically important poster. Printed by Charles Levy, it is made up of two sheets although Toulouse-Lautrec thought the printer had made mistakes and didn’t use him again. When this poster was plastered around Paris, the artist knew that his own silhouetted profile could be found in the background of silhouetted figures. The art of the streets pioneered by Jules Chéret (1836-1932) and immediately recognized for its implications by writers such as the Goncourt brothers and J.K. Huysmans (1848-1907) Lautrec exploited in the 1890’s aided by technological advances in color printing that continued to improve throughout the decade.
2. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Le Pendu, 1892
2. The poster Le Pendu is a lithograph done in 2 colors: black and dark green. It was commissioned by a magazine editor to publicize a new theater play. Based on a true story of a wrongful capital death, the poster depicts the son’s suicide. Created in charcoal in late 1891, it was printed in 1895 in a limited edition for collectors only.
3. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Ambassadeurs Aristide Bruant, 1892.
3. The poster Ambassadeurs Aristide Bruant is a lithograph in 5 colors yellow, blue, red, black, and olive green. Aristide Bruant (1851-1923) was a singer and this was a promotional poster for a café concert that opened in June 1892. The poster appeared all over Paris and on stage during the performance. The café owner thought the poster was a “disgusting mess” and refused to hang it until Bruant threatened to cancel his show. The subject wears a heavy dark velvet jacket, red shirt scarf, and wide brimmed hat with a riding crop. His head rises out of a dark mass which is lifted wholesale from a Japanese print by Katsukawa Shunshō (1726-1792).
Lautrec’s posters chronicled the vibrant world of Montmartre’s cabarets, cafés-concerts, dance halls, entertainers, and literary culture.
4. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Eldorado Aristide Bruant. 1892.
4. The poster Eldorado Aristide Bruant is a lithograph in 5 colors (olive green, yellow, red, blue, and black). It includes the letters “TL” and signed monogram which will appear on other posters. The poster was created for the singer’s event on Boulevard de Strasbourg (north of Boulevard Montmartre at Sebastopol). With the same but reversed design, the customer and artist cut poster costs while increasing brand identity. In modern art the figure of the imposing heroic individual performer was new and Bruant became an overnight celebrity that year in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec made no money on this project because the café owners were shocked by its content and refused to pay him.
Lautrec helped create a new form of visual culture where art left the museum and entered everyday life through posters pasted on city streets. These works became among the first art objects produced for broad public consumption and were tied directly to the cafés, cabarets, and entertainment venues of Montmartre.
5. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Reine de Joie, 1892
5. The poster Reine de Joie is a lithograph in 4 colors (olive green, yellow, red, and black). It includes the emblematic letters “TL” and is signed. The poster was an advertisement for a suggestive new serialized novel by Victor Joze (1861-1933) and depicted the moment in the novel when the heroine kisses a fat banker, the latter being modeled by Georges Lasserre, a Lautrec friend. The poster, also used as the novel’s cover, caused a scandal across Paris and prompted a poster tear-down campaign. Speculation ran rampant as to who might be the real-life personalities on which characters in the novel were based.
The posters are documents of mass entertainment, celebrity culture, advertising, consumer culture, and urban nightlife in Belle Époque Paris.
6. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Divan Japonais, 1892-93.
6. The poster Divan Japonais (1892-93) is a lithograph in 4 colors (olive green, yellow, red, and black). The cabaret on rue des Martyrs came under new ownership in 1892 and was totally refurbished in a trendy Japanese style. The poster depicts 24-year-old Jane Avril (1868-1943) with critic Edouard Dujarden (1861-1949) in the cabaret. On stage are shown the long black gloves of new singer Yvette Guilbert (1865-1944). In a stylistic move, the artist cuts off Guilbert’s head and shoulders in the poster much to the consternation of the young singer just getting started in her career. (She later commissioned a poster by another artist to depict her complete figure). When this poster went up all over Paris it created a sensation and was another triumph for Lautrec. In 1894 the Divan Japonais closed to be replaced by another establishment. As with his other posters, there were several preliminary sketches the artist made for Divan Japonais. The posters used the new and improving popular mechanical technique of color printing and applied it to commercial establishments and popular entertainers, subject matter usually reserved for cruder forms of advertisement.
Divan Japonais is one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s early posters. In his poster career the artist usually used anywhere from 2 to 5 colors. It is signed by Toulouse Lautrec. This Montmartre cabaret was taken over in 1892 by a new owner and totally refurbished in the avant-garde Japanese style which was the inspiration for the cabaret’s name. By February 1893 when this sixth poster was made by Lautrec and put up all around Paris, his 5 previous posters had already made him famous.
7. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Jane Avril, 1893.
7. The poster Jane Avril is a lithograph in 5 colors (olive green, yellow, orange, red, and black). The same subject who appeared in Divan Japonais, Jane Avril commissioned this poster for her performance at the Jardin de Paris, a new café-concert. The letters for the name of the establishment were added later by someone other than Lautrec. The artist first produced 20 collector prints and after, with its newly-added letters, the poster went into mass production. Known as La Mélinite—a type of explosive—Jane Avril looked to this poster to reinvigorate her career as a performer in Paris. The poster helped her to take Paris by storm as she went on to perform at the Casino de Paris, the Moulin Rouge and the Folies-Bergères. In terms of composition, the poster is noteworthy for its strong diagonals inspired by Japanese prints and the detail of a large musical instrument—including the meticulously drawn hairs of a musician’s fingers—which rounds out the design and is seen as homage to Degas who used a similar motif in his artwork.
Iconic figures such as Jane Avril, Aristide Bruant, Yvette Guilbert, and La Goulue became cultural celebrities through his poster designs.
8. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Aristide Bruant Dans Son Cabaret, 1893.
8. The poster Aristide Bruant Dans Son Cabaret is a lithograph in 4 colors (olive green, brown, red, and black). Lautrec’s third image of the singer became a Parisian icon. From the poster’s inception the singer used this image to promote his appearances—and for the next twenty years until 1912.
9. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Au Pied De L’Echafaud, 1893.
9. The poster Au Pied De L’Echafaud is a lithograph in 4 colors (grey, red-brown, red, and black). The poster was an advertisement for the memoirs of a prison chaplain published in 1893.
10. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Caudieux, 1893.
10. The poster Caudieux is a lithograph in 4 colors (olive green, yellow, red and black). Lautrec depicts Caudieux, who was a popular cabaret comedian, to be striding across the stage. Lautrec used the partial figure in the prompt box in other artwork.
11. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Bruant Au Miriton, 1893.Bruant Au Miriton, 1893.
11. The poster Bruant Au Miriton is a lithograph in 2 colors (olive green or black and red). Represented with his back to the viewer, the popular performer is identified simply by his costume and the way he stands. This artistic device had already been used by Degas based on a theory by an art critic that a person’s economic and social class could be revealed simply by the way he or she comports themselves. The poster was recycled by Bruant as a songbook cover.
12. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Babylone D’Allemagne, 1894
12. The poster Babylone D’Allemagne is a lithograph in 5 colors (olive green, yellow, red, dark blue and black). This was Lautrec’s second poster for another Victor Joze novel following his Reine de Joie. Lautrec wrote to his mother at this time to relate how busy he was with his art projects. Because of Joze’s anti-German message in the book, the author wanted the poster suppressed but it went up all over Paris nonetheless.
13. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – L’Artisan Moderne, 1894.
13. The poster L’Artisan Moderne is a lithograph in 4 colors (dark blue, yellow, green, and brown). The lettering is not done by Lautrec. Because of the impact of the cabaret and book posters, Lautrec began to be commissioned to make posters for the trades. This poster was provided to an interior design firm.
14. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – P. Sescau, Photographe, 1894
14. The poster P. Sescau, Photographe is a lithograph in 4 colors (dark red, yellow, green, and dark blue). The lettering is not done by Lautrec. This poster was provided to Paul Sescau, a professional photographer and personal friend of the artist.
15. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Confetti, 1894.
15. The poster Confetti is a lithograph in 3 colors (dark olive green, red and yellow). This is Lautrec’s poster for the English paper manufacturer Bella & de Malherbe. The model is Jeanne Granier (1852-1939). These paper manufacturers hosted poster exhibitions in 1894 and 1896 to which Lautrec was invited.
16. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – May Belfort, 1895.
16. The poster May Belfort is a lithograph in 4 colors (olive black, red and yellow). Following his trades posters Lautrec returned to the subject of the single musical performer. May Egan (whose stage name was May Belfort) was an Irish singer who appeared at the Cabaret des Décadents where Jane Avril performed.
Advances in color lithography allowed his work to reach a broad urban audience, bringing art directly into the streets of Paris.
17. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – La Revue Blanche, 1895.
17. The poster La Revue Blanche is a lithograph in 4 colors (blue, red, black, and green). The subject is Misia Natanson (1872-1950) who was married to Thadée Natanson whose brother was editor of La Revue Blanche from 1891 to 1903. Misia was muse to a generation of avant-garde artists, composers, and writers as the publication itself was the remarkable meeting point for the Paris literary and artistic worlds in the 1890’s. Lautrec shows Misia wearing an ostrich feather hat, spotted dress, fur jacket and muff and ice skating which was a popular activity in Paris. Two preparatory drawings for this poster are known.
18. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – May Milton, 1895.
18. The poster May Milton is a lithograph in 5 colors (blue, red, black, yellow and olive green). This poster was never posted in Paris but produced as an advertisement in a magazine to promote the U.S. tour of May Milton, an English dancer at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Picasso owned a copy of this poster and used some of its compositional elements in his own artwork. Art dealers would commission limited editions of black-and-white lithographs of performers such as May Milton because they sold quickly.
19. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Napoleon, 1895.
19. The poster Napoleon is a lithograph in 5 colors (blue, reddish brown, black, yellow and olive green). Toulouse-Lautrec produced this poster for a book cover competition that he lost. Failing to sell this artwork, the artist produced a limited edition of 100 copies at the artist’s expense. The artist’s fee for his poster artwork varied a good deal, although during his career Lautrec clearly made more money from the output of his graphic work than his paintings.
Influenced by Japanese prints (Japonisme), Lautrec employed flattened forms, strong diagonals, silhouettes, and unconventional cropping.
20. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Salon Des Cents, 1895.
20. The poster Salon Des Cents is a lithograph in 6 colors (blue, dark blue, black, yellow, ochre, and red). This poster is Lautrec’s homage to a married woman he met and became infatuated with during a summer cruise in 1895. The young woman sits in a deck chair under an awning facing out to sea. He produced the poster at his rentrée to Paris that fall and used it for international poster exhibitions sponsored by the journal La Plume at the Salon des Cent during winter 1895-96 and later in 1896 at the Libre Esthétique exhibition in Brussels.
21. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – The Chap Book, 1895.
21. The poster The Chap Book is a lithograph in 5 colors (olive green, blue, yellow, pink and red). The lettering is not done by Lautrec. The artist used the setting of an Irish-American bar near Place Madeleine in Paris to promote The Chap Book, an American magazine. Along with its identifiable characters, Lautrec includes the image of a bartender preparing a cocktail which was a libation newly introduced to Paris.
22. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – La Chatelaine, Ou ‘Le Tocsin’, 1895
22. The poster La Chatelaine, Ou ‘Le Tocsin’ is a lithograph in 2 colors (blue and blue-green). This poster was commissioned by former Republican politician and Editor-in-chief Arthur Huc (1854-1932) to advertise a novel by Jules de Gastyne (1847-1920) which appeared in his newspaper in popular serial form in 1895. Letters were added by others after copies of the poster were printed for collectors of Lautrec’s increasingly popular artwork.
His work captured the spirit of Belle Époque Paris, documenting its entertainment culture while influencing generations of graphic artists.
23. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Troupe De Mlle Églantine, 1896.
23. The poster Troupe De Mlle Églantine is a lithograph in 4 colors (green-blue, red, yellow and dark brown). The lettering is not designed by Lautrec. This was commissioned by Jane Avril for her work in London at the Palace Theatre and elsewhere. The formation dance was comprised of four identified dancers including Mlle Églantine and Jane Avril and derived from the famous French can-can.
24. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – La Vache Enragee, 1896.
24. The poster La Vache Enragée is a lithograph in 5 colors (dark blue, green-blue, red, yellow and black). The lettering is not designed by Lautrec. This was an advertisement for a new monthly magazine founded by Adolphe Willette (1857-1926). Its editor, Adolphe Roedel, organized an annual parade through Montmartre called the Vachalcade to lampoon the artist’s state of life in a major urban center.
25. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Elles, 1896.
25. The poster Elles is a lithograph in 4 colors (yellow, dark green, orange and blue). Later lettering is not designed by Lautrec. Degas would visit a Paris brothel to sketch its denizens, but Lautrec moved in for weeks at a time to do his artwork. Elles is a series of lithographs of the lives of prostitutes. Although considered some of the finest of lithographs of the nineteenth century, its portfolio of prints could not find collectors and they had to be sold singly. An exhibition of the complete lithographic series was held at La Plume starting in April 1896 where Lautrec adapted Elles’ title-page lithograph as the poster to advertise the show.
26. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – L’Aube, 1896.
26. The poster L’Aube is a lithograph in 2 colors (dark blue and blue-green). The lettering is not designed by Lautrec. This was another advertisement for a new journal, the leftist L’Aube, first published in 1896. After its printing, the printer and artist had a rafter of remainders of this poster which they tried to sell for next to nothing.
27. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Cycle Michael, 1896.
27. The poster Cycle Michael is a lithograph in 1 color (olive green). Bicycling had developed into a cult sport in France by the 1890’s. Lautrec’s interest in the new sport led to this poster commission of British cyclist Jimmy Michael with his trainer (left background) and a sports writer with a hand in his coat pocket. The bicycle company rejected Lautrec’s design in part because the depiction of its mechanics was inaccurate which left the artist to print a limited edition for collectors at his own expense.
28. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – La Chaine Simpson, 1896
28. The poster La Chaîne Simpson is a lithograph in 3 colors (red, yellow and blue). The lettering is not designed by Lautrec. This is Lautrec’s second poster for the new sport of bicycling which had become immensely popular in France in the 1890’s. It depicts popular rider Constant Huret (left) and, in the background wearing hats, two British and French bicycle and chain manufacturers. Lautrec was fascinated with the cycling sport and its imagery appears in other of his artwork.
29. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – The Ault & Wiborg Co, 1896.
29. The poster The Ault & Wiborg Co is a zincograph in 4 colors (brown, red, yellow and black). The lettering is not designed by Lautrec. The smallest of Lautrec’s posters, it was commissioned by an American ink manufacturer whose sitters are not precisely identified. Before it became a poster advertisement, Lautrec had an edition of it printed which he titled Au Concert.
Posters such as Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, Divan Japonais, and Jane Avril helped establish the visual foundations of Art Nouveau graphic design.
30. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Jane Avril, 1899.
30. The poster Jane Avril is a zincograph in 4 colors (black, red, yellow and blue). After six years of intense poster production, Lautrec temporarily left its practice in 1897 and 1898. When he returned to it in 1899 he found that technology had advanced to make the printing technique for his artwork more efficient. This poster was commissioned by Jane Avril but never publicly displayed. Lautrec looked to capture her dancing style and graceful and wistful figure which the artist admired. The serpentine-themed dress Jane Avril wears was a popular motif in the Art Nouveau.
31. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – La Gitane, 1899-1900.
31. The poster La Gitane is a lithograph in 5 colors (black, grey, red, brown and blue). The lettering is designed by Lautrec. Lautrec’s last poster was produced for a Carmen-like play that opened in January 1900 at the Théâtre Antoine in the tenth arrondissment. The play was unpopular, the poster never published, and Lautrec’s modern art poster career had come to an end.
Lautrec elevated commercial poster art from simple advertising into a respected artistic medium.
Select Bibliography: Ash, Russell, Toulouse-Lautrec:The Complete Posters, Pavilion Books Limited, London, 1991. Beauroy, Jacques, Bertrand, Marc, Gargan, Edward T., editors, The Wolf and the Lamb: Popular Culture in France, From the Old Régime to the Twentieth Century, Anma Libri, Saratoga, CA, 1977. Cate, Phillip Dennis, The Color Revolution: Color Lithography in France, 1890-1900, Peregrine Smith, Inc., Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City, 1978. Cate, Phillip Dennis and Shaw, Mary, editors, The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor, and the Avant-Garde, 1875-1905, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1996. Denvir, Bernard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Thames and Hudson, London, 1991. Gluck, Mary, Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005. Foxwell, Chelsea, Leonard, Anne, et.al. Awash in Color: French and Japanese Prints, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2012. Oberthur, Mariel, Cafés and Cabarets of Montmartre, Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, 1984. Rearick, Charles, Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment & Festivity in Turn-Of-The-Century France, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1985. Seigel, Jerrold, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930, Penguin Books, New York, 1986. Thory-Frèches, Claire, Roquebert, Anne, Thomson, Richard, Toulouse-Lautrec, South Bank Center, 1991. Weisberg, Gabriel P., Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture, Rutgers University Press, News Brunswick, New Jersey and London. 2001.
FEATURE image: A life-sized fiberglass roadside statue standing outside the retro Galaxy Diner near Bryce Canyon in Utah replicates Arden’s playful carhop posture—balancing on roller skates with her knees bent inward, one arm resting confidently on her hip, and the other raised to balance a serving tray. The fiberglass statue is directly modeled after the likeness, pose, and specific clothing worn by Danish model Dane Arden/Elsa Sørensen in one of her most famous 1950s non-nude glamour photography sets. While Dane Arden famously posed for indoor adult publications like Playboy and Adam, her wholesome outdoor “blonde bombshell” imagery became embedded in mid-century pop culture, eventually transforming her iconic 1956 image into an enduring piece of physical American roadside art. PHOTO: “Galaxy Carhop” by JackAZ Photo is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
A single 1956 glamour photograph of Dane Arden dressed as an American carhopexplores the intersection of mid-century modeling, roadside consumer culture, and the creation of the blonde bombshell image that defined a significant strand of postwar popular culture.
Dane Arden (Elsa Sørensen) in 1956 in her carhop uniform. The photograph was created by renowned glamour photographer Peter Gowland, whose work appeared on hundreds of magazine covers over a long career. Arden is captured mid-stride balancing on one leg with her left arm extended for balance. She holds a small serving tray with two green milk glass tumblers in her right hand. Her outfit consists of a red-and-white gingham print bikini top and high-waisted bottoms with white eyelet trim, a small matching sheer white half-apron around her waist, a ruffled hair accessory, gingham wrist cuffs, and black open-toe high-heeled sandals.
By John P. Walsh
Dane Arden (1934-2013) was an international magazine model in the 1950’s and 1960’s. She was born Elsa Sørensen on March 25, 1934 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Following her win of the title of Miss Denmark as a teenager she went to live with her family in Vancouver, Canada.
Her debut in the September 1956 issue of Playboy magazine gave her much publicity. Elsa Sørensen went on to appear multiple times in that American men’s entertainment/lifestyle publication. As Dane Arden, she modeled for other magazines such as the U.S. versions of Australia’s Adam magazine and Milan, Italy’s illustrated weekly news magazine, Tempo, among others.
Elsa moved to Los Angeles, California and married twice. She died at 79 years old on April 18, 2013 from complications following a bicycle accident in Vero Beach, Florida.
In one favorite set of non-nude color photographs of Dane Arden—this from 1956, the same time as her Playboy shoot— the 22-year-old Danish model expresses her beauty, physical dynamism and engaging personality as she poses as a carhop bringing fast food to people in their cars at drive-in restaurants.
Working carhops first appeared in the early 1920’s along expanding and popular interstate roads. In the 1920’s the carhops were mostly boys and men. During and after World War II, the service role was increasingly performed by women.
By the mid1950’s, abundant drive-ins had to compete for customers in fast-moving automobiles and so carhop uniforms had to be eye catching. Uniforms on busy roads would often be creatively thematic with military, airline, space age, and cheerleader uniforms predominating.
The 1956 color photograph of Dane Arden as a carhop (or waitress) is by Los Angeles-based glamour photographer Peter Gowland (1916-2010), the son of a Hollywood film actor and actress. In a photography career spanning over six decades and characterized by technical innovation, Gowland’s glamour and celebrity photography appeared on over one thousand magazine covers.
Dane Arden is an especially alluring carhop who wears a skimpy plaid-patterned matching fringed halter top and short shorts with fringed apron cut to size. Wearing the typical flat shoes and head gear worn by many female car hops at the time, Dane Arden proffers the perfect uniform to greet her customers with their lime-green cups of hot coffee.
Dane Arden embodied the “blonde bombshell” ideal that became highly popular in American mass culture during the 1950s and 1960s.
Her appearance in the September 1956 issue of Playboy and other classic mid-20th century men’s magazinesbrought Dane Arden (Elsa Sørensen) widespread publicity and launched her American modeling profile.
Published out of Atlanta and New York City by Sports Report, Inc., Tempo belonged to a highly popular post-WWII publishing phenomenon known as men’s pocket digests. Measuring just 4-by-6 inches, these micro-magazines were designed to be cheap ($0.15), highly portable, and easily read on a commute or tucked away out of sight.
During the mid-1950s, the publishing industry was navigating a massive cultural shift. Playboy had launched in late 1953, completely disrupting the market by moving erotic “cheesecake” imagery into mainstream consumer culture. Pocket digests like Tempo adapted by blending mild pin-up photography with compelling articles such as Hollywood celebrity gossip, political scandals, sports writing, and provocative relationship columns to maximize mass appeal on crowded newsstands.
This particular issue capitalized heavily on Arden’s rising star power. When it hit stands in October 1956, Elsa Sørensen had just debuted as Playboy’s high-profile centerfold the previous month (September 1956). Because she used her real name for Playboy and the name Dane Arden for Tempo.
Instead of a natural beach setting, Sørensen is posed inside a studio designed to look like a lavish, exotic harem room (below). She sits on plush red pillows against a sharp blue-and-white striped background.
Dane Arden is featured on the cover of Adam magazine (Vol. 4, No. 9), published in September 1960 by Knight Publishing Corp. Unlike the tiny, cheap pocket digests of the mid-50s (like Tempo), by 1960 Adam had transitioned into a full-sized, standard 8″ x 10.5″ glossy format. To justify its higher price tag (50 cents, compared to Tempo’s 15 cents), the magazine included more color photography, adult humor comics, and short fiction. The covers feature a small print warning label: “Adults Only!”. As the 1960s began, men’s magazines aggressively pushed boundaries by transitioning away from the safer, outdoor “bikini/cheesecake” themes of the 50s into more explicit, indoor erotic pin-ups.
In the mid-1950’s and early 1960’s Dane Arden posed in American men’s entertainment and lifestyle publications in the nude and non-nude.
In her magazine spreads, Dane Arden shared with its mainly male readership that it took her longer to achieve an attractive “disheveled look” in a swimsuit for a beach shoot (below) than if she was preparing for a fancy dress-up costume ball.
During the mid-1950s, pocket digests like Tempo relied heavily on these outdoor, natural-light beach shoots. They offered an easy-to-carry format that blended casual “cheesecake” photography with Hollywood gossip, appealing to the post-war American men’s publishing market that was rapidly expanding into the mainstream.
Dane Arden good-humoredly believed there was no “nuttier business” to be in than posing for cheesecake pictures in these popular magazines.
There is a short color documentary filmed in the mid 1970’s at the legendary Keller’s Drive-In in Dallas, Texas. Shot at the end of an era for drive-in car hops along America’s open roads since the 1920’s, the film works to make it easier to imagine the pace and purpose of Dane Arden’s 1956 glamour photograph of a female carhop at a popular mid20th century American roadside eatery.
The documentary about carhops and American Graffiti-style drive-in culture which once littered America’s roads coast to coast–and Dane Arden’s glamour photograph dressed as a car hop–placed the model’s photographic career smack dab in the middle of mainstream American culture.
Keller’s Drive-In which is featured in the film is a classic spot to enjoy a no-frills burger and cold beer. Its founder Jack Keller once worked at Kirby’s Pig Stand which became the nation’s first drive-in restaurant empire. Keller passed away in 2016 at 88 years old.
Keller’s original location opened in 1950 and closed in 2000. The oldest restaurant in the American chain today is the one that opened in 1955 on Northwest Highway in Dallas. There are two other Keller’s restaurants in Dallas.
In addition to Playboy, Elsa Sørensen appeared in the U.S. version of Adam magazine using the name Dane Arden which she used for all her non-Playboy modeling assignments.
Famously appearing nude as Playboy magazine’s Miss September 1956, it was a breakout year for Sørensen, who moved to Los Angeles and became highly sought after by American glamour photographers.
