Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The New Eve - May 1926



An older scan tonight but I thought I'd take a chance to get it up here on my blog.

This magazine is exactly the sort of artifact I'm most happy to scan. I came across this magazine in my searches for an issue of The Flapper and think it's absolutely one of the most beautiful mags I've had the pleasure to scan. I couldn't find any information about this publication, so it seems pretty obscure and I don't know how long it lasted. It's printed on a nice slick paper and the cover stock texture is very neat. It's a superbly crafted magazine, with neat ink colors - I must say it's aged very beautifully over the years. I didn't do too much to the raw scans of this one just because it's so darn nice just the way it is.

Flappers and roaring 20s culture looms large in my imagination as a cool period in American culture. There was a great sense of style and also a sense of the possibilities for the modern era. In the magazines, there was also a surplus of production values, and the mags from the mid-20s are at their thickest, widest dimensions, and with most photos and pictures (seemingly we had money to burn). I like this snippet on the inside front cover:



This idea of shedding the conventions of the past is very strong in modernism. Women had gained suffrage and there really wasn't this strong of a feminist movement again until the 70s. The mag starts with a set of photos of follies girls. I don't know much about the history of the follies, but they are most certainly a precursor to the burlesque that was to follow, tho probably more upper-crusty. Don't the French still have that sort of revue? Anyways, a couple of the lovely starlets:





There's also a piece of fiction in here (amazingly almost every kind of magazine used to have at least a little fiction in there it seems, we have all sorts of stories to preserve in all sorts of magazines we don't even start to have scanned examples of):



I'm not sure what all W. Carey Wonderly wrote in the magazines, but he did seem to have something of a career as a screenwriter:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938878/


There's also fashion, design, and lifestyle sort of articles within these pages. Definitely an interesting snapshot of an earlier time.

Enjoy!

Darwin

Get the scan here.

7 comments:

John Smith said...

Great magazine!. I have collected the Artist and Models style of pulp for years and they are a different view of the '20s. I can see the swirl of "plain brown rappers".

The download of the magazine is in .cbr format and is incompatable to Windows it seems. Do you have any thoughts of using another format?

darwination said...

Sorry, but I only release scans in .cbr format. I've got some instructions that run along the side of my blog on what programs I recommend for Windows users. Sorry, but no tips for mac users.

John Smith said...

Thanks for pointing that out. I do appreciate it!

David Crawford said...

The photo of "Rose Marie Haynes" looks very similar to Louise Brooks. I could find no other reference to Haynes as a Carroll girl, but I did find reference to a 1926 lawsuit against De Mirjian by Brooks attempting to prevent him from releasing draped nudes of her. Do you think this could be Brooks?

John Smith said...

I don't think that it is Brooks. Most of the nudes, probably all of them, have been accounted for. Ms Haynes was probably one of the many chorus girls in the Vanities, Scandals or even Follies. She was probably willing to pose nude to get ahead, then...nothing. A SOMEWHAT similar situation befell Norma Shearer, who joined the Follies. The first thing that she did was pose nude for Alfred Cheney Johnston. When the proofs were reviewed, Ziegfeld decided not to hire Ms Shearer because she was "knock kneed". Sadly, she went onto appear in a few films with MGM, marrying an MGM employee who died young. But that is all that I know about her. ;)

This does look a bit like a De Mirjian picture, but since it is from a pulp it is more likely to be a Hesser

FLORENCE CERAMICS.. A STORY OF OUR LIVES. said...

Is there any mention of Edwin Bower Hesser in this magazine?
His third wife was a model named Eve.
When Hesser died in 1962 his wife Eve remained living in Canoga Park CA. They lived in a former home of Jean Harlow.
In 1965 my parents were notified of Eve Hesser's condition.Eve's sisiter was our live in houskeeper in Spokane Wa.
Eve had gone over the edge and was living ingreat dispair. My parents, brother and I drove to CA to rescue her. Eve returned to Spokane with us.
She and her sisters were daughter of Clarence Cunningham an MD. Her mother was an opera singer.
The girls were raised in a boarding school ran by the order of the Holy Names Sisters of Spokane.
If we had only know to bring the treasures from Hessers art studio. My mom called the St. Vincent De-Paul society to come and take away what ever was of use to them.
I see that many of the Hesser papers ended up in the UCLA library.
Doug Foland
Portland OR.
sweetguypdx43@aol.com

FLORENCE CERAMICS.. A STORY OF OUR LIVES. said...

A Tribute To Edwin Bower Hesser and His Wife Eve. By Doug Foland.
I have just finished a lengthy color and black and white book
of Hesser's work.
From the 1920's of Broadway to the hills of Canoga Park CA.
My family knew Eva Cunningham Hesser.
Doug Foland Portland OR.
sweetguypdx43@aol.com