#Dallas Times Herald

[hcshannon]

Today on "Weird Ass Comics you never knew existed": The X-Men go to the Texas State Fair

#read comics #1980s #80s nostalgia #eighties #1980s comics #supplements #promotional #this exists #x men comics #marvel #x men #State Fair of Texas #Big Tex #Dallas Times Herald

[burningvelvet]

random excerpts from lord byron’s diaries that feel like tumblr posts from the 1800s

“My mind is a fragment.”

“I am too lazy to shoot myself.”

“Here I am, alone, instead of dining at Lord H.'s, where I was asked—but not inclined to go any where. Hobhouse says I am growing a ‘loup garou,’ a solitary hobgoblin. True.”

“Sleepy, and must go to bed.”

“Whether ‘Hell will be paved with’ those ‘good intentions,’ I know not.”

“Got up—redde the Morning Post containing [..] a paragraph on me as long as my pedigree, and vituperative, as usual.”

“I wonder what the devil is the matter with me! I can do nothing, and fortunately there is nothing to do.”

“Last night, party at Lansdowne House. Tonight, party at Lady Charlotte Greville's—deplorable waste of time, and something of temper. Nothing imparted—nothing acquired—talking without ideas:—if any thing like thought in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho!—and in this way half London pass what is called life. Tomorrow there is Lady Heathcote's—shall I go? yes—to punish myself for not having a pursuit.”

“What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of Seed which may be spilt in a whore’s lap – or in the orgasm of a voluptuous dream – might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Buonaparte.”

“Oh that face!—by te, Diva potens Cypri, I would, to be beloved by that woman, build and burn another Troy.”

“I have found increasing upon me (without sufficient cause at times) the depression of Spirits (with few intervals), which I have some reason to believe constitutional or inherited.”

“I shall soon be six-and-twenty (January 22d., 1814). Is there any thing in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?”

“Past events have unnerved me; and all I can now do is to make life an amusement, and look on while others play. After all, even the highest game of crowns and sceptres, what is it?”

“Redde a little—wrote notes and letters, and am alone, which Locke says is bad company. ‘Be not solitary, be not idle.’—Um!—the idleness is troublesome; but I can't see so much to regret in the solitude. The more I see of men, the less I like them. If I could but say so of women too, all would be well. Why can't I? I am now six-and-twenty; my passions have had enough to cool them; my affections more than enough to wither them,—and yet—and yet—always yet and but—‘Excellent well, you are a fishmonger—get thee to a nunnery.’—‘They fool me to the top of my bent.’” (Quotations from Hamlet)

“I wish I could settle to reading again,—my life is monotonous, and yet desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy, and burnt it because the scene ran into reality;—a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through ... yes, yes, through. I have had a letter from Lady Melbourne—the best friend I ever had in my life, and the cleverest of women.”

“As to opinions, I don't think politics worth an opinion.”

“Tells Dallas that my rhymes are very popular in the United States. These are the first tidings that have ever sounded like Fame to my ears—to be redde on the banks of the Ohio!”

“This journal is a relief. When I am tired—as I generally am—out comes this, and down goes every thing. But I can't read it over; and God knows what contradictions it may contain. If I am sincere with myself (but I fear one lies more to one's self than to any one else), every page should confute, refute, and utterly abjure its predecessor.”

“Mr. Murray has offered me one thousand guineas for The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. I won't—it is too much, though I am strongly tempted, merely for the say of it. No bad price for a fortnight's (a week each) what?—the gods know—it was intended to be called poetry.”

“I will not be the slave of any appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at least, that heralds the way. Oh, my head—how it aches?—the horrors of digestion! I wonder how Buonaparte's dinner agrees with him?”

“If I had to live over again, I do not Know what I would change in my life, unless it were for not to have lived at all. All history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years? and those have little of good but their ending.”

#i should have posted this for his bday #lord byron #byron #romanticism #english romanticism #diaries #history #dark academia #funny #tumblr memes #byron memes #geneva squad #poetry #poems #poets #writing #english literature #literature #lit #literature aesthetic #dark academia aesthetic #gothic literature #lgbt #aesthetic #art #literature memes #lit memes #history memes #percy shelley #mary shelley

[bitter69uk]

“On January 4, Jayne (wearing a leopard-skin cape, hat and muff) told Louella Parsons, “We are going to have a very quiet wedding and then we’ll fly to Dallas where my mother plans to give a reception for our friends there.” Then everyone had a good laugh and went to work on the real plans. The happy couple held another press event, showing off her ring and trousseau. They sent out one hundred invitations (on pink paper, of course). “This is one time I don’t want a lot of publicity,” Jayne unconvincingly told the assembled reporters and cameramen. (“It just happens that most of her friends are newspapermen,” said Jim Byron). Jayne and Mickey chose January 13 for the wedding date, “because Mickey and I met on the 13th. He won the Mr. Universe contest on the 13th and got his American citizenship on the 13th. I just love that number.” Jayne added, “I’m so happy. We’re both on a pink cloud.” Jayne picked the Wayfarer’s Chapel in Palos Verdes for the wedding – designed by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) in the 1940s, it was a modernistic glass and wood building that looked like the skeleton of a church. Glass was the key factor here: people who couldn’t get into the wedding could still see it – and photograph it. The only concern being would they crash through the walls in a disaster of blood and shards? “I want the ceremony to be serious and serene,” Jayne reiterated. “It’s going to be entirely free of photographers. Except maybe just one, from the studio. Well, I don’t suppose I can keep the photographers away if they want to come.” Andrew Carthew of the Daily Herald wrote that Jayne described the wedding, “with some slight irreverence, as the Greatest Publicity Stunt in History.”

/ From the 2021 biography Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It by Eve Golden /

On this day 66 years ago (13 January 1958), quintessential show business couple Jayne Mansfield and Miklós "Mickey" Hargitay married. Their tumultuous on-and-off relationship would play out within the flashbulbs of international paparazzi. They would have three children together, perform together on film and onstage in Las Vegas, ultimately divorcing in 1964. (Mansfield would die in 1967, Hargitay in 2006).

#jayne mansfield #mickey hargitay #lobotomy room #sex kitten gone berserk #platinum blonde #publicity stunt #starlet #old show biz #kitsch #jayne mansfield and mickey hargitay #show biz couple #old hollywood #classic hollywood #glamour #wedding day #bride and groom #retro

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

TODAY’S FROZEN MOMENT - 60th Anniversary - November 24th, 1963 -

This indelible moment, when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald was captured for eternity by Dallas Times Herald photographer Robert Jackson. He would win the Pulitzer Prize for it. Obviously, this moment was also seen live on television by millions of people, but there is something so much more powerful about a photograph to seal a moment in time. As for history, Dallas Police officer James Leavelle, the man in the light-colored suit and Stetson, whose wrist was handcuffed to Oswald’s for this walk, had also survived Pearl Harbor twenty-two years prior while serving on the USS Whitney stationed there. Two days of infamy, two seminal American history moments, and this Texan survived them both, up close and personally. Leavelle’s suit and hat are now in a museum in Dallas. This moment was one which sparked the myriad conspiracy theories that surround the murder of JFK. Jack Ruby was a shady but wily character who seemed unlikely to have been willing to murder somebody in front of millions of eye witnesses simply because he was angry about the assassination. It sill amazes me that so many people have since gone to their graves with the complete truth about all of these events of those days in Dallas. An entire industry of speculative books and films have sprung from these moments, and mostly due to the mystery left unclear. American history is sadly rife with moments of injustice that become gotten away with. This is likely our most infamous instance. The deeper mysteries are the whys of allowing these injustices to stay unresolved and unpunished.

[Mary Elaine LeBey]

#Mary Elaine LeBey #stories #JFK Assassination #Jack Ruby #Lee Harvey Oswald #Robert Jackson #iconic moments #american History

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Who Is ‘Prayer Man’?

On the day of JFK’s assignation, Dave Wiegman and Jimmy Darnell, two of the news cameramen travelling in the motorcade, began filming when they heard gunshots. For several decades, the significance of their two films was thought to lie in their portrayal of the spectators along Elm Street and the cars in the motorcade. More recently, attention has been drawn to the films’ depiction of the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository, and in particular to a previously ignored figure who, according to some observers, may have been Lee Harvey Oswald. In several frames of the two black–and–white news films, a figure is visible in the western corner of the TSBD doorway. From the cameras’ point of view, the figure is standing to the left of the man in the Altgens photograph who has been identified as Billy Lovelady. The figure’s right arm appears to be raised across its chest, which has earned it the name ‘Prayer Man’. The figure is unlikely to have been praying, but it may have its arms crossed, or it may be holding an object up to its chest. Although the figure in the currently available versions of the films is insufficiently distinct to permit a definitive identification, it appears to be a white man, dressed in a loose, dark–toned shirt with an open neck and either short or rolled–up sleeves. The figure does not appear to be wearing a white shirt or a tie, as would have been customary for male office workers in the early 1960s. Its short hair and light skin tone strongly suggest that it is neither a woman nor a black man, although the lack of definition in the images does not completely rule out either possibility. The figure’s head and hairline are not inconsistent with Oswald’s appearance.

Could ‘Prayer Man’ Have Been Oswald?

Lee Oswald claimed to have been on the first floor at the time of the assassination. There is certainly very little evidence to support the official doctrine that he was on the sixth floor of the TSBD. An unreliable witness, Howard Brennan, described the gunman as looking somewhat like Oswald, and a handful of other witnesses gave vague descriptions that matched Oswald along with any number of other young, white men. On the other hand:

Every witness who described the gunman’s clothing, including Brennan, claimed that it did not match Oswald’s clothing.

Oswald was seen on a lower floor about 15 minutes before the shooting, at the same time as a spectator saw a gunman on the sixth floor.

Oswald is known to have been on the first floor, in or near the domino room, about five or ten minutes after this.

Reports in the Dallas Morning News and the New York Herald Tribune, both published on the morning after the assassination, state that Ochus Campbell, the vice–president of the TSBD company, and a policeman saw Oswald very shortly after the shooting in a “storage room on the first floor”

The currently available evidence of Oswald’s location at the time of the assassination does not preclude him from being Prayer Man.

When Marina Oswald (who has maintained her husband’s innocence) was shown by researchers pictures of the "prayer man" from the films taken by Dave Wiegman of NBC-TV and Jimmy Darnell of WBAP-TV during the assassination, an unprompted Marina told Ed LeDoux that the “Prayer Man” was Lee.

#jfk assassination #jfk #lee harvey oswald #prayer man #unsolved mysteries #unsolved

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

Who Is ‘Prayer Man’?

On the day of JFK’s assignation, Dave Wiegman and Jimmy Darnell, two of the news cameramen travelling in the motorcade, began filming when they heard gunshots. For several decades, the significance of their two films was thought to lie in their portrayal of the spectators along Elm Street and the cars in the motorcade. More recently, attention has been drawn to the films’ depiction of the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository, and in particular to a previously ignored figure who, according to some observers, may have been Lee Harvey Oswald. In several frames of the two black–and–white news films, a figure is visible in the western corner of the TSBD doorway. From the cameras’ point of view, the figure is standing to the left of the man in the Altgens photograph who has been identified as Billy Lovelady. The figure’s right arm appears to be raised across its chest, which has earned it the name ‘Prayer Man’. The figure is unlikely to have been praying, but it may have its arms crossed, or it may be holding an object up to its chest. Although the figure in the currently available versions of the films is insufficiently distinct to permit a definitive identification, it appears to be a white man, dressed in a loose, dark–toned shirt with an open neck and either short or rolled–up sleeves. The figure does not appear to be wearing a white shirt or a tie, as would have been customary for male office workers in the early 1960s. Its short hair and light skin tone strongly suggest that it is neither a woman nor a black man, although the lack of definition in the images does not completely rule out either possibility. The figure’s head and hairline are not inconsistent with Oswald’s appearance.

Could ‘Prayer Man’ Have Been Oswald?

Lee Oswald claimed to have been on the first floor at the time of the assassination. There is certainly very little evidence to support the official doctrine that he was on the sixth floor of the TSBD. An unreliable witness, Howard Brennan, described the gunman as looking somewhat like Oswald, and a handful of other witnesses gave vague descriptions that matched Oswald along with any number of other young, white men. On the other hand:

Every witness who described the gunman’s clothing, including Brennan, claimed that it did not match Oswald’s clothing.

Oswald was seen on a lower floor about 15 minutes before the shooting, at the same time as a spectator saw a gunman on the sixth floor.

Oswald is known to have been on the first floor, in or near the domino room, about five or ten minutes after this.

Reports in the Dallas Morning News and the New York Herald Tribune, both published on the morning after the assassination, state that Ochus Campbell, the vice–president of the TSBD company, and a policeman saw Oswald very shortly after the shooting in a “storage room on the first floor”

The currently available evidence of Oswald’s location at the time of the assassination does not preclude him from being Prayer Man.

When Marina Oswald (who has maintained her husband’s innocence) was shown by researchers pictures of the “prayer man” from the films taken by Dave Wiegman of NBC-TV and Jimmy Darnell of WBAP-TV during the assassination, an unprompted Marina told Ed LeDoux that the “Prayer Man” was Lee.

#prayer man #cold cases #unsolved #unsolved mysteries

[killed-by-choice]

Jennifer E. Suddeth, 17 (USA 1982)

Jennifer and her boyfriend John Fredzess were scared. The 17-year-old girl was losing an alarming amount of blood.

The two of them were on the 4 hour drive back home after Jennifer’s abortion. It had been done by Franklin Henry "Frank" Robinson Sr. in California, where abortion was legal.

Over the course of the drive, John repeatedly called the abortion facility and told them that something was seriously wrong with Jennifer. The staff at the facility refused to put him through to Robinson. One nurse scolded Jennifer’s boyfriend and told him to “be realistic” about how much blood Jennifer really lost. By that time, John had already watched his girlfriend bleed through two pairs of sweat pants, two blankets and a towel.

Finally, John called another location where the abortionist worked and told him about what was happening to Jennifer. The abortionist insisted that the bleeding was normal and told John to stop calling.

Soon after that, Jennifer went into convulsions. John called 911, but Jennifer was already dead by the time paramedics got there. She lost 6 quarts of blood.

The investigation was horribly mishandled. Police Sergeant Miriam Travis, who was called to the scene to investigate, did not collect any evidence and only took four photographs at the death scene because she claimed she "ran out of film". She later allegedly lost two of the photographs.

The abortionist who killed Jennifer was arrested for first-degree murder and held for two days without bail. But then he was released.

Robinson admitted that Jennifer’s boyfriend had repeatedly called, but denied dismissing Jennifer's symptoms as no cause for concern. He claimed that he had first told John to bring Jennifer back to the clinic, but that John had then said he was too tired to make the drive. Robinson claimed he then told John to either call 911 or drive Jennifer to the hospital himself. "I was practically pleading," he said.

Robinson’s charges were then reduced to manslaughter and he was eventually acquitted.

For some reason, the state of California officially counted Jennifer’s death in their statistics as an illegal abortion death. This was done despite the fact that abortion is fully legal in California and the abortionist was running his business legally.

Jennifer and her baby were killed on June 30, 1982 and both of them were denied justice. We can’t let this keep happening.

LA County Coroner Report No. 82-8251;

Press-Telegram 6/28/83

“Abortion Doctor Pleads Innocent in Teen Death,” Dallas Morning News, Feb. 10, 1983

“A doctor accused of performing an abortion,” UPI NewsTrack, Aug. 23, 1982

“Abortion doc held in teen death,” Boston Herald, Aug. 24, 1982

“Physician acquitted in abortion patient death,” San Bernardino County Sun, Jul. 14, 1983

#death from legal abortion #pro life #tw abortion #tw murder #tw manslaughter #tw ab*rtion #tw blo0d #pro choice #abortion #abortion debate #unsafe yet legal

[westdallasgang]

Waco Jailbreak continuation: What happened after Clyde's jailbreak, and Bonnie's missed message from Clyde.

On the day Bonnie read of Clyde's successful jailbreak in the paper, Clyde sectretly slipped into West Dallas that same evening (with the 2 other escapees in tow) and rounded up 2 men who were willing to collect Bonnie in Waco. The hired men returned 2 days later empty-handed. It was said by Bonnie's cousin Mary that they did arrive at the house but she and Bonnie pretended to not be home, fearing the men were cops. Clyde didn't tell Bonnie beforehand that he was sending them there to pick her up so, he had to flee the state without her. Once arriving in Illinois, he sent out a telegram for her to join him when things cooled off. Except, things never did cool off. On March 18, Clyde, William, and Emery, were arrested in Ohio. Within a few days they were back in Texas.

Story goes that William Turner and Emory Abernathy were passengers in a stolen car being driven by Clyde. Their car, taken from Missouri, had a set of stolen Indiana license plates on it. After a night of burglary in Middletown, Ohio, Clyde thinks he's heading west towards Indiana. Without realizing he has taken a wrong turn, he steers the car down the steep winding road. At the bottom of the hill the road flattens out and makes a right turn. It was too late when the "Waco Three" realized they have just returned to the scene of their last burglary committed 4 hours ago and they are looking at 2 Middletown Police officers standing outside the B&O Railroad Depot. The officers recognize the license plate and the chase is on.

One officer said Clyde went across to Poasttown Road and then up Wilbraham Road which is a blind street. Seeing he was hemmed in, the bandit ran the car over the lawn between 2 houses where he jumped out and ran to the Middletown Hydraulic Canal, throwing his smuggled Waco gun in the water. The officers caught up with him as he ran down the canal where he surrendered. Officers eventually captured William Turner in an alley near Auburn Street and Crescent Boulevard after firing several shots. Emery was captured an hour later in the east end near the Big Four railroad crossing where he was trying to bum a ride out of town.

When McClennan Waco County authorities arrived to take custody of the Waco Three, they asked Middletown PD for the smuggled gun. They wanted it for evidence to investigate where it came from and how the prisoners got it. They were informed that the gun was unrecoverable, lying at the bottom of the swift-moving and very murky waters of the Middletown Hydraulic Canal. Clyde admitted this to Middletown authorities and later to the Waco Times-Herald. He was quoted as saying this was the gun used in the Waco breakout. Over the decades, rumors of this gun as well as alleged photos of it have risen, but research indicates this gun is still at the bottom of the canal. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to recover the famous gun Bonnie smuggled to Clyde. The gun has been down there for nearly 94 years, but metallurgic experts informed that owing to canal conditions and the silty bottom, the odds are good that it rests in a layer where there is no oxygen. These conditions will slow rusting significantly. Pictured above is the Middletown Canal where the gun is believed to still be.

#bonnie and clyde #waco jailbreak

[elvis1970s]

Between Christmas and New Year 1976, Elvis embarked on a short but lucrative tour to big arenas, including his first show in Birmingham, Alabama, and ending with his acclaimed New Year's Eve performance in Pittsburgh.

The itinerary and attendances:

Dec 27 Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 10 000 Dec 28 Memorial Auditorium, Dallas, TX 9 800 Dec 29 Jefferson Coliseum, Birmingham, AL 18 400 Dec 30 The Omni, Atlanta, GA, 17 000 Dec 31 Civic Center Arena, Pittsburgh, PA 16 409

In the context of the time, this tour generated a lot of local excitement and was very enthusiastically received. During a period when press reaction could go either way, it's interesting to see how this tour was covered;

The Birmingham News:

"...Elvis was in good voice, good shape, good health and good spirits. He had lost weight and gained confidence. His act was full of humour, zest, and occasional beauty…He is living proof that attempts at experimentation and innovation are not essential within the context of rock concerts. You simply need to have a positive talent, charismatic personality, a passion for performing, and the experience of handling an audience at any time in any place. Presley is still possessed of a fine voice which he uses with great enthusiasm on material that reveals him as a traditionalist, romanticist and sardonic-observer of the phenomenon he has become…"

The Dallas Times Herald;

"…Elvis, make no mistake, is a phenomenon. No one else has gone 20 years perched at the peak. Alice Cooper and the vaudeville rockers may trail in the dust of Elvis' heels. He could probably even cause an alarming dip in the Nielsen rating playing opposite Charlie's Angels. Where superstars quickly burn themselves out, Elvis survives, spreading himself to new generations of fans…"

#elvis music #elvis presley #elvis history #elvis aaron presley #elvis the king #elvis fandom #elvis concerts #elvis in the 70s #rock history #entertainers #Youtube

[retrocomicsexuallity]

Spider-Man (Dallas Times Herald Giveaway) — Christmas in Dallas!

#comics #80s #artist #out of context #marvel #spiderman #vintage #retro

[pulpsandcomics2]

1983 Dallas Times Herald supplement

[elliecallahann]

Series of Western Cowboy

by

Erwin H. Hagler of Dallas Times Herald

#photography #photoblog #western #wild west #black and white #aesthetic #pinterest #insufferable #cigarette #coquette #devon lee carlson #lana del rey #photoshop #my year of rest and relaxation #nyc it girl #nyc #rainyweather #vintage #80s aesthetic

[psalm22-6]

SEVERAL outstanding merchant tie-ups and numerous mentions on radio programs were among the high spots in the exploitation campaign put over by Manager Fred McFadden of the Palace Theater here for the premiere of "Les Miserables." The A. Harris & Co. store devoted two of its main windows to attractive displays consisting of life-size blow-ups of both March and Laughton in an effective tie-up on books. The Sanger Bros, window carried an assortment of scene stills and 11 x 14's. One-sheets with appropriate cards were on display in the windows of Neiman-Marcus, Titche-Goettinger and the Methodist Publishing House windows. Special bookmarks were distributed at all public and 18 local rental libraries. More than 300 special process cards were circulated throughout the city. A tie-up with Kaywoodie Pipes got all local cigar and stationery stores to display attractive window streamers containing a picture of March and strong selling copy on the attraction. Bulletin boards were posted in all local hotels and stuffers were placed in guest boxes. A direct mail campaign was circulated to  all prominent persons. A special screening for the clergy and local critics accounted for early reviews and additional feature stories. The picture was given four daily plugs over Station WRR. Station WFAA, owned  by the Dallas "News," put on a 15-minute program giving "Les Miserables" the breaks. Station KRLD, owned by the Dallas "Times-Herald," devoted ten announcements to the feature calling it the "best picture in ten years."

Source: The Film Daily, 24 June 1935 And in San Antonio they did a lot of the same things plus this: 

An attractive artist worked in the window of the Grand-Silver store on a pastel drawing of Fredric March and in the evening this drawing was illuminated and placed in the center of the window. The background for this drawing was a frame containing 60 scene stills from the production.  The front of the theater was decorated with blow-up heads of March and Laughton with all backgrounds a vivid red with large cut-out letters in yellow forming the title of the picture and star names.

Source: The Film Daily, 16 July 1935

#les miserables #lm 1935 #vintage advertisement #lm ephemera

[bitter69uk]

“On January 4, Jayne (wearing a leopard-skin cape, hat and muff) told Louella Parsons, “We are going to have a very quiet wedding and then we’ll fly to Dallas where my mother plans to give a reception for our friends there.” Then everyone had a good laugh and went to work on the real plans. The happy couple held another press event, showing off her ring and trousseau. They sent out one hundred invitations (on pink paper, of course). “This is one time I don’t want a lot of publicity,” Jayne unconvincingly told the assembled reporters and cameramen. (“It just happens that most of her friends are newspapermen,” said Jim Byron). Jayne and Mickey chose January 13 for the wedding date, “because Mickey and I met on the 13th. He won the Mr. Universe contest on the 13th and got his American citizenship on the 13th. I just love that number.” Jayne added, “I’m so happy. We’re both on a pink cloud.” Jayne picked the Wayfarer’s Chapel in Palos Verdes for the wedding – designed by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) in the 1940s, it was a modernistic glass and wood building that looked like the skeleton of a church. Glass was the key factor here: people who couldn’t get into the wedding could still see it – and photograph it. The only concern being would they crash through the walls in a disaster of blood and shards? “I want the ceremony to be serious and serene,” Jayne reiterated. “It’s going to be entirely free of photographers. Except maybe just one, from the studio. Well, I don’t suppose I can keep the photographers away if they want to come.” Andrew Carthew of the Daily Herald wrote that Jayne described the wedding, “with some slight irreverence, as the Greatest Publicity Stunt in History.” 

/ From the 2021 biography Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It by Eve Golden / 

On this day 65 years ago (13 January 1958), quintessential show business couple Jayne Mansfield and Miklós "Mickey" Hargitay married. Their tumultuous on-and-off relationship would play out within the flashbulbs of international paparazzi. They would have three children together, perform together on film and onstage in Las Vegas, ultimately divorcing in 1964. (Mansfield would die in 1967, Hargitay in 2006).

#jayne mansfield #mickey hargitay #jayne mansfield and mickey hargitay #show business #publicity stunt #publicity #lobotomy room #sex kitten gone berserk #kitsch

[dankusner]

Texas last experienced a total solar eclipse in 1878.

Flashback:

People worried that the morning's clouds would obstruct views of the afternoon eclipse.

"But at 3 o'clock the heavens were clear in the vicinity of the sun, and joy was manifest with all the anxious watchers," the Fort Worth Daily Democrat wrote.

The stars became visible around 4pm.

The temperature cooled roughly 13 degrees as the eclipse moved through Texas, per the Ellis County Museum.

The Galveston Daily News said the sight was "indescribable."

What's next: April 8 will be our only chance to witness a total solar eclipse — the next one in our region won't be until 2317.

1878

Smoked glass, sextants — and a new planet

1878 totality left Dallas in awe, eager for discoveries

Clouds hung low in the sky the night before, and by sunrise they still hadn’t cleared.

“All the morning people were seen carrying their pieces of smoked glass,” a predecessor to modern eclipse glasses, wrote a Ross Avenue woman.

The woman, N.L. Belsterling, had made her pieces of glass herself, but newsboys were selling them across the country.

“I, too, smoked my piece manfully — no, womanfully — at the risk of cut and burnt fingers, and succeeded in getting a piece well blackened,” she recalled in a letter decades later. “Several scientific gentlemen,” she added, were on hand.

Dallas was 36 years old and about to see its first total solar eclipse — if the weather would cooperate.

Ahead of Monday’s total solar eclipse, The Dallas Morning News conducted archival research on the 1878 eclipse, shedding light on its legacy in the region.

The event, like today, was a sensation.

For decades, observers recalled the moon’s shadow and the preparations that heralded the eclipse’s arrival.

No total solar eclipse had crossed the state since the arrival of Europeans centuries earlier, this paper wrote. And for the country, the stakes were even higher.

“It was a really important day for America and for American science because this was a time when the United States was still a young country,” David Baron, author of American Eclipse , said in an interview with The News .

Just two years earlier, America had celebrated its centennial and was becoming a global industrial power.

“But when it came to intellectual pursuits,” he said, “the Europeans looked down their noses at us,” confident the U.S. would never catch up. The date of July 29, 1878, was America’s chance to prove its intellectual might matched its economic muscle — and the public, galvanized by science they could see — was on board.

Eclipse expeditions

Knowing bad weather could spoil any one viewer’s observations, the U.S. Naval Observatory had launched about a half dozen eclipse expeditions across the country.

The zone of total darkness cut a path east from Russia to Alaska, crossed through British Columbia and traced large parts of the Rockies before entering Texas, where it curved out into the Gulf of Mexico and eventually passed over Cuba.

The chances of clear skies were better in Colorado and Wyoming, said Baron, so more resources were allotted to those expeditions. (Thomas Edison was among the scientists in Wyoming, though he was on a private trip.) In Dallas, things were a bit more DIY.

David Todd arrived by himself in Denison on July 12 after a four-day trip from Washington, D.C., according to the report he later submitted to the Navy.

A 23-year-old astronomer, Todd brought with him a $500 budget; a sextant; a chronometer; and a comet seeker, a type of small telescope.

“Todd was a one-man expedition,” Baron said. “The other expeditions were much more elaborate — more people, more equipment.”

In Wyoming, Edison brought along a device he called along the tasimeter, which he claimed could register changes in temperature as tiny as a millionth of a degree Fahrenheit, according to Baron. Billed as “bigger than the phonograph,” it turned out not to be very reliable.

The sun’s corona

Todd got situated, setting up communication with Washington and with people across Texas drafted to make their own observations of the eclipse and the sun’s corona, a mysterious phenomenon to scientists at the time.

“It was recommended that drawings of the corona be made at the three stations nearest the center of the shadow-path, namely Decatur, Jacksborough, and Henrietta,” he wrote in his report.

After a detour to Houston to pick up extra equipment, he returned to Dallas on Saturday night, two days before the eclipse, and checked in on his headquarters, the house of J.M. Oram, a local jeweler.

The house was about a quarter-mile from the telegraph office, and Todd later boasted of having someone on horseback standing by at the facility to grab any message that might come in from Wyoming during the eclipse and rush it to him “with all possible despatch.”

Like the other scientists around the country, Todd saw in the eclipse a rare chance to bring clarity to two big scientific mysteries.

The first was the corona, which becomes visible when the moon obscures the sun in what’s known as totality.

Scientists today know the corona is the sun’s outer atmosphere, but 19th-century theories ran the gamut.

Was it even a part of the sun? Maybe it was an effect of the Earth’s own atmosphere on the sun’s light, said Baron.

One theory, he added, even posited it was meteors burning up as they fell into our star.

By 1878, scientists had ruled out the most outlandish hypotheses, settling on a consensus that the corona was in fact part of the sun, but that was about as far as they’d gotten.

The other question the eclipse could answer was perhaps even bigger by today’s standards.

Scientists hoped in the span of mere minutes to catch a glimpse of an entirely new planet they believed existed — without having been definitively observed.

The planet Vulcan

“There was good reason to believe that there was at least one other planet between Mercury and the sun,” Baron said. “The belief was so great that in fact astronomers gave it a name.” They called it the planet Vulcan.

Vulcan, astronomers thought, had to exist to explain a quirk in Mercury’s orbit.

“Mercury behaved as if there was some mass between it and the sun, tugging it along,” Baron said. The problem was that “No one had ever reliably seen Vulcan.”

But that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t there.

Astronomers theorized if the planet was close enough to the sun, it would set with the sun at dusk, never to be seen in the night sky.

Daytime observation would be impossible, owing to the sun’s glare. “So, about the only time you might catch a glimpse of this supposed planet Vulcan would be during those few minutes of midday

darkness when the moon covers the bright surface of the sun and you could actually look at what is right around the sun,” Baron said.

Todd’s position in Dallas meant he wouldn’t be the first to spot Vulcan in 1878, but he might get a tip by telegram about where to point his telescope if another observer saw it before him.

As the big day wore on, the weather improved.

Only high clouds floated when the phenomenon was due.

Todd stood by his instruments at Oram’s house and his volunteers took their places, too.

Smoked glass in hand, the city looked up at about 3:14 p.m.

About an hour later, totality began.

“I almost held my breath in awe,” wrote Belsterling, the Dallas woman who saw it with her own eyes.

“The birds, overhead, blew hither and thither in alarm.

Chickens went to roost and began their pecking and crowding, preparatory to their night’s rest.

The frogs on the banks of the Trinity set up their sad, musical refrains.

As totality passed and the first rays of the sun fell upon us the scene was one of rare brilliancy.

I watched it as it slowly passed over, and felt sorry it was over.”

The next one wouldn’t be until 2024.

Belsterling’s account, captured in a letter, appeared in The News 50 years later.

She’s one of several Texans whose memories of the eclipse stayed with them for decades and resurfaced in newspaper coverage that looked back on the event.

‘Wonder and awe’

Ola Comer Haley, a young girl in Pittsburg, Texas, northeast of Tyler, watched the eclipse with her family in 1878 and told the Dallas Times Herald 45 years later, “I shall never forget the look upon mother’s face as I looked into it and saw an expression of wonder and awe, which as a little child, I mistook for sadness.”

Todd’s observations were less sentimental.

Tables and measurements make up his detailed report on what he saw during his stargazing.

But he did look back on his time in the city half a century later, calling himself a young scientist whom “a kindly cloudless sky favored so that Dallas has ever since held unchallenged a grateful nook in his heart.”

In the days and weeks after the eclipse, headlines shouted news of scientific breakthroughs. But as often happens in hindsight, little of the science held up.

“I mean, you know, this was the most important eclipse ever observed,” said Baron, miming the refrain of the time. “And Vulcan was found!” But of course, there was no Vulcan, he said. Studies of the corona turned out not to have revealed much either.

Still for Todd, it was the beginning of a long career.

After packing up his comet chaser, he went on to become a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts and an eclipse chaser whose expeditions took him around the world.

The Dallas expedition was his first. He died in 1939.

Baron said despite it being largely a scientific dud, the eclipse remained a turning point in the country’s intellectual history because it whet the public’s appetite for more discovery.

“Here was the scientific event that got America jazzed about showing the world that we could compete in this realm,” he said. “And it wasn’t long after this, that we really did lead the world in astronomy and many sciences.”

Signature moment

In Dallas, the events of 1878 became the stuff of legend, revived in the papers when a partial solar eclipse was visible here.

“You Can’t Find Eclipses Anymore Like One In ’78,” said a cheeky headline in 1963.

“When Dallas Watched The Sun Go Out,” read the front page of The News on the 50th anniversary.

That story took a more solemn tone, however, tributing the eclipse as a signature moment in the city’s history.

“It was an event anticipated with immense interest and caused the greatest possible excitement,” the writer, Geoffrey E. Govier, declared.

At the end, Govier’s tone softened into something more contemplative as he pondered whether eclipses would mean as much in the future.

He told readers the next total eclipse in Texas wouldn’t be for nearly a century and, in the last sentence, made an admission: “enthusiasm for these far-away darkenings of the Sun is naturally feeble,” he wrote, “and by that remote epoch further mysteries of space and time may have been penetrated.”

They certainly have, but we’ll still be watching.

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