The worldwide publicity resulting from William Fagan’s “Swiss Roll” article in Macfilos last September struck a distinct chord. It prompted me to return to a similar mystery that has been bugging me for the past twenty years.
Finding old photos without a clue about their history is a very familiar story and in its self unremarkable. But I have what I think is an intriguing example of the genre. Tw0 decades ago, I acquired a set of mystery negatives at a local garage sale here in Sacramento, California.
Job lot: $10
What was being sold, at the time, was a cardboard box filled with more than a hundred vintage metal 35 mm film canisters from Kodak, containing developed black and white negatives. I asked the seller what was with these negatives, and he said he didn’t know anything about them. They were pictures “of a bunch of guys in fedoras,” he said, and he wanted $10 for the box.
Intrigued, I paid the man and took the box home. I scanned the rolls of film and couldn’t tell much other than that the fellow was right, there did appear to be a bunch of people in hats, and they looked, from the clothing and the automobiles, to be from the mid-1930s.
I didn’t do much with the find until a few years later, when I took a class on photo developing and printing and started to make prints from the negatives.
Famous faces
From the prints I developed, I learned that I had what appeared to be casual, non-studio shots of people, places, and events, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area. They appear to be have been taken between 1936 and 1937. But the subjects, including several well-known names, piqued my interest.
The dating was pretty easy from the cars and events they depicted, such as pictures of the opening festivities for the Golden Gate Bridge on May 27, 1937. Determining who took the photos and why is still a mystery, although the images do provide a couple of clues.
From the prints I made, it was clear that the photographer had amazing behind-the-scenes access to these events. In one print, he takes a snapshot of Red Pollard and Tom Smith in the staging horse barn at a long-gone Bay Area race track—Tanforan, situated in San Bruno, south of San Francisco.
Red Pollard is getting ready to ride and is talking to Seabiscuit’s legendary trainer, Tom Smith. The horse does not appear to be Seabiscuit, however. Pollard is not wearing the appropriate Howard silks. From there, the photographer went into the stands and proceeded to photograph Tom Smith in repeated close-ups, almost as though he were looking for just the right shot to publish somewhere. He also photographed several people accompanying him to the races that afternoon, none of whom have ever been identified.
Cars and radio studios
Many of the photographs are of automobiles, auto dealerships, and salespeople, sometimes in Van Ness Avenue’s showrooms in San Francisco. Again, there are car-related photos of new Lincoln Zephyrs on the road to places such as Yosemite in the winter snow, Monterey, and other locations, primarily in California.
There are also pictures of the groundbreaking ceremonies for a radio station in Los Angeles (KNX, still on the air today) that contain snaps of some movie actors (Leo Carrillo, Jack Oakie, and singers including Bobby Breen) in the audience.
The photographer got behind the scenes at many events, including radio broadcasts and highlights of the motoring world. He was present at the testing of 1936 Fords by the San Francisco police department to purchase as police cruisers. In another instance, he was present at one of the AAA (or “triple-A”, the roadside assistance organisation) economy trials that started in San Francisco at the AAA building, still in located on Van Ness Ave. He also got unprecedented access to the final days of construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and, accompanied again by car people, onto the bridge itself to take photos of the preparations for the grand opening festival.
Auto adventures
The photographer also accompanied several people on motoring adventures as far north as Washington State and as far south as Tijuana, Mexico. He also has photographs from a trip to Chicago. The photographs indicate that he attended automobile shows in Chicago and San Diego, taking snapshots of the cars and surroundings.
The photographer had a connection with the automotive scene in a professional way. Possibly he worked in the automotive section of one of the Bay Area newspapers. Maybe he worked for a local auto dealership magazine or newspaper. Perhaps he worked for one of the large car dealerships that existed in the bay area.
Earl C. Anthony had Packard dealerships in San Francisco and Los Angeles and had interests in radio stations in both cities, though not KNX. Don Lee, the Cadillac dealer in San Francisco, also had similar business interests. My efforts to determine our photographer’s possible connection to any of these organisations have been unsuccessful.
What is pretty apparent is the mystery photographer hobnobbed with San Francisco society people, those with status and money. He documented their lives and adventures.
The sampling I’ve included of the several hundred photos I acquired highlights not only the places this photographer visited but some of the more interesting individuals who pop up again and again in this collection.
The mystery photographer
The fact that these pictures are all taken on 35mm film stock says something about the photographer. In the mid-thirties, a professional would probably have been using larger-format specialist cameras such as the Speed Graphic. The new 35mm cameras, such as the Leica and Contax, were generically described as “miniature cameras”, still very much the preserve of the amateur.
We do have one clue, a selfie portrait apparently taken in the mirror of a men’s washroom. It’s a fair assumption that this is indeed our photographer. According to William Fagan, the camera he is holding, which appears to be 35mm Contax II, is more than likely the one used for many of the pictures in the collection. Oddly, another Contax II appears in a second photographer’s hands, apparently taken at a reception. It is quite possible that this event was photography orientated, perhaps even at a Contax product announcement.
King of bokeh
William tells me that it’s quite likely the photographer was using fast Sonnar 50mm or 85mm lenses which, at the time, were known as the “kings of bokeh”, and he notices this distinctive bokeh effect in several of the shots. Many, he thinks, were shot wide-open, and the mystery photographer had a good eye for opportunities to get the best out of these lenses.
Nevertheless, we are left with many questions to answer.
Are the people at the race track that day he photographed Red Pollard and Tom Smith, the owners of the horse Pollard is about to ride? Are the proud people with their cars dealership owners and their wives?
Is the group shown on the unfinished Golden Gate Bridge comprised of prominent San Franciscans who got permission to go out onto it before it was officially opened?
Who is the blond man, every bit the movie star in appearance, who shows up not only with the group on the bridge but in many of the vacation photos from motor trips he took with our photographer?
And who is the smiling woman in the riding jodhpurs giving us a cheery wave from the front steps of a Bay Area mansion?
I’m hoping that this story and the photos intrigue you and prompt someone out there to help identify some of the individuals and, perhaps, explain the motives behind these photographs. If you think you can add to the discussion, leave a comment or write to info@macfilos.com.
I am grateful to William Fagan for identifying the cameras portrayed in the pictures and some Photoshop wizardry to improve some of my scans, as indicated in the captions.
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It has been a few weeks since the story of the mystery photos from the 1937 Bay Area appeared on Macfilos. Since then I was able to solve the mystery of one of the photos that were taken during the “fiesta” that celebrated the opening of the bridge. In a few photos ( that did not appear with the Macfilos article ) I had a figure who appeared to be an official from the event. He was receiving a satchel as he sat behind the wheel of a highly decorated Lincoln automobile that shows up in many of the pictures taken by our unknown photographer. It turns out his name is Arthur M Brown JR. He was the General Chairman for the Golden Gate Citizens committee. He is receiving a satchel of mail that, as the first car to be allowed across the bridge that day, he is delivering to officials on the Marin side of the bridge making those letters the first mail to cross the new bridge. Thanks to Warren Grieving of San Francisco for the information.
Bill, those photos were taken on Friday May 28th 1937 at the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge to Traffic. I have found the program for the event and I am sending it to you by email.
William
I Want to thank everyone who has submitted comments on the photos. Your observations have been revealing and are helping me gain knowledge in areas I am not that familiar with. Please keep them coming.
I want to answer some of the questions you all have raised.
Many of the questions involve the photos of the film/radio stars. All of photos came from a single event that they all attended in May of 1937. It was a groundbreaking ceremony for a new building that is located on Sunset blvd. in Hollywood. They were celebrating the start of construction of, I believe, a Columbia Broadcasting Station (CBS ) that has the call letters KNX. The building is still there as is the now a Television and radio studio. My guess is these movie people were told by their studios to attend this event and provide some entertainment and glamor. Jack Oakie is in another photo doing a skit/comedy bit wearing a college mortarboard hat. The woman was a focus of the photographer’s attention as he took probably 10 different shots of her.
A few year’s back I dropped by the KNX building and tried to interest them in these photos only to be told the had “enough old photos” that they were not interested.
That response is typical of the responses, if I got any at all ( I’m talking to you San Francisco Chronicle newspaper ) I got as I looked to find entities, historical organizations etc. that would like to get copies.
I did give away a copy of the photo of jockey Red Pollard and trainer Tom Smith, to a small museum that is located near the Seabiscuit home ranch, Ridgewood Ranch in Willits California . The Ridgewood Ranch, some 130 miles north of San Francisco, is long gone but the little museum in Willits has a small display highlighting the Seabiscuit story ( Seabiscuit himself is buried on the Ridgewood
property at an undisclosed location ).
I am impressed with the forensic photo work you all have done and hope if you have any more questions, requests that you let me know and I will see what I can do to answer them.
The woman certainly looks very much like Loretta Young (type into Google “images Loretta Young 1937”) ..and the man in the hat, with his coat over his arm at the stables looks somewhat similar to Louis B. Meyer, but Meyer would have been a bit chubbier, and I don’t think he’d have carried his own coat! ..and the chap in the photo also looks a bit too bewildered to have actually been L. B. Meyer.
There’s a great photo of the building – and a bit of its history – at laconservancy.org/locations/cbs-columbia-square
The guy with the glasses and the coat over his arm is Tom Smith, the trainer of Seabiscuit and other horses. These are not the colours of the owner of Seabiscuit, so another owner must have been involved.
William
The “Hollywood Star” certainly bears a strong resemblance to Loretta Young. For sure not Barbara Stanwyck. Dress codes certainly were very different back then. I do still wear Fedoras, but usually only from Fall to Spring, and yes to keep my head warm!
I have been asking Bill about putting these in the order of the actual rolls of negatives as we did with the ‘Swiss Roll’ but unfortunately the different rolls have got mixed up over the years and so it is difficult to put together specific ‘stories’ about specific people and events.
For example the Barbara Stanwyck guess arose from the fact that there is a photo of a man who may be her then husband, Robert Taylor, but because of what I have already mentioned we don’t know if these photos were taken at the same event. The same applies to the two Contax photos. The first one was definitely taken with a Contax and the second one may have been taken with a Contax, but certainly not the Contax in the photo. It was taken with 35mm film, for sure. As the rolls were already developed when Bill got them, we don’t have the ‘FILCA clue’ this time. The comments about the qualities of Sonnar lenses must be viewed in the light of a certain degree of uncertainty about what lenses might have been used, but the photographer had mastered the art of ‘wide open’ shooting.
Red Pollard is not wearing the Howard Colours, so we might assume that the person with his back to us is not him and that the horse in the race which is about to happen or which has just happened was not Seabiscuit.
There are a lot more points which you can see when you work on the images. The ‘Robert Taylor’ photo was full of black blotches which were very difficult to remove and made for a less than perfect image, but the images were generally in better condition than those on the Swiss Roll as the negatives were probably developed not long after exposure.
The best image of the group I saw (I believe there may be hundreds of images) is the one of the trio at the top with great interaction between Carrillo and young Bobby in the middle, while Okie on the left is showing WC Fields like disdain for a child while he puffed his cigar.
Bill wanted to show these representative images of both known and unknown people in the hope that they might trigger some recognition which might lead to further stories about the events and people in the photos. So, keep the suggestions coming.
William
Charles Howard was known to be a mechanical genius who also was a great seller (rare) and seemed to me like someone who would go for 35mm cameras. So I thought about him first of all. It may not be him but it has to be someone close to him… Not necessarily family but could be a friendly competitive auto dealer who also liked horses. Someone who was in the same circles.
That world at that time was a rarefied time when San Francisco auto dealers, horse racing and celebrities were all mixing together. So that tightens up the suspect list greatly.
I’m not in the San Francisco area but anyone who is could start asking about people who was crazy about horses, cars and cameras just before WWII.
A great read before the weekend and brilliant images. Glad you bought these old negatives. Thanks
Jean
Hello Bill, thank you for posting an intriguing article. Macfilos always seems to be able to come up with eclectic stories which are really interesting. My first comment would be, would there be a digital archive where these images could be kept for posterity as they are a fascinating social history. Do universities near you have such archives?
As regards the man in the washroom, we call it the “Gents” in England, I do not believe it is a self portrait through a mirror. I believe it is the same man and camera ( Contax II) in the next photograph. From my observations the two men seem to be the same person as they have the same swept back hair and distinctive forehead features.
Also, please correct me if I’m wrong; if the man in the second photograph is right handed, then the photograph of the assumed mirror in the Gents, the right hand would appear on the right of the photograph, not on the left as actually shown in the wash room photograph. Is my logic correct?
Thanks also go to William for his digital darkroom skills.
Chris
I also wondered whether the two photographers were one and the same. I agree on the similarity of the hair and forehead. I decided against thi theory because I had already convinced myself that the two pictures were taken on the same occasion. If that were the case, the man in the euphemism room doesn’t have the handkerchief in his top pocket. Also, if the man in the reception is holding the Contax, who took the other photograph and why is it in the collection?
Mike. Could the suit lapel of the man in the washroom holding the camera vertical be covering his white handkerchief in his top pocket because of him leaning to his left? Possibly, but I cannot however make out the signet ring on the right hand of man in the reception which is clearly visible on the man in the washroom photograph.
We will never know what was the actual story and it is not important; but pondering these ideas takes up back on a captivating journey into the past where the dress code for both men and women was totally different.
How many of us now wear hats outside apart for keeping our heads warm in winter?
Chris
Yes I forgot the signet ring. Thet was another difference which I noticed a couple of weeks ago when reviewing the images.
As the ring is actually on the LEFT hand of the mirror-image man (it appears to be his right hand when reflected in the mirror), and there is no ring on the left hand of the man in the photo below that, I think it further shows that they are not the same man.
Agreed. It also shows I need to improve my clarity of writing. Thanks for your input; always a delight to read.
Chris
I also wondered whether the two photographers were one and the same. I agree on the similarity of the hair and forehead. I decided against thi theory because I had already convinced myself that the two pictures were taken on the same occasion. If that were the case, the man in the euphemism room doesn’t have the handkerchief in his top pocket. Also, if the man in the reception is holding the Contax, who took the other photograph and why is it in the collection?
Chris,
“..As regards the man in the washroom, we call it the “Gents” in England, I do not believe it is a self portrait through a mirror..”
If you look at any photo of a Contax II camera – for instance, look at the the photo up above, below the ‘self portrait’ – you’ll see that the LARGER finder window is on the RIGHT-hand side of the camera as you look at the camera.
In the self-portrait, you’ll see that the LARGER v/f window is on the LEFT of the camera (..we-ell, at the TOP of the camera, because it’s held vertically). That shows that the self-portrait is a reflection – left and right are swapped over. So it is a self-portrait shot in a mirror – as we all do it (..we-ell, many of us..) when we see a nice big mirror in the Gents and we have a camera in our hand.
And, as Mike says “..if the man in the reception is holding the Contax, who took the other photograph”? ..that is, the self-portrait. If these are both frames from the same roll of film, then the roll which was in the bathroom camera must have been taken out and put into ANOTHER camera, in order to take a photo – on the same roll of film – of the man with the handkerchief who’s holding the Contax. Too far-fetched.
The self-portrait IS definitely a self-portrait in a mirror, and the man with the white handkerchief in the photo below that is a different man – with a similar hairstyle – who is holding ..examining the finder, as if he’s not used to holding such a camera.. holding a different, but similar, Contax.
David. Thank you for your explanation. I admit I got it wrong. I did not examine the camera in sufficient detail. Seeing big mirrors in any Gents in the future will always remind me of this article.
Chris
Ahahahaha!
Wild guess but could be Charles Howard himself or possibly his second wife Marcela Zabela. Or one of Charles Howard’s children. Or someone close to any one of them like grandchildren or wives. Or a close friend to one of them.
Charles Howard is the owner of Seabiscuit and he also was a major automobile dealer in the San Francisco area. In this time period, if you was close to Howard himself, you could get up close and personal to celebrities and so on.
That certainly explains the twin themes of cars and horses.
That’s definitely not ‘Barbara Stanwyck’, sorry.