Susann Shaw Connelly
January 1, 1919 – June 11, 2009

It was with much sadness that I learned recently of the passing of Susann Shaw Connelly, the lovely model who inspired so many of my designs.

Susann was much more than a beautiful face. At a time when it was far from the norm, Susann successfully combined motherhood and career. She was, in her daughter’s words, “a devoted mother, a proud grandmother, and a delighted great-grandmother.” She was a wage-earner on whom her family depended. As if all that were not enough, she was also an avid and artistic gardener and an embroiderer who achieved master craftsman certification in the Embroiderers’ Guild of America.

And she was a delightful woman. I never met Susann in person, but I had the pleasure of speaking with her on the phone; she spoke with humor and heart of her life and her family, her career and her fellow models, the challenges of aging.

Susann’s later years brought her many challenges which she braved with grace. At the end, Susann’s only hope was a pacemaker, but for her last 20 years she had insisted “no more operations”. Her clarity about her wishes was her final gift to her family.

Susann will be missed.

Anne

Meet the Models!

You know them.  You love them…all the glam women and men featured on our magnets, note cards and other must-have Anne Taintor products. 

But did you know that all the artwork we use comes from authentic vintage advertisements from the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s?  

We’ve been lucky enough to hear from some of these fabulous women…not at all surprised to learn that those beautiful models are just as classy today as they were when they first posed in their heyday.

Meet a few of our very own “Taintorettes:”

Georgia Carroll & Katharine Aldridge

Carey Cameron was running a routine errand when she happened to see Georgia Carroll, a dear friend of her late mother, gazing out at her from a file folder with the warning "an attitude is a terrible thing to waste".  Because Ms. Carroll’s daughter, Amanda Kyser (who is a good friend of Carey’s), was expected to be staying in Carey’s apartment while Carey herself was away on a brief trip, Carey purchased all the sets of file folders in the store (2) and propped them on the pillow of the guest bed.  Amanda, who was delighted with the gift left on her pillow, opened the package and discovered a model she thought was Carey’s mother in the package as well.  (Carey, in a hurry to leave for her trip, had not examined the packages carefully and had assumed that the file folders all had Georgia’s image on them.)  An emailed image allowed Carey to confirm that it was indeed her mother, Katharine Aldridge, musing "and to think that I’m only using one-tenth of my brain".  

Georgia and Katharine on assignment in Hawaii.

Katharine Aldridge was the first of the two friends to make a life in New York.  In 1936, Katharine was eighteen years old and working as a secretary in Baltimore when her Cousin Fitz, who was traveling to New York to exhibit his prize hen in a poultry show at Madison Square Garden, read an article about modeling agent John Robert Powers and sought him out to show him a picture of his lovely cousin.  Katharine had never heard of such a thing as a career in modeling - magazines in those days were illustrated mainly with drawings – but in no time at all she was a top New York model herself!  Her beauty, her charm, and a pronounced dramatic flair (as a freshman in high school she was voted the school’s biggest "scamp") led her on to a career in films (she signed with Twentieth Century Fox in 1939 and later made pictures with Warner Brothers and Paramount) and eventually to cult fame as an action heroine in sound serials at Republic Pictures.  As the star of "Perils of Nyoka", her first serial, she was seriously endangered (chased, burned, knocked unconscious…) nineteen times, and she was one of only eight women to receive top billing in sound serials!

In 1945 she married Texas wildcat oilman Arthur Cameron and retired from movies to raise their four children.  After her divorce from Mr. Cameron she met and married artist Richard Tucker, moving eventually to Maine, where she lived until her death in 1995.

Katharine also appears as the lovely cook on this Flask.

The Navy Blues Sextet. Katharine & Georgia are in the center.

Georgia and Katherine in a magazine ad.

Georgia Carroll moved to New York just months after Katharine.  Like Katharine, Georgia found instant success at the Powers Agency, and became a favorite with photographers and the other models alike.  Taintorette Susann Shaw remembers meeting Georgia in the waiting room of a photographer.  Susann calls Georgia "the most loveable, beautiful woman she had ever met, as lovely inside as she was out, which is saying something" and she recalls that "everyone was so nice to Georgia because she was so sweet you just couldn’t be anything else". Georgia and Katharine were often paired as models, and thus began a life-long friendship.  Also like Katharine, Georgia traveled to Hollywood and became an actress, signing with Warner Brothers in 1941.  On the tour bus for a USO show in which she was appearing, Georgia’s singing caught the attention of a fellow performer, band leader Kay Kyser.  In 1943 she joined Mr. Kyser’s band (Kollege of Musical Knowledge) as a featured vocalist.  The two fell in love, were married the next year, and raised three children.  After retirement, the couple moved to a historic home in North Carolina, where they continued to lead very active lives.  Georgia received her college degree at the age of 50!  Meanwhile, Kay enticed Hollywood professionals to North Carolina to help him bring Public Television (brand new at the time and designed to be educational) to his home state, which at that time had a poor literacy rate.  He also raised the funds to build the N.C. Memorial Hospital to give returning veterans better health care.  Such friends as Frank Sinatra and Doris Day donated their time to help Kay in his efforts.

Georgia and members of her family.

Georgia and Katharine remained friends throughout Katharine’s life, and their daughters and granddaughters still maintain warm friendships.  It is heartwarming indeed that, as Amanda says, "our mothers are together again under the same piece of cellophane."

Carey and Anne in New Mexico.

(Note from Anne: the amazing thing to me is that I had planned for the third folder in the series, "stop me before I volunteer again", to be the top folder.  The manufacturer made a mistake assembling the set, but I loved the way it looked and let it go.  Had everything gone according to plan I might never have heard the stories of these amazing women!  And I might never have met Carey and her husband Giovanni, which would have been a sad loss indeed!)

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Susann Shaw

Susann Shaw arrived in New York City in 1937 at age 17 with no money and an eagerness to prove herself. She had been raised in boarding schools and, while she lacked the support of a family, she was intelligent and hard-working. She found a room at the YWCA and a job in a secretarial pool. She remembers the City then as being so bright and lively and clean.

Susann's fellow secretaries urged her to become a model; she assumed they were just trying to be nice to her! But on June 27, 1938, the very day Susann was married, her new husband drove her to the Fifth Avenue address of the John Robert Powers Modeling Agency and asked his young bride to go up and try her luck. Unassuming Susann was easily discouraged by the haughty receptionist, but when she was halfway back out the door she heard a man's voice: "Hey you! Miss! Wait!" Although, as Susann recalls, she had been brought up to ignore the calls of strange men something made her turn around. Moments later Mr. Powers called Vogue magazine to tell them he was sending over the new face for which they had been searching. Within weeks Susann was John Powers' top model.

Susann graced the covers of fashion magazines like Vogue, Look, and Mademoiselle. She posed as a bride for Vogue more than 1000 times. She was called "The Most Beautiful Woman in New York City" by the print press reporters organization. In 1943 she appeared in the movie "Cover Girl” with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly.

But Susann craved motherhood more than fame. She left Hollywood to return to New York City, where she was able to combine motherhood and a career at a time when that was far from the norm. She still worked for high fashion magazines, but she also posed for countless inserts in big mail-order catalogs such as Sears, and she was featured as the woman at a sewing machine in the Singer logo of the time. The advent of television brought her back to acting and introduced her to her second husband John Connelly, who worked for NBC news.

In later years she turned her attention from modeling to fine embroidery and earned a Master Craftsman certification from the Embroiderers’ Guild of America. Her artistry has proved far more satisfying to her than her modeling career. Susann always believed that the accident of nature that gave her “good cheekbones” had little to do with a person’s true worth.

Susann is the lovely woman in "someone was going to have to set a bad example", “there was nothing passive about her aggression”, “of course it buys happiness”, “guess where I’m tattooed”, and the all-time customer favorite "I dreamed my whole house was clean”. Susann passed away on June 11, 2009. She will be missed.

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Joan Walsh

While shopping at Paper Source in San Jose, Calif., Terry Clavelli saw her mother’s face peering out innocently from our She could see no good reason to act her age notecard.  Terry had never seen that particular photo, or her mother’s hair done that way, but she immediately recognized her mother’s expression and beautiful doe eyes.

Her mother, Joan Walsh, passed away in 1990, much too young at the age of 65.  Terry says, “She was a wonderful, devoted mom, and ironically always acted her age.”  Terry’s own daughters were just 3 and 7 years old at the time, “and they just idolized her,” she adds.

A John Powers model in Manhattan in the early 1940s, Joan was a diminutive woman of 5’ 2”, as was her mother, who was scarcely 5 feet tall.  Joan, her mother and sister – all beautiful and petite – worked as face models to help support themselves during a difficult period.  Joan eventually left modeling to work for The Manhattan Project. The family moved to California in the late 1940s, where Joan worked as a bookkeeper at Glen Glenn Studios (where she often saw Lucille Ball, since the music for “I Love Lucy” was recorded there!).  Joan met her future husband in Los Angeles, and they married and made their home in the Bay area.  They adopted two girls and Joan became a devoted mother and homemaker the rest of her life.

“My mother was so gorgeous, yet deeply modest.  She played down her modeling days her whole life.  For Mom, it was all about her family, and education meant everything to her; she wanted the best schooling for us, no matter what.  She always took care of everyone else first.”

Acknowledging that her mother probably wouldn’t be comfortable with all this attention, Terry says, “Seeing my mother’s face on that card…it is so not her, but it’s so wonderful to see Mom ‘glorified’ like that.  If she were alive, she might be a little embarrassed.  I’m glad she has no choice.  She looks so happy, and in a way Anne is liberating her.”  Terry adds, “It’s been a fun experience for my whole family.”

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Barbara Luff McCraine

It was 1944 and beautiful Barbara Luff was working her way through New Jersey College for Women (now Douglas, Rutgers), when she posed for this photo. The strong features and expressive eyes (not to mention the killer body) that made her a top Powers model in the mid-forties, also makes her one of my all-time favorite ‘bad girls’.

After four years of gracing the covers and fashion spreads of Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue, and more, Barbara (now Mrs. Barbara Luff McCraine) graduated and left her glamorous modeling career to become a caseworker for New Jersey’s children’s services.

Eventually she retired from career #2 to become a stay at home mom.  Sixty years after the above photo was taken, Barbara’s past came back to haunt her (to her delight) when her granddaughter showed up for Christmas dinner wearing grandma’s picture on her “I can’t be good all the time”
t-shirt. And here is Barbara today, still glowing, in a card (which I will always treasure) made for me by her niece.  

Look for Barbara in 2007 in a brand new bad girl design. ( I can’t help myself; it’s those eyes!)

Anne & Barbara, February 2007

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Milo Gray ~ in her own words:

“The picture that Corby, my grandson, found on packages of Anne Taintor cocktail napkins was originally photographed in 1937, almost 70 years ago.  The strangest part is that my grandson, walking around a gift shop in Litchfield, CT, found the reproduction on cocktail napkins in 2006!! 

In those days – 70 years ago – certain debutantes were photographed for charity balls and other events.  And these “debs” became amateur celebrities whom the public loved to read about.  Big advertising companies would often try to “bribe” a debutante to promote their product. 

     Milo with her granddaughter & daughter.So Reynolds Tobacco asked me to pose for their Camel cigarettes.  I believe I told them that aside from parties, I also loved to figure skate at Rockefeller Center.  So I posed in that evening dress, which was a bright royal blue. 

[In the ad] There was a large picture with three smaller photos of my skating prowess with the catchy phrase, “I’ll skate a mile for a Camel,” instead of the traditional “I’ll walk a mile for a Camel.”  This ad was FULL PAGE and appeared in the back of every major magazine.  I even received some fan mail.  The payment of $750 for almost no work on my part seemed exorbitant beyond belief. 

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