On appearances.

I posted this photo in on September 3, 1921.

Earnest Hemingway and Elizabeth Hadley Richardson married in Bay Township, Wisconsin.  They'd divorce in 1927 after she learned of Hemingway's affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, who had been a friend of hers.

Hemingway looks so young, right? 

He was about 22, and she was about 30, making her slightly older than the norm for a woman to marry at the time.  At least in this photograph, they both appear younger than they really were, or so it seems to me.

To the right, as we view it, in the phone are Hemingway's parents.  His mother was. . . 49.

49.

And that says something about appearance and aging.  Would you have guessed that?

In marriage, Elizabeth started to show her age pretty quickly.  In the photo below, with their son Jack, she's about 35.

Quite a contrast from just five years earlier.

Of course, maybe it was hanging out with Hemingway that did that to a person.  Here he is, in 1927, with his second wife.

Pauline would have been 32 years old at the time.

Martha Gelhorn, Hemingway spouse number 3 and former lover of Gen. James Gavin, was 33 when this photograph was taken.

To complete this, Mary Welsh, Hemingway's last, and longest lasting, spouse was about the same age, and in the same profession, as Gelhorn.  I'm unsure of the date of this photograph, but it was taken during World War Two.  Hemingway was Welsh's third husband, FWIW, so they both were experienced with multiple marriages when they married each other.

The following photograph is of a different celebrity couple, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.  You'll see it again next month.

The photo was taken in 1939.  Lombard was 31.  Gable was 38.   The woman on the left is Elizabeth Peters, her mother.  She would have been about 63.  

I suppose all of these folks look their age.  Lombard, born Jane Alice Peters, was from a wealthy family, and maybe that explains everyone looking so well-preserved.

On December 8, we posted an item on that day.  It included a lot of photographs.

They included these street scenes from San Francisco.

These are just people out on the street, the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed. That night, San Franciscans would believe that their city was raided, a jittery reaction to the arrival of war with Japan.

But note how extremely well dressed everyone is dressed.

San Francisco, I'd note, is cold in the winter, and in the summer.  But these folks aren't dressed heavy at all, in all cases. It must have been a warm day. They're all just dressed really nicely.

Same in Hawaii.

If you see movies depicting Hawaii in 1941, made now, or even in the 50s, you're going to see short sleeves and Hawaiian shirts.  This guy is wearing a double-breasted suit with a vest.

The guy behind him, however, is dressed down. He must be a dockworker of some sort.  He seems to be wearing Levis, by the way, which you can tell due to the pocket rivets.  And his belt is a Navy or Army officer's uniform belt.

Back to San Francisco.  These guys are joining the Marine Corps.

Two of them are wearing pinstriped suits.  The third is dressed down as he has omitted his tie.  And at least one of them is wearing an extremely nice fedora.

I'll bet nobody has gone into a Marine Corps recruiting station wearing a pin striped suit and a fedora since World War Two.

And here are some guys joining the Navy.

Again, pretty well dressed.

Speaking of the Navy, a USO dance still happened that night, the imagined air raid on San Francisco notwithstanding.

Here, the striking thing isn't the men, it's the women.

As odd as it seems to say, they're notable as, once again, they're fairly well-dressed and, as odd as it is to say, they're not tattooed.

I'm not sure what all of this says, but it says something.