Cinema Centenary

I don’t read Russian but the dates suggest that this is commemorating Vera Kholodnaya (1893-1919), whose film work predates the better known silent cinema sparked by the Revolution starting in the early 1920's. I've never seen any of her pictures, but she was a stage actress who had some crossover success in films before her death.

But I got this envelope because of the very neat postmark with the motion picture camera and the length of film, a pretty unusual illustration to run across. I'm assuming this is commemorating the centenary of cinema, though the date illustrated here (1893) is a little earlier than most citations.


Sarah Bernhardt was probably the most famous actress in the world at the turn-of-the-century, and she had a few celebrated motion pictures, too--mostly recreations of her stage successes. This French stamp was issued in 1945 (Scott #B191) and nicely complements the illustration of Bernhardt on the card. The postmark is from 1949 so isn't a First-Day-of-Issue, but a regular postmark. Both items were choice finds at Westpex.