Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
The legendary female figure on the World War II B-17 bomber, the Memphis Belle, had a strong connection to the north Hamilton County community of Soddy. Although Anna Mae Clift, member of the legendary Clift family (great-granddaughter of Union Col. William Clift and second cousin of actor Montgomery Clift) was born in 1896 and lived in the area only in her first years, her relatives proudly claim her Soddy heritage.
In her early 20s, the tall red-headed beauty left for New York to dance with the Greenwich Village Follies. Not long after her arrival a handsome young Peruvian artist, Alberto Vargas, spied her walking down the street. Normally shy, Alberto followed her to a local theater. When Anna Mae came out several hours later, he asked in broken English to paint her portrait even though he had no money. Surprisingly, she agreed to model and became the inspiration for his watercolors and eventually his wife.
Alberto fell in love with Anna Mae immediately. Because Anna Mae was a beautiful showgirl, somewhat of a gadfly, and loved to party, he was reluctant to express his true feelings for fear of rejection. Unbeknownst to him, Anna Mae felt similar love for Alberto. In 1930, she proposed marriage, and he immediately accepted.
Alberto had begun his career by retouching negatives and then worked as a freelance artist selling pen and ink drawings. In 1919, Florenz Ziegfeld, head of the Ziegfeld Follies, hired him on a handshake as the official portrait painter of his girls, including Anna Mae. The artist credited Ziegfeld with teaching him "the delicate borderline between a nude picture and a wonderful portrait with style and class."
In 1934, Fox Movie Studios brought Alberto and Anna Mae to Hollywood, where he painted portraits of most of the leading ladies of the day, including Greta Garbo, Dorothy Lamour, Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich and child star Shirley Temple. One might think that a handsome Latin man would be tempted by the beautiful women of Hollywood, but he remained true to his only love besides art, Anna Mae.
In 1939, Alberto supported a labor strike and was blacklisted by the motion picture industry. He went to Chicago, where Esquire Magazine hired him to replace artist George Petty, creator of the pinup known as "The Petty Girl." Alberto made the mistake of accepting the new job on another handshake, which opened the way later for legal battles over ownership of his Esquire paintings and financial difficulties.
During World War II, the "Varga Girl" (with the shortened name) created by the naturalized American patriot from Peru became a morale builder for the American war effort. The "Varga Girl" appeared on thousands of patriotic posters and the backs of many pilots' jackets encouraging the sale of war bonds. He never turned down requests to paint or sketch mascots for military units.
The "Varga Girl" image was placed on both sides of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber based in England that was immortalized as the "Memphis Belle" in films in 1944 and 1990. The plane successfully completed its required 25 missions and was credited with eight kills of German fighters. Each of the 10-member crew was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.
In 1952, the artist met a young adman named Hugh Hefner, who was starting a new magazine. Alberto would publish 152 paintings of lovely young women, the "Varga Girls'" over 16 years for Playboy magazine. He was heralded as the "King of Pinup Art" during the liberated 1960s.
Anna Mae and Alberto's married life had its financial ups and downs, but their love affair endured. She died in 1974 at age 78 after a long illness in Westwood, Calif., where they had owned a small bungalow since 1936.
After her death, Alberto's thank you notes always ended, "And Anna Mae sends her love too." The heartbroken painter never recovered from her death. He died in 1982 at age 86. He said there was a little bit of Anna Mae in every Varga girl.
Former Hamilton County Commissioner Fred Skillern recalls Anna Mae and Alberto spending two weeks each summer for about five years in the 1960s at his father's Colonial Motel just off Soddy Lake.
Jerry Summers is an attorney with Summers, Rufolo and Rodgers. Frank "Mickey" Robbins is an investment adviser at Patten and Patten. For more, go to "The Real Vargas" Cigar Aficionado Magazine, August 1996; Steve Smith (slsmith01@comcast.net), president of the Soddy Daisy-Montlake Historical Society; or chattahistorical assoc.org.