Whoopee Girl, Lost again!

Today was a mixed day as far as my Bolles project goes. First the bad news. I got an email from my stalwart contact, Judy, who has been on the front line in the search for the Bolles Whoopee Girl painting from day one. If you've been keeping up with this occasional story, you may recall that after two years of frustration the original painting was recently returned to Ogden city officials, albeit under mysterious circumstances. Since then I've been asking (ever so politely) for a nice photo of it to include in my ongoing (and ongoing and ongoing) Enoch Bolles book project. However, in today's email Judy indicated that the painting in possession of the city was not the original, or at least not the original by Enoch Bolles. Instead it was a painting based on the Bolles girl that had been done about 20 years ago. Its since become the standard Whoopee Girl image used for the Pioneer Days. As you can see, she's cute but no Bolles girl. Ironically though, she is a redhead (the favorite hair color for Bolles cover girls). So that's where this story stands. My hope continues to be that the afterword of this story will be a post of the original painting.

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On the upside, another email I received today included a photo attachment of an original Bolles painting from a 1925 issue of Film Fun. It will be sold at auction in a week or so and once I get the links to the web site, I'll post the photo for all to see and a link to the sale.