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Perry and Jimmy: 1939

Washington, D.C., circa 1939. Actually there is no caption for this photo. Who can ID these mystery men? Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.
UPDATE: They're D.C. newspaper columnists Robert Kintner and Joe Alsop.

Washington, D.C., circa 1939. Actually there is no caption for this photo. Who can ID these mystery men? Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.
UPDATE: They're D.C. newspaper columnists Robert Kintner and Joe Alsop.

 

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Can I help?

If anyone wants to re-create the scene, I have the same typewriter in my attic. My parents gave it to me in the early 60's for school work. Used it till computers came along and took over.

I emphatically declare - - -

that that is Pee Wee Herman on the right and Al Franken (in his younger years when he was only slightly less homely than he is now) on the left.

Robert Kintner and Joe Alsop

Our mystery men are newspaper columnists Robert Kintner (standing) and Joseph Alsop, whose jointly written "Capital Parade" appeared in the Washington Post. In the 1950s and '60s, Kintner was president of the ABC and NBC television networks.

I know who those guys are!

Newspaper Columnist brothers Stewart (on your left) and Joe Alsop. Bigtime pundits of the 1940s-50s. Joe, though married, was gay. One time on a trip to Russia he got entrapped. The Russkies tried to leverage his flagrante delicti with a handsome Russky operative. Essentially, Siberia or work for us when you get home. Joe, who knew everybody and everything in Washington and could have been quite useful to the Russians, put country first. He called their bluff and said go ahead and prosecute me. They didn't and when they released him Joe promptly told all to the American Embassy. Affected his career and contacts here not at all.

[You're half right. That's Joe at the typewriter. - Dave]

Curatorial, not Reportorial

How many budding Jimmy Olsens have a reproduction of a Ming Dynasty painting hanging over their desks? These young men look like more like museum whiz kids, nor reporters (and I used to be one - the seated Pee Wee looks particularly curatorial). I'd guess that this office is in the old Freer Gallery of Art, or, as an alternative, in the Asian Section of the State Department, where by the late 1930s a few bright young Chinese language scholars had already been hired. Dave, a closeup of the few readable book spines in the upper left corner might help narrow the field.

The Daily Planet

Perry White and Jimmy Olson. Woodward and Bernstein. Woodward & Lothrop?

Norv & Pee

Norville Barnes advises his new hire, Pee Wee Herman.

Next stop, Broadway

A vaguely theatrical feel here. Fledgling playwrights would be my guess. Songwriters maybe.

Fourth Estate

That guy on the right is definitely Pee Wee Herman!

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