Signature Statement

In my previous post I closed with a challenge to find an unusual element to the Breezy Senorita, and I must admit it was not easy. Take a look below and you'll see the answer. It was Enoch's signature. Or at least what looks like a Bolles signature because I don't think he actually signed it. Aside from Film Fun Bolles only signed a handful of magazine covers and for the record here are the titles: America's Humor (one issue), Gay Book (two out of seven issues), Screen Romances (two issues), Talking Screen (one issue), Judge (nearly every issue he did), Puck (one issue), and Wit O' the World. He initialed almost all of his covers for Snappy Stories and a few for Laughter, Live Stories and Zest, but that was it. My guess is that less than half his Film Fun covers were signed or initialed though I've seen several originals where the signatures were cropped out or perhaps even tooled out by the engravers. Bolles was more apt to sign Film Fun in the 1920s and by the late 1930s he had virtually stopped (one of these days I'll put all this up on an Excel spreadsheet). Even his family had to beg to get Bolles to sign portraits he had done for them.

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But when Bolles did sign his covers his name became a part of his compositions. They were rarely rubber stamped; he constantly tinkered with the lettering which varied from issue to issue, as did the color. Often, he positioned it half in shadow so the lettering would transition from positive into negative space. Compare Bolles with the invariance of George Petty, who's signature was essentially a chop (no wonder, he trademarked it) and Vargas (who had it trademarked without his knowledge!). Armstrong's was a gorgeous mess of loops, almost begging to be yanked into an indecipherable Gordian knot of a scrawl, but after some early experimentation, it never changed.

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So now take another look at the Breezy Stories signature and you'll see how wrong it looks. Aside from the scale, which is smaller in relation to the painting than anything else Bolles has done, it just seems off. Missing is the sweeping brush stroke and casual skill with lettering so evident in the other examples. Instead you get what looks like an attempt at forgery, which is what I think it is. In 1935, the year this cover was first published there were several other Breezy covers that were signed by Bolles, and the signature looks exactly the same in each. I think what we are seeing is an engraver's attempt at copying the Bolles signature. Aside from four or so covers in 1935, no other of his Breezy covers were signed.

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Now let's reexamine our feature cover, from 1932. Bolles put a lot of extra flourish into the signature (and I'm sorry this copy has so much cover wear). It is unusual but the girl is the real outlier. The painting is well done and likely an accurate depiction of Margaret but alas, she looks nothing at all like a Bolles girl. And just who was Margaret Poggi is another bit of a poser. I could not find out a lick about her, even on imdb.com. It makes me wonder whether this image may have been a sort of leftover from an assignment Bolles did for Fox Films (he did some work for the company from time to time). If anyone could find something out about her or even better, snag a photo I would be grateful.

Reflecting on Bolles

Bolles wasn't much for tricky or complex compositions, and my guess was that if he was offered a job that required a crowd scene or a busy composition, he would have turned it down. This lovely cover from 1936 was a bit of an exception. Bolles did some of his best work for Gay Book, a curious periodical that initially had aspirations of class, but soon descended to featuring European showgirls and fetishes. But for a time the editors paid Bolles well, and he produced some of his most inspired cover art, which received extra care by the engravers. Bolles even signed some covers and got cover credit inside the magazine. As far as I've seen, only Breezy Stories gave him cover art credit and even then only for a short stretch. By the way, this is my 100th post since starting this blog last October. The cover is another find from my recent trip to the Windy City Pulp con in Chicago and I'll post the other two gems soon. I'm off to Seattle for a few days and won't be posting anything, unless of course I happen to run into a Bolles image on the street like I did in Stockholm last month. I'll keep my eyes open.

Do You Recognize Me?

Is there a better Bolles composition than this? None other than Francis Smilby called it "one of the most beautiful of all pinup covers" and who could rightly argue with him. Look at all the detail Bolles put into her dress, yet none of it is strained or overworked. And the subtle transparency of the material; what trouble Bolles took to let the deco motif show through on the left side. He even threw in one of his amorphic shadows for good measure to counterbalance the curvature of the motif (these shadows were a regular feature of his work and I'll be doing a separate post on them one of these days).