Wild Cherries v01n03, October 1933 / Worth Carnahan Pt. 4, Publisher

Continuing our series on Worth Carnahan tonight here at Darwin Scans, a rarity - the third issue of one of the more outrageously named magazines of the day, Wild Cherries.

Get a closer look at the cover at Flickr.

Get the full high-res scan here: Wild Cherries v01n03 (1933-10.Publications Service Syndicate) (Darwination).cbr

or you can read online or download alternate formats at the Internet Archive here.

In earlier posts, we had an introduction to Worth Carnahan in a look at some of his work with the Bohemia group for Joey Burten, we took a look at his covers for some of Harry Donenfeld's earliest girlies, and looked at Beer, a pamphlet Carnahan published as part of the We Want Beer movement.

Beer was published in June 1932, and Wild Cherries, which Carnahan seems to recall as his lone but failed solo adventure in magazine publishing, began with the first issue in Summer of 1933 and would run four issues until December of the same year.  I'd note that Carnahan had other pots on the stove as well at the time, as he produced a illustrated pamphlet in 1932 for Franklin D. Roosevelt and also did freelance cover work for other magazine titles like Hot-Cha and Honeymoon Tales.  In fact when it comes to his involvement in Wild Cherries, I was somewhat surprised to see how little of the art in this third issue (besides the distinctive covers) is Carnahan's.  Conversely, I do get the sense that the excellent layout and design work is completely his handiwork.  It's very possible that more of his own art is in some of the other issues, though.  Before we explore the third issue I've scanned  for this post, let's get the other three covers up to complete the gallery.  These first two images come from waterfowlstampsandmore's excellent series on Carnahan from the vantage of his later career designing stamps for the state of Tennessee and the last one is likely an eBay image.

Wild Cherries 1933-Summer v01n01.Publications Service Syndicate cover Worth B. Carnahan 

Sometimes older varieties of dirty jokes can escape the modern reader, but there's not much mystery that a little magazine named Wild Cherries is going to be naughty.  The orchard and orchard walls feature prominently in the art of French magazine La Vie Parisienne which was a great influence on Carnahan.  The fruits of spring, the privacy of the boughs - no doubt the orchard is a ripe locale for a little bawdy behavior.  The logo design is so good, Carnahan uses it through all four issues. 

Wild Cherries 1933-09 v01n02.Publications Service Syndicate cover Worth B. Carnahan

 

The lass on the second issue offers pie, easily my favorite of the run.  A crest, a trophy dame in a pink nightie, and a rolling pin, all arranged atop a basket and what better way to enjoy cherries.

 

Wild Cherries 1933-12 v01n04.Publications Press Syndicate cover Worth B. Carnahan

 

The Repeal Number, things are popping now, New York City.  The hangover might have been too much, as this was the last issue.  

But let's take a look inside, shall we?  While this magazine often gets identified as a girlie pulp (due no doubt to Carnahan's covers), I'd term it a humor mag or humor digest, as there is little fiction (though I do like Lois Haines' Love Strategy at the end of the issue), little photography, and the mag is made up almost completely of gag cartoons and jokes.  Still, the use of spot design and illustration points to Carnahan's layout work on Burten's Follies and Artist and Models Magazine, and there's that art deco feel of the 20s magazines running throughout.

Let's kick it off straight from the editor's pen.  WBC is looking for some more audience interaction (key in getting a magazine following) but also sees a new day.  A new regime is at the helm, and Prohibition is done for.  But the blues, man, you have to chase those away with a smile.  Jokes are a strong tonic, and the editor says if you can't find a laugh in here, you're beyond help.

The contents

Boiled in Greece and Business Before Pleasure.

I think Mable is about to school him.

My favorite page in the magazine. The flapper is totally adorable.  Can anybody help me out with an ID?  It's a pretty distinctive signature, but I can't make it out.  He did a number of the cartoons in the issue with a unique style. The grinning moon is excellent.

get a better look at Flickr

and no surprise with Carnahan at the helm, a neat puzzle page, and adorned by cuties

at Flickr

A signed Carnahan single column spot illo that kicks off a recollection of a wild night in the nightclubs of Harlem full of drink and other forbidden excitements, a walk on the wild side. 

This time the sun is grinning at the moon.

at Flickr.

What Fools These Mortals Be.  The ice-Man cometh, beware ye travelling men.  What a lovely frame for a dirty joke, a capacity for the ribald and the elegant in the same package.

at Flickr.

A delightful magazine, and I'd love to get scans or copies of the other issues.  More Carnahan investigations on the blog to come, likely traipsing around a bit.  I do want to do his FDR pamphlet which I was amazed I was able to track down, but I'm missing the top half of the front cover.  I'm hoping for a complete scan and have some other Carnahan works to scan in the meantime when while I try and track the cover and inside front cover down.  And 100 other projects, but you know how it is in scanland, a playground that just gets bigger and bigger.

Film International, 1975 / Stan Lee Goes Hollywood

Thought I'd cut short the long ass pulp I've been scanning tonight and do a quick post of an excellent but forgotten magazine, Film International.

 

I suppose I came to this magazine for the same reason that most will hunt it down right here, as this is a publication from Stan Lee a couple of years after O.G. Martin Goodman stepped away from publishing in the early 70s after having sold Magazine Management after a long and varied career in pulps, magazines, and comics.  McCoy and I were recruited to scan and edit these (and other) mags back when as an offshoot of the Timely-Atlas project.  You know, just send the package, and we'll take care of the rest, heh heh.  

Seeing as how the mags have never really migrated from whatever piratical recesses into wider circulation, I've put em up at the Internet Archive where they rightfully belong as artifacts of 70s cinema, a unique decade in cinema where a lot of barriers seemed to come down in film.  The lines between art, entertainment, and pornography were blurred, and there was a feeling that cinema was GOING SOMEWHERE NEW.   Old Hollywood was giving way to new stars and a new way of thinking.  I'm not sure how all that worked out, but here we are almost 50 years later in quite a different place altogether.

I'm short on time tonight (and do apologize for the lack of posts, I'm stacking up the scans quicker than I can give them introduced), so check the mag out yourself, as they are chock full of interesting and tantalizing material and pictures of today's old stars when they were young.  Cut short after four editions, Film International keeps its status as funky and experimental.  Survival is tough out there in the magazine jungle...

I'd be remiss, though, not to at least cut out a couple pictures of 70s Stan (from the third issue feature on the magazine launch party)

The issues

April 1975:

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or at the IA

May 1975:

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or at the IA

June 1975:

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or at the IA

July 1975:

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or at the IA

True Weird, May 1956

OK, scanfans, let's get weird then.

The Devil plagues Milan. John Martin cover, get a better look at Flickr

I love that the spine title reads simply WEIRD

Get the full hi-res scan here: True Weird v01n03 (1956-05.Weider)(D&M).cbr

or view online at the IA here.

McCoy's mysterious but true edits, really a fantastic treatment of a unique magazine.  

True Weird ran  bi-monthly for 3 issues starting in November 1955.  The magazine was born again as True Strange in October of 1956 and run seven issues until February 1958.

I've thought about these magazines a couple times recently.  First, seeing a couple original paintings for True Strange covers sell for dirt cheap (I don't collect art but I know when I see auction travesties high and low), I wondered if I'm the only one that sees a twisted Americana glory in those Thomas Beecham covers.  Second, I saw Arnold with Joe Weider in the recent Netflix documentary and was struck at Arnold's interest in magazine craft as well as his savvy in realizing that using negotiated space in Weider's magazines to sell his own products was a real money maker.  And there's no doubt Weider's magazines and fitness lines took off in the seventies along with the whole sport of bodybuilding with Arnold's star blazing the way.

But, Joe Weider had been at it the publishing game for a good long while before Arnold ever came along.  Weider started small time all the way back in August of 1940 with your physique, banging out type on his home typewriter, drawing his own illustrations, hand-lettering, and doing his own mimeographing.  By the time the 50s come around, Joe is spreading his wings.  There's his excellent wrestling mags (that link goes to a dead post, I know - the poor wrestling mags are neglected around here right now).  Or his American Beauty with a nutrition and cosmetic bent for the ladies. Or here's our man Subtropic Bob's takes on Weider's men's adventure magazines , Mr. America and American Manhood, a fun read for certain 😆 

But True Weird and True Strange seem like something different.  Sure there's some outlandish and sensational material, but there's also an earnestness about it.  A sincere devotion to plumb the mysteries??  Anyways, enough intro - let's get to the issue at hand.

The inner front cover, what better place to pimp your products

I'm not sure if I've mentioned here before that I'm a disciple of the weight room going on 20 years now, but this isn't really the place to get into that.  I've got more interesting mags for talking about lifting and health, but I enjoy looking at Weider's set here.  Covid brought the gym home and had a lot of people rethinking their workouts (even if I was back at the gym the day they re-opened grinning ear to ear).  Look at all this gadgetry with just a set of dumbells, eh?  That headstrap looks like a medieval torture device.  And I'm not sure you want your kettlebell to have sharp rods sticking out the sides but, hey, the home lifter has to improvise - or something.  Boots? Really.  I do give props to the wrist roller, though, that's a solid device.  But I digress.  The contents.

From the publisher to you.  Joe knows, as we all do, that there's phenomena that our current science can't explain even if he does lead with the excitement of werewolves and vampires.

 at Flickr

Check out the great purple inks over the grayscale, a very distinctive look.  Illustration by Albert Deke.  Werewolf or Vampire?  Maybe the crone knows.  Shapeshifters appear across cultures.

Horrors everywhere, to south, from the dark islands, VOODOO

But if wonders of the natural, nay the supernatural, world offer not enough mystery, there's always the doings of man.  The splash page for an extended piece on "Hollywood's Greatest Murder Mystery" regarding the murder of William Desmond Taylor. I'll go ahead and stick up all the pages even though it's likelier easier to read at the IA (OR DOWNLOAD THE SCAN, HA)

at Flickr

 An excellent splash from Joseph Ferrari -

At Flickr

The canine sensitivity to events natural and unnatural.  THE DOG WHO ANNOUNCED MURDER.  The cat seems to know something, too.

When All Holland Went Mad! Jacob Lee Cobb illustrates

Tulipomania???  The most valuable commodity in Europe, a flower.  Speculation madnesss

Haunted Houses.  An excellent composition by Michael Aumont

at Flickr

Witchcraft. Black Masses.  As alive today as ever. Bow before the goat-headed shaman, dogmen.

BARRED v01n05, circa 1966-1967 / Outlaw Biker Mags and Titus Moody

Last post I joked about filth, this post we might just indulge in some whoop whoop

Get the full hi-res scan here: BARRED v01n05 (--c.1966,7--.Seven Seventy) (DDT)

or view the issue at the Internet Archive here.

McCoy reminds those of good taste, Don't Download This! 

Searching my blog here, I'm somewhat amazed this is my first post on the so-called Bad Mags, the wilder, often fly by night publications of the age exploitation magazines.

I give full credit for my introduction to the world of these magazines to Tom Brinkmann's Bad Mags:

 

Mr. Brinkmann in Bad Mags Volumes One and Two catalogs, categorizes, and analyzes the world of seedy delights in the down market magazines.  Brinkmann has an entire chapter in the first volume on the genre of today's issue, "The 1%ers Outlaw Riders - Sixties Style," featuring covers and a survey of outlaw biker issues and articles in sixties and seventies magazines.

Appearing often on the covers of these magazines, and particularly on the biker issues from the above publisher, Seven Seventy, is reference to Outlaw Motorcycle (1966), a film/spectacle put together by Titus Moody.

Here's Titus in 1995, in an introduction to the film as cult classic which he claims was shot during the Watts Riots.

You can even watch the film - oh, the glories and depravities of Youtube

Brinkmann's first volume has some nice biographical information on Moody's adventures in Hollywood's fringe cinema, but I didn't see a decent bio on the web.  Anyways, Moody is listed as Executive Editor for this issue, and it seems to be one of a number of magazines from Seven Seventy that promoted and also used material from the film and the making of.   Outlaw Motorcycles is often credited for being at the front of the wave of movies to cash in on biker gang trends and fears and interests.  Bikersploitation?  Staged photos, real photos, representation or misrepresentation, I'm not judging - let's just get to issue at hand 😅

at Flickr

Special Second Issue Outlaw Motorcycle, Peter Fonda at the head of the pack.  Their love is hate fore everyone and everything except each other.

Brutal, Frank, Violent says the cover.  A lot of the photos look like kids hangin' out to me, but perhaps I'm just a sympathetic soul.  Some of these members look like models, but some of these members also look like poor role models lol

at Flickr

at Flickr

 at Flickr

at Flickr
 

at Flickr

Besides the biker photography, the magazine also gets into some of the local biker culture and club layout but also ventures into reviews of adjacent films.