Madge Meredith, Playing Witch, 1946

This Madge Meredith press photo was released while Trail Street—a “solid Randolph Scott Western”—was in production. Since the film was released on 19 February 1947 and the snipe was released for use on All Saint’s Day [aka All Hallows or Hallowmas]—the day following the big night for witches (i.e., All Hallows Eve or Halloween)—then I am assuming that this photo was circulated in November 1946 . The full snipe reads:

Bewitchin’ is the word for the well-dressed woman come All Saint’s Day. In proof—Madge Meredith all dressed up in a witch’s brew of a hat specially concocted by Designer Edward Stevenson, who threw into the pot a yard or so of night-black gaberdine, cooked it up into a tall, tall crown with a swoop of a brim (the better for riding whirlwinds) then added an old broomstick tipped with broomstraw yellow feathers. Madge, to add to the gaiety of the seasons, adds joak-o-lantern [sic] earrings. When she is not playing witch, Madge is engaged in playing a co-starring role in RKO Radio’s “Trail Street”

Here are the “joak-o-lantern earrings”:

And here is a broom-shaped hat pin. Or rather, a broom-shaped hat pin that has been painted onto the photo. (What this looks like to me, is a standard artist’s paint brush being used as a hat pin that has been “touched up” to look more like a witch’s broom).

I did a post in February of a 1922 postcard which included a “broom-shaped hat-pin thing”, and another in March of a 1912 postcard. I said in the first post that I had a few of these, and that I would post them all, and now I have! So, here they are:

[broom-shaped hat-pins from 1912, 1922, 1946]