Twin Peaks Publicity – Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings

In a continuing look at black and white publicity photos created for Twin Peaks in 1990, this image features Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings. These series of portraits were released by Capital Cities / ABC Television to help viewers keep track of the many characters in Mark Frost and David Lynch’s groundbreaking series.

PEGGY LIPTON AS NORMA JENNINGS

The stunning black and white photo of Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings was taken by the incredibly talented portrait photographer Mark Seliger. From 1992 to 2002, Seliger served as Chief Photographer for “Rolling Stone” magazine where he shot 188 iconic covers.  From 2002 to 2012, he was under contract with Condé Nast Publications where he shot photos for GQ and Vanity Fair and numerous other magazines. Mark has published several books including “When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust, Physiognomy” and “On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories.”

You can follow his work today on Instagram at @MarkSeliger.

Seliger provided several iconic publicity photos for Twin Peaks. The Norma Jennings images are part of a sequence captured on the set of the Double R Diner in Van Nuys, California. This image above was published in “TV Guide” for May 5-11, 1990 which shows Peggy standing in a slightly different pose.

A color transparency of Norma shows yet another pose from Seliger’s shoot. This one included a printed caption that read: “Peggy Lipton stars as Norma Jennings, who owns the Double R Diner. Through sheer hard work, she has made it a success, on ‘TWIN PEAKS,’ the hour-long dramatic series airing on the ABC Television Network.”

Yet another pose shows more details of the Double R Diner set behind Peggy.

I love editing these high-resolution images as I see details I’ve never noticed, such as Norma’s watch and bracelet.

My fellow Twin Peaks Blog author Vinnie Guidera and I were discussing these accessories and wondered if Peggy wore items from her own closet. Andrea Hays who played Heidi wore her own clothes in the pilot as did Sherilyn Fenn who played Audrey Horne.

The image above is an on location shot from the Twin Peaks pilot. Peggy is dressed as Norma Jennings in the former Mar-T Cafe (known today as Twede’s Cafe) in February 1989. She is wearing the same bracelet as the publicity photo taken in California months later. The watch may be different in the Pilot as the face appears larger than the later publicity photo. I wonder if the bracelet was something sentimental to Peggy.

Yet the bracelet will disappear later in the second season so perhaps it was a change costume designer Sara Markowitz made. Like many mysteries in Twin Peaks, we may never know the answer.