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This email is making the rounds from the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences to Hollywood's name talent criticizing the U.S. Post Office for this stamp issued September 18th. I've X'ed out the names:
From: "XXX" <XXX@oscars.org>
To: <XXX@aol.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:23:26 -0700
Subject: Re: Postal censorshipHave you seen the new Bette Davis postage stamp? It's a photo from ALL ABOUT EVE, and after staring at it for a while I realized there was something wrong. She has a gloved hand raised beneath her chin in a very awkward pose. They removed a cigarette from her fingers! Censorship from our Uncle Sam. Didn't they think anyone would notice? Film historians should revolt!
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Bette Davis didn’t smoke. She preferred Nicorette.
Does anyone have a link to the original photo with cig in hand?
Are they going to replace Groucho’s cigar with a lollipop?
You mean there are no photos of Bette Davis without her mouth full?
The first reason for the anti-smoking hysteria is a monetary one: the transfer of billions of dollars from tobacco company shareholders to the pockets of lawyers and politicians.
The other very important reason is that the NWO wants everyone off tobacco and on to prozac, zoloft, and all other mood altering drugs both ‘legal’(LOL) and ‘illegal’(ROFLMAO). Much more $$$$ there plus a drugged populace is very docile!
Good thing they’re not making a “Mad Men” stamp. They’d have their photo retouchers working overtime on that design.
Seriously, there is more smoking on one episode of “Mad Men” (which is the BEST show since “The Sopranos”) than every movie of the last ten years combined.
But it is, as I well remember, historically accurate.
They also did this to the 1994 stamp honoring bluesman Robert Johnson:
http://www.photobooth.net/mt/archives/2005/03/24/robert_johnson_photobooth_controversy.php
Oh, please. Join this millennium with the rest of us. Women posing with cigarettes was a symbolic gesture of rising feminism, and very effective. Codified media signals of suppressed feminism are no longer valid among the 24 live feed of Britney and Co. stretching their womanhood in more directions than most of us give a crap about.
The only thing the USPS is guilty of is failing to crop a JPEG in Photoshop correctly. But if you are so anti-censorship that you absolutely must maintain the integrity of the 8.5 x 11 Hollywood glossy, I recommend that the USPS print the original f’ing thing, slap an American Cancer Society logo across the bottom, and allocate ten cents of each one to hospice.
I thought she was just throwing up a gang sign. Bette always did keep it real.
They should include the cigarette, then overlay the stamp with a warning that reads:
THIS STAMP CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF TOBACCO CONSUMPTION
To the sender of this email: I’m sure film historians have better things to expend their energy on, like, you know, not getting fired due to a total lack of NEA funding to preserve our film heritage.
Getting upset about the lack of a cancerstick on overpriced snail mail postage is silly. You can print your own stamps with your own image these days. Find the photo and make your own stamp.
Otherwise, I suggest you philate yourself. (Sorry, couldn’t help it.)
Kevin’s right. It’s a little known fact that the most famous line from All About Eve was originally going to be “Fasten yo seatbelts, bitches, it’s gon’ get fucked up up in hurr.” Yet another victim of the Hays Code.
Does nobody realize that she’s using her right hand to draw the collar of her fur coat closer together? That’s why she doesn’t have a thumb — it’s under the coat’s lapel. That’s exactly the way my hand looks when I do that with my overcoats. Nothing awkward about it.
Ohplease is right. If this is supposed to be such a classic pose, then post the original picture showing her with the cigarette, or just admit it’s a non-story.
Bette Davis smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, and lived to be 81. I’m not defending smoking, but….
Nothing like a Bette Davis item to bring out all the bitchy queens.
Ciggy or not – photoshopped or not – cropped or not – fur or not (yea, I know PETA is gonna crap all over me now!)
None of that matters to me.
I’m just glad they used this picture instead of one from “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”!
She looks lovely; in the prime of her life. She was in her early 40’s right? Perfect. I love it and have already purchased several sleeves.
“Dark Victory” – “Now, Voyager” — two of my all time favorite BD films!
“Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon, we have the stars.”
Schmaltz all the way – loved every minute of it.
I love when the USPS gets all political on our asses. Nice to know where it stands: fur, yes…smoking, no.
I’m be honest, as much as we’re laughing at them photoshopping out the old ciggie if they’d left it in they’re a bunch of people (not us cool folks) who would have started screaming.
I find it funny more than anything.
Oh for goodness sake.
Put the cigarette back in the picture. Trying to rewrite (or rephotograph) the past won’t actually change the past.
sheeesh
1. Why have such a hard time believing it is a political message? It is the US Post Office.
2. She does look fab!!!!
3. It is a drawing, not really a picture.
Political correctness run amuck.
Jackson Pollock also posthumously quit smoking when the USPS gave him a stamp.
Forget the controversy about the position of Bette’s hand.
If anything, it’s a lousy picture choice.
You would think with 40+ years in the film business, the Postal Service could have chosen a BETTER PICTURE.
Nikki Finke has no other Hollywood-fixated story to write about these days? This is a large order of prognosis negative! Jeesh. What a non-issue altogether. Let’s just be thankful Bette has been thusly honored. The image is fabulous, with or without the deletion, and the censorship issue is best left for another day.
Well, a lot of people may laugh at the silliness of it, but my grandson wants to know why people in the movies smoke. His grandfather (my husband) died from smoking, and he misses him a lot. It’s hard to teach children smoking is bad when they see all the stars doing it. When is Hollywood going to get a clue?
THE ONLY STORY HERE IS THE STAMP LOOKS BEAUTIFUL. PEOPLE SEEM TO CRAVE REASONS TO COMPLAIN. LIFE IS TOO SHORT.
My favorite case of removing a cigarette is at Disneyland (or is it Disney World? I can never remember) in a life sized photo hung at a re-creation of Walt’s office. In the photo, Walt is sitting on the edge of his desk looking happy. It’s not til you look closer and see that in the reflection of the hand that’s leaning on the desk, he’s holding a ciggie. So, they took it out of his hand, but not out of the reflection.
When I first saw it many years ago, it just filled me with great glee.. not sure why, but it did.
Why wouldn’t they just have used a different picture? That absurd to edit a classic picture, just use one of her when she’s no smoking instead of editing out the cig.
prognosis negative? someone else watched that seinfeld that was on fox last night!
Agreed with eb. Be thankful they didn’t take a still from her last movie “Evil Stepmother”…
I hope that is a cruelty free fake fur she is wearing! Are those “blood diamond” ear rings? Redo the whole stamp! They should redub the film so she says, “Fasten your safety belts. Its going to be a bumpy night…in my zero emissions electric car!”
Look at the coat — they even made the mink look faux!
Silly. History is history.
I like the stamp but i think a picture of her on the staircase when she gives the “Seatbelt” line would have been better…or BETTE-er.
Did anyone complain when Steven Spielberg re-released ET, but replaced the guns in men’s hands with flashlights? How PC of him.
yes, it sucks that they censored the photo, but it’s not something to scream and cry about. It’s just a stamp, get over it.
I love Bette Davis. she’s one of my all-time fave actresses.
<3
Did anyone complain when Steven Spielberg re-released ET, but replaced the guns in men’s hands with flashlights? How PC of him.
Yes, people did complain. Did you have a point?
Comment by Maryland — October 1, 2008 @ 7:41 am
It’s hard to teach children smoking is bad when they see all the stars doing it. When is Hollywood going to get a clue?
________
What else shall we remove from movies for the children? Drinking? Drug use? Speeding? Killing? Fighting?
If we got rid of everything in movies that children might see and do, we’d be left with movies of just people silent, standing in a white room for 2 hours.
got this in response from the USPS….
Dear MATT,
Thank you for contacting us about the Bette Davis stamp being altered.
I apologize for your frustrations. However, in the original photo used as the basis for this portrait Bette Davis did not have a cigarette in her hand. What you are seeing is the effect of light and shadow.
If I can be of assistance to you in the future, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Thank you for choosing the United States Postal Service®.
Regards,
Angela G
Considering the range of photographs from a vampish Davis and the latter grand dame of film, I’d say this photograph is a great choice. She began working in Hollywood in 1931 and her last film was 1989 with more appearances after 1950, so this is earlier rather than later in her career, and the role in “All About Eve” which she won an Academy Award™ for.
As for the posters who wonder what to tell the grandkids about smoking, how about: “we, or someone we knew, grew, advertised, sold, purchased and smoked cigarettes and a lot of us died from it.”
Who actually still believes the best way to prevent pregnancy, STDs, STIs, and most health dangers is to ignore it, never mention it, don’t educate and simply ban all mention of them?
Oh, I forgot, a great deal of people believe this… sheesh.
As for the photograph, I have seen this studio still for years, and never with a cigarette! It’s from the scene where she is stranded with a broken down car in the snow, while Eve is stealing her role on the New York stage. Pivotal and prescient.
Perhaps you were thinking of this photo in the same fur, with cotton, rather than satin gloves?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v491/stinkylulu/CH-celesteholm-allabouteve-car.png
To James in London: well of course that’s what I tell my grandson! It gets harder to explain why people smoke in current TV/movies. I tell him there are a lot of stupid people out there.
It turns out (from the USPS response above) that no cigarette was harmed before its time. But I would not want the Federal Government plastering cigarettes over millions of stamps if it WAS there. Freedom of speech is one thing, but when the FDA warns smoking is hazardous to your health, putting it on a stamp would be rather contradictory, n’est-ce pas?
Somehow I don’t think looking at a picture of cigarette is very hazardous, actually…
Nor is the removal of a cigarette “censorship”.
touché
Nor is the removal of a cigarette “censorship”.
No, it’s just white-washing the past so it doesn’t contain the things we don’t like.
Why have actual facts about our past when we can just change it so it feels better–and truthier, right?