Bouquet du jour

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orchid 
1845, introduced by John Lindley in “School Botanty,” from Mod.L. Orchideæ (Linnaeus), the plant’s family name, from L. orchis, a kind of orchid, from Gk. orkhis (gen. orkheos) “orchid,” lit. “testicle,” from PIE *orghi-, the standard root for “testicle” (cf. Avestan erezi “testicles,” Arm. orjik, M.Ir. uirgge, Ir. uirge “testicle,” Lith. erzilas “stallion”). The plant so called because of the shape of its root. Earlier in Eng. in L. form, orchis (1562). Marred by extraneous -d- in attempt to extract the Latin stem.  
➔ The Online Etymology Dictionary

Dorothy Dandridge

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Photo by Gjon Mili ~ Porgy and Bess, 1959 

Singer, actress. Born November 9, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio, Dorothy Dandridge sang at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club and Apollo Theatre and became the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress...  ➔  biography.com

Limelight

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Charlie Chaplin and Claire Bloom, 1952

Filming Limelight
 
Charles Chaplin made Limelight at the most troubled period of his adult career. In the late 1940s, America¹s Cold War paranoia reached its peak, and Chaplin, as a foreigner with liberal and humanist sympathies, was a prime target for political witch-hunters. It did not help that he had recently been cited in an unseemly paternity suit. Pilloried as he was by the right-wing press and reactionary institutions like the American Legion, it seemed that America had turned against the man it had once idolised. 
 
In this atmosphere, his 1947 film, Monsieur Verdoux with its sardonic view of war, was attacked as being anti-American. Not surprisingly, then, in choosing his next subject he deliberately sought escape from disagreeable contemporary reality. He found it in bitter-sweet nostalgia for the world of his youth – the world of the London music halls at the opening of the 20th century, where he had first discovered his genius as an entertainer.

His story concerns a once-famous comedian who has lost the ability to command his audience. Chaplin said that he based the character on real-life stage personalities whom he had seen lose their gifts and their public – the American black-face comedian Frank Tinney (1878-1940) and the Spanish clown Marceline (1873-1927) with whom he had himself worked as a boy. Clearly he was also thinking of his own present bitter experience of a faithless public...

Keep reading here  ➔  Charlie Chaplin: Official Website
Text by David Robinson / Copyright 2004 MK2 SA
facebook   ➔   Charlie Chaplin (Official)

Eugene Robert Richee

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Veronica Lake, 1943
Mini Biography ➔ Studio photographer who worked for Paramount Pictures from 1925 to 1935 and took many photos of actress Louise Brooks during her time at Paramount. Richee later worked for MGM and Warner Brothers. Brother-in-law of studio photographer Virgil Apger, who first worked for Richee and was then hired by MGM in 1931. ➔ IMDb