15 Vintage Passports Of Iconic 20th-Century People

9. Ernest Hemingway

Notable American expatriate Ernest Hemingway was a seasoned traveler from about the 1920s onward. In A Moveable Feast, his memoir of his life in Paris with other illustrious artists like James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Pablo Picasso, he provides some succinct travel advice after learning his lesson on a long, frustrating car ride with a tipsy F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Never go on trips with someone you do not love.”

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s passport is a three-for-one: In the older tradition of American travel documents, a passport issued to a man would be eligible to cover his wife and children as well, so pictured here are Fitzgerald, his wife Zelda, and their only child, “Scottie,” who would later become a writer and journalist who traveled the country of her own accord.

11. Janis Joplin

The Queen of Rock and Roll is smiling in her passport photo, just less than seven months before she died of a heroin overdose in a Hollywood hotel room. Tragically, she never lived to need her passport renewed in 1974.

12. Ella Fitzgerald

The stamps on this well-traveled blues singer’s passport document her trips to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia, which makes you wonder even more why Hungary didn’t want to let her in.

13. John Lennon

You might say that John Lennon’s certified United States immigration document was his ticket to ride.

14. Beyoncé

While not technically vintage, Beyoncé’s passport nonetheless gives us a glimpse at the singing superstar before her Super Bowl headliner days. These days, Queen Bey’s passport seems capable of allowing her and fellow famous husband Jay-Z entry into Cuba despite the embargo on tourism: royal treatment indeed.

15. Audrey Hepburn

The Breakfast at Tiffany’s star appears to be wearing a white blouse, which disappears against the white background of her passport photo—maybe she should have gone with the little black dress that day instead.

Credits: mentalfloss.com