Page 9 - 2017 Year In Review

exclusively upon photos with
brief captions to illustrate the
world at war. There had never
been anything like it before and
after the war it was renamed
simply “Mid Week Pictorial,”
covering all of the news and
events of the world (including
sports) “in pictures.” This was
Life magazine decades before
Henry Luce and Britton
Haden created it.

The sex appeal, beauty and
grace of swimmers and divers were favorite subjects of the
were very popular at the turn of the century. Cards with two editors at the magazine, for in an era when “modesty” was
images were viewed through “stereoscopes” giving the viewer respected, the pictures of women
a 3D image. This picture caught the ball in the air during a in scantily clad swimming
water polo game at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis. suits were considered risque.
Pictured on the cover of the
Midweek Pictorial of July 6,
1922 is Elizabeth “Betty” Becker
Pinkston, captured in flight
at Brighton Beach, NY. Betty
was married to 1920 Olympic
diving champion Clarence
Pinkston and she would go on
to win gold and silver medals at
the 1924 Olympic Games.

Nineteen year-old Gertrude
The start of the 1904 Ederle was celebrated on the cover of the August 19, 1926 issue
Olympic 200 meter after becoming the first of her sex to swim across the English
freestyle race, from Channel. It was a feat generally believed to be impossible for
the dock at Lifesaver’s a woman, but she beat the best men’s record for the exploit by
Lake in St. Louis, nearly two hours and was a major milestone for the gender
won by American equity movement.
Charles Daniels. The
movement of the
swimmers is slightly
blurred. The lake
was contaminated
with animal feces and many of the competitors were stricken
with Typhoid, resulting in several deaths.

Rotogravure Printing One of the most well known athletes in the world in the

1920’s “Golden Age of Sports” was Johnny Weissmuller,
In 1914, the New York Times began publishing a stand-alone, whose celebrity as a swimmer led to his being cast in the role
14 x 20 inch magazine to carry the overflow of photographs of Tarzan in 1931. One of the
from the multitude of picture agencies covering WWI. most popular athletes at the 1924
Newspapers of the day rarely used photographs because Olympic Games, he returned to
printing presses were incapable of reproducing quality half- Paris in 1929, with 1920 Olympic
tone photographs and text on the same page. But before the diving champion Aileen Riggin,
war, the Times had purchased rotogravure presses (ironically to promote BVD underwear
from Germany) that reproduced photos close to print quality. during the grand opening of
“The Mid Week Pictorial War Extra”, as it was called, relied the Piscine Molitor, famous as

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