Sepia Saturday - Ex convict

Phileas Fogg

This week Alan is suggesting that we dig in our shoe boxes to make the invisible visible. For magicians that may be a piece of cake, for me it is next to impossible. I have been looking for missing limbs or heads but to no avail. However, I did find this picture of one of my favorites. He is shown here, going around the world on a misty day, almost invisible.  Fortunately there are more angles to approach this week's theme. If we look at the theme picture, the thing that strikes me is the title of the movie The Ex-Convict and the cashier behind bars. If ever there was a contradiction in a film poster...

Anna Nilsson

Guy Coombs

Other subjects that I could write about are the boy's worn shoes, the somewhat shabby looking suit the man is wearing, the difficult to decipher text on the floor or the movie stars performing in this 1914 film.  Although the plot of this movie is unknown to me, I believe the leading actors should be given a face, that is to say , their face. So may I introduce you to Anna Nilsson and Guy Coombs, stars of the silent movie but at one time also married to each other. Anna has been awarded a Wikipedia page, Guy hasn't risen to that level yet. But there is hope for him now that he performs as an SSS, a Sepia Saturday Star. 
Speaking of movie stars, my mother was a collector of movie star picture postcards. I selected one showing Amsterdam born actress Lien Deyers. To cut a long story short, she made her first movie under Fritz Lang and eventually went to the States via the U.K.  

Lien Deyers (1909 - 1982?)

The fact that miss Deyers is/was Dutch is not the reason to select this postcard. The reason is the backside. There my grandmother wrote to her eldest daughter, my mother, who was on a school trip to Germany. The card is dated August 28, 1933.

I have always admired my grandma's handwriting, I think it is beautiful, in particular the capitals. 
I will not tire you with a translation of the text but two things are worth mentioning. The first is that grandma writes that "it is terribly warm here, too warm to do anything." So we probably had a nice summer in '34. Usually weather conditions are not part of our family history. But sometimes they can be very significant when trying to explain certain circumstances. 
The other noteworthy thing is the text of the rubber stamp to the right. Translated it says "Use preferably Dutch manufacture". Economic circumstances in the 30's were generally less than optimal and governments tried to limit imports as much as possible. Hence the consumption of homemade products was stimulated. Today we would call this "protectionism". But the days of splendid isolation are over and protectionism is now almost a dirty word. 

As a final point I like to come back to miss Lien Deyers. Things did not go too well for her in the States. She was arrested several times for being drunk in public. It is unknown when she died. One of her signs of life was a written cry for help when she was an inmate in the Clark County jail in Las Vegas. But ever since she was discharged from prison, she was an ex-convict... Maybe someday there will be a film made of ​​her .

For more interpretations by the Sepia Saturday crowd,
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