Solved: The Mystery of Connie V. Masters
The story behind View-Master’s “Lonely Overdressed Woman Who Stares Contemplatively at the Landscape.”
I started collecting View-Master after finding a Model C and some reels that highlighted a few U.S. National Parks at an antique mall in Flint, Michigan, around 1998. My hobby started small and evolved slowly. And I think I would have lost interest pretty early if I hadn’t been charmed by several recurring visual motifs, like the tendency of 3D photographers to take a landscape photo from behind an errant tree to make the 3D effect “pop.”
I don’t post that many landscape shots on Instagram because they don’t translate well in 2D. You really need to see them in the viewer!
Another key motif in scenic reels was to place a woman in the frame, her face usually not visible to the camera. She’s often wearing a dress that doesn’t make sense for a visit to a National Park (even in the dressier era of the 1940s-’50s). The mystery woman always looks serious while staring out at the vistas before her. Every time I came across her, I was intrigued. Who is this overdressed woman staring contemplatively at the landscape? What was she thinking about? What was she doing there? Why was she alone? Why was she wearing a gorgeous blue dress at Mount Rainier in 1950-something?
Of course, it’s not always the same woman. Sometimes she’s blonde, occasionally brunette. Mostly, in American reels, she’s a titian redhead. Maybe it’s the intimacy of viewing View-Master reels — the dark eye pieces that you put right up to your face, the darkness all around the vibrant Kodachrome image — that added to her story and to her allure for me.
So, over the years, I made up a little story about her in my head, partly inspired by the strange disappearance of Connie Converse (another of my obsessions) and partly due to the allure of this woman who exudes confidence and independence in the 1950s. I took to calling her by the very corny name of Connie V. Masters after Connie Converse, Veronica Lake (my grandmother always thought she was so glamorous) and, of course, View-Master.
In my mind, Connie V. Masters was a renaissance woman driving across the country alone at a time when that would have been brave and transgressive. And her epic road trip — I’m guessing her trunk was packed with dresses! — took her to some of the most iconic tourist destinations in America.
The fact that she was a mature adult woman also intrigued me. View-Master would occasionally include snaps in reels of local teenage girls doing simple things like smiling pretty for the camera while picking apples in an orchard. Connie never bothered with such mundane or girlish efforts. She’s no girl. She’s a woman. Her age implied she’d lived a bit and her travels could be a reward she richly deserved or it could be a desertion of her responsibilities. Both ideas intrigued me.
I enjoyed both ideas (and still do), but the mystery of Connie V. Masters was mostly solved when I accidentally purchased some of the personal View-Master reels of Rupert Leach, who served as Director of Photography at View-Master for many years. He may have been one of the most-traveled men on the planet who wasn’t a politician or a wealthy playboy. It turns out the beautiful and mysterious redhead I had been daydreaming about for years was his wife, Poppy.
I know very little about Rupert and Poppy. According to the book View-Master Memories by Mary Ann and Wolfgang Sell, the Leaches were married in 1926. They had one son, Bruce. Leach traveled the globe for years for View-Master, and it seems that Poppy was his near-constant companion on these adventures.
While I still enjoy making up stories about Connie V. Masters, I also like to think about Poppy and how she was an unusually well-traveled woman who likely acted as her husband’s unpaid photography assistant. My own husband is an avid photographer, and I know how often I suggest an angle, help him set up, wait patiently as he tinkers and provide feedback. It’s nice to have yet another story to tell myself when I happen upon Poppy in another beautiful dress in front of yet another pretty landscape.
To see all the Instagram posts I’ve tagged as Connie V. Masters, click here.
Solved: The Mystery of Connie V. Masters
My wife Deborah has been a cheerful VM “pop queen” posing by request in the foreground in my many 3D VM travel shots.