A question by frequent visitor Gary about how many Bolles paintings got me onto this project, which is something I've been meaning to do for a long time. Here we see a graph showing all the Film Fun covers done by Enoch Bolles from 1923 to the magazine's last issue in September 1942. This doesn't include the 1942 annual as I don't know when it was published, nor 1922 which I forgot to add until it was too late (for the record Bolles painted the October and December issues). The Blanks during 1926-27 were months when Film Fun was not published, which I think corresponds to the period that Leslie-Judge was selling off the magazine. All later blanks are months when the magazine cover was done by another artist or were, egads, photos. The question marks represent paintings that survived for a time but may or may not still exist, with some of these having been extensively reworked by Bolles.
...
...
As would be expected, the majority of the 29 original Film Fun paintings known to exist were from the later years of the magazine. What is interesting are the outlier years; three painting from 1925 are still around, 1937 with half of the year's output surviving, and 1940 where three and perhaps four of eight still exist. The 1937 trend holds for Breezy Stories and Spicy Stories. For some reason Bolles, or somebody else, held on to a lot of of paintings from 1937 through 1938. As far as I know, there's just a single surviving original painting from Gay Parisienne out of the 46 he did, and just one each from the entire run of Tattle Tales and Bedtime Stories. It also appears that no origi
nals survive from 20 other titles Bolles did cover work for, but let's hope I'm wrong. As many of you know interest in Bolles' work has skyrocketed with record prices in recent Heritage auctions. This clearly has brought some pieces out of hiding, or perhaps just out of the den. Feast your eyes on this cover for the March 1938 issue of Spicy Stories that Heritage will be selling in their upcoming illustration auction. Until I saw it I had no idea the original was still around and let's hope there's more where she came from. If you have information on original Bolles paintings or corrections to my 'statistics' I'd love to hear from you!
nals survive from 20 other titles Bolles did cover work for, but let's hope I'm wrong. As many of you know interest in Bolles' work has skyrocketed with record prices in recent Heritage auctions. This clearly has brought some pieces out of hiding, or perhaps just out of the den. Feast your eyes on this cover for the March 1938 issue of Spicy Stories that Heritage will be selling in their upcoming illustration auction. Until I saw it I had no idea the original was still around and let's hope there's more where she came from. If you have information on original Bolles paintings or corrections to my 'statistics' I'd love to hear from you!
10 comments:
thanks for the info and HUGE thanks for that image, now THAT is what i call a pinup painting!!!!
it is so terribly sad though to think that so much of that man's work is gone forever.
a question that i've had on my mind lately and perhaps you know the answer: what would Bolles have gotten paid for doing a cover like the one above?
It is sad to think that about 170 of the 200 or so Film Fun covers Bolles did are lost. Pay for pulp magazine covers started around $25 and $100 or so would be around the average. My guess is that Bolles may have gotten perhaps a couple hundred a cover for Film Fun. If he got a hundred for the Spicy cover (one of his very last) he would be doing good.
Just plain beautiful job Jack! Thanks for your great work. I'd not seen that blond before either. Absolute dynamite!!
Let's hope that she's just the first in a parade of once lost Bolles paintings.
Jack, Can you clarify the JULY 1928 painting and film fun cover. The cover is noted as AUGUST, is this a printing mistake? I have never found the July issue, though another AUGUST issue has the pun " FROTH OF JULY". Maybe that is the true JULY issue. Or is this a case of the bimonthly issues? Very confusing indeed!!
thanks for the info jack. it's hard to put that kind of money into the terms of the time he was working but it sure doesnt seem like much, even for back then. no wonder those guys were turning out work at such a tremendous rate! it amazes me too with guys like Virgil Finaly who was doing these incredibly intricate stipled ink interior pieces for like $15 or something!
Hi Gary,
Somehow I had missed your question. I pulled out my August issues and Froth of July is indeed the August 1928 cover and my guess is that it appeared on the newsstand in July rather than August. The Bulls-eye cover is the July 1928 issue. As you know 1928 and 1929 are confusing years given that FF was published bi-monthly part of the time and then switched back to monthly. Right after the switch Bolles started doing covers for Pep and Spicy, maybe to augment the lost income.
Jack, The bullseye issue is clearly marked AUGUST, so is this a typo? Or could it be the second AUGUST issue for 1928?
Jack, I assume that MAY 1928 was the last month that there were 2 issues.
I think so but honestly I'll have to go back and look. I've gotten confused about this more than once because there may have been two June issues. But if so it ended there.
Post a Comment