LEGS FOR DAYS

Attack of the 150-foot woman.

When Michael Todd’s famed musical Mexican Hayride opened in New York City he decided to arrange for the program art, which had been painted by the famed Peruvian arist Alberto Vargas, aka Varga, to be reproduced at giant scale on the billboard atop the Winter Garden Theater, where the show was being staged. This photo shows Varga’s giant pin-up almost completed. There’s a bit of background around her head and legs that needs to be finished.

In person the matador-like figure, which is modeled after but isn’t quite a portrait of star June Havoc, was probably garbed in bright red with gold brocade, matching the colors of the program art. The reverse of the photo says: A gargantuan Varga girl, 157 feet wide and 30 feet high, has been completed atop the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway in New York. Sketches for the illustration were made by artist Varga in Chicago.

Of course, the horizontal image doesn’t look very impressive at a mere 433 pixels in width, so through the magic of Photoshop and for no other reason than we wanted to see what it looked like, we’ve reoriented the image below. There’s some egregious pixel stretching happening on the lower half of the figure, but all things considered, it looks pretty good. You can drag it to your desktop and rotate it for a better look. The photo was shot today in 1944.

New York City, Winter Garden Theater, Mexican Hayride, Alberto Vargas, Varga, Michael Todd, June Havoc, Broadway

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.