Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Altina Schinasi About this episode Altina Schinasi is known as the inventor of cat-eye glasses, but she was also an artist, a documentarian, and an activist. And she was very frank about her own faults and bad decisions.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:35 Tracy V. Wilson? You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back
1:19 Tracy V. Wilson? down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with the Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for sponsored jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get
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2:14 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:24 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.
2:27 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:29 Holly Frey? Alteena Shinazi has been on my list for a while for the simple fact that she, spoiler alert, invented cat eye glasses. She called them Harlequin glasses. It's one of those things that comes up kind of annually on her birthday. Like, there's been a Google doodle about her. And people sometimes will like to write, like, in fashion magazines and stuff, a quick, like, "The birthday of the woman who blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "Oh, that's fascinating. She sounds interesting. She's so much more interesting than I knew." Because once I dug into her story, I was really entranced by how much she had done in her life and how many historical events she bumped up against. And we're pretty lucky in this case because she is recent enough
3:11 Holly Frey? that there are even video interviews with her. There's an entire documentary that was made by her grandkids. I call them grandkids. They are adults and, you know, filmmakers, but I don't want anybody to think it's like little kids that made this. They did not.
3:27 Tracy V. Wilson? A kindergarten project?
3:28 Holly Frey? It is an actual film. And that's also fascinating because this is a woman who had faults, like anybody does. She made some bad decisions. In interviews, she's so casually frank about all of it. She never seems to want to gloss over the things about her that some people would find less appealing. That's honestly quite refreshing. It's also a little wild. The candor is really disarming, in a way, but it's, it made it all the more funny to me that in most, you know, blurbs you'll see about her, it's all about the cat eye glasses and none of the other things, some of
4:10 Holly Frey? which are really interesting. So today, we're going to talk about the glasses, but we will also talk about her art that she did, the documentaries that she worked on, her activism, her politics, and just a whole lot more. There are a lot of husbands, so buckle in.
4:28 Tracy V. Wilson? I wasn't quite prepared for that part of it.
4:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Altina Shinazi was born on August 4th, 1907, at 351 Riverside Drive at 107th Street in New York City. Her parents were Musa and Lorette Shinazi, and they already had two daughters, Victoria and Juliette. Altina's father, Musa, was born in Turkey and Americanized his name to Morris after moving to the United States. Her mother had been born in what was at the time, the Ottoman Empire. So Morris had left his village at the age of 15 and gone to Egypt to find work. He went there by cattle boat and learned about shipping while living in Egypt. That's also where he learned about tobacco, which would become an important part of his
5:17 Tracy V. Wilson? life later on. Altina later recounted that while in Egypt, a Greek man named Garofalo had taken Morris under his wing and basically raised him as a son. When Morris was around 30, it was that man who told him that he really should head to the United States because of all the opportunities there.
5:37 Holly Frey? Yeah, and I, I want to say, I'm not 100% sure on that name of Garofalo. She says it in interviews. I only saw the one interview where she talked about that man. And it's a little unclear, it's not super well enunciated, so there's a possibility that the name might be wrong there. But Morris did emigrate at that man's urging to the United States in the late 1800s. And he became very wealthy. Morris's story is kind of a storybook immigrant rags to riches tale. Due to disadvantaged circumstances in his early life, he didn't have any formal education, but he was incredibly smart. He reportedly spoke eight different languages.
6:22 Holly Frey? And after he moved to the United States, he saw a need for something. This comes with some baggage, but at the time... It was very, very commonplace and accepted that a lot of people smoked and they had to roll their own cigarettes and he invented a cigarette rolling machine. And this was a completely new idea at the time. But he had just noticed that, you know, it was a big sloppy mess most of the time when people rolled their own cigarettes. So he invented this machine that would do it for them, make it a very neat package. He patented it and it took off. His brother Saul joined him and they opened a factory at 120th and Broadway.
7:04 Holly Frey? And Altina would later estimate that the two men had become millionaires within just five or six years of business. And that's millionaires in the very early 20th century. So that's a lot of money very fast.
7:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, if this were an ad for immigrating to the United States, it would have results not typical in very small letters down at the bottom of the screen. Shinazi then built on the success of that rolling machine by manufacturing a line of cigarettes. And by the time Altina was born, he had moved the family into a 12 bedroom marble mansion. That is where Altina was born. Morris didn't marry until he was 50. His bride was a lot younger than he was, more than 30 years younger. The two of them had met through Lorette's father after Morris had made a return trip to Turkey. Lorette's father said that she would have no interest in an old man like Morris and
8:00 Tracy V. Wilson? the two of them are said to have just let her decide for herself. She was 17 years old at that time. But Morris was handsome and dashing and apparently he really won her over. Obviously there were also some power politics and dynamics in play here. The two of them got married in Turkey and then traveled to the United States and it was for Lorette that he built this mansion. It was designed by the same architect who built Carnegie Hall.
8:29 Holly Frey? But while this seemed like a good match initially, the marriage turned out to be mostly unhappy. Morris was not faithful to his wife, but he was also very jealous because she was very young and pretty. Lorette lived a unique life. She had everything she could ever want, but she didn't really have her own freedom. She could, for example, charge any purchase she might need, but she wasn't allowed to carry cash. Al Tina later described her mother as being like a prisoner. Lorette did not particularly care for that giant house and lavish life. It all felt like too much for her. And at one point, Lorette, in an effort to kind of get away from it, although sort of, this is a weird way to get away from a life of
9:14 Holly Frey? luxury, she rented an entire floor of the Plaza Hotel for an entire year and took Al Tina and her two older sisters with her to try to get a taste of independence. I mean, I would love to do that, but I don't think I would feel like I was getting away from my, the trappings of, of an over, overblown life at that point.
9:40 Tracy V. Wilson? My read on that was that it more gave her a break from the day to day of her marriage more so than the expanse and luxury of the mansion.
9:50 Holly Frey? Yeah, I think she really did just want to not deal with her husband for a minute.
9:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
9:55 Holly Frey? Although it was his money paying for the entire floor.
10:00 Tracy V. Wilson? The whole floor of the hotel. Yeah. So in her early years, Al Tina, who went by Tina, had private tutors providing her education. Then she went to the Horace Mann School until it was time to start high school. In the early 1920s, she was enrolled at the Dana Hall School. That's a private, all-girls school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. While there, she was active in a lot of school groups, but none of them really hinted at the art career that she would eventually choose. She was part of the Athletic Association and the Varsity Hockey Team, the French Club, and the Christian Association. And that one's a little odd because Al Tina was Jewish.
10:40 Tracy V. Wilson? She was one of the school's only Jewish students, and she generally hid that fact. So her membership in the Christian Association might have just been an effort to try to blend in. She mentioned that she always felt isolated there and noted in a later interview, quote, "It was high Episcopalian and I was the token Jew there." Nonetheless, she seems to have been well-liked. She was the class vice president in her junior and senior years.
11:09 Holly Frey? When Altina graduated from high school in 1924, she went to Paris and she spent some time there with her older sister. And it's there that she first began to study art. But she still didn't think art was really going to be anything for her other than a hobby. While she acknowledged that she had in her younger years thought about being an artist, she also noted that, quote, "Sometimes I thought I wanted to be a scientist." What she knew she did not want was to only be a housewife and mother.
11:39 Tracy V. Wilson? After returning to New York, she started studying at the Art Students League. This organization also came up in our recent two-parter on Wanda Gog, although Shinazi was there more than a decade after Gog was. We didn't really talk about this school in the earlier Wanda Gog episode, but it does merit some backstory. The Art Students League of New York was formed in 1875. It was an association formed by art students from the National Academy of Design after the academy stopped classes for a reorganization during a tumultuous time. The students, with no study options available, formed the league, quote, "having for its
12:20 Tracy V. Wilson? objects the attainment of a higher development in art studies, the encouragement of a spirit of unselfish and true friendship among its members, the imparting of a valuable knowledge pertaining to art as acquired by any of the members, the accumulation of works and books of art, and such properties as will best advance the interests of the members, mutual help in study and sympathy and practical assistance if need be in times of sickness and trouble." From that beginning, the Art Students League of New York has persisted, and it's become a school where both professionals and amateurs study art. It continues through to today.
13:00 Holly Frey? Shinazi's time at the Art Students League was defined by two teachers. First, German artist George Gross, who she later described as inspiring, but not necessarily a good teacher. She said that he didn't really teach anything. He would become very important in her later life, though. The other was fellow student Howard Warshaw, who she said actually taught her a great deal about painting and technique.
13:24 Tracy V. Wilson? At 21, Altina's life changed in multiple ways, and we will talk about them after we pause for a sponsor break.
13:35 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
13:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
13:58 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
14:05 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
14:12 Speaker 04 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
14:18 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
14:21 Speaker 04 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
14:26 Speaker 03 With the fan's experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
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15:42 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them,
16:25 Holly Frey? not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience.
17:19 Holly Frey? So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
17:50 Holly Frey? In 1928, Altina's father died. He was wealthy and important enough that there were many mentions in the paper about the estate that he left behind. Morris Shnazi had set aside $300,000 for Jewish and Christian hospitals in the US and $1.3 million to establish and maintain a hospital for the poor in Turkey. That was a bequeathment that Altina's mother, Loretta, oversaw personally. She traveled to Turkey, saw the hospital get built, and then administered the upkeep money from there. The rest of his considerable estate, ranging from about 3.5 to 7 million, depending on the source that you read, was distributed
18:33 Holly Frey? among Loretta, Altina, Victoria, and Juliet. So at this point, Altina was kind of set for life.
18:41 Tracy V. Wilson? The same year that Morris died, Altina got married to designer and architect Morris B. Sanders. They had met at a party while he was still a student. She also had a French suitor who wanted to marry her, and she joked about flipping a coin to make the decision between the two of them. However, she arrived at it, she decided to marry Sanders. And for a moment, it really seemed like the two of them were the it couple of the New York design scene. Their apartment was the penthouse at 544 East 86th Street, and it was featured in Architecture Magazine not long after their wedding. But later in life, Altina noted that they were really both too young, explaining, quote, "We really didn't know each other at all."
19:26 Holly Frey? They welcomed their first child, a son named Dennis, on January 21st, 1929. They had a second son, Terry, on December 30th, 1931. But this was not a happy time in her life. Morris was not a great husband, and Al Tina felt very lonely. She would later write of this time, quote, "I have three strong currents running in my life. One, a strong sex drive and curiosity. It cannot be that this is the only man I will know. Two, a strong creative drive that kept pushing me to inventions, creations, writing, objects, etc. Three, a strong attachment to my two children.
20:07 Holly Frey? Dennis was like a rooster, and Terry was soulful and shy."
20:12 Tracy V. Wilson? After four years of marriage, Al Tina filed for divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty and insulting treatment. Her divorce attorney, Mac Brandwin, would become an important figure in her life for many years. As this divorce played out, there were rumors that her ex-husband was very angry and might become violent, so she took the boys and went to Europe. This early 1930s crossing of the Atlantic was made aboard a German ship, and Al Tina later told the story of several conversations aboard where people engaged her in discussions about the issue of the so-called Jewish question. It was the ongoing debate about the status that Jews should have in Germany, and it
20:57 Tracy V. Wilson? was, of course, obviously stoked by antisemitism. The people asking Al Tina about it clearly did not know that she was Jewish.
21:06 Holly Frey? Yeah, she tells one story where she was talking to a woman that she met on board, and she was like, she seemed very lovely, and we were having a lovely conversation, and then she asked me about the Jewish question, and then I realized I didn't like her at all. And she's so matter-of-fact about it. Once the divorce was settled, though, and Shinazi was back in New York, she took a job as a window dresser, working under Peter Copeland, who designed windows for retailers on Fifth Avenue. To be clear, she didn't really need to take this job. Like I said, she was kind of set for life, but she also did not want to be idle and she wanted to do things. Window trimming gave her a sense of usefulness and this was really the beginning of considering art as a career.
21:49 Holly Frey? In this job, she also rubbed shoulders with well-known artist Salvador Dali. When Dali got a contract to design a window for the luxury department store Bonwit Teller, Altina worked with him on the project. This was not a project that resulted in a lifelong friendship or a collaboration. The whole thing went sort of terribly, although it doesn't sound like that had anything to do with Shinazi's work. The store management just did not like Dali's concept and they tried to change things. Dali apparently had a very passionate reaction and somehow window glass ended up broken.
22:23 Tracy V. Wilson? During this period in her life, Altina started an affair with her attorney, Mac Brandwin. She would reflect years later, quote, "It set up in me a very big conflict." It wasn't so much that this man had been her divorce attorney, it was that Mac's wife was her friend. She didn't want to be a mistress and she wanted him to leave his wife. He didn't, but the affair continued. While talking about it in a 2014 documentary directed by her grandson, Peter Sanders, Altina sort of coolly and matter-of-factly discussed that her sex drive was just too powerful to override it.
23:01 Holly Frey? As a divorced woman who had her own money and a staff to look after her children, Shinazi was free to cultivate the life that she wanted in Manhattan. Her home was very open and her social circle was artsy and fun. She hosted sketch classes once a week and people would sometimes just drop in for dinner. Her son Terry later said, quote, "I grew up thinking every family on Thursday night had a nude in the living room", referring to the nude models who would come and sit for the sketch class.
23:30 Tracy V. Wilson? And now we get to the story of the glasses. This is a story that gets told a number of different ways. One is that she had to work on a window display for an optician. Another is that while she was working on one window, she saw another one nearby that featured women's glasses. A newspaper account from 1939 had kind of a wild story. Quote, "The glasses were born the day Altina S. Sander went to a bridge party and found that her aesthetic sense was offended by the glasses her friends wore."
24:03 Holly Frey? But the way she told the story, she was not at work when inspiration struck, and she was certainly not at a bridge party. Here is her account, quote, "And then one day I was walking from a movie with some guy. I don't remember his name. And I passed a shop, an optician, and I saw this oil painting with glasses glued onto the face. And I thought, that is really so ugly. And then Dorothy Parker was writing verses, 'Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses.' And I felt, well, something better could be done than just these awful glasses that looked like the time of Benjamin Franklin. And then I thought, well, what's good? What would be good on the face? And I thought of a mask, a Harlequin mask. They're really beautiful on a face."
24:46 Tracy V. Wilson? She had been in Venice during Carnival, and the imagery of the Harlequin mask had really stuck with her. So she started playing with that shape in paper cut. And then she had prototypes made when she thought she had the design just right. Shinazi thought she was on to something with these glasses, and she started to approach eyewear companies with this design. She later recounted being told, quote, "Well, when we're ready to sell glasses to lunatic asylums, we'll let you know."
25:14 Holly Frey? But Altina was not dissuaded, and she eventually approached a shop in Manhattan called Lou Jeans. Initially, this meeting, which was with the shop's head salesman, looked like a bust, just like every other meeting. But by pure happenstance, the owner of the shop happened to walk through as their meeting was concluding. And he saw the photos of Shinazi's prototype, and he saw the potential. And he spoke with her about her new style of glasses. And then at the end of that conversation, he asked to be the exclusive distributor of the design. She took that deal.
25:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Mr. Lujin was wise to do so. The new Harlequin glasses, as they were called, became very popular very quickly. Their rise to prominence was helped by the fact that a lot of high-profile people were early adopters of Shinazi's glasses design. Claire Booth-Luce is often said to have bought one of the first pairs. Peggy Guggenheim wore them. Soon they were getting write-ups in magazines, and this was really a huge moment. Glasses for women up to that point had been seen as kind of a curse. They were not designed for anything other than utility. It was sort of universally acknowledged that they would never look good on basically anybody.
26:31 Tracy V. Wilson? But with Shinazi's innovation, glasses had become a fashion accessory.
26:36 Holly Frey? The ad campaigns for the glasses really reflected this shift. One magazine ad read, quote, "Be glad you wear glasses. Wear Harlequins. No longer is the girl who wears glasses doomed to look owlish, bookish, or just plain dull. Flattering Harlequins are so gay and debonair, they give your very spirits a lift. Remember, it is Harlequin's exclusive design that makes the difference. Look for the tag on the frame."
27:02 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1939, Shinazi won the Lord & Taylor Annual American Design Award. While she certainly could have stayed in the eyeglass game for the rest of her life, at the top of her game after winning this award, Shinazi decided to sell the company and get out of the industry altogether. Many years later, after Altina's death, her granddaughter said of this choice, quote, "She could have been one of the wealthiest women in the country, if not the world, if she had stayed in that business. She never loved the business of a business. She loved the art."
27:37 Holly Frey? Altina Shinazi was a person at this point of wealth and importance, living a very successful life in New York as the designer of the new chic glasses that everyone seemed to want.
27:48 Tracy V. Wilson? And then World War II broke out, and she actually used that success to help others. When a friend asked her if she would sign affidavits that could be used to get people out of Europe, she readily agreed and estimated that she signed 13 of them. These affidavits were required for people to immigrate. It basically was a document that vouched for the person named as being of good character, and it said that the signer would look after the person coming over so that they would not become a Burton.
28:17 Holly Frey? So to sign more than a dozen of them was actually a pretty significant act.
28:22 Tracy V. Wilson? And it was because of that act that she met Eric Barrett, a doctor she had signed an affidavit for. When he got to the United States, he phoned her and said, "Madam, I have arrived." Up to this point, Altina was still in her relationship with her lawyer, Mac Brandwin, who was still married to her close friend. But Eric started visiting her, and she later described their growing acquaintance as, quote, "eating away at her connection to Mac."
28:49 Holly Frey? Eric was, by all accounts, a very kind and sweet man. He was a great piano player, in addition to being incredibly smart, and Altina fell very hard for him. But not long into their relationship, while he was working in a tuberculosis hospital in New England, he came down with tuberculosis himself. And the two of them didn't see each other for two years. But then Eric wrote to Altina, and he told her that his health had actually improved, and he asked if she wanted him back in her life. And she absolutely did. The pair got married soon after. She worried, she would later confess, about possible transmission of the disease to herself, or, more concerningly, to her boys, but none of them ever contracted tuberculosis.
29:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Eric had spent time working at a hospital in Los Angeles, and he fell in love with California. When he returned to New York, he pitched the idea to Altina that they should move there, and she went for it. They bought a house in Coldwater Canyon with a view of the city. Though there were ongoing issues with Eric's health and Altina needing to learn to keep house after having had a staff her whole life, she later described this period as peaceful and one of the nicest times in her life. She wanted to really focus on her art, so one of the rooms in the California house was made into a studio with a sign on the door that read, "Do not come in unless there's a catastrophe." She would say that
30:17 Tracy V. Wilson? she wanted to have just three hours a day to herself without interruption, and that she really did work very hard.
30:24 Holly Frey? For a brief time, Altina actually started a factory to make sunglasses in her signature Harlequin shape in L.A. According to a story that she later told, her employees were a mix of black and white workers, and there was tension. When some of the white employees made the racist complaint about sharing a bathroom with their black coworkers, Shinazi's solution was simple. The black employees could just use the executive bathroom that only she used. She reportedly, though, closed the factory after realizing, once again, she really hated all the day-to-day aspects of running a business. There's a secondary funny story involving the mob that I will tell on Friday.
31:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay. In a moment, we'll talk about Shinazi's connection to the McCarthy-era red scare, but first, we will pause for a sponsor break.
31:17 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes, doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them
32:01 Holly Frey? more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
32:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Veev Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to Nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only
33:05 Tracy V. Wilson? gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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34:32 Speaker 05 Livright, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of the Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
35:06 Holly Frey? As we've mentioned on the show before, in the 1940s and 1950s, the Red Scare was ablaze in the US. AlTina described this as a very bad time when, according to McCarthy, quote, "everybody was a communist." 10 Hollywood screenwriters, Alva Bessie, Herbert Bieberman, Lester Cole, Edward Demetrick, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo, had all refused to answer questions before Congress after having been subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. They were held in contempt, blacklisted, and they got the nickname The Hollywood Ten. Director John Barry, who went by Jack, made a documentary about these men that was sympathetic to their situation.
35:51 Holly Frey? And soon, he too was on the list to be called before the committee. But he dodged the subpoena by hiding in AlTina and Eric's guesthouse. They kept their friend hidden until one night, he just left quietly and made his way to Europe.
36:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Eric's health concerns had a fresh ray of hope when streptomycin was introduced as a treatment for tuberculosis. He went to the Mayo Clinic for treatment, and initially, it was a huge help. But over time, he built up a resistance to the drug, and his health started to decline. He died in 1958, after which AlTina said, quote, "The world sort of fell apart."
36:30 Holly Frey? She met Charles Carey, who went by Charlie, a few months after losing Eric. And at the time, he had just started all of the proceedings of getting a divorce. In an interview in the documentary that we've referenced a couple of times, Charlie actually started crying while relaying a story about AlTina caring for him during this time when they had just met. She had kind of negotiated with his landlord to be let into his apartment, which she wasn't supposed to have access to, but it was so she could supply his kitchen with groceries. Charlie eventually moved into Al Tina's house. His job was in political science, so their social group became this very curious mix of artists and people in politics. Soon, the two of them were married.
37:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Al Tina was not in love with Charlie, although she did like him. She became depressed in their marriage, and this was a period when she painted a lot. Her work during this third marriage is vibrant and surrealist. Eventually, she found new projects and new media to work in, which kept her occupied. One of them was moving into the world of film. She got permission from George Gross, her teacher from back in New York, to make a film about his experiences in Nazi Germany. The resulting film, titled Interregnum, was nominated for an Academy Award.
37:50 Holly Frey? She also started volunteering as an art therapist at Synanon. It's an addiction treatment facility in Los Angeles that has its own wild story. If you want to look it up, there's a recent documentary about it. Kind of turned into a cult. As for Shinazi's involvement, she and a close friend worked alongside the people who were getting treatment there. She painted a huge mural in the facility's open space. And then she worked alongside residents to create a second large mural.
38:19 Tracy V. Wilson? She also became invested in the work of Martin Luther King Jr. She and her husband Charlie met Dr. King and a lot of the people in his inner circle with the proposal that they would like to make a documentary about the civil rights work that he was doing. King went for this idea and promised to do anything he could to help them. Writer John Killens signed on to write the script. He lived with Charlie and Al Tina while he wrote and was picked up by the police several times while they were in their upscale neighborhood, just because he was black. This film never got made, though. There was a lack of funding. Nobody really wanted to touch the subject matter because it was so divisive. And then Dr. King was assassinated and the project fell apart.
39:03 Holly Frey? Altina's activism continued when it came to the recent podcast topic, The Vietnam War. She and her husband Charlie were both vehemently and very vocally against the war. And they actually took out an ad in The New York Times that was like a large statement against the war. This was really risky, particularly for Charles Carey because of his political science career.
39:26 Tracy V. Wilson? The bear moved to Washington DC in the 1970s when Carey got a job in the State Department. With her life uprooted, Altina once again threw herself into her art. And she started a series of sculptures that have become iconic. She called these sculptures "charactors" because they are sculpted portraits in the form of chairs and benches. She would make plaster casts of the sitters and then make a mold and make castings from that so that she could use the cast of one model multiple times with different changes to sculpt and paint. In a 1978 radio interview, Altina said she had gotten the idea after looking at photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson,
40:07 Tracy V. Wilson? who had taken pictures of chairs as they were used in various social settings. The first set of these charactors were displayed at the Touchstone Gallery in Washington DC, but she continued to make them for years after that. Throughout her art career, she had often gone just by the name Altina. And though the Harlequin frames had made her well-known in the 1930s, she had a second huge surge of name recognition in the late 1970s because of these charactors. She appeared on television regularly, including on Good Morning America, where she famously said, quote, "I don't know who decreed that art should just be something you nail up on a wall."
40:49 Holly Frey? In July of 1980, a refugee from Cuba named Celestino Miranda arrived in the US. He was an artist and he was hired, along with his friend Fernando, to help Altina with her sculptures because she was quite a petite woman. She was getting older and these casts were often very heavy. And she and Tino really hit it off. Eventually, after they had visited Santa Fe briefly on a work trip, Altina asked him to move to Santa Fe permanently with her as her assistant for the rate of $1,000 a week. And he said he would think about it, and they continued working together in Washington DC.
41:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Altina was still married to Charlie, but one night when he was in LA on business, she asked Tino to spend the night. In his retelling of it, he didn't get her message initially. He thought she was just afraid to be alone in the house without her husband and that he would be sleeping in the maid's room. But Altina clarified that she was interested in him romantically.
41:49 Holly Frey? Before long, Charlie and Altina were divorced, and she married for a fourth time in 1981 to Celestino Miranda. This was scandalous to a lot of people that Shinazi knew and socialized with, aside from the fact that she had had an affair and left her husband for her lover. Because there was a concern that this much younger man, who really had nothing in terms of finances, was just marrying her for her money and social standing.
42:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Not long after they married, Tino was diagnosed with cancer. It was at this point that they finally moved to New Mexico permanently for his health. He would later recount that she let him get all kinds of animals, which he believed cured him. Altina did too, and she made a lot of artwork about their farm. They also continued to collaborate on sculpture. While people might have doubted the reasons that the two of them married each other, they clearly had found a unique compatibility as artists, and this created a very deep bond between them. A lot of the benches still in this character style that they made together during this time featured couples.
42:58 Holly Frey? Yeah, some of those pieces are really quite beautiful. Her son Dennis died suddenly of a heart attack in 1987, and that was a terrible shock to Altina. She told friends that she felt paralyzed, and that's something that has echoed in Tino's later account, where he describes her as never having cried and said that she kept everything inside.
43:21 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1995, Altina Shinazi published her autobiography, The Road I Have Traveled.
43:27 Holly Frey? I could not get my hands on a copy of this book. It is kind of rare. There was nothing I could get that wasn't going to take like a month to come from like Europe. Even though it was a US publication, there just aren't many copies floating around. That one bit that we read earlier about the three currents of her life is from it, but it is from her reading aloud from it that I got that. On the evening of August 19th, 1999, Altina told Tino that she just thought her dinner was digesting poorly. She died later that night at the age of 92.
44:04 Tracy V. Wilson? In her write up about Altina after her death, her granddaughter, Victoria R. Sanders, who produced the documentary that we've mentioned a few times, told a newspaper reporter, quote, "The thing about my grandmother was she was not like anybody else's grandmother, or mother for that matter. She looked 20 years younger. She was inquisitive, vibrant, anything was possible. She was always working on some new project."
44:30 Holly Frey? And that's Altina Shinazi. I love her. I have so many things to say about her on Friday. I have, you know, mixed things. I have listener mail.
44:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Great.
44:41 Holly Frey? It's about strawberries. We have gotten a lot of listener mail about strawberries. I'm kind of surprised at how much. I don't know why, since we talked about how very popular they are. But this one cracked me up so hard and I loved it. So this is from our listener Reagan, who notes that it's pronounced like Megan, but as Tracy and I know, we both know people who would say it Megan. So I'm hoping Reagan is correct. Reagan writes, "Hi, Holly and Tracy. I am a longtime listener who finally feels as though I have a worthy enough reason to email. Your episode on strawberries was instantly exciting to me. I took a screenshot of the episode and sent it to my husband, who loves strawberries. He eats them every day, rain or shine, summer or winter.
45:26 Holly Frey? However, as the episode progressed, I discovered more than one coincidence that tickled both me and my husband. I was listening to the episode as I was getting ready for bed, when, right before an ad break, you teased about the spy craft portion happening in Chile." With face wash still on my face, I ran to the living room to tell my husband that the strawberry spycraft was happening in Chile. Why would this piece of information warrant such a response, you ask? Well, my husband's father is an immigrant from Chile. How exciting. I returned to my nighttime routine, satisfied with all the excitement for the evening. Oh, boy, was I wrong. The excitement was far from over. Once back from the ad break, you delve deeper into Fresia's journey to Chile.
46:08 Holly Frey? When I heard you say that he landed in Concepcion, Chile, I nearly fell over. That is the exact town where my father-in-law was born and raised. Once again, I ran to tell my husband about this coincidence. What are the odds? Okay, so now I was 100% convinced the coincidences were over for the evening. Again, I was wrong. Duchenne presented King Louis XV, the successful Chilean strawberries, on July 6th, which happens to be my husband's birthday. Then you shared that Duchenne first noticed success with Chilean strawberries on June 6th, which happens to be my birthday. Now, by this point, I was already in bed, so I did not run to tell my husband these coincidences. However, I did tell him the next day. We were so tickled.
46:50 Holly Frey? I hope you both are also tickled to know how one episode contained so much excitement for me and my husband. We both attended your live show at the Indiana Historical Society when you discussed Gene Stratton Porter. I work at the IHS, and I am the co-host on our institutional podcast, so I couldn't miss the opportunity to see you two live. You bring so much learning, laughter, and excitement into my life and my husband's because I often share a synopsis of each episode with him. I gladly share pet tax. These are our two kitties, Trot, who's black and white, and Evie, Dilute Calico. We're obsessed with them. Trot is wacky and silly. As you can see, he has a little mustache. His favorite toys are clothes hangers, eyeglasses stolen from mom and dad's nightstand, Mardi
47:34 Holly Frey? Gras-style beads, and anything he can rummage from the basement to bring upstairs. Honorable mentions of basement offerings are allen wrenches, work gloves, and parts to our shop vac. Our Evie girl is much less flamboyant with her silliness. She's sweet and beautiful, and everything is on Her terms. She'll squeak at you if she wants attention. Otherwise, you are permitted to bask in her beauty from an arm's length away. She loves playing with strings, forehead scratches, and napping on her heated blanket. Evie is a massive fan of the bird cam on YouTube. Thanks for all you do to brighten the world with your work and simply by being yourself. Sincerely, Reagan. This is so darling. Okay, listen, Trot is cute and he looks diabolical, which is exactly my flavor of cat. And Evie is also gorgeous.
48:19 Holly Frey? Thank you for sharing this. I just love the idea of one episode hitting so many unique notes of someone's life.
48:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
48:28 Holly Frey? Strawberries. I think in, in honor of all of this, you should get a strawberry cake and just giggle at how many coincidences you have, Reagan.
48:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Yum.
48:37 Holly Frey? Mostly, I just want to eat strawberry cake and bring people into my web of strawberry cake evil. Um, I just love it. I like knowing that things resonate with people in fun ways and also that it brings joy and laughter and giggles. We all need more of that. If you would like to write to us with joy, laughter, and giggles or otherwise, or if you, like many people, want to write to us about strawberry information, there's gonna be more strawberry emails, Red, I promise you. Uh, you can do that at [email protected] . You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
49:20 Holly Frey? Stuck You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
49:34 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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50:42 Speaker 05 Livright, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sykes proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
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