Of Blackglama and William Desmond Taylor (no relation)

Out of extreme curiosity, can anyone tell me why hundreds of people all over Canada would have been looking for the Barbara Stanwyck Blackglama advertisement last Saturday?

Update: An answer! From Anonymous in comments:

A CBC radio show called the Age of Persuasion (an EXCELLENT show) mentioned that ad in a episode about Luxury Advertising.

http://www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion/episode/2011/01/15/season-5-luxury-advertising-full/

I’m glad I know. I got several hundred hits on this page, all from google.ca, but that wasn’t the weirdest part: No one downloaded the picture or hotlinked to it, and several people spelled “Blackglama” wrong. One person searched for “black llama.” Ha!

I hope someone can solve this mystery for me. Now that I know, I can say with certainty that what was going on in Canada on Saturday was a hell of a lot more fun than what was going in Kansas on Saturday.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to post was to tell you about the most amazing thing I just saw on The Daily Mirror: William Desmond Taylor’s tuxedo jacket from 1911, still in the Paramount costume wardrobe and looking terrific.

Here’s Willie in a tux. No, I have no idea if it’s the same tux or not.


Update, January 20: It happened again! This time I got hundreds of hits for “Mae West’s interesting request for a glass of wine in the 1933 movie ‘I’m No Angel.'” Guess this is for a trivia contest? The answer was “off the vine,” unless I’m reading the keyword analysis wrong.

6 comments

  1. What I wouldn’t give to browse around that living wardrobe museum. It’s like stumbling across a cache of lost films. Hmmm…have they checked the pockets?!

  2. Thank you, Anonymous! I am definitely going to take a listen to that later today.

    I was thinking the same thing, King. There might be clues!

  3. Brr. That is even colder than it has been here, which is usually about 10F, although it does dip down to 0 or lower on occasion.

  4. This is amazing. I love the story of William Desmond Taylor & especially the King Vidor interest in helping solve his murder.

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