Tag Archives: Albert Einstein

Miss Bra Queen Contest 1954 and Albert Einstein Sticking Out His Tongue By Arthur Sasse

Sometimes It Is A Slow News Day

News photographers take pictures that are assigned to them by editors based upon events that might merit coverage.

The caption to this January 5, 1954  Acme news phtograph is “Photographer Arthur Sasse was assigned to cover a contest for the title of Miss Bra Queen of 1954.”

The top portion of the photograph shows Sasse taking the photo that apppears in the bottom panel.  Miss Bra Queen was a bust as far as news coverage goes.

Sasse was an accomplished photographer and three years previous to Miss Bra Queen, he took one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century. Today, young people would probably think this was photoshopped, but of course it wasn’t.

It shows super-genius Albert Einstein had a humorous and mischievious side to him.  March 14, 1951 was Einstein’s 72nd birthday and he had just gotten into a car to be driven home with Frank Aydelotte and his wife. Sasse was asking Einstein to smile but Einstein had smiled many times that day for the photographers and was sick of it. So he stuck out his tongue instead. Sasse snapped the photo and the iconic image was captured.

Einstein loved the photograph after he saw it and ordered nine copies of it for his personal use. The original photo sold for $74,324 in 2009 at auction.

This is the scene in the moments leading up to the famous photograph being taken and the original uncropped version.