Besides Joe Dimaggio and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson that is. This picture belongs to a friend of mine, and we can’t figure out who else is in it.
Supposedly it was taken at a USO party.
Any ideas?
Dennis Franz.
I’ll take an informed but wild guess the guy over Bojangles’ right shoulder(between Dimaggio and Robinson) is Irving Berlin.
http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/2634090.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=B43C13524355E9287395BE5A8213FE4DA55A1E4F32AD3138
DiMaggio could eat corn through a picket fence, couldn’t he?
As an interesting note, 31,000 people visited the armory where he lay in state, with as many as 5,000 standing in line in light snow to get in. Rev. Adam Clayton Powell conducted his memorial service. The funeral procession was two miles long.
Oh, forgot, this was 1949 when Robinson died. :smack:
Great photo, and enough so to get me to search around under various parameters (old photojournalist sensibilities kicked in), and I couldn’t find a similar photo at all. I’d place it as late 30’s/early 40’s, from Joe’s looks.
For resources, these would be some good bets:
National Baseball Hall of Fame
And, of course; www.joedimaggio.com and www.yankees.com
I bet there’s archivists there that would peg it in a minute.
And, it should be noted that Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the other identified celebrity in the OP photo, helped to found the NY Black Yankees, a step in the right direction for the game we love now. That’s one reason I loved that photo so much; it hints at the fact that the game of baseball was becoming a levelling field of play, with Robinson and Dimaggio looking dynamic and equal.
That’s a pretty good guess as Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Duke Ellington, Bob Hope and Irving Berlin served as Bill’s honorary pallbearers. I’ve tried to match other pictures of Mr. Berlin to compare features, particularly the offset of the front tooth you see in WoS’s picture, but in almost all Mr. Berlin does not smile openly, which may be slightly telling in and of itself.
Here’s another pic I came across in trying to identify some of these gentlemen. Do you think the man on the left, Victor Herbert, could be the same, albeit a little older, as the gent on left in the picture in question? The pursed lips, moustache, dimple and other characteristics make me wonder.
Thanks for all the help, guys. We’ve been looking online and the closest resemblance to anyone in the pic that we could find is this:
http://www.carpenoctem.tv/mafia/guzik.html
My friend thinks that the man on the far right of the picture could be this guy, just younger. I’m not sure I’m sold. I looked at pictures for Irving Berlin, and to me he just doesn’t look like anyone in the picture.
The one that bugs me the most is the man between Joe and Bill. He looks like an actor to me, which if there were at a party, wouldn’t be unreasonable.