Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Altina Shanazi has been
Speaker 1: on my list for a while for the simple fact
Speaker 1: that she spoiler alert, invented cat eye glasses. She called
Speaker 1: them harlequin glasses. It's one of those things that comes
Speaker 1: up kind of annually on her birthday, like there's been
Speaker 1: a Google doodle about her, and people sometimes will like
Speaker 1: to write, like a in fashion magazines and stuff a
Speaker 1: quick like the birthday of the woman who dah, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, that's fascinating. She sounds interesting. She's so
Speaker 1: much more interesting than I knew, because once I dug
Speaker 1: into her story, I was really entranced by how much
Speaker 1: she had done in her life and how many historical
Speaker 1: events she bumped up against. And we're pretty lucky in
Speaker 1: this case because she is recent enough that there are
Speaker 1: even video interviews with her. There's an entire documentary that
Speaker 1: was made by her grandkids. I call them grandkids. They
Speaker 1: are adults and you know, filmmakers. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: want anybody to think it's like little kids that made this.
Speaker 1: They did not a kindergarten project. It is an actual film.
Speaker 1: And that's also fascinating because this is a woman who
Speaker 1: had faults like anybody does. She made some bad decisions.
Speaker 1: In interviews, she's so casually frank about all of it.
Speaker 1: She never seems to want to gloss over the things
Speaker 1: about her that some people would find less appealing. That's
Speaker 1: honestly quite refreshing. It's also a little wild. I just
Speaker 1: the candor is really disarming in a way, but it's
Speaker 1: it made it all the more funny to me that
Speaker 1: in most you know, blurbs you'll see about her, it's
Speaker 1: all about the cat eye glasses and none of the
Speaker 1: other things, some of which are really interesting. So today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the glasses, but we will
Speaker 1: also talk about her art that she did, the documentaries
Speaker 1: that she worked on, her activism, her politics, and just
Speaker 1: a whole lot more. There are a lot of husbands,
Speaker 1: so buckle in. Yeah. I wasn't quite prepared for that
Speaker 1: part of it. Altina Sannazi was born on August fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh seven, at three point fifty one Riverside Drive
Speaker 1: at one hundred and seventh Street in New York City.
Speaker 1: Her parents were Musa and Laurette Shnazi, and they already
Speaker 1: had two daughters, Victoria and Juliet. Altina's father, Musa, was
Speaker 1: born in Turkya and americanized his name to Morris after
Speaker 1: moving to the United States. Her mother had been born
Speaker 1: in what was at the time the Ottoman Empire, so
Speaker 1: Morris had left his village at the age of fifteen
Speaker 1: and gone to Egypt to find work. He went there
Speaker 1: by cattle boats and learned about shipping. While living in Egypt,
Speaker 1: That's also where he learned about tobacco, which would become
Speaker 1: an important part of his life later on. Altina later
Speaker 1: recounted that while in Egypt, a Greek man named Garoffalo
Speaker 1: had taken Morris under his wing and basically raised him
Speaker 1: as a son. When Morris was around thirty. It was
Speaker 1: that man who told him that he really should head
Speaker 1: to the United States because of all the opportunities there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to say, I'm not one hundred percent
Speaker 1: sure on that name of Graffalo. She says it in interviews.
Speaker 1: I only saw the one interview where she talked about
Speaker 1: that man, and it's a little unclear. It's not super
Speaker 1: well enunciated, so there's a possibility that the name might
Speaker 1: be wrong there. But Morris did emigrate at that man's
Speaker 1: urging to the United States in the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and he became very wealthy. Morris's story is kind of
Speaker 1: a storybook immigrant rags to riches tale due to disadvantaged
Speaker 1: circumstances in his early life. He didn't have any formal education,
Speaker 1: but he was incredibly smart. He reportedly spoke eight different languages,
Speaker 1: and after he moved to the United States, he saw
Speaker 1: a need for something. This comes with some baggage, but
Speaker 1: at the time it was very very commonplace and accepted
Speaker 1: that a lot of people smoked and they had to
Speaker 1: roll their own cigarettes. And he invented a cigarette rolling machine.
Speaker 1: And this was a completely new idea at the time.
Speaker 1: He had just noticed that, you know, it was a
Speaker 1: big sloppy mess most of the time when people rolled
Speaker 1: their own cigarettes. So he invented this machine that would
Speaker 1: do it for them, make it a very neat package.
Speaker 1: He patented it and it took off. His brother Saul
Speaker 1: joined him and they opened a factory at one hundred
Speaker 1: and twentieth in Broadway, and al Tina would later estimate
Speaker 1: that the two men had become millionaires within just five
Speaker 1: or six years of business. And that's millionaires in the
Speaker 1: very early twentieth century. So that's a lot of money,
Speaker 1: very fast. Yeah, if this were an ad for immigrating
Speaker 1: to the United States, it would have results not typical
Speaker 1: and very small. Let us under the bottom of the screen.
Speaker 1: Shanazi them built on the success of that rolling machine
Speaker 1: by manufacturing a line of cigarettes, and by the time
Speaker 1: Altina was born, he had moved the family into a
Speaker 1: twelve bedroom marble mansion. That is where Altina was born.
Speaker 1: Morris didn't marry until he was fifty. His bride was
Speaker 1: a lot younger than he was, more than thirty years younger.
Speaker 1: The two of them had met through Laurette's father after
Speaker 1: Morris had made a return trip to Turkya. Laurette's father
Speaker 1: said that she would have no interest in an old
Speaker 1: man like Morris, and the two of them are said
Speaker 1: to have just let her decide for herself. She was
Speaker 1: seventeen years old at that time, but Morris was handsome
Speaker 1: and dashing, and apparently he really won her over. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there were all there's some power politics and dynamics in
Speaker 1: play here. The two of them got married in Turkey
Speaker 1: and then traveled to the United States, and it was
Speaker 1: for Laurette that he built this mansion. It was designed
Speaker 1: by the same architect who built Carnegie Hall. But while
Speaker 1: this seemed like a good match initially, the marriage turned
Speaker 1: out to be mostly unhappy. Morris was not faithful to
Speaker 1: his wife, but he was also very jealous because she
Speaker 1: was very young and pretty. Lorette lived a unique life.
Speaker 1: She had everything she could ever want, but she didn't
Speaker 1: really have her own freedom. She could, for example, charge
Speaker 1: any purchase she might need, but she wasn't allowed to
Speaker 1: carry cash. Altina later described her mother as being like
Speaker 1: a prisoner. Lorette did not particularly care for that giant
Speaker 1: house and lavish life. It all felt like too much
Speaker 1: for her, and at one point, Lorette in an effort
Speaker 1: to kind of get away from it, although sort of
Speaker 1: this is a weird way to get away from a
Speaker 1: life of luxury, she rented an entire floor of the
Speaker 1: Plaza hotel for an entire year and took Altina and
Speaker 1: her two older sisters with her to try to get
Speaker 1: a taste of independence. I mean, I would love to
Speaker 1: do that, but I don't think I would feel like
Speaker 1: I was getting away from my beings of an over
Speaker 1: overblown life at that point. My read on that was
Speaker 1: that it more gave her a break from the day
Speaker 1: to day of her marriage, more so than the expanse
Speaker 1: and luxury of the mansion. Yeah. I think she really
Speaker 1: did just want to not deal with her husband for
Speaker 1: a minute. Yeah, although it was his money paying for
Speaker 1: the entire whole floor of the hotel. Oh. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in her early years, Altina, who went by Tina, had
Speaker 1: private tutors providing her education. Then she went to the
Speaker 1: horse Man School until it was time to start high school.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen twenties, she was enrolled at the
Speaker 1: Dana Hall School, that's a private all girls school in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: While there, she was active in a lot of school groups,
Speaker 1: but none of them really hinted at the art career
Speaker 1: that she would eventually choose. She was part of the
Speaker 1: Athletic Association and the varsity hockey team, the French Club,
Speaker 1: and the Christian Association. And that one's a little odd
Speaker 1: because Altina was Jewish. She was one of the school's
Speaker 1: only Jewish students, and she generally hid that fact. So
Speaker 1: her membership in the Christian Association might have just been
Speaker 1: an effort to try to blend in. She mentioned that
Speaker 1: she always felt isolated there and noted in a later
Speaker 1: interview quote it was high Episcopalian and I was the
Speaker 1: token Jew there. Nonetheless, she seems to have been well liked.
Speaker 1: She was the class vice president in her junior and
Speaker 1: senior years. When Altina graduated from high school in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four, she went to Pair and she spent some
Speaker 1: time there with her older sister, and it's there that
Speaker 1: she first began to study art. But she still didn't
Speaker 1: think art was really going to be anything for her
Speaker 1: other than a hobby. While she acknowledged that she had
Speaker 1: in her younger years thought about being an artist, she
Speaker 1: also noted that quote, sometimes I thought I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a scientist. What she knew she did not want
Speaker 1: was to only be a housewife and mother. After returning
Speaker 1: to New York, she started studying at the Art Students League.
Speaker 1: This organization also came up in our recent two parter
Speaker 1: on Wanda Gog. Although Shnazi was there more than a
Speaker 1: decade after Gog was, we didn't really talk about this
Speaker 1: school in the earlier Wanda Gog episode, but it does
Speaker 1: merit some backstory. The Art Students League of New York
Speaker 1: was formed in eighteen seventy five. It was an association
Speaker 1: formed by art students from the National Academy of Design
Speaker 1: after the Academy stopped classes for a real organization during
Speaker 1: a tumultuous time. The students, with no study options available,
Speaker 1: formed the League quote having for its objects the attainment
Speaker 1: of a higher development in art studies, the encouragement of
Speaker 1: a spirit of unselfish and true friendship among its members.
Speaker 1: The imparting of a valuable knowledge pertaining to art, as
Speaker 1: acquired by any of the members. The accumulation of works
Speaker 1: and books of art, and such properties as will best
Speaker 1: advance the interests of the members. Mutual help and study,
Speaker 1: and sympathy and practical assistance if need be in times
Speaker 1: of sickness and trouble. From that beginning, the Art Students
Speaker 1: League of New York has persisted, and it's become a
Speaker 1: school where both professionals and amateur's study art. It continues
Speaker 1: through to today. Shnazi's time at the Art Students League
Speaker 1: was defined by two teachers. First German artist George Gross,
Speaker 1: who she later described as inspiring but not necessarily a
Speaker 1: good teacher. She said that he didn't really teach any thing.
Speaker 1: He would become very important in her later life, though.
Speaker 1: The other was fellow student Howard Warshaw, who she said
Speaker 1: actually taught her a great deal about painting and technique.
Speaker 1: At twenty one, Altina's life changed in multiple ways, and
Speaker 1: we will talk about them after we pause for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. In nineteen twenty eight, Altina's father died. He
Speaker 1: was wealthy and important enough that there were many mentions
Speaker 1: in the paper about the estate that he left behind.
Speaker 1: Morris Shnazi had set aside three hundred thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: Jewish and Christian hospitals in the US, and one point
Speaker 1: three million dollars to establish and maintain a hospital for
Speaker 1: the poor in Turkya. That was a bequeathment that Altina's mother,
Speaker 1: Laurette oversaw personally. She traveled to Turkia, saw the hospital
Speaker 1: get built, and then administered the upkeep money from there.
Speaker 1: The rest of his considerable estate, ranging from about three
Speaker 1: point five to seven million, depending on the source that
Speaker 1: you read, was distributed among Lorette, Altina, Victoria, and Juliet
Speaker 1: so at this point Altina was kind of set for life.
Speaker 1: The same year that Morris died, Altina got married to
Speaker 1: designer and architect Marris B. Sanders. They had met at
Speaker 1: a party while he was still a student. She also
Speaker 1: had a French suitor who wanted to marry her, and
Speaker 1: she choked about flipping a coin to make the decision
Speaker 1: between the two of them. However, she arrived at it.
Speaker 1: She decided to marry Sanders, and for a moment, it
Speaker 1: really seemed like the two of them were the it
Speaker 1: couple of the New York design scene. Their apartment was
Speaker 1: the Penthouse at five point forty four East eighty sixth Street,
Speaker 1: and it was featured in Architecture magazine not long after
Speaker 1: their wedding. But later in life, Altina noted that they
Speaker 1: were really both to young, explaining quote, we really didn't
Speaker 1: know each other at all. They welcomed their first child,
Speaker 1: a son named Dennis, on January twenty first, nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: They had a second son, Terry, on December thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one. But this was not a happy time in
Speaker 1: her life. Morris was not a great husband, and Altina
Speaker 1: felt very lonely. She would later write of this time quote,
Speaker 1: I have three strong currents running in my life. One
Speaker 1: A strong sex drive in curiosity, it cannot be that
Speaker 1: this is the only man I will know too. A
Speaker 1: strong creative drive that kept pushing me to inventions, creations,
Speaker 1: writing objects, et cetera. Three a strong attachment to my
Speaker 1: two children. Dennis was like a rooster and Terry was
Speaker 1: soulful and shy. After four years of marriage, al Tina
Speaker 1: filed for divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty and
Speaker 1: insulting treatment. Her divorce attorney, Mac Brandwin would become i'm
Speaker 1: an important figure in her life for many years. As
Speaker 1: this divorce played out, there were rumors that her ex
Speaker 1: husband was very angry and might become violent, so she
Speaker 1: took the boys and went to Europe. This early nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties crossing of the Atlantic was made aboard a German ship,
Speaker 1: and Altina later told the story of several conversations aboard
Speaker 1: where people engaged her in discussions about the issue of
Speaker 1: the so called Jewish question. It was the ongoing debate
Speaker 1: about the status that Jews should have in Germany, and
Speaker 1: it was of course obviously stoked by anti Semitism. The
Speaker 1: people asking Altina about it. Clearly did not know that
Speaker 1: she was Jewish. Yes, she tells one story where she
Speaker 1: was talking to a woman that she met on board,
Speaker 1: and she was like, she seemed very lovely, and we
Speaker 1: were having a lovely conversation, and then she asked me
Speaker 1: about the Jewish question, and then I realized I didn't
Speaker 1: like her at all, and she's so matter of fact
Speaker 1: about it. Once the divorce was settled, though, and Shnazi
Speaker 1: was back in New York, she took a job as
Speaker 1: a window dresser, working under Peter Copeland, who designed windows
Speaker 1: for retailers on Fifth Avenue. To be clear, she didn't
Speaker 1: really need to take this job. Like I said, she's
Speaker 1: kind of set for life, but she also did not
Speaker 1: want to be idle, and she wanted to do things.
Speaker 1: Window trimming gave her a sense of usefulness, and this
Speaker 1: was really the beginning of considering art as a career.
Speaker 1: In this job, she also rubbed shoulders with well known
Speaker 1: artists Salvador Dali. When Dali got a contract to design
Speaker 1: a window for the luxury department store Bonwit Teller, Altina
Speaker 1: worked with him on the project. This was not a
Speaker 1: project that resulted in a lifelong friendship or a collaboration.
Speaker 1: The whole thing went sort of terribly, although it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like that had anything to do with Shannazi's work.
Speaker 1: The store management just did not like Dalli's concept and
Speaker 1: they tried to change things. Dali apparently had a very
Speaker 1: passionate reaction, and somehow window glass ended up broken. During
Speaker 1: this period in her life, Altina started an affair with
Speaker 1: her attorney mac Branwin. She would reflect years later quote
Speaker 1: it set up in me a very big conflict. It
Speaker 1: wasn't so much that this man had been her divorce attorney.
Speaker 1: It was that Max's wife was her friend. She didn't
Speaker 1: want to be a mistress, and she wanted him to
Speaker 1: leave his wife. He didn't, but the affair continued. Whilst
Speaker 1: talking about it in a twenty fourteen documentary directed by
Speaker 1: her grandson Peter Sanders, Altina sort of coolly and matter
Speaker 1: of factly discussed that her sex drive was just too
Speaker 1: powerful to override it. As a divorced woman who had
Speaker 1: her own money and a staff to look after her children,
Speaker 1: Shanazi was free to cultivate the life that she wanted
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. Her home was very open and her social
Speaker 1: circle was artsy and fun. She hosted sketch classes once
Speaker 1: a week and people would sometimes just drop in for dinner.
Speaker 1: Her son Terry later said, quote, I grew up to
Speaker 1: looking every family on Thursday night had a nude in
Speaker 1: the living room, referring to the nude models who would
Speaker 1: come and sit for the sketch class. And now we
Speaker 1: get to the story of the glasses. This is a
Speaker 1: story that gets told a number of different ways. One
Speaker 1: is that she had to work on a window display
Speaker 1: for an optician. Another is that while she was working
Speaker 1: on one window, she saw another one nearby that featured
Speaker 1: women's glasses. A newspaper account from nineteen thirty nine had
Speaker 1: kind of a wild story, quote, the glasses were born
Speaker 1: the day Altina s. Sander went to a bridge party
Speaker 1: and found that her esthetic sense was offended by the
Speaker 1: glasses her friends wore. But the way she told the story,
Speaker 1: she was not at work when inspiration struck, and she
Speaker 1: was certainly not at a bridge party. Here is her
Speaker 1: account quote and then one day I was walking from
Speaker 1: a movie with some guy I don't remember his name,
Speaker 1: and I passed a shop an optician, and I saw
Speaker 1: this oil painting with glasses glued onto the face, and
Speaker 1: I thought, that is really so ugly. And then Dorothy
Speaker 1: Parker was writing verses men never make passes at girls
Speaker 1: who wear glasses, and I felt, well, something better could
Speaker 1: be done than just these awful glasses that looked like
Speaker 1: the time of Benjamin Franklin. And then I thought, well,
Speaker 1: what's good? What would be good on the face? And
Speaker 1: I thought of a mask, a harlequin mask. They're really
Speaker 1: beautiful on a face. She had been in Venice during
Speaker 1: Carnival and the imagery of the harlequin mask had really
Speaker 1: stuck with her, so she started playing with that shape
Speaker 1: and papercut, and then she had prototypes made. When she
Speaker 1: thought she had the design just right, Shanazi thought she
Speaker 1: was onto something with these glasses, and she started to
Speaker 1: approach I wear companies with this design. She later recounted
Speaker 1: being told, quote, well, when we're ready to sell glasses
Speaker 1: to lunatic asylums, we'll let you know. But Altina was
Speaker 1: not dissuaded, and she eventually approached a shop in Manhattan
Speaker 1: called lou Jeans. Initially, this meeting, which was what the
Speaker 1: shop's head salesman, looked like a bus just like every
Speaker 1: other meeting but by pure happenstance, the owner of the
Speaker 1: shop happened to walk through as their meeting was concluding,
Speaker 1: and he saw the photos of Shnazi's prototype, and he
Speaker 1: saw the potential, and he spoke with her about her
Speaker 1: new style of glasses, and then at the end of
Speaker 1: that conversation he asked to be the exclusive distributor of
Speaker 1: the design. She took that deal. Mister Luzhin was wise
Speaker 1: to do so. The new Harlequin glasses, as they were called,
Speaker 1: became very popular, very quickly. Their rise to prominence was
Speaker 1: helped by the fact that a lot of high profile
Speaker 1: people were early adopters of Shnazi's glasses design. Claire booth
Speaker 1: Loose is often said to have bought one of the
Speaker 1: first pairs. Peggy Guggenheim wore them. Soon they were getting
Speaker 1: write ups in magazines, and this was really a huge moment.
Speaker 1: Glasses for women up to that point had been seen
Speaker 1: as kind of a curse. They were not designed for
Speaker 1: or anything other than utility. It was sort of universally
Speaker 1: acknowledged that they would never look good on basically anybody.
Speaker 1: But with Shanazi's innovation, glasses had become a fashion accessory.
Speaker 1: The ad campaigns for the glasses really reflected this shift.
Speaker 1: One magazine ad read quote, be glad you wear glasses.
Speaker 1: Wear Harlequins. No longer is the girl who wears glasses
Speaker 1: doomed to look owlish, bookish or just plain dull flattering.
Speaker 1: Harlequins are so gay and debonair. They give your very
Speaker 1: spirits a lift. Remember it is Harlequin's exclusive design that
Speaker 1: makes the difference. Look for the tag on the frame.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, Shannazi won the Lord and Taylor
Speaker 1: Annual American Design Award. While she certainly could have stayed
Speaker 1: in the eyeglass game for the rest of her life
Speaker 1: at the top of her game, after winning this award,
Speaker 1: Shannazi decided to sell the company and get out of
Speaker 1: the industry altogether. Many years later, after Altina's death, her
Speaker 1: granddaughter said of this choice quote, she could have been
Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest women in the country, if not
Speaker 1: the world, if she had stayed in that business. She
Speaker 1: never loved the business of a business. She loved the art.
Speaker 1: Altina Shnazi was a person at this point of wealth
Speaker 1: and importance, living a very successful life in New York
Speaker 1: as a designer of the new Sheikh glasses that everyone
Speaker 1: seemed to want. And then World War II broke out
Speaker 1: and she actually used that success to help others. When
Speaker 1: a friend asked her if she would sign affidavits that
Speaker 1: could be used to get people out of Europe, she
Speaker 1: readily agreed and estimated that she signed thirteen of them.
Speaker 1: These affidavits were required for people to immigrate. It basically
Speaker 1: was a document that vouched for the person named as
Speaker 1: being of good character, and it said that the signer
Speaker 1: would look after the person coming over so that they
Speaker 1: would not become a burden. So to sign more than
Speaker 1: a dozen of them was actually a pretty significant act,
Speaker 1: and it was because of that act that she met
Speaker 1: Eric Barrett, a doctor she had signed an affidavit for.
Speaker 1: When he got to the United States, he phoned her
Speaker 1: and said, Madam, I have arrived. Up to this point,
Speaker 1: Altina was still in her relationship with her lawyer Mac Brandwin,
Speaker 1: who was still married to her close friend, but Eric
Speaker 1: started visiting her, and she later described their growing acquaintance
Speaker 1: as quote eating away at her connection to Mac. Eric was,
Speaker 1: by all accounts a very kind and sweet man. He
Speaker 1: was a great piano player in addition to being incredibly smart,
Speaker 1: and Altina fell very hard for him. But not long
Speaker 1: into their relationship, while he was working in a tuberculosis
Speaker 1: hospital in New England, he came down with tuberculosis himself,
Speaker 1: and the two of them didn't see each other for
Speaker 1: two years. But then Eric wrote to Altina and he
Speaker 1: told her that his health had actually improved, and he
Speaker 1: asked if she wanted him back in her life, and
Speaker 1: she absolutely did. The pair got married soon after. She
Speaker 1: worried she would later confess about possible transmission of the
Speaker 1: disease to herself or, more concerningly, to her boys, but
Speaker 1: none of them ever contracted tuberculosis. Eric had spent time
Speaker 1: working at a hospital in Los Angeles, and he fell
Speaker 1: in love with California. When he returned to New York,
Speaker 1: he pitched the idea to Altina that they should move there,
Speaker 1: and she went for it. They bought a house in
Speaker 1: Coldwater Canyon with a view of the city, though there
Speaker 1: were ongoing issues with Eric's health and Altina needing to
Speaker 1: learn to keep house after having had a staff her
Speaker 1: whole life. She later described this period as peaceful and
Speaker 1: one of the nicest times in her life. She wanted
Speaker 1: to really focus on her art. So one of the
Speaker 1: rooms in the California house was made into a studio
Speaker 1: with a sign on the door that read, do not
Speaker 1: come in unless there's a catastrophe. She would say that
Speaker 1: she wanted to have just three hours a day to
Speaker 1: herself without interruption, that she really did work very hard
Speaker 1: for a brief time. Altina actually started a factory to
Speaker 1: make sunglasses in her signature Harlequin shape in La According
Speaker 1: to a story that she later told, her employees were
Speaker 1: a mix of black and white workers, and there was
Speaker 1: tension when some of the white employees made the racist
Speaker 1: complaint about sharing a bathroom with her black coworkers. Shanazi
Speaker 1: solution was simple, the black employees could just use the
Speaker 1: executive bathroom that only she used. She reportedly, though, closed
Speaker 1: the factory after realizing once again she really hated all
Speaker 1: the day to day aspects of running a business. There's
Speaker 1: a secondary funny story involving the mob that I will
Speaker 1: tell on Friday. Okay, in a moment, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: Shanazi's connection to the McCarthy era Red Scare, but first
Speaker 1: we will pause for a sponsor break. As we've mentioned
Speaker 1: on the show before, in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: the Red Scare was a blaze in the US. Altina
Speaker 1: described this as a very bad time when, according to
Speaker 1: McCarthy quote, everybody was a communist. Ten Hollywood screenwriters Alva Bessie,
Speaker 1: Herbert Bieberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dimitrix, Ring Lardner Junior, John
Speaker 1: Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton
Speaker 1: Trumbo had all refused to answer questions before Congress after
Speaker 1: having been subpoenaed by the House on American Activities Committee.
Speaker 1: They were held in contempt, blacklisted, and they got the
Speaker 1: nickname the Hollywood ten. Director John Barry, who went by Jack,
Speaker 1: made a documentary about these men that was sympathetic to
Speaker 1: their situation, and soon he too was on the list
Speaker 1: to be called before the committee, but he dodged the
Speaker 1: subpoena by hiding in Altina and Eric's guesthouse. They kept
Speaker 1: their friend hidden until one night he just left quietly
Speaker 1: and made his way to Europe. Eric's health concerns had
Speaker 1: a fresh ray of hope when streptomycin was introduced as
Speaker 1: a treatment for tuberculosis. He went to the Mayo clinic
Speaker 1: for treatment, and initially it was a huge help, but
Speaker 1: over time he built up a resistance to the drug
Speaker 1: and his health started to decline. He died in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, after which Altina said, quote, the world sort
Speaker 1: of fell apart. She met Charles Carey, who went by Charlie,
Speaker 1: a few months after losing Eric, and at the time
Speaker 1: he had just started all of the proceedings of getting
Speaker 1: a divorce. In an interview in the documentary that We've
Speaker 1: Restaurenced a couple of times, Charlie actually started crying while
Speaker 1: relaying a story about Altina caring for him. During this
Speaker 1: time when they had just met, she had kind of
Speaker 1: negotiated with his landlord to be let into his apartment,
Speaker 1: which she wasn't supposed to have access to, but it
Speaker 1: was so she could supply his kitchen with groceries. Charlie
Speaker 1: eventually moved into Altina's house. His job was in political science,
Speaker 1: so their social group became this very curious mix of
Speaker 1: artists and people in politics. Soon the two of them
Speaker 1: were married. Altina was not in love with Charlie, although
Speaker 1: she did like him. She became depressed in their marriage,
Speaker 1: and this was a period when she painted a lot.
Speaker 1: Her work during this third marriage is vibrant and surrealist. Eventually,
Speaker 1: she found new projects and new media to work in
Speaker 1: which kept her occupied. One of them was moving into
Speaker 1: the world of film. She got permission from George Gross,
Speaker 1: her teacher from back in New York, to make a
Speaker 1: film about his experiences in Nazi Germany. The resulting film,
Speaker 1: titled Interregnum, was nominated for an Academy Award. She also
Speaker 1: started volunteering as an art therapist at synanon To, an
Speaker 1: addiction treatment facility in Los Angeles that has its own
Speaker 1: wild story. If you want to look it up, there's
Speaker 1: a recent documentary about it kinda turned into a cult.
Speaker 1: As for Shnazi's involvement, she and a close friend worked
Speaker 1: alongside the people who were getting treatment there. She painted
Speaker 1: a huge mural in the facility's open space, and then
Speaker 1: she worked alongside residence to create a second large mural.
Speaker 1: She also became invested in the work of Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior. She and her husband Charlie met doctor King
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people in his inner circle
Speaker 1: with a proposal that they would like to make a
Speaker 1: documentary about the civil rights work that he was doing.
Speaker 1: King went for this idea and promised to do anything
Speaker 1: he could to help them. Writer John Killens signed on
Speaker 1: to write the script. He lived with Charlie and Altina
Speaker 1: while he wrote, and was picked up by the police
Speaker 1: several times while they were in their upscale neighborhood just
Speaker 1: because he was black. This film never got made though
Speaker 1: there was a lack of funding. Nobody really wanted to
Speaker 1: touch the subject matter because it was so devisive, and
Speaker 1: then doctor King was assassinated and the project fell apart.
Speaker 1: Altina's activism continued when it came to the recent podcast
Speaker 1: topic the Vietnam War. She and her husband Charlie were
Speaker 1: both vehemently and very vocally against the war, and they
Speaker 1: actually took out an ad in the New York Times
Speaker 1: that was like a large statement against the war. This
Speaker 1: was really risky, particularly for Charles Carey because of his
Speaker 1: political science career. The Bear moved to Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies when Carrie got a job in
Speaker 1: the State Department. With her life uprooted, Altina once again
Speaker 1: threw herself into her art, and she started a series
Speaker 1: of sculptures that have become iconic. She called these sculptures
Speaker 1: characters because they are sculpted portraits in the form of
Speaker 1: chairs and benches. She would make plaster casts of the
Speaker 1: sitters and then make a mold and make castings from that,
Speaker 1: so that she could use the cast of one model
Speaker 1: multiple times with different changes to sculpt and paint. In
Speaker 1: a nineteen seventy eight radio interview, Altina said she had
Speaker 1: gotten the idea after looking at photograph by Henri Cartier Bresson,
Speaker 1: who had taken pictures of chairs as they were used
Speaker 1: in various social settings. The first set of these characters
Speaker 1: were displayed at the Touchstone Gallery in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: But she continued to make them for years after that.
Speaker 1: Throughout her art career she had often gone just by
Speaker 1: the name Altina, and though the harlequin frames had made
Speaker 1: her well known in the nineteen thirties, she had a
Speaker 1: second huge surge of name recognition in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies because of these characters. She appeared on television regularly,
Speaker 1: including on Good Morning America, where she famously said quote,
Speaker 1: I don't know who decreed that art should just be
Speaker 1: something you nail up on a wall. In July of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, a refugee from Cuba named Celestino Miranda arrived
Speaker 1: in the US. He was an artist and he was
Speaker 1: hired along with his friend Fernando, to help Altina with
Speaker 1: her sculptures because she was quite a petite woman. She
Speaker 1: was getting older and these casts were often very heavy,
Speaker 1: and she and Tino really hit it off. Eventually, after
Speaker 1: they had visited Santa Fe briefly on a work trip,
Speaker 1: Altina asked him to move to Santa Fe permanently with
Speaker 1: her as her assistant, for the rate of one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a week, and he said he would think about it,
Speaker 1: and they continued working together in Washington, d c. Altina
Speaker 1: was still married to Charlie, but one night, when he
Speaker 1: was in La on business, she asked Tino to spend
Speaker 1: the night. In his retelling of it, he didn't get
Speaker 1: her message. Initially, he thought she was just afraid to
Speaker 1: be alone in the house without her husband and that
Speaker 1: he would be sleeping in the maid's room, but Altina
Speaker 1: clarified that she was interested in him romantically. Before long,
Speaker 1: Charlie and Altina were divorced and she married for a
Speaker 1: fourth time in nineteen eighty one to Celestino Miranda. This
Speaker 1: was scandalous to a lot of people that Shannazi knew
Speaker 1: and socialized with, aside from the fact that she had
Speaker 1: had an affair and left her husband for her lover,
Speaker 1: because there was a concern that this much younger man
Speaker 1: who really had nothing in terms of finances, was just
Speaker 1: marrying her for her money and social standing. Not long
Speaker 1: after they married, Tina was diagnosed with cancer. It was
Speaker 1: at this point that they finally moved to New Mexico
Speaker 1: permanently for his health. He would later recount that she
Speaker 1: let him get all kinds of animals, which he believed
Speaker 1: cured him. Al Tina did too, and she made a
Speaker 1: lot of artwork about their farm. They also continued to
Speaker 1: collaborate on sculpture. While people might have doubted the reasons
Speaker 1: that the two of them married each other, they clearly
Speaker 1: had found a unique compatibility as artists, and this created
Speaker 1: a very deep bond between them. A lot of the
Speaker 1: benches still in this character style that they made together
Speaker 1: during this time featured couples. Yeah, some of those pieces
Speaker 1: are really quite beautiful. Her son Dennis died suddenly of
Speaker 1: a heart attack in nineteen eighty seven, and that was
Speaker 1: a terrible shock to Altina. She told friends that she
Speaker 1: felt paralyzed, and that's something that has echoed in Tino's
Speaker 1: later account, where he describes her as never having cried
Speaker 1: and said that she kept everything inside. In nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: Altina Shenazi published her autobiography The Road I Have Traveled.
Speaker 1: I could not get my hands on a copy of
Speaker 1: this book. It is kind of rare. There was nothing
Speaker 1: I could get that wasn't going to take like a
Speaker 1: month to come from like Europe, even though it was
Speaker 1: a US publication, there just aren't many copies floating around.
Speaker 1: That one bit that we read earlier about the three
Speaker 1: currents of her life is from it, but it is
Speaker 1: from her reading aloud from it that I got that.
Speaker 1: On the evening of August nineteenth, nineteen ninety nine, Altina
Speaker 1: told Tino that she just thought her dinner was digesting poorly.
Speaker 1: She died later that night at the age of ninety two.
Speaker 1: In her write up about Altina after her death, her
Speaker 1: granddaughter Victoria R. Sanders, who produced the documentary that we've
Speaker 1: mentioned a few times, told a newspaper reporter quote, the
Speaker 1: thing about my grandmother was she was not like anybody
Speaker 1: else's grandmother or mother for that matter. She looked twenty
Speaker 1: years younger. She was inquisitive, vibrant, anything was possible. She
Speaker 1: was always working on some new project. That's how Tina Shnazi.
Speaker 1: I love her. I have so many things to say
Speaker 1: about her. On Okay Friday, I have, you know, mixed things.
Speaker 1: I have listener mail. Okay, it's about strawberries. We have
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of listener mail about strawberries. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of surprised at how much. I don't know why, since, yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about how very popular they are, but this
Speaker 1: one cracked me up so hard and I loved it.
Speaker 1: So this is from our listener Reagan, who notes that
Speaker 1: it's pronounced like Megan, but as Tracy and I know
Speaker 1: that we both know people who would say it Megan,
Speaker 1: so I'm hoping Reagan is correct. Uh. Reagan writes, Hi,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy, I am a longtime listener who finally
Speaker 1: feels as though I have a worthy enough reason to email.
Speaker 1: Your episode on strawberries was instantly exciting to me. I
Speaker 1: took a screenshot of the episode and sent it to
Speaker 1: my husband, who loves strawberries. He eats them every day.
Speaker 1: Rainer shine summer or winter. However, as the episode progressed,
Speaker 1: I discovered more than one coincidence that tickled both me
Speaker 1: and my husband. I was listening to the episode as
Speaker 1: I was getting ready for bed, when, right before an
Speaker 1: ad break, you teased about the spycraft portion happening in Chile.
Speaker 1: With face wash still on my face, I ran to
Speaker 1: the living room to tell my husband that the Strawberry
Speaker 1: spycraft was happening in Chile. Why would this piece of
Speaker 1: information warrant such a response, you ask, Well, my husband's
Speaker 1: father is an immigrant from Chile. How exciting. I returned
Speaker 1: to my nighttime routine, satisfied with all the excitement for
Speaker 1: the evening. Oh boy, was I wrong. The excitement was
Speaker 1: far from over. Once back from the ad break, you
Speaker 1: don't keeper into Frasier's journey to Chile. When I heard
Speaker 1: you say that he landed in Concepcion, Chile, I nearly
Speaker 1: fell over. That is the exact town where my father
Speaker 1: in law was born and raised. Once again, I ran
Speaker 1: to tell my husband about this coincidence. What are the odds? Okay?
Speaker 1: So now I was one hundred percent convinced the coincidences
Speaker 1: were over for the evening. Again, I was wrong. Dushane
Speaker 1: presented King Louis the fifteenth the successful Chilean strawberries on
Speaker 1: July sixth, which happens to be my husband's birthday. Then
Speaker 1: you shared that Dushane first noticed success with Chilean strawberries
Speaker 1: on June sixth, which happens to be my birthday. Now
Speaker 1: by this point I was already in bed, so I
Speaker 1: did not run to tell my husband these coincidences. However,
Speaker 1: I did tell him the next day. We were so tickled.
Speaker 1: I hope you both are also tickled to know how
Speaker 1: one episode contained so much excitement for me and my husband.
Speaker 1: We both attended your live show at the Indiana Historical
Speaker 1: Society when you discussed Gene Stratton Porter. I work at
Speaker 1: the ISHS and I am the co host on our
Speaker 1: institutional podcast, so I couldn't miss the opportunity to see
Speaker 1: you two live. You bring so much learning, laughter and
Speaker 1: excitement into my life and my husband's. Because I often
Speaker 1: share a synopsis of each episode with him, I gladly
Speaker 1: share pat Tax. These are our two kiddies, Trot who's
Speaker 1: black and white, and Evy Dilute Calico. We're obsessed with them.
Speaker 1: Trot is wacky and silly. As you can see, he
Speaker 1: has a little mustache. His favorite toys are clothes hangers,
Speaker 1: eyeglasses stolen from mom and Dad's nightstand, Maddy Grass style beads,
Speaker 1: and anything he can rummage from the basement to bring upstairs.
Speaker 1: Honorable mentions of basement offerings are Alan wrenches, work gloves,
Speaker 1: and parts to our shop back our evy girl is
Speaker 1: much less flamboyant with her silliness. She's sweet and beautiful
Speaker 1: and everything is on her terms. She'll squeak at you
Speaker 1: if she wants attention. Otherwise, you are permitted to bask
Speaker 1: in her beauty from an arm's length, the way she
Speaker 1: loves playing with strings, forehead scratches, and napping on her
Speaker 1: heated blanket. Evie is a massive fan of the birdcam
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Thanks for all you do to brighten the
Speaker 1: world is your work and simply by being yourself. Sincerely, Reagan,
Speaker 1: This is so darling. Okay listen, Trot is cute and
Speaker 1: he looks diabolical, which is exactly my flavor of cat
Speaker 1: is also gorgeous. Thank you for sharing this. I just
Speaker 1: love the idea of one episode hitting so many unique
Speaker 1: notes of someone's life. Yeah, a strawberries. I think in
Speaker 1: honor of all of this, you should get a strawberry
Speaker 1: cake and just giggle. How many coincidences you have? Reagan? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Mostly I just want to eat strawberry cake and bring
Speaker 1: people into my web of strawberry cake evil. I just
Speaker 1: love it. I like knowing that things resonate with people
Speaker 1: in fun ways, and also that it brings joy and
Speaker 1: laughter and giggles. We all need more of that. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us with joy, laughter
Speaker 1: and giggles or otherwise, or if you like many people
Speaker 1: want to write to us about strawberry information, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be more strawberry emails read. I promise you. Uh. You
Speaker 1: can do that at history at iHeartRadio dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.