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Sam Darling

Halloween past in suburban America

The Halloween costumes of my mother’s youth doubled down on her opera training. Here are three from her teenage years. They were living in the suburbs of Chicago at the time. Her mother’s artistic creativity is evident… not only in the costumes but in that painting on the wall in the background.


50s IL MC costume705

“Gypsy” or Carmen.


1950s IL Nora Street MC costume

“Egyptian princess” or Aida.


50s? IL, MC in Chinese costume

“Japanese geisha” or The Mikado or perhaps Madama Butterfly.

It is amusing to me that, for such a French family, my mother and her parents also experienced the typical suburban life of 1950s America. Here they are with my great grandmother in Park Ridge, Illinois during one of her visits in the kitchen of their post-war bungalow in 1958.


1950s IL Nora Street kitchen

Posing in a very serious fashion in some seriously 1950s fashion.


1950s IL Nora Street Helene Elise MC posing

[Helene Lasserre, Elise Lasserre, Maria Baroni. Park Ridge, Illinois, 1959]

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