Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Margie in 1952

I had occasion to look at a 2021 OCA post about the Remington Rand Photocharger, a long-gone piece of library technology that I remember from my Brooklyn childhood. When I followed that post back to a short film from the Brooklyn Public Library with a glimpse of the RRP in action, I was startled to see our friend Margie King Barab, then Margie Lou Swett, in a scene with high-school students, or “high-school students,” sketching costume plates in the library. In 1952, Margie was a twenty-year-old actress and singer in New York City. Her high-school days were back in Nebraska.

[From The Library: A Family Affair (1952). Margie appears at the 10:25 mark. Click for a larger view.]

A 2020 OCA post has much more about Margie’s television appearances and about a Naked City episode with characters who appear to be modeled on Margie and her first husband, the writer and raconteur Alexander King.

You can see if I’m seeing things by looking at screenshots from an episode of Naked City in which Margie appears uncredited. Or compare the screenshot above with a Carl Van Vechten portrait of Alex and Margie King. That’s Margie, for sure, in the Brooklyn Public Library and in the Naked City elevator.

Related posts
Seymour Barab (1921–2014) : Margie King Barab (1932–2018)

comments: 2

Anonymous said...

Did you mean to write the first occurrence of “high-school” without the hyphen, hence the quotes around the second?

Michael Leddy said...

No, I just meant that Margie was playing a high-school student. Perhaps the other sketchers were also not really students. I always put the hyphen in high-school students, even if it’s a given that they’re students in high school and not students under the influence.