Rich Beattie December 14, 2006

 

Even the stars look awful

His says he was going to Havana, Cuba for the purpose of “baseball playing” in 1920 (and that he has a “medium” forehead). Hers says that she was taking the Queen Mary to Europe for “business” in 1956 (and that she was married to Joseph Paul DiMaggio).

This information, on Babe Ruth and Marilyn Monroe, didn’t come from the tabloids. It didn’t come from biographies. It came from their passport applications. And while these are hardly tell-all documents, they do provide a window into celebrities’ births, marriage histories, and travel plans. They’re also a secret stash of autographs and bad photos.

Best of all, the information doesn’t require a publicist’s approval or a kajillion-dollar paparazzi payout. It’s free, and available through the Freedom of Information Act. All you have to do is ask the State Department.

So we did. We asked for the files of Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth, Ernest Hemingway, Judy Garland, Jesse Owens, Humphrey Bogart, Jerry Garcia, and Elvis Presley. The request took some time to process (a year and a half), and we ended up with information on all but the last two (there was no forthcoming explanation why those were unavailable).

See our slideshow of Celebrity Passport Photos

We got some unexpected stuff: Jesse Owens’ social security number, Marilyn Monroe’s birth certificate. We also learned some tidbits like the fact that the State Department asked the FBI for “all information” on Judy Garland in 1954 (they could have requested just “derogatory” information). The documents are a statement on changing times as well. Current applications ask for height and hair color, but when the Babe requested his passport in 1920, applicants were also asked to list the size of their mouths and the shape of their chins (“large” and “round” were his respective answers). Back then, too, passports were a bit cheaper: $2—a far cry from today’s $97 fee, though they were only valid for two years (today they’re good for 10).

The fee is hardly the only thing that’s changed. In fact, that Ruth had a passport at all is noteworthy. While passports have been around for hundreds of years, they weren’t required for U.S. citizens (except for a brief time during the Civil War) until 1941, according to National Archives documents. Even when President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order in 1915 regarding passports, it was simply to recommend—not require—them.

Come January 23, 2007, passports will be required packing for any border hop, even to Mexico and Canada, where birth certificates used to suffice. And by January 1, it’s estimated that 40-50 countries will be issuing passports that include chips with information on facial biometrics, according to Joel Shaw, Chief Strategy Officer for CryptoMetrics, which has been involved in the creation and standardization of the biometric platforms. Among other things, these chips will contain information about the distance between key facial features. But while some countries are requiring their citizens to appear in person to create the chip, says Shaw, most are just processing the new data from the good ol’ passport photo.

So the poorly-lit portraits will live on—at least for now—and will still get filed away in the State Department’s vast database. And that means, thankfully, that we’ll be able to see an endless stream of celebrities at their most unflattering.

See our slideshow of Celebrity Passport Photos

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