The Los Angeles Times news of the day obviously had great significance to this pair, as they chose to place it so prominently in this strip of photographs. The newspaper was the main reason I was attracted to this set of pics but I also loved the character and demeanor of the hatted, cigar-chomping lead player in this story.

I sent this photo to my friend Michael from Mike’s Look At Life for help interpreting it.  I thought Mike, who is a devoted commenter on this blog, might be able to shed some light on the front page headline. In Australia we have free access to old newspaper archives through Trove, a database managed by the National Library of Australia. I thought there would be a similar free resource in the USA but I hadn’t been able to find it from here.

Mike tells me that it is a user pays system for the archives in America, and proffered the following theory about the paper. I liked his theory so much, I have left my research at that.

Mike says “I believe that headline reads ‘Russians bid for US peace talks’. Based on that, as well as the hat, and cigar, it looks 1950-ish to me and that would then connect it to the Korean War. Pure speculation on my part but since we never had a war with Russia it would have to be another war.” 

If the headline referred to a hope for the end of the Korean War, then no wonder these two were excited to record the event.