I’ll be so famous people will completely forget about that other Marilyn. Just wait and see. When you hear the phrase “Marilyn Walk” you probably associate it with Marilyn Monroe’s distinctive sashay. That’s a fine image, but if your name happens literally to be Marilyn Walk then that means you went down in Hollywood history unremembered. We like to imagine Walk dreaming of catching her first big break and seeing an article about herself entitled “Walk of Fame.” It doesn’t seem as if that happened, but this shot by renowned lensman Bruno Bernard, aka Bernard of Hollywood, bestows a sort of fame upon Walk all by itself by making her image a rare collectible. It was probably made during the early 1950s. And just in case you think we’re making up her name, the reverse of the photo appears below.
Update: We now think this is Playboy model Marilyn Waltz. The look is right, the time is right, and the name is close. She was probably trying out a pseudonym to dissociate herself from her centerfold appearances, which spanned February 1954 to April 1955. Or this shot predated those appearances and she used a new name for her nude modeling. Either way, we're 95% on her identity.
Aww, we can’t believe how big she’s gotten.
A naked woman in a baby crib? From our 2012 perspective we think the whole idea is a bit deviant, but in 1963 presumably this photo from Bruno Bernard, aka Bernard of Hollywood, was totally innocuous, right? No, we didn’t think so either. Nude photography runs the gamut. Sometimes it depicts women as strong or even domineering, but more often it suggests that the perfect woman is pliant and childlike, so to us at least, going the extra step and putting the model in a crib is just a bit too overt for good taste. But we were not even zygotes in 1963 so we’re not trying to judge. The photo is pretty, and that’s really all we can say. The week’s quips, with observations from poet Carl Sandburg and actor Vincent Price, are below. Dec 8: “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”—Carl Sandburg Dec 9: “A lot of girls who can dish it out can’t cook it.”—Vincent Price Dec 10: Behind every successful man there’s a woman nagging him he’s not so hot. Dec 11: “Solo: A loud passage played by the orchestra leader’s brother-in-law.”—John Doremus Dec 12: “Every time my mother-in-law comes to sleep at our house, I have breakfast in bed. I sleep in the kitchen.”—Bobby Ramsen Dec 13: “The modern girl marries for keeps; she keeps on working and keeps house.”—Paul Fogarty Dec 14: There’s no economy in going to bed early to save candles if the result is twins—Chinese Prov.
When she says jump you ask how high.
Some call it cheesecake, glamour, or even smut, but we prefer to call it preserving the ephemera of history. For instance, this image by the renowned mid-century photographer Bruno Bernard, aka Bernard of Hollywood, did not exist on the internet a moment ago. And now it does. See how that works? So think of us as archivists, and yourselves as researchers. That probably won’t help if someone sees you looking at this image, but hey, it’s worth a try. Of late, when reading the Goodtime Weekly quips, we’ve been imagining them delivered as part of a stand-up show—i.e., followed by uproarious laughter. That actually helps a bit. When we obey the two drink minimum that helps even more. Next we’re going to steal a few of these lines and try them out in the real world. After all, the true test of a quip is whether actual living and breathing, flesh and blood humans laugh at it. So we’re going to give some of these a trial run and get back to you. Stay tuned. Oct 13: Mother Nature still blushes before disrobing. Oct 14: “Sometimes a man pulls the wool over his wife’s eyes with the wrong yarn.”—Mitch Miller Oct 15: “Have you heard of an elephant that went on a diet? Now he’s eating like a horse.”—Peggie Castle Oct 16: “The ten best years of a woman’s life are between her 25th and 26th birthday.”—Jerry Lester Oct 17: “Overheard at a restaurant: ‘She promised to love, honor, and obey. Now I’d settle for only one.’”—Irv Kupcinet Oct 18: “Every husband knows the best time to wash the dishes is right after his wife tells him.”—Paul Gibson Oct 19: “Husbands are like furnaces. You have to watch them or they’ll go out.”—Sam Cowling
Hmm, maybe I should change this wallpaper. Some well known photographers have contributed to the Goodtime Weekly Calendar, but the above image is by a true icon—Bruno Bernard, aka Bernard of Hollywood. The German-born Bernard possessed a doctorate in criminal psychology and had no formal photographic training, but after leaving Germany in 1937 was operating his own portrait studio within a year. His second studio was on Sunset Boulevard, and that’s where he worked for 25 years, along the way creating such iconic images as Marilyn Monroe’s Niagara and River of No Return promos, Lili St. Cyr’s Indian headdress and transparent bathtub shots, and portraits of virtually every star in mid-century Hollywood. The Goodtime Calendar has several other Bernard contributions, and you’ll see those as the year continues. As a side note, you may be wondering why we’re showing you this second week of July image a week early. It’s because we’re headed off to Sevilla, Spain tomorrow for a week or so, and we won’t be posting during that time. Well, you never know. Probably we won’t. Depends on what we see. But anyway, we didn’t want our vacation to interrupt our Goodtime Weekly series, so you get this page a week early. You also get the quips a week early:
July 7: “When a man opens the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.”—Larry Attebery July 8: When a pensive little thing gets married, she often becomes an expensive little thing. July 9: “A psychiatrist is a man who doesn’t have to worry so long as other people do.”—Pat Buttram July 10: “A Hollywood guy changes his name once, a dollar bill once in a while, and his girl once she gets wise.”—Joe Hamilton July 11: A man is incomplete until he marries—then he’s really finished. July 12: “Science is dandy, but what makes a world’s fair is sex and cotton candy.”—Gracie Hansen
July 13: Small town: a place where there’s no recreation for single folks once the sun goes down.
Update: Turns out the model is named Terry Higgins. We just discovered this in June 2015, but better late than never. At least you know we're always updating and refining the information on our site.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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