We’re barely out of the 1940s–1952, to be exact–and this lovely lady is presaging the Sixties already by wearing cut-off jeans shorts, no doubt called “dungarees” at that time. She’s a missus, too: Mrs. Linda Plannette. Looks like a sunny but cool Spring day in Southern California, judging by the long sleeves. My guess is that she didn’t traipse around in cut-offs all the time. Likely, her husband Paul Plannette, wanted to take a picture of the Merc and said, “Hey, how about a little cheesecake in the photo, huh?” Check out the big fat palm tree in the background.
Text in this Popular Mechanics piece says that
Mrs. Linda Plannette…is a spare-time Los Angeles mechanic. She and her husband put together the souped-up car, using a standard Mercury frame, shortened by 18 inches and a stock 1949 Mercury engine.
The guys over at Jalopy Journal say she looks like Geena Davis. I had to pull up a picture of the actress because it’s not a face that I have in my memory banks. My evaluation: sure, a little bit. Davis’ is a standard-issue attractive face. It’s not worth posting her picture; you can Google her.
I’d love to know what became of Linda Plannette. Is she sitting in a nursing home in Indio as we speak? Or not? My parents who are in their 80s are still going strong at their own place, no elderly people are they. Mrs. Plannette would be their age or a bit younger.
The past always seems to be so…old. Previous styles, mores, customs seem to have vanished, replaced wholesale with an entirely new set of styles, mores, and customs.
That’s why we can snicker at ridiculous stuff like men with handlebar mustaches riding crazy bicycles and corpulent women vamping it up as if they were sex goddesses.
In thinking about the past, I still can’t decide if we’re basically the same as our ancestors or if we are completely different. The easier thought is that we are different; that they inhabited a different nation than us, a nation called 1913, 1945, 1864, or whenever.
We see a series of women, most of them looking very 1922. But the one who really bridges the gap between the ages is the woman at 1:11, in the green. Her clip lasts only ten seconds, but in that short time we see an awkward girl of perhaps 20 years old begin with a shy smile, turn her head, turn back to the camera with just a wisp of a sexy glower, and then smile again.
Ten seconds.
Unlike the other women, who were actresses and who knew how to act very silent movie-like, she didn’t know how. Who was she? Whoever, she was probably born around 1900 and died by 1980.
So, turn off the sound, hit Play, advance to around 1:11, and go back in the past.
Sizzling, steamy hot. Oh sure, by today’s standards, she would probably never make the tabloid pages. But considering the time period and the hideously, troll-like son she produced, I’d have to say that Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome, later Lady Randolph Churchill, was a damn fine-looking lady with smoky dark looks.
A comedian who delivers “the most hilarious speech of his career” in front of 1,000 fellow celebrities at The Beverly Hilton, then collapses. An emcee who shouts for a doctor and “five physicians immediately run to the dais.” And then–get this–they cut open his chest with a pocket knife. And then–well, ya just gotta hear the rest.
It sounds like a corny “And, boy, are my arms tired!” comedy skit, but it really did happen.
Harry Parke and Lucille Ball Shortly Before Parke’s Death
Park Your Carcass Right Here
Harry Parke, born Harry Einstein in 1904, was a comedian, and by the 1950s was resting on the laurels of his invented persona, a Greek named Parkyakarkus. This fictive name translates to “park a your carcass.” Remember, in these days nobody blinked at ethnic humor.
Harry was one of those clubby, fraternizing comedians who was chums with all the stars of the day. So, naturally Harry belonged to the clubby, fraternal Friar’s Club in Beverly Hills, California.
Before the Friars established their permanent address on Little Santa Monica*, they would use any suitable venue for their celebrity roasts. And for the roast of luminaries Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, the Beverly Hilton was the place.
On November 24, 1958, Harry Parke had just finished his testimonial and had sat back down again. Parke sat next to Milton Berle, then slumped his head onto Berle’s shoulder and passed out.
Emcee Art Linkletter said, “How come anyone as funny as this isn’t on the air?”
When it became clear that Parke was seriously not well, he asked for help from the audience. As Linkletter related 42 years later to Larry King, he asked, on-mike, if
…anybody here have a nitroglycerin tablet?’ [To King:] We could have had enough to bury him. Everybody had them. Everybody has heart problems, see?
According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, that number was roughly twelve, saying “More than a dozen men came up with such pills.”
Linkletter then asked singer Tony Martin to sing a song to divert the crowd’s attention.
Martin’s unfortunate choice was “There’s No Tomorrow.”
Husky Western actor John Bromfield, star of “Revenge of the Creature,” part of the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” franchise, carried Parke to a “small corridor in back of the dais,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Improvised Pocket-Knife Surgery and Shock
The most startling aspect of this story is the improvised pocket-knife surgery and shock treatment of his heart.
As related by The Milwaukee Sentinel on November 25, 1958:
Here, George Burns talks to reporters at the Beverly Hilton. According to the caption on this USC Digital Library image, Parke is being operated on behind the double doors to the right.
Parke was the father of present-day comedians Albert Brooks and “Super Dave” Osborn.
Friar’s Club Beverly Hills
The Friar’s Club, known for its roasts of celebrities, was quite a place in its time. I remember its utter windowlessness being one of its great defining features. You would drive down hot, bright, jangly Santa Monica Blvd., and then you would be enveloped in the cool darkness of the Friar’s Club, a place outside of time. It has now been demolished.
Library of Congress’ National Jukebox. This is a treasure trove of free music and spoken word recordings from the Library of Congress’ archives. Only after reading a carefully-worded disclaimer about the representation of ethnicities in days of yore are you able to listen to these wonderful recordings.
USC Digital Library. Here you can find a pair of images titled “Friars club on night Parkyakarkus died, 1958.”
This picture came up today in BoingBoing.net, via a Tumblr post. What struck me, and several of the commenters, wasn’t so much the monkey aspect but the Woman On The Right.
She is an anachronism. She looks like someone you might meet on the street today.
But she probably did not adhere to beauty standards of the day: too scruffy, too thin, too ethnic. Some of the BoingBoing comments say:
I’m pretty sure I saw the woman on the right in a coffe shop in the Mission the other day.
The woman on the right really is striking. . .She could walk into most any bar or restaurant 90 years later and the majority reaction would be ‘wow’ (or at least. . .mmm okay).
Even the next-over woman isn’t so bad herself, though the hairstyle looks decidedly Marcelled or at least like something from the 1920s or 1930s:
