Newsletter - 2022-08-13

C82-61 : C504-560 [tobacco : UK] Churchman "Kings of Speed" (May 1939) 24/50 

Today in 1918 saw the Bayerische Motoren Werke AG established as a public company.

You know them better as their initials B.M.W., but it could easily have been B.F.W. which is how they started, in 1916, making engines for aeroplanes.

Then, of course, they had to stop making aeroplane engines after the end of the First World War because such were forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles in what proved to be a vain attempt to prevent rearmament.

In 1920, they made a petrol engine for industrial purposes that was relatively light and small, and someone thought it would be a good idea to use it to power a motor bike. By 1923 B.M.W. had decided to join in with this and were making motor bikes under their own name. But it took them until 1928 to start to produce cars. 

In 1937 Ernst Henne broke the land speed record in the most curious 494 cc B.M.W. that is featured on our card and on Wills's "Speed" (1938) 26/50. 

P521-330 : P50-62 : RB.113/90 : Ha540 [tobacco : UK] Godfrey Phillips Ltd "Home Pets" (1924) 22/25 

Sunday is World Lizard Day, so here is an attractive pair, which are described on the card as the "...handsome Green Lizard of Central Europe" though the picture has no idea of scale and they might be dinosaurs.

There also might be a spelling error in the last line of the text, it says they eat "mill-worms", but should that not be "meal-worms"? I do have to say I am amused by the "Price 3/6 each" which follows, as I have not come across a set price for a lizard before. I imagine a child being asked for 4/6 and taking the card in and saying they have been over charged... 

This set was also issued the same year (1924) by Cavanders, but you have to be canny to find it in a catalogue because it is not called "Home Pets" it is called "Little Friends". 

C230-480 : C48-23 [tobacco : UK] Cavanders "Camera Studies" (1926) 1/54

Today is Relaxation Day, something we all need, but many of us do not find time for. Perhaps it is because today our lives are too full of making money and hitting deadlines, or maybe with the change in our housing we no longer have gardens in which to wander and idly smell the flowers. We will probably never know who this "English Beauty" is, but she is captured for all time here, a souvenir of times gone by, perhaps forever. 

To mark the day why not relax with an album of cards that you have not looked at in a while, or with planning a trip to a future card event. Most of ours are back to normal, and are just waiting for you to walk through the door and meet up again with your card friends. 

A745-380 : a72-27 [tobacco : UK] Ardath Tobacco Co. Ltd "Figures of Speech" (February 1936) 32/50

Today, in America, they will be commemorating National Airborne Day.

It happens every year on this day, because on this day in 1940, forty-eight brave volunteers from the  U.S. Army Parachute Test Platoon leapt from the relative safety of their craft into the skies. 

These were friendly skies, but in November 1942 the parachute, and its tender human cargo, known as the Parachute Infantry, went to war for real. It later became the Airborne Division.

We also used silken wings, but seem to have no recognised day of tribute. And other nations also sailed through the skies; the first of all seems to have been Italy, in 1918. In Germany, paratroopers were operational from the start of the Second World War;  reportedly Winston Churchill based our original platoon on the German model, selecting the men from the commandos. Our First Parachute Battalion was ready for action by 1941, and the Parachute Regiment was formed in 1942, seeing much action during the events of D-Day in 1944, where the reality of landing amongst villages and entangling on Church spires was ever present.

C151-285 : C18-49 [tobacco : UK] Carreras "Film Stars" ovals (June 1934) 66/72

Mae West was born Mary Jane West on August 17th, 1893. Today she is remembered as the deliverer of suggestive phrases, but she was not just an actress; she wrote much of the work she did, and plays and screenplays for other stars.  And she was also a talented singer and stage actress, who worked for over seventy years. 

Her father was a boxer, who taught her to be tough and stand up for what she wanted.

Her mother was a model, frequently of corsetry, providing the intimate knowledge of her daughter`s stage and screen attire. 

Her first performances were well before she had reached double figures, and she would stand up and sing wherever there was a crowd, which led her into talent contests. By the age of fourteen she was acting regularly on stage, sometimes just as "Baby" or "Baby Mae", and sometimes dressed as men, for she was fascinated by men who dressed as women, and her trademark sashaying walk was almost certainly blended from several of them. 

Her first trip to Broadway, in 1927, was with a self written, self produced and self directed play, and it ended in jail. The play was simply called Sex, and she could have paid the fine, for moral corruption, but she chose to go to jail. She served eight days, but the publicity associated with them probably made her career. On release, she announced her next play, called The Drag, which celebrated gay rights, but though it was tested out of state, to mixed reviews, it was banned before opening from ever playing in New York.  Instead, she wrote Diamond Lil, which was a hit on Broadway and eventually became a film, "She Done Him Wrong" (1933) with Cary Grant in one of his first performances.

By the mid 1930s Mae West was the highest paid female film star, but at that time censorship was becoming more of a problem and many of her films, for which she wrote most of if not all of the screenplays were falling foul of it. A brief incursion into radio was also toned down.

She was enormously popular with the public, but the arrival of the Second World War saw filming cease and her last film was made in 1943. She does have a military claim to fame, as the life jackets issued to troops, which expanded at chest level, were called Mae Wests. 

After the war she moved into writing, with several biographies, and also released records. She made two films in the 1970s, but they were curious choices, like most films of the 1970s, liberal in some ways and shocking in others, though they were the starting points for a few actors and actresses who would go on to become bigger stars.

She died in November 1980, aged 87.

W675-641 A.a: W62-445 : W/196: RB.21/200-196 [tobacco : UK] W.D. & H.O. Wills "Etchings" (1925) 19/26

Today is Never Give Up Day, and this is a really fun card though it references Robert the Bruce in three ways, one because it is a Scot[tie], two because he is called Bruce, and three because of the spider, for Robert the Bruce famously spotted a spider striving again and again to make a web, and made a sudden decision to emulate that arachnid and keep fighting when all seemed lost.

Its true, Scotties and Westies seem to love watching spiders, and I think there is an element of hoping they will fall into their waiting canine jaws. However the meal would be very insubstantial. My current dog likes to chase bees,  he snaps at them all the time, though they are, luckily, always faster than him. 

I dont know who C.E.B. was, but if you do, send us the name. It looks like he provided the verses for all the cards, though I have only a few, in my odd dog box, most of which are Westies and Scotties. It seems that this set is all dogs though, because in some reference works it is called "Etchings (of Dogs)". It was also issued with Dutch wording, and overseas by Lambert and Butler. 

Today its World Photo Day.