Check-Out These Awesome Pin-up Glasses!

Isn't this the best retro ad for George Petty pin-up glasses?  Judging from the font and style of the ad this has to be from from the mid-to-late fifties.  I can just imagine a bunch of blue collar Joes smoking cigars, playing a game of poke using pornographic playing cards (at least as pornographic as playing cards got in those days) drinking hi-balls from these glasses.  Wouldn't it be great to track down a set of these?

Me-thinks I have a date with e-bay...

A Bombshell for the Ages: Esther Williams

Today's Bombshell for the Ages made waves in Hollywood as the first lady of the aqua-musical.  Esther Williams rose to fame in the forties and fifties through a series of films which featured her either performing in a wide variety of synchronized swimming routines or underwater ballet sequences, swimming the English channel, or even taking part in the odd water skiing number; essentially any sort of aquatic spectacle creative brass at MGM could come up with.  There was no other actress in Hollywood did what she did.  Let's take a closer look MGM's Million Dollar Mermaid.

Esther Williams was born in Inglewood California in 1922 to Louis and Bula Williams.  She was the youngest of five children.  As a young girl her older sister took her to the beach and swimming pools where she discovered her love for the water.  When she got older she began working as a towel counter at the pool in exchange for the five cent entry fee.  There she began taking lessons from the male lifeguard in proper stroke technique.  In those days strokes like Breaststroke and the Butterfly were only taught to men, however young Esther convinced the lifeguard to impart his knowledge on these strokes.  Before long Esther was setting  national records in freestyle an breaststroke.  She set the national AAU record in the 100m freestyle in 1939 and would have competed in the 1940 Olympics, had the second world war not broken out.

Once she graduated high school, Esther began attending Los Angeles Community college and working at a department store where she started as a stock girl, and eventually moved into modelling for the store.  While working at the department store she was contacted by an agent about appearing in the Billy Rose's Aquacade show (basically a big synchronized swimming extravaganza).  While performing with the Aquacade Esther was spotted by MGM scouts who were looking for a female athlete to mould into the next Sonja Henie (a 1930s Olympic figure skater turned Hollywood star).  She signed with MGM in exchange for a guarantee that she could swim in the Beverly Hills Hotel pool everyday.   She took part in studio training to mould her into a singing, dancing, and acting superstar.  As with most burgeoning starlets of the era much of her early time with the studio involved taking plenty of pin-up photos and visiting wounded soldiers in army hospitals as a part of the war effort.

Esther's first film role was opposite Mickey Rooney's eponymous character in Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942).  Her first aquatic role would occur two years later in Bathing Beauty (1944).  She went on star in several other aquatic themed films, each with a bigger better aquatic set piece to outdo the last.  Among her most popular include The Thrill of Romance (1945), Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949),  Neptune's Daughter (1949), Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), Easy to Love (1953), and Dangerous When Wet (1953).  In spite of her athleticism and skill in the water the underwater feats performed by Esther in her films often took their toll on this aquatic bombshell.  She almost drowned on more than one occasions, once due to improper swimming attire (a heavy flannel bathing suit that became so heavy that it dragged Esther to the bottom of the pool) and from not being able to find the trap door to exit an enclosed water tank.  She also ruptured her eardrums on several occasions and even broke her neck after attempting an 115 ft drive for the movie Million Dollar Mermaid (1952).  This spinal injury left her in a body cast of 7 months.  By the mid-fifties she had fallen out of favour with MGM and left the studio.  She signed with Universal International, and made a few non-musical dramatic films.  None of the Universal films came close to the success that her films with MGM, and by the sixties she retired from acting.

In the years since her retirement, Ms. Williams has been anything but idle.  She is the namesake of both a retro swimwear company and pool manufacturer.  She has also created a series of Mom and Tot swimming instructional videos.  She currently lives in Beverly Hills with her fourth husband of 16 years.

Here's a little taste of an Esther Williams aqua-musical:

RIP: Jane Russell 1921 - 2011

Yet another sad passing to report.  Famed actress and classic Hollywood sex symbol. Jane Russel passed away on February 28 at the age of 89. 

Russell first rose to fame as the star of Howard Hughes' western The Outlaw (1943), in which the films entire marketing campaign revolved around Ms. Russell's ample cleavage.  If you've ever seen Martin Scorcese's The Aviator (2004), you're probably familiar with the scene in which Howard Hughes defends featuring Russell's breast so gratuitously in The Outlaw, at a moral decency hearing when it was believed that her assets violated the Hayes code. In spite of her controversial introduction to the world she went on to a successful film career, highlighted by staring roles opposite Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra.  Her most iconic role was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1952), starring opposite Marilyn Monroe. 

Although Hollywood cast her as the sultry sexpot, in real life Jane Russell was a devout Christian.  As her film career declined she went on to headline various nightclub and musical acts.  She also became a Playtex bra spokeswoman during the seventies.  She married three times, staying happily married to her third husband until his death in 1999.  She was very active in the Christan community and was also passionate about helping orphaned children find homes, fonding the World Adoption International Fund in 1955.

A Bombshell for the Ages: Bettie Page

While on the subject of the pin-up, we certainly cannot forget the women whose name is synonymous with the art form - the inimitable Bettie Page.

Bettie Page was born in Nashville TN. on April 22, 1923, the second child of six in a family who wandered the United States in search of economic stability.  Bettie was often tasked with taking care of her younger siblings and performing household chores.  Once her parents divorced Bettie became the primary caretaker while her mother worked to make ends meet.  At the age of ten, the burden of family finances became too great and her mother was forced to leave Bettie and two of her sisters at an orphanage.

In spite of early hardships, Bettie was a bright, ambitious teenager who got good grades, volunteered with several school clubs including the school paper and student council.  She graduated at the top of her class, and as the class Salutatorian won a $100 scholarship from Peabody College, where she studied education and earned her Bachelor of Art degree in 1943.  That year, she also married her first husband, Billy Neal.  They soon moved to San Francisco, and over the next few years bounced around the country.   Bettie divorced Billy in 1947 and moved to New York where she dreamed of becoming an actress.

While walking the beaches of Coney Island in 1950 she met a cop/amateur photographer, Jerry Tibbs, who helped Bettie but together her first pin-up portfolio and introduced her to several other photographers, who all wanted to work with her.  Before long her pictures were appearing in all sorts of popular girlie magazines of the era.  Ms. Page won the title of "Miss Pinup Girl of the World" in 1955 and was the January centrefold of Playboy magazine that same year.

In addition to her pin-up photographs, the ever uninhibited Ms. Page modelled for fetish photographs wearing a wide array of bondage gear and posing in various scenes of dominance and submission.  She also appeared in several short fetish films that could be attained through mail order catalogues at the time.  It was her participation in such activities that led her to be named in a Senate investigation after a young man died during a bondage session.  The American Congress called Bettie to testify regarding the photographs that she appeared in.  As a result of these hearings, many of the pictures, and the negatives that produced them, featuring Bettie were destroyed.  Any negatives that remained were illegal to print for years after that.

Outside of her modelling career, Bettie made a few appearances as an actress in a couple of off Broadway productions and some television shows.  She decided to leave New York and modelling in 1957, moving to Florida where she eventually became a born-again Christian and faded into obscurity.  During the 80s and 90s she her photograph made a resurgence and she has since taken her rightful place as a pin-up legend.  Bettie Page passed away on December 8, 2008.

Here's a video of Bettie dancing:

The Pin-up: A Primer for the Unaquainted

A Typical Gil Elvgren Pin-up 

Being in the pin-up photography business, you sometimes forget that there are those who have only a vague notions of what pin-ups are.  Fear not gentle reader, this little piece is meant for you. 

The pin-up is a purely American creation, originating from the pen of Charles Dana Gibson.  Gibson was responsible for creating the first universally accepted image of female beauty, through his illustrations of curvaceous, gorgeous Victorian women that would appear in various publications.  His female ideal was dubbed the Gibson girl.  Because images of the Gibson girl would be published in magazines and other disposable media it became common practice for fans of the Gibson girl to rip the illustrations out of these publications and pin them up in various places.  Thus the term pin-up was born.

By the 1930s, the image of the idealized woman had greatly changed from the bodiced gown wearing Gibson girl.  Women's clothing had become much less restricting, and women had shown the first signs of sexual liberation during the rollicking 1920s.  The proliferation of Hollywood films with their dazzling array of beautiful young starlets, especially in the risque pre-Hays codes era, also did much to expose mass audiences to this evolving feminine ideal.  The two biggest factors that led to the explosion of the pin-up in the 1930s were the growing popularity of nudist magazines and pulp novels.  Nudist magazines, aside from the overt pictures of naked people, often would publish humorous stories that would be accompanied by similarly humorous, yet sexy pictures of women in various stages of undress.  Pulp novels would similarly contain illustrations that would accompany the descriptions of salacious crimes against women that would include bondage and nudity.  Famous pin-up artists like Alberto Vargas, George Petty, Gil Evgren all began their prolific careers during this decade.

No discussion of the history of the pin-up can discount the impact that the second world war had on the explosion of pin-up art and photography in mainstream popular culture.  Men who had been sent half way around the world needed reminders of home.  Pin-ups, with their slightly naughty portrayal of all-American girls next door offered enlisted men comfort on long lonely months on the front.  As a part of their contribution to the war effort.  Starlets, under contract to the studios, would often pose for suggestive photographs (by 1940s standards) that would then be distributed overseas to GIs who would then hang the photographs in their lockers and bunks.  The most famous Hollywood pin-up was Betty Grable who built her popularity as GIs favourite pin-up into a viable film career.  Other famous actresses, like Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, and Dorothy Lamour were all popular with the uniformed men.  Pin-ups began popping up on airplane fuselages and on other military vehicles.

Once the war was over, the popularity of pin-ups continued, becoming increasingly risque with the growing popularity of girlie magazines and the gradual rise of adult-only publications.  While the charmingly innocent images of girls having their panty covered nether-regions revealed through various devices were still popular, pictures of women in bondage gear and engaging in various acts of S&M also found favour among certain audiences.  Iconic pin-up model Bettie Page, participated in the creation of such images.

By the sixties, many of the great pin-up artists of the thirties, forties, and fifties began winding down their careers.  Publications like Playboy and later boundary pushing magazines like Hustler which featured photographs which literally left nothing to the imagination in their depictions of the feminine form made early pin-up photographs seem quaint by comparison.  Many artists continued the tradition of the pin-up, evolving the image to a more blatantly sexual one (ie. more nudity).

In more recent times, the classic image popularized by Elvgren, Vargas, and others has made its way back into public consciousness.  Illustrators and photographers (myself included) have resurrected this style of celebrating female sexuality.  The next chapter is still being written.

A Bevy of Gibson Girls

Suggestive Pulp Novel Cover

GIs Favorite Betty Grable

Bettie Page and Her Whip

Bombs Away!- Vintage Nose Art

Paramount to pin-up culture is the phenomena of pin-up flavoured nose-art.  For those unfamiliar with nose art, it is a form of graffiti art whose canvas is the nose and fuselage of military aircraft.  Nose art originated in 1913 and became a standard amongst several squadrons during the first world war.  Although the nose art of that era usually took the form of troop insignias and various graphic representations of death from above mantras.


The practice of painting babes on planes really took off (like the pun?) during the second world war, corresponding with the explosion of pin-up photographs being used to rouse the morale of military men.  And rouse them they certainly did.  Soon, thousands of planes were emblazoned with the hypersexualized images of pin-up girls in revealing fatigues, patriotically waving a flag wearing next to nothing, or (as in the final image displayed in this post) nothing at all.  Enjoy!