The new Illustration Friday challenge word this week is “shy”. Phyllis Driver had dreams of becoming a concert pianist, but lacked confidence in her talent. Instead, the shy Phyllis became the humor editor of the Bluffton College newspaper. At 22, Phyllis married Sherwood Diller and resigned herself to the dull and expected life of a housewife. She …
17-year old Steve Took answered an ad in the music newspaper Melody Maker. Guitarist Marc Bolan was looking for a drummer to join his band and Steve fit the bill. The band, Tyrannosaurus Rex, performed one disastrous show and Bolan fired everyone but Steve. They remained a duo, busking in subways with Steve accompanying Bolan’s …
Young Billy Haines ran away from his Virginia home, with his boyfriend, at age 14. They worked in a dance hall (that was most likely a brothel), until Billy was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout and offered a $40 a week contract with MGM Pictures. In March 1922, Billy was off to Hollywood. Billy …
Jenny Maxwell, a distant relative of Marilyn Monroe, began her acting career in small roles — mostly in TV westerns and sitcoms in the late 1950s. She made her big screen debut with an uncredited part in the 1959 teen melodrama Blue Denim, which dealt with the then-controversial subject of abortion. After an unsuccessful audition for …
Jack Kerouac carried a notebook with him wherever he went. He chronicled his life, his actions, his feelings… everything. He traveled across the United States and Mexico meeting people, observing their lives and writing about what he saw. His journeys and scribblings became the basis for his most famous book, On the Road. Viking Press, the publishing company that finally …
In the long ago days before eBay cornered the market on people selling their household castoffs, my wife and I frequented flea markets on a regular basis. Each Sunday morning, when the weather was nice (and sometimes when it wasn’t), we’d strap our unwilling young son into his car seat and head out to the …
Twenty-three year old Debora Sue Schatz, on the job as a mail carrier for just over a year and a half, was doing a favor for a co-worker. On June 7, 1984, immediately after finishing up her daily route, Debora drove to a more affluent section of West Houston to cover for a fellow mail carrier who needed some time …
It was late in the 1977 baseball season. Dusty Baker, the Los Angeles Dodgers veteran right fielder, was coming around third base and trotting home on the final ninety feet of his 30th home run of the season. He was greeted at the plate by on-deck batter Glenn Burke, a youngster in his second year …
The Illustration Friday word this week is “book”. When she wasn’t writing poetry, Sylvia Plath spent a good portion of her life trying to kill herself. At 21, Sylvia made her first attempt at suicide by taking a handful of her mother’s sleeping pills. When she was discovered three days later, in a crawlspace beneath her house, she chronicled the …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “crooked”. “Canada Bill” Jones would shuffle and trip into a room, wearing ill-fitting clothes and a cocked grin. His hair was mussed and he’d ask stupid questions. And it was all part of his master plan. Born in England in the early part of the 19th century, Bill moved to Canada while …
