Dorothy Dandridge

This glam photo was found at klbndc's photos at Flickr -- a worthy stop for those interested in African-American history, loaded with not just grand old (and rare) daguerreotypes, but a wealth of information from news clippings etc. A must see link. (Hence the 'racism' tag.)

Fanny Brice, Al Jolson & The Seven Lively Arts

As promised in part one, more on Fanny Brice (with a generous dollop of Al Jolson).





This from the The Seven Lively Arts, by Gilbert Seldes, this is The Daemonic in the American Theatre (pages 191-200).

ONE man on the American stage, and one woman, are possessed--Al Jolson and Fanny Brice. Their daemons are not of the same order, but together they represent all we have of the Great God Pan, and we ought to be grateful for it. For in addition to being more or less a Christian country, America is a Protestant community and a business organization-and none of these units is peculiarly prolific in the creation of daemonic individuals. We can bring forth Roosevelts--dynamic creatures, to be sure; but the fury and the exultation of Jolson is a hundred times higher in voltage than that of Roosevelt; we can produce courageous and adventurous women who shoot lions or manage construction gangs and remain pale beside the extraordinary "cutting loose" of Fanny Brice.

To say that each of these two is possessed by a daemon is a mediaeval and perfectly sound way of expressing their intensity of action. It does not prove anything-not even that they are geniuses of a fairly high rank, which in my opinion they are. I use the word possessed because it connotes a quality lacking elsewhere on the stage, and to be found only at moments in other aspects of American life-in religious mania, in good jazz bands, in a rare outbreak of mob violence. The particular intensity I mean is exactly what you do not see at a baseball game, but may at a prize fight, nor in the productions of David Belasco, nor at a political convention; you may see it on the Stock Exchange and you can see it, canalized and disciplined, but still intense, in our skyscraper architecture. It was visible at moments in the old Russian Ballet.

In Jolson there is always one thing you can be sure of: that whatever he does he does at the highest possible pressure. I do not mean that one gets the sense of his effort, for his work is at times the easiest seeming, the most effortless in the world. Only he never saves up-for the next scene, or the next week, or the next show. His generosity is extravagant; he flings into a comic song or three-minute impersonation so much- energy, violence, so much of the totality of one human being, that you feel it would suffice for a hundred others. In the days when the runway was planked down the centre of every good theatre in America, this galvanic little figure, leaping and shouting--yet always essentially dancing and singing--upon it was the concentration of our national health and gaiety. In Row, Row, Row he would bounce up on the runway, propel himself by imaginary oars over the heads of the audience, draw equally imaginary slivers from the seat of his trousers, and infuse into the song something wild and roaring and insanely funny. The very phonograph record of his famous Toreador song is full of vitality. Even in later days when the programme announces simply "Al Jolson" (about 10.15 P.M. in each of his reviews) he appears and sings and talks to the audience and dances off-and when he has done more than any other ten men, he returns and, blandly announcing that "You ain't heard nothing yet," proceeds to do twice as much again. He is the great master of the one-man show because he gives so much while he is on that the audience remains content while he is off-and his electrical energy almost always develops activity in those about him.

If it were necessary, a plea could be made for violence per se in the American theatre, because everything tends to prettify and restrain, and the energy of the theatre is dying out. But Jolson, who lacks discipline almost entirely, has other qualities besides violence. He has an excellent baritone voice, a good ear for dialect, a nimble presence, and a distinct sense of character. Of course it would be impossible not to recognize him the moment he appears on the stage; of course he is always Jolson-but he is also always Gus and always Inbad the Porter, and always Bombo. He has created a way of being for the characters he takes on; they live specifically in the mad world of the Jolson show; their wit and their bathos are singularly creditable characteristics of themselves-not of Jolson. You may recall a scene I think the show was called Dancing Around - in which a lady knocks at the door of a house. From within comes the voice of Jolson singing, "You made me love you, I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it"--the voice approaches, dwindles away, resumes -- it is a swift characterization of the lazy servant coming to open the door and ready to insult callers, since the master is out. Suddenly the black face leaps through the doorway and cries out, "We don' want no ice," and is gone. Or Jolson as the black slave of Columbus, reproached by his master for a long absence. His lips begin to quiver, his chin to tremble; the tears are approaching, when his human independence softly asserts itself and he wails, "We all have our moments." It is quite true, for Jolson's technique is the exploitation of these moments; he has himself said that he is the greatest master of hokum in the business, and in the theatre the art of hokum is to make each second count for itself, to save any moment from dulness by the happy intervention of a slap on the back, or by jumping out of character and back again, or any other trick. For there is no question of legitimacy here-everything is right if it makes 'em laugh.

He does more than make 'em laugh; he gives them what I am convinced is a genuine emotional effect ranging from the thrill to the shock. I remember coming home after eighteen months in Europe, during the war, and stepping from the boat to one of the first nights of Sinbad. The spectacle of Jolson's vitality had the same quality as the impression I got from the New York sky line-one had forgotten that there still existed in the world a force so boundless, an exaltation so high, and that anyone could still storm Heaven with laughter and cheers. He sang on that occasion 'N Everything and Swanee. I have suggested elsewhere that hearing him sing Swanee is what book reviewers and young girls loosely call an experience. I know what Jolson does with false sentiment; here he was dealing with something which by the grace of George Gershwin came true, and there was no necessity for putting anything over. In the absurd black-face which is so little negroid that it goes well with diversions in Yiddish accents, Jolson created image after image of longing, and his existence through the song was wholly in its rhythm.

Five years later I heard Jolson in a second-rate show, before an audience listless or hostile, sing this out dated and forgotten song, and create again, for each of us seated before him, the same image-and saw also the tremendous leap in vitality and happiness which took possession of the audience as he sang it. It was marvelous. In the first weeks of Sinbad he sang the words of 'N Everything as they are printed. Gradually (I saw the show in many phases) he interpolated, improvised, always with his absolute sense of rhythmic effect; until at the end it was a series of amorous cries and shouts of triumph to Eros. I have heard him sing also the absurd song about "It isn't raining rain, It's raining violets" and remarked him modulating that from sentimentality into a conscious bathos, with his gloved fingers flittering together and his voice rising to absurd fortissimi and the general air of kidding the piece.

He does not generally kid his Mammy songs-as why should he who sings them better than anyone else? He cannot underplay anything, he lacks restraint, and he leans on the second-rate sentiment of these songs until they are forced to render up the little that is real in them. I dislike them and dislike his doing them-as I dislike Belle Baker singing Elie, Elie! But it is quite possible that my discomfort at these exhibitions is proof of their quality. They and a few very cheap jokes and a few sly remarks about sexual perversions are Jolson's only faults. They are few. For a man who has, year after year, established an intimate relation with no less than a million people, every twelvemonth, he is singularly uncorrupted. That relation is the thing which sets him so far above all the other one-manshow stars. Eddie Cantor gives at times the effect of being as energetic; Wynn is always and Tinney sometimes funnier. But no one else, except Miss Brice, so holds an audience in the hollow of the hand. The hand is steady; the audience never moves. And on the great nights when everything is right, Jolson is driven by a power beyond himself. One sees that he knows what he is doing, but one sees that he doesn't half realize the power and intensity with which he is doing it. In those moments I cannot help thinking of him as a genius.

Quite to that point Fanny Brice hasn't reached. She hasn't, to begin with, the physical vitality of Jolson. But she has a more delicate mind and a richer humour--qualities which generally destroy vitality altogether, and which only enrich hers. She is first a great farceur; and in her songs she is exactly in the tradition of Yvette Guilbert, without the range, so far as we know, which enabled Mme Guilbert to create the whole of mediaeval France for us in ten lines of a song. The quality, however, is the same, and Fanny's evocations are as vivid and as poignant as Yvette's-they require from us exactly the same tribute of admiration. She has grown in power since she sang and made immortal, I Should Worry. Hear her now creating the tragedy of SecondHand Rose or of the one Florodora baby who-- "five little dumbells got married for money, And I got married for love . . .." These things are done with two-thirds of Yvette Guilbert's material missing, for there are no accessories and, although the words (some of the best are by Blanche Merrill) are good, the music isn't always distinguished. And the effects are irreproachable. Give Fanny a song she can get her teeth into, Mon Homme, and the result is less certain, but not less interesting. This was one of a series of realistic songs for Mistinguett, who sang it very much as Yvonne George did when she appeared in America. Miss Brice took it lento affetuoso; since the precise character of the song had changed a bit from its rather more outspoken French original. Miss Brice suppressed Fanny altogether in this song-she was being, I fear, "a serious artist"; but she is of such an extraordinary talent that she can do even this. Yvonne . George sang it better simply because the figure she evoked as Mon Homme was exactly the fake apache about whom it was written, and not the "my feller" who lurked behind Miss Brice. It was amusing to learn that without a Yiddish accent and without those immense rushes of drollery, without the enormous gawkishness of her other impersonations, Miss Brice could put a song over. But I am for Fanny against Miss Brice and to Fanny I return.

Fanny is one of the few people who "Make fun." She creates that peculiar quality of entertainment which is wholly light-hearted and everything else is added unto her. Of this special quality nothing can be said; one either sees it or doesn't, savours it or not. Fanny arrives on the scene with an indescribable gesture--after seeing it twenty times I believe that it consists of a feminine salute, touching the forehead and then flinging out her arm to the topmost gallery. There is magic in it, establishing her character at once -the magic must reside in her incredible elbow. She hasn't so much to give as Jolson, but she gives it with the same generosity, there are no reserves, and it is all for fun. Her Yiddish Squow (how else can I spell that amazing effect?) and her Heiland Lassie are examples-there isn't an arriere-pensee in them.

"The Chiff is after me . . . he says I appil to him . . . he likes my type - - " It is the complete give away of herself and she doesn't care.

And this carelessness goes through her other exceptional qualities of caricature and satire. For the first there is the famous Vamp, in which she plays the crucial scene of all the vampire stories, preluding it with the first four lines of the poem Mr Kipling failed to throw into the wastepaper basket, and fatuously adding, "I can't get over it"--after which point everything is flung into another plane-the hollow laughter, the haughty gesture, the pretended compassion, that famous defense of the vampire which here, however, ends with the magnificent line, "I may be a bad woman, but I'm awful good company." In this brief episode she does three things at once: recites a parody, imitates the moving-picture vamp, and creates through these another, truly comic character. For satire it is Fanny's special quality that with the utmost economy of means she always creates the original in the very process of destroying it, as in two numbers which are exquisite, her present opening song in vaudeville with its reiterations of Victor Hebert's Kiss Me Again, and her Spring Dance. The first is pressed far into burlesque, but before she gets there it has fatally destroyed the whole tedious business of polite and sentimental concert-room vocalism; and the second (Fanny in ballet, with her amazingly angular parody of five-position dancing) puts an end forever to that great obsession of ours, classical interpretative dancing.

Fanny's refinement of technique is far beyond Jolson's; her effects are broad enough, but her methods are all delicate. The frenzy which takes hold of her is as real as his. With him she has the supreme pleasure of knowing that she can do no wrong-and her spirits mount and intensify with every moment on the stage. She creates rapidly and her characterizations have an exceptional roundness and fulness; when the daemon attends she is superb.

It is noteworthy that these two stars bring something to America which America lacks and lovesthey are, I suppose, two of our most popular entertainers--and that both are racially out of the dominant caste. Possibly this accounts for their fine carelessness about our superstitions of politeness and gentility. The medium in which they work requires more decency and less frankness than usually exist in our private lives; but within these bounds Jolson and Brice go farther, go with more contempt for artificial notions of propriety, than anyone else. Jolson has re-created an ancient type, the scalawag servant with his surface dulness and hidden cleverness, a creation as real as Sganarelle. And Fanny has torn through all the conventions and cried out that gaiety still exists. They are parallel lines surcharged with vital energy. I should like to see that fourth-dimensional show in which they will meet.

You can read The Seven Lively Arts by Gilbert Seldes online here; or, if you should, like I, prefer paper to cozy up with, here's the paperback at Amazon -- which, you can get a deal on if you purchase it with The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States by Michael Kammen.

I mention the latter as the blurbs about that book have some of the best, clearest, most concise information on Gilbert Seldes himself.

From Publishers Weekly:

In his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes (1893-1970) made the then-controversial claim that popular entertainment and culture should be treated just as seriously, and as rigorously, as the so-called high arts. Krazy Kat and Irving Berlin were worthy of critical attention, he said; and arts criticism in America hasn't been the same since. Kammen, a historian, stresses the "hands-on" aspect of Seldes's long and versatile career. He was a historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, scriptwriter, journalism school dean, newspaper and magazine columnist and CBS's first director of television. Although at times Kammen seems curiously defensive, his balanced and insightful account of Seldes's professional life?from the early '20s at the Dial magazine (and the beginning of long-running feuds with both Hemingway and the Algonquin Round Table set) to the 1950s debates on the role of "mass culture"?is a story of a life as well as a history of pop culture on the rise. Seldes, Kammen says, thought of himself as "a highbrow populist" and was a "compulsively candid critic." Kammen weights Seldes's contributions fairly but can be equally candid.

Mary Carroll of Booklist:

Cornell University's Kammen is an astute student of U.S. cultural history; People of Paradox (1972), A Machine That Would Go of Itself (1986), and Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) suggest his scope. It's hardly surprising that he would find Seldes a fascinating biographical subject. Seldes was a major contributor to arts criticism and magazine journalism from the 1920s to the 1960s: edited The Dial when it published T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland; wrote a classic defense of popular art, The Seven Lively Arts (1924), hundreds of magazine articles, a successful Broadway treatment of Lysistrata, and programs for radio and TV; and was founding dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. Seldes fought with Hemingway, George Jean Nathan, and Edward R. Murrow and wrestled with issues of current relevance, including "dumbing down" vs. "leveling up" in the mass media and government's role in supporting (or restraining) artistic expression. Seldes shed light rather than heat on significant artistic issues American society has faced.

Also, related, is this piece on The Seven Lively Arts and The Freemasons.

For more on Jolson, the International Al Jolson Society.

The Only Way To Keep A Gal, Is To Keep Her In A Cage

Deanna was working on this piece on collecting vintage sheet music, and showed me this baby:


Since neither Deanna nor I have the sheet music, she's contacting the seller, Joel, of www.sheetmusiccenter.com, for a follow-up article on "coon" music. I'll post the follow-up when she's published it, but I couldn't wait to show off this old cover with a man with a key standing outside his caged girlfriend.

This is what I could find out.

It's by "The Originator of Ragtime" or "The Father of Ragtime" Ben Harney. The Rag-Time Ephemerist has an article on Harney, Ben Harney in Context, which doesn't illuminate the cover art or the song itself much, but the online article does quote from The New York Clipper (September 26, 1896) which covers Harney's time with the Boston Athenaeum Star Specialty Company (touring under the aegis of Andrew J. Hughes, proprietor of Boston's Howard Athenaeum Theater):

His coon songs gained enthusiastic response. He was assisted in the gallery and on the stage by 'Strap' Hill, a colored dancer and singer.

In the article (again, only part of which is available online) there's a tantalizing bit more on "the negro" in question:

Based on the recollections of Harney's wife Jessie, the authors of They All Played Ragtime identified his "stage assistant," "Strap" Hill as a "young Negro ragtime player and entertainer ... from Memphis" whom Harney first met either in or on his way to Chicago in 1893.3 Clipper citations make it clear that Harney and Hill worked together, on and off at least, from the fall of 1896 until the fall of 1898

Harney wasn't favored by commercial recording, but there's an MP3 of him singing The Wagon here.

Stay tuned, as they say...

Tipsey For Nipsey (Russell)

Now I knew Nipsey Russell must have made some comedy records, but I had no idea what I was really in for when I grabbed these two old Nipsey records...


(Yeah, and I left those 50 cent price tags on 'em for the photos -- so it eats at your souls!)

The covers are nearly identical, save for the colorized photos and the song titles. The front covers read:

Nipsey Russell Presents Borderline Records

HARLEMS "Son of Fun"

The spines, however, make a bit more sense with the "Borderline Records Presents Nipsey Russell Harlem's Son of Fun". They also make it clear that I have volumes two and three -- so I'm missing number one (hint-hint y'all!)

Reading the titles doesn't do the works justice -- I know, because I read them and still wasn't prepared -- but here they are. (And hit the links to download/listen.)

Vol II

Side One:

Little Peter My Boy
Drafted
Cherry For A Banana Split

Side Two:

Nudist Wedding
Well Do Hospital
Public Transportation
The Singer

Vol III

Side One:

A Day At The Races
Radio Roundup
My Friend Luigi

Side Two:

Tall In The Saddle
School Days
Honeymoon Hotel

Like many folks, I knew Nipsey from game shows (my favorite, too, is Match Game). But I had no idea that 1960's Nipsey Russell was raunchier than Match Game Nipsey! Who knew that you could get away with such things in the 60's -- let alone without a warning label or whatnot.

Back cover reads:

about "NIPSEY" RUSSELL
HARLEM'S 'SON OF FUN'

NIPSEY RUSSELL is, by all odds, the more perceptive, brilliant and flexible of the current crop of young comedians. His keen wit is so readily adaptable to all situations and types of "Material" that he has been able to vary his efforts to everything from: -- Injecting bright sage humor into RELIGIOUS CONCERTS to -- Touring as Comic M.C. with star-studded Jazz Variety Shows (BILLY ECKSTINE'S GREAT SHOW OF '54) to -- Guest performances on CBS-TV (the ROBERT Q. LEWIS Show) to -- Legitimate Drama (Summer Stock lead in "CABIN IN THE SKY" Seacliff Theater) to -- dispensing the accepted brand of Commercial Comedy in plush Supper Clubs (The ELEGANTE in B'klyn and the CORDILLION ROOM of the CONCORD HOTEL). He projects so easily in each medium and with such warmth and affability that he is completely captivating to most audiences.

NIPSEY was born in Atlanta, Georgia and danced professionally from the age of nine. He received his early training in showmanship and stagecraft from two entertainment "Greats", EDDY HEYWOOD Senior and ANDY FAIRCHILD. College trained in Liberal Arts and Business, Nipsey served overseas in World War II as Army Lieutenant in the Medical Administrative Corps.

NIPSEY RUSSELL wrote, directed and emceed his own Radio Variety Show (STATION WLIB-N.Y.) for more than 17 months; played a featured part in the Negro National Network's RUBY VALENTINE SHOW Starring Juanita Hall... and was top comic in the STUDIO FILM "Rhythm" SERIES. Nipsey is a great favorite at the Famous APOLLO theater and his 10 year record run at Harlem's CLUB BABY GRAND is still unsurpassed. IN THESE ALBUMS -- Nipsey demonstrates his mastery of the "Double Entendre" Quips & Quotes and his hilarious interpretations of the raucous and bawdy routines he laughingly calls --

"DIALOGUE THEY DARE YOU TO DO!"

Die-hard collectors, I found no real info on these recordings. The album cover text which says that Nipsey presents Borderline Records made me wonder if this was his own label. Even when I found a (very few) other vintage records by Borderline, also comedy recordings, I wasn't sure... Nipsey had a business degree you know.

But Barnes and Noble states, "In 1960 Russell signed to the Borderline label and released a series of comedy LPs including Confucius Told Me, Things They Never Taught at School, The Birds and the Bees and All That Jazz, and Sing Along with Nipsey Russell."

Also, most if not all of the bits recorded on these two records (and the others) were also recorded on the (much easier to find) Humorsonic label -- which I also didn't find any real info about. (I'm still not satisfied with this; so more research is required.)



Here are my 'liner notes' and additional resources:

I think this may be what is referred to as "STUDIO FILM "Rhythm" SERIES".

This was the only reference I could find to Nipsey's radio show.

Listen to NPR's tribute to Nipsey Russell.

The cover states it was the Negro National Network, but it was (should you care to continue searching) in reality the National Negro Network, started in 1953 by Leonard Evans. W. Leonard Evans, Jr. died in June of this year (2007); he left a wonderful legacy of African-American media. Here's a wonderful 1963 interview with Evans titled "Why Do We Need a Negro Sunday Supplement?" Should that site remove the recording, or you'd prefer to download it for listening to later (it is quite long), I've uploaded a copy here.

For more on African-Americans and radio history, see this article by author Donna Halper (whose interesting media bio includes the discovery of Rush.

From Nipsey to Rush. This is why I dig collecting.

PS When sharing the Nipsey humor tracks with your friends, please credit me, Silent Porn Star, with a link. It's polite, proper and provides incentive for me to go through the bother of making such files to share. Thank you.

Billie Holiday

I never knew that Billie Holiday left the stage midway through the song and allegedly slashed the heckler with a knife -- then resumed singing. The song? Strange Fruit, a song about the lynching of a black man in the American South.

You can find more here, at PCL. (The link they direct us to, the Walter Gordon Collection, is not working now... I keep my fingers crossed for its return. Meanwhile, use the Google cache.)

You can also find a press release on the collection here.

Also via Google cache, I found this image:

The text reads: John Levy (left) and Walter Gordon stand in the court hallway before Billie Holiday’s criminal assault trial. Levy was Holiday's manager and boyfriend for much of her turbulent career.

That's Bull Moose, Not Randy, Jackson

Bullmoose Jackson was born Benjamin Clarence Jackson in Cleveland in 1919. It was in 1943 that bandleader Lucky Millinder's band that gave him the unforgettable name "Bull Moose."

Here's more according to Schadenfreudian Therapy -- Featuring 1950-60s vintage Calypso music (the REAL stuff, not Harry Belafonte or the souvenir steel drum music sold to tourists) -- where I found Bull Moose:

His own band, the Buffalo Bearcats, earned more in the late 1940s than both Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn. Bullmoose hired some great sidemen for his band, including drummer Panama Francis, bassist Red Callender, (longtime Monk tenor man) Charlie Rouse, and Sam "The Man" Taylor (best known for his work on the original Screamin Jay Hawkins classic "I Put a Spell on You"). But the song you probably know him for -- "Big Ten Inch Record" -- was recorded after his greatest fame, in 1952 with the Tiny Bradshaw Orchestra.

You can even download seven Bullmoose Jackson cuts here.

Songs in the download are:

Big Fat Mamas Are Back in Style
Keep Your Big Mouth Shut
Nosey Joe
Cherokee Boogie
We Can Talk Some Trash
Bowlegged Woman
Get Off the Table, Mabel

Amazingly, I've heard Get Off the Table, Mable. But you know I'm lovin' Big Fat Mamas Are Back in Style and Bowlegged Woman. Wonderful music and risque songs; how have I lived so long without these songs?

I also found the lyrics to Big Fat Mamas Are Back in Style:

Listen, sister
You should wear a smile
Jump for joy just like a child
'Cause big fat mamas are back in style

Listen, brother
It's all over that dial
Hear that crowd, they're going wild
'Cause big fat mamas are back in style

You need a big fat mama
And boys you can't go wrong
A big fat mama
To rule your home sweet home

Listen, mama
You gotta keep that double chin
'Cause the big fat mamas and the little fat mamas
Are back in style again

(More info on the lyrics here.)

Bull Moose died in 1989, but his mark on the history of rhythm & blues will remain forever.

Wow, racist Black Americana and a sex joke.

Hubby and I went to an auction, and won a box full of old postcards and photos. He pulls out this first one and says, "Wow, racist Black Americana and a sex joke."

I look at the card and am puzzled... "Sex joke? He's just feeling like the black sheep..."

"Look at the sheep's mouth!" he insists (his tone a mix of impatience and disbelief at my stupidity).


Oh

My

Gawd.

The black sheep is in the same blackface as the man.



"He's been screwing the sheep and this is proof," he exclaims triumphantly. (Not pleased at the imagery, is he, but rather he's glad my light-bulb finally went on.)

So much for me being the 'sex collector' with sex on my mind all the time, huh.

Well, it is my virgin experience with such an item.

Sure, I've seen variations on the old sex with sheep joke, but it's always been the Greeks who sheepishly become the butt of the joke. Not that I'm saying it's better to make jokes about the Greeks than it is the black people, but then blackface takes things to a whole other level. Just talking about this makes me uncomfortable...

Not sure I should even own it. Not sure who should. But for now, I do.

This card, published by Central Minnesota Novelty Co. (St. Cloud, Minn), number 190, also shocks me because is it postmarked 1954. The freakin' 50s?! If this had been from say the 30's, I wouldn't have been quite so shocked. Repulsed, yeah; but less shocked.

But wait, there's more!

We also found another vintage racist postcard in the box. This one depicts a little black boy behind a fence with a goose pecking at his, err, pecker. The text reads, "Early bird catches the worm."



A bit less shocking to me -- maybe because it's after seeing the other one?

...Then again, when's the last time you heard a black man's genitalia referred to as a small worm?

Published by Noble (how ironic is that?), of Colorado Springs, "A Genuine KromeKolor Comic Card" (I'm surprised they didn't make one more "c" a "k" to get the three K's), this one is postmarked 1951. It bears a copyright symbol and is card number 217.

Politically Incorrect Swizzle Sticks

The auction for these stir sticks ends in just a few hours (so if you want 'em, bid now!), so I figured I'd best borrow the photo and comment as quickly as I can.

I've never seen these before, and I am completely charmed -- in an utterly perverted sense of the word 'charmed', I am sure, but nevertheless, I love these! As a collector, these non-PC items thrill me. As a woman, I am both horrified and amused by the depictions of the aging process... I'd like to add that while these are about black folks, I'd be equally enthralled if these women were white. But they are not. Undoubtedly, as Black Americana, they will get 3 times the final bid of white chicks too. But on to my horror & delight...

If you look closely, inside each woman's abdomen (or uterus) is a number, her age. Note at 15 how firm her breasts are, but at 30, they begin to droop... let's not even talk about 40. And apparently, women look so bad after 40, there's no sense in making a swizzle stick.

I think I need a drink after this ;)

PS I found these by watching the ebay feed on the sidebar -- that thing will be the death of my bank account yet.