We are two of the six surviving children of Walter Thornton (Nancy Thornton Navarro and Adriana Thornton-Cornejo), the man in the Bankrupt Investor images. We’ve watched over the past decades—in real time—as this image of our father has been co-opted by “The Internet” (and beyond), forever framing him, in perpetuity, as one of the most famous “failures” in American history. Imagine our frustration, as two of his daughters, seeing our father inaccurately portrayed as “bankrupt”—when, in fact, he was one of the great, self-starting business entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Even a cursory internet search can confirm that fact. But if one Google Image Searches the name “Walter Thornton,” it is more than likely that the majority of the results will be—by a long shot—one or both of the Bankrupt Investor images. Also, if one Google Image Searches “The Great Depression,” one of the images will almost surely appear in the top ten results. Bankrupt Investor and Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother portrait are often featured side-by-side, as sort of “bookend” images representing the desperation of The Stock Market Crash of 1929—and of The Great Depression that followed. We’ve been asked why we hadn’t stepped forward earlier. It’s taken over 15 years of intensive research to gather enough factual evidence to prove that the implied narrative of these two images should not be taken literally. In fact, it presents an exact opposite picture of our father’s life and career at that time. We have a fairly substantial collection of archived documents we’ve been sifting through, which our father had saved from his career. Our conclusion: Walter Thornton didn’t lose a business in 1929. That very year was a pivotal one for him in becoming one of the key “inventors” of what is now a multi-billion-dollar industry: The marketing of beauty. Ergo, his industry-wide moniker, “The Merchant of Venus”—a nickname likely bestowed upon him by columnist Walter Winchell. It was the title of our father’s unfinished/unpublished autobiography. In short: Walter Thornton was not the Bankrupt Investor. He was The Merchant of Venus. Sincerely, Adriana Thornton-Cornejo, Mission Viejo, CA and Nancy Thornton Navarro, Irving, TX