Category: Arts

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Rock & Roll’s First Guitar Heroine

Rosetta Tharpe on stage in a church
In the 1940s, Rosetta Tharpe brought to the stage a completely new kind of music and performing style that was later imitated by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presely and the pantheon of rock stars up until today’s. But she got little credit for her history-making work.

When Sister Rosetta Tharpe picked up her electric guitar in the 1940s and lit into “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” she didn’t know she was creating a musical style that would become an international sensation. But today, this audience-taunting, duck-walking, howling, stomping, gospel-singing black woman is known as the Mother of Rock and Roll.

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Frances Marion: Trailblazing Screenwriter of Hollywood’s Golden Age

Mary Pickford and Frances Marion on set in 1920
On set at a United Artists film shoot in 1920 are Frances Marion (right) and Mary Pickford (left). Marion, who wrote the scripts for more than 130 films during during Hollywood’s Golden Age, was one of the most highly-paid screen writers of her era.

Google “top 25 greatest screenwriters of all time” and you’ll find every single one of them is a man. But from 1915 into the 1930s, a woman named Frances Marion was the most successful and highest-paid screenwriter in show biz.

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Florence Mills: Jazz Age ‘Queen of Happiness’

Smashing racial barriers and wowing audiences on two continents, Florence Mills sang and danced her way into the history of the Jazz Age, leading the way for female African American superstars who came after her.

It was the Roaring Twenties, the anything-goes Jazz Age, when Florence Mills made her mark in American history. Known as the “Queen of Happiness,” she was a cabaret singer, dancer and comedienne known for her effervescent stage presence, unique birdlike voice, wide-eyed beauty and slicked bobbed hair imitated by women on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Anna Coleman Ladd: Repairing WWI’s Broken Faces

Before the modern age facial reconstruction and plastic surgery, Anna Coleman Ladd was one of a handful of unique artisans in World War I who created highly detailed masks to hide severely mutilated soldiers’ facial wounds.

Philadelphia-born Anna Coleman Ladd is best known for her neoclassical portrait busts and bronze sculptures of sprites frolicking in public fountains. But her greatest work — and her most important legacy — was restoring the self-respect, honor and dignity to World War I veterans known by the French as “the men with the broken faces.”

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Aimée Crocker : Edwardian Era Wild Child and Media Darling

Newspaper headline of Aimée Crocker adventures
Aimée Crocker was a fabulously wealthy 19th-century railroad heiress who shocked U.S. society with her continent-hopping antics and bohemian eccentricities.

By the time 19th century Bohemian Aimée Crocker’s wild ride of a life was over, this was her name history: Aimée Crocker Ashe Gillig Gouraud Miskinoff Galitzine. But when it comes to surnames or husbands, who’s counting? This late 1800’s railroad heiress was born into enormous wealth in 1864, when women were expected to be shy, docile, retiring creatures who graciously accepted their roles as quiet spectators in the game of life. But shy, docile and retiring were simply not part of Crocker’s DNA.

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Margaret Bourke-White, Trailblazing American Photojournalist

Margaret Bourke-White in the 1930s
As she became one of the 20th century’s most famous photographers, Margaret Bourke-White broke down barriers that previously limited photojournalist opportunities for U.S. females. Above are images of her photo on the cover of the first edition of LIFE magazine in 1936, and a shot of her in her aviation gear at the start of World War II.

Margaret Bourke-White, who entered college in the 1920s with the idea of becoming a Herpetologist,  could have made a name for herself handling snakes. Instead, she picked up a camera and went on to become a groundbreaking female photojournalist, giving us some of the most iconic images of the 20th century.

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