Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Saturday Evening Post, January 4th 1936 / J.C. Leyendecker New Year's Baby

It's always out with the new and in with the old here at Darwination Scans, but I'll take pause to reflect that it was a very good year on our little blog here and to promise even more discovery and stimulation in the year to come.

It's been a very good year in my family life and a great year for magazine scans, so let's break out the bubbly, baby. I found tonight's magazine in a little antique store a block or two past the end of Boulder, Colorado's downtown while on vacation a Summer or two ago. It was in bad shape and overpriced but magic!


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Who can divine what the future holds, eh? Brilliant composition here - all the wonderful and twisting curves, all the different reflective surfaces, the enchantingly cute baby, the rich detail of a scene full of exotic objects -fantastic!

The New Year's Baby, a long-time American icon, first appeared on the Post's cover in 1906 and it was the last cover Leyendecker would do for the post in 1943. I went looking for a gallery of them all put together, but alas, no blogger has attempted this feat yet. I don't know much about Leyendecker, but I can instantly recognize his distinct style. Certainly a giant in American illustration. For an introduction I'll point you to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.'s fantastic website, BPIB. Here's his page on Leyendecker with bio and many images. There is also a nice gallery here at the excellent American Art Archives site. And if you are interested in the artist, you are in luck, there's a new edition of his work that just came out in 2008 by Laurence and Judy Cutler. My wife got it for me for X-mas, and it looks great. There's a nice review of the book with pictures here.

Thanks again to McCoy for his outstanding restoration work on the cover and for his edit of this magazine. Not to short-shrift, but I posted this one on a whim, so I will quickly post the contents and a handful of samples from this great slick magazine as New Year's Eve awaits...Enjoy and Happy New Year!

The Saturday Evening Post v208n27 (1936-01-04)(Darwination-McCoy).cbr
Get the scan here!

Contents. A fellow pulp scanner pointed out to me that The Hurricane which begins this issue was adapted as a John Ford film, I'll have to track it down. I find the pre-war look at Japan interesting, and there's lots of good fiction in here along with some very nice illustrations and vintage advertising.


Samples.

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And remember party-goers, in the morning, when you welcome the shining new year still feeling the excesses of the previous, there is a cure!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

A Follow-Up / Snap 1941-04 & Jest 1942-07

A Merry Christmas to everyone! Santa brought me mostly books this year, but what more can a guy want? I spent a nice afternoon yesterday thumbing some great new books on J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Saunders, and Robert Maguire, along with the second volume of Bad Mags. For a scanner/collector like me, that means writing down many a scan target, so I'd guess we'll see some blogging on some of these subjects in the year to come.

I promised sports pulp, and indeed I will deliver next time, but for now a quick follow-up to Spot. Sorting my incoming scans folder last night, I came across a couple of scans from my friend McCoy that fill out my ramblings from last time on Spot. So today, I figured I'll post some covers and samples for two other four-lettered magazines from the approximate time period of Spot with a similar format. Trends come and go in the magazine industry, and any successful magazine is bound to have imitators. And that's not to say all the imitators of a trend are of lesser quality or don't bring in fresh approaches within the theme. Or that originators don't in turn incorporate facets of an imitator's magazine. Or that oft-times separate magazines are feeding from same trends in culture and printing technology.

In any case, here's two magazines very much in the vein of Spot, oversized, thin, and jam-packed with photos, all less risque than their predecessors in the girlie pulp and risque humor publications. Maybe the big pages were more in-step with the idea of the pin-up, more suitable for the soldiers headed off to war. Maybe the paper rationing equated to using a format to create the illusion of bigness for a smaller amount of paper. Giant pages but very thin magazines. McCoy tels me he has a couple more magazines that might fall into this genre is his stack, so there are yet more titles of this magazine to explore. But today, for your perusal, the April 1941 issue of Snap and the July 1942 issue of Jest!

Snap v01n05 (1941-04).Get the scan here.

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A pictorial on censored kisses.

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And I'll post in full the pictorial on the dangers of tourist cabins. I got a kick out of this one, where were all the tourist cabins when I was in high school, dammit?!


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and onto...

Jest v01n06 (1942-07). Get the scan here.

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This cover is really something else. I'm not sure if it's a cute cover gone awry or what. A mixture of dirty and weird, I get a sleazy vibe, har har

A recipe for cheesecake, eh?

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Pin-ups and their pets, a peek at a peke?

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Lastly, a war bonds cartoon from Courtney Dunkel. Dunkel worked in some of the earliest comics for Dell in the 20s, did cartoon work for Judge in the 30s, and worked on syndicated strips at various points in his career. His lambiek page is here.


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Once again, thank you McCoy for these scans and all your work in the digital preservation of vintage magazines. You're definitely one of the guys on the scan scene that is making it happen.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Spot, October 1940 / Evolution of the Girlie Magazine

Well I seem to have taken a bit of a breather here from the posting, but let's get back at it, shall we.

Up tonight, the second issue of Spot, a thin but over-sized burlesque magazine from October of 1940. I was just googling to confirm that the publisher listed, Country Press, Inc., is as I suspected a Fawcett operation and came across an article from Time in the same month of publication as our issue tonight. I think it sets the scene wonderfully, check it out:

The Press: Sewage Disposal from Time 1940-10-14

Great stuff! The culprit here is Man to Man, and look at the contributors. In a publicity stunt, a distributor is picked up and hauled in. I get the general feeling that the mid-30s witnessed a general tightening of the public morals. The country had seen what the free-wheelin' living of the 20s had wrought and seems to have tightened up. Catholic groups were pressuring newsstands to clean it up and city ordinances were drafted to prohibit sale or crack down on under the counter sales of spicy materials. But whatever the cause, the mid-late 30s saw the end of the classic girlie pulp. Tattle Tales, Gay Parisienne, Paris Nights, Pep Stories, etc. would all cease publication during this period. I'm not sure what I'll find yet, but I think there are some interesting publications in this period of uncertainty. The girlie pulp had died, but at the same time it was becoming possible to use much more photography cheaply in your publications. The magazines of the 40s are very visual in their exploration of the use of photos. If anything, they are almost overrun with photos. Time, Look, and Pic are the sort of magazine I'm thinking of, big and beautiful to behold. I can see how a publisher of burlesque material could see the potential, and that's where this magazine comes in. Soon magazines like Harrison's Beauty Parade (though lacking nudes) would begin to point to a standard format for men's magazines that Playboy would come to replace as the general standard in men's magazines. Of course, Playboy would draw on the traditions of the humor/cartoon magazines as well which were numerous in the 40s. Anyways, I'm rambling but I suspect there are more magazines like this one from the period. I've been reading Dian Hanson's volumes on the history of Men's Magazines, so I've got more ruminating on this whole area to do before I can get much of a grasp on it. But on to tonight's magazine, Spot! And before I begin I can't forget to thank McCoy for his edit work on tonight's issue. Once again, he's done a splendid job and his help allows me to get many more magazines done than I might otherwise, so it is much appreciated.

A hip title by me, the spot is the place to be.


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Contortionists, whew. I'm not sure if it's sexy or icky, but what a cover. I'm reminded of the strange series Bolles did for Cupid's Capers earlier in the 30s. It makes for an eye-catching cover, I mean, I'd pick it off the rack and check it out for sure.

Stories include A New Twist on Broadway, Big City for a Day, Bathing Suits from a Bottle, Big Game American Style, Carburetor Carnival, Paulette Always Gets Her Man, The Hard Road to Screen Fame, Blow-Ups, Hollywood's Good Girl Lets Go!, A Hot Time in the Old Town, It's Fun to Be Fooled - Even When You're a Magician, It's a Living, Manhattan Beach, and Jump Joint on the Delta, my favorite feature, a ride to the wild side exploring a black juke joint in New Orleans a reflection of race attitudes of the day, fascinated and condescending at the same time.

Spot v01n02 (1940-10.Country Press)(Darwination-McCoy).cbr
Get the scan of the entire magazine here.

The indicia page:

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The editor, Fred Feldkamp, has a wiki here. It's nice to see both house photographers get some time up front like this.

I like the Bathing Suits From a Bottle article. I'll post it in it's entirety below. I especially like the second page where the editor poses the article as a conundrum for the censors. A bit of flaunting the question, I love it.


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Yes, flaunting the naughty laughs, humor and sex make great bedfellows in the magazines. I don't doubt that it's the occasional risque photo like this that sold many a magazine.



There is certainly a voyeuristic element here, traveling from spot to spot. The page on sunbathing almost looks like it was shot from a peeping tom's point of view.


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We're all just tourists through these exotic spots and locales, so maybe it's even safe to explore how the other half lives, eh? Here's the article on New Orleans' Tick Tock Tavern. The language no doubt offends modern-PC sensibilities, but I think it's a lovely pictorial besides its value as a barometer of race perceptions c.1940.


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I'll leave you with my own little moment of zen.



Next up, sports pulp!