Bolles once wrote: "printers love any color, as long as it's red," and it's a perspective he took to heart. Red is a cardinal theme on his covers. Not only was the Bolles girl's wardrobe flush with scarlet, but more often than not she sported red locks.
So I had a problem...that being which single issue to pluck from a field of hundreds blooming red from rose to poppy. It wasn't long before I was getting a bit flush from sampling all that burgundy, claret and rosé.
But I kept coming back to one particular image and I think out of all this cover from 1935 burns brightest. Enoch probably had to empty a couple tubes of Cadmium red on the canvas (though the color looks a bit more like Naphthol) to finish the dress but the expense was well worth it. Any Hollywood starlet would be thrilled to wear it on the red carpet.
But look closer, there more going on here. Notice all those strong diagonals moving through the composition in both directions. The contrast provided by the piano adds a lot. The little bits Enoch lets peek through from behind the girl reinforce the outline and punch up the depth, projecting the girl toward us. Smart move by the art editor to stick with red for the logo.
And of course you can't have a Bolles girl without those hand flourishes. Maybe she's about to add some left hand rhythm but I prefer to think she's beckoning an admirer. After all it's also wave to your neighbor day.
I generally take a dim view of artists' attempts at swiping Bolles, as Enoch himself did. His grandson told me how he'd rail against other artists he felt were swiping his stuff. Even the editors of Film Fun noticed and in the mid-30s initiated a lawsuit against the magazine, Movie Humor, in large part no doubt because of George Quintana's line by line ripoffs of Bolles' covers (and if you are wondering why I refer to him as Quintana and not Quantance, the author Dian Hanson will be coming out with her take on the debate later this year in her new pinup book). Although the suit against Movie Humor was denied, the presiding judge granted a temporary injunction because of the "confusingly similar cover format."
I take exception, however, to the lively interpretation of a classic 1937 Bolles cover you see here. I first came across it in an article in the New York Times article on a company that reproduces old menus for a line of products and of course I had to investigate further (as if there was a choice). The image was the cover to the Latin Quarter restaurant and was appeared around 1950, though it seems for more contemporary to me. Although the artist, Vanni Cola (I've had no luck tracking down any info on her/him) accurately followed the composition, the simplified color scheme and strong use of red works really well. I also like the bulls-eye, which was a visual trope Bolles used many times. And the way the typeface (hand drawn?) is worked into the image aces it.
So I contacted the friendly folds at Cool Culinaria and we had a lively discussion on the intersection of our mutual interests that led to a blog post about it on their site.
Finally, the klutzy pinup theme of this cover--while pretty much the rule for the likes of Elvgren and others--is relatively rare for Bolles. Limiting my search to Film Fun, I found no examples at all until 1932 and only five total out of over 200 covers. Curious two of the first three covers by substitute artists for the magazine used klutzy themes.
Our Bolles girl is the embodiment of reptile awareness. This image appeared on the February 1924, the year Bolles took over as sole cover artist for Film Fun. It was a very inventive period for Enoch and he produced several other gangbuster covers that year. While it may seem that scaly creatures would make anything but an endearing prop for pinups, Bolles revisited the reptile theme several more times during his career. He not only pulled another croc out of his alligator suitcase of props but also employed snakes and turtles. In fact he did more covers with reptiles than with puppies.
While our flapper has a bad case of herpetophobia the Bolles girl on the right certainly isn't shedding any tears over her pet crocodile. The image was used in a series of ink blotters featuring artwork by Bolles but as far as I know was never appeared on the cover of a magazine.
And to finish on a high note, here's a charmer whose seriously wrapped up with serpent awareness.
What is it with Miley? She needs to enlarge her fashion sense beyond the same pale underthings and take a fashion cue from our Bolles girl, who demonstrates how to ride a wrecking ball in style and sure-handed authority. Her jaunty work uniform looks right in place on the job site, and unlike Miley she took the time to lace up her boots. Some time back I wrote about another underdressed girl of the music scene who seems to have picked up on up some Bolles girl poses and the post got a notice in Esquire magazine. They were a bit ambivalent about the connection, but that's not about to stop me from looking. The Bolles girl lives on!
