Pop Up Pin Ups

In the bargain book section at Barnes & Noble, a pop-up pin-up book.




I didn't get it because it has like 8 pages; even at $9.99 (if I'm remembering right), that was about $1 a page.

It's Time To Play Adult Games

A 1963 Dell Purse Book promises "101 adult ways to beat boredom" -- but don't expect to 'beat' away your blue balls to photographs; this book is all about the brain action.

The Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy # 14

The Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy, edition #14:

Shawnee (of Kinsanity) wrote about being busted with a naught read by her child's counselor in Moms Caught With Erotica:

"Why is it," I asked him rhetorically, "that smut is less acceptable than violence or the shallow idolization of 'famous people'? It's damn odd really, because my kids got here through normal, healthy sex -- not via violence or the vicarious living or emotional stalking of celebrities."

Speaking of books and moms, Elline (at Girl with Pen) happily reviews Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life in Off the Shelf: Mama, PhD:

The contributors in this book, edited by Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans, break the seal of silence that suppresses the intense difficulties and institutionalized prejudice that academics who want to be more than just a "head on a stick" – but rather a whole person, including a maternal body – experience.

Alessia (at Relationship Underarm Stick) asked Do Romantic Comedies Ruin Relationships? The question was based on a recent study by a team at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh:

In what certainly will not be news to feminists who have long argued that images in & portrayals by the media, the bottom line was, according to Dr Bjarne Holmes, a psychologist who led the research, "We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people's minds."

Interestingly, after participating in the survey about media and relationships, Alessia then asked Which Came First? The Chick-Flick Or The Egg On Your Face? Worth reading -- and keeping tabs on her continuing thoughts on the study.

Slip of a Girl (of A Slip of a Girl) gives us a biology lesson in Things That Snap My Girdle - In A Bad Way:

Because, yes, it bothers me deeply when you (especially my sweet cross dressers), get all squeamish about menstruation. Some of you think it's TMI, but a few of you have made comments about how "lucky" they are to "take what they want of femininity and leave the rest" -- and that really makes me angry. It makes most women angry.

At A Femanist View, SnowdropExplodes gives a personal account of his history with porn in Porn and Me:

The greatest harm that I can find in the story I have to tell, is that when I thought porn was evil, it had a negative effect on my confidence with women, and in myself; it led to psychological issues for me, and it meant a denial of my true sexuality. That ideology was harmful to me in the same way as it appears that certain right-wing Christian ideologies can be harmful to young gays in their midst. I am glad to accept erotica and porn as being not in and of themselves evil or wrong.

Also, SnowdropExplodes was the only one to take my call as a writing assignment -- producing the fabulous An Incomplete History of the "No Sex Please, We're British" Thing. Too wonderful to take a snip from, so go read it all. Every word. I may post a quiz.

(Rather related, SnowdropExplodes updates us on the UK's current internet censorship plans.)

PaganKinktress, of Erotic Bohemian, discusses the word Slut:

I catergorize the words slut and whore as ways of defining and appreciating one's sexual energy.

Speaking of sluts... Aspasia of La Libertine has a Review of Malena:

It's a great film and is a fantastic illustration of slut-shaming at its worst.

Aspasia also explores sluts (and pop culture notions of sex and spirituality) in space in Slut-shaming comes to a galaxy far, far away!

There just seems to be this inability for some of Luke's fans, mostly male fans from my experiences, to accept the fact that this character is a sexual being. I suppose because the Force and being a Jedi is always depicted as being "spiritual" and away from the body, those fans feel the need to see him as a celibate priest. I won't even get into the debate over the Old Jedi Order (Yoda, et.al.) and its regulation that Jedi have no attachments and whether or not that meant celibacy. Lordisa, I'm not touching that one right now!

Aspasia also reviews Lust and Caution:

...this is one of the most sensual, erotic and unabashedly sexual mainstream films I have ever seen.

Jaynie (at Here's Looking Like You, Kid) discusses her "awkward attempts" to defend one of her favorite movies against a male film expert in Defending To Have And Have Not:

Nothing against him -- he's been very nice dealing with a movie fan whose ignorance is pretty clear -- but how do I better articulate my thinking that our perceptions may be, at least in part, influenced by our genders (and related expectations, emulations, and emotions) without sounding like a silly girl? Or worse yet, some foaming-at-the-mouth feminazi?!

GoddessGlory of Bombilicious The Man Destroying Blog defends prostitution in Introduction to The Return of the Goddess: Whore Power:

But at the end of the day it isn't sex in exchange for money that degrades, cheapens and enslaves women it's societal norms and roles. Prostitution will NEVER go anywhere because it's apart of human/ape/primate identity, it's who we are. Whether or not you look at it this way there is "prostitution" all throughout "regular" sexual relationships between people even marriages.

Because you know there's still a lot more defending of sex work to be done, Amber Rhea (of Being Amber Rhea), has some Red Herrings for you:

It's about people articulating their own sexual desires and boundaries - especially women, as we have been traditionally denied this right.

Last, but not least, Latoya Peterson's post (at Racialicious) called The Not Rape Epidemic which is so good, that I cannot select a quote from it. Just go read it all. I mean it.

A few final words about this carnival...

I had a great time hosting it. While the holidays admittedly slowed the number of submissions, those I received were wonderful; in fact, I'll be adding quite a number of new blogs/bloggers to the sidebar due to this experience.

The carnival, and in fact the issues the carnival supports, needs your support too. So please submit to future carnival editions, consider hosting a future edition, and link to the carnival posts.

Perhaps most important of all, please continue the conversations presented in individual posts/articles in the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy. It can be silently, in your mind; in person discussion with friends & family etc. in the real world; or via blogging, letters to the editor at other publications, or other use of media. But continued exploration and expression of these issues is important.

While my carnival hosting duties may officially be over, I'm open to hearing from more of you about such related topics; so please, whenever you have or find posts which fit my beat aka submissions call, please do contact me.

The next Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy will be hosted by Sugarbutch Chronicles on January 26th, 2009.

Never Too Much Gay Head; That's What She Said

It's not what you think; but it's still pretty fun.

I Bet Richard Simmons Would Sweat To This Oldie

These images from The Charles Atlas Strength Training Course remind me of the Naked Yoga books -- only Atlas was years ahead of such things as eroticizing a workout.

To Provide For The Various Phases Incident To Love, Courtship & Marriage

Love Letters With Directions How To Write Them by Ingoldsby North includes "the Art of Secret Writing, the language of Love portrayed, and rules of grammar" -- Because the various phases incident to love are affected by grammar.


An ad in the back of Donohue's Vest Pocket Webster's Dictionary & Complete Manual of Parliamentary Practice, copyright 1901.

Reprints of the book are readily available.

Sleezy Pulp I Just Couldn't Buy

We all know pulp novels (which is a category of books wider than the term 'pulp' technically refers to) are exploitative works; but sometimes I just have to draw the line. Even if it's only 50 cents at a thrift shop.

Today's example, a copy of Super Cop Joe Blaze #3, The Thrill Killers, by Robert Novak.



It's not that I don't need to start collecting a bad series of cop adventure novels (supposedly by a Washington pundit), it's not that today I needed 50 extra pennies of my meager budget to go towards something else; I had after all lifted the book up to see what it was about. Nay, my refusal was based entirely upon the front cover text:

Nurses were being brutally raped then carved to ribbons by a pair of killers looking for kicks

My initial reaction was, "Aren't the readers lusting over the same kicks?"

And the more I ponder it the more my reaction stays the same, for the book doesn't say a single word, however clichéd, about how said super cop 'vowed revenge' or thought these murderers the 'worst sort of criminal'.

Instead it sells the rape & mutilation of women -- nurses who, by the way, are the pulp icons of 'good innocent & intelligent girls'.

Sexism, in light of the times & target consumer, may be rampant in pulp novels; but such misogyny is quite another thing entirely.

High-Five Fridays On A Friday Evening

This week's High-Five Fridays...

1) Slip of a Girl is looking for more information about this photo -- help her if you can!

2) The Educational Alliance at 197 E. Broadway, New York, has a History of Jews, Sex and Politics on the Lower East Side Walking Tour on Sunday, September, 28, 2008, from 2:00-3:30 PM:

Discover the lurid secrets of sex and sexuality as you wind through the streets of the Jewish Lower East Side. Spanning from the 1880's to the 21st century, from synagogues to sex shops, the former shtetl will come alive with tales of Jewish prostitution, pornographers, birth control pioneers, undergarment peddlers, bath houses, burlesque performers, erotica, fetish and fashion.

3) CR/LF alerts us to the legal rukus over the photos from Marilyn's last sitting -- reminding us of intellectual property rights issues as he does so.

4) I may not technically be a museum, but I follow this stuff: MW2009 Call for Participation.

5) Feministing has a call for submissions: What Made You a Feminist? Might actually submit something... You?

Not Even The Ankh Can Save It

It might delight you to know that I'm a freak for ancient Egyptian history -- and I say 'freak' because any anthropologist, archaeologist, or historian will tell you that Egyptology draws the freakiest of all persons, making Egyptologists the butt of all jokes.

My affection for such study began in childhood, followed me through college course selection, and remains with me today. Back in 1973 I was an ankh obsessed girl -- earrings, bracelets, chokers, you name it, I was covered in it -- so it would have thrilled me then to have discovered The Coven, "A sensational novel of Washington intrigue and witchcraft by Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt writing as David St. John" (Fawcett Crest, printed October, 1973).

The back of the book, sans mention of ankh, would still have held promise to a young me who fancied romantic notions of secret sects:

WHO WAS
ANDREE LESCAULT?

No one really knew much about the murdered songstress except that she had been extraordinarily beautiful, that her singing cast a strange spell over all who listened, and that even sophisticated Washington had fallen victim to that spell. There was talk that some of her tribal chants were really secret rites. There was also talk that a certain powerful and handsome senator with presidential ambitions had a special interest in her. A very special interest.

Jonathan Gault found that out when they summoned him to find her murderer. He had also heard Andree sing and felt the presence of something macabre and evil...

The victim, Lescaunt, was more than an Afro-French chanteuse; the mystical ankh that she and most of her musical followers wore leads the investigation into a cult, of course.

From page 45:

Out of delicacy or ignorance the jeweler hadn't told Ellen a few other details about the Ankh that I was able to learn at the Georgetown Library. The basic form was an oval atop a tau cross. A magical symbol, at its most elemental level it represented a human being. Antedating Christianity, it was believed a precursor of the crucifix. And its sexual significance was explicit. According to Dioscurian legend the Ankh established both the rising and falling currents of life. The symbol abounded on the tomb of Tutankhamon, even as filigree design in the pharaoh's funerary furniture. And wherever it was displayed it signified inexhaustible, all-prevailing potency.

The Ankh. The ansate or handled cross.

An amulet, periapt, magic charm; a talisman for those it touched. Andree Lescaut had worn it, and her enthusiasts as well. Was it a recognition sign among members of some latter-day Egyptian secret society, devotees of a cult? Dedicated to what? African Music?

Aside from the fact that the author stretched his word-count with the behavior of a thesaurus, what else do we learn...

• That black is beautiful, baby -- so long as it comes hither via France.
• That religious things predating Christianity are not only secretive & sexual, but murderous -- especially if linked to another culture's music.

While my thirteen year old girl's loins flush with heat at such simple sentences as "And its sexual significance was explicit", even then I was disappointed that such a ripe sentence not only bore no fruit but, lacking any attempt at back-up, had apparently sprung from nothing more than the author's mind; just another diversionary perversion.

The rest of the novel with Gault as its aggressive and sexually swaggering male lead reads like classic pulp detective fiction, albeit there are a few timely updates such as the reference to Gault's equally aggressive and sexually swaggering female gal pal, Gina. Case in point, this example from page 47:

[Gina] leaned back against the sofa and stretched, catlike. "I can think of things even more interesting--but there I go, seducing you again."

"Women's Lib influence. Equal rights for females."

Yeah, having the ERA referenced by some white male Nixon punk as a means to some sexually aggressive tail is exactly what I enjoy. Not.

In fact, there's really nothing to please me in this book -- not even the romantic ankh loving girl of my youth would have been satisfied with the shoddy writing, stock characters, fade-to-black sex scenes, the poor diversionary perversion of the Ankh, the thinly veiled stabs at Kennedy & youth culture, or anything else in this book. It could have been a sinfully good bit of escapism, as many pulps are, but it missed the mark.

(Curt Purcell at The Groovy Age Of Horror has another review of the book, in case you should want to hear more.)

When discussing Hunt's books, (too) many folks focus on his Washington & CIA experiences, saying, as Tim Weiner at the NY Times did upon Hunt's death, that, "His works followed a formula of sex and intrigue but offered flashes of insight." Poo. That's people wishing to legitimize poor books based on the employ of the author -- when they can't boost the written work any other way.

So why give it so much space here at SPS?

Well, what is rather interesting about The Coven is its author, E. Howard Hunt.

Yeah, yeah, everybody knows that the guy was a criminal. But wanna know what else is creepy? His son's own description of him.

When Hunt died in January of 2007, his son, David Hunt, celebrated the "good to know not everyone thought of my father as evil" sentiments by posting comments to this post about his father's books. When one comment-leaver said, "I have a copy of Stranger in Town, 1st ed., 1947, signed “Howard Hunt”, and inscribed “For Mary with love Howie” - Any idea who Mary is?", David replied:

I would imagine Mary was probably a romantic interest. Only his closest friends called him Howie. My father was quite a playboy back in the day. Being a writer, musician and secret agent he had his pick. He was a smooth operator for sure. We did have a nanny named Mary Trainer for many years in Japan and Spain but I doubt he would use “Howie” when signing something for someone in his employ

Here poor naive David waxes nostalgic on his pa's hero status as a sexual predator, yet manages to turn a blind eye to the possibility of the smooth operator's ability to bonk the nanny.

I don't know the nanny in question or even anything about her, but it seems to me that a playboyesque spy with a penchant for extramarital activities would certainly have the potential to at least be on friendly enough terms with the female help to sign a copy of his book with his nickname.

Reading and rereading David's comment, it sure sounds like married daddy was having affairs... Well, that was his due as a man with "his pick" of women, right?

Or maybe the son just likes to imagine his father as something better than he was, more like the leads in the novels... Triumphing in sexual conquest is the male ideal -- as long as it's not with the nanny.

Do I believe E. Howard Hunt was a playboy & a smooth operator?

I'd say he'd have to be better at that than he was as an author.

"If only she hadn't cut her hair by herself in the dark with a bread knife, she would easily be one of the hottest women in my collection"

So says Rex Parker of the woman on the cover of One-Way Ticket. (Link found via A Slip of a Girl.)

Sanity In Art Circa 1936 (Or, Let's Hate Modernism)

Inside the Parmount folder I found pages 5-8 of The Milwaukee Journal from Sunday, August 9, 1936. The pages appear to be from the "art" section, with lots of interesting bits on what was happening in arts at the time. None, perhaps, more interesting to me than this article, Mrs. Logan, Chicago Art Patron, Writes Book Against Modernism, which was published on page 6.



It's so grand, I have to type it all out -- giving you no reason not to read it:

Mrs. Frank G. Logan, Chicago, originator of the now nation-wide Sanity in Art movement, has announced that she will carry her fight against "modern, moronic grotesqueries" right into the American home.

Plan citizens of this country, accustomed to talking their art as the museums hand it to them, will become conscious of the fraud that is being perpetrated against them, says Mrs. Logan, and "sweep the rubbish from the galleries."

Mrs. Logan, whose state of nerves over art followed a predominantly modern exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago last winter, is the wife of an institute trustee and donor of the Logan prizes and many other art awards, as well as a generous contributor to the institute.

Calls It Junk

"Even a kitchen calendar can be an inspiration to the housewife if it shows a reproduction of one of the old masters," Mrs. Logan said as she sat in her drawing room facing a Rembrandt and surrounded by a collection including Corot, Rousseau, Van Dyck, Seyffert, Jacques and Hoppner.

"If everyone surrounded himself with copies of our beloved old masters--which we can get for 50 cents--the people would become imbued with a new appreciation of art and would not tolerate the miserable junk some of our museums are showing and calling modern art."

Turner, Ruebns, Innes, and El Greco were among those Mrs. Logan listed for reproduction on calendars and in inexpensive prints to help restore sanity in art judgment to housewives. In course of time the housewife is able to add to the cultural objects in her home in a manner which will create in her children the desire for the better things in life, according to Mrs. Logan.

A Forthcoming Book

While emphasizing that she is in no sense a dictator and wants only to lead people to their best judgment, Mrs. Logan said she was writing a book, also to be called "Sanity in Art," which she hopes will show everybody the folly of modernism.

"I'm deliberately making it an inexpensive book," she said, "so that everyone can have it. I shall use 30 cuts to contrast what is offensive and ridiculous in modern art with the work of real masters, old and new."

Mrs. Logan, who led a fight which resulted in officials in the Art Institute of Chicago bringing "song of the Lark" out of the dusty basement, at least for a time, protested that she is not advocating "mere prettiness which soon palls, but the beauty of form, whether it be of nature of human."

The crusade is carried over the radio and by mail by Mrs. Logan. Each day brings her a gratifying packet of fan mail. Particularly active branch chapters have been formed in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Greenwich, Conn., and Minneapolis, she said.

Mrs. Logan was Josephine Hancock Logan, the daughter of Col. John Lane Hancock (1812-1883), a colonel in the Civil War who later established the largest meatpacking house in Chicago who went on to serve as president of the Chicago Board of Trade, and the wife of Frank Granger Logan, founder of the brokerage house of Logan & Bryan. She is credited as having written books of verse, including Lights and Shadows and Heights and Depths, and "many lyrics including a Negro monolog entitled Longing." But it's the Sanity in Art movement for which Mrs. Logan is (if at all) remembered.

The Sanity in Art movement spread to more locations than noted in The Milwaukee Journal article. In this 1940 Time article article the leader of the Boston branch, Margaret Fitzhugh Browne -- called "the Society's old-maid president" -- is quoted as saying, "[The Picasso show] is an exhibition of crazy stuff. People who went to the show flocked to join the Society for Sanity in Art."

I think this says plenty about the group's philosophy and just who would join -- as well as Time's stance on modernism, despite loud out-burst from 'the public' against it.

However, if you think it was a Picasso which had Josephine Logan's panties in a bunch, it wasn't. Her bloomers became bunched when the Chicago Art Institute gave the Logan prize to Doris Lee's Thanksgiving in 1935; Mrs. Logan was so miffed that she formed an official society, complete with "Inc." and the book, as you've read, was part of the gospel.



In Time's review, they quote Logan from her book Sanity in Art:

Sanity in Art means soundness, rationalism, a correct integration of the art work itself in accordance with some internal logic. We know sanity is often difficult to define, and we also know insanity is often apparent at a glance. ... I have been called an iconoclast, and indeed I am one, in that I am trying to destroy false gods that have been forced upon us in the museums.

I find her statements that the false gods of modernism would be forced upon "us" very intriguing... Certainly her husband had some pull (or push) at the Chicago museum, yet she felt that the art was foisted upon museums. An odd statement as museums are seen (and usually have been seen) as the arbitrators of taste and 'what is art'; gate-keepers who dictate or bestow than those foisted-up or dictated to. Perhaps Mrs. Logan chafed at the younger folks who made more decisions regarding these matters (employees and younger trustees vs. old men like her husband). Or perhaps Mrs. Frank G. Logan chafed at being a woman with no say -- other than to push Mr. Logan, who was, by all accounts at this time anyway, a rather retiring gentleman. But in any case, Josephine, who has more influence than most, feels that 'someone' is duping 'us'. It's curious and makes me wish for her journals & diaries... Perhaps the old grand dame had taken young artists under her wing too *wink*

Back to what we do know.

The Society for Sanity in Art was, to quote Ask Art, "opposed to all forms of modernism, including abstract expressionism, surrealism, and many other changes going on in the world at that time."

I think it's important to note that indeed, the times, they were a-changin' and Mrs. Logan, then approximately 73, wasn't the only one resisting. As noted in the introduction to Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (2001), published at the Chicago History Fair site, there were lots of responses to the changing times. Here's a bit from the book's introduction on the Chicago art scene at the time :

In the art world, conservatives split from the Chicago Society of Artists and formed a new organization, the Association of Chicago Painters and Sculptors, leaving the modernist core to run the Chicago Society of Artists. Josephine Logan's Sanity in Art organization, founded in 1936, attacked the aesthetics of modernism; Eleanor Jewett, art critic for the Chicago Tribune, shared Logan's point of view and labeled the works of Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh brutal, primitive, and childish.

An example of Josephine Logan's power (and her own primitive & childish charm) is told in the following story of when the Chicago Art Institute opened its 47th annual show in 1936:

Last week's Chicago Art Institute show carefully avoided any of the extreme schools of U. S. painting, was described by Chicago's ablest critic, Clarence Joseph Bulliet (Chicago Daily News), as "a sedate show of practically unrelieved conservatism." The jury for painting-Edmund Archer, John Steuart Curry, Jerry Farnsworth, Meyric Rogers, Thomas Tallmadge-salved its artistic conscience by giving Mrs. Logan's prize to an unexceptionable if uninspired studio nude entitled Olympia, by capable, hard-working Robert Philipp of Manhattan.

Late in the afternoon day before the show opened, Mrs. Logan, accompanied by Chicago Tribune Critic Eleanor Jewett, arrived at the museum. Director Robert B. Harshe rushed forward hastily, conducted his patron to the prizewinning Olympia.

"Do you approve, Mrs. Logan? Do you approve?'' he cried anxiously.

"Yes," said Mrs. Logan, "I approve. It is very sweet."

Sweeping through the rest of the gallery, Mrs. Logan looked with marked disfavor on another prizewinner, Earthquake by Jon Corbino, showing a sleeping family on the second floor of a collapsing barn above a group of frightened horses.

"And why, Mr. Harshe," asked she, "should a thing like that be given a prize?" Hanging next to the prizewinning earthquake was a picture by Jim Lee of two amiable Japanese moppets reading a book. As a rebuke. Mrs. Logan bought it.

I cannot find images of Earthquake, nor of the Jim Lee work Logan purchased; but did find the "uninspired studio nude" Olympia by Robert Philipp.



I don't think needs only to rely on Time's characterization that Logan was being a cheeky-little-monkey, purchasing Lee's work to rebuke the award-winning Corbino; I can think of numerous occasions when I've seen such thing.

While Sanity in Art has been called "an aesthetic 'Moral Majority'" * Logan and her ilk were not necessarily prudish when it came to nudity. Being lovers of the classics, they recognized "beauty of form, whether it be of nature of human" such as with Olympia. And even devout movement members who were artists, such as early Sanity in Art member Claudia M. Barkdull McKenzie, created nudes. This is the California painter's Floral Still life with Nude.




"Plump, round-faced Josephine Hancock Logan" not only founded the Society for Sanity in Art, Inc., but gave out its own Sanity in Art Awards. And in 1939 the society had its own first national exhibition at Chicago's Stevens Hotel. Of it, Time said:

Mrs. Logan turned up early, dressed in pink lace, pink gloves, diamond and emerald bracelets, a hat of feathers and flowers. While an eight-piece orchestra played her favorite tunes and she—befeathered, beflowered and bemused—sat humming them, a crowd, many of them oldsters, peered at 255 sane exhibits, murmured brightly: "Isn't it wonderful to see real painting again?" First of the eleven prizes went to Chauncey Ryder, 71, for a harmless landscape; other prizes to sound, conservative Frank W. Benson, 77, mountain-whittling Gutzon Borglum, 68. Herself a little dim about who had won the prizes, Donor Logan purred comfortably: "But they're all my old friends."

Time paints her as some ditzy matron of the arts, forcing me to wonder more about this woman who was so outraged at modernism that she had to start such a public campaign in her 70's. Just a photo would be nice at this point. *sigh*

I could not find any images of the Sanity in Art award, but here's a description from an auction catalog:

SOCIETY FOR SANITY IN ART AWARD MEDAL, 1937. 75.8mm. Bronze. Signed, "Mortens." (MACO) Lightly tarnished Unc. Obverse: SOCIETY FOR SANITY IN ART JOSEPHINE HANCOCK LOGAN FOUNDER around a high relief central bust of Mrs. Logan, looking very much like a wealthy dowager. The reverse features a deco style nude young woman seated above an inscription: SOCIETY FOR SANITY IN ART/ MEDAL/ AWARDED TO/ The medal is not awarded.

It would be easy to imply that Logan and others in the Sanity in Art movement were, well, 'nutty'. But you have to remember the context of time.

Logan and others in this movement had not only survived the great depression (and the Logans did so clearly with wealth & power intact), but they were the product of Victorian values -- and now they faced a changing world which demanded that they acquiesce & fade away.

The changes in art, museums replacing Rembrandts with Picassos, was not just a visual 'out with the old, in with the new' statement, a sign that power was shifting; it was much more than that.

Art was the way one expressed the grace of privilege, both by owning it and by being a patron. On a personal level, one worked hard to be able to afford real art. Such wealth and power had its public responsibility, namely to guard culture & extol values and art was one of the ways to do so. To stand by and watch masters -- or at least the space for their works -- be eviscerated by modernism was to watch one's lifetime (seemingly) become irrelevant and to have concern for the future. What would the values and art of those times be?

While it's easy to see that modernism did more than just survive, and the researcher in me says to let the documentation of the artists Mrs. Logan speak to their own longevity & popularity (especially when compared to the longevity & popularity of those she eschewed), I feel it only fair to state that Mrs. Logan's concerns, the ideals of the Sanity in Art movement, show up continually in any matter of social change -- including reactions to art which reflects such things.

Josephine Hancock Logan passed away in November of 1943 at the age of 81. Her obit notes that she had "dedicated a society for "Sanity in Art" to the proposition that "The 'Cuckoo of Publicity' has laid the egg of a new 'dodo bird' in the hard nest of art," thereafter purred contentedly at her own safe & sane exhibits," and tacks-on a brief mention that she was also co-founder of the American College of Surgeons.

Not long after her passing, the Art Institute of Chicago began used the Logan name to reward just the sort of modern works that Josephine loathed.

It is not clear just what the 'Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Purchase Prize' indicates -- awards, funds, both? -- for the "Purchase Prize" is relegated to a single line associated with specific objects in the collection.

Worse yet, the Logans are ignored on the museum's website entirely.

Since Frank Granger Logan served for more than 50 years on the institution's board, started the Chicago Art Institute's awards, and became honorary president, it seems only decent to acknowledge him. And while Josephine Hancock Logan's legacy may seem more murky in its qualities, it's clear that she was a passionate supporter of the arts. Her reaction to modernism is a part of art history & should be well documented.

The absence is a modern, moronic grotesquery.


It should be clear by now, that if you have any knowledge to add to the story of Josephine Hancock Logan I'd love to hear it. I'm also interested in any papers, books, objects of hers (I can't pay much, but I'll take good care of them!)

Additional stray thoughts...

I could find no references to any radio shows by Mrs. Logan &/or Sanity in Art; but I'll keep looking.

The 'masters on calendars and other inexpensive prints' idea would have been deemed kitsch by Gillo Dorfles. I'm not sure this qualifies as irony, but it bears noting.

* In her book, My Love Affair with Modern Art, Katharine Kuh wrote this of the Sanity in Art movement:

Sanity in Art was like an aesthetic "Moral Majority." It was a rabid movement of art vigilantes with its objective to have the most reactionary art, and only American art at that, shown, bought, or collected in Chicago and the rest of the Midwest. In turn, the group was intent on eliminating the practice of modernism -- any deviation from its rigid provincial code attracted explosive verbal onslaughts. In my case, the attacks were physically threatening as well, as when someone smashed the glass window of the gallery to register disapproval of an exhibition of Joan Miro.

Kuh says the organization was "unique to Chicago", which is not true; but it's her experience as gallery owner which counts here. Of course, Kuh herself is controversial too; but that's for another time.

Reading Is Sexy

Writing is sexier.



Vintage Saturday Evening Post cartoon by Leo Garel, clearly water-damaged, but who can toss the clipping aside?

Filed under "sexism" because it sure smells like a gold digger dig to me.

To Celebrate The End Of The Olympics (I Don't Care For Them, So Sue Me)

Via Hang Fire Books (owner Will, who today I dub The Great Will of Cheer-Ya): Fee Males, by Bert Shrader, French Line 37, 1968.

Travis Todd promoted an all-male sex Olympics for hustlers who gave other men satisfaction for a fee.

Check out more groovy gay (and lesbian) pulp scans in his Flickr collection.

Sex Of Negro Population

A chart from The Negro American family; Report of a social study made by the College classes of 1909 and 1910 of Atlanta University, by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, under the patronage of the trustees of the John F. Slater Fund; together with the Proceedings of the 13th annual Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, held at Atlanta University, on Tuesday, May the 26th, 1908. (published 1908)


In Negotiation of African American Identities in Rural America: A Cultural Contracts Approach, Ronald L. Jackson II and James B. Stewart, both of Pennsylvania State University, discuss W. E. B. Du Bois' philosophies:

Du Bois did not view the wholesale assimilation of the culture of the larger society as the ideal developmental path for Black families. In discussing sexual mores, he (1908, 42) argued: “The Negro attitude in these matters is in many respects healthier and more reasonable. Their sexual passions are strong and frank . . .The Negro motherlove and family instinct is strong, and it regards the family as a means, not an end, and although the end in the present Negro mind is usually personal happiness rather than social order, yet even here radical reformers of divorce courts have something to learn.”

Image, via NYPL digital collection.

See also: Papers of Caroline Bond Day who published A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the United States (1932).

High-Five Friday

1) In New Wives' Tales, Jackie Wullschlager reviews books on the lives of famous wives & lovers, including the kinky relationship between Simone de Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre. (Get ready to put on your Amazon wish lists.)

2) Brenda's Babes won $20,000 for her pin up collection. (I didn't enter because I didn't want to video my home.) Via Dinosaurs & Robots.

3) Gracie Passette interviewed Shon Richards on XXBN's Cult of Gracie and it rocked! You can listen/download here.

4)The Things Women Go Through to Attract Men..., by Cheryl Saban.

5) The New York Times reviews the J, Paul Getty Museum show, Grecian Taste and Roman Spirit: The Society of Dilettanti, "a quirky, fascinating show" which "examines the culture of connoisseurship in a men’s club in 18th-century London, revealing the unlikely origins of both classical archaeology and the Greek Revival style." (Sometimes I hate living in the Midwest; I miss shows like this.)

You can participate in High-Five Fridays too.

The Offensive Breast

Pop Tart at KKC sent me these scans, marked pages from 1954's The Family Physician, by Dr. Herman Pomeranz & Dr. Irvin S. Koll. She knew I'd have much to say about them.

The defacement begins with the combating cancer breast exams.



An "X" is placed over each breast -- nude breasts sans nipples, because nipples cannot be seen even in medical books. They must only be found in men's mags and National Geographic; a rule that still applies today, no matter how antiquated and foolish.

The Xs continue throughout the fitness pages too -- but you'll notice that the naked men in exercise diapers are free of inked-x-comments.




This leads me to conclude that the person who inked judgment was a girl, approximately 12 years of age.

This is an age where young girls are rather modest & uncomfortable with nudity and the sexual life of the female form. Even if the photos are not intended to be sexual she feels it -- like the photos of naked pygmies young boys masturbated to in National Geographic magazines, she is painfully aware. The X marks the spot where she is uncomfortable.

It's either that, or the work of a misogynist male. And I don't like to think about that.

Impressive -- But How About Hardcovers?

Via aag, How many books can you do?

Kafka's Porn Stash

John Coulthart alerted me to this: Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet.

James Hawes, academic and Kafka expert, reveals some of Kafka's porn stash in Excavating Kafka, to be published this month. Hawes says his book "seeks to explode important myths surrounding the literary icon, a 'quasi-saintly' image which hardly fits with the dark and shocking pictures contained in these banned journals."

Even today, the pornography would be "on the top shelf", Dr Hawes said, noting that his American publisher did not want him to publish it at first. "These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action... It's quite unpleasant."

Since I'm all for looking at humans in their full complexity, I can't wait to see/read the book myself -- and will hold off on more comments until then.

(Then again, I've never read Kafka... Must I read him before the bio-outing? I guess that depends upon one's views; reading this to know of the man vs. the myth, risking future reading of his works, or having proper literary framework first.)

The article is excellent -- only out-done in read-worthiness by the comments; here are a few:

Porn is nauseating, no matter who reads it. And in Kafkas time, it was not widely accessible,. It was a more normal, safer world back then, naive as that may sound. Kafka was a disturbed person, and that was the key to his originality. It is a greater achievement to be original, yet a whole person.

Fosse, Oslo, Norway

We have become worse than the Victorians ever were! (And I say that as a scholar of Victorian lit.) The combination of prurient invasion of privacy and hypocritical condemnation is more revolting than any pornography could ever be. Everyone has private fantasies, some are weird. So what?

Carol Siegel, Portland, USA

I love Kafka, and I would definitely pay to read his porn, especially if it's dark and unpleasant. I really hope that this material will be widely released in my lifetime.

Jenna, Tampa,

I don't see what the massive deal here is. As far as some of the material being quite dark, Kafka seemed to be a guy with some pretty dark places anyway. His sexuality wouldn't likely be much different. "Nothing but a pervert" is, I think, inaccurate and unfair.

Laura, Some,

As Coulthart said when he sent me the link, "Can't wait to see the reaction when the book appears."

Related: Franz Kafka tribute of "recomposed photographs".

"If Husbands Only Knew--"

Deanna (aka Pop Tart) knows how I do love these old trashy gossip magazines, so she sent me this scan -- and promises more to come...

If husbands only knew how much they are missing they would not wait another moment to read "Sex Fulfillment In Marriage." Many men (even those who have been married a long time) don't get half the delight because they don't know the knack of sexual intercourse!

As Deanna wrote in her post, some things never change.

The ad boasts of "Sex Charts and Explanations", including the female sex organs, "front and side views... The Internal Sex Organs... The External Sex Organs... Entrance to Female Genital Parts..." (Click to read the large scan.)

Earl Kemp On Fandom

Chatter with Earl Kemp continues...

(If you missed earlier parts of the interview: Intro, on science fiction, on censorship and politics, on reading and writing.)

SPS: I can understand your reluctance to return to editing... But a memoir? Or an anthology of your own works? You've been writing for years and have many fans...

Earl: That's the good part about the LA show mentioned separately. Makes me feel huge and significant with people actually wanting to meet me, to look at me askance and, unconsciously touch me. Sure makes me wonder where I was when I was doing all those wonderful things they imagine me doing.



SPS: OK, to recap you think the Internet is wonderful, but you still don't see the possibility of a return to or recreation of the sf community -- or any author/fan family?

Earl: No I don't. It's all part of the burgeoning of the world. Everything is becoming too big, too costly, too unmanageable even by those in power who think they're doing it right and only for the buck. They don't get any of it. They don't want to get any of it. They don't want anything disproving their concepts of what they think of as money-making reality.

The best times are always with the right person/people/group and that is limited, by necessity, to all one can handle.

There are annual World SF Cons...they attract many thousands of people from far too many tangential directions with their own crosses to bare. Multiple tracks of bland propaganda hyping things of no significance. Twenty to 30 program items going on simultaneously in several different ballrooms and, at times, even in several different 4-star, plush, unreasonably expensive hotels, some within walking distance.

SPS: I'll admit I've never been... It's always seemed more for exhibitionists than shared/sharing interests. But hey, I'm now elusive, if not heading for hermit status.

Your points about size are valid; it is difficult to create mass intimacy. Orgies do not satiate when the real point is a connection based on something more than body contact. Yet immense popularity sort of forces the situation, no?

Earl: It certainly forces me to avoid the situation. Otherwise I would find myself spending thousands that I don't have just to sneak around and secretly meet old friends who are doing the same thing and avoiding all else.

SPS: It's a conundrum of sorts... Fans create popularity; yet the more popular the person/work/genre, the less access and connection. In some cases this decreases popularity; in other cases, I think it decreases the quality/care of the work/person. (Then again there's the misplaced idolization of celebrity itself.) Have you any thoughts on how to balance this?

Earl: No. [But] then there is the annual Corflu meeting of fanzine editors, usually less than 200 where everyone knows your face and damned near everything else. A sit down, hash it out, get screwed up, network with your closest friends from all over the world. Heaven! I can hardly wait.



Image credits:

LAPB 2008 photos at NooSFere.

Corflu photo from gsmattingly at Flickr.

Ruthless As A Young Cat

Whatever that means.


Via Julia at Flickr.

Earl Kemp: Acres of Nubile Flesh

In Acres of Nubile Flesh, Earl Kemp exposes the business of finding nude models and actors for Greenleaf projects:

Where do they all come from?

Bodies all over the place, everywhere you looked, stumbling over each other trying to be next in line. Where do they all come from?

There was a while, back during the late 1960s and on into the '70s, when I was buying people by the ton. It sure seemed that way, at least. After Greenleaf Classics began buying magazines filled with photos of naked people packaged by outside contractors, I began growing annoyed with the types of people they were using as models. Somehow, they were doing things all wrong, I contended. They should be paying attention to what those people look like at least, and cleaning up some of them considerably ahead of time.

Naturally, I figured I could pick desirable people out as well as the next guy, and hopefully a little bit better while I was at it. I had no sooner begun contacting Los Angeles area modeling agencies when they started barraging me with telephone calls themselves. I had no idea there were so many modeling agencies in the entire state, much less in Hollywood alone. Each one of those agencies had loose leaf notebooks filled with Polaroid photos of naked people for me to look at…lots and lots of loose leaf notebooks. It was much easier that way, flipping the pages, looking at the naked people trying to smile up at me from within those loose leaves.

Earl Kemp also, literally, exposes himself...



And others too...

Occasionally, and just for fun, I would insert photographs of personal friends without their knowledge, in the nude, into some of our various publications. Then, after the publication appeared, give them copies of it and point them out inside the issue. Without exception, every one of them was pleased with the surprise and passed copies of them around among their friends.

In a similar jest, I would also insert close-up photos of myself without showing my face into those books or magazines. At one time, most of the black cork wall on one side of my office was pinned with tear sheets of just me, and not one person working there knew it was me. I recall taking my cue for this from Alfred Hitchcock, who always inserted himself into each of his productions. I figured I could easily outcock Hitchcock, and I did.

Continue reading this issue of Kemp's fanzine for more on Song of the Loon, the work "that started a mini revolution in sleaze book publishing," the film Adultery for Fun and Profit, and the film's aftermath too -- featuring lots of great old ephemera and lurking federal government guys.

On Manners, Rude Dicks & Klondike Bars

Pop Tart at KKC shows us a few pages from her copy of Your Manners Are Showing, by Betty Betz (1946). My favorite one is this one:

How crude and rude of Dick to eat
While walking gaily down the street
(Perhaps he nibbles on the roam
Because he's starved by folks at home!)

If one is to believe that a crude and rude dick's behavior is based on how well he is satisfied at home, then no man earns a Klondike bar; his woman does.

And, by the same token, this girl is to "blame" for this rude dick's use of the LG Shine.

Jive About

John Cebollero's Jive About: A Sketchbook 08 has an exclusive, never-before-published pin-up collaboration with Richard Corben -- and you can get signed copies of this limited edition, as well as have John create an original sketch on the back cover for you, at his website.

Jennifer Cody Epstein On Prostitute-Concubine-Post-Impressionist Pan Yuliang

A brief interview with Jennifer Cody Epstein, author of The Painter from Shanghai, a novel based upon the life of Chinese painter Pan Yuliang.

Pan Yuliang is a wonderful artist -- but one who is often discussed more for her struggle to become one (having been sold at the age of 14 into prostitution by her only surviving relative) and for her nude works (at a time when such works were scandalous).

I'm delighted to have Jennifer's insight here...

SPS: When/how did you first become aware of Pan Yuliang?

Jennifer: I was actually the Guggenheim with my husband and some relatives—roughly ten years ago. The exhibition—which was amazing--was on Modern Chinese Art, and there was just one image by Pan Yuliang on display. But it drew me over immediately; it was a typical Pan Yuliang in that it was very evocative of Matisse and Cezanne, and the bright, bold colors and distinctly Western setting (as compared to the huge propaganda-style images and much more subtle ink paintings around it) really stood out for me.

SPS: What was it that captured you & compelled you to write the book?

Jennifer: Upon seeing the picture, I went over to study it more closely. And when I read about Pan’s story (prostitute-concubine-Post-Impressionist icon; really?!) it just blew me away. I’d never heard of her before—but I couldn’t, at that moment, understand why---it struck me that everyone should know about her. I suppose writing the book was one way to try to understand her, and to try to imagine what making that sort of an extraordinary journey would be like.

SPS: How long did it take to create the book?

Jennifer: From inception to publication it was almost exactly ten years--so a long time! Granted, throughout that period I quite my job at NBC, finished an MFA at Columbia and also had my two daughters, so there were some side-trips.

SPS: Why write a novel, rather than a biography?

Jennifer: Mainly because I'd made the decision--after ten years in journalism--to try writing fiction, which I'd always wanted to do. But also because Pan's story ended up being one of those where I actually had to use creative license in order to get any sort of a complete sense of her. Even the art historians I spoke to confirmed that there is so little actually factually known about her (even the birthdate on her gravestone in Paris is generally agreed to be inaccurate) that in order to get a full sense of her life, one has to simply imagine.

SPS: You mention there is little documentation or biographical information about her... What do you think that is due to? A lack of respect for her, her art? Did her popularity increase after her death, when it was "too late" for much information? Or was it a general lack of respect for women in general? Or just a problem in general of artists from that time? Something else?

Jennifer: I think the lack of documentation was in part a combination of all these factors. But I also think that Pan herself kept a pretty tight grip on her story and was very careful about the versions of it she allowed out. This isn't surprising, given how wildly controversial both her work and her history were, and also given the fact that people tended to pay more attention to the latter than the former.

SPS: Have you seen Hua hun, and if so, what are your thoughts on the film?

Jennifer: I have. I actually knew about the film fairly early into my research, but held off watching it until I was well grounded in my own book and characters---I didn't want to risk being overly influenced by it. think I finally sat through it after I'd already finished with Shanghai in my book and was moving on to Paris. I certainly appreciated Hua Hun for its beauty--it was very well-done, and I loved the intense aestheticism of it visually. But I did feel that--like the biography it's based on--the movie portrayed Pan Yuliang as somewhat less of a self-determined woman and artist than I came to see her as. The general sense I got from watching it was that she was more or less shaped by the actions of the men around her; e.g., rescued despite herself from the brothel, guided into art and school by her husband, etc. I sensed such a strength of character and will in her paintings, though, that I really wanted to give her more of a role in her evolution as an artist.

It's been noted to me, incidentally, that some readers think i made her too strong--they don't find her particularly likeable. But my sense is (both from my own musings and from what I've heard) that she wasn't an easy person in real life to either know or to like--so I suppose in some ways that just makes me hope that I got something right!

SPS: Did she have any children?

Jennifer: She did not. The biographical info points to at least one pregnancy but (as I write [in the book]) that was terminated. She did adopt her husband's son, however; he's still alive I believe, in Anhui province.

SPS: If you could say in one sentence (of what took a decade to create) -- what you think is the sum of the book... I guess that would be two sentences --

Jennifer: The sum, for me, is really the boundless creativity and ingenuity of the human spirit (though I hope that doesn't make people gag!). The truth is, Pan Yuliang was pretty much damned from the start by so many factors--her gender, her class, her country of origin; the fact that her parents died and her uncle was an opium addict; the fact that she was sold into a brothel. It's a set of circumstances that most women would simply not have survived. And yet thanks to her resilience, talent and the sheer bravery she displayed in painting what she wanted, regardless of cost, she has left other women and artists this extraordinary example and legacy. (I'm sorry, that's four sentences and a lot of semicolons!)

SPS: That's OK -- it took me how many sentence fragments just to get near a question. *wink* Do you have a "one sentence bit" of what you hope the reader walks away with from The Painter From Shanghai?

Jennifer: That even in the most apparently dire of circumstances you still have the power to shape your own dreams, goals, life.

SPS: And, in one sentence, what did you walk away from the experience with?

Jennifer: The thrill of having had Pan Yuliang and China as a job for the past decade (how lucky is that!?), and a renewed faith in myself for actually having published a historical novel with family and sanity (at least somewhat) intact!

Thanks, Jennifer; I can't wait to read it!

You can read more on Jennifer's process with the book here; and catch a live interview with the author on XXBN's Cult of Gracie, tonight (Wednesday, July 16th) at 9 P.M. (central).

Call in questions and comments are welcome at 1 (646) 200-3136. (And rumor has it that a copy of The Painter from Shanghai will be given away to live callers...)

If you miss the show, you can listen to the archived show (or download it) here.


See also:

The Nude in the Art of Pan Yuliang, by Elsa Favreau.

A Lonely Legacy of Pan Yuliang: Capital Museum in Beijing Exhibit

See more of Pan Yulian's works here.

Earl Kemp On Reading & Writing

Continuing my talk with Earl Kemp. (Intro, on science fiction, on censorship and politics).

SPS: I was reading about Greenleaf and the apparently surprising popularity of gay works at that time... It is said now that many women are fans of such books and films -- straight women are the primary fans of written works and lesbians a large part of film sales. At the time you were producing gay publications for Greenleaf did you notice this?

Earl: I did notice how very popular the genre was, and that it was almost totally forbidden at the time. I also noticed that female writers (even straight ones) of lesbian material were off the wall possessive of their opinions that were often in conflict with our editors and our sales. Also numbers of straight male writers wrote gay novels. Also purchasers of gay material were more willing to pay for quality up to and including the type of paper the books were printed on.

These days, I find very little difference between our '60s books and modern bestsellers. Except perhaps that females use more dirty words and figure more prominently in them...as writers and readers and especially as protagonists on the prowl. Harlequin grown up and no holds barred for female readers.

SPS: Your comments about female reading materials is a bit foreign to me personally... I do know that it's said that women are the majority of book buyers, but as for that formula, it's not really me.

Earl: Locally they appear to be in the majority. Most local men would deny that they ever read any book.

SPS: What's on Earl Kemp's "must read" list?

Earl: I don't have one. I enjoy William Diehl very much. I can tolerate an occasional James Patterson but sure wish he had some Creative Writing classes and an editor and a proofreader. Some of my old friend writers still thrill me these days, notably Lawrence Block and Donald Westgate. Even Hunter did it too until he died, but in all of their books I find myself and our common past and all the things we learned how to do together.

I momentarily forgot (it's difficult to remember quickly and make snappy comments) two of my all time favorites, Elmore Leonard who can write no wrong and Larry McMurtry.



SPS: "Ahh," she said nodding.

I'm not certain I can articulate what resonates about that, nor follow it up with anything. If I were talking my thoughts, I'd open my mouth as if to speak then think better of it; then repeat the process several times. It's rare anyone can move me to such a silence.

Is this, do you think, the same for your dislike of TV, films etc... This lack of being able to find yourself there?

On the other hand, that seems a bit odd for a man who was hooked by other worlds... But then not feeling 'at home here' seems to have been a common theme I hear/read from sf authors.

I realize there is no direct question there. Just a few scattered thoughts. I might have been better off just keeping my mouth shut.

Earl: Oh, no. I always find myself there. At times even before the film begins or the novel opens. I am the original "reader identification" guy.

Of course. I was never "at home there." I was born into a foreign place with a language that I never understood among people doing nothing very slowly. A stranger and afraid in a world I never made. I didn't come alive until around the age of 30 and wasn't born a human until I was divorced. I'm still trying to shake off my teenage years and become an adult.

[As for keeping your mouth shut] You don't learn/exchange anything that way.

SPS: Given that sf was such a 'family' community before, I have to ask about Tiptree...

What did you think of her? Her writing? Did her stand-offishness affect your connection/appreciation? Did her secret affect your opinions of her &/or her writing?

Earl: I have no thoughts about her. She's after my time. I've never read anything by her.

SPS: How can Tiptree be after your time? You're still here. You're still reading. An aversion, perhaps?

Earl: Possibly. I think I explained that when I was a working editor I had not the slightest chance of reading for personal pleasure. Now I do. Now I'm very selective in who wrote it and whatever it is that I think I want to read. Currently around a novel a day with a little nonfiction thrown in for grins.

Images from Earl Kemp's efanzine: Greenleaf's The Man From C.A.M.P. series, Agent 0008 Checklist.

High-Five Fridays #24

High-Five Fridays is still on hiatus; but I'm still playing.

1) Book collectors will enjoy this tantalizing review of Books: A Memoir, by Larry McMurtry. Here's a snippet:

A purpose of this memoir, Mr. McMurtry writes, is to “raise ghosts” of booksellers past, in the same way that Booked Up has become an “anthology” of their wares. In 1950, when Fourth Avenue was bookstore row, Manhattan had 175 bookstores. The online business that replaced them, Mr. McMurtry laments, is precise and efficient but lacks the human contact and serendipity of poring through shelves of dust in search of treasure.

2) An interview with David Farley, who wants to expose you to Napoleon's penis.

3) The debate on "the sensuality of children" continues in the Australian art world: one side, the other. Personally, I think concerned people need to take a real look at the definition of "sensual" and discover that it's not necessarily erotic; but I am glad to see this covered as a conversation.

4) The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society announced plans to open a new exhibit in the Castro district later this year -- if it can raise enough money. (Hint Hint) Kudos to Out in America for giving it press; a hand slap for not including an actual link to the historical society.

5) Thanks to Mark at Dinosaurs & Robots for noticing what goes on here.

Behavior Of The American Housewife

I'm not sure if I have this book or not... (My shelves, they sag & buck like a wild horse; and if it weren't for the boxes full of books in front of them, they'd likely tip over. Yes, organization is on the "to do" list.)




But even if I have a copy (or three) of 1961's Sexual Behavior Of The American Housewife, by W.D. Sprague Ph.D., it likely wouldn't include these marks. (Click image to read them.)



Marks and notations are something I'd never leave in a book; as a tribute to the countless kind and helpful librarians in my youth (and today too), I've never even dog-eared a page. But when I find them, I am fascinated. As is Ann Douglas, poster of these images at Flickr, who says:

My favorite part of this entire book -- the housewife title I just posted -- is this page spread. I think it's hilarious how someone (the not-so-happy wife) marked these passages with huge lines and giant X-es. I wonder if she "accidentally" left the book on bed for hubby to find one night when she was late getting home to make dinner, with the book open to the page with the mysterious markings. It makes you wonder.

Lingerie Catalog

Irish Wit and German Sadism directs us to Plaid Stallions for some "hawt babez in 70s lingerie". One of the said stallions commented the following image:

It takes a minute to get used to the airbrushed nipples in this thing. I don't know why a Lingerie catalog would feature shots of unimpressed woman looking downward.

I guess that stallion doesn't know of the submissive female gaze.

High-Five Fridays #23

High-Five Fridays is still on hiatus; but I'm still playing.

1) Ethan Persoff posted about "me" -- well, this blog, anyway -- and I'm so tickled.

2) More for those who find the brainy sexy: Our Fair Kari.

3) You may have see this elsewhere, but still... Finding books which hide the private Polaroid porn is cool. (Via Sex Is A Red-Blooded Thing who added his 2-cents.)

4) Reflecting on the Good Old Days: A Reality Check, a review of Otto L. Bettmann's The Good Old Days – They Were Terrible! (I wonder if there's a chapter on sex?)

5) Think you know your Casanova?

In the classic eighteenth-century sense, Casanova is a poor example of a libertine in that he had so little interest in conquest or coercion. He was no Valmont or de Sade. He is outclassed ten to one by his fictional alter ego Don Giovanni with his catalogue of 1800 conquests. Casanova's is not a compulsion or sex addiction. Indeed, he might not register at all as having a "Casanova" complex in the sense in which the term is used today. Rather, he enjoyed the game of love and seduction, a sport or art of unsurpassed fashionability in the generation that preceded the French Revolution. He narrates affairs, rather than one-night stands. Romantically, he was indefatigable.

Man Ray Auction Day

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) works are up for auction on July 3rd, in Paris via Sothebys. Here are a few of the offerings...

Nudes & Sphere, with an estimate of 7,000—10,000 EUR:

signed 'MR' and dated '40' (lower left), ink and wash on paper.

35,2 x 25,4 cm; 13 7/8 x 10 in.

Executed in 1940, probably prior to the artist's departure from Paris to settle in Hollywood as a refugee in his homeland, this drawing and a related oil of the same year entitled Disillusion, are reference to the turmoil and conflict of a war in Europe as events unfolded and Man Ray realised he had to flee. The composition portrays confusion and uncertainty with three nudes clutching a sphere representing the planet in its state of unrest.

Also up for auction is Man Ray's Seated Nude, with an estimate of 8,000—12,000 EUR:

signed 'Man Ray' and dated '1941' (lower right), gouache and brush and ink on paper. Executed in 1941.

35,5 x 25 cm; 13 7/8 x 9 7/8 in.

This is a gouache study of Juliet Browner, who was to become Man Ray's companion and later his wife in 1946. She was a professional dancer who had trained under Martha Graham in the 1930's in New York.

More information on Juliet (Browner) Man Ray is here; cemetery photos here.


Perhaps my favorite, Les Mains Libres bronzes: ten bronzes created in 1971 from Man Ray drawings for a collection of Paul Eluard poems published as Les Mains Libres in 1937.As Grace Glueck wrote in The New York Times in '97 the bronzes include:

...an ''imaginary portrait'' of the Marquis de Sade in bronze (1971).

To the Surrealists, de Sade (1740-1814), the recorder of kinky sex and the writer of antireligious tracts, was a revered iconoclast. No likeness of him existed, and Man Ray felt free to create several. The bronze bust is a striking image that resembles at once Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism, and Benjamin Franklin.

Its fat face and shoulders are scored with an irregular grid that simulates the stone facades of the institutions, especially the Bastille, where de Sade spent years imprisoned for scandalous behavior. It's not inappropriate that the artist devoted this much attention to de Sade, because, as the writer Arturo Schwarz notes in his book on Man Ray, a streak of sadism runs through his work.

Some drawings on view were prompted by Man Ray's dreams. They, in turn, inspired poems by the French Surrealist Paul Eluard. The poems and drawings were paired in the book ''Les Mains Libres'' (1937). A hand creeping around the side of a mountain, a naked couple sheltered by a giant rose, a bridge with a nude sprawled across its top: these are better examples of Surrealist fancy than of the draftsman's art. Today they have a hothouse charm that heightens their appeal.

The lot of bronzes has an estimate of 50,000—70,000 EUR; so I can show them to you knowing that I'll not be bidding against you -- nor any one else. Sadly, I'll be doing no bidding at this auction at all.

120 Years Ago In New Zealand

40-year-old Joseph Fletcher said to 20-year-old Jacob Crawford "All right, you young bugger, we'll have a fuck too'. Crawford said 'Alright, put it up my bloody arse, Joe."

A year later, in 1889, Robert Gant, a photographer resident in the Wairarapa, was taking photographs of himself and his friends dressed in drag enacting women's tea-parties, the Chinese porcelain tea pot forever poised, unpouring, above the cup.

From Why you should read 'Mates & Lovers'.

Ho Ho Ho

Santa's Lap, by Valerie Hart (1979 Sutton House Publishing Co., Inc.; Adult Classic series), is a raunchy retro story about Ed Weeder, a guy earning a living playing Santa to beat the high cost of oil. Along with exploring & perverting the childish myth of Santa, there's the male fantasy that nymphomaniacs will discover the down-on-his-luck divorced guy's special sexual talents:

He shut the door, turned on the light, and looked around. It was a reasonably comfortable room, with two large double beds in it, a small full-sized bathroom ahead to the left, and the two sinks outside, joined by a counter in front of a huge mirror. The walls were off-yellow and clean, and the beds looked fairly new so the mattresses wouldn't be lumpy.

“Okay,” Ed said to the woman as she peeled off her heavy coat and hung it in the small closet. “Why are we here?”

“For the same reason people usually go to motels nowadays,” she answered, her sweet voice very disarming.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“Take off your coat,” her voice commanded. He did so, letting her hang it up, as well. Then he sat in the room's only chair while she sat on the bed.

“What's this all about?” he asked.

“Does it really matter?” she replied, answering his question with another question. “All that really matters is, I want you to take me to bed.”

“Then someone comes busting in and takes pictures which you threaten to show to...”

“To whom?” she asked. “Are you married?”

“Divorced,” he answered.

“Well then, what are you worried about? Besides, blackmail is too tacky. Believe me I didn't ask you here to extort money from you. To begin with, I need a good man. My husband is an insurance broker, and he's out day and night, trying to sell insurance. I never see him, he never takes me out, and though I live in a big house with a nice car and a maid to take care of the kids, I'm lonely.”

“That still doesn't explain why you picked me,” Ed replied.

“To begin with, you're a very handsome man. The four of us saw that when Harriet's son pulled your beard down. In fact, Harriet told him to do just that, so we'd be able to get a look at your face. “We all agreed you're quite handsome.”

“All?”

“Oh yes,” she told him. “This is more than a one-night-stand. If I find you satisfactory, I'm to report it to the other ladies, and they, one at a time, will also ask for the same service, and they'll offer the same price, fifty dollars... each!”

Sea Of Parted Legs

One Leg Leads to Another is a gallery of graphics using the view through a person's parted legs -- via Thingsville, US.

Spies Like Us

Harlequin #230, Women Spies by Kurt Singer (1953), isn't even fiction. According to 5m@5hYdez, "It's history. One women spy per chapter."

I Like It Here, By Kingsley Amis

I Like It Here, by Kingsley Amis (© 1958, Ballantine Books, First Printing, August, 1971) promises, "A rollicking trip with a not-so-innocent abroad," features an intimate embrace on both the front & back covers, and has a salacious teaser page regarding an international kiss not bound by the same language barriers as speech.



Naturally, I concluded that this story of Garnet Bowen, a reluctant traveler (forced to travel by his wife who wants a family holiday with the additional incentive of two paid writing gigs), would involve some sort of sordid reading... Having read Only Two Can Play/That Uncertain Feeling by Amis, I not only was anticipating Garnet's extra-marital exploits (or at least his fantasies of such) but was looking forward to this book.

But I would be disappointed.

What little dalliance there may be, it's but a few paragraphs more than the teaser; and it is about as awkward as trying to communicate in a language you don't know.

OK, so it's not the smut-fest the publishers made it out to be; that's not unusual -- not for such books at that time or books and films produced & marketed today. So what is it about?

I Like It Here is about a married man's reluctance to accept both the old and the new. His married life & work seems to make him feel miserable about himself yet he resists any change, large or small. It's a whiny, "Poor me, I'm a put-out male," story which certainly will resonate for many men; but leaves me wanting his wife to divorce him and get on with her own life -- rescuing the children from such a full-time putz influence.

While That Uncertain Feeling explored male insecurities (and ineptness), it did so without such a mopey whine and it didn't rely so heavily on a rushed Hail Mary wrap-up at the end.

Not surprisingly, I Like It Here is forever heard by me with a "but" in front of it, spoken in the pouty tone of a petulant toddler who doesn't want to leave the park.

What is surprising is that I Like It Here was the next story in Kingsley Amis' Jim Dixon series:

Lucky Jim (1954)
That Uncertain Feeling (1955)
I Like it Here (1958)
Lucky Jim's Politics (1968)

This was unknown to me because A), the lead character in Only Two Can Play/That Uncertain Feeling was called John Lewis, and B), as mentioned, Garnet Bowen was the lead in I Like It Here. So how was I to know?

Knowing this changes things a bit. Not only am I reading different versions, where more than names could have been changed, but I can, out of my affection for John Lewis/Jim Dixon, act like his wife must have been doing and try to remember the man he used to be. I'll cut him some slack.

But still, if you're looking for smut, I Like It Here is the wrong place.

Red Rape

No, it's not a menstruation situation; it's a pre-cold war pulp to get your blood boiling. One presumes that once you've got your ire up, you'll be ready to take a whack at those Ivans.


From the Conelrad.com review:

The testosterone-bursting speculative adventure begins – literally – with a Russian gang rape and submachine gun fire from the capitalist hero and rescuer of women, Danny Fare. Sellers' immediately exposes the reader to the grim near-future realities of an America under the occupation of the "Reds" or, as they are frequently referred to, "Ivans." The protagonist (Fare) spirits the damsel-in-distress, Fran Wilson, from the scene of her defilement to safety, but not before finding time to disfigure his own treasonous wife, Marta, for sleeping with an "Ivan." Fare brands Marta's pretty face – the tradition of the new American resistance – with the same knife blade that he has just used to kill her Soviet sugar daddy (for good measure, he slits the Russian's throat while the thug is in mid boot-knocking coitus with Marta).

Via Boing Boing (so nice, they named it twice).

That's "Asanas", Not "Ass-Annas"

Nothing says "the natural 70's" like yoga au naturel.




Naked Yoga: First Series of Asanas, photography by John Adams and written by Malcolm Leigh, 60 pages in length, stapled covers, priced at 60p (London, Fabbri & Partners Ltd. 1973).

"In the photographs, the bodies are naked. The results of Yoga will not be just an increase in something known, but an entirely new and fresh set of experiences. Just as the mind best experiences new thoughts in silence, so the body will become aware of its new sensitivity in the absence of clothes."

Such sensitivity can only lead to sweaty mats -- both the exercise variety, and those Matts who enjoy the book's photos.







Naked Yoga: Second Series of Asanas with photography by John Adams and written by Malcolm Leigh, 60 pages in length, stapled covers, priced at 60p (London, Fabbri & Partners Ltd. 1973).







Naked Yoga: Third Series of Asanas, photography by John Adams and written by Malcolm Leigh, 60 pages (11 x 8.75 inches), stapled covers, priced at 60p (London, Fabbri & Partners Ltd. 1973).

High-Five Fridays #19

High-Five Fridays is still on hiatus; but I'm still playing.

1) 'Tis the season: Feminist buttons circa 1968 - 1972.

2) From her collection of "sex toys that maybe should have never been..." (I've seen plenty of ads for this one; but do not have any of the actual vibes.)

3) The 60's Aren't Dead, even if Bo Diddley and Alton Kelley are.

4) The true tale of browsing a book collection during an orgy, discovering first editions splattered with the former owner's blood. Da-y-mn. (Via Hang Fire Books.)

5) Comstockery in the 21st Century:

If we can thank Anthony Comstock, founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and famed censor, for nothing else, there is this: much of what we know about the sexual subcultures of 19th-century New York is thanks to the efforts of Comstock. Much of the Society's intelligence on the moral depravity of the time came from the personal efforts of Comstock, who went to the fleshpots of the city himself to observe the offenses to common decency and recorded them in meticulous detail to be included in the Society's reports.

Black Beauty

From African bodies of evidence: Dartmouth's gutsy 'Black Womanhood' probes old wounds:

In 1810, an English ship's surgeon brought Saartjie Baartman, a young South African woman, to London. She was displayed on stage and made to squat to show her genitals. After she died in 1816, her brain, skeleton, and genitals went on exhibition in Paris, where they remained until 1974.

Baartman, dubbed the "Hottentot Venus," was a victim of colonialism at its most vulgar. She plays a generative role in "Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body," a sweeping, gutsy, and provocative exhibition organized by curator Barbara Thompson at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

I'd never heard of Baartman. But now I'm fascinated -- in that ashamed awareness of those who rubberneck in ignorance which is combined with anger and sorrow for the woman herself.



It wasn't until 2002 that she returned home -- nearly two centuries later. (See also: The Life and Times of Sara Baartman "The Hottentot Venus", a film by Zola Maseko.)

The exhibition looks right up my alley -- to bad the museum isn't in my alley.

However, the catalog itself is apparently worth seeing. (You can purchase it from the museum.)

From a collector's standpoint, the following reminds me how many nude African female postcards I see:

Partial nudity was common in 19th-century Africa, but imagine the reaction of Victorian-era Europeans landing there, greeted by bare-skinned natives. They deemed Africans primitive and erotic, applied anthropometry - the measuring of body parts - to attempt to understand them, and sent postcards home, many with photos and captions intended to titillate and reinforce presumptions of white racial superiority.

High-Five Fridays #16

1) Discovering more about those social gatherings of ninteen-ought-eight -- and don't miss the cute song lyrics on this card from 1912: I’ve Got to Go and Get Myself a Girl Like You. (It's a hoot!)

2) One of the largest collections of vintage erotica.

3) Amanda at SWOP East shares a good link, saying:

The MET has a display of superhero fashion. This is notable since most superhero clothing takes a lot of cues from BDSM attire -- whether publicly acknowledged or not.

4) Why the Leather Archives and Museum is important.

5) A review of The Forgery of Venus, a fictional work.

Find out how to give your High-Five Fridays here!

The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you've admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted!

Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).

Find more High-Five Friday folks here!

** Remember, Mister Linky use is for those #1 participating in the meme (this week's High-Five Friday) and #2 who leave a comment. Thank you!

Sin & Redemption Radio Show

Tonight on Cult of Gracie Radio, the guest is Randall Radic, also known as 'Father Felony' or 'Daddy Radic,' is the Ripon, CA pastor who pleaded guilty to embezzlement after he sold the First Congregational Church without the knowledge of his congregation.

As the ad on the sidebar says, Grumpy Old Bookman wrote, "if you want to read a (fairly truthful) book by a priest who is a convicted felon and has had eight fiancees & two wives, & a very complicated set of relationships... then this is for you."

It promises to be a very interesting show.

About Randall: His recently released memoir, The Sound Of Meat (published by Ephemera Bound) covers his earlier life as a professional swim coach and priest, including his eight fiancees & two wives. "I used to try and save souls without ever examining my own," says Radic. Now, with this memoir, he puts pen to his mission, voice to his sin, sadism to his redemption.

Just go here at 9 p.m. (central) tonight, and press the orange button to listen live! Call in at (347) 838-8467

Can't be there live? Watch the Cult of Gracie blog for post-show info and downloads!

Dorothy Kilgallen, Taking It On The Chin

I am rather obsessed with watching the old What's My Line? & I've Got A Secret episodes. The shows' charms lay as much in the panelists themselves as it does with the guests (including "famous" folks I've never heard of) and, of course, the numerous delights that such vintage television provides. I've mentioned my delight in calling panelists names, simply because of what I'm continually discovering about them, but sometimes I'm just darn cruel.

For example, I'm so rigorous in my negative comments about panelist Dorothy Kilgallen's chin, saying things like, "I must Google to see if there's record of the incident with a horse that must have stepped on her face," that hubby was starting to become immune to them.

But now I feel badly about that... And not because hubby rolls his eyes at me with silent judgement for my rudeness or with boredom.

In deciding to investigate Kilgallen's chin, I discovered that Frank Sinatra and I held the same views on it. Performing in Vegas, Old Blue Eyes called her "the chinless wonder", and at the Copa, he said, "everyone in New York is here tonight except for Dorothy Kilgallen... she's out looking for her chin." Just more to love, or hate, about Sinatra, depending your personal views on the man.

But in discovery of such statements, I learned more about Dorothy Kilgallen, history, culture -- and myself -- than I ever could have imagined.

Kilgallen was more deeply entrenched in the romantic, mysterious, fascinating world of the late 50's and 60's that I prefer to live in, at least research wise.

Kilgallen left a small Hollywood career for that of a journalist. She was not only a gossip columnist, but a crime journalist -- which makes her more than the stereotypical female press person you think of, but a woman ahead of her times pursuing a profession deemed unsuitable for females. She also became the first woman to fly around the world.

But more than this, she was a woman. A woman who, lonely in her marriage to a cheating husband, turned to singer Johnnie Ray, a man 14 years younger than she, for what would be not only a passionate love affair, but a long-term one as well. This is where the feud with Sinatra is said to be at least partially rooted:

Sinatra had loathed Johnnie Ray from the moment the young musical upstart hit the scene. Ray's conquest of the pop charts in '51 (the top three spots all at once occupied by the same artist) had come at a time when the once (and soon to be again) successful Sinatra couldn't draw headlines unless it was for indulging in his penchant for punching paparazzi. So in '51, Frank was outraged to see that his place in pop music's upper echelon had been replaced by a skinny, half-deaf, androgynous cry-baby who all the scandal sheets proclaimed as a raging homosexual, and he was further incensed by the fact that the love of his life Ava Gardner had a star-struck obsession with the singer. Frank harbored a lifelong grudge.

Dorothy Kilgallen had been less than flattering to Sinatra in her popular opinion columns, citing his violent behavior and brooding public persona.

All of this melted my cold negative commenting heart a bit, but there is more.

As a gossip columnist in this time period, it would only be natural that Dorothy would know of and write stories about Marilyn Monroe. But I didn't know that she was one of the first to write of Monroe in some rather surprising ways, including her death:

On Aug. 3, 1962, Kilgallen became the first journalist to refer publicly to Marilyn Monroe's relationship with a Kennedy. Within 48 hours, Marilyn was found dead of a drug overdose at her Los Angeles residence. The inquiry into her death was marred by numerous unanswered questions and contradictions in the medical findings.* Dorothy publicly challenged the authorities with tough questions. For instance, she wrote, "If the woman described as Marilyn's 'housekeeper' [Eunice Murray] was really a housekeeper, why was her bedroom such a mess? It was a small house and should have been easy to keep tidy." Kilgallen also wanted to know "why was Marilyn's door locked that night, when she didn't usually lock it? If she were just trying to get to sleep, and took the overdose of pills accidentally, why was the light on? Usually people sleep better in the dark." And she asked, "Why did the first doctor [to arrive on the scene] have to call the second doctor before calling the police? Any doctor, even a psychiatrist, knows a dead person when he sees one, especially when rigor mortis has set in and there are marks of lividity on the surface of the face and body. Why the consultation? Why the big time gap in such a small town? Mrs. Murray gets worried at about 3 a.m., and it's almost 6 a.m. before the police get to the scene."

Kilgallen wrote that "the real story hasn't been told, not by a long shot." Such bold reporting was not common in American journalism at that time.

In a case of what can now surely be called foreshadowing, this is eerily similar to the death of Kilgallen herself, just a few years later.

On November 8, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her own home. A death with equally strange details, powerful connections, and a poor investigation of its very own.

She was found by her hairstylist, Marc Sinclaire, who after discovering her, told friend Charles Simpson, "When I tell you the bed she was found in, and how I found her, you're going to know she was murdered."

Things amiss include:

Kilgallen not sleeping in that room or bed.

A woman who was normally cold, putting the air conditioning on when it was cold outside.

Kilgallen routinely slept in pajamas and old socks, no make up etc., yet she was found not only wearing a peignoir set, but with hair and makeup in place as if she were going out.

Kilgallen had a book, The Honey Badger, by Robert Ruark, laid out on the bed next to her, but not only was it not in the proper position for her if she was reading it, it was a book she'd already finished reading & discussed with friends -- and while Dorothy needed glasses to read, they weren't found in the room.

There was a drink on the nightstand by the bed, but where Kilgallen sat, it was out of reach.

Oh, and while we're at it, those first at the scene say there was a piece of paper by the door, eluded to by some as a suicide note, but it was never produced and no one claims to have read it.

While there are many other curious things about the way cause of death was noted (and by whom), the story officially touted is that Kilgallen, like Monroe, had over-dosed, either as a suicide or more likely by accident.

As Kilgallen wrote about Monroe, why would a woman seeking to sleep, wear an outfit she never wore, put herself in a room so cold as to be uncomfortable, not remove her eyelashes -- or at least the very uncomfortable to lean upon hair pieces, get a book she's not only already read but then not bring along her glasses, and put a drink (medicated or not) on a table near the bed but then place herself such that she would not be able to reach it easily? And all this in a room she didn't sleep in?

Curiosity only grows when one discovers what Kilgallen had been doing in the years between Monroe's death and Kilgallen's own.

Just months after Monroe's death, on November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated and Kilgallen was not only upset by the event, but was investigating it. She didn't believe the Oswald story at all, and when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, she arranged to have a private interview with Ruby.

No one is certain what was said in that interview, but Kilgallen often said she had something big, which would crack the JFK investigation wide -- and then some. She continued not only to investigate, but pen columns about it too, and it was said that the Ruby interview and other details would be published in her forthcoming book, Murder One, which was contracted to write for fellow What's My Line? panelist, Bennett Cerf, & Random House -- published without any such chapter(s) after her death. Kilgallen's file of notes on all this, seen by a number of persons, has yet to surface. Both the known and unknown details are fascinating -- and the stuff for conspiracy theorists, such as this article, Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen? by Robert Morningstar.

As easily drawn into such things as I can be, I'm leaving the threads here for you to follow-up as you choose, while I continue a different path.

What strikes me, shames me too, are other thoughts....

I don't like to reduce people, especially women, to such symbolic status that their humanity is removed, but in this case, Marilyn and Dorothy represent far more than just themselves.



While not complete mirror opposites, it's clear they each offer moments upon which to reflect upon their differences. Marilyn Monroe's wish for the sort of respect and admiration Dorothy Kilgallen had is widely documented. And Dorothy, who loved opulent surroundings and personal glamour, likely wished, at least from time to time, for some of Marilyn's beauty and to be seen and coveted in such terms. Neither was granted their wishes, of course, but such personal and private dreams are larger than just these two women.

If the woman of beauty, a man's plaything, is understood to matter less in this world, her afterlife continues to grow her legend. Monroe's beauty & status as sex icon only gathers more strength, even if she herself is batted about and accepted as a pawn at the whims of men and society.

If a woman's intelligence, however threatening, is supposed to matter more than earthy beauty, why is Kilgallen the less known? Her valor and strength are not reported and commented upon, even upon the anniversaries of her death. She is not revered -- in fact, she's nearly lost to history already.

We may never know what happened to each of these women. Their stories may or may not be tied to such grand crimes and cover-ups as the conspiracy theorists argue. But the really horrific facts are the if, how, and why these women are remembered. Conspiracy cover-ups aside, our collective societal values have been uncovered, and I do not like what I see.

Or what I myself have said and done with comments about Dorothy's chin.

If you can hear me now, Dorothy, you have my most sincere apologies.

For more on Dorothy Kilgallen:

What's My Line?: Daly & Dorothy... The Stalwart & The Tragedy (scroll to mid-page for the start of Kilgallen's story)

One of the most discussed books on Kilgallen's death is Kilgallen: A Biography of Dorothy Kilgallen, by Lee Israel.

The book was rumored to be made into a film, with, according to Johnnie Ray in a 1981 interview, Shirley MacLaine to play Dorothy Kilgallen (and David Bowie to play Johnnie Ray). Here's what Johnnie Ray had to say about the book and the matter of Dorothy's death:



Also of interest, at least to me, is this book: Johnnie Ray and Miss Kilgallen, by Bonnie Hill.

You can watch the first episode of What's My Line? aired after Dorothy's death (Part One, which Daly's comments, Part Two, Part Three, with the panelists' comments on Dorothy's passing as part of their nightly good-byes).

See also, Kilgallen's connections to Dr. Sam Sheppard's trial.

High-Five Fridays #15

1) Jane Jakeman reminds us that sometimes romanticizing history is erotic fun, in her review of The Aviary Gate, by Katie Hickman.

2) The Urban Woo links here -- thank you, too!

3) William of Hang Fire Books reviews Stalags, a documentary on the bizarre phenomenon of Israeli-produced, concentration camp fetish-porn paperbacks. As he says, "Gross? Yes. But completely fascinating."

4) The Telegraph lists the 50 best cult books.

5) Via Cult of Gracie's post-show notes, I discovered the classic painting The Swing, by Jean-Honore Fragonard (shown at left) depicts more than petticoats: "This picture became an immediate success, not merely for its technical excellence, but for the scandal behind it. The young nobleman is not only getting an interesting view up the lady's skirt, but she is being pushed into this position by her priest-lover, shown in the rear."

Find out how to give your High-Five Fridays here!

The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you've admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted!

Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).

Find more High-Five Friday folks here!

** Remember, Mister Linky use is for those #1 participating in the meme (this week's High-Five Friday) and #2 who leave a comment. Thank you!

Sexploitation Career Paperbacks

Deanna at CQ shows us "Three books which explore and exploit career perks your guidance counselor never told you about: Super-Jet Girls, Semi-Tough, and If It Moves, Kiss It."





Of course I have Semi-Tough, but the other two are new to me -- and belong with my copy of Coffee Tea or Me. *wink*

Understanding Sex History

Gracie uncovers an ancient Roman domestic violence lesson, which includes the following intriguing thought...

[Will we] ever be able to understand the degree to which sexuality is a 'locally constructed' or a transcendent, 'trans-historical experience of Eros'.

Earl Kemp On Censorship & Politics

Continuing my talk with Earl Kemp (Intro, and part one, on science fiction).

SPS: What are you proudest accomplishments?

Earl: Being totally surveillied by law-enforcement for an unbearable ten years before they figured out how to arrange my "downfall." You can't imagine what it feels like to not be able to use a telephone or to receive an unopened and preread letter...to have numbers of people following your every step anywhere in the world. Millions of dollars of public funds spent for...personal amusement of a political few. From Nixon to Mitchell to Rhenquist...criminals all...me no. Much like the Presidential Medal of Honor.

SPS: Was the arrest & time served a relief after all of that?

Earl: Absolutely. Being in prison was extremely rewarding because of the closeup view of what it was really like as opposed to all the myths. Very bad officials doing very bad things for enormous personal profits. Very much like those wonderful people in DC running the world at the expense and lives of others and again only for personal corporate profits and even that for multi nationals...not for the US at all.

Everyone should have the opportunity of gaining such enlightenment.

SPS: Did it continue afterwards too?

Earl: For a while. I can still remember when it stopped because there was such sudden silence and everything felt remarkably as if I had moved to another country permanently, so unlike living under a microscope.

The most difficult part of it all to accommodate was the knowledge that it had taken them ten full years of totally illegal intensely close observation to finally frame a downfall. And all that time I thought they were my best protectors, knowing absolutely every minute thing about me and not being able to find anything actionable. Mindblowing!

SPS: Do you think you are still on lists?

Earl: Isn't everyone? What do you think the Patriot Act is? Homeland Security? Do you follow the news of all the illegal FBI wiretaps nationwide? Do you not know that all email is monitored?

However, my paranoia is no longer in charge but I can still spot an undercover Fed by odor, long before they come into sight.

I lived cross-border US/Mexico and witnessed time and time again Federales handing over drugs to Feds for distribution and mutual profit. Big massive shipments...not your dime bag common prisoner.

SPS: Ever consider moving to another country?

Earl: I lived in Mexico for over 20 years. It was indescribably wonderful.

SPS: If it was so wonderful, why leave?

Earl: A horrible thing called NAFTA screwed it up unbelievably. Forcing it, in just a few short years, to mirror image everything that is bad/wrong with the USA. Gone instantly were most of the local products, customs, including even the cuisine. Now nothing that was good about it remains, all having been replaced overnight with Wal-Marts, CostCos, MacDonalds (they all sell individual bottles of beer through the drive through windows), Starbucks and everything one normally goes on vacation to avoid.

And an incredible amount of red tape, forms to fill out, documents, and finally passports for all US citizens wanting to pass beyond that incredibly ugly, fortresslike wall. "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall!" The Federales replaced by US Feds, spying on innocent tourists...

I could go on and on but my Mexico no longer exists. It looks like suburban NYC and smells worse.

Not an edible taco in sight.

Every poisonous, forbidden to sell in the US food item, long stored in warehouses just waiting for an excuse to ship them across the border and flood the Mexican market and drive away all those delightful things most people won't remember five years from now.

Reason enough?

It works for me.

SPS: Anything you'd like a do-over on?

Earl: Yes, most of it. I'd be noticeably more aggressive....

SPS: That's most intriguing.

Earl: I was Wimp #1. Naive. Trusting. Commonplace. Patriot.

To be continued...

Resources:

The Illustrated Presidential Report Of The Commission on Obscenity & Pornography, Earl Kemp, editor.

Sadomasochism in Comics: A History of Sex and Violence in Comic Books, Greenleaf Classics, by Hans Siden, introduction by Donald H. Gilmore, Ph.D.

All photos from Earl Kemp & his zine; used with written permission.

Sex In Comics

From Earl Kemp's zine (Vol. 1 No. 4, October, 2002), comes this info on the Sex In Comics series:

...Donald H. Gilmore, Ph.D, aka "Douglas H. Gamlin" and probably "Dale Gordon," and his wife Betty have established their own writer's colony/porn-mill in Guadalajara. Gilmore's Ph.D is strictly diploma-mill but he's a serious student and researcher of sex and erotica and his non-fiction work is among the best in the genre during the era. His four-volume Sex In Comics remains the best reference on Tijuana Bibles, with valuable information not found anywhere else, including the story of "the three gals," whose entrepreneurial efforts at creating, printing, and distributing sex comics in the late 1930's are singular for the trade and a major, if well-nigh unknown, feminist declaration of independence. The artistic quality of the their comics becomes a strong influence during their time, and will later be a great influence upon counterculture cartoonist, R. Crumb. Gilmore and his stable move their work through Greenleaf.

Related: Robert Crumb on collecting.

Earl Kemp On Science Fiction

Continuing my talk with Earl Kemp.

SPS: On paper, or in this digital age with sites like Wikipedia, "Earl Kemp" begins with science fiction. We hear the 'worked as a graphics artist' and then it's the fanzines, editing, etc.. How do you remember this transition?

Earl: As moving into adulthood and into the real world. Being born again with a view into reality.

SPS: What was it about science fiction which made you so passionate about the genre?

Earl: Just got hooked completely. Still am. Can't escape it.

SPS: Don't play coy; tell me what it was that hooked you. I want to hear about 'the golden age' or 'new wave' from someone who experienced it then -- both in terms of stories and the community.

Earl: I'm not ready to rethink backward for more than half a century. Too much trouble. Too little reward.

SPS: Whatever it was that grabbed you, did so by the heart if not the throat because you've been so passionate about the genre... Surely it deserves an ode, if not a few lines of description, yes?

Earl: Of course it does. But it was mostly the people involved at the time. Vastly different than the people involved today. To begin with, they cared. They involved themselves with each other. There was no distinction between fans and pros. It was family.

It hasn't been family now for...what...40 years. These days it's mostly media hype pushing for profits for total crap. But big profits and even bigger crap. Pros now are isolated from their fans, too aloof even to wipe their own asses. And most of them are in desperate need of talent, editors, and especially proofreaders....

SPS: Does any of what hooked you remain for you in the science fiction of today?

Earl: Good heavens NO. Pale shadow of its former self. For me, little or no adventure. People like Dean Koontz and Stephen King have totally destroyed both writing and sf. Crap abounds.

SPS: So they are the answer to Who Killed Science Fiction? I was taught it was Sputnik. lol

Earl: No, that was strictly the failure of periodical distributors crashing under their own weight. Had nothing to do with Sputnik.

SPS: There is quite a resurgence in sf -- you must be aware of that with all the hands reaching for you. Are there writers/works today you are fond of or at least feel capture some of that whateveritwas which first hooked you?

Earl: Contemporary sf escapes me totally. At the same time I find myself doing far too much reading. I had to give that up as a professional editor because there was no time for me, just for work.

Now I'm rereading lots of old favorites and running the whole gamut of contemporary bestselling fiction. I find most of it to be very formulaic...following largely the formula we created for Greenleaf Classic, as strange as it seems. And with a heavy tilt toward female readers who just have to have a go at that incredibly handsome but somewhat naive hunk, hung like a donkey...who will be totally their's before the last chapter closes.

SPS: What would it take for you to return to editing? Anthologies maybe? You've been writing your memoirs, online; any plans for a book -- a print book?

Earl: Always plans. Just waiting for the right person/thing/happening.

SPS: What would the right thing be? Would it have more to do with feeling part of a community, concern/caring for the work and the genre, or money?

Earl: None of these would be motivational except perhaps money. As prices go up, I have to buy/use less. Plus, at my age I'm much too cynical about my abilities to generate enough energy for any occupation. Only hedonistic motives could push me beyond current resting.

SPS: Do you think there is hope for such a sf community again? The Internet and blogging certainly can help with this, right? Or do you feel that ego/money/personality are still in the way preventing such a thing from happening again?

Earl: All media is different these days. Sort of like corporations running the country. Nothing is ever for the benefit of the writers or the readers any more. Unreadable books, banal television, unwatchable films...all selling like crazy.

SPS: So you don't really see anything positive about the Internet -- offering individuals less expensive voices, & ease in connection? Maybe you just feel that way because it allows any ID hiding slob with an email address to contact you.

Earl: You're mistaken. I think the Internet is one of the best things that's come along in ages. I couldn't live without it. Especially the less expensive part, although where I live, with NO option except dial-up that costs too damned much, really makes me miss big city living with competition and facilities that work occasionally.

I don't like subterfuge of any sort. Even usernames are insulting.

SPS: Personally, I too dislike the dishonesty of usernames. I hide behind mine because of the implications for family. Talking with you makes me feel more than a bit ashamed. Not just your finger waggin' but the life you lived. You didn't buckle or run away; you faced things. But I've tired, already, of being the tallest nail. Like you, I too hum Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose -- only I know that I still have something to lose and I'm not willing to pay that price.

Oh, I know I am on lists. Have been prior to W. My battles were smaller, more personal; yours were larger, more public. I hope someday to appear valiant in attempt if not victorious in action in my own history, a family legend; but you already are a legend.

This is part of The Collective Adoration Of Earl Kemp. Those who reach out to you want to rub the Buddha's belly, hoping some of that moxy will rub off. You don't describe yourself with much aggression and valor, but we see it.

As for the other reasons to from an Earl Kemp Mutual Admiration Society, I think they all lead back to passion. Certainly there was a passion behind standing up for Big Beliefs -- 10 years of government stalking gave you plenty of time to reconsider the personal cost. But there also is a passion for writing, the sf genre and the community. No one can describe Earl Kemp as apathetic. Even while you mock & paint yourself as the tired man of so many years, here you are.

In an age of apathy, what's not to admire about Earl Kemp.

And no, dear editor, I am not missing a question mark.

Earl: Flattery will get you absolutely anything.

To be continued...

All photos from Earl Kemp & his zine; used with written permission. Cover of Sin Chained, via Vintage Sleaze's Greenleaf Catalog.

The Earl Kemp Interview, The Introduction To

Recently I was 'talking' with Earl Kemp. The Earl Kemp. (If you're an ignoramus, check Wiki.)

I had exchanged a few emails with him before, confirming and posting a call he'd made, for example; but this time I became bolder...

SPS: Earl, I'm particularly fascinated by the concept of your status as an icon. As a creator of collectibles and as one who knew/knows so many other legends who did the same, I imagine the annoying folks who want copies, contacts, signatures, questions answered... It's a foreign concept for a girl hiding behind an online ID, living in terror of being attached to 'smut' because of the havoc it's already played in my life. Not that I've served any time for my beliefs -- yet.

I won't proclaim to be your biggest fan -- a pop quiz would prove that a lie lol. But your name & works come up again and again in my research of The Big Picture, and I must admit a bit of crush along with some envy... Not that batting lashes ought to sway anyone; nor gushing like an idiot. It's especially lacking in charm when typed. ;)

It really would be a treat to ask a few questions & share your answers -- so much so that I don't mind exposing myself as an idiot in terms of all that is (at least the public life of) Earl Kemp.

I realize it's a bit of a contradiction, me spouting that I imagine the annoyance of people asking you for things while asking for an interview; but I'm only human and have more than a few such pesky problems ;)

Earl: It is a problem. You wouldn't believe what some people ask for and, apparently expect to get, for free, including people who won't even sign their messages or have real IDs.

Not to worry. These days even I envy whoever it was people seem to think I used to be. What a time I must have had once upon a.

SPS: As I said, I'm very interested in your experiences and perceptions, so let's start there... What do most people want from you?

Earl: Hands-on sexual advice. How can I become normal? Invite me to your next regularly scheduled orgy. Send me nude photos of yourself.

SPS: Here I thought you were besieged with hands grabbing at your papers & publications, your (little black) address book, and, like me, digging in your brain for stories... And here you are, with the folks whose hands are out not for stuff, but to get in your pants. Not that I'm surprised, actually; it's what I'm here after. But I had at least hoped I had a more subtle approach.

Earl: Not exactly. After all, I'm pretty much past that kind of stuff these days, knocking on 80 and tired enough to prove it.

SPS: What (aside from this interview, perhaps) is the most obnoxious request?

Earl: Letters from clergymen on church letterheads asking to be fixed up with teenage or preteen boys. Letters from law-enforcement on letterheads asking for fuck flicks...in each case they were referred to the FBI for handling.

SPS: This is one thing people I speak with are surprised to hear about you. Most of them know of you from the sci-fi pages and they seem surprised to hear of ...For Nothing Left To Lose... Personally, I want to join your cult just for those points of view. (Then again, I'm under the impression that your cult has many other benefits.)

Earl: Sure does. Keeps me off the streets and clean and honest.

SPS: When I show folks For Nothing Left To Lose, a few say something such as, "Oh, yeah, well, I guess three months in the clink for obscenity would do that..." but I'm of the impression that it was just these opinions which led you to your work, which led to the nasty time. Am I right, or are those other folks?

Earl: You are right. I don't have to feel like I'm fighting the whole world, at least the fucked up professional politicians who sold our country out to the highest bidders. I can go along with the flow and play total idiot just like the majority of C-average US citizens, especially the ones in charge in D.C.

SPS: I certainly will share my thoughts on this, but I wonder what you think it is that continues to draw people to you?

Earl: Audacity. Admitting to the human condition and denying religious superstitions and myths as life motivations.

To be continued...

All images from Earl Kemp, used with written permission.

Related: Part Two of the interview, Earl Kemp on Science Fiction.

Collecting: Creepy or Sexy?

Via Boing Boing, quotes from Robert Crumb on Collecting (from Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting, by Brett Milano):

“Collecting is creepy. Record collectors put each other down for their various fixations. Everybody is convinced that his way of collecting is superior. They look down on casual collectors, who are just accumulators -- the kind who’ll just pick up anything and let it pile up. A true collector is more of a connoisseur, and that’s the good thing about collecting. It creates a connoisseurship to sort out what’s worthwhile in the culture and what isn’t. Wealthy art collectors in this country have sorted out who the great artists are. If you’re collecting a lot of objects of one particular kind, you develop a very acute sense of discrimination.”

“Any of the younger guys who get into collecting are quirky and oddball types, pretty maladjusted people. They’re not into hanging around in bars and picking up chicks or nothing. If they have a girlfriend at all it’s amazing. And the older collectors I know, a lot of them just have their little room down in the basement where they go and listen. They don’t share it with anyone, and their wives don’t know anything about it. So when they die, the vultures start descending.”

“Picking up chicks? Forget it! It never gets them hot, they don’t give a shit about collectors. I wouldn’t say that collectors are antisocial - that would imply that they want to do something harmful to society - but it’s not very sociable either. Very self-obsessed, kind of asocial. That’s why the world looks down on collectors, it takes a certain kind of personality. There is nothing sexy or glamorous about it. Women aren’t attracted to people because they collect. You can go up to them and say, ‘I’m an outlaw bandit’ and they’ll like that. But if you say, ‘I’m a collector’ - no chance.”

With all due respect, Mr. Crumb, I promise not to start drawing comic books -- if you'll stop telling me what kind of guys I dig.

I'll take (and I have) a collector over an outlaw bandit (or any bad boy) any day.

Related: Marybeth Hamilton celebrates the passion of a record collector, from where the image comes.

Of Bottoms Up, Getting Your Kicks, And Kicks In The Pants

The above illustration is by Bradshaw Crandell & from Ted Saucier's Bottoms Up, Greystone Press, NY, 1951.



Saucier was the publicist for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for nearly four decades, and this was likely all the authority needed to author a book of cocktail recipes for the elite -- and which appear to be, at least in part, credited to the elite.

For example, Bottoms Up is the first known reference of a vodka martini in the United States, a recipe credited to celebrity photographer Jerome Zerbe. (Zerbe was a long-time companion of the society columnist and writer Lucius Beebe. Beebe reportedly made so many flattering references to Zerbe in his newspaper column, "This New York," that rival columnist Walter Winchell suggested that the column name should be changed to "Jerome Never Looked Lovelier." Together, Zerbe and Beebe created El Morocco's Family Album.)

As a side-trip, some info on the Waldorf-Astoria -- and certainly such a grand old hotel deserves it's due at a sex history blog. (If only to see that our fascination with celeb watching isn't all that new.; perhaps at a later date we'll dish on the more sordid happenings of bedrooms.)

From a 1931 article titled, At Home To Society:

The hyphenated name caught the public's fancy: a great hotel—a name big enough to apply. The comedians and humorous writers of the day took it up and played upon it—a sure sign of popularity.

"Meet me at the hyphen," said one wag.

"Where is that?"

"Between the Waldorf and the Astoria," was the reply, That joke immediately traveled to Kalamazoo, jumped to Des Moines, leaped to San Francisco, and was soon told in the Hong-Kong Club. Going the other way, within a few weeks it was served as a relish at the Sphinx bar in Cairo with the newest American cocktail. By the spring of 1899 somebody was singing on the stage a song called "The Waldorf-Hyphen-Astoria," whose words various New York papers printed.

Here's a scan of Waldorf "Hyphen" Astoria, words and music by E.C. Center and Jackson Gouraud (via NYPL Digital Gallery).



Here are the lyrics:

We have all met those guys who affect to patronize
The hotel with the hyphenated name
But if it should befall that on them we'd try to call,
It would be hard to find them just the same.
After hunting long and well through each separate hotel,
Without result, a fellow must decide,
They may be on the square, but if they are living there,
It must be on the "hyphen" they reside.

Chrous: At the Waldorf "Hyphen" Astoria,
No matter who or what you are,
Be sure you not to Oscar as you enter.
Just speak to him by name,
And for "ten" he'll do the same--
That's the proper thing at the Waldorf "Hyphen" Astoria.

The 'Oscar' mentioned, according to Nancy Groce in New York: Songs of the City, is "Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf-Astoria's powerful and punctilious headwaiter". And the song may have mocked the name, but was more about the who's who which stayed there -- and resulting gawkers:

Of course, like today, not everybody seen there was actually a guest or a patron of the hotel's extremely expensive restaurant, the Palm Garden. Many, like the poseur in the 1897 song "Waldorf 'Hyphen' Astoria," simply hung around for a glimpse of the rich and famous.

The song was sung by John Parr in A Reign of Error, a musical farce featuring The Rogers Brothers.



It seems the production had been around earlier, and the song added later (March 19, 1899, The New York Times)



The same allure & authority Saucier & the Waldorf-Astoria held for publishers captured the attention of Hefner and Bottoms Up received a dandy review in the second issue of Playboy -- sure the nude illustrations helped *wink*


(Images via A Dash of Bitters.)

This collector cannot be restrained from wanting such a book. (Give me the $200 for the signed copy at eBay, will ya? I'd settle for any decent copy of Ted Saucier's Bottoms Up, actually; but why should I settle for anything?)

Nor can she help (nor be stopped) from noting this little piece of irony discovered during her research...

In 1931 some clever person (known only by the initials M.C.) 'respectfully' suggested that "the militant suffrage movement, now on the rampage in England, be referred to as 'The Reign of Error'."


It would seem that M.C. was unaware of both theatre & popular music to feel they had coined such a phrase. (Unless they were just 13 years of age at the time the letter to the editor was penned.)

So we begin with an illustration of a naked lady using ice tongs to select men she'll consume and end with a person wishing women would remain less than equals in the eyes of the law.

I leave it for you to discuss.

Of Sex Pots & Beautiful Girls, Beauty & Art, & Carole Landis

In case you hadn't noticed, I am as much 'anthropologist' as 'historian' and 'smut fan' -- modestly educated in each, but mostly of the well-read self-taught variety.

As all three, I welcome a more contextual approach to biographies than the usual gushing over the pretty cheesecake of yesterday. So I was really excited to discover that Eric Lawrence Gans, Professor of French & Francophone Studies at UCLA, founder of Generative Anthropology and author of several books (in anthropology and other areas), has been working on a book about Carole Landis.

Carole Landis: A Most Beautiful Girl (Hollywood Legends Series), is due this June from University Press of Mississippi. You can pre-order it at Amazon now -- but while you eagerly await the work, why not enjoy his notes in progress?



Of particular note, in the broader question of 'broad appeal', his article Carole Landis and the Concept of Public Beauty, from which the following is excerpted:

The experience of beauty--true beauty, not the mimetic sign of a fictive other’s desire--is the worldly correlate of what we call immortality, the timelessness of the realm of signs. It is an individual, not a collective experience, one that finds its guarantee on the individual’s internal scene of representation rather than on the public scene of ritual from which it derives.

The beauty of art is a beauty of representation, of signs rather than things. Because artworks are composed of human signs, the postmodern spirit that sees natural difference as the product of cultural victimage tempts us to construe them entirely within the "socially constructed" orbit of mimetic desire and its deferral. But mimetic desire, even as a specifically human phenomenon, is founded on appetite, with which it loses contact only at the point of madness.

The prototype of Kant’s idea of natural beauty is landscape, a source of esthetic pleasure less in itself than by analogy with landscape painting. But by far the most intense experience of natural beauty, indeed, of beauty tout court, is that of human beauty. In classical civilization, this beauty was more likely to be masculine than feminine, but beginning with the troubadours and medieval courtly love, the terms "beauty" and "beautiful" have been applied more and more exclusively to women. Since the demise of the Old Regime eliminated the sacred/aristocratic notion of self-display, the norm of masculine dress has become sober and conventional, whereas women’s clothing and adornment remains attuned to displaying the body to advantage.

Some feminists have complained of the "objectification" of women in such things as beauty contests. Yet historically, the increasing insistence on feminine beauty parallels the growing equality of women. Today, when women are arguably closer to equal public status with men than ever in history, young women’s dress seems geared more than ever to the flattering display of the body. The obvious difference in the respective degrees to which sexual selection has reshaped male and female bodies obliges us to conclude that, lacking special cultural circumstances, female beauty will always be more humanly significant than masculine. Nor is this beauty appreciated exclusively or even predominantly by men. Not only do women actively seek out examples of female beauty to imitate; they are touched by it, perhaps more authentically than men. Of the many people to whom I have shown Carole’s pictures, a far greater proportion of men than women feel the need to deny her exceptionality. To my mind, this difference is attributable to the interference of the shame of masculine desire with esthetic judgment. In particular, interest in the bosom is so vulnerable to ridicule that efforts to avoid it dominate whole historical eras, for example, the 1920s, during which time men’s real tastes in women’s bodies could hardly have undergone some mysterious mutation. Women, unencumbered by male embarrassment, are much more ready to acknowledge female beauty when they see it.

While earlier on, Gans' adoration of Landis is quite apparent with poetic praise -- which he will again and again return too -- it's his context and tone of unapologetic anthropological study which makes me believe Carole Landis: A Most Beautiful Girl will be more than just the usual biography of a babe.



Gans continues:

I would not be writing about Carole if I saw her as one among many beautiful and talented actress whose lives were shortened by exploitation and calumny and/or unjustly neglected by history. My experience of Carole is of someone unique, and it would be unfaithful to that experience for me not to begin from the premise of her uniqueness. This leads to an anomaly that must be faced head on. How can it be that during the era when Hollywood wholly dominated the generation of images of public beauty, only one person has left us a truly beautiful public image, and, if this is so, how is it possible that this person and her images are so nearly forgotten today?

Although many are reluctant to admit it, a woman’s beauty begins with her body, which the glamour photograph can only suggest; with a few possible exceptions, such as the infamous Marilyn Monroe calendar, nude photography before the 1970s was either art photography or pornography, neither of which are modes of what I call public beauty. The subject of the picture says to us, "take this image as a substitute for what I cannot show you, but which I promise you is there." Yet the typical glamour shot (classically, an 8x10 black and white glossy), even of the presumably most beautiful stars, promises something it cannot deliver. The disparity between the physical beauty that the subject’s dress and comportment promise us and what our objective judgment concludes is really there is a measure of the mimetic element in our cultural perception; one is expected to sacrifice one’s judgment on the altar of cultural mimesis to the (implicitly collective) suggestion emanating from the picture itself. The spectator must supplement the image’s failure to fulfill its promise (a relative failure, to be sure, but the promise is of "absolute" satisfaction) with images of the star’s film roles, perhaps of her off-screen life. The success of the Hollywood publicity machine in determining our sense of public beauty is a tribute to the effectiveness of this sacrificial operation.

Do yourself a favor and peruse the Carole Landis pages of Gans.

Frankly Fiona

Girlfriend & creation of the late Paul Raymond, Fiona Richmond became a columnist & a porn star (model and film), recorded an album, worked 'in the fashion industry' (how vague) &, eventually, became the owner of hotels -- with a former pig farmer.

All this gleaned from the postmortem Mirror interview with her (post Raymond's death; not hers).

One of her books, Tell Tale Tits, received a favorable review at Trash Fiction (and apparently Fiona is a huge draw at the site).

Paul Raymond Presents Frankly Fiona, the LP, is a scarce recording -- which Richmond, in her autobiography, says she didn't even sing on. (Adding to the mystery, some places refer to the LP as a 'spoken word' record.)

The small photo at left is from the record's cover, via Trunk Records (scroll) who adores it. However, whatever, the record makes the #11 spot on the 20 Most Bizarre Albums Ever in Q Magazine's 150 Greatest Rock Lists Ever (2004).

The photo below is believed to be of Fiona and Big Mal (aka Malcolm Allison, the UK football coach), part of the photo spread feature celebrating Big Mal inviting "the sex queen Fiona Richmond into the communal shower" -- making the list of top 10 football scandals (in a world where sex has always been high on the priority list).



According to the Crystal Palace Football Club forum, pictures of Fiona Richmond and the players appeared in an article in Men Only magazine in either the May or June 1976 issue.

If that's true, then it looks like they'll be found in May issue (vol 41, issue 5, 1976), which proclaims "Fiona's Illustrated Big Mal".

Along with columns in Men Only, Richmond also wrote columns and was featured in other magazines, like Club, aka Club International, published -- surprise! -- by Paul Raymond Publications.

The Pleasure Primer

An ad for an adult bedside reader found in the back of a 1950s vintage Western pulp magazine. Below, a copy of the book's jacket.

BDSM & Fetish Publication History

Gwen's Leather/BDSM/Fetish History Scrapbook has lots of information of interest to collectors. Look by years for landmark publications, issues & publishers, as well as clubs, persons and events -- including censorship actions.

Note: There are more female covers/images at the site, but few larger than thumbnails; hence the male & gay focused erotic works here.

Petty & Grand Books In 1957

From a 1957 Good Housekeeping, a 'picks and pans' on books:

Francoise Sagan, poor dear, had two of her three books panned. Thus she is the “petty” in the Petty and Grand.

But Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was “grand”.

She even had her photo included in the feature.

Another excellent CQ post on the context of magazines and pop culture. Read it.

This Really Frosts My Cake

From this retro Magic in Frosting book comes this risque cake of a couple sharing a bed.


I bet this really 'frosted' those who pushed the 'marrieds in twin beds' philosophy.

Found via Planet Fabulon.

The Fine Art of Wenching

Many thanks to Will at Hang Fire Books for sending me to Vintage Girly Mags. Not only are the covers (presumed to be) lovingly scanned, but each single page of the magazine is too. The only draw-back is that there is little text, so you have to 'turn' each thumbnail to get an idea of what is inside. (As a collector I am forever bitching there is not enough text on vintage smut sites. :sigh:)

However, 'paging' through Vintage Girly Mags is worth the effort. For example, you'd otherwise miss this gem in a 1962 issue of Wench.


Inside, on pages 16-17 (and continued on page 68) there's an article by Jay Taylor called The Fine Art of Wenching? which, as expected, is all about how to woo babes.




Here's an excellent passage:

Don't blame a girl for her flaws. Time's a great healer. If she's blacker than tar, tanned is the word to use. If she's cross-eyed, tell her she's like Venus. Thin as a stick? She's willowy. If she's a runt, call her cute. If fat, a full-bodied woman. And don't pass up women past thirty, Ovid says. You're crazy if you do. They're much more skillful in love-making. They don't have to be teased, worked up to a frenzy. They're the kind, he says wistfully, that can keep up with a man. "What I like is the deal that leaves both partners exhausted," he adds confidentially, "What I hate is the girl who gives with a feeling she has too. Dry in the bed with her mind somewhere else gathering wool.

"Duty's very well, but let's not confuse it with pleasure; I do not want any girl doing her duty for me.

"What I like to hear are the words of utter abandon.

But of course all this would make sense to me -- and not just because I'm one of those over 30 women either. This article is based on Ovid's Art of Love.

So not only is 'nothing new' in seduction, but magazines haven't changed much either -- they're still recycling content.

Nude Tarot

More images from the deck of tarot cards I mentioned here.



As mentioned, the deck offers two versions of The Lovers cards for sexual preference options.




The Daughter of the Moon Tarot, originally called A Matriarchal Tarot, is built on Dianic Wiccan principals and features many female goddesses -- and lots of nudity. Shown below are Kali, Pele, Mawu, Calafia, & Malama; examples of many cultures, colors and physical types.







The round card shape is also considered to be more female in symbolism. Those familiar with tarot cards will note the uniqueness presented with round cards -- depending upon your grace in reading them, round cards are that much more challenging or fluid to read.


The book gives brief legends for each female archetype, goddess, and image used; and yes, because I'm one of those kind of womyn, my copy of the book is autographed by author Ffiona Morgan at the National Women's Music Festival in '93 (in Indiana that year).

Sex Worker's Art Show, 2008

This info comes via Chloe Jo's Newsletter:

The show is a jaw-dropping evening of performance art created by people who work in the sex industry and are artists, innovators, and geniuses!

Hitting the road in two big vans loaded with a stripper pole, fifteen ponds of glitter, and an ipod, the acclaimed cabaret-style show brings audiences across the nation a blend of spoken word, music, drag, burlesque, and multimedia performance art. Intelligent and hot, disturbing and hilarious, the performances offer a wide range of perspectives on sex work, from celebrations of sex positivity, to views of the darker sides of the industry.

This year's incredible lineup of performers includes international burlesque sensation and recipient of the "Best Body in Burlesque" award, Miss Dirty Martini; infamous feminist author Chris Kraus; award-winning author of the coming-out memoir How I Learned to Snap, Kirk Read; porn star and writer Lorelei Lee; performance artist and comic queen of cleavage The World Famous *BOB*; performer and musical theatre mutineer Erin Markey; internationally infamous drag-subverter Krylon Superstar; dominatrix and destroyer of Asian feminine mythology Keva I. Lee; and tour founder and director Annie Oakley.

The show includes people from all areas of the sex industry: strippers, prostitutes, dommes, film stars, phone sex operators, internet models, etc. It smashes traditional stereotypes and moves beyond "positive" and "negative" into a fuller articulation of the complicated ways sex workers experience their jobs and their lives. The Sex Workers' Art Show entertains, arouses, and amazes while simultaneously offering scathing and insightful commentary on notions of class, race, gender, labor and sexuality!

Also featured at the show will be a new anthology of sex worker writings, Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry (Seal Press), edited by Annie Oakley. Working Sex features work by several of the show's performers, as well as Eileen Myles, Bruce LaBruce, Nomy Lamm, Michelle Tea, and many more!

For more info visit http://sexworkersartshow.com

Did Garbo's Books Just Want To Be Let Alone?

The bookplates beg to differ -- the ex libris proclaim that the books just need to be returned.



This Greta Garbo bookplate was designed in 1939 by A. Herry and is just one that Bookplate Junkie, Lewis Jaffe, shows you from the 1930 Yearbook Of The American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers.

Lewis promises more as part of a Sunday series, so keep an eye there.

History of Western Porn

Marianna Beck's series, The Roots of Western Pornography, is being published at Libido Film's blog. As they put it, "porn is not merely about sex. It also has a social and political context." Amen.

So far, there are three parts:

Part One: an introduction and Italy in the 16th-century in Italy (titled: I modi -- the birth of the stroke book)

Part Two: French Enlightenment in the 17th-century

Part Three: England Bites Back With Fanny Hill

Watch for the rest because it's excellent.

Image from Pietro Aretino's I modi.

Where There's A Will...

Will Straw, PhD, Department of Art History and Communications Studies professor spotted my Hollywood Follies post and sent me an email requesting some information.

While I dig around in my collection (I have a system, but it's not very friendly to research requests like this), Will has allowed me to share his email so that any here with info can help.

Hi -- I was googling "Wayne Sabbath" and, after five pages of references to religious books, found your site, with the scans from Hollywood Follies. Thanks for those. I've been trying to reconstruct the career of Wayne and of his partner (who may, in fact, be him) "Cap'n Joey"/Jo Burten, who published spicy magazines from the 1920s onwards. Burten's Follies was the best known of these, and "Follies" turns up in many of his titles. The last record of any of them I can find is a reference to Joe getting busted c. 1959 for obscenity. Do you know any more about these guys?

In any case, thanks for the interesting read,
Will

If you have any info please post it here and/or contact Will via contact info on his webpage.

At the risk of distracting you...

Readers may be delighted to know that Will is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America, a history of true crime magazines in America with an emphasis on its visual content, including 196 color illustrations. The book is also available at Photo-Eye and the Andrew Roth Gallery; a review, with a slide show, can be found at Men's Vogue, and you can download the book's introduction (PDF) here.


Will also writes the Canadian culture blog at McGill.

** Don't forget! If you have any information on Wayne Sabbath, "Cap'n Joey" Jo Burten. or the follies publications, please let us know!

A Time For Sex Ed Innocence

A Time For Innocence (A Kid's-Eye View of the Facts of Life) (1969) is a Fireside Book reissue of Sex and the Single Child by Sam Levenson with illustrations by Whitney Darrow, Jr. I found it at a thrift store this weekend and flipping through the pages I was smitten enough to read the back -- then take it home.


The books are dirt-cheap at Amazon, so if you are at all charmed by what you see, grab a copy for as low as a penny; however, even if the books are cheap, I didn't want to ruin the binding on the scanner, so excuse the photos.

"Hey, Ma. How come I'm so plain and you're so fancy?"

If find it a bit surprising that a publication which would admit -- and not scream in horror -- that it's possible and normal for children to see their parents nude. Certainly no one in today's culture admits to such things, despite millions of people who do so. (Infants, perhaps, as we believe they cannot remember such things; but more likely they just can't talk and therefore share the secret.) How refreshing!

Because you know I love storks:

"The stork only brings the parts. The doctor puts them together."

"The storks come from the Chicago stork yards."

"I hope he doesn't scare Mommy; she's pregnant you know."

From the back of the book:

When Sam Levenson, as a boy, finally mustered up the courage to ask that age-old question, "Where did I come from?" he got some pretty discouraging answers:

"When you'll have children of your own, you'll ask them."

"Ask your mother. You're from her side of the family."

"If God wanted us to know what's on the inside he would have put it on the outside."

The revolution in sex education has changed all that. Today the facts of life are rampant among children, but, as Levenson points out, "One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination."

In a series of funny, touching, unabashed and uninhibited vignettes, Levenson--aided and abetted by the incomparable Whitney Darrow, Jr.--quotes the lovely, innocent logic of little people as they express their views of the big people's world. "The difference between men and women is that women dance backwards." "We come from seeds just like vegetables; that's why they call us human beans." All are woven together with a commentary that glows with Sam's own brand of humor and wisdom. For him, "Sex is a three-letter word which sometimes needs some old-fashioned four-letter words to convey its full meaning: words like give, care, help, kiss, feel, love; words which even a child can understand."

All of which makes A Time for Innocence one of the most lovable exposes in years.

The book is lovable. Filled with cute illustrations by Darrow and equally cute quotes from children.

"Girls have the same circles on their chests as boys so the doctor will know where to put the stethoscope."

"A lady becomes a mother when she concedes."

"How come if there are no bull-girls, there's cow-boys?"

"If you want girl babies you marry a lady. If you want boy babies you marry a man."

Along with the cuteness, the humor, the warm and fuzzy feelings, are things which are perhaps not so funny.

At first I thought this book was a product of the sexual revolution -- even a product being positive about the sexual revolution. But reading the text before the one-page cartoon panels and the pages of childish quotes, one finds a less clear message.

From chapter one, page 12-13:

From the time of my childhood to my child's childhood the subject of sex has passed from the less said the better to we can't stop talking about it. We are now answering more questions than our children are asking.

We are bearing down too heavily on the minds of little children with explanations they cannot fathom. They do not yet have the emotional maturity to understand a clinical dissertation. It can be frightening.

One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination. Come to think of it, we gown-ups are pretty good at that sort of thing, too, especially these days when there are so many facts to choose from.

The fanciful facts of life that our little primitives invent serve to decorate the walls of their psychic dwellings places deep in virgin forests. We expatriates feel obliged to lead them out of their sheltered caves. "This way to the truth. So sorry."

It often happens that even after you have led the children into the clearing he will run back into the forest. Don't we all?

Of course I believe that sex is like anything else we teach our children -- answer what they ask broken down into the size pieces they can handle. When asked by my children, "How do babies get in the mother's tummy?" I do not respond with every bit of plumbing, let alone every detail about sex positions, sexual pleasures and relationship issues. I start with the fact that part of what is required to make a baby is an egg, which is already inside a woman's body. If they ask more, I tell more; if not, that's all that's said. Until the next question is asked anyway.

But...

I disagree that sex education need be a "dissertation" or beyond their emotional maturity. Most education involves some element of fathomlessness, else it would be something they already know; but answers and education need not be "bearing down too heavily."

From chapter three, pages 43-44:

Many of our schools are now enthusiastically involved in crash courses on Sex Education for the post-potty-trained. Breeding has been added to reading. The curriculum may go from how a baby is the born in the first grade to how not to have a baby in the eighth grade.

Really? As a child born in the 60's and in elementary school in the early 70's, I can neither remember nor imagine such things. Certainly at the tail end of elementary school we had those assemblies where we were split into two groups, male and female, and watched films which described our changing bodies; but baby making in first grade? I don't think I had finished planting a successful marigold seed or rooting a sweet potato much before then.

Levenson continues:

The child, it is hoped, will no longer pick up stuff in the gutter, as I did. (I must say that along with the undesirable things I picked up in the gutter there were some highly desirable items like immies, rubber bands, pennies, checkers, buttons...)

In order to qualify for a Sex Education license (in this case an unfortunate word for certification), the applicant must have majored in Sex (at least twelve credit hours) as an undergrad and pursued (another poor choice of word) private (still worse) investigation for at least thirty-two hours, half of which must have been field work. He/She must above all show proof of a passionate commitment to La Dolce Vita family style.

The classroom approach to sex education is scientific. A spade is called a spade, but the child is not allowed to call any part of the anatomy a spade. Correct names are recommended. This often created problems at home where the unenlightened parents call things by euphemistic and affectionate nicknames--"Your pip-pip is showing, honey." "Wipe your too-too, darling." While a pip-pip by any other name still performs certain specific functions, it is best to use dictionary rather than confectionary terms. Even when models of the human body are used, they are no longer of a neuter gender since what is seen is no longer regarded as obscene.

And why should it be?

One of the valuable fringe benefits of the program has been the wealth of information the parents have picked up from their children. "No kiddin', Georgie!"

Teaching the act of love is easy. The feeling of love, without which man becomes just another animal, can be taught only by people who deeply believe in love. For the true believer love is compassion, empathy, sympathy, tenderness, devotion, benevolence, friendship, sacrifice, respect, affection, brotherhood, sisterhood, giving, receiving, exchanging--a spiritual heart transplant.

I (continuously) object to the constant denial that human are animals and that we need to separate ourselves from them. I know this lofty goal is for our spiritual betterment (which is where religious zealots get their toes in to the conversation and legislation), but honestly, when it comes to biology we are animals; so let's stop arguing that there's another scientific taxonomy to work from.

Next follows the three-letter word requiring four-letter words part mentioned on the back of the book, which is rather decent advice, and then...

We must not hesitate to tell the child that love also means pain.

It is easy to become a father or a mother. It is much harder to become a full-grown person. This is basically what true Sex Education should be about.

The home is the first and most influential school. The way parents treat each other in the living room will help a child to understand life in the bedroom.

I wish he had continued more about the subject of pain... I would whole-heartedly agree, but as I'm not quite sure where Levenson is heading, I'm naturally reluctant to do so. Also, the notion of a becoming a full-gown person, and that this is what Sex Ed should be about is too ambiguous. Does he mean that sex should be reserved for grown-ups? To that I agree. But he really should clarify here.

The matter of parents and their treatment of one another at home in the living room and its relationship to life in the bedroom is a great line that I also wish he had underscored with more detail.

I believe his intentions were to say that any discussion of sex, any Sex Education, needs to include the pragmatics of responsibility -- not just for pregnancy, but relationships and health -- but the lines were poorly drawn. (And if you argue that the book was merely a cutesy look at innocent kids in the world of grown-up matters, I'll argue right back that Levenson has preached a bit too long on what's wrong with sex ed.)

Over all, it's a cute book, a funny book; but it's also a reminder of several things:

* even during the sexual revolution, sex education wasn't necessarily accepted
* pictures alone do not always tell the story

Warning: Depraved Collector At Work

He says he's providing a valuable service, "to depraved landlocked sailors anyway."

Being neither a sailor nor landlocked, but just depraved, I believe his blog, Hang Fire Books, and his Flickr sets are valuable services -- only, please, William, start including titles, authors (text in general) in your descriptions at Flickr. (I'm batting my lashes and everything!)

Can't believe I hadn't found William and Hang Fire before; but now that I have, on the sidebar they'll be.

Ben Casey: The Strength Of His Hands

A Deeply Moving Story About America's Most Exciting TV Personality

A New Novel * Never Seen On TV * First Publication

A Lancer Original paperback, by Sam Elkin, Copyright 1963, Bing Crosby Productions

From the back:

A WISE AND JUST MAN

Ben Casey: He Must decide on the wisdom of writing a book based on his experiences...

Ben Casey: A great humorist has lost the will to live... what can he do?

Ben Casey: Was he falling in love, or was this a superficial attraction...?

Ben Casey: The most exciting television personality of the last decade.

Ben Casey: The Strength Of His Hands: an unforgettable, completely new novel. Never on television! Never before published!

Elsie de Wolfe

Most folks think "Lesbian" and "decorator" when they hear the name Elsie de Wolfe, but she was also an avid promoter of cancer-sticks -- and not just with ads like this Lucky Stikes ad (in the Delineator, February 1929) either.



When Elsie said, "I recommend a Lucky in place of a sweet - when your figure must be considered," she meant it. She wrote a book on it too: Elsie De Wolfe's Recipes for Successful Dining (1934).

Of course, one must remember that smoking was not just fashionable; such promotion was well compensated.

For more on Elsie, see Band of Thebes birthday tribute where they say, "Baby boomers who act like they invented being young at sixty are forgetting about Elsie de Wolfe who at sixty-one in 1926 attended a costume ball in Paris dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer and made her entrance doing handsprings."

Fanny Brice, Al Jolson & The Seven Lively Arts

As promised in part one, more on Fanny Brice (with a generous dollop of Al Jolson).





This from the The Seven Lively Arts, by Gilbert Seldes, this is The Daemonic in the American Theatre (pages 191-200).

ONE man on the American stage, and one woman, are possessed--Al Jolson and Fanny Brice. Their daemons are not of the same order, but together they represent all we have of the Great God Pan, and we ought to be grateful for it. For in addition to being more or less a Christian country, America is a Protestant community and a business organization-and none of these units is peculiarly prolific in the creation of daemonic individuals. We can bring forth Roosevelts--dynamic creatures, to be sure; but the fury and the exultation of Jolson is a hundred times higher in voltage than that of Roosevelt; we can produce courageous and adventurous women who shoot lions or manage construction gangs and remain pale beside the extraordinary "cutting loose" of Fanny Brice.

To say that each of these two is possessed by a daemon is a mediaeval and perfectly sound way of expressing their intensity of action. It does not prove anything-not even that they are geniuses of a fairly high rank, which in my opinion they are. I use the word possessed because it connotes a quality lacking elsewhere on the stage, and to be found only at moments in other aspects of American life-in religious mania, in good jazz bands, in a rare outbreak of mob violence. The particular intensity I mean is exactly what you do not see at a baseball game, but may at a prize fight, nor in the productions of David Belasco, nor at a political convention; you may see it on the Stock Exchange and you can see it, canalized and disciplined, but still intense, in our skyscraper architecture. It was visible at moments in the old Russian Ballet.

In Jolson there is always one thing you can be sure of: that whatever he does he does at the highest possible pressure. I do not mean that one gets the sense of his effort, for his work is at times the easiest seeming, the most effortless in the world. Only he never saves up-for the next scene, or the next week, or the next show. His generosity is extravagant; he flings into a comic song or three-minute impersonation so much- energy, violence, so much of the totality of one human being, that you feel it would suffice for a hundred others. In the days when the runway was planked down the centre of every good theatre in America, this galvanic little figure, leaping and shouting--yet always essentially dancing and singing--upon it was the concentration of our national health and gaiety. In Row, Row, Row he would bounce up on the runway, propel himself by imaginary oars over the heads of the audience, draw equally imaginary slivers from the seat of his trousers, and infuse into the song something wild and roaring and insanely funny. The very phonograph record of his famous Toreador song is full of vitality. Even in later days when the programme announces simply "Al Jolson" (about 10.15 P.M. in each of his reviews) he appears and sings and talks to the audience and dances off-and when he has done more than any other ten men, he returns and, blandly announcing that "You ain't heard nothing yet," proceeds to do twice as much again. He is the great master of the one-man show because he gives so much while he is on that the audience remains content while he is off-and his electrical energy almost always develops activity in those about him.

If it were necessary, a plea could be made for violence per se in the American theatre, because everything tends to prettify and restrain, and the energy of the theatre is dying out. But Jolson, who lacks discipline almost entirely, has other qualities besides violence. He has an excellent baritone voice, a good ear for dialect, a nimble presence, and a distinct sense of character. Of course it would be impossible not to recognize him the moment he appears on the stage; of course he is always Jolson-but he is also always Gus and always Inbad the Porter, and always Bombo. He has created a way of being for the characters he takes on; they live specifically in the mad world of the Jolson show; their wit and their bathos are singularly creditable characteristics of themselves-not of Jolson. You may recall a scene I think the show was called Dancing Around - in which a lady knocks at the door of a house. From within comes the voice of Jolson singing, "You made me love you, I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it"--the voice approaches, dwindles away, resumes -- it is a swift characterization of the lazy servant coming to open the door and ready to insult callers, since the master is out. Suddenly the black face leaps through the doorway and cries out, "We don' want no ice," and is gone. Or Jolson as the black slave of Columbus, reproached by his master for a long absence. His lips begin to quiver, his chin to tremble; the tears are approaching, when his human independence softly asserts itself and he wails, "We all have our moments." It is quite true, for Jolson's technique is the exploitation of these moments; he has himself said that he is the greatest master of hokum in the business, and in the theatre the art of hokum is to make each second count for itself, to save any moment from dulness by the happy intervention of a slap on the back, or by jumping out of character and back again, or any other trick. For there is no question of legitimacy here-everything is right if it makes 'em laugh.

He does more than make 'em laugh; he gives them what I am convinced is a genuine emotional effect ranging from the thrill to the shock. I remember coming home after eighteen months in Europe, during the war, and stepping from the boat to one of the first nights of Sinbad. The spectacle of Jolson's vitality had the same quality as the impression I got from the New York sky line-one had forgotten that there still existed in the world a force so boundless, an exaltation so high, and that anyone could still storm Heaven with laughter and cheers. He sang on that occasion 'N Everything and Swanee. I have suggested elsewhere that hearing him sing Swanee is what book reviewers and young girls loosely call an experience. I know what Jolson does with false sentiment; here he was dealing with something which by the grace of George Gershwin came true, and there was no necessity for putting anything over. In the absurd black-face which is so little negroid that it goes well with diversions in Yiddish accents, Jolson created image after image of longing, and his existence through the song was wholly in its rhythm.

Five years later I heard Jolson in a second-rate show, before an audience listless or hostile, sing this out dated and forgotten song, and create again, for each of us seated before him, the same image-and saw also the tremendous leap in vitality and happiness which took possession of the audience as he sang it. It was marvelous. In the first weeks of Sinbad he sang the words of 'N Everything as they are printed. Gradually (I saw the show in many phases) he interpolated, improvised, always with his absolute sense of rhythmic effect; until at the end it was a series of amorous cries and shouts of triumph to Eros. I have heard him sing also the absurd song about "It isn't raining rain, It's raining violets" and remarked him modulating that from sentimentality into a conscious bathos, with his gloved fingers flittering together and his voice rising to absurd fortissimi and the general air of kidding the piece.

He does not generally kid his Mammy songs-as why should he who sings them better than anyone else? He cannot underplay anything, he lacks restraint, and he leans on the second-rate sentiment of these songs until they are forced to render up the little that is real in them. I dislike them and dislike his doing them-as I dislike Belle Baker singing Elie, Elie! But it is quite possible that my discomfort at these exhibitions is proof of their quality. They and a few very cheap jokes and a few sly remarks about sexual perversions are Jolson's only faults. They are few. For a man who has, year after year, established an intimate relation with no less than a million people, every twelvemonth, he is singularly uncorrupted. That relation is the thing which sets him so far above all the other one-manshow stars. Eddie Cantor gives at times the effect of being as energetic; Wynn is always and Tinney sometimes funnier. But no one else, except Miss Brice, so holds an audience in the hollow of the hand. The hand is steady; the audience never moves. And on the great nights when everything is right, Jolson is driven by a power beyond himself. One sees that he knows what he is doing, but one sees that he doesn't half realize the power and intensity with which he is doing it. In those moments I cannot help thinking of him as a genius.

Quite to that point Fanny Brice hasn't reached. She hasn't, to begin with, the physical vitality of Jolson. But she has a more delicate mind and a richer humour--qualities which generally destroy vitality altogether, and which only enrich hers. She is first a great farceur; and in her songs she is exactly in the tradition of Yvette Guilbert, without the range, so far as we know, which enabled Mme Guilbert to create the whole of mediaeval France for us in ten lines of a song. The quality, however, is the same, and Fanny's evocations are as vivid and as poignant as Yvette's-they require from us exactly the same tribute of admiration. She has grown in power since she sang and made immortal, I Should Worry. Hear her now creating the tragedy of SecondHand Rose or of the one Florodora baby who-- "five little dumbells got married for money, And I got married for love . . .." These things are done with two-thirds of Yvette Guilbert's material missing, for there are no accessories and, although the words (some of the best are by Blanche Merrill) are good, the music isn't always distinguished. And the effects are irreproachable. Give Fanny a song she can get her teeth into, Mon Homme, and the result is less certain, but not less interesting. This was one of a series of realistic songs for Mistinguett, who sang it very much as Yvonne George did when she appeared in America. Miss Brice took it lento affetuoso; since the precise character of the song had changed a bit from its rather more outspoken French original. Miss Brice suppressed Fanny altogether in this song-she was being, I fear, "a serious artist"; but she is of such an extraordinary talent that she can do even this. Yvonne . George sang it better simply because the figure she evoked as Mon Homme was exactly the fake apache about whom it was written, and not the "my feller" who lurked behind Miss Brice. It was amusing to learn that without a Yiddish accent and without those immense rushes of drollery, without the enormous gawkishness of her other impersonations, Miss Brice could put a song over. But I am for Fanny against Miss Brice and to Fanny I return.

Fanny is one of the few people who "Make fun." She creates that peculiar quality of entertainment which is wholly light-hearted and everything else is added unto her. Of this special quality nothing can be said; one either sees it or doesn't, savours it or not. Fanny arrives on the scene with an indescribable gesture--after seeing it twenty times I believe that it consists of a feminine salute, touching the forehead and then flinging out her arm to the topmost gallery. There is magic in it, establishing her character at once -the magic must reside in her incredible elbow. She hasn't so much to give as Jolson, but she gives it with the same generosity, there are no reserves, and it is all for fun. Her Yiddish Squow (how else can I spell that amazing effect?) and her Heiland Lassie are examples-there isn't an arriere-pensee in them.

"The Chiff is after me . . . he says I appil to him . . . he likes my type - - " It is the complete give away of herself and she doesn't care.

And this carelessness goes through her other exceptional qualities of caricature and satire. For the first there is the famous Vamp, in which she plays the crucial scene of all the vampire stories, preluding it with the first four lines of the poem Mr Kipling failed to throw into the wastepaper basket, and fatuously adding, "I can't get over it"--after which point everything is flung into another plane-the hollow laughter, the haughty gesture, the pretended compassion, that famous defense of the vampire which here, however, ends with the magnificent line, "I may be a bad woman, but I'm awful good company." In this brief episode she does three things at once: recites a parody, imitates the moving-picture vamp, and creates through these another, truly comic character. For satire it is Fanny's special quality that with the utmost economy of means she always creates the original in the very process of destroying it, as in two numbers which are exquisite, her present opening song in vaudeville with its reiterations of Victor Hebert's Kiss Me Again, and her Spring Dance. The first is pressed far into burlesque, but before she gets there it has fatally destroyed the whole tedious business of polite and sentimental concert-room vocalism; and the second (Fanny in ballet, with her amazingly angular parody of five-position dancing) puts an end forever to that great obsession of ours, classical interpretative dancing.

Fanny's refinement of technique is far beyond Jolson's; her effects are broad enough, but her methods are all delicate. The frenzy which takes hold of her is as real as his. With him she has the supreme pleasure of knowing that she can do no wrong-and her spirits mount and intensify with every moment on the stage. She creates rapidly and her characterizations have an exceptional roundness and fulness; when the daemon attends she is superb.

It is noteworthy that these two stars bring something to America which America lacks and lovesthey are, I suppose, two of our most popular entertainers--and that both are racially out of the dominant caste. Possibly this accounts for their fine carelessness about our superstitions of politeness and gentility. The medium in which they work requires more decency and less frankness than usually exist in our private lives; but within these bounds Jolson and Brice go farther, go with more contempt for artificial notions of propriety, than anyone else. Jolson has re-created an ancient type, the scalawag servant with his surface dulness and hidden cleverness, a creation as real as Sganarelle. And Fanny has torn through all the conventions and cried out that gaiety still exists. They are parallel lines surcharged with vital energy. I should like to see that fourth-dimensional show in which they will meet.

You can read The Seven Lively Arts by Gilbert Seldes online here; or, if you should, like I, prefer paper to cozy up with, here's the paperback at Amazon -- which, you can get a deal on if you purchase it with The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States by Michael Kammen.

I mention the latter as the blurbs about that book have some of the best, clearest, most concise information on Gilbert Seldes himself.

From Publishers Weekly:

In his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes (1893-1970) made the then-controversial claim that popular entertainment and culture should be treated just as seriously, and as rigorously, as the so-called high arts. Krazy Kat and Irving Berlin were worthy of critical attention, he said; and arts criticism in America hasn't been the same since. Kammen, a historian, stresses the "hands-on" aspect of Seldes's long and versatile career. He was a historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, scriptwriter, journalism school dean, newspaper and magazine columnist and CBS's first director of television. Although at times Kammen seems curiously defensive, his balanced and insightful account of Seldes's professional life?from the early '20s at the Dial magazine (and the beginning of long-running feuds with both Hemingway and the Algonquin Round Table set) to the 1950s debates on the role of "mass culture"?is a story of a life as well as a history of pop culture on the rise. Seldes, Kammen says, thought of himself as "a highbrow populist" and was a "compulsively candid critic." Kammen weights Seldes's contributions fairly but can be equally candid.

Mary Carroll of Booklist:

Cornell University's Kammen is an astute student of U.S. cultural history; People of Paradox (1972), A Machine That Would Go of Itself (1986), and Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) suggest his scope. It's hardly surprising that he would find Seldes a fascinating biographical subject. Seldes was a major contributor to arts criticism and magazine journalism from the 1920s to the 1960s: edited The Dial when it published T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland; wrote a classic defense of popular art, The Seven Lively Arts (1924), hundreds of magazine articles, a successful Broadway treatment of Lysistrata, and programs for radio and TV; and was founding dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. Seldes fought with Hemingway, George Jean Nathan, and Edward R. Murrow and wrestled with issues of current relevance, including "dumbing down" vs. "leveling up" in the mass media and government's role in supporting (or restraining) artistic expression. Seldes shed light rather than heat on significant artistic issues American society has faced.

Also, related, is this piece on The Seven Lively Arts and The Freemasons.

For more on Jolson, the International Al Jolson Society.

Smutty Bibliophile Post

Bibliobull is an informative Q & A for book collectors, covering the care & non-feeding of your collectible books.

Derek at CQ discusses organizing your books.

Hellish Library Of My Dreams

The the French National Library has unlocked its secret archive of erotic art, and what's most surprising shouldn't be:

Marc Lambron, a novelist, said that a visit to the show, which is closed to visitors under 16, was a lesson for those who believe that good morals dominated the past. “Enter these ancestral grottos and you will gauge the scale of that lie,” he wrote.

A-duh. How'd we carry on as a species if we didn't fornicate? Expressing sex in art, if nothing else, confirms our cultural delight -- hey, and no delight in it, no afternoon delight, no babies.

What thrills (and saddens as I won't be able to visit) is the collection of written works:

The show of 350 works, ranging from manuscripts by the Marquis de Sade to early pornographic photography, is causing a stir because the library’s trove of licentious literature – known as L’Enfer (Hell) – has been the stuff of fantasy since the early 19th century.

L’Enfer, to which “immoral” works were often consigned after police seizure, was closed in 1969. Now that morals have changed, the Paris transport authority has even joined the fun, converting a Métro station into a teaser for the exhibition. Underground trains will slow down at the disused Croix-Rouge station so that passengers can glimpse erotic engravings.

Hell got its name in the 1830s when the library isolated from its vast collection works that were deemed to be “contrary to good morals”. The original works, which survived police bonfires and theft by curators, include a rich collection from the libertine age of the 18th century. Top among them is Thérèse Philosophe, a 1748 novel about the initiation of a lustful young woman that was a bestseller of its era. Some great names were consigned to Hell, including Voltaire, whose heroic-comic poem La Pucelle (The Maid) sparked scandal and the wrath of the King and the Pope in 1762.

Link found via Radical Vixen.

Kellerman, The Nude Mermaid

These photos are of swimming sensation and film star Annette Kellerman in the waterfalls of Kingston, Jamaica, for the filming of A Daughter of the Gods -- the photoplay was released October 16, 1916 (reissued by Fox Film Corporation in December 1917, in August 1918, and in February 1920).




Kellerman, The Australian Mermaid, was billed as "the Diving Venus" and called "the world's most perfectly-formed woman" -- and she had her share of scandal, including being arrested in 1907 for indecent exposure when appearing in her bathing suit:

In 1907, Annette and her father left London to seek greater fame and fortune in America. New York theater operators, however, were not impressed and found her swimming costumes offensive to American moral sensibilities. In spite of the General Slocum disaster little progress had been made in teaching women to swim and Annette was appalled by the cumbersome dress and pantaloon combinations that prevented American women from swimming. "I can't swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline," she reportedly said before walking on to Revere Beach near Boston wearing a one piece bathing suit that exposed her shapely form and bare legs. It was an act of defiance that resulted in her arrest and imprisonment for “indecent exposure.”

When her case came to trial she admitted violating the law but asked the judge how many more women would have to die because they didn’t learn to swim? “What difference is there from these legal costumes than wearing led chains around our legs?” She brought to court a man’s suit onto which she had sown leggings, making a one piece suit that technically conformed to the law, which required women to be covered from neck to toe. The sympathetic judge agreed to drop the charges against her, in return for her promise to only wear this swimsuit. The resulting newspaper headlines and outpourings of public support tolled a death-knell for Victorian attitudes towards women's swimwear and fashion and gave young women and girls a role model and encouraged them to swim. It also made Annette Kellerman a star.

If this swimmer-turned-movie-star-with-scandals sounds at all familiar to you, you're probably thinking of Esther Williams and her role as Kellerman in the 1952 film Million Dollar Mermaid. Williams had such great respect for Kellerman that Williams titled her autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid, after the movie she made about Kellerman's life. Which includes the years of athletics, stage performance and vaudeville (see the Keith-albee New York Hippodrome program) prior to her movie career.


But Kellerman would make a splash in Hollywood. According to Bikini Science:

In vector momentum terms Kellerman begins in the movies fully clad in 1909, bares her legs in 1914 (AK1410) and is fully nude in 1916. Covered to not-covered in seven years--and that's not just the story of Kellerman, it is the story of the era.

Kellerman's nudity is not Hollywood's first, but she is the first big-name star to appear à natural on the big screen. And the first to display an active role as opposed to a static poser, a relative modesty difference.

In the 1911 film The Mermaid, Kellerman became the first actress to wear a swimmable mermaid costume on film -- and in 2006, MermaidFX is said to have created a line of costumes based on the designs worn by Annette Kellerman (and claims to have the rights to her name & copies of Kellerman films -- which I find no proof of, nor reasoning for).



In 1914, Kellerman wrote a script for a film called Neptune's Daughter, which cost a modest $35,000 to make but which was the first film to gross $1 million in ticket sales.

Then in 1916, she was nude in A Daughter of the Gods.

A Daughter of the Gods was the first Hollywood production to cost over $1 million, with it's lush 1/2 mile long sets and a cast of over 20,000 extras. And it was well received. Sort of.

In it, Kellerman plays a girl who, disconsolate after the death of her bird, hurls herself into the ocean only to be reborn as "Anita, a daughter of the Gods," also described as "a mysterious beauty." A convoluted plot involving characters with names like "Chief Eunuch," "Fairy of Goodness," "The Sultan," and "The Arab Sheik" results in Anita vanquishing the "Witch of Evil." Though the film, like Neptune's Daughter, had a complex narrative and bewitching visual effects, it was Kellerman's unclad figure that formed its centerpiece. "Beauty is the keynote of the film. Beauty and symmetry of the female form," noted Moving Picture World. Male spectators sought out this very quality. A West Virginia woman made "four deep gashes in her husband's head" with a potato masher following the release of A Daughter of the Gods. "That scoundrel went to see that Annette Kellerman movie three times in three days, and he'd tell me every night what a pretty form she had," complained the angry, masher-wielding wife. The lifting of Victorian sexual mores clearly presented new difficulties for many an American housewife, not to mention her vulnerable spouse.

(Page 98, Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915 by Andrew L. Erdman.)

While A Daughter of the Gods was a great success, the film lead to a formal banning of nude scenes in the US motion picture industry in 1917. (The rumor is, some enterprising Chicago guy took the nude scenes and inserted them into underground trade films called called Charles Chaplin comedies -- I'm searching, but so far no luck on finding any actual leads on either the films or the gentlemen who produced/distributed them.)

However the film & scandal thrust Kellerman into international stardom. And as a result she was the highest paid working woman in the world, earning as much as $5,000 a week, for almost ten years.



A Daughter of the Gods is considered a lost film; but we still have hope. In 2004, Mary Ann Cade found many Kellerman films presumed lost. (Keep your fingers crossed!)

It is said that Kellerman wrote and published several books -- including How To Swim (1918), Physical Beauty: How to Keep It (1919), and a book of children's stories titled Fairy Tales of the South Seas (1926) -- and wrote her unpublished autobiography, My Story.

She also wrote numerous mail order booklets on health, beauty and fitness; and in 1924, according to this program, she had a fitness club in LA:

Annette Kellerman has formed a club for women who are interested in gaining health and physical beauty in addition to enjoying all the advantages by a high-class country club. All members of your family enjoy privileges under your membership. Her club-located near Los Angeles-is the only one of its kind in the world where physical education-diet-swimming-tennis-golf-indoor and outdoor sports and pastimes may be enjoyed year round.
Write Miss Kellerman today! Her booklet tells the full story of this interesting development-Miss Kellerman's life work.
Dear Miss Kellerman: Please send me the booklet about your club for women. Annette Kellerman Country Club 500 Metropolitan Theater Bldg., Los Angeles.

Related:

The Original Million Dollar Mermaid: The Annette Kellerman Story

The Powerhouse Museum has a large collection of Kellerman items, including personal items.

Hey, Secret Santa (& Other Santas)

CQ has 13 Gift Ideas For Collectors, which includes shopping at Schiffer for books. I took a peek, because the 20% off is intriguing, and found there are quite a few titles worth a smut collector's limited shelf space, including Striptease Artists of the 1950s by Bunny Yeager.

However, the best idea is the folding shopping cart. I can't believe that I don't have one. Santa, please fix that.

As A Collector, I Could Make A Lot Of Money Off Celebrities

As news of poor Heather Mills' 'more pornographic' photos hits the tabloids and the blogosphere, I am reminded of a few points. However, let's cover the story first...

Heather Mills, aka Lady Macca, was known to be a model and in 2006 the first photographic proof was put on display for all the world to see. These photos came from a 1988 German sex book, Die Freuden Der Liebe (The Joys Of Love), which featured naked images of her performing sex acts on/with a male porn model. Mills 'escaped' that time, claiming the book was a "sex educational manual".



Apparently this how-to was for the illiterate as well as the sexually ignorant as, "The filthy volume features 112 pages filled with pictures — and contains NO accompanying words." (No need to know German to enjoy the book!)



The newly-found photos, clearly from the same shoot as they feature the same lacy red corset and stockings -- and ill-conceived pink glossy lipstick, show more than naked boobies.



(To my collector's eye, that's clearly 80's pubic hair-covered pussy.)

These photos are said to come from a magazine (so far unnamed & dated) and this time it's the use of text which is damning. The photo caption reads, "I'm gonna drive you crazy with my body..." which surely sounds less like a sex ed manual and more like an invitation to masturbation.

Or maybe that's just me.

The media feeding frenzy is all about the horrible lies -- how Mills denied & denounced that she's ever done porn, or been a prostitute. (Apparently she's also faking being blonde, but we can forgive that, I suppose.) I would say that it's more about pushing pulp (and digital ad sales). But in either case, the bottom line is that the public is fascinated. "We" must be; or the money wouldn't be made.

Which brings me to my points.

A) As a collector I could make a lot of money off celebrities. I could sit home all day digging through my boxes of porn, sex ed manuals, calendars, postcards, et all, looking for faces, names and identifying characteristics of celebrities, then phoning my info in to publications & reaping big financial rewards as I provide scanned evidence. But I don't.

It's not that I have more fun things to do, and providing scans means I don't even need to damage my stash; it's just that I don't like the idea.

In fact, I don't understand it.

(That's point B.)

Why are we so freaked out that people, especially beautiful people, powerful people, desirable people, have sex lives? That they were models, actors, & sex facilitators? Why, for that matter, are we surprised that they were some how compensated for this?

Sex isn't horrible. Being paid for it, especially in a performance (really equal to that of an actor playing any role, including some atrocious character), isn't either.

But lots of folks think it's bad. The shocking scandals couldn't push profits if it wasn't. So no wonder Mills denied such things.

However, even if I own enough proof to sink a thousand celebrity careers (and for the most part, I am not into celebs, gossip, and those which trade in such things), I have no desire to do so.

Another example of how taking the higher road and following your principals, leaves you with less financially? Perhaps. But in the end, sex will remain. (If it doesn't, we as a species die.)

And I, for one, am hoping the universe or gods of smut will honor me, not with 1,000 virgins, but with some sort of smutty afterlife. Maybe even let me keep my smut collection.

The World of Suzie Wrong

It's Christmas, 1962...

What are you going to give your daughters?

How about little racist brothel dolls?

The Black Champion & The White Avenger

Saved from a lynching via a female sado-masochist from the future who, it turns out, started the racist hunt, is the story of Terror Blu 113: Il Campione Nero (The Black Champion).

The US Constitution Erotic Coloring Book

The US Constitution Erotic Coloring Book, by Donny Miller:

This book is raw. Limited edition book. Donny Miller did this one because it’s important that people read The Constitution and more than that so why not make it fun and full of naked girls that you can color?

The King, by Morton Cooper

The cover of The King, by Morton Cooper reads:

HARRY ORLANDO, SWING, SINNER, MILLIONAIRE, CROONER

HELL ON WOMEN, KING OF THE DOLLS

"STRONG MEAT"
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

"SUPER-SATURATED WITH 100 PROOF SEX" GALVESTON NEWS

BOOZE, BRAWLS, SEX, SCANDAL

"SHOULD BE PRINTED ON ASBESTOS PAPER"

THE KING -- out sexes VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

The back of the paperback:

He's the Bit-Time pop-singer whose sexy saga has "SET TONGUES WAGGING FROM COAST TO COAST." Detroit News

"IF IT'S SEXCAPE YOU WANT, THIS IS IT." Cleveland Armory

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS
sizzled the move queens -
now it's Harry Orlando's turn;
THE
KING

"A BLOCKBUSTER"
Library Journal
"GRAPHIC AND GUTSY"
Worcester Telegram

What's the best about The King is probably what also makes this book the worst. I've not (yet) read Valley Of The Dolls (though I will; I'm such a huge fan of Beyond), so I can't make any comparisons to that work; but it's safe to assume that The King falls into the genre of trashy books. Books, like those by Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins, that I salaciously read years ago. Books which once would have been qualified as great beach reads, with saucy romps and glamorous settings; pure escapism. Books which have now been supplanted by chick lit.

However, what's rather unique about The King is that the main character is male, and we see the world through his eyes as well as several other male leads as supporting cast. While women abound (several even with key or pivotal roles) we see little through their eyes; these characters begin and end as female rolls, if you catch my meaning.

I can't say this is a rare peep into the male psyche -- and truth be told, there are little surprises when you read so many trashy books-- but it is more than a bit refreshing to have the bull-shit set aside in terms of pretense. Heck, it was illuminating -- I thought I had heard all the slang &/or derogatory terms for women, but there were a few revelations, like quiff. Apparently this word predates the current use of the word for 'vaginal fart', drawing from the original definition of the word, a prominent forelock, which certainly makes sense. I am not misinterpreting the multiple and near exhaustive (despite a plethora of other words such as quim, snatch, twitch, and gash) use of the word. Take this passage, taken from page 371, where Orlando admires his notches but realizes the emptiness of such conquests: "You've had the Louvre of lovers, the queen of quiffs, and what have you got in your pocket to take home with you?"

And before you feminists get all pissy, it may soothe (or further upset you) to know that Italian-Americans are Wops, blacks are Niggers and well, you get the idea. The 60's, for all the stuff you read about racial equality, weren't the most racially kind times; and this book doesn't even pretend to be. Enjoy a slice of racial stereo-types with your hair pie (though, I'm not certain that 'hair pie' was actually used in this book -- you get the idea, tho, right?)

But now I'm getting ahead of both myself and Orlando.

The King is filled with sex, yes, but it's not the sex we are used to reading about today. Or is it? I don't know what you've been reading, but when I read a 'graphic' and 'sexy' book, both tab A and slot B are described, usually in detail, along with every step of the action. But in The King, well, it's (nearly) everything right up to those parts. It could be the time, or it could be further evidence that it's all about the thrill of the chase. But in any case, if you expect to find your panties wet from all this action, you'll be disappointed.

If, however, you enjoy a sordid tale of celebrity scandal, well, then, The King should fit the bill. Even if most of the celebs it outs are no longer filling our tabloids, or are dead even, this is fun.

Reading The King doesn't require the use of Google to discover that the lead character, Harry Orlando, 'is' Frank Sinatra (who was really unhappy with this book). Nor will you miss the other celebrities of the 60's hiding behind clear plastic retro bubble umbrellas.

Orlando's be-friended political candidate, the one whose campaign he helps at the request of the candidate's powerful father, is the ill-fated President Kennedy, and so covers the connections between entertainers and politicians. Bland actor turned presidential hopeful, Grant Campbell, is clearly Ronald Reagan. There are assorted smaller characters resembling 'a rat pack' if not the Rat Pack. (Interestingly enough, the black comedian on the late night talk show seems to be Nipsey Russell.) And the respected reporter, Bill Temple, could be very loosely based on James Bacon, but the main pivot points of this character focus on the personal & bitter swing Sinatra -- err, Orlando, makes from Camelot to the Republican party.

Since the babes aren't too fleshed-out, or, rather, aren't much more than flesh, it's hard to point to the not-so-cleverly disguised female celebs from that time period -- other than one who clearly, to me, seems to be Monroe. (She would have to appear in a Sinatra tale somewhere; and I bet the softer approach was due to her death just years before Cooper began writing The King. Then again, the women just don't matter here.)

In this work of fiction politics and social change are clearly characters -- as well masked as Sinatra supposedly is. The role of communism is actually played by communism, but the fictitious Friends of Victor Wade plays the Christian Right/Moral Majority or the friends of Falwell, as shown in this passage:

It was Temple, following up on a tip, who discovered that Wade and his friends were more than simply braying anachronisms. It was Temple who tracked down the proof that the executive level of the group was riddled with racists and boobs who were dangerous in their boobism. "Our sole function," announced Victor Wade, "is to educate every loyal, red-blooded American citizen on his inalienable right to speak out against all enemies of freedom. We have no other design." In truth, factions of the group, quietly but definitely directed from the top, had been successful in wrecking mental-health programs in many small communities, had infiltrated PTA chapters with members who persuaded passive majorities that this history book would have to be dropped because its interpretations of American history weren't patriotic enough or that the teacher with the funny-sounding foreign name would have to be bounced because of vaguely dangerous ideas he held. Pressure had been successfully put on librarians and bookstore owners to drop from stock books which, because of their political, ethnic, or moral slants, furthered the subversive cause. An astonishing number of men running for local political offices as liberals or moderates had been defeated, thanks to red-herring attacks by Wade Friends--attacks dealing not with the candidates' liberal or moderate views but with rumors about the candidates' sexual preferences or long-forgotten adolescent rebellions.

(The King, © by Morton Cooper, First Printing, January, 1968, Signet Books, pgs 307-308)

(Fiction or not, you didn't think I'd pass up an opportunity to remind everyone how important it is to not remain passive majorities puppeted by the right-restricting political right -- did you?)

Now that you've got the cast of characters, I see no reason to ruin the possibility of you actually reading this book by giving away too much of the plot. Most of it centers on the 'boys will be boys' stuff of babes, friendships and relationships among men, how men get their power, booze & more babes (or how they perhaps waste their power), all set in the swingin' 60's.

For the most part the juicy-joy of this book isn't about the plot; it's about the retro romp. Highly recommended -- and the cheap thrills can be found cheap at thrift stores, at Amazon, and on eBay.

For more on The King, see:

Time's blurb from Friday, Jun. 23, 1967.

For more on Morton Cooper (aka Morton Cooper Feinberg) see:

A list of short stories from vintage magazines, from The FictionMags Index.

Reviews of his other books, The Comedian (Gold Medal Books, 1953), and The Star-Cross System (New English Library, London, 1973; originally published in the USA by Avon Books under the title of Stop-Over in 1960), from Trash Fiction.

The author's obituary from The New York Times, June 6, 2004.