Photograph

The portrait depicted here is of Irene Rich. Rich was a successful San Francisco real estate agent who received her first movie job as an extra in Mary Pickford’s "Stella Maris" in 1918. She graduated to starring roles in silent melodramas. Rich eventually made the transition to talkies, joining Will Rogers in a serie...

Joan Crawford's journey to screen stardom began with a poor childhood moving from Texas to Oklahoma and finally Kansas City where she worked to help support her family while attending school. She won a Charleston contest at a local café in her early teens. Later, Crawford moved to Detroit where she danced under the sta...

The photograph depicted here is of Pauline Frederick. Pauline Beatrice Libby took “Frederick” as her stage name and later as her legal surname after being disinherited by her father who disapproved of her pursuit of acting. Frederick was an accomplished stage actress, but began acting in silent films when she was 32...

When a punctured eardrum ended Japanese born Sessue Hayakawa's original dream of a naval career, he enrolled at the University of Chicago to study banking. During a 1914 trip to Los Angeles, Hayakawa was lured into acting and went on to become one of the great film idols of the early motion picture era, rivaling Dougla...

Charles "Buddy" Rogers was born in Olathe, Kansas. He was a student at the University of Kansas with plans to become a band leader. While his dream of becoming a band leader did not come to fruition, he became a performer nonetheless. Rogers moved to Hollywood and became an actor. He performed in more than 40 films inc...

Rose Marie Mazzetta was the last theatrical subject photographed by Orval Hixon in Kansas City. Mazzetta began performing as Baby Rose Marie at the tender age of three. She became an NBC radio star at age five and at age six made her acting debut in the 1929 musical short "Baby Marie: The Child Wonder." Mazzetta joine...

This black and white photograph of Kansas City features several of the city's early historic buildings. Bold signs on buildings stand out amongst the structures, most notably the marking of the Westgate Hotel, the New York Life Building, and the New England Life Building in position to one another across the cityscape....

Sepia toned photograph of Theda Bara. Theda Bara was an American actress in both silent film and the stage. Bara was cinema's original vamp, the dark, heartless seductress who lured men to their destruction. It was a persona that she and her studio also perpeturated off-screen. The daughter of immigrant Jews, Bara wa...

This is a photograph from behind the bronze statue of Sir Winston Churchill in London's Parliament Square. From this angle the photograph creates the sense that Churchill is stepping past the viewer leading their gaze to the icon of the Palace of Westminster and Big Ben. Also from this angle one gets the sense that thi...

The photograph depicts the side silhouette of former President Harry S. Truman walking across the street of the Independence Square. The original photograph was taken in 1960. An accompanying plaque dedicates this work as being "presented to R. Crosby Kemper III, in recognition of outstanding leadership and commitme...