It's Off to Work We Go

High magazine began as an oddly-sized bi-monthly in May of 1957, a companion to Ho! magazine of similar size (both roughly 4 x 11, like a regular sheet of copy paper folded in half, vertically). Maybe the mag was supposed to fit in one's pocket, or maybe the odd shape was simply to set them apart from the pack; the mid 50s were golden for male-targeted periodicals of all shapes and sizes, some with die-cut covers: a process practiced more in the 1960s and 1970s. The size is definitely cool by today's standards because so many titles now are oversized, weighing sometimes a full pound or more, and often released in limited editions, as if the publisher's did NOT ACTUALLY WANT to sell product. Go figure.

 

The first issue (May 1957) sported Harold Robbins fiction, an Elvis article, photos by Weegee, the guy who'd popularize distorted images, and a few glamour layouts. Issue #2 had a sweet front photo of Maria Stinger in recline, and the title banner had changed from "Hi" to "High," and with respect. "Hi" is too friendly and "High" is hep.

High, and Ho! (which ran only two issues), would stay pretty sharp, with excellent photography of excellent models by excellent photographers, even into later issues, when they assumed a "normal" magazine size, after #6 (shown here). Still, not much nudity. 

It's hard to tell, but the gal on the cover of #1 could be Tina Louise (she's on the cover of Ho! #1), but to err on the safe side is to say that the foggy redhead is really the girl in the dot, Margo Donnelly. There is a brilliant but short layout with centerfold of Marlyn Maher, in full color, at the center. She was huge in the later 1950s, but often her name was misspelled, like Marilyn Moher, which was likely the real spelling. 

However skimpy the two mags were on nudity, they were able to land some big names in the modeling business because of their limitations. On issue 6 is the marvelous Lili St. Cyr, and inside is Diane Webber, who bedazzles the rear cover along with Maher. Russ Meyer shot a spread or two for the publishers, as did Jerry Low and James J. Pappas.

Dig Julie Newmar (Catwoman) on the rear of #3! Hot damn!

    

Issues showing, from the collection of the author: 

High magazine, nos. 1 [May 1957], 3 [Oct 1957], 4 [Dec 1957], 6 [Apr 1958]
All six issues of tall High make a great centerpiece for an archive of odd-shaped paper / magazines, and try to attain both issues of Ho! and not simply a single issue.

Only As a Last Resort

Tiny, little Ann Chapman strikes up a conversation with your eyes, and brings new meaning to the idea of a pocket companion. She is featured on two matchbooks, these unstruck, which in the novelty world means a good thing, and with their matches intact (an even good-er thing). These come from "Dick's Last Resort," a chain restaurant with locations now in Maryland, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas (where these originate), California, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Florida, and Nevada. I couldn't find anything on the location history of "Dick's" in Dallas, but date of production is presumed to be early 1970s. 

Chapman was a Russ Meyer one-shot, in the 1968 sleaze thriller "Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!" and she would act in only a handful of films, all as a dancer. Perhaps Ann was a dancer outside of her Hollywood career, and perhaps she frequented other Southwestern establishments / public pools. Whether or not Russ Meyer shot the photos used for these matchbooks is debatable (likely not); the image of her in a wicker chair is decidedly not Meyer-esque. He did capture her decently in FKLW, resulting as one of the filmmaker's oddest heroines. She also is privy to having been in one of Meyer's best love scenes: sex in a pool with underwater footage! She slams home on several occasions with her male counterpart and gives us an experience we need to towel-up after.

She didn't smile much in FKLW. There is, however, nothing odd about lighting up with a smile. 

Caruska-bunga Dude!

 

Before Karen Brown in the mid 1970s, the literally "Golden" girl with the 70+ inch chest who epitomized the meaning of plumper in erotic photography; before Kristen Andersen aka Darla Hood aka Susan Burton aka Smiley in the early 1970s, with eyes to die for and a superb belly (see my other post), a fantastically cute Polish model named Caruska broke the glamour and pinup mold. Essentially, she couldn't squeeze into it.

She is Matron Saint of full-figured models of Generation X. Fans of both Brown and Hood-Andersen need to dig a little deeper and soak up the jus at the roots. Dip that mental hoagie in a little Caruska! This cover from Climax [v17 n 10, Oct 1971] has proved to be one of her earliest mass-market photo shoots. Featured inside is a Keith Bernard black-white-color layout, and nude to boot! Her turtle is on-site, and likely the company is what drove Michelangelo to be such a party dude.

Even in horizontal pose her fullness is apparent, abundant you might imagine, to the point where two masses meet an opposing force and create a rift; dimples in surplus.

One notes the tiny feet. These tiny feet, couple with her well-formed thighs and calves, grabbed the attention of a fetish photographer named Elmer Batters, a gentleman looking for work and finding it at the ready in California. All the models went to California, notably Hollywood, to find work in film and inevitably wound around the fingertips of eager and hungry photographers as a means of breaking into the scene. Caruska was immediate eye candy to Batters, who found her at Pretty Girl International in Hollywood, the photog too exhausted from "call girls" who'd rather be screwed than shot. He'd hole-up at a motel, and indeed it was a capital M-Motel, where he could seed out his seediness, where his concierge would ring the local flesh (often the easiest of subjects to acquire), and he could grab his thing and shoot away. Batts paid them fifty bucks a day, so for the time and for a model hungry not only for exposure but for her next meal, it was fair.  Caruska was however hungry only for the exposure, and with such precious stores in tow, your author would gladly take shelter with Caruska and her healthy supply in any fallout. 

One can appreciate the fact that she was not shy, and relish in the product. With a seemingly perfect Rubenesque carving, hips and tan-lines purporting the tagline,"To Acknowledge the Divine is Relative, But Allow Me to Relate My Divination," Ruski subtly explodes in the development as we do, not so subtly.

Where the Shit are you, Caruschka? Does your turtle wade in Heaven's Pool with you, or are you raking in the pension plan benefits? Write me a letter baby, we can be pen pals. Wrap my birthday present in a stocking from the 70s, a bra from the 80s, submit your spectacles from the 90s, remit a flat-heeled slipper from ten years passed, and yours truly opines when we meet we'll be splashing with Michelangelo.

1996, Taschen Amuse-Guele, tiny book
with two gatefolds = awesome

Party Behind the Sign! Party Behind the Sign! Should I Bring Beer? Don't Bring Anything.....ANYTHING.

                Betty is back and with an invite to a swoiree. Where you ask? A naked party, natch.

  

Can't tell who's on the back, but she seems to be defying gravity as well.....

Front slipcase cover image of Vest Pocket Books Nos. 101 and 102. The first issues from the limited edition publisher, and they would only last for four titles. See my prior post concerning the last two, numbers 103 and 104. Now, the babe on the top, adorning "Carnival Pet" by Orrie Hitt (who loved to write the themed novel), is a woman named June Wilkinson. Below her is Judy / Judi Bamber, who was subject to one of my earlier shrines, er...blog posts. Why the mirror image for Judy and not for June? The art director obviously felt something would jar the prospective client from the dark side of sin to the lighter, playful side of sin. 

Rear blurbs for the Vest Pocket slipcased issues. Technically the publisher could be said to have produced 6 individual installments: nos. 101, 102, 103, 104, and two slipcased sets. My speculation, which helps to true understanding of this material, made on the basis indeed of speculation, is that one of two things happened. Thing the first: VP issued the titles separately, at 50 cents each, realized "Holy Shit, we made books that get lost in the lint trap!" They then issued two sets of two to regulate their package dimensions and fall in with the rest of the market, as opposed to being so outlying they simply become stranded. Thing the second: VP PRINTED the issues separately, at 50 cents each, realized "Holy Shit....," then super-produced these slipcases, upped the price to a buck, and distributed them. Hypothetically, concern lays in how long it actually took them to break even. 

I Did It, I Confess, Lock Me Up with Four Dames and I'll Go Straight..

Forgotten beauty from years passed. The element of youth leaves not the spirit.
Images gathered from a Google hunt. You need a big gun to Google hunt. Most people don't know that.

What Knockers!

Brandon House Book No. 610, 1963

A glamour girl named Bonnie adorns the cover of a book with the headline: "Women sold their bodies to any comer if he had the price.....no mater how bizarre his demand." I won't disagree that, yes, some models did turn a trick or two. Maybe it was predominant in the 1950s. Maybe the 60s. Highly likely the 70s, and even likelier the 1980s, but only the coke days of the 1980s. The childhood years of your maker, baby.

Meet Bonnie Logan, who showed up early in the 1960s and made a splash, after making a slightly different splash in the cool waters of Florida as a singer. She has a faintly and delicately distinct Latina vibe, but she hails from Wisconsin, and those dark curls, feather-shaped eyes and pink lips are closer to the weather-ready features of a winter-bred Canuck. Her magazine appearances generally stayed A-class, but later she could be found in a few instances bucking it up with chicks from the fetish side of the tracks. And why not, with those legs and the aforementioned traits and the certain look that says "I'm a step and a heel ahead of you, man."

Here are some topless shots of the little badger. I find more clothing / lingerie shots, but you can't beat a good reflective surface, though Bonnie's consideration to do so is more than any blogger can handle, and still git out some good thoughts. 

CANDIDA v2 n2, 1960

CLOUD-9 v1 n 5, 1960 (see Terri Higgins
post for cover, it's awesome)

 This could be a "what the shit happened to..." if I were concerned with her current status. Live and well, I trust, and my fondest regards, Bonnie. Once we get to the 1970s, that concerning type of writing can be assumed, but before that, we merely relish the delight of a grainy b&w image in a sleazy mag from ages past. "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" ranks her at #335, between Roberta Vasquez and Tami Roche. She may have ranked higher had she made the move from glamour and pinup to film and song, but then what's life without variety? And what's life without Bonnie Logan?

                       

A Drag Strip Girl goes Up in Smoke

The beauty mark strikes again. Just a little dab off to the side oughta do it. Marilyn Monroe, Lili St. Cyr the stripteaser, and now, pinup/actress Judy Bamber. She hits the mark just right on the cover of a neat little paperback titled "Motel Girl," by A. E. Oliver. Published by Vest Pocket Books (no. VP104) as part of a double set, including a monochrome slipcase, alongside "Strange Sin," by D. W. Craig (VP103). The books are seriously vest pocket material, taping in at only 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches. But the set together measures, well, twice that. The first two issues (102 and 101) are equally scarce, and when they are found, they are found for premium prices. June Wilkinson adorns one of those issues. Judy was used for this cover in 1962. Who comes to mind when we take in the short blond curls, a full set of lips and its accompanying punctuation, and lithe form? "God Bless You, Lili St. Cyr!"

Here's some more Judy, in what is likely her natural hair color. She was the cover girl for Modern Man Magazine (April 1958), but I have lost the original covers and second leaf of my issue, so all there is to work with is this set of black/white photos, four years before her bleaching. 

Frolic magazine, April 1958. 

I like the way her eyebrows really arch up there, like St. Cyr's did. Judy has a bit of an elongated face, whereas Lili's was more rounded, like a cheeseburger! (num, num). One can barely makeout some tan lines too. Git yer magnifying glass and fog it up breeeathing heavy over this dame. Follow the bikini lines down the cleavage and imagine them finishing somewhere below the shoulders, and witness, her upper bronze stops at the halfway point on her bosom. That, my friends, is the spot and our "X." Start digging.


*top image culled from the 'net. Thanks.

"That's How Much Longer You've Got to Be Alive, and It Isn't Long, My Pretty, It Isn't Long"

May, 1962

Not even negotiably the States' first "super" model, Betty Brosmer had it seemingly all. A crazy hourglass figure, something between 38-18-36, and what they at Novel Books in the early 1960s perceived as 44-26-36. By that time she had married legendary bodybuilder and fitness Maharaja, Joe Weider, so it's possibly the two settled in to a comfortable marriage and decided to have just one more scoop of ice cream before bed. The editors at Novel Books, Chicago based (which equals smut galore, thanks, the Outfit), embellished for all the right reasons, but here they weren't too far off. We'd like to imagine the extreme, and Betty was the extreme in real life, combining the best of fantasy and reality into one compact and teasing blonde with a body to kill and a brain to best entrepreneurs today. I would play chess and lose admirably, but in a tender way, because, again, A Body to Kill.

Jan, 1961

Novel Books published "Men's Digest" in 1961, so naturally they employed the same photography circle, perhaps no more than four or five shooters at one time. Keith Bernard worked there. Keith Bernard shot Betty Brosmer, and she knew how to love the camera, and I imagine Bernard took it lightly and professionally: shaking like a leaf behind his lens. He is credited with the photo for "Bed Crazy," but not for "The Teaser," even though the place and time is right for him to have done both.

Left, the design crew made full use of their poor production and Betty's bodacious curves in one Go. Then they were "The Man's Line," and a year later we can see they dropped that little grab. All we really see is the word "EASE" and aint it the truth? Not much teasing going on here, but her smile and hair-covered fingertips pull us right in. The tease is her intangibility. She's essentially two-dimensional, and the missing dimension is what makes us pick this up fromt a wire rack at a drug store (or a vending machine at an airport). Her magnificent cotton curves look perfect against the black matter galaxy in which she reigns as center of the universe for whoever owns the book.

Orrie Hitt had her in mind when he penned "Bed Crazy" in 1960. What he didn't consider was that his characters could be made real, brought to life on the covers of his novels (something of a ghost in today's mainstream publishing market...when do you see a hardcover novel in a photo-illustrated dust jacket anymore?) by the best in the industry. Here Betty's waist is front and center, second to her bust, in contrast to the layout of "Teaser." The draw here is the abrupt change in composition, manifesting in just under a year, of the cover art. Colors are clearer and less negative in appearance, red and green much easier to look at as image than black, white, red and yellow. They were established to the point that they didn't need to advertise their more accessible product, no longer elating their being "The Man's Line," and no adverts at all in "Bed Crazy." Betty's skin is matte and her hair is glossy, the green top almost a cut-and-paste job. Damnit, the Outfit! Put her in her teasing white slip and call it a day.

Betty's back must be like the yellow brick road, with so much 3/4 twisting and posturing.
Betty is Betty Weider now and can be found at her name DOT COM

Back of "Teaser," somebody finally cast
Betty in gold. 

You Turn to Molasses Before You Turn to Salt

Mid-century American history defines much of our social response to date. With particular attention paid to mid-century American art and photography, and in general, a changing attitude towards women with power, and important beyond, women as equals. How the new "freedoms" were achieved is well documented, in both objective and subjective philosophies, and today's contribution is to fall right in rank.

Mid-century America. The middle of America in its farming boom, midriffs now more meddling than ever, Hollywood in the middle of it's noir phase; all things adding up to the whole lot of nothing we have today. But we do have very distinct sexual attitudes that mid-century America had the audacity to invoke, and Terri Higgins, then Las Vegas dancer cum glamor model, busts through the door with quiet precision.


Bigger breasts became bigger in America, after experiencing heavy exposure in England a full ten years earlier, and Vegas-native Terri (or Terry) Higgins used not only her bust to get to the point: the point that a look could cause hysteria, real and talking to yourself uncontrollably-type hysteria, maybe participate in a homicide, as seen at right in a shoot from Nugget in February, 1959. She taught us that less is more, and when you have so much more, even less is more. The youth in her youth, when her blonde was more lemon than custard, her come-hither more curiosity than beckoning flame, her brow more neighborhood sweetheart than spell-casting nymph. 

Witness two covers below, from 1960-1961, illustrate purposefully how exacting, how pinpoint, and how cold this chick could eye a man up right up to a little warm notion, stepping up then to a sweaty anticipation, and finally, spontaneous combustion.

Tonight Vol 1 No 6, 1961 / Cloud-9 Vol 1 No 5, 1960

A terryfying Terrific figure, 40-23-37, and eyes like a thousand tiny knives on track in the unseen magnetism we can not help but exude. Higgins had the rare gift, and powerful allure, to overwhelm her audience in a way not many (if any) before her had even the notion to consider. Maybe Irish McCalla, maybe Eve Meyer. But at a time when a woman's world was less about vacuuming, and sucking in it's many guises, really, Terri told mid-century America that women can start to take it instead with their own two hands, taking without needing to be told to first. 

A sense of ownership ignites while the commandeering ensues in absolute silence. 

Showcase, 1960, No 1 - June Wilkinson on cover. 

Not only was Higgins well-endowed, so one market could be tackled, her hesitance to make a goofy, post-War pinup clown face, with all the exaggerated expressions (sorry Betty, but no one makes those faces when they're at the beach..), helped her keep true to the upper echelon of the B-movie version of men's entertainment. For the classy guys who listen to jazz records with their dates at home because they couldn't afford to pretend to afford a steak dinner (Playboy). These guys picked up Adam magazine, and listened to wash-tub bands with the rest of the stags in the herd.

1959

Burlesque was tipping its hat as it left, but hardcore pornography was still a decade away, so on the heels of smiles a plenty and before the "if I'm not satisfied soon I'll hurt you" attitude of modern porn, we have gals like Terri, keeping the door to the past locked but keeping the key in her possession. Just as she kept hungry eyes in possession of her own. Even with the tendency to look below the neck of a naked somebody, I keep transfixed in gaze, and know there's no chance of victory in this staring contest.   

Percentage-based, Higgins probably smiled no more than 10% of her time infront of the camera. She managed a few winces, but they really were no more than that. It's this quality which keeps her floated above so many others, and she worked it well before anyone else. It's not a look of discomfort on display, I think, but perhaps it's gathered contentment in the lavender scent of a too-bubbly bubble bath without laughing, without feeling guilty, without surprise, and with so much allure, the foundation of the industry. Only one person of late can I presume to be her successor: 

                                               

Terry Higgins, you curves are missed, and few will impact as yours have. You kept your gaze razor sharp, and caked enough mascara on those steely blues to create a mid-century American noir masterpiece. You culled your eyes from Picasso and your bouffant from Monroe. The look hurts, Killa....please may I have another?

Sir! Vol 21 No 1, Sept 1964