Would you like to see my etchings?

Above we have a couple examples of 1930s ephemera; catalogs of hand colors art posters by "well known American artists" which were "personally selected" by Joseph Bonita.  More about him later.  The contents of these catalogs were claimed  to be photo reproductions of  the original paintings and included a few unremarkable landscapes, but the rest were all of the pretty girl variety. Needless to say, none of the artists were well known, although one of the few signed paintings was by Paul Von Klieben, who years later designed the Ghost Town in Knott's Berry farm and was a resident artist there.  

No, it was another artist's work, this one unattributed, that got my interest.  Initially I assumed the photos were not taken directly from actual paintings but reused from engravings, as was the case with a series of blotters produced in the 1930s from Bolles magazine covers.  The images were reproduced off the covers--not the originals--and printed on blank or black backgrounds, Bolles signature was tooled out of the image in every case where it had appeared on the magazine cover.  I very much doubt whether he saw a nickel out of it.  But then in one of the catalogs I came across an image instantly recognizable as an unpublished Bolles, and that changed everything.  Somehow Bonica had gotten his hands on unique and original material, very likely directly from Bolles himself.  And so I took a closer look.  It turned out that some of the other Bolles paintings included in the catalog were still around, including a more finished version of the sketch.

  

Better yet, I recently picked up yet another of these catalogs and it didn't have just three or four pieces by Bolles in it, but nearly 20, and of these I know that four of the original paintings are still around.  Let's hope we can add a few more to the list of survivors, especially because the catalog includes several fabulous images that are among Bolles' very best, including two paintings that made my top 10 list of original Film Fun paintings I hoped would be yet found, including the iconic motorcycle girl, oddly titled as "Slyvia" in the catalog.  

Addendum:  A few years back I somehow managed to get in touch with Bonica's grandson.  I learned that in the 1940's Bonica had moved from print to film media and was hawking 16mm movies of burlesque dancers, and later a curious movie about the atom bomb.  His grandson had no knowledge about his connection to Bolles or his 1930s art catalogs. 

Blink and you'll miss her...

...and I almost did.  After a few days away I was back home, slogging through a backlog of emails that had piled up like snow in Buffalo.  Several were Google alerts for Enoch Bolles, one of which ended up linking to an image I'd uploaded to a flickr group months ago.  I hadn't been back to look since then so out of curiosity I opened the page to the group (Flappers and the Jazz Era) to check out thumbnails of recent entries.  Buried among them was an image that tickled a very small, but overdeveloped patch of neurons in my brain.  I enlarged the image and alarm bells starting ringing. There were tell-tale signs; long hands, fingers sinuously entwined; heart-shaped lips, the ends drawn tight like penny candy wrappers into a calm smile; rouged cheeks, a bit heavy for my taste; lovely pearls each so carefully rendered.  The bobbed hair style was spot-on but the treatment seemed too sculptural.  And then those peepers, beautiful yes but fringed by that mess of mascara which made them look like they'd draw blood if she blinked too hard. 

Still, I wasn't entirely certain but then my eyes were drawn to what looked like a small fingerprint in the corner and that's when my heart started pounding. I zoomed on in and "bing" and there it was.  Look closely and you'll see the initials EB modestly rendered next to her shoulder.  A new Bolles!  Published in 1925 amid his most active period of advertising illustration for all sorts of products and now we can add Winx to the list. What a great New Year present.  My thanks go to clotho98 who posted the image. Check out her flickr page for hundreds of other great vintage images.

So I'll leave you with a question that this entry has revived.  From 1924 to 1926 Bolles produced a huge body of advertising work, from trolley cards for a wide variety of products, to full color posters for films, to magazine illos like this one. There's plenty more around to be sure. But as far as I can tell, after 1926 his advertising work dropped to near nothing and I have no clue why.  In 1927 Snappy Stories stopped publication, leaving Bolles with Film Fun as his only regular assignment, so it wasn't as if he was overextended.  He must have taken on other work to fill the gaps, but where is it?

Addendum:  I want to give a shout-out to the Dawl for the fabulous seasonal update he gave this blog. Thanks!!

Santa's Baby

Beginning in 1928, the January issue of issue of Film Fun (which showed up on the newsstands a calendar month early) featured a Christmas theme.  Here we see the cover for 1931; Santa seems particularly cheery but then again, rarely has he been the recipient of such generous gifts. The streak of Christmas covers ended the following year but Bolles clearly liked this composition enough to use it in a far more raucous new year's celebration for the January, 1936 issue of Breezy Stories. This has to qualify in the top tier of covers top for the magazine, which is saying a lot because Breezy paid Enoch more than the average pulp and in return he put a lot of extra work into his covers.

So is there any wonder as to why the beau of the Bolles' girl is beaming?  The lucky guy, after Santa there were only one or two other times where the Bolles girl shared the spotlight on the cover with a member of the opposite sex.  And from the look on his face he seems quite grateful to take the supporting role.

The Summer of '42

Is it as cold where you are as it is here?  It seems like a large swath of the planet has recently been struck by bad weather.  And it's not even Winter yet!  To to warm things up I'm posting a really inventive cover for the August 1938 issue of Breezy Stories.  In fact it was his Bolles' final assignment for the magazine.  His fifteen year run of covers for Film Fun also ended the same month, due to his hospitalization for what his doctor described as overwork and undernourishment.  Yet it would be over a year before Bolles returned to commercial work and in the meantime the magazine industry was in the throes of a sea change.  Just two months before this Bolles girl waded into the newsstands, Action Comics #1 was published and the comic book began its ascendancy into the print media stratosphere, carried by the steely arms of Superman. The publisher was Harry Donenfeld, who had clawed his way up the business by publishing Spicy pulps, most all of which Bolles had done work for at one time or another.  In preparing this post I learned that as a young man Donenfeld worked for a clothing store his parents owned in Newark in the 1920s.  Bolles grew up in Newark and his family had strong business ties in the community, including a successful shoe manufacturing business.  One has to wonder if they first crossed paths there. 

By the end of 1939 Bolles was back on the job for Film Fun but his other markets had dried up. Breezy Stories was sold off and the new publisher scrimped by recycling old covers. Both Spicy Stories and Gay Parisienne had ceased publication, victims of declining sales, badgering by the decency leagues, and perhaps Donenfeld's preoccupation with his burgeoning comic book company.  In the meantime Bolles was back in top form and doing great work, having updated his girls for the 1940's with WW-II styled pinup poses and Rita Hayworth hairstyles. 

The 1000 Yard Dare

Dare you take on these femme fatales?  Others have tried and paid the price. 

A couple posts back the topic of conversation was the sassy variant of the Bolles girl. Here we see examples of the girl with the 1,000 yard stare or better, dare. Bolles did a number of these, mainly for Bedtime Stories. I'd long thought he'd left them blank faced as a time saving matter, particularly given that he was earning a lot less per cover compared  with Film Fun. The illustrator Hugh Ward complained he was only getting sixty bucks a cover, and this a couple years after Bolles had left the magazine, which leads me to believe the owners may have doled out a sawbuck or two more for Bolles.

However, after having pored though my files to pick out these examples, I've been forced to reconsider my initial hypothesis. First, it wouldn't have taken Bolles any longer to apply one of his patented blinding smiles than a blank slate. Second, these  particular girls were far less likely to be identified as a Bolles girl.  Why, you might ask, wouldn't any illustrator be proud to be identified as the creator of such beautiful creatures?  The most likely reason was the seamy reputation of pulps the likes of Bedtime Stories. Back in the 1930s Mayor Laguardia's Citizen's Committee on Civic Decency was burning with fervor to squash the so-called smoosh mags--nearly all of which Bolles worked for at one time or another--and among them Bedtime Stories ranked as perhaps the most notorious. The vice cops didn't hesitate to shutter newsstand vendors brazen enough to sell them or haul their publishers into court when they were lucky enough to find them.  The consequence was that for a long time nobody knew who did these covers, even such an authority as the late Francis "Smilby" Smith author of Stolen Sweets was stymied. Certainly Bolles didn't sign these or request credits in the magazine's mastheads, which were chock full of phony names and locations to mislead the authorities. 

So after thumbing through a virtual stack of covers I now think Bolles had more in mind that just shaving an hour or so off the time it took to complete a painting.  Take a look above at Mata Hari (sporting that spectacular tiara) and you'll see that she's got something serious on her mind. Bolles chose infamous historical or literary figures with reputations for sex, intrigue and sometimes, violence (both to other's and themselves). So in some cases there is a historical explanation for the severity of the girl's expression. Bolles also loaded these covers with cultural references, though you have to figure he knew most would be lost on the target audience. Yet, our resplendent Cleopatra--who's lately gotten a lot of press with a new biography--certainly has no need to explain her regal insouciance.

Coming soon:  My choice for the masterpiece of all Bolles' magazine covers. 

It's a Bolles World: Part II

It was a long meandering trek through the enormous Eldon mall in downtown Newcastle, England before I found a watch repair shop, inconspiciously tucked in a row of garish jewelry stores. While waiting for my watch battery to be replaced I happened to spy a rotating Zippo lighter display and before long the misnamed Varga Windy girl slowly wheeled around the bend.

...

As you very likely know, she was actually the creation of our man Enoch, and one of these days I'll get around to relating the story of her origin in its entirety. What surprised me though, was this 1960s variation that revealed itself a few seconds later. Zippo has produced at least a hundred varieties of the Windy girl but this was one I'd never seen before (and it was 'regionalized'; the sign changed to read Piccadilly Circus). Checking further I learned this Windy was one in a four decade set, all "updates" of the Bolles original. Sadly someone did a really lousy job drawing these and the addition of the cheapo clip art was certainly no triumph of design. Worst of all, the color scheme applied to the original version is a combination Bolles would never have allowed to see print. But Zippo has never treated Bolles very well. His name was intenionally misspelled in the original ad and he never again got any credit for the image. Adding insult to injury, Zippo identified Windy as a Varga girl in the 60th anniversary edition of the lighter produced in 1993. They subsequently got in some hot water for it and had to make good with the Vargas estate. You have to wonder if they ever even flirted with the idea of trying to reach Bolles' family.

...

Coming soon: scans of Bolles original paintings thought lost forever from a 1930 catalog , and a movie publicity book that includes reproductions of a billboard by Bolles!

Which way is she leaning?

Did you vote? Our Bolles girl is still pondering who to cast her ballot for. Let's hope she supports our party!



This is one of three issues of Breezy Stories from 1936 that the original painting is known to survive. Unfortunately my versions of both the magazine and painting leave something to be desired, and that's too bad because this cover has so much going for it. For unknowns reasons there are even more original Breezy Stories paintings from 1937 still around, and I'll get around to putting them all up on a post before long.
...

On the topic of original Bolles paintings, just this week I got my hands on a copy of an art catalog from 1936 which has photos of nearly 20 Bolles originals. Over half are paintings I figured didn't survive the trip to the publisher's trash bin, and it gives me hope that at least a few are still be around somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered (expect an entire post on the catalog images sometime soon). If I had a clue where I bet we could rally together a few volunteers for some door to door "canvasing".