The Postcard
A postcard that was published by Rotary Photo of London EC. On the back of the card they have printed:
"This is a Hand-Painted Real
Photograph of a British Beauty,
Miss Gladys Cooper and Baby
John."
The card was posted in Wolverhampton using a ½d. stamp on Friday the 27th. April 1917.
It was sent to:
Miss G. Nicholls,
Scarboro House,
All Saints Road.
Local.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"My Dear Gertie,
Thanks for letter. I will
see you at Queens at
5.45 on Sat. - that will
give us a chance to get
a seat.
I rang you up but the
phone was engaged
each time.
Love Elsie."
Miss Gladys Cooper
Gladys Cooper's most noticeable characteristic is that she rarely if ever smiled when being photographed. In some publicity shots she actually looks quite annoyed.
Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, (18th. December 1888 – 17th. November 1971) was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television.
Beginning as a teenager in Edwardian musical comedy and pantomime, she was starring in dramatic roles and silent films before the First World War.
She also became a manager of the Playhouse Theatre from 1917 to 1933, where she played many roles. From the early 1920's, Cooper was winning praise in plays by W. Somerset Maugham and others.
In the 1930's, she was starring both in the West End and on Broadway. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, Cooper found success in a variety of character roles; she was nominated for three Academy Awards, the last one as Mrs. Higgins in 'My Fair Lady' (1964). Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, she mixed her stage and film careers, continuing to star on stage until her last year.
-- Gladys Cooper - The Early Years
Cooper was born at 23 Ennersdale Road, Hither Green, Lewisham, London, the eldest of the three daughters of Charles William Frederick Cooper and Mabel Barnett.
Gladys Cooper spent most of her childhood in Chiswick, where her family moved when she was an infant.
Gladys made her stage debut in 1905 touring with Seymour Hicks in his musical 'Bluebell in Fairyland'. The young beauty was also a popular photographic model.
In 1906, she appeared as Lady Swan in London in 'The Belle of Mayfair', and then in the pantomime 'Babes in the Wood' as Mavis. The following year she became a chorus girl at the Gaiety Theatre, creating the small role of Eva in 'The Girls of Gottenberg'. That Christmas, she was Molly in 'Babes in the Wood'.
In 1908, she appeared in the musical 'Havana', followed the next year by 'Our Miss Gibbs', in which she played Lady Connie. She was then on tour again with Hicks, in 'Papa's Wife', before playing Sadie von Tromp in the hit operetta 'The Dollar Princess' at Daly's Theatre in 1909.
In 1911, she appeared in a production of 'The Importance of Being Earnest' and in 'Man and Superman'. Among several other plays, the next year she was Muriel Pym in 'Milestones' at the Royalty Theatre. A highlight of 1913 was Dora in 'Diplomacy' at Wyndham's Theatre. That year she also played the title role in 'The Pursuit of Pamela' at the Royalty.
In 1913 Cooper appeared in her first film, 'The Eleventh Commandment', going on to make several more silent films during the Great War and shortly afterwards. She continued full-time stage work, however, including appearances as Lady Agatha Lazenby in 'The Admirable Crichton' in 1916, and Clara de Foenix in 'Trelawny of the Wells'.
In addition, in 1917, Cooper became co-manager, with Frank Curzon, of the Playhouse Theatre, taking over sole control from 1927 until she left in 1933. During these years, she starred several times in 'My Lady's Dress'. She appeared in W. Somerset Maugham's 'Home and Beauty' in 1919, repeated Dora at His Majesty's Theatre in 1920 and elsewhere thereafter, and played numerous roles at the Playhouse Theatre.
-- Gladys Cooper - The Later Years
It was not until 1922, however, now in her mid thirties, that she found major critical success, in Arthur Wing Pinero's 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray'. Early in her stage career, she was criticised for being too stiff. Aldous Huxley dismissed her performance in 'Home and Beauty', writing:
"She is too impassive, too statuesque,
playing all the time as if she were Galatea,
newly unpetrified and still unused to the
ways of the living world."
Evidently, her acting improved during this period, as Maugham praised her for:
"Turning herself from an indifferent actress
to an extremely competent one through her
common sense and industriousness".
For both the 1923 and 1924 Christmas shows at the Adelphi Theatre, Cooper played the title character in 'Peter Pan', while also playing several other roles at that theatre during those two years. She appeared in Maugham's 'The Letter' in London and on tour in 1927 and 1928, in 'Excelsior' in 1928, and in Maugham's 'The Sacred Flame' in 1929, also in London and on tour.
Among other roles, Cooper was Clemency Warlock in 'Cynara' (1930), Wanda Heriot in 'The Pelican' (1931), Lucy Haydon in 'Dr Pygmalion' (1932), Carola in 'The Firebird' (1932), Jane Claydon in 'The Rats of Norway' (1933), Mariella Linden in 'The Shining Hour' in 1934 and 1935, in London and New York City and on tour (at the same time making her first "talkie" film, 'The Iron Duke'), also playing Desdemona and Lady Macbeth on Broadway in 1935.
She was Dorothy Hilton in 'Call it a Day', again in both London and New York, from 1935 to 1936. A highlight of 1937 was Laura Lorimer in 'Goodbye to Yesterday' in London and on tour. In 1938, she played Tiny Fox-Collier in 'Spring Meeting' in New York, Montreal and Britain, as well as several Shakespeare roles and Fran Dodsworth in 'Dodsworth'. She repeated 'Spring Meeting' in 1939.
Cooper turned to film full-time in 1940, finding success in Hollywood in a variety of character roles, and was frequently cast as a disapproving, aristocratic society woman, although she sometimes played lively, approachable types, as she did in 'Rebecca' (1940).
She was nominated three times for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performances as Bette Davis's domineering mother in 'Now, Voyager' (1942), a sceptical nun in 'The Song of Bernadette' (1943), and Rex Harrison's mother, Mrs. Higgins, in 'My Fair Lady' (1964).
In 1945, after playing the role of Clarissa Scott in the film 'The Valley of Decision' for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, she was given a contract with the studio. Her credits there included both dramatic and comedy films, including 'The Green Years' (1946), 'The Cockeyed Miracle' (1946) and 'The Secret Garden' (1949).
Other notable film roles were 'The Man Who Loved Redheads' (1955), 'Separate Tables' (1958) and 'The Happiest Millionaire' (1967) as Aunt Mary Drexel, singing "There Are Those".
Her only stage roles in the 1940's were Mrs. Parrilow in 'The Morning Star' in Philadelphia and New York (1942), and Melanie Aspen in 'The Indifferent Shepherd' in Great Britain (1948).
She returned to theatre (between films) more often in the 1950's and 1960's, playing in London and on tour in such roles as Edith Fenton in 'The Hat Trick' (1950); Felicity, Countess of Marshwood, in 'Relative Values' (1951 and 1953); Grace Smith in 'A Question of Fact' (1953); Lady Yarmouth in 'The Night of the Ball' (1954); Mrs. St. Maugham in 'The Chalk Garden' (1955–56), Dame Mildred in 'The Bright One' (1958); Mrs. Vincent in 'Look on Tempests' (1960); Mrs. Gantry (Bobby) in 'The Bird of Time' (1961); Mrs. Moore in a stage adaptation of 'A Passage to India' (1962); Mrs Tabret in 'The Sacred Flame' (1966 and 1967); Prue Salter in 'Let's All Go Down the Strand' (1967); Emma Littlewood in 'Out of the Question' (1968); Lydia in 'His, Hers and Theirs' (1969); and others.
She received two nominations for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, for her roles in 'The Chalk Garden' and 'A Passage to India'.
She also had various television roles in the 1950's and '60's. These included, among others, three episodes of 'The Twilight Zone'. In the first, titled "Nothing in the Dark" (1962), she played an old lady who refuses to leave her flat for fear of meeting 'Death'. A young policeman (Robert Redford) is shot at her doorstep and persuades her to let him inside.
Her second appearance was in "Passage on the Lady Anne", which aired on the 9th. May 1963.
Her final episode was the 1964 "Night Call", where she portrayed a difficult, lonely old lady who is besieged by late-night phone calls. Cooper starred in the 1964–65 series 'The Rogues' with David Niven, Charles Boyer, Gig Young, Robert Coote, John Williams and Larry Hagman. The series lasted a single season of thirty episodes, most of which featured Cooper as the matriarch of a crime family.
In 1967, at the age of 79, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). Her last major success on the stage was at the age of 82, in 1970–71 in the role of Mrs. St. Maugham in Enid Bagnold's 'The Chalk Garden', a role she had created on Broadway and in the West End in 1955–56.
-- Marriages of Gladys Cooper
Cooper was married three times. Her husbands were:
- Captain Herbert Buckmaster (1908–1921). The couple had two children: Joan (1910–2005), who was married to the actor Robert Morley, and John Rodney (1915–83).
- Sir Neville Pearson (1927–36). Sir Neville and Lady Pearson had one daughter, Sally Pearson, aka Sally Cooper, who was married (1961–86) to actor Robert Hardy.
- Philip Merivale (1937–1946), a fellow actor. The couple lived for many years in Santa Monica, California as permanent resident aliens. He died at age 59 from a heart ailment. Her stepson from this marriage was John Merivale.
-- The Death of Gladys Cooper
Gladys lived mostly in England in her final years, and died from pneumonia at the age of 82 in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
The Battle of Doiran
So what else happened on the day that Elsie posted the card?
Well, on the 27th. April 1917, after three days of intense hand-to-hand combat, the British withdrew to their initial positions near Doiran Lake in Macedonia.
A Mine Disaster in Colorado
Also on that day, a mine explosion at the Victor-American Fuel Company coal mine in Hastings, Las Animas County, Colorado, killed 121 people.
A coroner's jury found that Hastings mine inspector David Reese caused the explosion when, deep in the mine, he opened his oil-burning, key-lock safety lamp (which generated light by burning the oil on a wick) in an attempt to re-light it.
Reese's body was found with matches in his pants pocket, a violation of mine-safety laws.
In June 1912, twelve miners were killed in an explosion at the same mine.
A small monument marks the location of the 1917 explosion. It is located on County Road 44, about 1.5 km west of the Ludlow Monument, which commemorates those who died in a massacre during the Colorado Coalfield War.
Tetratema
The 27th. April 1917 also marked the birth in Thomastown, Ireland of Tetratema.
Tetratema was an Irish race horse who became a thirteen-time race champion, including the 2000 Guineas Stakes and July Cup in 1921. Tetratema died at the age of twenty-two in 1939.
Frederick Gutekunst
The day also marked the death of the German-American photographer Frederick Gutekunst.
Frederick is best known for his portrait photography that included Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland and Caroline Still Anderson.
Frederick, who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the 25th. September 1831, opened his first photographic portrait studio with his brother in 1854, and successfully ran his business for sixty years.
He grew to national prominence during the American Civil War, and expanded his business to include two studios and a large phototype printing operation.
Frederick is known as the "Dean of American Photographers" due to his high quality portraits of dignitaries and celebrities.
He worked as the official photographer for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and received national and international recognition for his photographs of the Gettysburg battlefield and an innovative 10-foot long panoramic photograph of the Centennial Exposition.
-- Frederick Gutekunst - The Early Years
Gutekunst's father was a cabinetmaker and the family name Gutekunst means "good art" in German. Most sources list Gutekunst's place of birth as Philadelphia. However, his obituary in the Photographic Journal of America lists Gutekunst's birthplace as Germany.
Frederick's father wanted young Frederick to become a lawyer, and sent him to study law for six years under Joseph Simon Cohen, prothonotary to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
However Frederick found the study of law "dry and uninteresting," and instead became involved in the emerging photographic technique of the daguerreotype.
He was a frequent visitor to Marcus Aurelius Root's gallery, and learned the craft of daguerreotype from photography pioneer Robert Cornelius.
Gutekunst displayed an aptitude for chemistry, and progressed the technique to convert a dagurerreotype image into a printable electrotype plate.
Frederick's father noticed his son's interest in chemistry, and found an internship for him with a pharmacist, Frederick Klett. Gutekunst undertook a four-year apprenticeship with Klett, and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1853.
-- Frederick Gutekunst's Photographic Career
Frederick worked for two years at a drug store in Philadelphia and began to collect parts to build a camera. He was able to purchase a lens and battery, and his carpenter father built him a box to house the camera.
Frederick joined the Franklin Institute and used their laboratory facilities to conduct scientific experiments. He created his own photographic plates coated with collodion and made ambrotypes of his friends in the back of the drug store.
Gutekunst's brother, Louis, was a barber and helped financially support Frederick's interest in photography.
In 1856, the two brothers opened a photography studio named Gutekunst & Brother. They worked together until 1860, when Louis went back to work as a barber.
The business grew quickly due to strong demand for photographs. The Civil War turned the Gutekunst photography studio into an extremely popular destination.
Philadelphia was a major center for military deployment, and soldiers would have their portraits made in their uniforms as a memento for their families before going off to war.
Generals George Meade, Ulysses S. Grant and Philip Sheridan also came to have their photographic portraits taken by Gutekunst. The portrait of Grant in particular raised national interest and set Gutekunst apart from his contemporaries.
Gutekunst took photographs of numerous dignataries and celebrities including Caroline Still Anderson, William Cullen Bryant, Grover Cleveland, William Lloyd Garrison, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William McKinley, Carl Schurz and Walt Whitman.
Frederick kept detailed listings of those he photographed, and one of the ledgers is housed at the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Frederick worked as the official photographer of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and in 1875 photographed railroad-related structures and scenery which were printed as a collection of stereo views.
Gutekunst became known as the "Dean of American Photography," and was recognized for his photographs of the Gettysburg battlefield.
He created a ten-foot wide and 18 inch high panoramic photograph of the 1876 Centennial Exposition made from seven negatives. It was described as the largest photograph in the world at the time. His panoramic photograph won him medals from Austria, France and Italy, as well as two gold-lined bronze vases from Japan.
On a visit to Germany in 1878 Frederick he purchased the rights for the Phototype process. One year later during a visit to Philadelphia, J. H. Fitzgibbons, the editor of the St. Louis Practical Photographer, noted that Gutekunst was manufacturing thousands of prints every day.
Eventually, Frederick's factory needed to move out of Arch Street in Philadelphia and up to 813 Girard Avenue. Here a staff of forty under the supervision of the engraver, James P. Harbeson, kept up with demand for reproduction for publications, etc.
Girard Ave was a perfect location for this endeavor since this part of Philadelphia was more industrial and less retail than Arch St.
Some of the products of this venture were illustrations for books such as the Biographical Album of Prominent Pennsylvanians, Artistic Houses, and Artistic Country Seats published by D. Appleton & Co. of New York.
At this time Gutekunst began to use what we would now call a panoramic camera which took a photo of one hundred and eighty degrees, and from which the studio could produce a print thirty-six inches in length.
In 1885, Frederick was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.
-- A New Photographic Studio
By 1893 Gutekunst had been in business for almost forty years, and an additional studio was needed for the growing enterprise. The new studio was established in an upscale part of Philadelphia at 1700 N. Broad St., with William Braucher as manager.
Frederick's success enabled him to move his home out of Center City Philadelphia into Pulaski Avenue in Germantown in Philadelphia.
A year before his death Gutekunst incorporated his business and some of the older employees became stockholders, but Braucher resigned at that time. Gutekunst had successfully run his photographic studio for sixty years.
-- The Death of Frederick Gutekunst
Frederick Gutekunst died at the age of 85 in Philadelphia on the 27th. April 1917. Eight weeks earlier he had fallen down the steps of his N. Bouvier residence returning to his studio after lunch at home.
This fall and Bright's disease seem to have caused his death.
Frederick was laid to rest at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.
