Click February 1938 v01n01

Scrollable Image

It's been a long, busy week, and I've just gotten back from the final home game of the Memphis Grizzlies, but I've got a little time for a short post tonight that's a follow up to the post a couple back on Look and the emergence of the variety photo magazine of the late thirties. My pal McCoy has just scanned a key issue in the canon of the 20th century American magazine, and it needs sharing with a wider audience! It is a fine scan of Click v01n01 from February of 1938 with Dorothy Lamour adorning the cover, and the full scan is available here.

If Look was some sort of counter-balance to Life in its inclusion of entertainment and sensational material, appealing to a wider audience, then Click took this notion even further. Too far, some believed, as Steven Lomazow's American Periodicals: A Collector's Manual and Reference Guide notes that Click was at times deemed obscene enough to be banned by Canada and the Catholic Church. Indeed, I was a bit flabbergasted to find a couple of artfully done nudes in the issue, as I tend to think of the mainstream magazines of the mid and late 30s as having totally abandoned the free-wheeling spirit that permeated the magazines of the roaring 20s. I'd note that the gallery photos in this issue are in no way obscene and many have artistic qualities. And perhaps they seem more so in contrast to the shocking character of many of the articles. But let's put up some pages so you can judge for yourself, eh?

What makes kosher meat kosher? Err, there's more here than I really needed to know. Ah, well, modern society is awfully out of touch with how food gets on our table, so seeing such things is a healthy reminder of where our meat comes from. Not that our modern automated process mirrors the old school approach taken here...


Scrollable Image


Scrollable Image

Whew, looking into the workings of this grisly business makes you feel like a voyeur, at least you aren't like THESE PEOPLE, oh my. Surely, the irony here isn't lost on the magazine creators - Click certainly seems a wholehearted experiment in peeping...


Scrollable Image

And if the perennial subject of peeping toms doesn't excite you, the next article should, as the subject of WHITE SLAVERY sold many a magazine and must have been some sort of great fear for many an American for many years of the 20th century as the subject seems to pop up from the illustrated newspapers into the pulps and variety mags and into the sweat mags spanning a good majority of the century as a hot topic for the tabloid-minded. This issue devotes a whopping 6 pages to the subject, I'm only going to post the first.


Scrollable Image

And following the article on white slavery, blood-thirsty Nazi youth! Is this the old-school equivalent of backyard extreme wrestling?


Scrollable Image

From Violence to Sex? How to Sleep with a Stranger?!?


Scrollable Image

Hey! Damn misleading headlines, grumble, grumble. A fun article, though. I sure hate sharing a hotel bed with anybody but my wife - family, friend, stranger, or no...And a couple of samples from the gallery/cartoon pages. Carole Lombard, what a beauty...


Scrollable Image

Click contained a handful of color pages which add charm. Usually it's the cartoon pages that get the color treatment, but not always.


Scrollable Image

The last sample pages I'll put up from the issue are both pages from an article on Washouts or the type of women that men don't like to date. Most of these behaviors are indeed irksome, though I admit I find a number of these supposed turn-offs rather endearing and I imagine I'm not the only one...


Scrollable Image


Scrollable Image

Also included in the issue (there's no contents page) in addition to cartoons and gallery photos are articles on pain and hypnotism, driftwood art, baby photos of stars, the secret of Jeanette MacDonald's popularity, nose-bobbing, women doing a man's job, Mae West and a dummy, a Zulu wedding, entertainment news, bee stings: a cure for rheumatism?, and more. Big thanks to McCoy for scanning this key issue! While I'm at it, here's a couple more of this title that he has scanned - thanks for all your hard work, bud.

Click v02n02 March 1939

Scrollable Image
Get the full issue here.

Click v02n05 June 1939

Scrollable Image
Get the full issue here.

Tomorrow! Another McCoy scan from last week, a fantastic novelty catalog I just have to get up here....And later this week - how to edit - some technical tips and some thoughts on presentation...