Vintage 1943 WWII-Era Lynn Baggett 4th of July Firecracker Pin-Up Photograph

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Thanks to all our eBay bidders! We are honored to be your one-stop, 5-star source for vintage pin up, pulp magazines, original illustration art, decorative collectibles and ephemera with a wide and always changed assortment of antique and vintage items from the Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Mid-Century Modern eras. All items are 100% guaranteed to be original, vintage, and as described. Please feel free to contact us with any and all questions about the items and our policies and please take a moment to peruse our other great eBay listings. All sell no reserve!ITEM: This is a vintage and original 1943 published Hollywood pin-up photograph of actress Lynn Baggett. A wonderfully patriotic World War II-era Fourth of July portrait of Lynn in a festive striped outfit while seen lighting a firecracker papered with bonds. A published image by Bert Longworth, this still retains its original press snipe which reads: "Lynn Baggett, Warner Bros. featured player, makes as if to shoot a sky-rocket loaded with War Bonds -- the idea being to "Bond the Axis" on Independence Day."Measures 7 1/4" x 10" with margins on a glossy single weight paper stock.Photographer's ink stamp and various publication notations to verso.CONDITION: Fine condition with pinholes in the corners, corner wear, and general storage/handling wear. Please use the included images as a conditional guide.********************Tall, regal, sultry-eyed, flame-haired (later blonde) Lynn Baggett is better remembered for her turbulent, unhappy private life than for her "B" level acting roles. Born Ruth Baggett in Wichita Falls, Texas, on May 10, 1923, her father, David L., was in the oil business and her mother, the former Ruth Simmons, a stenographer. While in Dallas following her high school graduation, the pretty teenager was discovered by a Warner Bros. agent and signed. As a girl with no experience, the studio promoted Lynn (sometimes billed Lynne) as a beauty queen and titleholder ("The Cobra Girl," "The Triple A Girl," etc.) while paying her dues in a slew of unbilled sexy starlet bits as chorines, nurses, waitresses, singers and party girl types. For five long years she toiled obscurely in such WWII-era films as Manpower (1941), Air Force (1943), The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944), Roughly Speaking (1945), Mildred Pierce (1945) and Night and Day (1946).The studio did little to increase her stature in Hollywood and she eventually was released from her contract in 1946. After signing with Universal, she finally received her first role of substance in The Time of Their Lives (1946), an above average Abbott and Costello haunted house comedy vehicle. Following her marriage to the Austro-Hungarian producer Sam Spiegel ("On the Waterfront") in 1948, she acted less frequently, showing up in a few secondary roles with the classic film noir D.O.A. (1950), probably her best remembered role as a shady lady/widow of mystery, and in The Flame and the Arrow (1950) and The Mob (1951) her most prominent.The Spiegel/Baggett marriage was quite stormy, marred by adultery and nasty fighting. They separated in 1952. Three years later she finally received a divorce. With her career now in shambles, Lynn found work as an Arthur Murray dance teacher. In 1954, she was the direct cause of a fatal two-car accident in which a 9-year-old boy, on his way home from a summer camping excursion, was killed. Another young boy in the same car was seriously injured. Overcome by fear and acute anguish, she "blacked out" and was later charged with leaving the scene of an accident. She was convicted of felony hit-and-run.A failed acting comeback led to severe depression, mental problems and acute substance abuse. She attempted suicide by pills in 1959 before succeeding a year later on March 22, 1960, dying of acute barbiturate intoxication. She had been released from a private sanitarium several weeks earlier. She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Never close to showing her true potential, Lynn(e) Baggett became one of Hollywood's sadder statistics... read more

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