The Swank magazine I was "familiar" with was/is a hardcore porn mag, so I assumed that this Esquire-ish-looking publication must have been some unrelated publication that just happened to have the same name. More on that in a moment.
Before I even got to the first page, I saw this priceless ad:
Anyway, one of the first things I was struck by in this magazine is the diversity of art styles found within. There's this Mr. Magoo-ish caricature of Frank Lloyd Wright:
...to this very colorful, almost abstract piece (accompanying a fiction piece called "Panic"):
...to your standard--but still very nice--gag art of the time:
...to gritty, black and white watercolor work like this (alongside a non-fiction piece called "The Harder They're Hit"):
As the cover suggests, there's also lots of mild T&A in the magazine, like in this photo spread for an article called "How To Be A Damned Fool At A Convention"(?):
There are some "profiles" of comely young lasses, but this is about as explicit as it gets:
Buried in the middle of the mag, there's this piece about an up-and-coming actress named...Julie Newmar!
The magazine has other fiction pieces, gag cartoons, joke pages, etc. Overall, a solid package of men's entertainment.
Sure, the nudie content is pretty nonexistent, despite the winking cover, but I guess that's what other magazines were for:
Related to what I mentioned above, I assumed that this Swank was not related to the still-ongoing hardcore Swank. But one look at the mag's wiki page tells me that, yes, this is still essentially the same magazine!
This was one of the magazines that was owned by the legendary Martin Goodman and then was bought by someone else, and, over time, the T&A content of the mag got bigger and bigger, eventually pushing everything else out of the magazine. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
One final note: I love the name of Swank's publisher--the absurdly macho "Male Publishing Corp." I bet the offices were just like they are on Mad Men.
Today's Angelique Trouvere glossy up for grabs:
4 comments:
Julie Newmar....Yum! She was THE best Catwoman. Rob, sounds like you're realy getting a hunger for all types of old magazines. I don't blame you though, they're a treasure trove of fun.
It really is a shame that magazines and advertisements don't use illustrations the way they used to. What little illustration work you do see nowadays all tends to look the same too: sort of manga comic book stuff. I miss the diversity of styles you could once find in the commercial art world.
I also find it funny to see the transitional sexual attitudes in the 50s. Things were becoming more open, but the focus was still on men having their way with submissive females. Women were presented as daintily wrapped candy waiting for men to rip off the wrapper and devour. No wonder the women's lib movement kicked into high gear in the 60s.
This looks like the kind of mag that I would have bought had lived back then. The artwork is very impressive, and yes, I too am sorry that illustrations have become uncommon in magazines and even book covers, replace by bland, same-looking Photoshoped "photography". Swank really looks like a great mag.
"Swank" has been tied into the comic book industry, the title was started by Victor Fox and was later run by Chip Goodman (son of Martin).
Post a Comment