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Memories of Katinka

Memories of Katinka

A few days after my dad signed the contract [https://jimheid.ghost.io/the-curtain-rises/] with the Hartman-Steindorff Opera Company in 1922, he performed in Katinka, a musical composed in 1915 by Rudolf Friml [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Friml] and Otto Harbach [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Harbach]

The Curtain Rises

The Curtain Rises

San Francisco in the 1920s. The memories of the 1906 earthquake were as fresh as the memories of 9/11 are today. The city had rebuilt, and the United States was entering what would later be called the Age of Prosperity [http://americainclass.org/sources/becomingmodern/prosperity/text1/colcommentary.pdf]

My Mom, Her Brother, and the Rocking Chair

My Mom, Her Brother, and the Rocking Chair

When my dad’s career as a performer began heating up in California, my mom was a toddler in the Western Pennsylvania coal-mining community [https://jimheid.ghost.io/claridge-pa-in-the-1930s/] where she grew up. In this photo, from about 1922, she sits in a little rocking chair alongside her older brother

Portrait of a Young Actor

Portrait of a Young Actor

California agreed with my dad. Within five years of moving west with his mother, he went from being the kid from Brooklyn wearing knickers to being the young man pictured here. He’s 20 in this spectacular, hand-colored portrait, taken in San Francisco in December 1922. (View a larger version

Discovering California

Discovering California

Shortly after the end of World War I, my dad and his mom moved from Brooklyn to Northern California. Several relatives lived in Berkeley and Oakland, and my dad and grandmother headed west to join them. The photo above was taken in Berkeley on April 15, 1918. My dad is

Lives Not Yet Intertwined

Lives Not Yet Intertwined

My dad was 16 years older than my mom, and I often think of what their lives were like before they found each other. During the 20s, when my dad was working in radio and touring up and down the West Coast as an actor, my mom was a child

Claridge, PA in the 1930s

Claridge, PA in the 1930s

My mom grew up on this street. It’s in the tiny town of Claridge, in Pennsylvania's Westmoreland County, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh. Claridge was one of many coal mining communities in Western Pennslyvania. Company houses, a company store, and miners, many of them immigrants from Eastern

My Dad in 1913

This is the second-oldest photo I have of my dad. According to an annotation on the back, it was taken on Essex Street in Brooklyn in the fall of 1913. (View the full-size photo [https://jimheid.ghost.io/content/images/2016/01/dad-in-brooklyn--essex-st--fall-1913.jpg] .) I don’t know who the

My Dad’s School Photo

My Dad’s School Photo

This is the oldest photo of my dad that I’ve found. He’s in the far-right row, second from the front. I’m guessing he’s about 10 or 12, which would date this photo at between 1912 and 1914. (View the full-size photo [https://jimheid.ghost.io/content/