How on earth did the publishers of Film Fun get away with this cover? Or did they? It was published in 1925 and right around the same time Canada had banned Film Fun. This cover, by the way, was far hotter than anything within its pages but by the end of the year you could find photos inside of Earl Carroll girls traipsing around bare bottomed. Curiously the covers to those issues were a lot more sedate. It's almost as if some sort of erotic climate control was in place, the covers became more risqué as the pages within cooled, and vice versa. Robert Brown noted as much about Bolles' work for Breezy and Spicy in the 1930s.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
May Day!
How on earth did the publishers of Film Fun get away with this cover? Or did they? It was published in 1925 and right around the same time Canada had banned Film Fun. This cover, by the way, was far hotter than anything within its pages but by the end of the year you could find photos inside of Earl Carroll girls traipsing around bare bottomed. Curiously the covers to those issues were a lot more sedate. It's almost as if some sort of erotic climate control was in place, the covers became more risqué as the pages within cooled, and vice versa. Robert Brown noted as much about Bolles' work for Breezy and Spicy in the 1930s.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
On the subject of nudity and censorship in the print media. The 1920s was in fact, no worse than it is today, in some respects the 1920s was far more open minded to artistic nudity than it is today. In Britain anyway... Let me give you some examples. When the first Jungle Book was published in the 20s, the wolf boy, 'Mogly' was depicted naked, when the seccond edition was published, the cover depicted him nude too. 'The Water Babies' were illustrated nude by a leading British illustrator in the 20s. But two examples of artists teaching youngsters in the 20s, that artistic nudity is perfectly ok. Contrast that with the 'Nudes Are Taboo' attitude by modern children's book publishers. Prudish attitudes start early and usually persist into adulthood.
Alan
From my own casual examination of the interiors of Film Fun, I would agree. By the 1930s the interior material had become tamer as far as what was shown, but at the same time there was a trend toward some obvious tawdriness, at least as far as the "Hollywood hopeful" photo sections. The content changed little over the next decade but by the 1940s the magazine managed to fall under the lense of the Postmaster General who declared it lewd and yanked its mailing privilges, which is pretty much life support for any periodical
Post a Comment