A Puzzlement

Every so often I find things at estate sales that don't seem to belong with the rest of the stuff.  

A good example of this is an autographed picture I found last week.  The gentleman whose estate items were being sold, appeared to have been a Caucasian guy who worked in the film industry.  In addition to the usual sorts of household items, the estate included some Judaica, a box of postcards of classic automobiles, and a large box of black and white stock photos taken on the sets of many "B" movies. 

In the box with the pictures from the forgettable films, there was an autographed picture of four California politicians, which I brought home for 25 cents.  

It's addressed to Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (the second man from the left) by Mervyn Dymally (the third man from the left).  Dymally, a native of Trinidad, was the first black state senator elected in California and the first black lieutenant governor in California.  He also served six terms in Congress.  I think the other two men in the photo are (far left) Billy Mills, a retired Superior Court judge and one of the first three African Americans elected to the Los Angeles City Council, and (far right) Leon Ralph, a former state Assemblyman from Watts who later became pastor of a church.  (Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'll update this blog post.)

It certainly wasn't Sam Yorty's estate; he died in 1998.  And it wasn't Mervyn Dymally's estate; he died in 2012 in another part of Los Angeles County.

I often uncover mysteries at estate sales.  Sometimes I'm able to piece together information about the items I find; other times, they just have to stay mysteries.  Maybe someone found the photo at an estate sale, and added it to their own collection?

Regardless of its travels, the photo is now on its way to the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State Los Angeles, Mervyn Dymally's alma mater.

Most Faithfully

Hollywood is in the middle of its Awards Season.  Local newspapers are stuffed with full-page ads and inserts headed "For Your Consideration," which are mirrored on local radio and TV.   Everyone roots for their favorite movies and favorite actors, hoping they will win one or more of the coveted prizes.

It's not uncommon for me to find movie memorabilia at estate sales.  Scrapbooks with stock photographs of celebrities, or more often newspaper and magazine clippings relating to famous actors and actresses, are not uncommon things for people to save.

Yesterday I dropped by the estate sale of a woman who was born in 1912 and died last year at 95.  I found only one piece of Hollywood ephemera there: a signed photograph of one of a young lady's favorite actors.

"Most Faithfully, Rin-Tin-Tin" is in large script, and below in smaller letters it reads "Lee Duncan, Master and Friend, 1929."

Why would someone save a photograph ostensibly signed by a dog (and not even an original pawtograph!), until the day she died at age 95?  Rin Tin Tin must have been pretty special to her.

I decided to do a little research on this, one of Hollywood's first canine heroes, and it turns out that he was pretty special to a lot of people, not the least of whom were the heads of Warner Bros. studios.  

Note:  The dog in the photographs here is not the only one to carry the name "Rin Tin Tin."  Many people reading this blog will remember a handsome German Shepherd who had the title role in the popular 1950s TV series Rin Tin Tin.  The original Rin Tin Tin was a movie star in the 1920s and early '30s; I found lots of additional photos of him online.  And what a star he was.

Almost every Hollywood story is a mixture of truth and hype, so the actual story of the first Rin Tin Tin may never be fully known.  But as the generally-accepted story goes, Rin Tin Tin was found in France in 1918 by an American serviceman, Lee Duncan.  In 1919, when World War I was over, Duncan brought the dog back home to Southern California and spent hours each day training him.  

Duncan, like so many young people in the early 1920s, was tempted by the siren song of the movie industry, based only a few miles from his home.  Duncan wrote a screenplay set in the Sierra Nevada mountains for Rin Tin Tin, took the dog and went from studio to studio trying to interest them in his project.   

The Internet Movie Database shows Rin Tin Tin as one of the actors in The Man from Hell's River (1922), which starred Wallace Beery, and My Dad (also 1922), which starred longtime Hollywood actress Ruth Clifford.  

Then Warner Bros. bought Duncan's screenplay for Where the North Begins (1923) and cast Rin Tin Tin in the leading role.  It was the start of a beautiful, and very lucrative, relationship.  Rinty, as he was known, made 16 pictures for Warner Bros. between 1923 and 1928, then nine more -- well, I guess you could call them "barkies," instead of "talkies" between 1928 and '31.   The films were so successful that studio insiders reportedly called Rin Tin Tin "the mortgage lifter," because the proceeds from his movies bailed the studio out of financial trouble time and again.  Rin Tin Tin's films also helped launch the career of a young screenwriter named Daryl F. Zanuck.

In most of his films, Rin Tin Tin got top or near-top billing.  Most of his films were huge box office and critical successes, and by 1926 Rin Tin Tin was earning a reported $6,000 a week, the equivalent of almost $77,000 a week today -- more than most of Warner's human stars were earning at the time.  Rin Tin Tin did celebrity endorsements for Ken-L-Ration dog food.  He was often photographed in human-type poses.  Gossip columnists wrote about him, his "wife" Nannette and their puppies, as though they were human. 

In 1929, voting for the first Academy Awards took place, honoring the films of 1927 and 1928.  Multiple sources say that Rin Tin Tin actually received the most votes for Best Actor, but the Motion Picture Academy leaders decided that, for credibility's sake, the award should go to the Best Human Actor, and it was won by the Swiss-born German/Austrian actor Emil Jannings (who later went on to star in a number of Nazi propaganda films).  That same year, Warner Bros. was also given a special award of merit for producing the first "talking" picture, The Jazz Singer, which transformed the motion picture industry.

Rin Tin Tin's radio show, to which he contributed barks, started in 1930 (although a human actor named Bob Barker -- no, really -- supplied many of the canine sound effects) and he starred in it until 1932, when his son Rin Tin Tin, Junior took over.  Rin Tin Tin's last film was a 12-part serial in 1931, called The Lightning Warrior.  One of his co-stars, far down in the billing, was a young man named Yakima Canutt. 

Rin Tin Tin died in 1932.  His passing made international news.  Like his life, his death is the stuff of legend -- one account has the dog drawing his last breath in the front yard of his master's home, cradled in the arms of a neighbor, sex symbol Jean Harlow (which many human males at the time would have envied).  His name lives on through his many descendants; Rin Tin Tin the Twelfth is currently spokesdog for the American Humane Association. 

In her book Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, author Susan Orlean wrote: 

In his way, Rin Tin Tin had come to represent something essentially American. He wasn’t born in the United States, and neither were his parents, but those facts only made him more quintessentially American: he was an immigrant in a country of immigrants. He was everything Americans wanted to think they were — brave, enterprising, bold, and most of all, individual.  

Perhaps that's what the young lady who saved his picture for 84 years admired about Rin Tin Tin; perhaps she, too, hoped to be brave, enterprising, bold, individual, and -- as the autographed picture said -- faithful.

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CBS Sunday Morning did a story on Rin Tin Tin when Susan Orlean's book came out.  It has film footage of the original Rinty and several of the other dogs who carried his name:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv8w4_nuGbY

Here’s a video clip of the original Rin Tin Tin, introducing a new movie with human stars:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD9C6DqQ2xY

The Internet Movie Database has more biographical and anecdotal information on the original Rin Tin Tin:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0863833/bio?ref_=nm_dyk_qt_sm#quotes

An NPR blog highlights a biography of Rin Tin Tin:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/09/24/140746523/rin-tin-tin-from-battlefield-to-hollywood-a-story-of-friendship

As does The Telegraph (UK):  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9010387/Rin-Tin-Tin-the-dog-who-charmed-the-world.html

Many people devote blog space to the memory of Rin Tin Tin, such as this one: 

http://rand3285.edublogs.org/sample-page/

Susan Orlean's book is here:  http://www.amazon.com/Rin-Tin-Legend-Orlean-Hardcover/dp/B00BR5G9M0/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390185688&sr=1-4&keywords=rin+tin+tin

Another book, Rin Tin Tin: The Movie Star gives some alternative information about the life of the famous canine:  http://www.amazon.com/Rin-Tin-Tin-Movie-Star-Ann-Elwood/dp/1453866655/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390185606&sr=1-2&keywords=rin+tin+tin

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Vintage postcard, to be discussed in a new blog post soon!

A Roasting Pan Like Grandma's: Wagner Magnalite

I received a vintage roasting pan for Christmas from The Man of the House (who was also a beneficiary of the ham I baked therein).  

Yesterday I posted a photo of it on the Facebook page of Dusty Old Thing.  

This morning I awoke early to the notification system of my cell phone, a continuous tiny buzzing and fooping sound, telling me that Facebook was forwarding comments from other Dusty Old Thing readers about how much they love their old cookware.  Nearly 500 people (and counting) have chimed in on the subject of the Wagner Magnalite pan.

Guess I better put it on the blog too.....

The genesis of the story is as follows:  At Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law told me the story of one of her roasting pans.  It had come from the estate of her mother-in-law, who had purchased it new from a door-to-door salesman in the 1930s.  Grandma had always used it to cook pot roast, I learned.  

I do love to use old things to cook with.  My little kitchen is packed with RevereWare and Pyrex and Fire King, old cutlery and flatware.  

I looked on the bottom of the pan and saw the faded words  

Wagner Ware 

Sidney 

-O-

And below them

Magnalite.

That sent me to the computer to look up the history of the company.  And what in the world is Magnalite?

The American Culinary website gives some of the history:

1865

Matthew and Marvin Griswold first manufactured articles of light hardware but are credited with making the firm a leader in the manufacture of cast iron cookware. Roger Griswold foresaw electricity as an ideal heat source and developed the first complete electric commercial cookware line in Erie, Pennsylvania, USA.

1881

Bernard and Milton Wagner first manufactured metal castings of light hardware for general stores and tin hollowware for government contract work. They are credited as the original and first to cast iron for cookware and holloware in Sidney, Ohio, USA and WagnerWare was born.

1891

William and Louis Wagner joined the partnership and they built the first and most modern cookware manufacturing facility of the time. The Wagner brothers were pioneers and the first in America to cast aluminum and iron cookware. As sole manufacturers of WagnerWare, they won top honors at the Chicago, Nashville, Paris, Buffalo and St. Louis Exposition and further acknowledged at the Panama-Pacific International Expo. in San Francisco, California as the finest aluminum ware in the World.

1934

Wagner created a chemistry of blended metal and named it Magnalite. They retain, John Gordon Rideout who along with Frank Lloyd Wright, were original Fellows of the Society of Design Engineers, and proponents of the design philosophy "form follows function." This unique vessel design and mission style handle gave birth to this respected American Classic.

A buyer's guide to Magnalite on eBay provides details on the metal itself:

Magnalite by Wagner was hand poured and cast in Sidney, Ohio (1934 - 1999). It is considered to be some of the finest American made cookware ever produced. Genuine Magnalite cookware is in high demand by collectors and daily users, alike.

From an Original Magnalite Care and Use Instructions Booklet...  "Magnalite [cookware] is made from aluminum and a special magnesium alloy which is an excellent heat conductor and reacts well to change in temperature, it is 'cast as thick as two silver dollars' and 'cooks food from all sides-it's like having an oven on top of your range (heat radiates from every part of Magnalite not from the bottom only).  Can be taken from refrigerator to the oven."

As long as I was on eBay, I noticed that there were several dozen Magnalite roasting pans for sale.  

And Christmas was coming!

That was enough for me.  I told "Santa" about his grandmother's pot roast pan and provided some directions about how he might acquire a similar one.   

By Christmas morning, a big box was under the tree.  I opened it and took my new, old pan to the kitchen.

The pan even had a trivet, on which to rest the roast.

By Christmas afternoon, the ham was on the trivet in the pan in the oven:

Christmas dinner was assured, with the promise of split pea and ham soup to come.

(Magnalite brand cookware is still being made, by the modern incarnation of the same company.  It is also being faked in a country overseas, so be careful if you decide you need to have one of these pans.)
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What's Missing from Your Christmas?

If you haven't read my blog post "The Truth Behind Santa Claus," please take a couple of minutes to do so. 

It talks about the need for people to have hope in something yet to come, faith that there's something -- someone! -- loving and righteous that's larger than themselves, and the understanding that their choices have consequences (sometimes expressed as What Goes Around, Comes Around).  Cultures around the world hold these values, and even children understand these principles.

http://estatesalechronicles.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-truth-behind-santa-claus.html

This post, below, follows those thoughts a little farther.  
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A few months ago, I attended the estate sale of a local gentleman who had been an architect and artist.  The items for sale included many of his blueprints and renderings for homes and businesses, as well as a few of his set designs for stage productions.  

When I saw one of his set designs for a Christmas pageant, I noticed that something was missing from it that exemplifies what Christmas is really all about.  I plunked down my dollar and brought it home.  

Take a look at the architect's rendering, printed on a large piece of thin paper.  It has the bright light from the wonderful star, the little town, beautiful colors in the night sky.  It even has a rather ornate stable -- everything we need to know that this drawing is about Christmas.

What intrigued me, though, is not what the artist drew, but what he left out, or rather barely suggested in the picture.  He left an odd-shaped white space in the center of the Christmas drawing, with a few light pencil strokes to show that something, someone -- no, three someones -- are missing from the picture.  

The picture would only be complete when the actors took center stage in the Christmas pageant.

If you know the Christmas story that's presented in the ancient Scriptures, you know that the three people missing in the artist's work are Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  Each character is essential for the Christmas story to be complete.  

Mary and Joseph had hope: they had something to look forward to.  All of her young life, Mary had heard the many prophecies that a Messiah, a Savior would someday come, not just for Israel but for the whole world.  But Mary never could have predicted it would come true in her lifetime, and through her own life.  

An angel appeared to Mary and told her that she, who'd never been with a man, would have a child, and that child would literally be the Son of God -- God with us -- that very Messiah that the ancient prophets foretold.  Mary also needed faith to trust, to believe that what the angel said was true and that God would sustain her through the very unusual circumstances that were about to happen.  Mary's choice to trust what the angel said, had consequences.

Joseph needed faith to trust in something inexplicable that was more powerful than himself.  Joseph was pledged to be Mary's husband.  When he found out she was pregnant and knew he wasn't the father of her child, he planned to quietly break off their relationship.  

But before Joseph could do so, he faced what was probably the biggest challenge of his spiritual life.  An angel visited him in a dream, and told him that the baby Mary was carrying was not the result of some other man's will, but a miracle.  God Himself had chosen to make an extraordinary entrance into this ordinary world by fulfilling all those prophecies -- right in the middle of Joseph's life.  Joseph made the choice to trust God, and stay with Mary and the baby.

(Note:  Why shouldn't God use extraordinary means to signal His own arrival on earth?  How else would we have known, except through the fulfillment of the prophecies and the miracle of the Incarnation, that Jesus was not just another little Jewish kid?  His birth was, after all, the start on earth of the one extraordinary life that changed the ordinary world for all of time.)

Jesus is the central figure in the blank spot in our Christmas story.  He exemplifies all three things we need for Christmas to be complete: hope, faith and the understanding that our choices have consequences.   

I'll turn to British author Elizabeth Goudge to describe Him, via her 1951 book God So Loved the World.  The Christmas story is excerpted in her 1967 work A Christmas Book.  (I found a copy of the latter, of course, at an estate sale.)

Here's the background, in Goudge's words:

This is the story of an almost unbelievable humbling, nothing less than the story of the life that God lived when he came down from heaven and lived upon earth as a man.... [In the person of Jesus] God lived and died for us men and for our salvation.  

The fact of this humility is so glorious that it is beyond human understanding, but the limitations of race and time and place put a sort of picture-frame about the glory, so that we can look at it without being blinded.  And we must look at it, because the picture in the frame is the most important thing in this world, or in any other.

To have a relationship with God, we need to have faith that He exists and that He loves us and is interested in having a relationship with us.  (Note: God is not interested in us having some form of "religion."  Any fool can do "religious" things and not have love for God and other people in her or his heart.)  This relationship gives us hope for our future with Him.

Man had forgotten what God looked like.  In the beginning God made man and loved him, and man looked up at God, and loved him also.... Man loved God of his own choice because God had given him free will.  Unless God had given man the gift of choice he would have been incapable of love, because it is the nature of love that it cannot be compelled, but must be freely given.

As Goudge illustrates, our choices have consequences:

But now man did the most dreadful thing that he has ever done in the whole course of his history.  He turned away from God and put himself in the centre instead of God.  He chose to love and serve himself instead of God, and for a man to think himself more worthy of attention than God is pride, the most detestable of all the sins and the root of all the others....

Goudge describes what God did, to shore up our faith and give us hope:

...The great love of God chose to do two things: to show himself to man all over again in his eternal beauty, and to lift up the great weight of sin that kept man a prisoner and carry it away, that man might be free to rise up and turn from self to God, and to serve and love him as he used to do in the beginning.

God, in the person of Jesus Christ, also made choices:

And the way of God's choice was the way of this humbling.  He came down to earth and lived as a man among men, that they might see and hear and touch eternal beauty, and he took upon himself the dreadful suffering and death that are the result of sin, though he himself was sinless, and in this way lifted the load and carried it away.

This great showing-forth and deliverance God accomplished for us in the person of his Son, who is one with him, the Word of God, the brightness of the everlasting light and the image of his goodness....  The suffering and death endured for us by him are the suffering and death of God.

But he has still left to us the power of choice.  We need not look at him and love him unless we want to.  We need not turn from ourselves to him unless we choose.  But if we have once looked at him, even though we have seen him only dimly, we find we cannot do anything else but try our very hardest to put him in the centre of our lives.

A Hankie (or Two) for Christmas

I often find vintage handkerchiefs at estate sales.  I thought it would be fun to show you some of the ones I've found in the last few months that have Christmas designs on them.  

Bradford Santa and His Reindeer Set

In keeping with the season, I thought I would post photos of this vintage 1950s Christmas tabletop (or under-the-tree) decoration:  

A set of Bradford Santa Claus and His Reindeer, in their original box.  I found them at the estate sale of a 101-year-old man.

A quick online search showed me that Bradford made several different versions of Jolly Old St. Nick and his business associates.  

The reindeer came in a variety of styles, numbers and colors including white, silver, brown and metallic green.   

My set includes white (albino?) reindeer, a metallic red Santa and a metallic green sleigh, still in their original box and with their original red ribbon reins.

Santa was supposed to have a Christmas tree, but it's missing from the set.  The previous owner lost the original tree and substituted a green plastic frond of some kind -- perhaps a decoration from an aquarium?  From a distance it's close enough to a tree, so I kept it.

You can see that the set is a decent size, next to a 12" ruler.

Bradford Novelty Company was a family-owned business that operated in Pennsylvania for about 50 years, then closed in 2006.  They made decorations for other holidays, but were best-known for their Christmas items.

Like so many other mid-century companies, they are no more, but many of their lovely old Christmas ornaments are still available, at online auction sites and of course, if you're lucky, at estate and yard sales.  

You can see an assortment of photos of their work by looking at Google Images for "Bradford Vintage Christmas" or a similar search.

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This blog has some photos and information about Bradford: 

 http://mactavers.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Collect-Cute-Plastic-Vintage-Christmas-Collectibles-from-the-1950s-and-1960s