Cha Cha!!

I've long been frustrated by this cover-or I should say how it was treated.  Published in the waning days of 1937, barely six months later Bolles was gone, not only from Gay Parisienne but also Spicy Stories, Breezy Stories and even Film Fun.  In short he was out of the magazine illustration business entirely. An entire year passed before he painted a new cover for Film Fun, and in the interim the corner of the publishing landscape Bolles had long toiled had been plowed away. With the exception of Film Fun every other magazine he'd worked for had folded, along with just about all the rest of the so-called smoosh mags.  It was as if when Enoch left the building he took the entire genre with him. 

There will be more to say about this when the Bolles book gets published, and frankly this is why the pace of posts on this site has ebbed.  During the last year I've been directing a lot of effort into the manuscript and now that it is off off to my agent I need to become a bit more selective about what goes on the blog, lest I give away too many goodies that need to be debuted in the book.  But not to worry as I have scans of over 500 Bolles covers and plenty else to share.  

So back to this cover. The printing, as far as I can tell (alas, this issue is not part of my collection) was lamentable, as was the rule for this title.  The dramatic shadow over the girl's eyes, her sombrero, and the fan were all overexposed into a dark blob. The color of the entire composition muted. And you know that Bolles would not have painted her this way.  So I judiciously applied a little photoshop to create what I think is a truer version, though you can bet the original (do I wish she was still around) would be even livelier. 
Ole!