The July 17 1923 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained this photograph of a French matinee idol who was apparently about to appear in movies in the United States.
Unfortunately, a search for Jean Devaldez turned up absolutely nothing. Either this photo caption horribly misspelled his name, or France’s “sheik supreme” didn’t go to America after all.
The July 17 1923 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained this photograph of a woman who some people thought was the most beautiful in England.
I could find nothing on M. V. Holt or Mrs. M. V. Holt – I have no idea who she was.
By the time of this photograph, Lady Diana Manners had become Lady Diana Cooper (1892-1986), as she had married Duff Cooper in 1919. The Coopers had been part of a set of intellectual aristocrats known as The Coterie; sadly, many of them were killed in the First World War. During the war, she apparently threw wild parties to try to escape the horrors of the war, and who can blame her?
In 1924, she played the Madonna in a revival of a play called The Miracle, and toured extensively with it for years. She also appeared in two early British colour films. YouTube has footage of Lady Cooper at a garden party in the 1920s, and an audio interview of her in 1969.
The February 22 1923 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained this ad for furs:
Just for fun, I decided to use the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator to determine what some of these prices would be in 2019 dollars.
The February 22 1923 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained a photograph of a young woman about to compete in a golf match:
I could find very little on Dorothy Klotz, though I did find some photographs of her, including this one. She eventually became Mrs. Dorothy Klotz Pardue, but that’s all I know.
Glenna Collett-Vale (1903-1989) dominated women’s golf in the 1920s, and is sometimes considered the greatest woman golfer of all time. She won six U.S. Women’s Amateur titles, and earned 16 consecutive tournament victories between 1928 and 1931. In 1924, she won 59 out of 60 matches, losing the 60th when Mary Browne’s ball caromed off hers and into the cup on the 19th hole. Given all of this, I would guess that she beat Ms. Klotz in their match.
The February 22 1923 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained this photograph:
The Marquis (usually spelled Marques) de Casa Maury and Paula Gellibrand got married in 1923, and were divorced in 1932. (He later married Freda Dudley Ward, who was the mistress of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, from 1918 to 1934.) Ms. Gellibrand married four times in total, and was once described as “the most beautiful woman in Europe”.
The July 6 1923 Toronto Globe had an advertisement for a series of appearances by self-help author Harriet Luella McCollum:
Harriet Luella McCollum (1874-1948) was noteworthy for using her maiden name despite being married with two children, which was unusual for the time. She was the author of a number of books, which were apparently part of a series. Some of the books were:
She does not have a Wikipedia page, so there is no single collection of details of her life.
The November 25 1923 Toronto Daily Star contained this short article about a man who claimed that his twin brother had committed the crimes for which he was accused, and also claimed that his twin was three years older than he was:
The accused also apparently had the same fingerprints as his twin. The presiding judge, not surprisingly, was skeptical.
By random chance, I have found two articles in Toronto newspapers with news about actress Ethel Barrymore. The articles are over two decades apart!
The first is from the July 6 1923 Toronto Globe:
The second is from the December 12 1944 Toronto Daily Star, reporting that she had successfully fought off influenza:
Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959) was a member of the Barrymore family of actors; she is the grand-aunt of actress Drew Barrymore. While in England as a young woman, she met Winston Churchill; he is rumored to have proposed to her. After her divorce from Russell Colt in 1923, as described above, she never married again.
The business pages of the August 11 1923 Toronto Globe listed some business opportunities, along with telephones for sale:
A Google search yielded an ad in the July 1927 edition of Popular Mechanics that touted the Stransky Vaporizer. (The ad mentions that Mr. Stransky once ran for Governor of South Dakota.) The Model T forum has a discussion of the Vaporizer, including photos of it and its owner’s manual.
At one time, apparently more than 100 of Pukwana, South Dakota’s 192 citizens had jobs related to the Stransky Vaporizer, and the Pukwana post office processed up to 20,000 pieces of mail a day. Today, Pukwana has 285 residents, including the Puk U Bar.
The Canadian Independent Telephone Company had a bold-face listing in the 1923 Toronto city directory. By 1925, the listing was no longer in bold-face, and the company had relocated to 90 Chestnut Street. The company does not appear in the 1926 directory.
I have no idea whether the theatrical opportunity was successful or not.
The August 11 1923 Toronto Globe listed this bit of filler:
This is a somewhat unexciting set of facts. But it’s interesting that Vancouver exported so much grain to the UK, given that it’s on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and Vancouver is on the Pacific.
