New York Star
Treasure Chest Thursday
By Don Taylor
In the Donna Darling collection was an absolutely gorgeous magazine image of Donna as a young woman. Sadly, the image was larger than the scrapbook it was in and was pasted across two pages and split in two. Also, a portion of the photo was lost. I’m not a photoshop expert, but I did the best I could with the photo, first I joined the two images as best as I could. Then I touched up some of the lines and creases. I tried to blend where the two images come together, but I wasn’t very successful with that.
Donna, always the promoter, had a professionally done photo of herself made at the Ira L. Hills Studio in New York. Then she used that photo to promote her headlining “Bathing Beauties” show and to wish everyone “Christmas Greetings.”
I’ve spent considerable time trying to find a copy of the New York Star, Volume XXV, No. 15, to no avail. I have additionally contacted an archive that is holding many of the photographic images of Ira L. Hills in hopes they might have a high-quality image of Donna.
Donna Montran Christmas Greetings, 1920
If someone good with photoshop can do a better job of joining the two halves together then I did, I’d be happy to send the two original 3440 x 2496 image scans to work with. (This web version is only 500 x 668 pixels in size.)
