Duke v01n01, June 1957 / A Black Playboy?

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This strange mascot appeared on the cover of all issues of the magazine, curious.

Once again, I've taken a long absence from blogging here on my digital newsstand, but I'm back today with a special treat. I did manage to fix my computer (replaced the power supply myself, feels good), but Summer is always a busy time for me with the kids home from school, so I've hardly had any time to scan or edit not to mention blog. I've carved out a couple of hours this afternoon, though, so let's take a look at a very interesting and rare publication that many have pointed to as the first African-American men's magazine, Duke. Recently, hidden in a mixed lot on eBay (the best way to find magazine steals), I was lucky enough to find a very affordable copy of the first issue to share. Get the full hi-res scan here.

I first learned of Duke on a post by Steve Lomazow here and knew I had to scan an example. Being a big fan of Chester Himes, jazz, and vintage girlie magazines in general, my interest was piqued. Later, I came across an entire (very short) chapter in Dian Hansen's second volume of her History of Men's Magazines on the subject, "The Great Black Hope," as she was fortunate enough to have access to a number of issues from the magazine's six issue run from approximately June though November of 1957. Hansen includes a number of cover images and interior spreads, and I'll go ahead and stick the text up here since she makes some insightful comments, and it serves as a nice starting point for a little further ponderance on the nature and origins of the magazine.



I have not dug deep enough to discover the magazine's backers, but I do find it interesting that Hansen speculates that Hef might have been involved. Eric, the administrator over at one of my favorite websites, http://www.vintagegirliemags.com/, independently noticed when I posted this magazine there a little while back the similarities in layout of Duke to Playboy. I speculated there that, had Hef bankrolled the magazine, we'd probably know about it by now because of his boastful ways or that maybe it would be mentioned alongside one of Hef's somewhat forgotten but great experiments from the same year, the Harvey Kurtzman edited Trump magazine that proudly lists Hefner as publisher at the top of the contributors. Still, the fact that Hansen and others are so ready to link the two publications shows what a high-class magazine Duke is.

Starting with the man chosen to edit, Dan Burley, a man with a proven record in newspapers and magazines with ties to the greatest black publishers, writers, musicians, athletes, actors, and other celebrities of the day in addition to being an excellent musician and writer/poet/journalist in his own right. I think Burley's imprint on the magazine cannot be overstated - from the musicians that appear (the magazine most probably takes its name from Ellington's nickname, the Duke even graces the cover of the November issue) to the fiction writers whose work is printed (almost entirely reprint material, I've discovered) to the athletes featured (this issue has Jesse Owens wishing the magazine well in the letters column and Burley himself pens the article on the Joe Louis Gym in Chicago, perhaps using contacts formed in his time as Sports Editor at the Chicago Daily Defender early in his career) to the inclusion of disc jockeys and other celebrities. On this blog, we'll probably be seeing more of Burley's work in future posts on Johnson magazines that he edited in the early 50s, so I'll keep an eye out for his editorial work. Of interest to fans of the Charlton-published Hepcats Jive Talk Dictionary I posted a while back is Burley's 1944 publication The Harlem Handbook of Jive:



There's a nice post on this publication at The Brooklyn Rail by Theodore Hamm here. The original publication is no doubt pricey and beyond scarce, but luckily there is a reprint available (which I've bought but, alas, not had time to read as of this posting) which bundles the handbook as well as a 1959 follow-up, Diggeth Thou? which can be found at your local bookstore or here. As to the origins of the term Bebop Burley is credited for originating, I've seen many origin stories, but who knows...

Burley's daughter keeps a website and foundation to honor his remarkable life, which I've barely touched upon, which you can visit here.

On to the meat of the magazine and perhaps a little discussion of the articles and authors within. As is typical of a first issue, a mission statement on the inside cover along with some photos of contributors. Like some other girlie magazines from this period, Duke sought to shed the stigma of the "adult" label in part by touting itself as a literary magazine, and, indeed, there are some great, great authors in here, a little of their pedigree to that point is listed. I'm experimenting a little this post by using 800 width images for my smaller size, hopefully that doesn't cause many people problems with viewing. Shrinking an entire magazine page down to 600 pixels doesn't seem right when I view my blog on most screens, so I'm going to try 800 down here (hopefully) where I've dropped below my sidebar stuff. Remember (I know I'm like a broken record with this), the images in the scan are at like 3200+ width, so they are much easier on the eyes and have not been compressed by an image hosting service, the best images I make available are the ones you get in the actual scan as even the scrollable images have been reduced to half the width and greatly compressed (on top of the compression I give the image to get it to a shareable size in the first place).


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Contents. I'd note you can ascertain where a story was originally published in the indicia information. I was scratching my head for a while trying to figure out the origin of some of these stories and asking, and it is laid out quite clearly down there in black and white, sheesh.

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The letters page in which well-wisher boost the magazine including olympic legend Jesse Owens and jazz critic Leonard Feather.

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And after these initial statements of purpose and lofty goals of literary and market success, Duke Steps Out, a couple of pages on happenings and lifestyles demonstrating Duke has friends in low places and knows the intimate habits of hip and famous. Watermelon John is agricultural entrepreneur and gambler I've never heard of before but I like the description of his dice style and of his winning 18 grand on a single roll. I'm not a craps man myself but do play a hand or few of poker now and then and enjoy stories of famous gamblers like Minnesota Fats or Amarillo Slim. Listed in the article are a few gamblers of color I've never heard of (unless Tampa Red is also the blues man by the same name - he does have gambling songs) and a colorful description of the Hot Springs gaming scene, a fun vacation town with all sorts of interesting history:



The sleeping habits of musicians. Basie is read to go even after a late night; Ellington needs his beauty rest:



The first story is from Chester Himes, a key reason I was hot to track down this magazine, as I was hoping there was a Himes short story I haven't read. Actually the story, "Night of Manhood," is an excerpt from a novel, The Third Generation, which was published in 1954. Illustration by Bob Bonfils (perhaps best remembered by aficionados of pulp art for his sleaze paperback covers, a handful you can view over at our friends at Pulp International here).

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I haven't read The Third Generation, but, as I understand it, the poor reception of this "protest novel" (a blanket term it seems is slapped on any book in which race is a central theme), is part of what drove Himes to emigrate to France. I'm not reading the excerpt printed here because I plan to read the full novel, but don't let that stop you from checking it out. I know Himes primarily from his Harlem Cycle, or the nine books he wrote regarding the cases of Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, tough as nail NYPD detectives in Harlem, trying to keep order in Harlem while their white commanding officers try and keep them from cracking too many skulls. I think it's fair to consider these books in the pulp vein (Himes did, or would say he wrote them for money, as his original inspiration to write came from reading Black Mask in prison, having been sent their for armed robbery at age 19 after being expelled from college, straying from his middle class beginnings), and I pretty much adore them. The blurb on the paperbacks call him "a black Raymond Chandler," but he's got his own satirical style that vaguely reminds me of someone like Ishmael Reed as much as anyone in the Black Mask school. A couple of his books were made into blaxploitation flicks in the 70s and another into A Rage in Harlem in 1991, but while his stories can certainly edge on farce, I don't really care for any of them and feel they all completely miss the tone of his books (which are very subtle and unsubtle at the same time).

Outside of his Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones books, Himes is remembered for his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), a story of a black man working in the LA shipyards during the war. I recently checked it out from my library and was not disappointed. It's very different from his Harlem Cycle, part Crime and Punishment, part Native Son, but very much an novel about LA, interracial sexual tension, and black life in a wartime naval yard. It is a sophisticated first novel and certainly worthy of study or just a good read. Himes followed Hollers with Lonely Crusade (1947), Cast the First Stone (1952, a prison novel, highly censored by his editors, I've got a more recent edition that is supposedly truer to the original manuscript), and the aforementioned The Third Generation, none of which met the acclaim of his first novel. His next novel, The End of a Primitive gets interestingly mentioned in this issue in a pictorial on the Ted Williams Dancers which apparently reminds the editor of Himes' latest work:


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The fact I've enjoyed everything I've read by Himes and something about this prompted me to track the book down, and it is indeed something else, unrestrained for certain. I bought the Old School Books edition which has a forward by Himes and attempts to restore the book to its original text:


Bitter, funny, and, yes, savage, this is one unrelenting book. Here's the original cover, his editor changed the title and took the liberty of editing much of the manuscript for content, even if the cover seems ready to stir controversy:



And controversial the novel is. In his preface, Himes writes that it caused fistfights and years-long disagreements between editors and men of letters. It was Himes' favorite novel, an eruption of bitterness, truthfulness, and scorn of the literary world, much of the novel being taken from his own experiences, the protagonist being a struggling writer told to avoid writing anymore "protest" novels on race. You write what you know, and the editors and literati Himes showed the book to couldn't have liked to much the editors and literati, black and white, within the novel itself. And then there's the sex and the booze and the violence and the unflinching barrenness of the main characters and the blurred lines between the (interracial) sex and the (interracial) violence. It's a heavy book, man, the ending simultaneously a tease and a release, inevitable and a tragedy and a farce all at the same time. Himes found the book very funny. Myself, I'm not so sure. It's not a book for the weak of heart, but I came away with a much better feeling for Chester even if it's far from his detective novels...I now want to check out Pinktoes, another novel on interracial romance, from 1961 which I gather

Chester Himes (big pic blown up (or actual scan size) from the contributors page):



George Schulyer, who Mencken praised and was a reactionary voice in black culture, draws a connection between blacks' tastes in liquor and their taste in women. Meat and potatoes? Art by Oscar William Neebe. A lot of innuendo at work here in a discussion of the differences between the sexual habits of whites and blacks, perhaps some stereotypes or beliefs that linger on 50+ years later...

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The next feature I'll showcase in the issue is Ray Bradbury's "The Last White Man." The whole world now knows that Ray recently passed, and he's rightfully received obituaries and in memoriam articles in all sorts of publications. Ray wrote a very accessible brand of fiction, poetic but unpretentious horror and science-fiction with a very human heart. The story here originally appeared in The Illustrated Man (1951) as "The Other Foot," an apt title as it deals with a white survivor of a nuclear holocaust traveled to the moon which has been colonized by blacks. Speculative fiction has always offered opportunities for scenarios and metaphors that make us consider our current social dilemmas in another light, and I love that Burley solicited this story for his first issue, the longest story chosen for the issue. RIP, Mr. Bradbury, I appreciate very much the great stories and novels of yours I read over the years. You left this planet a better place. I'll put up the entire story. Art on the splash from Dan Seculin.


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Next, here's an interesting article by Gene Krupa, "School for Skins," that's a response to some hubbub I've heard mentioned before, Stan Kenton's claim in 1956s that the jazz critic's polls turned a deaf ear to white musicians. Leonard Feather (who I mentioned was in the letter's column of this issue) wrote a scathing response impugning Stan's racial sensibilities (which he later apologized for, Stan employed black musicians and was friends with many black band leaders of the day) which gave Kenton a black eye he's probably never recovered from. Anyways, here's the great Gene Krupa describing his debt to black jazz musicians. As a jazz musician myself, I could never deny that much of jazz was born from the blues or that white jazz is often missing that hip swing (Krupa mentions the 40s as a crossroads in jazz when Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy and Art Blakey changed it forever with a new sound but still gives homage to Louis Armstrong and the pioneer stylists). Still it's a world music with many other influences, not every black man has rhythm, and Kenton may have a point about whites sometimes being overlooked by jazz critics (perhaps Krupa as an example). Very well-written by Gene, a Chicagoan like Burley:


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Gene is probably most famous for his time with Benny Goodman or for his bombastic style and antics. Excuse a quick youtube diversion, I couldn't help but listen to a handful as I typed this out. First his completely iconic turn in "Swing, Swing, Swing":



Gene Krupa, wildman


One final full very short story, "Sugar Brown," from Langston Hughes who spent some formative time in my hometown of Lawrence, KS, and even attended a couple of the same schools as me. My nephew now goes to one of the elementary schools he attended and there's even a newer elementary named in his honor. I'd read The Ways of White Folks as an undergrad and some of his poetry in anthologies, but I hadn't read any of his novels until digging around for this post and learning that Not Without Laughter, his first novel, somewhat autobiographical as many first novels are, is inspired by his time in Lawrence:



Though some of the characters seem rigidly typed, I very much enjoyed the book, and much of it is very tender, a nice slice of life 100 years ago. I definitely recognized some of the settings, though Lawrence 100 years ago was probably very different (as evidenced by the treatment faced by blacks, the story that Wilt Chamberlain integrated downtown lunch counters in the 50s always seemed so crazy to me in what I always felt was an oasis of enlightenment as far as Kansas goes). Still, much is the same, any Midwestern kid that has spent time by the river is greatly affected from Mark Twain on down, and Hughes' poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" speaks to time spent watching the Kaw flow by.


The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

A nice page regarding Hughes in Lawrence that talks about some of the settings and events in the book and Hughes' writing here.

Here's "Sugar Brown," splash art by Jime Lentine


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I've gone on long enough about the issue (this post has ended up taking a few sittings instead of the one I planned per usual), but here are just a few more images.

Art from Eldzier Cortier, certainly the most famous artist represented in the issue, who does a few illustrations for "Daddy-O That's Me":

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The first page of a fashion spread on Sammy Davis, Jr.

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Eleanor Crews, Duchess of the month, photo by Russ Meyer?

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A Bill Ward cartoon. Ward drew Torchy and other golden age comics and was a regular in the Goodman Humorama line. I hadn't noticed it was Ward (though his style is distinctive) using an alias until I came across this post at Vintage Sleaze. The proprietor also has another post with some Duke images including an obituary for Dan Burley here.

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Much more within including Duke on Discs by Joe Ziggy Johnson, $300,000 Bosom on Ilene Day, cartoons, "Daddy-O That's Me" by William Fisher, "Upstairs Versus Downstairs" by Booker Bradley on the age old debate between ass and breast men (ass!), dirty jokes, "August Afternoon" by the great Erskine Caldwell, "Fight Factory" and poetry from Burley, "Titan of the Talk Trade" on Al Benson, and more. Do You Dig?

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I'll keep my eye out for later issues for certain. I'd love to see more of this fantastic magazine. Next time on Darwination Scans!: undecided! I need to get the scanner going, but I also have so much old material to post, so who knows what you'll see here next time. Perhaps we'll continue on with our ongoing series on the birth of the girlie pulp, but I reserve the right to meander as I am wont...

Rest in Peace, Adam Yauch / Grand Royal 1 (1992) and 2 (1996)

So, as mentioned in the the comments on my last post, I have miraculously and serendipitously gotten my hands on the first issue of Experience (dated September 1923), and am excited to scan and post it for y'all to round out that trio of magazines and my blog posts on flappers as part of my series on the birth of the girlie pulp. The mystery on the title change will be cleared up (it's not precisely the reason we have surmised) and there is a surprising format change to a full magazine size. I didn't see the "lost" Dashiell Hammett story in here, but I'll give it a closer read when I scan it. Sadly, my desktop computer broke down this week, so I'm reduced to blogging on a silly and slow little laptop nowhere near powerful enough for much scanning or especially image processing, so there might be a little hiccup in those processes while I attempt to repair the thing (not exactly my specialty). In the meantime, I've got a post or few on subjects outside of the 20s, beginning today with a look at Grand Royal, the amazingly idiosyncratic magazine put out by the Beasties in the 90s as a tribute to Adam Yauch who departed the mortal plane last week, succumbing to cancer.

Followers of my blog know that I tend to avoid modern subjects, but MCA's death has really affected me, so this post is sort of a tribute to a somebody that touched my life and left the world a better place as well as a salute to a most excellent magazine, certainly as worthy in its way of examination as any other mag I've posted here on my blog.

It might surprise those that know me from the pulp scanning scene or my blog here to find out I'm a hip-hop fan, but then again maybe not. The collection of mags and topics I cover here are most eclectic, and hip-hop music is all about total assimilation. I can't for the life of me understand the complete inability of certain generations to dig it (it's not real music, they're just talking over stolen music, blah blah blah), but if that's you don't worry - I'm probably preaching to the choir today, anyways.

Yeah, hip-hop is in a bad way these days with a corrupt industry that glamorizes the kitschiest trappings of capitalism and propagates brain-dead hooks over lame beats, but in the golden age of rap, hip-hop was life-changing. Don't get me wrong there's still great hip-hop out there (the mind-blowing lyrics of a MF DOOM, the fierce political rap of a Mr. Lif, the goofy yet brilliant stylings of Das Racist (beastie boy descendants for sure), the jaw-dropping displays of turntable and beat craft mastery on display in Madlib's Medicine Show series or Cut Chemist's stripped-down Sound of the Police), but the main of hip-hop has become culturally bankrupt, stripped of its vitality and ability to change the consciousness of the American culture. Not like when I was a kid.

Maybe it's a crazy juxtaposition to go from some grand claims about the golden age of hip-hop to speaking on the Beastie's first major release Licensed to Ill, an admittedly juvenile album, but, man, did I love that shit when it came out just as I entered junior high. I don't know how many times my ma "confiscated" my brother and my cassettes of that album, but we'd just go buy a new copy. I remember sneaking out to the car at night so we could listen to it on the cassette player unheard. It was new, it was outrageous, it was so transgressively cool to an 80s junior high kid, totally dazzling. You have these drunken bufoons raising hell on Johnny Carson or whatever late night shows, parading around a giant inflatable penis at their stage show, Rolling Stone with the headline "Three Idiots Create a Masterpiece." No doubt that entire album (as well as the albums to follow) is burned deeply into my little brain, as I can recite the whole thing rhyme for rhyme. Rapidfire lyrics, delivered as a team, a middle finger up to respectability, an entire album about partying and fun. I still love it even if the Beasties wouldn't play those songs in later years as they grew in musicianship and conscience, largely trying to forget about some of the dumb shit they say on that album. And conscience is the right word when talking about Yauch, as he was the one who first recognized that hip hop was going off the tracks with misogyny and glorification of violence. Yauch would never do a commercial or sell out, staying true to his self. Yauch came to reject the skeezy lyrics of "Girls" or "She's Crafty" quickly and by the release of Ill Communication on "Sure Shot" raps:

I Want To Say a Little Something That's Long Overdue
The Disrespect To Women Has Got To Be Through
To All The Mothers And Sisters And The Wives And Friends
I Want To Offer My Love And Respect To The End.

My little 6 year old girl asked me last week if there's ever been a woman president and then asked me incredulously why not. As a father, it's truly heartbreaking to have to answer a question like that, and I absolutely respect how the Beastie Boys matured over the years in offering a conscious message and used their platform to lobby for personal and social change. From the irreverent but groundbreaking Licensed to Ill to the sampling masterpiece Paul's Boutique to the instrumental funk grooves of Check Your Head to the bombastic attack of Ill Communication to the electronic space jam of the very eclectic Hello Nasty up through their latest release, the Beasties are always evolving. The "Fight for Your Right (revisited)" video, from their newly released album and written and directed by Yauch himself, is sort of a genius retrospective, gut-busting.

Adam was the laid-back beastie, "cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce," and anchored the circus. What a damn shame to see him go, I completely enjoyed their last album and the instrumental album before that and spent last weekend spinning all their albums on my record player in remembrance. It's been a real blow to generation X. A reminder of our own mortality maybe but really a loss of one of the guys that made my generation what it is, RIP, dude.

Sigh.

Let's take a quick look, then, at the first two issues of Grand Royal, a fondly remembered - if hard to get your hands on - magazine from the days when the independent music scene was burgeoning on the heels of the Nirvana explosion. I'm going to try and not post too many pages and flood out the post, so download and read them if you desire to understand the full goodness of these mags. It's a very well-crafted magazine with contributions from all Beasties as well as some issues being edited by Spike Jonze (who directed their famous "Sabotage" vid -I blogged about his involvement in BMX mags and its influence on his later career on another nostalgia-seeped post here).

Grand Royal 01 (1993) (DREGS).cbr

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Get the full hi-res scan here.

Great cover, two of the coolest cats ever. Bruce Lee in his yellow suit that Tarantino would later adorn Uma with in Kill Bill fights Kareem from Game of Death, iconic cool.


I've seen circulation numbers varying from 5,000 to 10,000 for this issue and have heard various reasons why so few copies exist. What I do know for certain is that for a 20 year old magazine, it's damn hard to find a copy. I've seen them go for over a hundred in so-so shape before. There's no reason for such scarcity in the digital age, my friends, have your own copy, eh?

Contents. Mike D interviews Russell Simmons, interview with Clement Dodd, Mike D interviews Q-Tip, MCA on Tibet, Top 10s, At Home and on the Road with the Beastie Boys, Bob Mack interviews Luscious Jackson, A Conversation with DJ Hurricane, R.D. Bone and Lawrence Hubbard's Real Deal Comix, Mike D interviews the Pharcyde, What's Up with George Clinton, The Great GAP Conspiracy, Joey Buttafuoco's Fashion Tips, Bruce Lee - Still Dope After All These Years, Enter the Hornet, Gene Stanley interview, record reviews, much more.


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On the page following the introduction, Adam Yauch immediately feels the need to clarify something regarding the Pharcyde photo. I remember reading this issue at my pal Jake's house and this bit I remember very clearly, good for Yauch.

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It's this photo he's talking about. No doubt the Pharcyde reget some of their early lyrics themselves. Guns are bad or at the very least aren't to be joked about, glorified, or played with, mmkay?



And I'll go ahead and post the whole Pharcyde interview. Photos by Spike Jonze who did their "Drop" video and later Fatlip's solo tune, "What's Up, Fatlip?", both great vids. My yellow and blue double album of Pharcyde's first is a fave record. Labcabincalifornia is an under-recognized album, too.

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Mike D interviews Q-Tip. If you're a Tribe fan, check out the new Michael Rapaport doc, it's incredible. Word is Q-Tip doesn't like it because he comes off as a controlling freak, but really it just lets out his idiosyncratic side, we love you just the way you are, Tip. It took some of that to pull it all together. A touching, intimate portrait of the band. On a personal note, I appreciate the time given in the movie to Phife's battle with Type I Diabetes (he's pretty much a poster child for how not to cope with the disease). My girl's Type I, and every bit of awareness helps faster diagnosis, better treatment, and moves us all closer to a cure.

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I'll just post links to bigger images for some of this stuff, shrinking down a full page to 600 pixel width doesn't do any good anyways. Remember if you want the best quality and width just download the scans, eh? Yauch on Tibet, an issue that would come to be very dear to him. I hope his study helped bring him peace in the end.
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Top 10 Feuds
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George Clinton Artwork
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The Joey fashion pages, LOL

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The Gap Conspiracy. Believe. Two pages.
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Mike D interviews Kareem on Bruce Lee
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Yauch on his snowboarding adventures.
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Grand Royal 02 (1996) (DREGS).cbr

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Get the full hi-res scan here.

The line on the spine for this second issue that came out a whopping four years after the first is so good - "Long Awaited, Much Anticipated, Grossly Outdated" HAR.

I'm quickly running out of blogging time (a few hours goes so fast!!), so I can only put up the infamous mullet article. This is perhaps the most notorious issue of the mag's six issue run.

Contents.Highlights include the great Lee Perry article/interview, an interview with Ted "off his fucking rocker" Nugent, Timothy Leary: CIA Agent? and much, much, more. One last note, I can't help but feel a little sadness looking at all the advertisements adn how vital the music scene of the early 90s was compared to what's going on now, sad. Some great graphics work in the advertisements, too.

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The History of the mullet, brilliant.

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The flexidisk in my copy is used beyond ripping but there's a nice version of Biz doing "Bennie and the Jets." As a substitute, here's a youtube link of a more ornate version. Biz gives a shout out to Yauch on the birth of his girl, awww. And just when I was all cheered up after looking through these high-larioius mags.



Enjoy the mags. We'll miss you, MCA.

Have You Ever Been Experienced? / Flapper's Experience, October 1925

Flapper's Experience (1925-10.Experience)(12 missing pgs)(D&M)

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Good lord, it's been 2 months since my last post - I'm so easily distracted. Basketball (Rock Chalk Jayhawk, GO GRIZZ) has occupied much of my dwindling free time the last couple of months, but I've carved out a few hours here to type about the next magazine in my series on the birth of the girlie pulp and continue a discussion of that type at the heart of much 20s revolution, the flapper. I've certainly lost my train of thought, but that's never stopped me from stumbling on before, so...

Today, I offer the Flapper's Experience from October of 1925, an evolution from the incarnation in the last post and a bit of a mystery as to its exact lineage. As I mentioned in the last post, I believe that first run of The Flapper is represented in toto by the seven issues lined out here in this Flickr set, running consecutively from May 1922 through November of 1922. I have seen various issues of this seven printed in different cover colors, leading me to believe that demand was high enough for numerous printings. Phil Stephensen-Payne's Galactic Central site shows a red variant for the issue I posted here. These seven issues are the only issues in the WorldCat record of library holdings.

After this intial run, the waters are quite murky, though images of one cover demonstrate that the magazine did indeed continue on under the same title, though with a color cover and I'm guessing more interior graphics. The sole issue of I've seen (and only cover images of that) of The Flapper after those original seven issues is the May 1923 issue, the Anniversary Number, which Doug Ellis shows a thumbnail cover of in Uncovered: The Hidden Art of the Girlie Pulp, sorry about the blurriness - blown-up thumbnail:



David Earle has a larger, though black and white, reproduction of this lovely cover (I can't peg the artist, I would absolutely love to own a copy) in his Re-Covering Modernism: Pulps, Paperbacks, and the Prejudice of Form and describes the contents. I'll just scan the entire paragraph here as the surrounding sentences speak to the flapper's role in some other magazines I'll be looking at in this series:



It's the Anniversary Number, but I suspect it was more of a re-launch and perhaps a one-off at that. David Sloane's Index, American Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals, does note that the last copyrighted issue was volume 2 number 6 (which is actually the seventh issue) but also gives the date of the last issue as June 1923, so perhaps there was one more issue after the one above with the color cover or earlier issues outside of the first seven even if I've never seen evidence thereof. Of course, the copyright records for periodicals of the day often list issues that were never actually produced or fail to mention issues that actually do exist, so they can be misleading. A good number of the catalogs of copyright entries for periodicals have recently been added to archive.org here, by the by, for any interested in an excellent resource for information on forgotten and not-so-forgotten periodicals.

Why The Flapper petered out, I don't know, as the various colored printings and fan letters would seem to indicate some popularity. Perhaps the faddish-nature or newness of the term "Flapper" began to wear off because the publishers jetted the name and look for a new magazine they simply titled Experience which remained a digest format though the covers started to use glamor shots, adopting a look closer to a true story/confessions magazine, the first issue of the new title being issued in the Fall of 1923. Galactic Central's entry for this group of magazines gives the first issue of Experience an October date. I've never come across any issues of Experience but the magazine is noted for publishing a couple of early Dashiell Hammett stories, one of which has been reprinted in Lost Stories which collects some of Hammett's uneven early work from magazines like Smart Set, 10 Story Book, and True Detective Mysteries. Don Herron writes about tracking down the February 1925 issue of Experience and investigating other "lost" works of Hammett on his blog here. I'll put up the cover images of the issue as well as the cover of the January 1925 issue so you can see what I mean about the confessions type look of the cover:





The only WorldCat holdings I can find for Experience are at Penn State which has some issues bound with The Flapper. Their holdings begin with a v01n03 dated December 1923, so that doesn't clear up the exact date of the first issue for me (not that such details matter to anyone but crazy types like myself):



Perhaps a Hammett scholar in the area might take a look and see if the missing story is in one of these 1924 issues. I'll be keeping my eyes out for any copies of the magazine that hit eBay, Hammett or no, as I'd like to see the contents of an issue. In any case, Experience ran from 1923 on into 1925 before the name changed to Flapper's Experience and the look reverted to something more in line with the original magazine, even if the interior was more graphically sophisticated with illustrations and photographs. David Sloane's index entry for the publication:



Sloane is confused here about Experimenter being the publisher (that was the famed Hugo Gernsback's outfit, the names are so close this is an understandable mistake, I'll be posting an issue of his French Humor later in this series when I get back to the French influence), but I think his dates for Flapper's Experience starting in early-mid-1925 and running through mid 1926 are about right. The only issues of Flapper's Experience I found in WorldCat holdings are in a women's collection at Bowling Green here and run intermittently from April 1925 to August of 1926.

A note also on Sloane, definitely disregard the end note that the publications are unrelated (as if you haven't being following the line I've laid out), Phil Love, in a 1925 issue of Comics and Movies which the Strippers Guide blog has reprinted here, includes in an informal resume that, "I got a job as staff artist with The Baltimore Times, now extinct. Later I went with a local commercial artist as an apprentice but soon decided that commercial art held no charms for me. I quit and went to Chicago as art editor and associate editor of The Flapper (later Experience, now Flapper's Experience) to which I had been contributing for some time." Also, in the issue I'm sharing today, in the My Greatest Thrill section, a young Flapper ties the two magazines together (I'll post that bit later, see the caption regarding a pink nightie).

One more tidbit from Sloane's index is that he mentions that in 1925 Flapper's Experience was declared undeliverable by the post office along with Film Fun, although both were found to be mild by judge and juries. This was probably part of a surge of indignation mid-decade regarding all these magazines I'm posting, and I'll have forthcoming posts on this moral backlash later in the series as well. Truly, there is little objectionable in Flapper's Experience as we'll see here as I move away from this boring bibliographical information that has surely put all but the most die hard of periodical detective to sleep. One last note before I go on, though. From all this guesswork I'm doing and from the scant library holdings of these periodicals, I hope I pass along the necessity for popular scanning of such magazines as the one I'm sharing today. Few, if any copies, of some of these magazines are held in libraries today, and if they are, they aren't nearly accessible enough given the technologies of the digital age. Today's issue of Flapper's Experience is the only issue I've ever seen on eBay, so the issue you might miraculously come across in your granny's attic of some old magazine might be the last one on Earth, so scan it and share it!

Anyways, I'll get off my soapbox and into the meat of this magazine and the ever-entertaining subject of the flapper. It's a different magazine in many ways from the issue I shared in the last post, though both are very authentic in their appreciation of their subject, the girls themselves.

I'll lead with one of the many photos from the magazine, much better printed than the few in the first issue I shared. A flapper-to-be? Pauline Zelznick, next to one of those puzzling cartoons.


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Flapper's Experience is less concerned than The Flapper in defining exactly what a flapper is, a couple of years having passed and America now having a good idea what kind of girl identifies herself as a flapper, the faddish aspect perhaps having passed but influence and type demonstrating staying power, bobbed hair and a "modern" attitude perhaps being the norm amongst the girls throughout the 20s, a decade given to faddishness (pole sitting, the aviation craze, the Charleston, playing the stock market, and many others). Amongst the fads, though, were many trends that would endure well into the century, particularly among women. Women would take up smoking, drinking in public (the illicit nature of the speakeasy broke the taboo of women at the rail), and most noticeably the fairer sex took to cosmetics in ways they never had before. In many ways, I find this counter-intuitive. The trends seem to me towards a more "ready to go", natural type of look. Gone were the corsets and brassieres; women might want to look boyish almost and avoid appearing fussy. But this was also a time of fashion an glamor as well as a period when advertising came into full bloom. Last time, I mentioned I'd been reading Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, and he has an excellent chapter in there titled The Revolution in Manners and Morals that speaks to the coming of age of a generation that had rejected many of the old ways of thinking (probably the chapter I found most interesting and well-written, though I did also appreciate his take on the Florida real estate boom and the market meltdown of 1929, not so different from our own recent woes - overall, it's a great book). Allen writes of the cosmetics boom:



A couple of advertisements from the inner front cover demonstrate this new concern with cosmetics, I like the one for "Sheik Lure".



There are many mentions within the mag of "the sheik" type as different girls favorite type of man no doubt a reference to the immense popularity of the films of Rudolph Valentino. An offshoot perhaps of this increased use of cosmetics and the rise of fashion is a type found in many movies and stories from the 20s - the department store girl. So prevalent is she that Allen mentions her, too:



The department store girl shows up in this issue as the heroine of a Jack Woodford story, "Love and Nothing But." I rather like Woodford (though he is terribly uneven), perhaps the most prolific author from the girlie pulps who we've seen before on this blog here in his selection "Anybody Can Write a Sex Novel" from 10 Story Book and probably other places as well. I'll go ahead and put up the whole story, as it demonstrates a couple of common conventions from the romance pulps - a girl must choose between suitors, one wealthy and one not-so and also the surprise ending in which she gets to have her cake and eat it too.


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On the two pages above, you can see the photographs of some 20s flappers, certainly a key attraction in the magazine. The page above tells you that you are free to write any of the girls pictured, almost always in their bathing suits (please include 12 cents), and herein lies much of the charm of the publication, as a sort of hub for young people to share their stories and meet each other. The authenticity of the mag comes from the fact that most of the material is submitted by the readers themselves. In an age before online dating, this magazine served to hook up flappers and flippers (their male counterpart). You might even find your great or great great grandmother in here looking to find a man, oh my. Indeed, the main benefit of joining the National Flapper's Flock which we were introduced to last post seems to be meeting members of the opposite sex. The last pages of the magazine (sadly some are missing) are largely comprised of small-type entries of men and women in your area.

Beyond the superficial qualities of the flapper, it is perhaps her playfulness which she is most identified with, and the lead editorial dispenses sound advice in this department. Life's too short not to have some fun every day:


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The office secretary goes to the beach, jokes of various (usually low) caliber.


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A nice pages with some color of actress Shirley Dahl, surrounding art-deco style artwork from Donald Denton:

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In an era that saw an explosion of magazines in general and the singular explosion of the genre of confessions or true story magazines behind the success of Bernarr MacFadden's True Story, most stories in which were anything but true and written by staff writers, Flapper's Experience capitalizes on the trend and is made up of a more-authentic variety of true story, very brief stories submitted by readers, each of whom gets an Experience Annual if their story is printed. There are "Weird Happenings" in a decade that was very interested in ghost stories:



or "My Most Embarrassing Moment":



or "My First Kiss":



Some of the letters are good, some bad, some trifling and some not at all trifling. I think the editor must surely be contrasting the last two in "My Greatest Sorrow." I wouldn't care to wager whether either story is true, but one is a bit more weighty than the other:


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I like how the editors joke that they've bought a reader a nightie, scandalous:



There's not only pictures of Flappers in here, a couple of "Flippers" for the girls to write to:

Earle Klingensmith of Sheffield, Ohio


Oscar Klatt of Sheboygan, Wis.


2 reasons:



The back cover puns on the Charleston.


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Again, thanks to McCoy for the edit work and remember that you can grab better quality images directly from the scan than these that have been stepped on by the image hosting service or reduced in width by me here.

Enjoy the issue! So we've discussed the flapper as one ingredient of the girlie pulp, next time in this series, another key ingredient - SEX!?!?