How to move back in with your parents while maintaining some dignity.
So here we have another vintage image of two men that just begged for a little research. It's showed up in variety of websites aggregating images that are labeled as vintage gay couples. Each depiction lacks any information (here, here, here, and here). Who is this "homo bride and groom" marching down the aisle toward matrimonial bliss? I want to know. A quick search revealed that the images came from an article that appeared in Jet Magazine on September 21 1967. Whomever took the original screen caps kept the pictures but removed most of the identifying information (along with a lot of the obvious homonegative text). Here are the facts that I know: The two men are John Knockhart, a 24 year old from Belgium and Henyrk Rietra, a 26 year old who owned Rotterdam's "famous Welcome Bar." In attendance was best man, Pieter Maas and a small group of friends and family. The Catholic priest Father Omtzigt officiated over the ceremony. Bishop Martien Antoon Jansen defended the priest saying he was tricked into the ceremony. That's not bad for a quick Google image search. It was enough to give me a trail to follow this story. At first I thought the trail was going to run dry. Simple Google searches gave up nothing about who these two men were. My first tantalizing lead was this image of a sugar packet. This is, apparently, all that is left of the "famous Welcome Bar" that Rietra owned. The sugar packet, however, has an address. I followed that address and found an African art gallery. I've emailed the gallery owners, Kathy van der Pas and Steven van de Raadt, to see if they might know anything about our young couple or the business that apparently once stood where their gallery is currently located. I'll keep you posted. The sugar packet, however, wasn't the end of the line. A search for Rietra took me to a webpage that was in Italian. Thanks to Google, reading Italian (which I don't) is unnecessary. A click of a button and the web page is (poorly) translated into English. In 1967 Henryk Rietra and Jean Knockhaert, two men of 26 and 24 years respectively, are joined in marriage in Broederkappellet Rotterdam by Catholic priest JZ Omtzigt. So we have at least another reference to these two men and their marriage. John Knockhart has now become Jean Knockhaert. The correct spelling of Knockhaert's name gives me some new leads. Jean and Henryk (sometimes listed as Harry) had a photographer, Robert Lantos, on hand the day of their wedding. Some of those photographs have been archived in The Netherlands National News Agency (ANP) Photo Archives at the Memory of The Netherlands Project. I've emailed the reference librarian at the Koninklijke Bibiliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands, to see if they might have some additional resources. click for original click for original click for original click for original click for original click for original At least for now, this is as far as I can travel in learning about the "homo bride and groom" that appeared in Jet Magazine. These two young men were courageous in their very public declaration of love and at the forefront of the liberatory movements of the 60s and 70s. It very well may be the first modern same sex wedding held in a church. I have found images of a same sex wedding in Philadelphia that took place within a home in 1957. It's sad to me that the only part of their story that seems to remain is a homonegative laden pictorial in Jet Magazine, a couple of obscure blog posts making reference to their marriage, and some archived black and white images. Rietra and Knockhaert are now in their early 70s. Perhaps one of them--or a friend--might Google their names and find this. If they do, I hope they contact me. I'd like to hear their story and help the world share this couple's love story. They deserve that dignity along with our respect and thanks. Here is the entire article from Jet magazine. The author, Charles Sanders, died in 1990. For more images of vintage men and their relationships (some gay, some straight) visit: Two Men and Their Dog; Adam and Steve in the Garden of Eden: On Intimacy Between Men; A Man and His Dog; The Beasts of West Point; Vintage Men: Innocence Lost | The Photography of William Gedney; It's Only a Paper Moon;Vintage Gay America: Crawford Barton; These Men Are Not Gay | This Is Not A Farmer | Disfarmer; Desire and Difference: Hidden in Plain Sight, Come Make Eyes With Me Under the Anheuser Bush, Hugh Mangum: Itinerant Photographer, Two men, Two Poses; Photos are Not Always What They Seem,Vintage Sailors: An Awkward Realization, Three Men on a Horse, Welkom Bar: Vintage Same Sex Marriage, Pretty in Pink: Two Vintage Chinese Men, Memorial Day Surprise: Vintage Sailor Love, Memorial Day: Vintage Dancing Sailors, The Curious Case of Two Men Embracing, They'll Never Know How Close We Were, Vintage Love: Roger Miller Pegram,Manly Affections: Robert Gant, Homo Bride and Groom Restored to Dignity, The Men in the Trees, The Girl in the Outhouse, Tommy and Buzz: All My Love,Men in Photo Booths, and Invisible: Philadelphia Gay Wedding c. 1957. 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Photographer John Johnson, from Lincoln, Nebraska, took hundreds of photographs in the early 1900s of African Americans and immigrants in his community.
lorygilmore: ch0p-suey: kissmyafro: A man begging his wife’s forgiveness inside Divorce Court, 1948, Chicago. Bad bitches vintage edition I reblogged this picture yesterday but I love it. Stone cold.
And… THIS is how you land a man 1938-style. Now put a ring on it, dammit! It was 1938 and times were oh-so-much different then. I always find these vintage “dating tips” for single women hilarious. I mean, “Don’t drink too much, as a man expects you to keep your dignity all evening. Drinking may make some girls seem clever, but most get silly” and “Careless women never appeal to gentlemen, Don’t talk while dancing, for when a man dances he wants to dance.” The last image in this series is the true winner though… The only thing I can think of whilst looking at this photo is the Dead Kennedys’ song “Too Drunk To Fuck,” although that’s sung from the male perspective... or the video below it, a crazypants PSA from a conservative “Factual Feminist” (sponsored by the conservative American Enterprise Institute) on how not to get roofied!
For more than 50 years, James VanDerZee produced images that embody the spirit of Harlem. From the 1920s to the 1940s, he was the neighborhood's most popular and prolific photographer, his camera
Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support sanitation workers striking for better wages, working conditions, dignity and respect. Underlining the verb mad…
Last year, Dave Jordano decided to unearth some work he created as a student in the early 1970s in his hometown of Detroit. Both Jordano and Detroit...
When he died on Sunday at 87, he left a legacy of rich reflection in the form of his many books
Turpentine worker's family near Cordele, Alabama. Father's wages one dollar a day. This is the standard of living the turpentine trees support. Dorothea Lange, photographer. 1936
Explore Retroarama's 2008 photos on Flickr!
This Day In Buster…November 22nd 1902… The New York Clipper: ‘The Three Keatons write: 'Little Buster Keaton was the recipient of a delightful reception at the hands of the schoolchildren of Dover,…
The Artist is a glossy, black and white valentine that I loved. It creatively echoes Singin' in the Rain, the 1952 MGM musical comedy directed by Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly and starring Gene Kelly as a lovably vain silent screen star in 1920s Hollywood right at the brink of the sound revolution. George Valentin (superbly played by Best Actor Oscar nominee Jean Dujardin) rather resembles Hollywood silent screen star Don Lockwood (superbly played by Gene Kelly) in Singin' in the Rain. George Valentin will have a "meet cute" encounter with a young lady who aspires to be in show business. He will discover her and get her into the movies at his studio. They will fall in love. Don Lockwood had a "meet cute" encounter with a young lady who aspired to be in show business. He discovered her and got her into the movies at his studio. They fell in love. Despite their on-screen chemistry, George really doesn't care for his blonde co-star one bit. The same goes for Don Lockwood and his blonde co-star, the annoying Lina Lamont. Relationships and careers will change with the revolution of new technology, the advent of sound in films. The Artist, a French production boldly and beautifully shot in black and white, is predominantly silent just like the films of the 1920s. Here, silence is golden. The Artist is a film young acting students and wannabe filmmakers need to see. Steven Spielberg told AFI (American Film Institute) "I don't get a lot of answers that give me comfort" when he asks young people what films they like from the 1930s and 40s, the black and white days. In a clip that's on YouTube, Spielberg went on to say that studying the classics, the movies made before the 1960s, is crucial to your craft. I have heard sentiments similar to Spielberg's come from casting directors in New York City. One said, "It's the American Idol generation. They don't want to do the work. They just want the fastest route to a red carpet." The Artist, what the self-absorbed George publicly labels himself as being, falls in love with Peppy Miller after he discovers her. Bérénice Bejo scored a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her work as the Peppy, the determined dancer who becomes a Hollywood sensation in this film-within-a-film story. If you were a young actress submitted to audition for that role, how would you know how to play Peppy if you didn't see the Singin' in the Rain and some silent films starring Louise Brooks, Clara Bow or early Joan Crawford? Peppy is not going to move like women on TV's The Bachelor or a show like Glee. This is a different era, a different tone. Dress was different. Make-up style was different. The women in a Charles Chaplin or Buster Keaton silent 1920s comedy will not be outfitted like they're on Whitney. Trust me on this. Do your homework. Make Mr. Spielberg proud. In The Artist, George's star falls as Peppy's ascends. A few critics have compared that element to A Star Is Born. I'd say it's more What Price Hollywood?, the 1932 RKO film directed by George Cukor. Constance Bennett was Mary Evans, a waitress hungry for movie stardom. An alcoholic director discovers her. He hits the skids as her movie career skyrockets. Peppy Miller is called "The Girl You'll Love To Love." Mary Evans is called "America's Pal." In A Star Is Born, the 1937 original directed by William Wellman and the superior 1954 remake directed by George Cukor with Judy Garland and James Mason, the woman who becomes a star has a love for the suffering actor who discovered her that eclipses her need to be a star. She'll walk away from movies to help him put his life back together. Peppy will help her down-and-out actor/director love, but she won't quit movies to do so. In What Price Hollywood? and in The Artist, one of the lead characters gets hit with a divorce. Not so in A Star Is Born. The Artist is a big French kiss to classic movie-lovers and classic movies, especially MGM musicals from the famed Freed unit with screenplays by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. First, there's the obvious similarity to Comden & Green's Singin' in the Rain with Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor. Millard Mitchell (in the middle of the pic below) plays producer RF Simpson, a loving send-up of Oscar winning MGM movie producer and songwriter Arthur Freed. One of the songs Freed wrote -- "Singin' in the Rain." The RF Simpson-like movie producer trying to deal with The Artist is well-played by John Goodman. A major lesson to be learned by George the Artist calls to mind another marvelous gem in the MGM musical crown that's, again, a Freed unit musical with a screenplay by Comden & Green. In The Band Wagon, Fred Astaire at the top of his game plays Tony Hunter. Hunter, a Hollywood musical star since the 1930s, is in a bit of a career lull. He accepts an offer to reinvent himself in a new 1950s Broadway musical. He's riddled with self doubt as he meets with its husband and wife writing team and the show's Ascot-wearing director. When the director calls Tony an "artist," Tony counters with "...I'm just an entertainer." The quartet then launches into the movie's joyous anthem, "That's Entertainment." Movie audiences grow cold to George's arrogance. His vanity project jungle movie flops. He must learn to become, like Tony Hunter in The Band Wagon, "...just an entertainer." Peppy is an entertainer. She packs the movie houses. George has not been one to share the spotlight. He was a self-centered star onscreen and off. He could be a selfish jerk...like Gene Kelly in Freed's For Me and My Gal starring Judy Garland. Will George learn humility? Or will he cling to the past in fear and drink himself into oblivion now that movies can talk? "I'm washed up. No one wants to see me speak." With a character in this situation, ask yourself "What would Arthur Freed do?" For a film with hardly any dialogue, The Artist says so much in so many clever ways. It's a tale of transitions. From silent movies to sound. From vanity project to team work. Plus it has a movie pooch that takes its place alongside Asta from The Thin Man and Toto from Freed's The Wizard of Oz. This is a must-see for classic film fans. And future filmmakers. Gene Kelly's artistry helped Arthur Freed's An American in Paris win the Oscar for Best Picture of 1951. It was all shot in Hollywood. A Parisian in America, director and writer Michel Hazanavicius, made a great valentine to the art -- and the entertainment -- Hollywood gave us. Bravo, Michel, on your 10 Oscar nominations. One more thing: There's a cameo appearance by veteran actor Malcolm McDowell early in The Artist. Actress Kim Novak made entertainment news by saying that she felt "raped" when she saw a sequence in The Artist using a Bernard Herrmann love theme from the soundtrack of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. She starred in that 1958 classic. It's a film that was appreciated more by the French when it was released than here in America, by the way. In Stanley Kubrick's controversial and hugely popular 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, McDowell starred as Alex. Alex likes "a bit of the ultra-violence." He violates a woman to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain." The MGM musical is referenced in Kubrick's futuristic film. Gene Kelly's recording of "Singin' in the Rain" is on the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack. I can't recall Kelly saying that he felt raped. And there you have it.
LIFE's Hansel Mieth captured the spirit of Harlem in the 1930s by training her lens on life in the street.
The Man of the Soil, 1910 August Sander (1876-1964) was one most important German photographers of the twentieth century. He is best known for the sweeping documentation of his fellow countrymen in…
Buster Keaton, Dorothy Sebastian - Spite Marriage (1929)
How to move back in with your parents while maintaining some dignity.
