There is something paradoxical, at least to my mind, about a silent film star playing the saxophone. Anna Q. Nilsson, in the advertisement, was both--a silent screen star and an aspiring saxophonist--and any chance of hearing her evaporated long ago. Yet we are heirs to this document: a photograph taken in 1926 for a York saxophone advertisement, evidence that she was popular in that way that sometimes influences people to do or to buy.

In our present day and age of multimedia blitzkrieg, a photograph is a silent affair. Bordered on four sides, the eye can only wander so far and so it is that our minds must wander instead. We can supply a narrative of our own making: a soundtrack of our own design.I found myself doing this with Anna Q. Nilsson's photo.

Anna Q. smiles, not quite at the camera, but more probably at a roomful of admirers, all eagerly waiting to hear her blow a few notes.Did she play? Did she talk about her horn or reed problems with Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish, her silent film cohorts? Did she like the Paul Whiteman band? Was the saxophone so new that even a woman in pearls with flowers in her hair was encouraged to play it? And paid to advertise it so that other women might take it up?

Time will tell that the latter didn't quite happen.The years during WWII however did show off quite a few female saxophonists, trumpeters, trombonists, and percussionists for a short time. It wasn't until the 1972 passage of Title IX (it wasn't just about sports...) and the following years that young women began playing instruments that had somehow become "male identified."

It would seem that Anna Q. never heard that message. In 1927, a year after this photo was taken, she made a film with Babe Ruth called "Babe Comes Home". In 1928, The Babe is pictured playing a saxophone for his team mate, Lou Gehrig. I wonder if Anna Q. and The Babe spoke of their common saxophone interest on the movie set. Photographs, like silent films, can speak volumes...