Girls, Girls, Girls – The American Woman, The Farmer’s Wife, and The American Needlewoman

Up for your perusal this fine Spring Sunday, a trio of women’s magazine from the early part of the last century. As a preservation scanner, I strive to produce scans of material from all parts of popular culture. While a title like The American Needlewoman might not sound too exciting, you never know what you are going to find in some of these old magazines. In the golden era of American Illustration and the time period in which Americans were reading more than ever before or ever since, there are all sorts of goodies in all sorts of publications. At the beginning of the 1920s, there were over 2000 magazines on the stands, many of them finely crafted. I’ve been astounded at the beauty of Cosmos and Redbooks and feel the whole spectrum of women’s magazines is worth exploring with scans.

First up, an older scan. The American Woman, August 1919

The American Woman was a publication out of Augusta, Maine. This issue features nice cover by Beryl Morse Greene, an artist I was able to find out absolutely nothing about.


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Scan of American Woman 1919-08

This mag is both very similar but also different to the women’s mag of today. There is illustrated fiction, health and lifestyle articles, a bit on doilies, recipes, kitchen architecture and similar topics you might expect to find in a women’s magazine. Dimensionally, this was pretty big magazine. You’ll notice this issue had been triple-punched at one point, and beyond the cover, I did a pretty light edit on it. I’m growing fonder of the natural look and have a lot of different types of magazines I want to get to, so quite frankly, some get more love than others. In the fiction department, this magazine offers “Madelon” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (see a page on Freeman with biographical information, texts, and other goodies here ). Also inside “Cinderella’s Younger Sister” by E.M. Jameson, and “A Short Cut to Freedom” by Alice Garland Steele, “Bitter-Sweet by Ada Mary Harris”, and “The Bride and the Mother-In-Law” by Richard Arnold.

A sample:


As a carpenter, I’m always fascinated by these old kit homes that were the precursor to modular and other modes of cheap construction. A pretty little craftsman imo. A little house packed with interesting details is far neater to me than a bland mcmansion the size of a football field with raised ceilings and the like.



The second lovely up today. The Farmer’s Wife October 1932 featuring a cover from Jules Erbit, more well known for his pin-up work. Lady and dahlia:



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Scan of The Farmer’s Wife 1932-08

I’ve always heard that there was a real struggle between rural and city America, and this magazine was meant to be for those happy to define themselves as rural Americans. Coincidentally, this mag was postmarked to Wamego, KS, for any fellow free staters reading. Fiction includes “Star Lillies” by Ann Warner and “Leather Hinges” by Hugh J. Hughes. There are also letters from farmer’s wives, an article on small homes of Britain, fashion notes, recipes, and tips on building a good henhouse.

Samples


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An article on “Breaking Baby”, Dr. Spock where are ye?



I like this Oxydol ad with Mrs. Drear and Mrs. Cheer, from Rosie O Neill, creator of the Cupie Doll (a nice bio link for O Neill Here)


And lastly today, The American Needlewoman, April 1926 sporting perhaps my favorite cover of the three. I know a child with flowers is a tired theme, but I love all the subdued reds and pinks.



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Scan of The American Needlewoman 1926-04

I found a gallery of covers for this magazine featuring Earl Christy and others. I like the reddish stock of paper, it’s definitely kind of funky and the inks a little rough, but very charming.
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The inside front cover features Hollywood photos, the silver screen ruled the day. Even this needlework magazine is leading with photos of stars and starlets



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Some line-drawn illustrations from whom I believe is Morris Hall Pancoast .



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This ad here reminds me of my grandpa, who ran a furniture advertising agency for a number of years. As a boy, I remember him having artists around the office responsible for the artwork. A lot of detail and craft goes into an ad like this.



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Enjoy the mags, I’ll continue to occasionally explore vintage women’s magazines every once in an attempt to represent a fuller diversity of American magazines and balance my boyish pursuits. Speaking of, next time up here at darwination scans, a personal fascination of mine, a selection of girlie pulps – GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS 2 Oh my

Cheers and keep on scannin,
Darwin

The National Police Gazette October 1964

I first heard of The National Police Gazette in a book my cuz recommended to me by Elliot Gorn called The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America, a splendid social history of the emergence of boxing as a premier sport in America. The book explores the beginnings of pugilism in Britain as sport that tied aristocratic patrons to lower class boxers set against the tide of middle class reform in the age of enlightenment. While boxing’s popularity waned under enlightenment ideals in Britian, the sport took a different course in America, eventually becoming embraced by our middle class by the end of the nineteenth century and until recently holding a tight grip on the American imagination. A great read for certain, Gorn tells of early boxers like Yankee Sullivan, Tom Hyer, John Morrisey, and of how boxing culture was intertwined with pub life, gangs, politics, and other parts of American society. None of these early boxers would come near the fame of John L. Sullivan, and The National Police Gazette played a central role in catapulting Sullivan and his sport to the forefront of the American imagination.

The National Police Gazette began in 1845 as a sort of true crime periodical founded by Journalist George Wilkes and lawyer Enoch Camp. Camp retired in the early 50s and Wilkes sold out to retired police chief George Wahington Matsell who added racier material and illustrations until he sold out to his engravers as settlement for debts incurred who in turn handed the operation over in 1877 to Richard K. Fox, a recent Irish immigrant who had been selling advertising space for the engravers as a side job to hawking ads for the Commercial Bulletin.

Fox took the paper in new directions, dramatically increasing it’s circulation. The paper was now printed on a pinkish page, making it stand out from its competitors. Fox also increased the frequency of woodcut illustrations and began including pictures of burlesque beauties and vaudeville stars. Some modern authors have pointed to these ads and illustrations in pointing to the paper as the first girlie magazine in America. Cheap subscriptions were sold to bars, barbers, and other gentlemanly meeting places where many men might mull over the same copy of his pink paper. And in 1879, the introduced the country’s first true sports section and began covering prize-fighting, a sport still illegal in many locales and frowned upon as brutal and mean. Built on a working-class readership, Fox made boxers public figures, and his feud with John Sullivan was a spectacle of mutual promotion selling copy and spreading Sullivan’s fame. Fox would find opponents for Sullivan and defame his character while Sullivan would publicly respond and call out the publisher. The International Boxing Hall of Fame says Fox did more to popularize boxing than anyone else in the nineteenth century.

Anyways, some links…

A nice page at Everything 2 giving a brief history of the publication including some elements of its appeal to the working man

the introduction to Gene Smith’s 1972 book on the subject from the October 1972 edtion of American Heritage magazine with a great description of working conditons at the gazette and some of the more unsavory aspects of Fox’s character as well as the debt owed Fox by the likes of Hearst and Pulitzer

A modern website, cheeky homage to the paper with current events done in the gazette style. Also some neat links here to archival material, including some letters from Sullivan to the paper

And lest, I forget the cheesecake, A slideshow of the magazine during WWII featuring legs, smiles, and revealing outfits

Fox died in 1922 after his paper’s popularity had already begun to wane, and it was sold to Roswell and then to a Canadian publisher.

The links above speak to the pub’s decline after Fox’s death, here’s an issue from October 1962 when the magazine was Roswell owned. I’ve read a number of issues of this magazine from the 50s up, and I find them consistently entertaining. In a lot of ways, what happened to this magazine is pretty similar to what happened with a lot of the postwar publications. Pulpish paper was replaced by a slicker stock, more color and photos were added, all the production values upped in a sign of postwar prosperity. The pulps became men’s adventure magazines and the girlie pubs were edging more towards the likes of Playboy, Nugget, and Esquire. There’s plenty of fear and hysteria ala the cold war, but there’s plenty of material in the traditional vein of the magazine. Man’s “sports” like fishing, gambling, horsebetting, are covered along with lots of boxing. Healthy doses of cheesecake (certainly a bit more racy than the exposed anklets that aroused the male readers in the 19th century but tame by our current standards) along with true crime and sensational photos all combined to make this the nation’s longest running periodical, and this issue dabbles in all…

Get the full hi-res scan here:
The National Police Gazette v169n09 (1964-10)(Slinkynation-Dregs)

Castro! Sex! Lollo! I feel my pulse rising already



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The contents


A nice range of manly interests, I always enjoy the variety in this magazine and broad appeal



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Nice boxing content in this issue. A Sonny Liston interview and an article on Jack Johnson. A pink page hearkening back to the yesteryear of the gazette



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When I was checking archive.org for same scans of early issues (which I sadly didn’t find) I came across a neat book in Fox’s series of athletic books on Johnson and other early boxers

The Life and Battles of Jack Johnson

You can also find some other books from that series including a techinical manual by Frank Gotch for Wrestling and a Boxing Manual by James Corbett for free download here. Other books in Fox’s series included entries on poker, dog fighting, craps, Jiu Jitsu, and cock fighting.

The centerfold, those dirty communists have all the fun!



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Some other bits.





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Friends have told me that they used to have men’s sweat magazines in the barbershop and that they used to sneak a peak. This mag upholds the tradition of giving page space to the barbers that subscribe to their rag



As American as apple pie. Thanks to Slinky for the raws for this issue. You can find some more scanned issues of this publication HERE. My thanks go out to the scanner that’s been posting these issues. Next time on Darwin radio: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS

The Perfect Crime 12 / Cal Massey

I kind of glassed over Cal Massey a couple of posts back for the Teen-Age Romances post, and I’m trying to get some older material up, so here's an old scan and post that leads with one of Massey’s stories and gives some information on him.

The Perfect Crime began in 1949 and ran for 33 issues on Cross Publications, whose only other titles were Uncle Milty (based on the comedy of Milton Berle) which ran 4 issues in 1950 and a bizarre-looking title Super Circus which ran for 5 issues in 51. The covers on this series are fantastically graphic and many are presented from odd perspectives. I'm thinking Cross might have been a magazine publisher that was dabbling in comics (I wonder if they had anything to do with that The Wrestling Scene which I scanned which is advertised in this issue) but I can't really find anything about their operation. If anybody knows anything about this publisher, let me know.



Here's the full scan of issue 12. To me, this is a classic crime cover - and very graphic:

The Perfect Crime 012 (1951-05.Cross)

The first story is "Steve Duncan and the Venus de Milo Murders" drawn by Cal Massey. Apparently, Massey went to work for Cross shortly after graduating from art school in Philadelphia and went on to become a prominent artist and role model in the Atlanta black community:

Massey on how comics affected his art

Here's the splash:



Steve Duncan must have been the recurring private dick in the first story in this title and is a bit of an interesting character. He doesn't really seem to use a gun in this caper, and he navigates a web of treachery and deceit involving the black hand with only his wits about him.

Next up is "Two and Two Make Five" about what happens to a smart con when he tries to pull the job he's been thinking about while locked up. I love the commentary on the dance number:



If anybody recognizes the artist's sig (I think I see one on the splash page) lemme know. I still don't quite get the revelation in the last panel of this one. It sure seems like a grasping typee ending common in some of these goldenage stories.

Third up is "The Case of the Cracked Disc Jockey" certainly the most bizarre tale of the issue involving jealous rival disc jockeys, a headache-inducing transmitter, and a twice-deadly record:



Next up "Your Money or Your Life" told from the perspective of a cabbie driver facing his first stick up followed by "A Very Honest Fellow" about a timid bank employee that's pressured into stealing by his wife that finally finds his way.

One element I find very interesting in this comic are the text pages. Instead of the usual poorly written two page text story, this title has an editorial. This issue's editorial is titled "Marble Cake and Mayhem" about waves of immigration and their influence on the creation of street gangs. The Germans and the Dutch resent the newcomer Irish who in turn come to resent the Italians. The writer uses the metaphor of the city as a black and white layer cake made up of waves of different immigrants where every block might be separated by ethnic group. And if you have trouble walking a block over you just might wanna get your pals together and start a gang. I kind of like the placement of an editorial in a comic like this.

The last story is "Robbery Can Spell Murder" where a man dies a horrible death but manages to point the finger at his killers.

Also to note in this title are the two-page anti-crime slogans that run throughout. Some of them almost seem old testament and some are quite funny. I also like some of the funky gradient coloring in some of the panels as well, I think it lends a lot of atmosphere:









And as far as the shock value I was expecting, although this comic has a couple violent moments, it's far less gory than it might be. A lot of the violence seems to happen off-panel and it avoids going for the some of the gruesome images it could have gone for (say a shot of the victim from the front in the last story or a panel of the DJ that falls prey to the flying record).

52 pages of goodness, I say! I spend a lot more time reading an issue like this from the golden age than thumbing through the average modern comic. Not every story idea in here is executed perfectly but I got a kick out of it.

Cheers,

Darwin

Whisper, May 1950 / A Hanging in Misery

I'm not quite sure what I expected when I picked this out to scan, but this magazine seems to be more similar to a men's adventure magazine or something like The National Police Gazette than the cheesecake or gossip/scandal content the name and covers imply. I got this issue cheap to check it out, and it's really not the greatest Driben cover I've ever seen. I kind of like the peephole motif though this title uses, and I recall it being used sometimes on covers to girlie pulps. I’m starting something new today, below images of some of these pictures are links to a larger scrollable image for easier reading. I, of course, recommend downloading the full scan for perusal, but for those that are just surfing casually this is a way they can sample the fare a bit more closely.



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I guess I thought it would be a gossip mag because it was published by Robert Harrison, the same publisher of the notorious Confidential which is remembered for dishing vicious Hollywood gossip with a circulation of a whopping 5 million readers before a libel suit ended a particular brand of gossip. Here’s a wiki on Harrison and his magazines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harrison_(publisher)

Apparently, Whisper differs from the cheesecake of his other girlie mags he specialized in before Confidential in that it featured exploitative stories. I’ll point out this page that has some links to covers of some of his other mags like Beauty Parade, Wink, Titter, etc. The cover images are small but you can check out other issues of Whisper with the keyhole motif.

http://www.btinternet.com/~brmerc/girlie/Girliemag.html

The Contents:



This issue leads with the urgent question



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I like this spot illustration for “Legion of Violent Lovers”



or this graphic for an article featuring goldfish eating and hotrods



I found this spread particularly disturbing of a hanging, but it most definitely fits in with a sort of morbid voyeurism common in a whole spectrum of men’s magazines of the era.



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I had recently come across something about the last public execution in America which prompted me to do a little digging about this Roscoe Jackson. Being a freestater, I’m not surprised this happened in Galena, Missouri (between Branson and Springfield near the Arkansas border) in 1937 (just kidding showmestaters heh heh), but here’s a little more information on the hanging that tells of Roscoe’s life and crime, how his father came to see the hanging and slept with his head on the curb as revellers imbibed and partied awaiting the mornings execution:

http://websolutions.learfield.com/deathrow/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=7219F4FA-94AE-4AA6-ACF3D8BF1F09B7DF

and a couple other little pages from the White River Historical Quarterly that fill out the picture a bit more:

http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/V9/N1/f85c.htm

http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/V8/N12/S85g.htm

Murderer or no, I like his purported last words, “I am going to die like a man. Goodbye, folks. Be good to each other.”

What prompted me to look into Roscoe’s hanging was that I’d come across a different case even more fascinating from just a little earlier that also lays claim to being the last public execution in the U.S. But this hanging was even more of a circus, as the Sheriff who was to have acted as hangman was a woman, adding a whole nother level of sensationalism. This time the setting was Owensboro, Kentucky, and there’s a nice NPR page with audio and a picture gallery on the happening there, the occasion reflected upon in contemplation of the upcoming Timothy McVeigh execution which was broadcast over closed circuit TV as a sort of public execution:

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/apr/010430.execution.html

puzzled by the earlier date on this one, I stumbled across a book on the subject which is entirely posted on the web here:

http://www.geocities.com/lastpublichang/

I found the part of the expert hangman they brought in to assist the female sheriff quite interesting, but I suppose you want your hangman to be the best. The explaination for the earlier date is explained here and seems to hinge on the fact that the MO hanging was within the bounds of some temporary blockade and not truly public:

http://www.geocities.com/lastpublichang/LastPublicExecution.htm

Anyways…you never know what you’ll find in these old magazines and where the random article might lead, and this one caused some contemplation on public execution, sick and voyeuristic, but perhaps more honest than secreting the dirty deed away somewhere? Hmm…

But I hate to leave on that note, so how about a little cheesecake to coat the palette, eh? The centerfold:



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And finally the full size scan can be got here:

Whisper v03n07 (1950-05.Whisper) (Downlow-DREGS)

Cheers,

Darwination