[Eleanor Roosevelt cutting birthday cake, with Lana Turner and Deana Durbin on her right]

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A cake cutting with Eleanor Roosevelt and two of Hollywood's biggest young stars, Lana Turner and Deanna Durbin, sets this photograph apart from more formal portraits of the first lady. The caption card gives no date or occasion, but both actresses were prominent studio names in the late 1930s and early 1940s, which suggests the picture dates from roughly that period. Harris & Ewing, the Washington studio that made the print, documented much of the capital's public and social life in those decades. Mrs. Roosevelt often used such events to draw attention to charities and wartime causes, and the mix of Washington and film personalities reflects how celebrities were drawn into that work.

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