Yesterday, I re-posted a 2010 entry of mine with Clara Bow in a host of Halloween-themed promotional pictures. Recently I found another from the set, and it inadvertently started off a lengthy search for Halloween props reused repeatedly in pictures over the years:
That mask and the pumpkins from the set I posted yesterday were also used in a series of pics with Nancy Carroll:
Another popular set of props originated with promotionals for I Married A Witch (1942):
Those pumpkins show up all over the place:
Virginia Welles
Ann Savage
And three with Ann Miller, taken at least a decade after the Veronica Lake film:
:
In this one, Ann is posed with the same striped cat that was in the Elaine Stewart picture I posted earlier this month.
Speaking of cats, Ava Gardner and June Knight have the same one, painted differently, and I think the same broom with a different rein:
This all started a few days ago when Thomas, in comments of that Elaine Stewart post, brought up the hilarious cats that show up in these Halloween cheesecake pics. I went searching for a specific photo I was looking for and found these two, which have the same wiry black thing shaped vaguely like a cat:
Joyce Holden
Jane Adams and Patricia Alphine
And finally, right back where we began, with Clara Bow and those freakish cats I went looking for in the first place:
You’re welcome for the nightmares.
Holy crap. That second cat in the last picture looks angry. I’d be pissed too if somebody shot and stuffed me just to stick in a photo, Clara Bow or not.
Those cats…they don’t look like they were ever real, though I suspect they are actually some Victorian-era “taxidermied” cats the prop guys found in some shop.
I would really love to have been a fly on the wall during some of these photo sessions. “Okay, Ann, now turn your head and whisper a secret to the pumpkins. A sexy secret, of course!” “Alright, Jane and Patrica, I want you to look up and smile like your prom dates just rang the doorbell–who cares if it’s witch-like, we all know this just looks like a page from a cheesy sewing book, anyway.”
Ha! What I wouldn’t give to know what they told June Knight that caused her to get that particular look on her face.
The Hollywood version of sticking your head through a hole so’s you can look like a muscle man, or a bathing beauty. Except with stuffed animals.
Yeah, those cats ARE scary. Is it just me but do some of these women look a little familiar? To me Ann Savage looks like Helen Hunt and Joyce Holden could be Sarah Paulson’s sister.
Ann Savage DOES look like Helen Hunt! I thought she really resembled Hunt in that Boston Blackie movie she was in. I had to look up Sarah Paulson, but I definitely see the resemblance, too.