The Romanoff Family circa 1913 -1914

This colorized family portrait of Russian Czar Nicholas II takes creative liberties in the choice of colors on both background and the subjects. The B&W registration of light pastel colors often result in white but except for the Czarina Alexandra, I preferred using a common color scheme for the daughters based on the many official pictures where they appeared to wear uniform apparel. This photo shoot was taken sometime between 1913 and 1914 just 3-4 years away from their murders by the Bolshevics during the takeover by Lenin and his communist party. The entire family members have been canonized as Saints and Martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church in November 1981, They are, left to right, seated: Grand Duchess Maria Nicholaevna; Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna; Czarevitch Alexei Nicholaevitch on the floor; Tsar Nicholas II; Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna Standing: Grand Duchess Tatiana & Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna. Downloaded from the U.S. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs All colors were guessed as there have been several colorization works on the same subject.

Colorized Bette Davis 1939

George Hurrell was well known as a glamour photographer for several Hollywood studios, notably MGM. Here' one with Betty Davis in 1939 during the same photo shoot as the earlier posted shot but at a different angle and colorized with a different dress color, more intense(warmer) skin tone, lighting,& with eye shadow.

 

Colorized Bette Davis

It was said that the difference between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, aside from looks, was that Bette Davis could shed tears just from cue, while Joan needed to listen to a really sad story before any tear will fall. There goes a hint on who was the better actress. Too bad, Bette Davies did not have the voluptuous curves of Joan nor the self-aware flamboyant elegance. But Bette's face more than made up for what lacked below the neck. It was said that if looks could kill, Bette's eyes were enough, considered the most expressive eyes in Hollywood. There's is even a rock hit by the name " Bette Davies Eyes" by Kim Carnes. Here's another colorized Bette Davies by the glamour photographer George Hurrell. It's probably the closest you can get to a seductive Bette among the few of her photoshoots Admittedly, Bette never really cared about her looks, and you can see that with the very few creatively alluring photos that Joan had tons of.

 

Colorized Bette Davis in her 20s

Here's another Hollywood vintage from the number one arch enemy of Joan Crawford - the legendary Bette Davis. Not as dashingly seductive as Joan, the two-time Oscar awardee made her mark more as a character actress, though both excelled as dramatic icons. Here is my colorized young Bette Davis in her mid-late 20s. I don't exactly like colorizing props and backgrounds unless absolutely necessary and this one has flowers in front of and right beside the subject. No choice but to colorize the flowers as well.

 

Colorized Joan Crawford circa 1939-1942

Still in her mid-late 30s, the beautiful Joan Crawford has seen the peak of her early career and was nose diving with the last three films, The Bride Wore Red (1937), The Shining Hour (1938), and The Women (1939). She was by now dubbed by Harry Brandt, President of the Independent Theatre Owners Association of America as Box Office Poison, along with Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Fred Astaire, John Barrymore, and Katharine Hepburn. She would hang on to the only career she loved taking on roles that were a mix of hit and miss until she was released by MGM to t Warner Bros. where her fortunes would once again rise with the critically acclaimed and box office hit Mildred Pierce in 1945. The role was meant for Bette Davis who rejected it, prompting the director to put the now legendary Joan Crawford to a screen test before passing the mark for the role.

 

Colorized Joan Crawford from the 1946 Humoresque

Here's my colorized Joan Crawford from her 1946  film Humoresque with John Garfield.  Already 40 years old considered old age by Hollywood standards (actually starts at 35),  she was considered Box Office Poison since 1938 (in good company along with Greta Garbo and  Fred Astaire). But Joan was a strong-willed actress resurrecting her career to win her first Oscar in the 1945 Mildred Pierce,   Humoresque was her 2nd film after that.

I don't really like colorizing backdrops and props since they tend to steal the attention from the focus of the image.  But in some cases, I find myself enjoying colorizing the props.  Here, I must have spent about the same time colorizing the sofa chair as I did Joan. With regards the backdrop, I tend to recede them as far back as possible using the oldest technique of monochrome blurring to create some depth of field effect. 

Colorized Joan Crawford in Blond 1937

Here's my colorized Joan Crawford in an MGM publicity still  taken by George Hurrell sometime between 1937 and 1938.  One of the few photos where she sported a blond hair

Colorized Joan Crawford in "The Women" 1939

From the film promotion of one of her most famous films, 1939 "The Women" where she wore what is reputed to be her favorite set of jewelry.  Crawford clearly had eyes for exquisite jewelry. This brooch, bracelet, and necklace set was created by Parisian jewelry house Verger Frères for Boucheron sometime around 1935 and acquired by the future Oscar winner thereafter.  Auctioned at Soptheby's and  exhibited at the Boston's Museum of Fine arts in 2014-15, the set has 131 cts. of oval-cut aquamarines and 11.5 cts. of round brilliant-cut platinum-set diamonds in 18k yellow gold with rose gold accents.   Good thing the celebrity jewelry site from  where I downloaded the original b&w has a detailed photo of the exact jewels worn. Rather than detail them on the photo, I just composited the actual jewelry over her photo and made some manipulations for light/shadow and perspective with a little touch of Photoshop rendering of lens flare in several places.

John Hollow Horn Bear, 1898

After some time, going back to colorizing what deserves to be colorized can be a rewarding experience. I mean something that was meant to be colorful but deprived of the pageantry thanks to the tyranny of a pioneering imaging technology . These are the American natives. Nothing as glamorous as colorizing portrait beauties of vintage cinema, but the various colorizing options are much wider in this genre. I would have loved colorizing Philippine ethnic tribes taken at the turn of the century. Unfortunately, there are so few, and those few failed to capture the details that can make digital colorizing a pleasure.

Below is a certain John Hollow Horn Bear, a young Sioux Indian regally photographed taken 1898 from the Digital Public Library of America section of the New York Public Library Digital Collections and downloaded from the MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH DIVISION OF ART, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION. Other than that, not much else in known about the subject. On the other hand, there was a well known Hallow Horn Bear (1850 - 1913) also a Sioux, and whose short bio can be found in wikipedia.

The details have been nicely captured and preserved all this time. I consider this a work in progress as there are still a few items left uncolored. Perhaps, it can stand as is, but I may have a better disposition to some absent colors in the future.

Mata Hari's Tragic End

Mata Hari, at 34, a bit plump and approaching her last few years on stage. By 1910, Mata Hari had spawned various imitators of her erotic dance routines in Paris while touring Europe maintaining amorous liaisons with various high-ranking military officers, politicians, and royalty with strong influences in government and economy. By the start of WWI, she may have already engaged in espionage activities that remained contentious.  Prior to the war, she was generally considered a free-spirited artist, but as war progressed, she began to achieve notoriety as a dangerous seductress whose relationships could so easily lend themselves to espionage suspicions.

With an administration eager to win the war, one double agent for whom everything that went wrong with the war could be blamed was most convenient, making Mata Hari the perfect scapegoat, which explains why the case against her received maximum publicity in the French press, which was more than eager to hype her role in the war, and unwittingly created her legendary reputation as a dangerous seductress, a femme fatale.

In Feb 1917, with the flimsiest of evidence, the French government arrested Mata Hari in her room at the Hotel Elysée Palace in Paris, and put on trial in July, accused of spying for Germany, and causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. She was executed by firing squad in October, two months after turning 41. British reporter Henry Wales said to have witnessed the execution claimed she refused a blindfold, even blowing a kiss to her executioners. "Slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face. For the fraction of a second it seemed she tottered there, on her knees, gazing directly at those who had taken her life. Then she fell backward, bending at the waist, with her legs doubled up beneath her." A non-commissioned officer then walked up to her body, pulled out his revolver, and shot her in the head to make sure she was dead.

Mata Hari Seductress Extraordinaire

What was it with Mata Hari that captivated her regal and powerful audiences? Without the classic beauty of a Cleo de Merode, her statuesque figure and milky skin that was rare among European women made her stand out. Her figure would shame that of Venus de Milo. And she knew how to leverage her sultry appeal to win recognition. There was clear flirtatious style in all of Mata Hari's stage acts that garnered wide acclaim. Her most applauded segment was her progressive shedding of clothes until she wore nothing but her signature jeweled bra and some head and arm ornaments. Her exhibitionist act was an instant success as it defied acceptable norms in stage performance, pioneering on exotic dance, and liberating body expressions to erotic heights that Paris was later to become world-famous for.

Promiscuous even at a tender age, Mata Hari would never be content with just one man, and the military provided her with a steady supply, with focus on those in power that eventually got her recruited by a government minister to spy for France. As a Dutch national, she was free to cross borders throughout western Europe, making her espionage career shuttling between Germany, France, Belgium, and Britain easy. And this ease would later bring her career to a tragic end.

The Real Mata Hari

Beauty and seductiveness are not always together. Here is the real Mata Hari, the definitive femme fatale. Not exactly a ravishing beauty as Greta Garbo, she did have the sultry allure that brought dozens of French generals and admirals to divulge their military secrets while in bed allegedly causing the deaths of more than 50,000 French soldiers during WWI. (About the only thing common between Mata Hari and Greta Garbo who portrayed here in a 1931 film that made her famous was that both were flat chested.)

Born in 1876, she was a contemporary of the most photographed woman at that time, Cleo De Merode, just a year older than her, (which I colorized early last year). A Dutch by decent, Margeretha Geertruida Zelle took the name Mata Hari (Eye of Dawn) after a brief sojourn with her husband (which she eventually divorced) in Malang, Eastern Java where she reputedly learned the erotic dances of Javenese girls that she reprised upon her return to France at the turn of the 20th century. By 1905, Mata Hari had become a celebrity to many royals and military officers, on par with the likes of Isadora Duncan who was also her contemporary who pioneered in modern freestyle dance.

Colorized Greta Garbo in the 1931 film Mata Hari

Expect Hollywood to be bigger than life.  The real archtype femme fatale Mata Hari would have swooned to see herself portrayed by the more beautiful Greta Garbo in this 1931 film, just 14 years after she was executed by the French in a firing squad. Of course, the court was never able to prove the allegations that Mata Hari was a double agent, a spy and counter spy, for France and Germany.  All they had was circumstantial evidence, but they needed someone to blame for causing the deaths of at least 50,000 French soldiers during WWI.   Details of the trial had been sealed and are scheduled to be declassified by the French military this year, exactly one hundred years after her execution.

Colorized JFK & Jackie

A colorized tandem studio photo of JFK and Jackie presumably during their first years in the White House. The original has sever moire patterns when enlarged, requiring some smoothing both before and after colorizing.  Again, some liberties and guesswork were used on their clothes and the background.

Coloized JFK & Jackie as Newly Weds 1953

Here;s a colorized JFK and Jackie on their wedding day at the Kennedy estate in Newport, Rhode Island in Sept 12,1953 just a few months after John gifted Jackie with a 2.88ct diamond engagement ring from Van Cleef & Arpels.

Someone pointed out the month of the wedding was September when the leaves and the grass start to yellow. Did a slight modification on the JFK-Jackie wedding day colorization to make the grass a bit yellowed from the earlier colorization I made below.