Category Archives: photographs

photographs

Parallèle des édifices anciens et modernes du continent Africain

 

Pierre Trémaux was a remarkable artist, naturalist, and architectural historian, best remembered for his three part publication on the architecture of Africa and Asia Minor: Voyage au Soudan oriental et dans l’Afrique septentrionale executes de 1847 a 1854; Parallèle des édifices anciens et modernes du continent Africain; and Exploration archéologique en Asia mineur. We are fortunate to be adding the second part to the Graphic Arts Collection, leaving only the third yet to be acquired.

Trémaux meant to document the people and places he saw using the early paper negative process but the quality of the prints was not good. Ultimately, the majority of the published plates are tinted lithographs. In the second volume, he bound the fading salt prints directly opposite a lithograph of the same scene, providing excellent historical comparisons for art and architectural historians. For our purposes here, only single plates are reproduced since photographing two pages in this oblong volume would make them exceptional small.

Now at Princeton: Pierre Trémaux (1818-1895), Voyages au Soudan oriental et dans l’Afrique septentrionale, exécutés de 1847 à 1854: comprenant une exploration dans l’Algérie, le régences de Tunis et de Tripoli, l’Égypte, la Nubie, les déserts, l’île de Méroé, le Sennar, le Fa-Zoglio, et dans les contrées inconnues de la Nigritie; atlas de vues pitoresques, scènes de mœurs, types de végétation remarquables, dessins d’objets éthologiques et scientifiques, panoramas et cartes géographiques (Paris: Borrani, [1852-58]). 37 x 55 cm. Graphic Arts Collection Oversize 2013-0025E. Purchased with funds from the Friends of the Princeton University Library. Fully digitized

Pierre Trémaux (1818-1895), *Parallèles des édifices anciens et modernes du continent africain: dessinés et relevés de 1847 à 1854 dans l’Algérie, les régences de Tunis et de Tripoli, l’Égypte, la Nubie, les déserts, l’Ile de Méroé, le Sennar, la Fa-Zoglo et dans les contrées inconnues de la Nigritie: atlas avec notices (Paris: Librairie L. Hachette et Cie., éditeurs, [between 1854 and 1858?]). 35 x 54 cm. Graphic Arts Collection 2020 in process

*No two extent copies are alike. This copy now at Princeton contains 84 lithographic plates (including title page) and 7 salt prints from paper negatives.

Architect, orientalist and photographer, Pierre Trémaux (1818-1895) made a first naturalist trip in 1847-1848 in Algeria, Tunisia, Upper Egypt, eastern Sudan and Ethiopia; Leaving Alexandria, he sailed up the Nile to Nubia and brought back many drawings. He left in 1853 for a second trip to North Africa and the Mediterranean (Libya, Egypt, Asia Minor, Tunisia, Syria and Greece), from where he brought back this time a precious set of superb photographs, taken on the spot using pioneering techniques for the time, as well as a fascinating travelogue and an interesting collection of natural history.

For this work devoted to the architectural history of Asia Minor and Africa and published in 3 parts over several years (1847-1862), Trémaux drew inspiration from his daguerreotypes, his own sketches and calotypes by the suite to compose the lithographic illustrations. Subsequent issues of his Voyage au Sudan Oriental et dans l’Africa Nord, from 1847 to 1854, contained prints mounted on salted paper which, poorly preserved, had to be replaced by lithographic reproductions.—rough translation from the listing by Pastaud Maison de Ventes aux Enchères

Complete images: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10101719c.image

“These luxe publications, produced with the support of the French government, exploit an array of graphic techniques; they combine salted paper prints, engravings, tinted and colour lithographs, photolithographs, and texts in ways never previously attempted. Their examination provides insights into the ways these media interacted, and how comfortably photography in fact sat amongst its predecessors within the long-established context of the travel narrative.” –https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2017.1399287

Like many pictorial albums, few historians take the time to read Trémaux’s texts but are content to study and enjoy his images. Recently, some scholars have begun to evaluate his racist views on the populations he documented in Africa and later described in Origine et transformations de l’homme et des autres êtres (1865). For a discussion of Trémaux and Darwin, see: Wilkins, John S. and Nelson, Gareth J., “Trémaux on Species: A theory of allopatric speciation (and punctuated equilibrium) before Wagner”, Archives of Philosophy of the Science, University of Pittsburgh, 2008; texte repris dans la revue History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2008, 30, pp 179-206.

 

 

This acquisition lives in the Graphic Arts Collection but was made with sincere thanks to Deborah Schlein, Near Eastern Studies Librarian; Alain St. Pierre, Librarian for History, History of Science and African Studies; Holly Hatheway, Head Librarian, and Nicola Shilliam, Western Bibliographer for Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology; and Patty Gaspari-Bridges, Assistant University Librarian for Collection Development.

Expedition to the Dead Sea, Petra, and the Left Bank of the Jordan

Honore Theodore Paul Joseph D’Albert Duc de Luynes (1802-1867), Voyage d’exploration à la Mer Morte, à Petra, et sur la Rive Gauche du Jourdain [= Expedition to the Dead Sea, Petra, and the Left Bank of the Jordan] (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, n.d. [ca.1868-74]). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage RECAP-33945831

 

Alphonse Poitevin (1819-1882) won both of the 1856 photographic competitions sponsored by the Société françoise de photographie to discover a way (in short) to stop photographic prints from fading. Poitevin’s prize money was donated by Honoré d’Albert duc de Luynes (1802-1867) but when the Duke needed someone to print the photographs from his 1864 expedition to the Dead Sea basin and interior of Jordan, he passed on Poitevin and chose Charles Nègre (1820-1880).

An amateur archaeologist, Luynes organized the expedition to examine the region’s ancient ruins and perform geological and scientific observations. He took with him scientists, historians, and Lieutenant Louis Vignes (1831-1896), who served as the expedition’s photographer after receiving extensive training from Nègre. Vignes made both paper and glass plate negatives, which were carefully transported back to Paris and printed in ink as photogravures for the atlas documenting the expedition. Voyage d’Exploration a la Mer Morte à Petra et sur la Rive Gauche du Jourdain.

“Nègre was to complete the work by January 1868 for the sum of 23,250 francs. The photographs, made by the Duke’s second in command, Lieutenant L. Vignes, are for the most part rather contrasty and lacking in detail in the shadow areas. It is remarkable how Nègre was able to open up the shadows and fill them with light, detail and space. But undoubtedly the main reason the Duke chose Nègre to perform this task lay in the quality of the prints Nègre was capable of producing. Quite possibly de Luynes had expected the artist to win the prize of the Société Francaise competition, for he had achieved a control over his process which resulted in prints of rich tones, fine detail, transparency and effect.” – Borcoman, Charles Negre, pp. 45-46 and plates 199 and 200.

Together with three volumes of text, the atlas volume presents 64 of the Nègre photogravures; plus 18 lithographs, 2 maps, and 1 chart. Rachel Stuhlman, George Eastman House, writes that Nègre produced “printing plates capable of reproducing the entire gradation of tones, from the white of the paper to the strongest black…” and that he “…transformed the dull photographs into evocative images of great poetry.”

 

Contents: t. 1. Relation du voyage.–t. 2. De Petra à Palmyre, par m. Vignes.–Voyage de Jérusalem à Karak et à Chaubak, par mm. Mauss et Sauvaire.–t. 3 Géologie, par m. L. Lartet.–Atlas.

Edward George Mevs, Photographer in Haiti



Born in New York City on October 18,1866, Edward George Mevs was registered as an American citizen while in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1877. The purpose of his visit is listed as business although he was 11 years old. There is no information about his father’s occupation.

Back in New York in 1893, now 26-year-old Mevs applied for a passport to travel to Port-au-Prince as a photographer, promising to return in two years. A second application was completed in 1895 when the two years ran out.

Mevs continued to travel between the two cities throughout his life, the last recorded trip at the age of 63 in 1930. We know he was 5’ 11’’ with brown hair and a fair complexion, although his nationality is listed as American, Haitian, and West Indian on various documents.

Mevs is the one photographer’s name that has been found in a small volume labeled Illustrated Souvenir Album of Haiti, Comprising the Leading Business Houses and Views of The Republic (Toronto: S. McCoy, 1895). Each recto has a cyanotype, most illustrating a Haitian business with text identifying the company on the opposite page. Several prints are further described in a written caption.

 

 

This is a curious album printed by A. S. Barham in Kingston, Jamaica, and published by S. McCoy from Toronto. Included are drugstores, hotels, banks, import/export merchants, suppliers of French goods, drugstores, coffee exporters, hardware stores, lumber mills, opticians, printers, a cooper, and an ice factory with diverse locations such as Port-au-Prince, Gonaïves, Cap Haitien and Jacmel.

It is not unusual for a photographer to use cyanotypes in this period, which is a relatively inexpensive process. Also called Blueprints, the image is made by painting iron salts on paper or cloth and then exposing the material to sunlight through a photographic negative. Long term, the image is susceptible to fading when given too much light exposure, but it is also surprisingly resilient, as the image may return when left in the dark.

 

 

Inspired by a Dictionary

Perhaps it was an odd match to cast Mel Gibson [below] as Sir James Augustus Henry Murray [above]  (1837-1915), editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death, and Sean Penn as William Chester Minor (1834-1920), one of the OED’s major contributors. They star in the film adaptation of Simon Winchester’s 1998 book The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (also called The Surgeon of Crowthorne) chronicling Minor’s relationship with Murray, while confined in the Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.

 

After years of delay, the film is streaming on Kanopy: https://princetonlibrary.kanopy.com/video/professor-and-madman

Work on the OED began in 1857 and unbound fascicles were published from 1884 forward under the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009038919.  In 1899 alone, Minor provided 12,000 quotations for the OED. The project was expected to take ten years to complete and be some 7,000 pages long, in four volumes. In fact, when the final results were published in 1928, it ran to twelve volumes, with 414,825 words defined and 1,827,306 citations employed to illustrate their meanings.

 

Among the other work inspired and produced thanks to the OED are the animations of William Kentridge, who took over the video screens of Times Square in December 2019 with “To What End?” for that month’s Midnight Moment.

Animations projected on dictionary pages continued work he began with “Second-Hand Reading” (2013) and the book Second-Hand Reading (2014) in the Graphic Arts Collection: recap RCPXG-8786663:

 
In 1994, the Cuban American photographer Abelardo Morell created a series around the dictionary, including Six Dictionaries, 1994 and Dictionary, 1994. Morell was a 2006 Visiting Professor in the Humanities Council and Class of 1932 Fellow in Visual Arts.

Abelardo Morell, Six Dictionaries, 1994.

Abelardo Morell, Dictionary, 1994

Lake of Darkness


Karen Fitzgerald, Lake of Darkness: Twelve Photogravure Etchings with Five Poems by Czeslaw Milosz ([New York]: Karen Fitzgerald, 1996). Copy 10 of 12. Gift of the Kohler Foundation. Graphic Arts Collection 2020- in process

Abstract:, “Lake of Darkness was created as a response to Czeslaw Milosz’s poetry and what it means to be in the earth, to be embedded within the landscape. The structure of Milosz’s poetry has a deep resonance for me. He evokes the individual, specific, and granular experience of being of the earth. His work also connects historical aspects of this sense with the physical experience of consciousness. When he labels the earth a ‘lake of darkness’ for creatures who are not winged—the ones that can lift themselves out and above—he offers a landscape that has meaning for all of us. Milosz’s poetry offers a transformational language that I have brought into visual form. The natural world beckons to all of us if we slow down, listen, look, recall. The details emerge slowly and delicately, like the smell of linen drying on a clothesline. This project is a way of bringing that hyperawareness forward as a kind of re-knowing. The world is, after all, a Lake of Light. The darkness serves to make the light more defined, even more exceptional.”–Artist’s statement (https://fitzgeraldart.com/lakeofdarkness/)

“12 photogravure etchings printed by the artist on Somerset textured white, 300 grams, in an edition of 12 impressions plus 3 artist’s proofs. Plates by Lothar Osterberg, New York. Type was set in Centaur printed letterpress son Somerset textured white, 300 grams, by Leslie Miller at The Grenfell Press, New York. Tray case was made by Claudia Cohen, bookbinder, Easthampton, Massachusetts.”–Colophon.

 

Five poems by Czeslaw Milosz: The bird kingdom ; On prayer ; It was winter ; On angels ; An appeal.

It was winter (a selection)
Winter came as it does in this valley.
After eight dry months rain fell
And the mountains, straw-colored, turned green for a while.
In the canyons where gray laurels
Graft their stony roots to granite,
Streams must have filled the dried-up creek beds.
Ocean winds churned the eucalyptus trees,
And under clouds torn by a crystal of towers
Prickly lights were glowing on the docks.

This is not a place where you sit under a café awning
On a marble piazza, watching the crowd,
Or play the flute at a window over a narrow street
While children’s sandals clatter in the vaulted entryway.

It Has Always Been About Voting

Robert J. Brand, It Has Always Been About Voting: A portfolio of photographs taken in Mississippi during the James Meredith March Against Fear (1966). Signed limited edition. Philadelphia: Hartfield Editions, 2012. Copy 9 of 40. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process.

When the photographer Robert J. Brand was 20-years-old, he participated in the James Meredith March Against Fear (June, 1966). The event was initiated by Meredith, the first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962, who set out to walk the 220 miles from the northernmost part of Mississippi to Jackson, the state capitol, in order to encourage voter registration. Despite the promise of State Highway Police protection, a white sniper shot and wounded Meredith on the second day of his peaceful walk.

Various Civil Rights organizations, including those of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, rallied to carry on the march for him. Eventually 10,000 people would participate in the march to Jackson, with 4,000 registering to vote in the counties along the way, and a total of 15,000 entering the city on June 26, twenty days after Meredith first set out.

 

“Brand participate in almost the entire 3-week venture, taking photographs along the way. Those present here show a march vastly more diverse than Meredith’s original call to black men exclusively to join him on his march, with men, women, and children of all races present in the crowds. Photographs depict scenes of both celebration and prayer while also displaying the darker side of the event, with numerous shots of groups of white male onlookers, one provocatively dressed in a Confederate flag-themed shirt while his friend gives the marchers the finger.”

Elsa Dorfman

Jorge Luis Borges at the Midget Restaurant, 1970s. (c) Elsa Dorfman

The early portrait photography of Elsa Dorfman (1937-2020) is beautifully represented in the Graphic Arts Collection, thanks to a generous gift from the artist’s husband Harvey Silverglate, Princeton Class of 1964. An extended profile of the photographer can be read here: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2017/09/elsa-dorfmans-portrait-photography

Her work was featured in the 2010 Princeton University Library exhibition The Author’s Portrait, one of the few living artists included because, well, we couldn’t not include her terrific work. Each of the prints in our collection includes a hand-written caption made by Dorfman with a steel-nib pen dipped in black India ink. She once wrote to us correcting a reproduction of her work that did not include the text, noting it was an integral part of the final work. These photographs come from the early 1970s, when Dorfman was selling gelatin silver prints for $2.50 each from a grocery cart in Harvard Square.

The portraits included in our collection are Audre Lord[e] at Riverside Park; Charles Olson at Kelleher’s; Jorge Luis Borges at the Midget Restaurant; Nikki Giovanni at home; Robert Creeley and Spot at Good Harbor Beach; Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky; Anais Nin at home; Robert Lowell at Arthur Freeman’s apt. Cambridge, Mass.; W. H. Auden at home; and W. S. Merwin at home. Also in the collection is the pivotal Elsa’s Housebook: a Woman’s Photojournal (Boston: D. R. Godine, c1974). Graphic Arts Collection 2006-2545N, which can be read online through temporary access by Hathi Trust.

Elsa Dorfman passed away on May 30, 2020. An obituary by Mark Feeney appeared in the Boston Globe almost immediately that begins

“Elsa Dorfman, whose large-format Polaroid color portraits made her famous in the world of photography, and whose ebullient personality made her famous in the world of Cambridge, died Saturday at her Cambridge home. … Three parts earth mother to two parts riot grrrl (or perhaps the other way around), Ms. Dorfman cut a memorable figure. Her beaming moon face, set off by glasses and center-parted hair, was almost as distinctive as her don’t-try-this-at-home fashion sense. Jumpers and running shoes? Of course. Polka dots and stripes? On occasion.”

Her work was introduced to an international audience by Errol Morris’s documentary about her, “The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography.” Here is the trailer:

 

 

When Dorfman moved back to Cambridge in 1959, after an early stay in New York City, she started organizing readings by writers and poets, calling her company the “Paterson Society” after William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg’s home. This led to introductions and friendships, which in turn led to the many portraits of authors, poets, and literary figures. This early video shows the set up for our photograph of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky;

 

Her large format Polaroid camera, one of only six in existence, weighed close to 240 pounds, producing photographic print nearly 2 feet square. This clip shows the camera in action:

 

 

Ms. Dorfman, photographed at her Cambridge home on Feb. 4, 2020. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe staff

Need a Project, no. 12? Ice Cream and Anarchists

From the George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

Political activist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) came to the United States in 1885 and was swept up in the anarchist movement that led to the attempted killing of Henry Clay Frick and the assassination of President William McKinley. In between, to pay the rent, she twice operated an ice cream parlor. The first was successful but given up to make the attempt on Frick’s life. The second was a failure and forgotten.

Together with her partner at the time, Alexander Berkman (1870-1936), she opened her first ice cream parlor in 1892 in Worcester, Massachusetts. The enterprise is well documented and there are several links below. Goldman did the cooking and serving, while Berkman helped out periodically.

S.N. Behrman went to Goldman’s ice cream parlor as a child living in Worcester and wrote about the experience in “Double Chocolate with Emma and Sasha,” The New Yorker, January 16, 1954: 24-29.

“One day, when I was still very young, Providence Street began to come alive with rumors and horrid allegations about the proprietors of a new ice-cream parlor that had been opened in our neighborhood. We children were forbidden to patronize the anathematized parlor, and it was a long time before I dared to defy the ban. Since the new entrepreneurs were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman (whom Miss Goldman called Sasha), some people might have disapproved of them on political grounds; the hatred of the Providence Street parents was founded on religious ones.”


Not long after she was released from prison, Goldman opened her second ice cream parlor in the spring of 1895, together with her friends Claus Timmerman and Edward Brady. Located in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, it only lasted three months. In her autobiography Goldman writes,

“It occurred to me that we might try something like our ice-cream parlour in Worcester. It had been successful there; why not in New York? Ed approved of the project and suggested that we proceed at once. I had saved a little money and Fedya offered us more. Friends advised Brownsville: it was a growing centre, and a store could be got not far from the race-tracks, where thousands of people were passing daily. So to Brownsville we went, and fixed up a beautiful place. Thousands did pass by there, but they kept on passing. They were in a hurry to get to the race-track, and on their way home they had already visited some ice-cream store nearer the track. Our daily receipts were not enough to cover our expenses. We could not even keep up the weekly payments on the furniture we had bought for the two rooms we had rented in Brownsville. One afternoon a wagon drove up and proceeded to collect beds, tables, chairs, and everything else we had. …In three months we had lost five hundred dollars, besides the work.” –Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Volume 1

This week’s challenge:
Where exactly was the second ice cream parlor located? Might it be the same building where she helped her friend Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) opened the first birth control clinic in the United States: 46 Amboy Street, Brooklyn, New York? When you find the answer, please email jmellby@princeton.edu.


46 Amboy Street, Brooklyn, New York. Above: ca. 1916.  Below: 2020.

Soon after this, Goldman moved into 208 East 13th Street, where she published a monthly magazine, Mother Earth, that served as a forum of anarchist ideas and a venue for radical artists and writers. Happily, Hathi Trust is providing open access for students while the library is closed. Firestone Library HX821.M85

 

Here are some other accounts of the ice cream parlor:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67893771
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/04/ice-cream-the-dessert-of-revolution
http://www.snbehrman.com/library/newyorker/54.1.16.NY.htm
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-anarchism-with-whipped-cream-and-a-cherry-on-top-20150401-column.html

A preview of the PBS American Experience episode on Emma Goldman:

The full hour can be streamed here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/goldman/#part01

Reminder of digital graphic arts collections

Over the years a number of materials in the Graphic Arts Collection have been digitized. Some are connected to the online catalogue and some are not. Some are in the newer site DPUL and some in the older PUDL and some just online somewhere. Here is a list of the ones I can confirm, in case they are helpful to your research:

Antonio Martorell. Las Antillas Letradas https://dpul.princeton.edu/wa/catalog/nz8063470

Brother Jonathan Jubilee Pictorial newspapers http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/9z903261b

Early Soviet Illustrated Sheet Music https://dpul.princeton.edu/catalog?f%5Breadonly_collections_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Early+Soviet+Illustrated+Sheet+Music&q=+Early+Soviet+Illustrated+Sheet+Music&search_field=all_fields

Franklin McMahon. Signing the Israeli/Egyptian Peace Accord, 17 September 1978 https://dpul.princeton.edu/wa/catalog/5138jj65g

Franz Freiherr von Wertheim’s Manuel de l’outillage des arts et métiers http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/qr46r156v

Franz Hogenberg Engravings http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0051

George Humphrey’s The Attorney-General’s Charges Against the Late Queen (50 caricatures) http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dj52w599c

Gillett G. Griffin Japanese Woodblock Prints http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0026

Giovanni Ottaviani after frescoes designed by Raphael. Loggie di Rafaele nel Vaticano https://dpul.princeton.edu/wa/catalog/5d86p388v

James Gillray Caricatures http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0015

Jie zi yuan hua zhuan (Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting): http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/9z9031252
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/kh04dr094
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/fq977w17w

John Baptist Jackson Chiaroscuro Woodcuts http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0031

Lorenzo Homar prints, drawings, and blocks http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0033

Middle Eastern Film Posters http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0100

Pathé Baby French silent movies https://library.princeton.edu/pathebaby/films

Photography album documenting the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (1865), the Indian Northwest Frontier Hazara Campaign (1867-1870), views of Malta, etc., 1860-1880 https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/5954033#view

Pencil of Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/3696558#view

Princeton Print Club scrapbooks http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/td96k526s

Richard Willats early photography album http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/k930bx11x

Robert Nanteuil Engravings http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0010

Sinclair Hamilton Collection of American Illustrated Books miniatures (1/4 done) https://dpul.princeton.edu/ga_treasures/catalog/v979v657w And other titles

Société Engelmann père et fils (3 vols. Chromolithography). http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/3484zk471

Specimens of paper with different water marks, 1377-1840 http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/k930bz393

Taller de Gráfica Popular http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0012

Thomas Nast drawings and wood engravings http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0039

Thomas Rowlandson prints and drawings http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0130

Treasures of the Graphic Arts Collection  https://dpul.princeton.edu/ga_treasures

Versailles on Paper, Books and Engravings
http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0083
http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/versailles2
http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/versailles3

How much money can you spend in one month?


In the 1926 French silent movie 600,000 francs par mois a bet is made between a bored millionaire and a railroad worker that the latter can’t spend 600,000 francs every month for one year. The worker quits his job and tries desperately to spend huge sums gambling, drinking, traveling, and so on, only to find he continually earns more than he spends. You’ll have to watch the whole film to find out what happens in the end.

The popular comedy was released again in 1927 with the English language title Mister Mustard’s Millions and in 1933 as 600,000 Francs a Month.

The story comes from a novel by Jean Drault (pseudonym for Alfred Gendrot, 1866-1951), adapted for the stage by André Mouëzy-Eon, Six cent mille francs par mois: pièce en trois actes et quatre tableaux d’après le roman de Jean Drault (Paris: Billaudot, 1931).


If the plot sounds familiar, there was also a comic novel written by Richard Greaves (pseudonym for George Barr McCutcheon, 1866-1928) in 1902 called Brewster’s Millions, later adapted for the stage in 1906. According to film archives, there have been at least 13 film adaptations from this American version, in which a grandson will inherit a fortune from his grandfather if he can spend $1,000,000 over one year.

Pathé films home edition of 600,000 francs par mois in the Graphic Arts Collection of French silent films has been digitized and can be seen here. https://library.princeton.edu/pathebaby/films   Each reel is meant to play approximately one minute so it takes quite a few to play the entire movie.  **Note, if you have any trouble playing the films directly on the website, hit the download arrow at the bottom right and play them on your own preferred video player. Also, a number of films have already been downloaded by various people and can also be found on Youtube.

https://library.princeton.edu/pathebaby/films

 

You may not have seen the 1914 film of Brewster’s Millions by Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959), but surely you remember the 1985 adaptation with Richard Prior (1940-2005) and John Candy (1950-1994). In this version, Prior has one month (30 days) to spend $30,000,000 in order to receive his inheritance.

See the video or read the book Brewster’s Millions here on Google books.

 

A poster by Léo Joannon from 1933.

If you want to go further, Alfred Gendrot AKA Jean Drault collaborated with the Germans during the Nazi occupation of France and wrote several anti-Semitic publications. He was arrested in September 1944 , tried and convicted in November 1946. The sentence was later reduced to five years imprisonment and Drault died not long after his release. See “Anti-Semitism on Trial: Jean Drault in Front of His Judges” by Grégoire Kauffmann (1946).