The "L" Pose

Sorry for this visual contrivance but I've long pondered whether Bolles created poses from letters of the alphabet, or some related sort of personal geometry (he was mathematically inclined). Among the various poses that show up repeatedly during his long career is one that seems to form the letter "L". My theory is that Bolles resorted to this patella punisher in reaction against the tyranny of the magazine cover. How do you pose the girl on three or four magazine covers each with the same dimensions every month year after year without repeating yourself. If your career as a cover artist goes on for three decades as Bolles' did, at some point it is inevitable; you simply have to revisit the same poses (the L, the ogive, the T, the X), themes (the upskirt, the torn outfit, the surfer, the cowgirl) and visual puns (girl on a buoy, girl riding beach toy, girl and animal). And Bolles was at a huge disadvantage compared with other artists who had long careers doing magazine cover art. Periodicals such as the Saturday Evening Post had cover themes that ranged from babies to grandparents with the occasional pretty girl in between, affording its cover artists considerable latitude. It is true that during her 14 year run of McCall's Neysa McMein did nothing more than portraits of woman cast in the popular American type of the healthful homemaker, but the magazine's subscribers were quite content with this. Not so for Bolles. Though he received considerable fan mail, he was also constantly harangued with requests from readers (I use the word loosely here) for a certain pose or their favorite hair color, be they blondes, brunettes or readheads. Plus Bolles had to contend with a growing lineup of competiting magazines with cover art so brazenly modeled after Film Fun that the Delecortes took their publishers to court for infringement (they lost the case). Because of this Bolles must have been pressured by Abril Lamarque and the other art editors of Film Fun to ratchet up the curb appear of his cover art. One way to do this is to increase the scale of the girl, hence the L pose that is the theme of this post. Side seated poses occasionally showed up in the late 20s and during 1930-31 Bolles experimented with peculiarly large headed girls. The earliest L poses appeared on Pep in 1929, but Bolles didn't use it much again until 1934 when it started showing up with increasing frequency on the covers of Spicy Stories, Gay Parisienne and later, Film Fun. In part he may have simply become weary of having to dream up novel poses year after year (there were a lot of L poses during the last three years of Film Fun ) but it also let him put more girl on the cover, and what was lost in compositional variety was made up for in the huge wardrobe ranging from harem girl to body stocking.


So let's hear it for the L pose, and the T, and the X and the...