| [The picture from "Sticks and Stones" |
| in Season 2 - retouched with |
| Paint Shop Pro XI] |
 |
| [Angela Lansbury and Peter Shaw's |
| wedding photo, for comparison] |
Stephanie drew my attention to this topic, so the credit for it goes to her. It's about one of the many photographs and pictures that decorate Jessica's house in Cabot Cove (few of which we ever get to see in clear focus). One of the clearer images of it, she found, is in the episode "Sticks and Stones" from Season 2:
"... right around the 16:38 minute mark (I think) you get a glimpse of that photo that I've always wondered about. It's large, in a gold, oval frame next to the kitchen door. After Amos enters, you get a brief glimpse of the whole thing in the upper left hand corner of the screen. ... If you ever get a chance to capture it and take a closer look, let me know what you think."
Her question was: could this be a photograph of Jessica and Frank on their wedding day?
Well, I did get a chance to look for the photograph, and I did manage to get a screen capture of it. But the photograph, being in the background of the scene, isn't in focus, and given its height on the wall, it is also very poorly lit. So I snipped it out of my screen capture image and exported it to Paint Shop Pro XI, where I cleaned it up as much as I could - increased the resolution, sharpness, brightness, etc. The top picture to the right represents the fruit of my labor.
The photograph still isn't much to look at, even after getting the PSP XI treatment, but to my eyes at least it's definitely a wedding photo. The woman has relatively short wavy hair, a white dress, and a white pillbox hat with a veil. The man is wearing a dark suit and I think that's a carnation or boutonnière on the left breast of his jacket. It could be a miliary uniform, but I can't say for sure.
As to who is featured in the photograph, it would certainly make sense that it could be Jessica and Frank, though it's also possible it could be her (or his) mother and father on their wedding day, I suppose.
Given the propensity for pictures from Angela Lansbury's career to show up on Jessica's walls, I then wondered if perhaps this was actually a picture of Angela and Peter Shaw on their wedding day, so I tossed in their wedding photo for comparison (bottom picture). The suit Peter is wearing could definitely be the same on in the oval photograph, and his dark hair matches the man's, so that holds some promise. However, the necktie is much darker in the oval photograph than Peter's, so that may speak against the man actually being Peter. Furthermore, it seems to me that Angela's dress is too different from the one pictured in the oval frame to be the same dress, and Angela's hair is lighter than the woman in the photograph's. So I'm thinking that the woman pictured is not Angela - or at least, not Angela on that particular day.
Have a look at the pictures for yourselves, Gentle Readers - what do you think?
