Toast of the Town

This is one of the most frequently swiped of all Bolles images. I've seen used it on book covers, on a poster where the martini glass was replaced with a beer bottle, on t-shirts and more. Almost never has Bolles been credited with the image and his heirs have not seen a nickel from the countless other expropriations of his work. Truth be told Bolles did not retain either the ownership or the copyrights to his art, but this was the fate of most illustrators of his time. One of the rare exceptions was George Petty, who successful demanded all rights to the famous Petty girls he did for Esquire. This perceived impudence, along with the exorbitant fee he charged Esquire (over a thousand an image) led the prickly David Smart, one of the founding editors, to eventually drop his contract. Smart then turned to Alberto Vargas, who was initially grateful as he was working doing odds and ends for the movie studios in California after the market in New York had dried up on him. But Vargas was so anxious for the job that he signed without reading the the details in his contract. When it later became clear just how exploitative the terms were, he sued to get out of it. Not only did he lose, but Esquire retained the rights to the name "Varga"and so when Alberto left Esquire he had a long struggle ahead to rebuild a following using his real name. Years later, Reid Austin an assistant art editor at Playboy, helped convince Hugh Hefner to publish a new Vargas illustration, and the rest became history.

But back to our man Bolles. What was the fate of his martini girl? I cannot say but I do know she wasn't treated so well. Here's a photo from a 1942 issue of Film Fun and you can see the painting in the Film Fun office unceremoniously propped behind a model (It's curious that there is a painted logo). Very likely this painting suffered the same sad fate of so many others, to be cast off in the trash. One can only hope that it is safely nestled with a stack of other Bolles covers in a closet, waiting to be rediscovered. Such was the fate of several Rolf Armstrong paintings, so there is always a chance...

One last aside. In the late 1960s Bolles had learned that Alberto was doing pinups for Playboy (they were contemporaries, Bolles was born in 1883 and Vargas in 1896) and so he took a portfolio of samples to New York to see if 'similar' magazines might want to publish the work of another famous classic pinup artist. He visited the offices of Penthouse. Needless to say, they were not interested in art.