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. 
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 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.
Did you vote? Our Bolles girl is still pondering who to cast her ballot for. Let's hope she supports our party!
rom 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".
And this brings up another unique aspect of Bolles' work. Was there any other pinup artist of his era (granted, the term pinup originated in the early 40s) who depicted their girls with such confrontational intensity? Bolles produced a lot of covers with nary a hint of a smile. Some of his girls were bored, others pettish or merely unimpressed, and there were more than a few who confronted you with a cool, neutral gaze that conveyed an air of menace. I would venture that Bolles painted more mirthless pinups than any other artist. Throw out embarrassment as an emotional expression and you couldn't come up with a single straight faced Elvgren. Petty did haughty but after 1935 it was all smiles, and you had to wait until Playboy before you saw it from Vargas. It was Bolles who made the pinup more than just a vehicle of vapid cheeriness or abashment. But let's brave a closer look. Could that be the slightest curl of a smile on the edge of those luscious lips? Still not sure? We'll zoom in even closer when we probe the depths of Bolles' emotional range in future posts.
y theories is that an editor used one of Bolles' unfinished sketches and had it embellished by another artist. Or perhaps it was a completed composition that an editor was unhappy with and instructed another artist to give it a more painterly look. Who knows, but what I am sure is that the overpainting isn't by Bolles. It's just too muddy and unassured in spots, particularly the weave pattern on the rattan chair. That's the very type of repetitive detail that Bolles would have nailed down to geometric precision. The woman's shawl is another problem. The folds in the wrinkles follow Bolles style but they are muddy in execution. I kind of like the detailing of the older gent's face but his hands are another matter. 
I had in mind an entirely different theme for today's post but it went up in smoke after coming a recent entry on the actress, Armida Vendrell featured in the fabulous and fabulously informative Starlet Showcase. The name rang a loud bell in my head. I recognized her as one of the cinema starlets occasionally featured on the cover of Film Fun, debuting in 1929 with the It Girl, Clara Bow and ending in 1932 with the utterly obscure, Margaret Poggi. The Poggi cover---which will be featured in an upcoming post--is a real poser; it was both a superb effort by Bolles yet a total departure from his typical style. But that story must wait, so back to Armida.
Aside from the cover painting there was not a lick about her inside the magazine, which was odd. As light on information as Film Fun was, the editors typically tucked in a short half-page feature on the cover girl, usually nothing more than a couple extra stock photos and a fake interview. So it was a real delight to get to read about Armida in the Starlet Showcase entry and better yet, see some great pics of her. Admittedly, Bolles likeness is a bit weak, and the same could be said for most of the other "specially posed by..." covers (See. I did it! I actually wrote something negative about our man Enoch). Compa
re for yourself with this terrific photo of Armida I expropriated from Starlet Showcase. It's a curiosity in itself because I'm nearly certain it was swiped for a pinup (Gene Pressler? Bradshaw Crandell? Maybe I'm thinking of Bolles, he did something similar in a 1938 Film Fun). Just to be clear, there was never any special posing; not with Armida, or Clara or Loretta or Alice. No famous, near famous or mere Hollywood hopeful sat for Bolles in his modest New York studio. He worked from publicity shots, which the Film Fun mail room received by the crate load. Except...there might be one lone exception. Long ago Enoch's daughter told me she had heard Lupe Velez actually did pose for him, and I am inclined to believe her as the cover Film Fun painting of Lupe is miles beyond any other. But it must be said that Armida's getup is another matter entirely. The designs are fabulous and knowing Bolles very likely historically correct. It's only too bad that in 1930, when this issue was published, Film Fun was skimping on printing and paper quality. This cover deserved better.
Sakamoto, who lived just prior to the Meiji restoration. Initially a traditionalist who favored isolation and tradition, he read extensively and became a strong advocate of opening the borders of Japan and embracin
g modernization, so much so that he brandished pistols along with samurai swords (by a twist of fate a gun was used to assassinate him), but this story is not about Sakamoto, as seminal of a figure that he was. That's somebody else's blog. No this story is about Enoch Bolles.
Do you feel this way? Does your heart start thumping when you read a story about someone uncovering a trove of old nitrite silent films in an attic, or discovering a new species of butterfly in the rain forest? To me these sorts of events are antidotes to the feeling that there truly is nothing new under the sun. Every now and again something unexpected turns up that surprises us and renews our curiosity. Well today's post is one of these events. It's been quite a stretch since the last time I've come across what for me is a "new" Bolles cover, and longer yet when his work pops up on a magazine I'd not expected him to have any connection to.
I've been lagging on my promise to post some additional Bolles covers featuring more imaginative interpretations of sailor suits and so here they are. Working through Bolles' oeuvre you'll find a fair number of examples of sailors and other nautical themes. Bolles himself did some sailing and one of his earliest jobs was at the Philadelphia shipyards where he did illustrations of ships. In fact, one of the earliest surviving examples of his work is of a sailing ship. Bolles even built a boat in which he piloted his family down the Hackensack river.
as. As you can see from the 1927 Film Fun above, Bolles either inspired this postcard or swiped it, my guess is the former. What's surprising to me is how closely the uniform follows the painting and just how risqué it comes off by comparison. It just goes to show that what Bolles could get away with in an illustration would, when translated to the 'real thing,' be a lot less acceptable for consumption by the general public, or at least it seems so to me. And if that weren't enough, here's yet another swipe of the cover, used for a 1928 issue in a German publication called Das Magazin. From time to time in past posts I've shared other examples of copied covers, and I never fail to find it curious when some cover images but not others take on a second life.
detail from the actual painting.
gned by Bolles.
Bolles fans worth their fodder have surely heard the resounding report that this painting sold for over 80 thousand dollars at the Heritage auction last week. It's yet another record for a Bolles and is the 10th highest price of any painting yet sold from the Martignetti collection. It is certainly a great painting, no argument from me, but it is also completely atypical for Bolles. As rare as his black themed paintings were, a magazine cover awash in white borders on treason. At least with black you have the opportunity to establish contrast, create a silhouette, craft a definitive statement. But with white all that is so much harder. Pen and i
nk without the ink. Which is one reason why this painting is so successful.
ar posters and also likely because it was such an revered occupation. Bolles could add some double entendres to the sailor theme (I'll say! But let's not forget that sometimes a cannon is just a cannon) but nursing was off limits, at least back in Bolles' day. My how times have changed.
e comparison with the printed cover-which was pretty well done- makes immediately evident, a lot of interesting detail and subtlety was lost in the reproduction. By the way, you can get a fabulous Giclee print taken from the original painting at Impact Graphic posters. For those of use who can't afford a Bolles original (and who can these days), it's the next best thing.
most geometric element to the composition. On the subject of signatures, there was a letter printed in this issue from a reader who inquired why Bolles signed some of his covers but not others. Truth is that he often did not sign his work but I've also seen a number of original Film Fun paintings with signatures that ended up being tooled or cropped out of the cover. Why that was done is the question I would have asked the editor.
air, glorying in the garish winter (nuclear winter?) sunset. It's almost as if Bolles was doing a riff on himself as Quintana might have interpreted the Netty girl. As bad as I'd like to have a copy of the Film Fun Netty girl issue in my collection I want this one ten times worse.
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.
In the previous post, I'd left entry number 10 off of my favorites list of Film Fun girls. So say hello to my number one Bolles girl. I can't remember when she hit the top of the charts but she's been there as long as I can remember, and I can state with confidence that there forever she will remain.
nowledge to do something like that and to know it will end up making her even more fetching. And talk about attractive; don't those huge olive gray eyes draw you into the picture?
As you know from previous posts, the series of auctions of the Martignette collection of illustration art have put a number of Bolles originals back into circulation, unfortunately for collectors at record prices. But one positive side effect is that this enthusiasm for Bolles has also other brought other originals long held in private collections into the market, several of which were thought to be lost. The example above first showed up at a Heritage auction several years ago and is back at auction again. I had found this sketch of the image in a 1930s art catalog but knew nothing about this painting until it showed at Heritage. I'm almost positive it was never published. Speaking of Heritage, check out whose art they chose for the catalog cover to feature their upcoming auction.
were neglected or thrown out with the trash. Very few artists kept their original art and fewer yet retained the rights to it. Among the more notable exceptions was George Petty, who not only held on to all his originals for Esquire but also retained the rights to the images, which he aggressively remarketed. Like the majority of commercial illustrators Bolles signed away the rights to his work though he did manage to hold onto a fair number of his paintings including comprehensive sketches and proofs, but over the years they have been lost, given away or worse, stolen.
ver the web and each has been reworked by Greg Theakston in the guise of Bettie Page. If fo
r no other reason you'd have to choose these because they would be the most valuable to ever hit the commercial market. 
otherwise had a very busy second career. The original painting survived at least for a while, and a long while back I posted a photo of it in the Film Fun home office. In the second category of great but not iconic examples it would be an punishable offense to leave our favorite cowgirl out to pasture. I've written several entries over the months on my efforts to corral this painting from 1934. Though there have been several false sightings I am convinced she is out there somewhere waiting to be rounded up. And just to make things interesting below is a photo of her in the original, circa 194
0. She's now the called the Whoopee girl and serves official mascot of the Pioneer Days rodeo held annually in Odgen, Utah.
sister from south of the border. This lovely senorita debuted in 1934 and soon appeared in blotters, calendars and even on a box of chocolates. Sadly in each case efforts were made to remove Enoch's signature. Clearly the inspiration for this cover was either a model or a photo, she has none of the more mannered aspects that Bolles sometimes is criticized for. The composition is a variant of the Bolles "L" and in my mind is the best example of the 
pose Bolles ever did. It's got everything, a fabulous composition, the snappy costume and hat, drapery and of course, great footwear. 
d all that crinoline, or whatever it should be properly called. As good as Bolles is at legs he really outdid himself with this painting. The pose is supposed to be based on a model and I have a photograph of her, but won't bother posting it. This is one of those covers where the model was merely a setup for Bolles' imagination. 
t the term pinup came into use, because one could argue that he had more to do in codifying the genre than any other artist. But I digress, so turning to his work from the 1920s many would place this cover from 1928 at the top of their list. She's the total package. The next cover, from 1929 is shows that Bolles can do both naughty and nice. And today's final entry comes from 1924, one of Bolles best years for Film Fun. It's anything but a typical Bolles cover a
nd I guess you could call this his peeved category, which includes a fair number of other covers. No copper is going to get away with pushing her around.
