Here is another California photo album, but it recounts the adventures of a lady who lived a very different lifestyle than that of the Rikers. Consisting of three albums, covering 1915-1920 and 1929-1931, it captures trips made by Consuelo Vanderbilt, an heiress of the Vanderbilt fortune. Consuelo lived a life of extraordinary privilege, and yet her youth was so dominated by her mother that it was not always filled with joy. Her mother pushed her into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. It was a loveless marriage for both. Married in 1895, the beautiful Ms. Vanderbilt separated from her husband in 1906, long before these albums begin. However, she would remarry between albums in 1921, a happier liaison with an aviator and manufacturing heir. She did remain friendly with some members of her first husband's family, including its most famous one, Winston Churchill. The albums cover some of the same coastal cities visited by the Rikers, along with exclusive locales such as Newport. This is not so much a view at how the other half lived, but of how the upper fraction of the one percent lived. Item 35. $2,750.
Item 132 is a three-sheet poster for the film The Bull-Dogger. It featured Bill Pickett, a black cowboy noted for his ability to (literally) take down a bull by its horns. It was produced by the Norman Film Mfg. Co., which produced movies featuring black heroes for a black audience, when most depictions of blacks on film were but caricatures devised by whites. Along with Bill Pickett, described as “the World's Colored Champion,” the film features the lovely Anita Bush, and the wide-eyed “Bennie Turpin,” a play on the famed cross-eyed white comedy actor of silent films, Ben Turpin. $6,500.
The William Reese Company may be reached at 203-789-8081 or amorder@reeseco.com. Their website is www.reeseco.com.
