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waywardcrow · 1 year ago

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Timeless.

Summary: 1943. 1975. 2024. Three different decades, three different lives, three different times your life and Bucky's interwined; he lost you twice, will he do it again?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader.

TW: It can change each chapter but themes of Bucky as soldier and as the Winter Soldier in general, some stalker behaviour but with good intentions?, flashbacks and a not so good writing style by me, lots of feels, one awful boss, one jerk that almost gets reader in an accident, mentions of headaches, past reader is mentioned to be named Beth but that changes for 2024 version of her so I nicknamed her Ace, this will be a +18 story so minors dni, as always please remember english is not my first language so if I make a mistake or forget something let me know.

Pictures from pinterest and graphic and dividers by the amazing @ firefly-graphics so all credits to the creators.

Your head was aching like never before and that was your life now; annoying pain, annoying boss who was a fucking brat with a trust fund who never heard the word “no” as a kid and that now acted like she was entitled to make your life miserable.

It wasn’t like you were and idiot who believed a job like this will be easy, as a born and raised new yorker who watched The devil wears Prada too many times you were aware of what will come your way as PA of the editor of one of the best magazines in the country but your issuess were beyond that, it was easy to handle a bully if you are getting something in exchange besides a check that barely paid your rent.

This job was suppossed to be your opportunity and Mia Alexander was beating up your expectations. With a sigh you picked the coffee and make your way back to the office, it was so stupid that you have to walk three blocks in the pouring rain just to get her stupid cold brew from the stupid pretencious coffee shop that always made you feel like you were back in high school. Always the outsider in a world ruled by assholes, just like the one who pushed you too hard while waiting to cross the street. For an idiotic reason, your first thought was that you will have to go back for another cold brew when the one in your hand hit you and then the pavement, not the bike coming your way.

It happened too fast for you to understand it, the asshole pushing you towards the traffic, your annyoance, the stranger who hold you back in the blink of an eye, the pain in your head stopping and then you were standing at a safe distance to the cars, with your umbrella tossed in the pavement and absolutely no idea of what had happened.

Alexander yelled at you for your aspect when you came back late with her first coffee all over your dull clothes and the second one not good enough apparently, the best you could do was bite your tongue and not tell her to fuck off. This job was everything you had.

“What the fuck happened to you, babe?” Harper didin’t care about Mia but that was because she couldn’t get her fired being her sister and everything, you were a different story.

“Your evil sister doing her usual shit” was your only response, Harper was completely different to Mia and if you tried to tell her about the incident she will drove you herself to ER. She followed you to the bathroom, your blouse was so stained it couldn’t be saved and still you wanted to do something to don’t cry.

Harper pursed her perfect red lips, it didn’t matter how many times she tried to help you, Mia was their mother’s favorite and will never do anything against her; the best she could do for you was to get you out of that clothes.

“Take that off, I’m bringing you something and don’t argue” Harper disappeared before you could try and came back with a pretty blouse with a V line and a small waist that will rock with your boring blue jeans.

“I can’t wear that” you refused still covered in coffee.

“Why? I have seen you wear more skimpy stuff when we go out” someone walked in the bathroom and shot you an intrigued look when she saw Harper undressing you.

“You know why” your dumb boss didn’t like that the person walking three steps behind her attracted the attention so you were expected to wear boring clothes in order to not be noticed by anyone.

“I’m telling you, one of this days I’m going to punch her in the face and I will not give a fuck if I get cut out…” your hand in her mouth stopped her to finish her sentence “back off, Ace” her nickname make you roll your eyes “you know I’m right.”

She was but your life was a constant reminder that no matter how right you were, you had no other option but to do as you were told if you wanted to pay the bills and help your parents, you stopped wishing for a way out long ago, this was your life.

Bucky went back to the tower that night after making sure you were home safe first, Sam tried to call him back but he ignored his phone and jumped in the shower, the hot water barely easing the tension in his muscles. He could have lost you that afternoon.

The super soldier still wanted to chase the idiot who nearly get you killed but Bucky wouldn’t be able to hold back if he saw him again, that’s why he asked Sam to take care of it without giving a good explanation beyond what had happened: a jerk pushed a by-stander to the traffic and didn’t give a shit about it. Bucky had to act like you were nothing to him, just another civilian he could help. He was liar, a murderer, a destroyer of lives but that lie, insignificant and not even believable, left his chest aching. You were everything; you always were from the moment he set his eyes on you that night in 1943.

Bucky expected more from his last night home before going to war, his date was nice but Connie will never think twice about him once he was gone and in all honesty, he wouldn’t do it too. Maybe it was the fact that Steve insisted in being enlisted that left him so uneasy, maybe the thought of leaving his family behind when his ma and his sisters already lose too much or maybe it was everything mixed with his fears.

Opposite to Steve, he never wanted to go to the war, it was what left them without a father, what left his mom without a husband, Bucky swore he will never abandon his family to fight and die alone in someone else’s land but his country didn’t care about his promises and his fears and demanded his blood and sacrifice anyway.

He tried to don’t let his family see this, not even Steve but Rebecca could see it, only three years of difference between them made them close to know each other well. She was there when Bucky got the letter informing him about being drafted, she held him while he cried like a little kid and swore to don’t say a word to the others, Rebecca woke up early the morning of his mandatory training to make him breakfast and give him a hug before their ma could do the same.

Bucky didn’t want to leave her in charge, she was his little sister, his responsibility but he was sure Rebeca will do it.

The way back after leaving Connie and her friend home was silent, Steve probably was back in their apartment after being rejected again, Bucky promised himself to be reasonable with his best friend later but after he spent one more night with his family.

In the porch stairs there were two girls whistling a short melody, he could see them from the distance, one was Rebecca but he didn’t knew who was the other one, her hair pinned up perfectly giving him a good view of one perfect neck and three moles aligned like a little constellation.

When he got close enough, Rebeca spotted him and she broke a smile.

“Bucky! You are here!” His sister got up, holding him in her embrace. After all those years he could swear he still remembered her scent: homemade cookies and lilacs. “You are early” she said, giving him a suspicious look.

Before she could say more, he interrupted “Who’s your friend, Becca?”

You shot him a funny glance, like you knew what he was doing and follow his sister after fixing your skirt.

“I’m Beth, nice to meet you” You and Rebecca were being friends for more of a year but you never met her brother, Rebeca tried to set you both up but he insisted in not dating anyone as young as her sister, didn’t seem right but that was before he got a chance to actually know you.

He knew a lot of beautiful girls; he probably dated a good number of them in the last years but you were more than your pretty eyes or your perfect lips, he never felt like his whole world stopped with any of them the way he felt it with you.

“Beth” Bucky repeated, his tongue tasting sweet with the echo of your name in his mouth. A charming smile made its way to his lips and you blushed under the intensity of his eyes. Everybody talked about Rebecca’s brother, such a ladies man, a respectful one but a ladies man anyways and you were raised better than to be one of those dames who let men sweep them off their feet.

“I should go back home, Becca” you said giving your friend a quick hug and a nod to her brother.

“Let Bucky walk you home Beth, is late and your mother will not be happy if she knows you went alone” oh Rebecca was good, Bucky could see the spark in her eyes, identical to his, and he could hear her future constant reminders from now on about how she told him so, she was always right about him and Beth.

“I don’t want to impose” was all the girl could say and Bucky took that as his chance.

“Please, allow me to escort you home safe, miss” he used his best smile and extended his arm like a gentleman “it will be an honor.”

For a heartbeat, he could see your intention to roll your eyes but you agreed and took his arm, Rebeca didn’t do a good job at hiding her smile saying her goodbyes before going back to the house to tell Winnifred everything.

And that was the only time he could be close to you before he lose everything he was once.

Next chapter >>>

Please let me know what you think! Thanks 🩵.

#bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes x f!reader #40s bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes angst

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theamericanpin-up · 2 years ago

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Varga Girl Gatefold # 27 of 63 - Alberto Vargas - "V Mail For A Soldier" - March 1943 Esquire Magazine Varga Girl Gatefold Illustration - Verse by Phil Stack below

Do you remember when the night slants down And all the Inns rouse dreamily from sleep? Do you remember when this gilded town Makes promises that it can never keep? Do you recall a waltz that once we heard? Do you relive a kiss our lips have known? Is there a dream that beckons to be stirred Across the miles that keep us so alone?

You have a few hours for memories, I know, And yet I like to think that you find time To read these simple words: "I love you so ..." And know how well you made those moments rhyme ... (That was a happy world that we had then - So, fight, Sweetheart, to bring it back again!)

#alberto vargas #march #1943 #esquire magazine #varga girl #gatefold #illustration #pin up #american pin up

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icarus-suraki · 11 months ago

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Before anything else, this is !!!NOT!!! a pro-AI post!!!

So I feel like there's some fundamental misunderstandings around here about How AI Image Generators Work. And I feel like you ought to know your enemy if you're going to stand against it. I keep seeing comments about "using my words" or "using my art" and I get it and I totally understand the principle, but you'll have a much better argument against the lack of credit and compensation if you know how these programs work. Again, this is not a pro-AI post. I'm also going to avoid anthropomorphizing these computer programs as best I can because that's not helpful either.

First, when an AI or neural network program generates an image, it is not a collage, it is not a cut-and-paste, and it is not a readymade.

The program has a database of images that have been collected (scraped). The program is then given input by humans to catalog the images, gradually building up the program so it can automatically catalogue the images. If a series of images are tagged as "dog" by human programmers, the AI is programmed to identify patterns within those images and the program comes to associate those patterns with the input 01000100 01101111 01100111 (or "dog" in English).

So what it spits out is more of an amalgamation of images based on the programmed associations. I've certainly heard rumors of artwork appearing that's very, very similar to someone's original work and I'm sort of suspicious about some of it. On the other hand, I have seen someone generate a really, really accurate copy of a photo of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. That probably took a lot of work and, really, is it worth it? I don't think so.

The issue of stylistic copying is a bigger problem than, hey, I can make this program copy a picture. There's a color printer in the next room over from me right now. I could make that program copy a picture too. Not impressed.

But remember that AI operates on pattern recognition. A distinct style or technique is a pattern and a computer can be programmed to identify that pattern. So AI can replicate at least some of the patterns/techniques in, for example, van Gogh. It's a pattern that the computer has identified and then human users respond with input like "Yes, that is the correct pattern," which helps that pattern identification persist.

The same kinds of patterns appear in, say, overall image layouts. I have seen tons and tons and tons of images online over the years that can boiled down to "small person in foreground with back to viewer; large object facing small person and viewer." A kid in front of a monster, a woman on a dock by the ocean, two people looking at a sunset; Midjourney can spit these things out for ages. It's another pattern. It's all about pattern recognition.

Okay. I have access to Midjourney, one of the bigger and more popular AI image generators out there. So I'm going to do some demonstrations.

Here is Yves Tanguy's 1943 painting Through Birds Through Fire But Not Through Glass:

Don't worry, I'm opted out, though I can guarantee copies of this image have already been scraped from elsewhere. I'm using this one because I happen to like Yves Tanguy's paintings and I was watching a YT documentary about his work recently.

So let's throw just the title as a prompt into Midjourney version 4: Through Birds Through Fire But Not Through Glass --v 4

And you get these kind of…YA novel covers. It's using a more literal interpretation of "birds" and "fire" and "glass" based on what patterns are associated with those tags. But some of the linguistic pattern may have also tapped into tags on, yes, YA novel covers. It's similar to that pattern. You could get "Through Birds and Fire" or "The House of Birds and Fire" out of that painting title. The program has recognized one or more patterns and is returning amalgamated results based on those patterns.

So let's do something a bit more complicated and add in the artist's name: Through Birds Through Fire But Not Through Glass Yves Tanguy --v 4

This time I added the artist's name. "Yves Tanguy" is connected to images in Midjourney's database. The Midjourney program has identified certain patterns in the artist's work: towers, gradient skies, unidentifiable biomorphic objects set in a vast landscape, certain preferences of light and shadow, a sense of the hyper-real in the surreal. I've also circled what look like signatures at the bottoms of the images--that's another pattern that the program has identified. You, a human, can look at these images and say, yeah, I see some similarities...kind of. Hilariously, Midjourney is still taking the words "fire" and "birds" fairly literally when the artist (and human brains) can understand the language quite differently.

So the issue isn't quite as simple "they're using my words" or "they're stealing my art" might sound. Because while both of these things are very true but it's going to be harder to point to part of an AI image and say "this right here is something I painted."

Because it's more like the AI can jack your style. It identifies your patterns and it replicates them based on what it has already been programmed to identify.

The complexity here makes arguments against AI a lot more difficult. It's more like the copyright infringement or plagiarism accusations that go to court and the arguments are about how "similar" this novel is to another novel or how "similar" the chord progressions are in one song versus another. And, as much as I love Zeppelin, they sure did rip off Spirit's song "Taurus."

So I hope you can forgive me for using Midjourney in this explanation. And I hope it can give you better arguments about why the current practices with AI are unethical. Just yelling "plagiarism!!" is good, but I hope this will give you more of an explanatory leg to stand on if someone argues against you.

At least AI images can't be copyrighted. We've got that going for us, which is nice. I guess.

#midjourney #ai images #ai ethics #plagiarism #that one image with the girl #what is going on with the fucking eyes tho?#read in justin mcelroy voice

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jacensolodjo · 2 years ago

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Speaking of "yeah but people cheered during Operation Barbarossa" I think people are like... completely missing the whole reason WHY anyone would think being invaded from the West was going to be a GOOD THING for them.

They were under SOVIET RULE. The Soviets were killing people en masse so of course if you have people claiming to be your liberator from THAT you're going to at first think it's great. Remember, there was very little info coming into the Soviet Union about the Holocaust. This was on purpose on some level BY THE SOVIET UNION. Because they were allies with... Nazi fucking Germany. Y'all keep forgetting this and I'm tired of it. What do you think happened to Poland? Do you somehow not even know about the Pact that bisected Poland?

It's the absolute start of the whole 'there's soviets then there's everyone else but we're not gonna say that we're just gonna say either you're Soviet or you're a fascist". That was the absolute. You're either a comrade or you are a fascist. There is no middle ground. And the only one pushing that line was... Soviets. Once Barbarossa happened, it was no longer censored about what was going on re: Holocaust.

The funniest part though is people claiming that is what happened during the Donbas shit and then the new invasion since 2022. When it wasn't. At all. NO ONE has been suffering under 'Ukraine rule'. There was never ANY anti-Russophone action like there has been for those who speak Ukrainian. For centuries speaking Ukrainian was a killable offense. People act like Ukraine then turned around and made speaking Russian illegal. None of that has happened after making Ukrainian the state language of... Ukraine. Russian was never made illegal, it just isn't being used for schools and government and such.

People want so badly to be persecuted and they simply aren't. Persecution is what russia is good at. You had folks in the eastern Ukraine area who may have collaborated but it wasn't a wholesale thing like russia has been pushing in their propaganda. And we actually have been getting people stepping forward and admitting they were WRONG to think anything was going to be good for them when russia invaded.

Here's a little secret: Nazis didn't like Slavs either. In fact, Nazis wanted to add a little 'e' after the 'v' for Slavs. They wanted a nation of slaves. There was an entire secondary plan for Operation Barbarossa to make this happen. You section out all the volk from the icky Slavs and then you send the icky Slavs to camps, often camps that are already occupied by enemies of the soviets that you've just taken over.

A lot of people found this out the hard way, sadly. But it was NEVER a whole bunch of people being FOR Nazism. It was them being AGAINST communism. And there IS a difference. Remember, there is no absolute binary of fascist and commie. Yes, there were Ukrainian SS divisions. But they were small. Guess what other countries had SS divisions. Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Bosnia, Croatia, Georgia, etc.,. Overall you only had 500,000 non-German SS soldiers. Out of tens of millions of people. Out of all of those different countries. Romania above all was the most eager to join and did.

In fact, every other SS unit HATED the Polish and Ukrainian units. 53,000 people tried to sign up in Ukraine in 1943. Only 12,000 were accepted to a final number of 23,000 by the end of the war. And yet now you have people acting like Ukraine has been a nation of nazis. Why do all the other collaborator countries get a pass? Hell, everyone knows what Switzerland did and yet it's just peachy keen now. The nordic countries were downright rabid in their antisemitism but it's Ukraine that is the evil one.

You are not immune to Russian propaganda. You claim to be antifascist and yet you support fascists. The russcists ain't gonna fuck you. Russia and the US being at loggerheads is not a binary of supporting one (russia) over the other (US). With Ukraine somehow being viewed as a satellite territory of the US hence supporting President War Crimes. Or just the general binary of "we support everyone who isn't the US" even when the people of the countries you 'support' tell you point blank to stop it because their country has done bad shit too that they have been trying to hold people accountable for and your blind support isn't helping (notably north Korea and China but the list does go on).

#war in ukriane #ukraine #russia tag #world war two #nazi mention #holocaust mention

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xneontragedyx · 9 months ago

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The photograph you’ve shared captures a moment in history, but without additional context, it’s challenging to determine the specific fate of the individuals depicted. However, I can share some insights about other famous photographs and what happened to the people in them:

V-J Day Kiss Photo:

The iconic World War II photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on August 14, 1945, symbolized jubilance and relief upon the war’s end.

The nurse in the photo was Greta Zimmer Friedman, who later confirmed her identity.

The sailor was George Mendonsa, who spontaneously kissed her in celebration.

Friedman described it as a celebratory moment, not a romantic event1.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Photo:

Taken during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, this picture shows people thrown out of the ghetto by German troops.

Many were killed, and the rest were sent to concentration camps as retaliation for their actions against Jews2.

Little Rock Nine ‘Scream Image’:

The iconic photo captured Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, being screamed at by Hazel Bryan during the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

In 1997, photographer Will Counts arranged for Eckford and Bryan to meet, and they reconciled after 40 years3.

Mother and Daughter Falling from a Fire Escape:

Taken in 1975, this photo shows 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones falling from a burning apartment building’s collapsed fire escape in Boston.

The circumstances surrounding this tragic event remain heartbreaking4.

Remember that each photograph tells a unique story, and sometimes the full details are lost to history. If you have any specific context or additional information about the people in your photograph, feel free to share, and I’ll do my best to provide relevant insights. 😊

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pepikhipik · 2 years ago

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Jan Beneš o neznámé historii japonských Američanů za Druhé světové války

O vysídlení sto tisíc japonských Američanů do sběrných táborů po Pearl Harboru víte. Ale věděli jste, že za armádu pak v segregovaném pluku bojovalo 10 tisíc japonských Američanů? Získali rekordní počet ocenění, zvítězili v jedné z nejtvrdších evropských bitev.

Pluk s označením 442nd Regimental Combat Team vznikl v únoru 1943. Tvořili jej japonští Američané 2. generace, ale velitelem a nejvyššími důstojníky byli běloši. Dvě třetiny vojáků pocházely z Havaje (ta nebyla státem). V pluku byli dělostřelci, pěchota i kapela a zdravotníci.

Připravovali se v Camp Shelby v Mississippi, v té době v Evropě působil Stý pěchotní prapor, segregovaná jednotka japonských Američanů.

Pluk byl po výcviku přesunut do Itálie a v srpnu 1944 byl k němu připojen právě Stý prapor. Jejich heslem se stalo Go for Broke, Riskuj všechno.

Na podzim 1944 se podíleli na spojenecké invazi Francie, osvobodili městečka Bruyeres and Biffontaine od nacistů. A pak dostali volno, které jim však zrušili, protože se ve Vogézách „ztratil“ prapor 275 texaských vojáků, které se nedařilo Spojencům osvobodit z německého obležení.

Část japonsko-amerického pluku proti 6 tisícům německých vojáků bojovala 5 dní a osvobodila 211 Texasanů. Přišli přitom o 800 vojáků. Velení šokovala jejich chrabrost i počet vojáků, o něž při záchranné misi přišli. Texaský guvernér hrdiny v roce 1962 jmenoval čestnými Texasany.

Japonští Američané následně osvobozovali severní Itálii, tentokrát po boku segregovaných afroamerických pěchotních jednotek. Celkem 442. pluk získal 4 tisíce Purpurových srdcí, 4 tisíce bronzových hvězd, 560 stříbrných hvězd, 21 Medals of Honor (nejvyšší vyznamenání).

Vojáci ve 442. pluku byl mnohdy dobrovolníci, chtěli dokázat věrnost USA, navzdory pochybnostem o loajalitě jap. Američanů. Například Sadao Munemori, který padl v Itálii, působil v armádě už před Pearl Harborem a sloužil i když jeho rodina trpěla v americkém internačním táboře.

442. pluk taky byl u osvobozování koncentračního tábora Dachau.

V pluku rovněž sloužil Daniel K. Inouye, který od roku 1959 sloužil jako první federální kongresman za Havaj, od roku 1962 jako vůbec první senátor z nejnovějšího státu Unie.

Někteří vojáci z 442. pluku získali ocenění za chrabrost hned po 2SV, zbytek si na ně musel počkat až do roku 2010, kdy Kongres schválil zákon oceňující celý pluk. V roce 2012 je ocenila i francouzská vláda. Jedná se o nejvíce vyznamenanou jednotku americké armády v dějinách.

Květen je Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month, takže jsem na toto téma narazil na tw profilech pár amerických historiků. Jinak zdroje hír a na youtube je toho hodně:

Patriots Under Fire: Japanese Americans in World War II

by Kathryn Shenkle, Historian, Arlington National Cemetery

EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS 100/442D REGIMENTAL COMBAT TEAM

Fifty years later, the "Remember Pearl Harbor" 100th Infantry Battalion, and the "Go For Broke" 442d Regimental Combat Team is still the most decorated unit in U.S. military history. Members of this unit earned over 18,000 individual decorations including 9,486 Purple Hearts, and 5,200 Bronze Stars. The Combat Team earned five Presidential Citations in 20 days of Rhineland fighting, the only military unit ever to claim that achievement. General of the Army George C. Marshall praised the team saying, "there were superb: the men of the 100/442d... showed rare courage and tremendous fighting spirit... everybody wanted them." General Mark W. Clark (Fifth Army) said, "these are some the best... fighters in the U.S. Army. If you have more, send them over." This World War II unit was composed of up to 4,500 nisei, which means second generation Americans of Japanese ancestry. ⬇️

Going For Broke: The 442nd Regimental Combat Team

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated Japanese American unit, is remembered today for its brave actions in World War II. Despite the odds, the 442nd’s actions distinguished them as the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of the US military. ⬇️

Asian-Pacific Americans in the U.S. Army 442d Regimental Combat Team

The 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) was activated on 1 February 1943, composed of American-born Japanese called "Nisei" (NEE-say), or second generation. Some volunteered from Hawaii, others from the ten relocation centers on the mainland. The commander and most company grade officers were Caucasian; the rest of its officers and enlisted men were Nisei. The team included the 442d Infantry Regiment with three battalions, the 522d Field Artillery Battalion, and the 232d Engineer Company. After a year of individual and unit training at Camp Shelby, Missippi, the unit deployed to the Mediterranean in May 1944. The 1st Battalion remained at Camp Shelby to train replacements and was redesignated the 171st Infantry Battalion (Separate).

Autor článku a odkazů: Jan Beneš ⬇️

#WWII #historie #japonští Američané #Jan Beneš

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unpopularwiththepopulace · 4 years ago

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A retrospective on some of Broadway’s most important female costume designers across the last century

How much is our memory or perception of a production influenced by the manner in which we visually comprehend the characters for their physical appearance and attire? A lot.

How much attention in memory is often dedicated to celebrating the costume designers who create the visual forms we remember? Comparatively, not much.

Delving through the New York Public Library archives of late, I found I was able to zoom into pictures of productions like Sunday in the Park with George at a magnitude greater than before.

In doing so, I noticed myself marvelling at finer details on the costumes that simply aren’t visible from grainy 1985 proshots, or other lower resolution images.

And marvel I did.

At first, I began to set out to address the contributions made to the show by designer Patricia Zipprodt in collaboration with Ann Hould-Ward. Quickly I fell into a (rather substantial) tangent rabbit hole – concerning over a century’s worth of interconnected designers who are responsible for hundreds of some of the most memorable Broadway shows between them.

It is impossible to look at the work of just one or two of these women without also discussing the others that came before them or were inspired by them.

Journey with me then if you will on this retrospective endeavour to explore the work and legacy that some of these designers have created, and some of the contexts in which they did so.

A set of podcasts featuring Ann Hould-Ward, including Behind the Curtain (Ep. 229) and Broadway Nation (Eps. 17 and 18), invaluably introduce some of the information discussed here and, most crucially, provide a first-hand, verbal link back to this history. The latter show sets out the case for a “succession of dynamic women that goes back to the earliest days of the Broadway musical and continues right up to today”, all of whom “were mentored by one or more of the great [designers] before them, [all] became Tony award-winning [stars] in their own right, and [all] have passed on the [craft] to the next generation.”

A chronological, linear descendancy links these designers across multiple centuries, starting in 1880 with Aline Bernstein, then moving to Irene Sharaff, then to Patricia Zipprodt, then to the present day with Ann Hould-Ward. Other designers branch from or interact with this linear chronology in different ways, such as Florence Klotz and Ann Roth – who, like Patricia Zipprodt, were also mentored by Aline Bernstein – or Theoni V. Aldredge, who stands apart from this connected tree, but whose career closely parallels the chronology of its central portion. There were, of course, many other designers and women also working within this era that provided even further momentous contributions to the world of costume design, but in this piece, the focus will remain primarily on these seven figures.

As the main creditor of the designs for Sunday in the Park with George, let’s start with Patricia (Pat) Zipprodt.

Born in 1925, Pat studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York after winning a scholarship there in 1951. Through teaching herself “all of costume history by studying materials at the New York Public Library”, she passed her entrance exam to the United Scenic Artists Union in 1954. This itself was a feat only possible through Aline Bernstein’s pioneering steps in demanding and starting female acceptance into this same union for the first time just under 30 years previously.

Pat made her individual costume design debut a year after assisting Irene Sharaff on Happy Hunting in 1956 – Ethel Merman’s last new Broadway credit. Of the more than 50 shows she subsequently designed, some of Pat’s most significant musicals include: She Loves Me (1963) Fiddler on the Roof (1964) Cabaret (1966) Zorba (1968) 1776 (1969) Pippin (1972) Mack & Mabel (1974) Chicago (1975) Alice in Wonderland (1983) Sunday in the Park with George (1984) Sweet Charity (1986) Into the Woods (1987) - preliminary work

Other notable play credits included: The Little Foxes (1967) The Glass Menagerie (1983) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1990)

Yes. One person designed all of those shows. Many of the most beloved pieces in modern musical theatre history. Somewhat baffling.

Her work notably earned her 11 Tony nominations, 3 wins, an induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1992, and the Irene Sharaff award for lifetime achievement in costume design in 1997.

By 1983, Pat was one of the most well-respected designers of her era. When the offer for Sunday in the Park with George came in, she was less than enamoured by being confined to the ill-suited basements at Playwright’s Horizons all day, designing full costumes for a story not even yet in existence. From-the-ground-up workshops are common now, but at the time, Sunday was one of the first of its kind.

Rather than flatly declining, she asked Ann Hould-Ward, previously her assistant and intern who had now been designing for 2-3 years on her own, if she was interested in collaborating. She was. The two divided the designing between them, like Pat creating Bernadette’s opening pink and white dress, and Ann her final red and purple dress.

Which indeed leads to the question of the infamous creation worn in the opening number. No attemptedly comprehensive look at the costumes in Sunday would be complete without addressing it or its masterful mechanics.

To enable Bernadette to spring miraculously and seemingly effortlessly from her outer confines, Ann and Pat enlisted the help of a man with a “Theatre Magics” company in Ohio. Dubbed ‘The Iron Dress’, the gasp-inducing motion required a wire frame embedded into the material, entities called ‘moonwalker legs and feet’, and two garage door openers coming up through the stage to lever the two halves apart. The mechanism – highly impressive in its periods of functionality – wasn’t without its flaws. Ann recalls “there were nights during previews where [Bernadette] couldn’t get out of the dress”. Or worse, a night where “the dress closed up completely. And it wouldn’t open up again!”. As Bernadette finished her number, there was nothing else within her power she could do, so she simply “grabbed it under her arm and carried it off stage.”

What visuals. Evidently, the course of costume design is not always plain sailing.

This sentiment is exhibited in the fact design work is a physical materialisation of other creators’ visions, thus foregrounding the tricky need for collaboration and compromise. This is at once a skill, very much part of the job description, and not always pleasant – in navigating any divides between one’s own ideas and those of other people.

Sunday in the Park with George was no exception in requiring such a moment of compromise and revision. With the show already on Broadway in previews, Stephen Sondheim decreed the little girl Louise’s dress “needs to be white” – not the “turquoisey blue” undertone Pat and Ann had already created it with. White, to better spotlight the painting’s centre.

Requests for alterations are easier to comprehend when they are done with equanimity and have justification. Sondheim said he would pay for the new dress himself, and in Seurat’s original painting, the little girl is very brightly the focal centre point of the piece. On this occasion, all agreed that Sondheim was “absolutely right”. A new dress was made.

Other artistic differences aren’t always as amicable.

In Pat Zipprodt’s first show, Happy Hunting with Ethel Merman in 1956, some creatives and directors were getting in vociferous, progress-stopping arguments over a dress and a scene in which Ethel was to jump over a fence. Then magically, the dress went missing. Pat was working at the time as an assistant to the senior Irene Sharaff, and Pat herself was the one to find the dress the next morning. It was in the basement. Covered in black and wholly unwearable. Sharaff had spray painted the dress black in protest against the “bickering”. Indeed, Sharaff disappeared, not to be seen again until the show arrived on Broadway.

Those that worked with her soon found that Sharaff was one to be listened to and respected – as Hal Prince did during West Side Story. After the show opened in 1957, Hal replaced her 40 pairs of meticulously created and individually dyed, battered, and re-dyed jeans with off-the-rack copies. His reasoning was this: “How foolish to be wasting money when we can make a promotional arrangement with Levi Strauss to supply blue jeans free for program credit?” A year later, he looked at their show, and wondered “What’s happened?”

What had happened was that the production had lost its spark and noticeable portions of its beauty, vibrancy, and subtle individuality. Sharaff’s unique creations quickly returned, and Hal had learned his lesson. By the time Sharaff’s mentee, Pat, had “designed the most expensive rags for the company to wear” with this same idiosyncratic dyeing process for Fiddler on the Roof in 1964, Hal recognised the value of this particularity and the disproportionately large payoff even ostensibly simple garments can bring.

Irene Sharaff is remembered as one of the greatest designers ever. Born in 1910, she was mentored by Aline Bernstein, first assisting her on 1928’s original staging of Hedda Gabler.

Throughout her 56 year career, she designed more than 52 Broadway musicals. Some particularly memorable entities include: The Boys from Syracuse (1938) Lady in the Dark (1943) Candide (1956) Happy Hunting (1956) Sweet Charity (1966) The King and I (1951, 1956) West Side Story (1957, 1961) Funny Girl (1964, 1968)

For the last three productions, she would reprise her work on Broadway in the subsequent and indelibly enduring film adaptations of the same shows.

Her work in the theatre earned her 6 Tony nominations and 1 win, though her work in Hollywood was perhaps even more well rewarded – earning 5 Academy Awards from a total of 15 nominations.

Some of Sharaff’s additional film credits included: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Ziegfeld Follies (1946) An American in Paris (1951) Call Me Madam (1953) A Star is Born (1954) – partial Guys and Dolls (1955) Cleopatra (1963) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Hello Dolly! (1969) Mommie Dearest (1981)

It’s a remarkable list. But it is too more than just a list.

Famously, Judy’s red scarlet ballgown in Meet Me in St. Louis was termed the “most sophisticated costume [she’d] yet worn on the screen.”

It has been written that Sharaff’s “last film was probably the only bad one on which she worked,” – the infamous pillar of camp culture, Mommie Dearest, in 1981 – “but its perpetrators knew that to recreate the Hollywood of Joan Crawford, it required an artist who understood the particular glamour of the Crawford era.” And at the time, there were very few – if any – who could fill that requirement better than Irene Sharaff.

The 1963 production of Cleopatra is perhaps an even more infamous endeavour. Notoriously fraught with problems, the film was at that point the most expensive ever made. It nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox, in light of varying issues like long production delays, a revolving carousel of directors, the beginning of the infamous Burton/Taylor affair and resulting media storm, and bouts of Elizabeth’s ill-health that “nearly killed her”. In that turbulent environment, Sharaff is highlighted as one of the figures instrumental in the film’s eventual completion – “adjusting Elizabeth Taylor’s costumes when her weight fluctuated overnight” so the world finally received the visual spectacle they were all ardently anticipating.

But even beyond that, Sharaff’s work had impacts more significantly and extensively than the immediate products of the shows or films themselves. Within a few years of her “vibrant Thai silk costumes for ‘The King and I’ in 1951, …silk became Thailand’s best-known export.” Her designs changed the entire economic landscape of the country.

It’s little wonder that in that era, Sharaff was known as “one of the most sought-after and highest-paid people in her profession.” With discussions and favourable comparisions alongside none other than Old Hollywood’s most beloved designer, Edith Head, Irene deserves her place in history to be recognised as one of the foremost significant pillars of the design world.

In this respected position, Irene Sharaff was able to pass on her knowledge by mentoring others too as well as Patricia Zipprodt, like Ann Roth and Florence Klotz, who have in turn gone on to further have their own highly commendable successes in the industry.

Florence “Flossie” Klotz, born in 1920, is the only Broadway costume designer to have won six Tony awards. She did so, all of them for musicals, and all of them directed by Hal Prince, in a marker of their long and meaningful collaboration.

Indeed, Flossie’s life partner was Ruth Mitchell – Hal’s long-time assistant, and herself legendary stage manager, associate director and producer of over 43 shows. Together, Flossie and Ruth were dubbed a “power couple of Broadway”.

Flossie’s shows with Hal included: Follies (1971) A Little Night Music (1973) Pacific Overtures (1976) Grind (1985) Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1993) Show Boat (1995)

And additional shows amongst her credits extend to: Side by Side by Sondheim (1977) On the Twentieth Century (1978) The Little Foxes (1981) A Doll’s Life (1982) Jerry’s Girls (1985)

Earlier in her career, she would first find her footing as an assistant designer on some of the Golden Age’s most pivotal shows like: The King and I (1951) Pal Joey (1952) Silk Stockings (1955) Carousel (1957) The Sound of Music (1959)

The original production of Follies marked the first time Florence was seriously recognised for her work. Before this point, she was not yet anywhere close to being considered as having broken into the ranks of Broadway’s “reigning designers” of that era. Follies changed matters, providing both an indication of the talent of her work to come, and creating history in being commended for producing some of the “best costumes to be seen on Broadway” in recent memory – as Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times. Fuller discussion is merited given that the costumes of Follies are always one of the show’s central points of debate and have been crucial to the reception of the original production as well as every single revival that has followed in the 50 years since.

In this instance, Ted Chapin would record from his book ‘Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies’ how “the costumes were so opulent, they put the show over-budget.” Moreover, that “talking about the show years later, [Florence] said the costumes could not be made today. ‘Not only would they cost upwards of $2 million, but we used fabrics from England that aren’t even made anymore.’” Broadway then does indeed no longer look like Broadway now.

This “surreal tableau” Flossie created, including “three-foot-high ostrich feather headdresses, Marie Antoinette wigs adorned with musical instruments and birdcages, and gowns embellished with translucent butterfly wings”, remains arguably one of the most impressive and jaw-dropping spectacles to have ever graced a Broadway stage even to this day.

As for Ann Roth, born in 1931, she is still to this day making her own history – recently becoming the joint eldest nominee at 89 for an Oscar (her 5th), for her work on 2020′s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Now as of April 26th, Ann has just made history even further by becoming the oldest woman to win a competitive Academy Award ever. She has an impressive array of Hollywood credits to her name in addition to a roster of Broadway design projects, which have earned her 12 Tony nominations.

Some of her work in the theatre includes: The Women (1973) The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1978) They're Playing Our Song (1979) Singin' in the Rain (1985) Present Laughter (1996) Hedda Gabler (2009) A Raisin in the Sun (2014) Shuffle Along (2016) The Prom (2018)

Making her way over to Hollywood in the ‘70s, she has left an indelible and lasting visual impact on the arts through films like: Klute (1971) The Goodbye Girl (1977) Hair (1979) 9 to 5 (1980) Silkwood (1983) Postcards from the Edge (1990) The Birdcage (1996) The Hours (2002) Mamma Mia! (2008) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)

It’s clear from this branching 'tree' to see how far the impact of just one woman passing on her time and knowledge to others who are starting out can spread.

This art of acting as a conduit for valuable insights was something Irene Sharaff had learned from her own mentor and predecessor, Aline Bernstein. Aline was viewed as “the first woman in the [US] to gain prominence in the male-dominated field of set and costume design,” and was too a strong proponent of passing on the unique knowledge she had acquired as a pioneer and forerunner in the field.

Born in 1880, Bernstein is recognised as “one of the first theatrical designers in New York to make sets and costumes entirely from scratch and craft moving sets” while Broadway was still very much in its infancy of taking shape as the world we know today. This she did for more than one hundred shows over decades of her work in the theatre. These shows included the spectacular Grand Street Follies (1924-27), and original premier productions of plays like some of the following: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1928) J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan (1928) Grand Hotel (1930) Phillip Barry’s Animal Kingdom (1932) Chekov’s The Seagull (1937) Both Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934) and The Little Foxes (1939)

Beyond direct design work, Bernstein founded what was to become the Neighbourhood Playhouse (the notable New York acting school) and was influential in the “Little Theatre movement that sprung up across America in 1910”. These were the “forerunners of the non-profit theatres we see today” and she continued to work in this realm even after moving into commercial theatre.

Bernstein also established the Museum of Costume Art, which later became the Costume Institute of the Met Museum of Art, where she served as president from 1944 to her death in 1955. This is what the Met Gala raises money for every year. So for long as you have the world’s biggest celebrities parading up and down red carpets in high fashion pieces, you have Aline Bernstein to remember – as none of that would be happening without her.

During the last fifteen years of her life, Bernstein taught and served as a consultant in theatre programs at academic institutions including Yale, Harvard, and Vassar – keen to connect the community and facilitate an exchange of wisdom and information to new descendants and the next generation.

Many designers came somewhere out of this linear descendancy. One notable exception, with no American mentor, was Theoni V. Aldredge. Born in 1922 and trained in Greece, Theoni emigrated to the US, met her husband, Tom Aldredge – himself of Into the Woods and theatre notoriety – and went on to design more than 100 Broadway shows. For her work, she earned 3 Tony wins from 11 nominations from projects such as: Anyone Can Whistle (1964) A Chorus Line (1975) Annie (1977) Barnum (1980) 42nd Street (1980) Woman of the Year (1981) Dreamgirls (1981) La Cage aux Folles (1983) The Rink (1984)

One of the main features that typify Theoni’s design style and could be attributed to a certain unique and distinctive “European flair” is her strong use of vibrant colour. This is a sentiment instantly apparent in looking longitudinally at some of her work.

In Ann Hould-Ward’s words, Theoni speaks to the “great generosity” of this profession. Theoni went out of her way to call Ann apropos of nothing early in the morning at some unknown hotel just after Ann won her first Tony for Beauty and the Beast in 1994, purring “Dahhling, I told you so!” These were women that had their disagreements, yes, but ultimately shared their knowledge and congratulated each other for their successes.

Similar anecdotal goodwill can be found in Pat Zipprodt’s call to Ann on the night of the 1987 Tony’s – where Ann was nominated for Into the Woods – with Pat singing “Have wonderful night! You’re not gonna win! …[laugh] but I love you anyway!”

This well-wishing phone call is all the more poignant considering Pat was originally involved with doing the costumes for Into the Woods, in reprise of their previous collaboration on Sunday in the Park with George.

If, for example, Theoni instinctively is remembered for bright colour, one of the features that Pat is first remembered for is her dedicated approach to research for her designs. Indeed, the New York Public Library archives document how the remaining physical evidence of this research she conducted is “particularly thorough” in the section on Into the Woods. Before the show finally hit Broadway in 1987 with Ann Hould-Ward’s designs, records show Pat had done extensive investigation herself into materials, ideas and prospective creations all through 1986.

Both Ann and Pat worked on the show out of town in try-outs at the Old Globe theatre in San Diego. But when it came to negotiating Broadway contracts, the situation became “tricky” and later “untenable” with Pat and the producers. Ann was “allowed to step in and design” the show alone instead.

The lack of harboured resentment on Patricia’s behalf speaks to her character and the pair’s relationship, such that Ann still considered her “my dear and beloved friend” for over 25 years, and was “at [Pat’s] bed when she died”.

Though they parted ways ultimately for Into the Woods, you can very much feel a continuation between their work on Sunday in the Park with George a few years previously, especially considering how tactile the designs appear in both shows. This tactility is something the shows’ book writer and director, James Lapine, was specific about. Lapine would remark in his initial ideas and inspirations that he wanted a graphic quality to the costumes on this occasion, like “so many sketches of the fairy-tales do”.

Ann fed that sentiment through her final creations, with a wide variety of materials and textures being used across the whole show – like “ribbons with ribbons seamed through them”, “all sorts of applique”, “frothy organzas and rembriodered organzas”. A specific example documents how Joanna Gleason’s shawl as the Baker’s Wife was pieced together, cut apart, and put back together again before resembling its final form.

This highly involved principle demonstrates another manner of inventive design that uses a different method but maintains the aim of particularity as discussed previously with Patricia and Irene’s complex dyeing and re-dyeing process. Pushing the confines of what is possible with the materials at hand to create a variety of colours, shades, and textures ultimately produces visual entities that are complex to look at. Confusing the eye like this “holds attention longer”, Ann maintains, which makes viewers look more intricately at individual segments of the production, and enables the costume design to guide specific focus by not immediately ceding attention elsewhere.

Understanding the methods behind the resultant impacts of a show can be as, if not more, important and interesting than the final product of the show itself sometimes. A phone call Ann had last August with James Lapine reminds us this is a notion we may be treated more to in the imminent future, when he called to enquire as to the location of some design sketches for the book he is working on (Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created 'Sunday in the Park with George') to document more thoroughly the genesis of the pair’s landmark and beloved musical.

In continuation of the notion that origin stories contain their own intrinsic value beyond any final product, Ann first became Pat’s intern through a heart-warming and tenacious tale. Ann sent letters to three notable designers when finishing graduate school. Only Patricia Zipprodt replied, with a message to say she “didn’t have anything now but let me think about it and maybe in the future.” It got to the future, and Ann took the encouragement of her previous response to try and contact Pat again. Upon being told she was out of town with a show, Ann proceeded to chase Pat through various phone books and telephone wires across different states and theatres until she finally found her. She was bolstered by the specifics of their call and ran off the phone to write an imploring note – hinging on the premise of a shared connection to Montana. She took an arrow, stabbed it through a cowboy hat, put it in a box with the note that was written on raw hide, and mailed it to New York with bated breath and all of her hopes and wishes.

Pat was knife-edgingly close to missing the box, through a matter of circumstance and timing. Importantly, she didn’t. Ann got a response, and it boded well: “Alright alright alright! You can come to New York!”

Subsequently, Ann’s long career in the design world of the theatre has included notable credits such as: Sunday in the Park with George (1984) Into the Woods (1987, 1997) Falsettos (1992) Beauty and the Beast (1994, 1997) Little Me (1998) Company (2006) Road Show (2008) The People in the Picture (2011) Merrily We Roll Along (1985, 1990, 2012, segment in Six by Sondheim 2013) Passion (2013) The Visit (2015) The Color Purple (2015) The Prince of Egypt (2021)

From early days in the city sleeping on a piece of foam on a friend’s floor, to working collaboratively alongside Pat, to using what she’d learnt from her mentor in designing whole shows herself, and going on to win prestigious awards for her work – the cycle of the theatre and the importance of handing down wisdom from those who possess it is never more evident.

As Ann summarises it meaningfully, “the theatre is a continuing, changing, evolving, emotional ball”. It’s raw, it’s alive, it needs people, it needs stories, it needs documentation of history to remember all that came before.

In periods where there can physically be no new theatre, it’s made ever the more clear for the need not to forget what value there is in the tales to be told from the past.

Through this retrospective, we’ve seen the tour de force influence of a relatively small handful of women shaping a relatively large portion of the visual scape of some of Broadway’s brightest moments.

But it’s significant to consider how disproportionate this female impact was, in contrast with how massively male dominated the rest of the creative theatre industry has been across the last century.

Assessing variations in attitudes and approaches to relationships and families in these women in the context of their professional careers over this time period presents interesting observations. And indeed, manners in which things have changed over the past hundred years.

As Ann Hould-Ward speaks of her experiences, one of her reflections is how much this was a “very male dominated world”. And one that didn’t accommodate for women with families who also wanted careers. As an intern, she didn’t even feel she could tell Patricia Zipprodt about the existence of her own young child until after 6 months of working with her. With all of these male figures around them, it would be often questioned “How are you going to do the work? How are you going to manage [with a family]?”, and that it was “harder to convince people that you were going to be able to do out-of-towns, to be able to go places.” Simply put, the industry “didn't have many designers who were married with children.”

Patricia herself in the previous generation demonstrates this restricting ethos. “In 1993, Zipprodt married a man whose proposal she had refused some 43 years earlier.” She had just newly graduated college and “she declined [his proposal] and instead moved to New York.” Faced with the family or career conundrum, she chose the latter. By the 1950s, it then wasn’t seen as uncommon to have both, it was seen as impossible.

Her husband died just five years after the pair were married in 1998, as did Patricia herself the following year. One has to wonder if alternative decisions would’ve been made and lives lived differently if she’d experienced a different context for working women in her younger life.

But occupying any space in the theatre at all was only possible because of the efforts of and strides made by women in previous generations.

When Aline Bernstein first started designing for Broadway theatre in 1916, women couldn’t even vote. She became the first female member of the United Scenic Artists of America union in 1926, but only because she was sworn in under the false and male moniker of brother Bernstein. In fact, biographies often centralise on her involvement in a “passionate” extramarital love affair with novelist Thomas Wolfe – disproportionately so for all of her remarkable contributions to the theatrical, charitable and academic worlds, and instead having her life defined through her interactions with men.

As such, it is apparent how any significant interactions with men often had direct implications over a woman’s career, especially in this earlier half of the century. Only in their absence was there comparative capacity to flourish professionally.

Irene Sharaff had no notable relationships with men. She did however have a significant partnership with Chinese-American painter and writer Mai-mai Sze from “the mid-1930s until her death”. Though this was not (nor could not be) publicly recognised or documented at the time, later by close acquaintances the pair would be described as a “devoted couple”, “inseparable”, and as holding “love and admiration for one another [that] was apparent to everyone who knew them.” This manner of relationship for Irene in the context of her career can be theorised as having allowed her the capacity to “reach a level of professional success that would have been unthinkable for most straight women of [her] generation”.

Moving forwards in time, Irene and Mai-mai presently rest where their ashes are buried under “two halves of the same rock” at the entrance to the Music and Meditation Pavilion at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge, which was “built following a donation by Sharaff and Sze”. I postulate that this site would make for an interesting slice of history and a perhaps more thought-provoking deviation for tourists away from being shepherded up and down past King’s College on King’s Parade as more usually upon a visit to Cambridge.

In this more modern society at the other end of this linear tree of remarkable designers, options for women to be more open and in control of their personal and professional lives have increased somewhat.

Ann Hould-Ward later in her career would no longer “hide that [she] was a mother”, in fear of not being taken seriously. Rather, she “made a concerted effort to talk about [her] child”, saying “because at that point I had a modicum of success. And I thought it was supportive for other women that I could do this.”

If one aspect passed down between these women in history are details of the craft and knowledge accrued along the way, this statement by Ann represents an alternative facet and direction that teaching of the future can take. Namely, that by showing through example, newer generations will be able to comprehend the feasibility of occupying different options and spaces as professional women. Existing not just as designers, or wives, or mothers, or all, or one – but as people, who possess an immense talent and skill. And that it is now not just possible, but common, to be multifaceted and live the way you want to live while working.

This is not to say all of the restrictions and barriers faced by women in previous generations have been removed, but rather that as we build a larger wealth of history of women acting with autonomy and control to refer back to, things can only get easier to build upon for the future.

Who knows what Broadway and theatre in general will look like when it returns – both on the surface with respect to this facet of costume design, and also more deeply as to the inner machinations of how shows are put together and presented. The largely male environment and the need to tick corporate and commercial boxes will not have vanished. One can only hope that this long period of stasis will have foregrounded the need and, most importantly, provided the time to revaluate the ethos in which shows are often staged, and the ways in which minority groups – like women – are able to work and be successful within the theatre in all of the many shows to come.

Notable sources:

Photographs – predominantly from the New York Public Library digital archives. IBDB – the Internet Broadway Database. Broadway Nation Podcast (Eps. #17 and #18), David Armstrong, featuring Ann Hould-Ward, 2020. Behind the Curtain: Broadway’s Living Legends Podcast (Ep. #229), Robert W Schneider and Kevin David Thomas, featuring Ann Hould-Ward, 2020. Sense of Occasion, Harold Prince, 2017. Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies’, Ted Chapin, 2003. Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, Stephen Sondheim, 2010. The Complete Book of 1970s Broadway Musicals, Dan Deitz, 2015. The Complete Book of 1980s Broadway Musicals, Dan Dietz, 2016. Inventory of the Patricia Zipprodt Papers and Designs at the New York Public Library, 2004 – https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/thezippr.pdf Extravagant Crowd’s Carl Van Vecten’s Portraits of Women, Aline Bernstein – http://brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/cvvpw/gallery/bernstein.html Jewish Heroes & Heroines of America: 150 True Stories of American Jewish Heroism – Aline Bernstein, Seymour Brody, 1996 – https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aline-bernstein Ann Hould-Ward Talks Original “Into the Woods” Costume Designs, 2016 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EPe77c6xzo&ab_channel=Playbill American Theatre Wing’s Working in the Theatre series, The Design Panel, 1993 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sp-aMQHf-U&t=2167s&ab_channel=AmericanTheatreWing Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, Mai-mai Sze and Irene Sharaff in Public and in Private, Erin McGuirl, 2016 – https://jhiblog.org/2016/05/16/mai-mai-sze-and-irene-sharaff-in-public-and-in-private/ Irene Sharaff’s obituary, The New York Times, Marvine Howe, 1993 – https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/17/obituaries/irene-sharaff-designer-83-dies-costumes-won-tony-and-oscars.html Obituary: Irene Sharaff, The Independent, David Shipman, 2011 – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-irene-sharaff-1463219.html Broadway Design Exchange – Florence Klotz – https://www.broadwaydesignexchange.com/collections/florence-klotz Obituary: Florence Klotz, The New York Times, 2006 – https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/obituaries/03klotz.html

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drev-the-procrastinator · 4 years ago

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WIP Title Tag Game

I got tagged by the wonderful @starcloud-nova, thank you so much for the tag! I'd wanted to do this since I'd been seeing it on my dash a lot, so thank you Nova!! <3 Rules: post the file names of all the files in your wip folder no matter how silly the name. Get sent an ask with a title and then answer it with a snippet from said WIP or tell something about it. Tag as many people as you have WIPs!

Alright! I. Hm. I think I'll post the name for the whole WIP folder as is and then maybe names of some of the docs... So you can ask about a specific scene or about the WIP as a whole? All of them don't have anything written for them yet though. Myeah. So!

Kotirintama-fic/Home Front Fic prologue v.2 sauna :) lumilyhty/snow lantern it's his tragic backstory he can.....crie??? wtf 1943 где твоя винтовка солдатик iniziare prologue v.1

Sad BNHA fic/Eri gets OFA Bnha fic idk stupit version of that one scene I guess... scene notes? (snippets from different scenes)

Kingdom AU hämmhngngnnhhän hyttysiä/mosquitos saunajutskalol beginning thing scene 2 i guess maybe i don't remember Oo first meeting idk bro some kingdom au stuff

that uhhh time travel one (bnha)

BNHA but fantasy fanfic?

space fic (The Overview Program)

right the mandalorian fic the lil snippet from the end of the outline

TT a lil snippet from notes on phone Da Battel

I'd be happy to receive an ask or two, or maybe more, or even just one! And then the tagging... Uhhh I don't know how many people who write stuff that I know of have already been tagged, and I doubt I'll think of even 8 people, so if you see this and want to do it but have yet to be tagged, I'm tagging you right now!! Otherwise I'm tagging... uhhh... @birdantlers, @evevoli03, @lastwordbeforetheend, @purplecarseat, @quizzicalcrow, if you've already been tagged then I apologize!

#thanks for the tag again Nova!!! <3 #also I'm very sorry if I forgot someone!!#i think i had a writing tag #drev's fics #although tt isn't a fic #but anyway

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aliveandfullofjoy · 4 years ago

Note

So I was reading about the first Oscars ceremony, and it had a division between Outstanding Picture and Best Unique & Artistic Film, where Unique & Artistic was apparently meant to be an equal to Outstanding Picture but dedicated more for prestige artistic works. The next year, the two categories became one from then on, and Outstanding Picture was the only top prize. (If any of that is wrong, blame wikipedia.)

If the split had remained, and there was a more commercial-y movie top prize and a prestige art top prize, what are some notable movies that suddenly pick up wins?

okay wait........ this is a brilliant question and i am ashamed to say i’ve never really given it much thought until now.

idk if you’ve seen wings and sunrise but they’re both pretty great and they do represent wildly different kinds of filmmaking. while it’s safe to say Wings is the more commercial film, it has great craftsmanship behind it and it very clearly created the template for accessible, capital-i Important, and well-made best picture winners to come.

and, full transparency, sunrise is one of my, like, top 15 favorite movies, so i’m hella biased, but that movie is a gorgeous and strange and thrilling piece of work. the title “unique and artistic film” is impossibly vague, but watching sunrise makes it very, very clear that it fits that bill for that category. and while we’ll, of course, never know what might have happened if that category had continued, it’s tempting to think that all the winners in unique and artistic film would be of sunrise’s calibre, but knowing the oscars... that’s clearly a fantasy, lol. while sunrise is a wildly inventive and artistic film, it’s important to remember that it was fully on the academy’s radar -- janet gaynor won best actress in part for her performance in the film, and it also won best cinematography. so while it’s tempting to think the academy would always recognize a truly unique and artistic achievement every year, in all likelihood, they probably wouldn’t stray too far from the movies that were already on their radar.

so for this thought experiment!!

it’s probably safe to assume every best picture winner has to go in one of the two categories. there are only a handful of winners that stick out as maybe missing out on the big win in this new system, but only a handful.

so uh. this is way more than you asked but i got hooked. here’s what i think might have happened if the two best picture categories had stuck around. as i was working through the years, it became clear to me that, unfortunately, in a lot of years, the unique and artistic film would likely end up going to the more overtly “prestigious” films, such as the song of bernadette or the life of emile zola, while their far better and more commercially viable rivals (casablanca for bernadette, the awful truth for zola) would win outstanding picture. the actual best picture winners have an asterisk next to them. what’s also interesting to consider is the importance of the best director category: most of the time, a split in picture and director will tell you what’s clearly the runner-up. those years, usually, give you a good sense of how the two awards would shake out.

Outstanding Picture / Unique and Artistic Film

1929: The Broadway Melody*; The Divine Lady

1930: The Big House; All Quiet on the Western Front*

1931: Cimarron*; Morocco

1932: Grand Hotel*; Bad Girl

1933: Little Women; Cavalcade*

1934: It Happened One Night*; One Night of Love

1935: The Informer; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (** this is one of the few years i think the actual BP winner, Mutiny on the Bounty, would miss out; The Informer was clearly the runner-up for BP with wins in director, actor, and screenplay, while Midsummer was seen as THE artistic triumph of the year, and with its historic write-in cinematography win, there was clearly a lot of passion for it)

1936: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; The Great Ziegfeld*

1937: The Awful Truth; The Life of Emile Zola*

1938: You Can’t Take It With You*; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Grand Illusion (** this one’s tough... Grand Illusion made history as the first non-english movie nominated for BP, and it clearly had a lot of support, but Snow White was such a monumental moment in Hollywood, and the academy clearly acknowledged that with its honorary award)

1939: Gone with the Wind*; The Wizard of Oz (** this is one of the first years with a clear runaway favorite for best picture, which makes guessing the way the other award would go very difficult! i’m leaning towards Oz purely because of its technical achievements, but i’m not confident about that choice at all.)

1940: Rebecca*; The Grapes of Wrath

1941: How Green Was My Valley*; Citizen Kane

1942: Yankee Doodle Dandy; Mrs. Miniver*

1943: Casablanca*; The Song of Bernadette

1944: Going My Way*; Wilson

1945: The Bells of St. Mary’s; The Lost Weekend*

1946: The Best Years of Our Lives*; Henry V

1947: Gentleman’s Agreement*; A Double Life

1948: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Hamlet*

1949: All the King’s Men*; The Heiress

1950: All About Eve*; Sunset Boulevard

1951: A Place in the Sun; An American in Paris*

1952: The Greatest Show on Earth*; The Quiet Man

1953: Roman Holiday; From Here to Eternity*

1954: The Country Girl; On the Waterfront*

1955: Marty*; Picnic

1956: Around the World in 80 Days*; Giant

1957: Peyton Place; The Bridge on the River Kwai

1958: The Defiant Ones; Gigi*

1959: The Diary of Anne Frank; Ben-Hur*

1960: Elmer Gantry; The Apartment*

1961: West Side Story*; Judgment at Nuremberg

1962: To Kill a Mockingbird; Lawrence of Arabia*

1963: Tom Jones*; 8½

1964: Mary Poppins; My Fair Lady*

1965: The Sound of Music*; Doctor Zhivago

1966: A Man for All Seasons*; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1967: In the Heat of the Night*; The Graduate

1968: Oliver!*; 2001: A Space Odyssey

1969: Midnight Cowboy; Z

1970: Airport; Patton*

1971: The French Connection*; The Last Picture Show

1972: The Godfather; Cabaret

1973: The Sting*; The Exorcist

1974: Chinatown; The Godfather, Part II

1975: Jaws; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*

1976: Rocky*; Network

1977: Star Wars; Annie Hall*

1978: Coming Home; The Deer Hunter*

1979: Kramer vs. Kramer*; All That Jazz

1980: Ordinary People*; Raging Bull

1981: Chariots of Fire*; Reds

1982: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Gandhi*

1983: Terms of Endearment*; Fanny and Alexander

1984: Amadeus*; The Killing Fields

1985: Out of Africa*; Ran

1986: Platoon*; Blue Velvet

1987: Moonstruck; The Last Emperor*

1988: Rain Man*; Who Framed Roger Rabbit

1989: Driving Miss Daisy*; Born on the Fourth of July

1990: Ghost; Dances with Wolves*

1991: The Silence of the Lambs*; JFK

1992: Unforgiven*; Howards End

1993: Schindler’s List*; The Piano

1994: Forrest Gump*; Three Colors: Red

1995: Braveheart*; Toy Story

1996: Jerry Maguire; The English Patient*

1997: Titanic*; L.A. Confidential

1998: Shakespeare in Love*; Saving Private Ryan

1999: The Cider House Rules; American Beauty*

2000: Traffic; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (** this is another year where i think the actual BP winner, Gladiator, might have missed out. it was a tight three-way race going into oscar night, and if there were two BP awards, i think this consensus might have settled, leaving Gladiator to go home with just actor and some tech awards.)

2001: A Beautiful Mind*; Mulholland Drive

2002: Chicago*; The Pianist

2003: Mystic River; The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*

2004: Million Dollar Baby*; The Aviator

2005: Crash*; Brokeback Mountain

2006: The Departed*; Babel

2007: No Country for Old Men*; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2008: The Dark Knight; Slumdog Millionaire*

2009: The Hurt Locker*; Avatar

2010: The King’s Speech*; The Social Network

2011: The Artist*; The Tree of Life

2012: Argo*; Life of Pi

2013: 12 Years a Slave*; Gravity

2014: Birdman*; Boyhood

2015: Spotlight*; The Revenant

2016: La La Land; Moonlight*

2017: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; The Shape of Water*

2018: Black Panther; Roma (** again, i think Green Book gets bumped out in this scenario, i think Black Panther is precisely the kind of movie that benefits from an award that’s seemingly more ~populist~ while Roma easily snags the unique & artistic prize)

2019: 1917; Parasite*

2020: The Father; Nomadland*

but of course i have no idea at all, and most of these are just my gut reactions lol. what a fun question!

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starredshield · 16 days ago

Note

[ blanket ] sender draping a blanket over receiver's shoulders. (for them sitting by the fire maybe?)

Ever since the serum, his life was never the same, his body was never the same. It's so sensitive in a way that no one can quite put a finger on, not even himself. It always gets too cold- or too hot- or too...enhanced when he doesn't want it too. He's been sleepless for days, unable to get a good night sleep without waking every few minutes from the sound of footsteps making him jump, anxious.

Now, he's sitting in front of a fire, warming up as he hugs himself, trying to get as much as warmed himself up. He was lost in his thoughts, eyes blank as he stared at how the fire consumed the wood. He was sleepy. So sleepy- until he felt a weight fall on his shoulders, making him jump.

“Mh!-” He whipped his head up only to see- it was Buck. “Buck- don't sneak up like that.”

#[opcnhighwaymind]#★ [ v // Do You Remember 1943 ]

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bmaatuga · 3 years ago

Text

The Game of Concentration, as played in a film archives

Remember playing the card game “Concentration” when you were a kid? Matching up pairs of images, trying to recall where you saw that card before? For a refresher, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(card_game)

Well, that’s how I feel at work sometimes. I see an image that sparks a memory of something similar or identical among our holdings.

I Tweeted on Oct. 19th about Athens’ Palace Theater, which was on College Avenue. Looking online for an image of the Palace, I saw that on the great website Cinema Treasures, someone had posted a newspaper photo about a captured Japanese submarine (actually a “mini-sub”) that came to Athens:

Japanese sub in Georgia? We have some footage of a Japanese sub in Georgia! It’s in the Booth Williams Home Movie Collection. The Williams family lived just southwest of Athens in Monroe, Georgia, and in 1943, Mr. Williams filmed the submarine as it stopped in town, drawing a huge crowd. Footage starts at 15:46 in at this link: https://bmac.libs.uga.edu/pawtucket2/index.php/Detail/objects/39083

Looking online for more information, I found mention of this mini-sub, the Ha-19, appearing in Terra Haute, Indiana: it was touring the country to raise money for war bonds. It was a two-man sub captured at Pearl Harbor, and in Terra Haute, at least, it cost adults $18.75 to see inside of it, children only a quarter. In Midland, Michigan’s paper, there’s a very detailed report about the tour and the sub: https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/A-Window-to-Midland-rsquo-s-15269003.php

Here’s more information on the sub that went all over the country raising money to fund the war: https://ussnautilus.org/the-submarine-that-toured-america/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HA._19_(Japanese_midget_submarine)

It now rests at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas: http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08456.htm

Maybe it showed up in your home town.

We have more WWII memories on film in the archives. One favorite is in the Gibson home movies, where we learn of V-J Day: “14 Aug 1945 V-J Day Today.”

These are just two small examples of important memories preserved in home movies, on this #AudiovisualHeritageDay, CCAAA and UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. A part of our collective memory of WWII and the efforts we went through as a country, doing our best to fight tyranny to make a better future for everyone.

#Japanese submarine #WWII #war #war bonds #fundraising #home movies #8mm #film #Pearl Harbor #audiovisual heritage

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waywardcrow · 1 year ago

Text

Timeless.

Chapter IV.

Summary: 1943. 1975. 2024. Three different decades, three different lives, three different times your life and Bucky's interwined; he lost you twice, will he do it again?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader.

TW: It can change each chapter but themes of Bucky as soldier and as the Winter Soldier in general, flashbacks and dreams in italics like this, lots of feels, reader's being a little anxious, some stalking lol, a brief sex scene (p in v), very bad written smut, implied domestic violence (not from Bucky), murder mentioned, past lives, past 40'sreader is mentioned to be named Beth but that changes for 2024 version of her so I nicknamed her little bird for Bucky, Ace for everybody else, this will be a +18 story so minors dni.

Disclaimer: Please remember english is not my first language so if I make a mistake or forget something let me know.

Pictures from pinterest and graphic and dividers by the amazing @ firefly-graphics so all credits to the creators.

Previous chapter <;<<

You were fired, that wasn’t a surprise.

Mia Alexander didn’t sue you for every penny you had, that was shocking.

But getting a call from Pepper Potts herself, that was the real main event of your whole life.

She asked you to go and pay her a visit at her office in the Avengers tower, like if that didn’t send you in a spiral of bliss and terror, what will you wear? What could a woman like her want to talk with someone like you? Even if Sergeant Barnes –Bucky, you reminded yourself- told her what had happened in the gala, she might be mad at you.

Your head begun to think in the possibilities all the way there, considering that this was the reason why Mia didn’t sued you, maybe Pepper Potts would do it.

When you finally arrived to the tower your stomach was in knots, not even your lucky outfit made you feel better but like every other day in your life you sucked it up and walked to the front desk.

“Hi, I’m here to see Miss Potts?” you said, making it sound more like a question and the receptionist stared at your vintage midi skirt and blouse like he understood your hesitation. You offered him a smile before telling him your name so he looked for it in the screen in front of him and gave you a visitant pass.

“Third floor, follow the hall, last door in your right” he said and then went back to his screen.

“Oh, ok, thanks” your neck was hot with embarrassment when you reached the elevators and just became more evident when you got in and someone else did too.

“Good morning, third floor too?” Scott Lang, THE Scott Lang, asked you and you could only nod like an idiot. He did a double take on your face and smiled “hey, I know you; you are the girl who throws champagne at evil bosses.”

You were turning purple, it was a sure thing.

“What?” it was all you said.

“Yeah, the other night you did an incredible stunt, Sam told us everything” so Captain America knew too, great. Scott must saw something in your expression because his changed “is ok, seriously, when we hear what she did no one blamed you for it, I was sure Hope was about to kick her ass and don’t let me start with Yelena” your head was spinning “I think it was brave and more subtle than ruining your boss company and driving a car to his pool”

That earned a strangled laugh from you.

“Are you going to see Miss Potts too, Mr. Lang?” you asked when the elevator doors opened again and you walked with him.

“Actually I’m going to see Maria Hill but I’ll see you later” he smiled at you with such honesty that you relaxed for the first time in all day, making your way to your destiny you noticed the front desk for Miss Potts assistant was empty and you were just on time which was as good as being late.

Without not knowing what to do, you knocked at her door.

“Come in”.

Taking a deep breath, you did it squaring your shoulders and trying to tell yourself everything would be fine.

“Good morning, Miss Potts, I hope is ok I called, there was no one and-“

“It’s completely fine” she said gesturing for you to sit in front of her and went to address your formally even if contradicted her next words “Please call me Pepper, everyone does.

There was something about her, a professionalism that was inspiring but also made her approachable and you couldn’t help but smile.

“Only if you call me by my first name too”

“It’s what you like to be called? Because Sam told me about your friend calling you Ace when he went with Sergeant Barnes to the hospital, I think it fits you” at her words it was impossible not to blush again; first of all because of the mention of Bucky, the recurrent thought of your head the last days and then because of the nickname Harper gave you.

“I mean, yeah, my friends call me that” it was an exaggeration, you only had one friend.

“Maybe we should stick to it, between me and you Pepper is not even my name but I think is perfect for me” there was something like nostalgia in her eyes but she didn’t let you think too much about it “and I like that my employees feel comfortable when we talk.”

“Excuse me, what?” it was really embarrassing how you couldn’t form a decent sentence in front of her.

“I would like you to be my assistant, Ace” she said and then your life really changed.

Bucky still could tasted you, the other you, the one who reincarnated and was born in a rich Italian family in 1950, the one that somehow found him when he was The Winter Soldier.

He wasn’t supposed to fuck you in your fiancée’s car, well ex fiancée, you couldn’t marry a dead asshole. His mind couldn’t know why he needed you that bad but his body did, Bucky was sure it was the conditioning what made him be such a caveman with you but the truth was, you were his mirror back then.

You wanted him since Lucas bragged about his connections to Hydra and how they lend him their best asset to protect the arsenal his father’s company will provided for them. Your whole attention was in the silent assassin who looked at you like you were everything he could ever want.

Lucas wasn’t great with you, his little bird, that’s why he snapped his neck and took you away, sometimes his nightmares will let him breath and remember you surrounding him, riding his cock, high in pleasure, telling him that you loved him before you both were found and he was dragged back to Hell.

As a small blessing, he didn’t remembered that while dreaming, Bucky was too lost on you, in the salty taste of your skin against his tongue when he traced the valley of your naked breasts with it.

“Give me one more, little bird” he ordered, thrusting in and out of you with an incredible skill considering the small space “drench my cock again.”

His english was perfect with you, no sign of hesitation, not remembering he wasn’t supposed to speak it so naturally when it wasn’t necessary; the Brooklyn accent showing up without effort.

“I- I can’t” you sobbed, drunk on him, your body asking for more.

“You will” his metal hand let go your neck to play with your clit, the cold metal sending you to your climax once again, taking him with you.

The softness of your skin against his was the last thing he remembered before waking up.

Harper called you when you got back home and screamed when you tell her the news; she made a joke about coming to work with you so she could see Sam Wilson every day, making you feel better. Since you convinced your parents go and have the retirement they deserved, Harper was the only one you had and she was more than what you deserved but sometimes you wished for more, for someone to go home to.

Like a fool, your mind went to Sergeant Barnes; you needed to thank him for what he did for you.

If not for him, you would have be ruined but how could someone put that in a thank you card?

Maybe you could bake something for him.

Bucky likes apple pie.

The thought came out of nowhere with an intense hint of pain between your eyebrows, what was that?

Maybe a nap would help, your new job waited for you and this was the chance you dreamed of, ruining it wasn’t an option.

When Bucky went to check on you that night, you were already sleeping in your couch, making very difficult for him to let you there. Of course he could break in and carry you to your room without waking you up but it would make you feel unsafe.

It was hard for him to go back to a civilian life, or the closest he could have, his actions needed to be careful, especially around you. It was also torture he remembered almost everything and you nothing at all, that he couldn’t tell you about that night on your porch in 1943 or your breakfast with him, Steve and the Howlies when your unit was sent to Europe and destiny brought you both together again, he couldn't tell you about that time in Italy.

Bucky wanted you to know everything but you will never believe him, in the best case you'd believe it was a joke or a proof of him losing his mind but you could also believe him dangerous –which he was- and get away from him where Bucky would not be able protect you.

Sited there in your fire escape, he started to memorize every part of you he could see through the darkness, if that was all he could have from you, he would make it be enough.

Tag list: @cjand10 @bunnyforhim @cookingdancingchick

Next chapter >>>

Hello lovelies! Sorry for bringing this short chapter, I tried to start going through their past lives but witout giving so much details so this don't gets very confusing, if it still is please tell me so I can work on it, what de you think? I'll love to read about it in the comments!

Love, Lily.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x f!reader #bucky barnes fluff #40s bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes angst

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

Text

ORSON WELLES ALMANAC

May 3, 1944

“Orson Welles Almanac” aka “The Orson Welles Wonder Show” (1944) is a CBS Radio series directed and hosted by Orson Welles. Broadcast live in California and Arizona via CBS West Coast studios, the 30-minute program was heard Wednesdays at 9:30pm beginning January 26, 1944. Its last broadcast was July 19, 1944. Orson Welles Almanac presented readings from classic works, drama, music, sketch comedy, magic, mindreading, and personal commentary by Welles. Many of the shows originated from US Army camps where Welles entertained the troops. Welles had an ongoing battle with the program’s sponsor, Mobil Oil, which shortened the life of the series. Twenty six broadcasts were produced; all but four shows have survived.

This is the 15th episode of the series, aired on May 3, 1944. Previous guests were Groucho Marx, Lionel Barrymore, Ann Sothern, Robert Benchley, Hedda Hopper, and Victor Moore. Lucille Ball previously guest-starred on the series on March 3, 1944.

CAST

Lucille Ball (Guest Star) was then filming Ziegfeld Follies for release in 1945. Her films Best Foot Forward and Thousands Cheer (both released in 1943) were still in local cinemas. Ball was in her fourth year of a rocky marriage to Desi Arnaz, who she would divorce in September 1944, although the papers were never officially filed. Two days earlier, she had be heard in “A Night To Remember” for radio’s “Screen Guild Players.”

Orson Welles (aka ‘Wonder Boy’) arrived in Hollywood in 1939 when Ball was a contract player at RKO Studios. To squelch rumors that he was a homosexual, the studio sent Lucy to escort him to a premiere to be photographed. He later recalled,

“We went to see the opening of some movie or other—I simply picked her up at her house and we went to the movie and got photographed and came home and I said ‘Good night,’ and that was the end of that. That was the end of that romance, but it was the beginning of a long friendship.”

A veteran of the theatre, in 1941 the actor / director completed his magnum opus film Citizen Kane. In the 1950s he was under contract to Desilu to film a pilot for an anthology series called “The Fountain of Youth,” which wasn’t aired until 1958 and did not result in a series. Despite that, it won a Peabody Award, the only pilot to ever do so.

On February 5, 1956 Lucy and Desi appeared with Welles on Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town.” They were there to promote their film Forever Darling. Welles was there to promote his revival of his King Lear at New York’s City Center, which he initially performed in a wheelchair due to injuries to both ankles. By the time he performed it on “Toast of the Town” (aka “The Ed Sullivan Show”) Welles was using a crutch.

When the Oscar-winning actor and director was down on his luck he was invited to stay in the Arnaz guest cottage. Notorious for his drinking and rude behavior, Lucy had to find a way to politely get rid of her guest so she decided to have an episode of “I Love Lucy” written for him so she could pay him a salary. With that in mind, Desilu paid him the exorbitant sum of $15,000! Ball’s memories of Welles were mixed. “I had a real love-hate relationship with Orson,” she said towards the end of her life. “His mind was awesome…but he was also a pain in the ass.”

At the time of this broadcast (March 8, 1944) Welles’ film Jane Eyre was playing in cinemas.

Aurora Miranda (Musical Guest) was a Brazilian singer and actress. She began her career at the age of 18 in 1933. Miranda appeared in several films, including The Three Caballeros, where she danced with Donald Duck and José Carioca, singing the song, "Os Quindins de Yayá". Her sisters were Carmen Miranda and Cecilia Miranda.

The All-Star Jazz Group: Mutt Carey (trumpet), Kid Ory (trombone), Barney Bigard (clarinet), Buster Wilson (piano), Bud Scott (guitar), Ed Garland (bass), and Zutty Singleton (drums).

John McIntire (Announcer)

EPISODE

This episode was broadcast from the Naval Air Station at Terminal Island, San Pedro, California, at the time, the fastest ship-building station in the world.

ORSON: “All the way out I had to sit on Lucille Ball’s lap!”

The sailors in the audience respond very vocally to Lucille.

Orson and Ball enact a scenario depicting Lucille Ball pulling over to pick up a prudish sailor who is hitchhiking. The sailor says he’s headed to the Museum of Natural History, and maybe the Aquarium. They drive off, the sailor uncharacteristically staving off Lucille’s advances. He admires her car - a 1941 Cadillac.

ORSON: “You get much pick-up?” LUCILLE: “You’re the third today!”

She takes him on a ‘short-cut’ and they run out of gas. She wants to stay and cuddle...but he is afraid. Afraid that the museum will be closed!

Welles introduces Aurora Miranda to Lucille Ball. He has to ‘translate’ her heavy accent. She sings "No Tabuleiro da Baiana", with Welles joining her briefly in duet.

Lucille asks Orson if she can do a love scene with one of the sailors. He recruits someone from the audience - George. Although he claims no acting experience, he knows he can kiss! Orson sets the scene: a boy comes home from college to meet his sweetheart for the first time in a long while. Orson acts as a director.

ORSON: “Woah! Slow down! What’s the rush?” GEORGE: “I’m expecting a transfer any minute.”

Although the scene calls for hand-holding the sailor puts his arm around her. Lucy senses that Orson is deliberately intervening to prevent him from kissing her, but finally he does.

ORSON: “Cut! That’s it! This isn’t commando tactics! She’s an actress, not an obstacle course!”

Orson introduces the All-Star Jazz Band playing “Savoy Blues.” The piece was first recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1927 and was composed by Kid Ory, who plays trombone here.

Orson Welles reads the honor speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V on the subject of honor.

In 1965, Welles made a film called Chimes at Midnight (aka Falstaff) which incorporated monologues from several of Shakespeare’s “Henry” plays, including Henry V.

#Orson Welles #Lucille Ball #Shakespeare #Aurora Miranda #Orson Welles Almanac #1944 #Terminal Island #Falstaff #Henry V #Savoy Blues #Kid Ory #All-Star Jazz Group #Jane Eyre #I Love Lucy #Radio

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nekoannie-chan · 5 years ago

Text

A Diary of Secrets part I

Pairing: 40’s! Steve Rogers X Barnes! Reader.

Word count: 2186 words.

Summary: Y/N Barnes decided to write a diary telling everything that had happened while she waited for Steve and Bucky to come back from the war, what happens when Bucky found out everything that happened between his little sister and Steve?

Warnings: Some smut references, mention of a death of characters, nothing explicit.

A/N: The diary parts are in italics.

Main story is setting between 1943-1945.

Also I included in a small Runaways cameo.

This is my entry to the @cake-writes ‘s Cake’s 1940’s Challenge with the quote:

“Force is the only language they understand, like bullies“-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English, if you notice any mistake please let me know and I will correct it.

I don’t give any kind of permission that my fics be posted in other platforms or languages (I translate myself my work) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don’t steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other’s people. The only exception is the ones I gifted ‘cuz now belong to someone else. If you find any of my works on a different platform and is not one of my accounts, please let me know. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Marvel’s characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

Main masterlist.

Add yourself to my taglist here.

My other media where I publish: Ao3, Wattpad, ffnet, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter.

If you like it please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.

Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI

1943

You took the notebook; you missed your big brother, not even a week had passed since he had left, although he was not the only one, however, you did not know if you would see him again given the chances that you will reach the next decade, you opened the notebook and took your favorite pen.

"Maybe it's a nice memory for Bucky to know what was going on in his absence," you thought while smiling.

To Bucky:

I'm writing this diary for you, I don't know if I'm going to make it or if I'll see you again, but if I don't make it and you do, I want you to at least know what happened during all this time.

It is also to feel closer and not miss you so much and have something of me in case anything should happen.

I really love you brother.

You weren't sure if that was a good introduction but you needed to make sure that no one else was going to read it.

However something was very true you did not know if you would see him or Steve again, it still hurt that Steve had left even though he had made a promise that you hoped the two of you could keep.

Dear Bucky:

Do you remember when you introduced Steve to our family? I was eight years old, and I guess you never imagined how relevant it was going to be in our lives, right?

I hope that both of them are well in the army, Steve did not want to work in the factory with Rebecca's husband, they are fine, Mom is working hard too.

You know the other day I remembered the time you found Steve and me kissing each other, that's when you found out about our relationship.

I miss you brother.

You wrote other memories and banalities, sometimes you felt as if time passed very slowly, other times very fast, you could not say exactly what fate was going to bring to any of the three, but you felt that it was not exactly a good thing.

1939

You were on the swing in the park crying, you didn't really want to go home.

“Y/N?”

You tried to wipe away the tears with the back of your hand, then looked up as you recognized the voice.

"Hi Steve," you said.

“You're crying, what's wrong?” He asked worriedly sitting down on the swing next to him.

"No, nothing," you replied, looking away.

"Tell me the truth, you know I'm going to try to help you," he asked.

"Steve, nothing happens."

Steve raised your face with one of his hands and studied him closely.

"Your eyes give you away, you were crying, I know you so tell me what's up or let's go to your brother," Steve said.

You sighed and bent down to grab your purse that he used with a backpack and showed him a completely broken notebook.

He took it completely confused and began to check the notebook realizing that it had happened.

“It's your stories' notebook? but who…?”

"It was a girl in my class because my brother didn't want to dance with her the other day."

Steve hugged you, he better than anyone knew how you felt.

"If they bother you again, tell me and I'll give them what they deserve," he assured.

"Steve, I don't like to be bothered, it's bad for your health," you commented.

"It is also bad for yours and it is very cruel that they want to hurt you, so ignore those girls, you are very cute Y/N," he said.

"Do you think I'm cute Steve?"

"No ... well ... I mean if ... I mean ...”

"Forget it, they are right, I am horrible," you interrupted.

“No! I don't want you to say something like that again”

"Steve ...”

He kissed you, an innocent kiss on the lips, Steve could no longer contain himself, he liked you, and however he hated when people bothered you and made you feel bad, he hated to see you cry.

For him, you were the prettiest and most innocent girl he had ever met, you were almost the opposite of Bucky, the only one who didn't look at him with disgust or contempt, the only one who always remembered his birthday.

Bucky ... he didn't even care if he hit him, he had already gotten tired of so many failed appointments that he had accepted to forget you, but he couldn't keep hiding his feelings anymore.

“I…”

You felt the heat on your cheeks increase, you didn't know what to say or do, and you liked Steve since you were twelve years old.

"Y/N, I like you, I don't care if your brother hits me, and I can't hide feelings anymore" Steve confessed.

"Are you serious, Steve?"

"Sure but I understand if ...”

You came closer to him and now you kissed him.

"Do you want to be my girlfriend?" He asked finally.

And then you kissed again, finally after so long.

“How shall we tell your brother?” Steve suddenly asked, terrified.

Knowing Bucky… he was probably going to murder him.

"Well, I don't know ... I don't know how he's going to take it," you answered confused.

"Hmm ... we better not tell him."

You nodded, maybe for the moment that was for the best.

"I'll buy you another notebook and you can write more stories there," Steve promised.

"I won't be able to get them all back."

Some sheets were completely broken, they had also lost pieces and with that fragments of the stories that you liked so much to write.

"You will make better ones," he assured you.

Steve kissed your hand.

"You must return to your house or they will start to worry, I will accompany you," he offered without releasing your hand.

All the way back they went hand in hand.

"Thanks, see you tomorrow?" You thanked him when you arrived at the porch of your house.

“Sure”.

You gave him a little kiss. You separated a few seconds before the door to the house opened.

“Y/N? I was going to go look for you, “Bucky said.

"I met Steve on the way here, we talked for a while and he offered to accompany me back," you replied.

Bucky thanked him and made him come in to have dinner with you.

1943

“What!? Are you leaving Steve? ”You asked, unable to process what I had said a few minutes earlier.

"Yes doll, I was finally accepted into the army," he repeated.

"Steve, I thought we had already talked about this."

“I know but it's that Bucky…”

“My brother what? You can do other things...”

“What things? Are you going to say the same as him? ”He asked, exasperated.

”Why do you want to go?”

"I must do something for the country, my father did it, and it is my duty."

You shook your head, Steve and his father were not the same people.

"Force is the only language they understand, like bullies," Steve said.

"Steve ... I don't want to lose you, you are the love of my life" you whispered almost crying.

"I promise I'll be back, as soon as I get back we'll be married."

From his pocket, he took out an engagement ring.

“Where did you get that?”

“It belonged to my mom, save it for when the time was right, I think this is it, would you marry me?

You nodded as you felt the tears start to come out of your eyes, he took your hand and put the ring on you.

"I love you Y/N, as soon as I return I will fulfill everything you always wanted," he promised.

"I love you, Stevie."

You kissed, Steve started cuddling you.

2024

They beat Thanos, thanks to Sister Grimm; Tony's wounds were healed as well as being able to bring Nat back with Tina Minoru’s help.

Steve was debating for a while about whether to stay or return to the moment before he had made the biggest mistake of his life, but if he left, he didn't know how he would explain the reasons to Bucky, so he decided to stay, he owed it to his friend, and he owed it to your beloved Y/N.

“Barnes, this is what we found, I don't know but I think it was from your family, do you know Y/N?” Nat asked, giving Bucky a box with various things.

"She is my younger sister," he replied.

"Well, there are several notebooks there, it seems they are hers, I think she wrote something to you, I don't know very well, I only read the first page to make sure that were things for you," Natasha indicated.

“Thank you.”

Bucky took the box and began to check things, some vague memories came to him.

He knew Rebecca had passed away in 2010, but he didn't know when Y/N had passed away or what had happened to her.

He remembered that Rebecca had married a few months before he went off to war, so she knew after the war finished she had several children.

But Y/N ... his little sister ... she was dating Steve ... had she continued with her life after what had happened? No matter how much he searched, he found no information.

He saw one of the last photos that the three of them had taken together, they were smiling, Y/N was the smallest, not only of age but also of height, he looked very happy in that photo.

Although on second thought, if Y/N had known everything that happened to her ... she would have been disappointed in him, she had always admired him, but for all those things he did in the past, he felt ashamed.

“Buck, finally I find you, what is that?” Steve asked when he saw that his friend had something in his hand.

"Natasha gave me this, it's my family stuff."

He showed the photo to Steve, he seemed to notice that his friend had turned pale when he saw it, but he had probably hallucinated him.

"Do you know what happened to my little sister?"

"Hmm, yes, Peggy told me, she went to see your family after I fell on the ice and ...”

“AND?”

"She didn't make it."

“Oh…”

Bucky held onto the table, finding his direct family was more than impossible in the current era.

"I don't know exactly what happened to her, your family didn't give Peggy much information," Steve continued.

"She ... she was sick, wasn't she?"

“Yes, her condition was very delicate since she was twelve years old.”

"I guess she got worse," Bucky deduced.

"What's all that?" Steve asked, glancing inside the box.

“Booklets, it seems that Y/N wrote things.

"Surely the stories she loved to create so much."

Bucky looked at the photo again, did not remember many details.

"Do you know when that was?" Steve asked him.

"Before the war?" Bucky answered uncertainly.

"Yes, a month before you were accepted in the army, there should be another photo of the four of us.”

"You had a photo on your compass, didn't you?"

“Yes, it's from Y/N.”

Steve showed him the compass, Bucky couldn't remember how Steve and Y/N had ended up together.

Steve was beginning to feel uncomfortable, no one knew what had actually happened the last time he saw her, he had been thinking of going back and fixing everything, there was no time when he did not regret or feel bad about what had happened.

"I have to go with Tony, he asked me for help."

"Sure, go, I'll keep checking this."

After Steve left, Bucky looked doubtfully at the notebooks, should he read them? From the little she flipped through it looked like a newspaper, wouldn't she be violating her little sister's privacy?

But there was no way of knowing what had happened to his little sister, he opened the first page, it seemed that it was dedicated to him, that then could be a signal to continue, but he did not want to be interrupted.

He took the box and took it to his room, he made sure he was reading the first volume, he wanted to understand everything perhaps that would also help him to remember and know more about his past, many things were still blurred and confusing.

If Bucky found out what had really happened, he probably wasn't going to forgive him either, Steve saw the compass again, he would even be able to sell his soul if necessary as long as Y/N forgave him.

"As I would like you to truly believe that I regretted what I did, I never wanted to hurt you, I was very stupid, I couldn't fulfill anything I promised you doll," he murmured before closing the compass.

The weekend he would go to Y/N's grave again to leave him flowers, nobody knew that he used to do it, he did not want to answer any kind of questions, would it be too cynical of him to ask the photos of Bucky?

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