Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Gaite Parisienne?

Stumbled across some more Enoch Bolles cancan art, this time gracing the cover of the aptly-named Gay Parisienne magazine:

 Click image to enlarge.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Classic Funhouse...

Not exactly the cancan, but counted amongst our all-time favorites nonetheless. Once again, we've used deep AI to give these exceptional pieces a new lease of life:



 



If memory serves correct, the last image was actually christened "off-duty cancan" and featured a dancer from the Windmill Theatre.

Sunday, February 12, 2023

A Bit of Sauce

A few more saucy postcards from the vault. Sorry, had to truncate this first one due to the left side of the image being a little "scrambled" during the scanning process; hoping to find a more complete version in the near future:

Next, a sentiment I suspect we can all agree with (guess it must run in the family):

Not sure if this one technically qualifies as the cancan, but the girls' suspenders hearts all seem to be in the right places:

Click images to enlarge.

Friday, February 10, 2023

Frontline Follies

Question: if shows like this had still been around when you were a kid, would you have gone to see them?

"Cleaned up" version:

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Jane's Journal

Yes, Norman Pett's Jane returns in this stock edition published by Rylee just two years after the war. The 41-page pamphlet includes photos, articles, sketches and a hand-colored strip rarely seen outside the UK. Oh, and page sixteen features this unexpected little gem:

The rest of the book may be viewed (and downloaded) at Internet Archive (nsfw):

https://archive.org/details/Janes_Journal_by_Pett_Rylee/

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Magazines, covers & postcards

Tried to "clean up" some of the images I came across on BB's tumblr site; once again, I'll leave you to judge the results:


 

Thursday, August 11, 2022

An Old Favorite

So, are you ready for another trip to The Judas Hole?  Yes, that's right, it's time to review our favorite moments from The Haunted Strangler (Amalgamated, 1958):

Loosely based around the Whitechapel murders of the 1880s (with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde thrown in), the movie contains two extended cancan sequences set in a Victorian music hall. Like Jimmy Sangster's Jack the Ripper (Tempean Films, 1959), the movie was shot in black & white and contains virtuoso performances by professional dancers. According to some sources, the cancan scenes were choreographed by Joan Murray, a former Windmill Theatre alumnus. 

Seriously, I still can't understand why nobody's come up with a color version of this masterpiece. Judging from these screencaps alone, the cancan number would be nothing short of spectacular!

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Deep Learning

We've tested several online colorization programs, and DeepAI still seems to be the best we've come across so far. We'll allow you to judge the results for yourself with these stills from 1959's Jack the Ripper:

Ballet Montparnasse in monochrome.

Ballet Montparnasse in color.

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Spicy Tales

 

Pulp magazines (often referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks." The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. 

The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, especially those of the "spicy" variety. 

While held in low regard at the time of of publication, "spicy pulp" cover paintings are now considered exceptional pieces of American pop culture and are keenly sought after by collectors and enthusiasts alike. 

- freely adapted from the Wikipedia article.

More Vintage Lingerie Ads

"MATCHING BRA AND PANTIES with Her Initial!" And to think we could see advertisements of this kind in virtually any newspaper back in the day. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic...

 

"I can't wait to get into them!" Odd that an ad for Slimma Slack & Skirts would feature a girl in her bra and knickers, but then again, we're talking about the British tabloids here...

Monday, June 27, 2022

Postwar Cheesecake

Katy Keene in her "undies." Despite its squeaky-clean reputation, Archie Publications could get pretty steamy during the pre-code era. While the character was aimed at a predominately female audience, most stories contained a generous amount of cheesecake, usually in the form of Katy getting changed. Readers often submitted designs for the characters' clothing; evidently the strip had a devoted male following as well.

Eight years before Marilyn Monroe's iconic scene in The Seven Year Itch, Katy Keene found herself fighting the gale for close on six pages. The strip's creator, Bill Woggon, frequently "spiced up" the action with pin up pages and mild innuendo here and there (well, practically every issue TBH). 

"Fanservice" elements were less common in other titles, though they managed to sneak in under the radar from time to time. Billed as "America's Typical Teenaged Girl," Ginger Snapp was a female version of Archie Andrews, complete with bright red hair and oddball supporting cast - although the similarities seem to have ended there. Unlike her better-known counterpart, Ginger occasionally treated her readers to gratuitous lingerie shots, complete with lacy black underwear and thigh-length suspender stockings.

Last (and quite possibly least) we have Owen Fizgerald's Moronica. Published by AGC in the early 50s, Moronica (yes, that was apparently her real name) was portrayed as ditzy, naive and accident-prone, ie a stereotypical "Dumb Dora" played exclusively for laughs. Appearing mainly in the back pages of Dizzy Dames (a more subtle title cannot be conceived), the strip ran for less than a year before its cancellation in June 1953. Strangely enough, the idea of an airhead blonde losing her clothes at the drop of a hat didn't catch on too well at the time. Guess there's just no accounting for taste.

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Jane Revisited

Following Jane's phenomenonally successful run in the 1940s, the Daily Mirror attempted two revivals of the character over the next three decades, first with the short-lived Jane, Daughter of Jane in the 1960s (Alfred Mazure, 1961-1963):

...followed by a mid-eighties reboot which updated the original heroine for a contemporary audience (1985-1990). Veteran cartoonist John M. Burns added an espionage parody recalling Jane's homefront adventures of the war years:

 

While both strips were initially well-received , neither managed to recapture the charm of Norman Pett's wide-eyed ingenue. Despite some truly knockout artwork from Burns and Mazure, the revivals simply couldn't match the patriotic fervor of their predecessor. Apparently, the key to success involves more than just a pretty blonde running around in her lingerie :)

See also this post for more of the same. 

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

The Golden Age part 2

British comedies of the 60s and 70s often included completely gratuitous lingerie scenes, randomly dropped into the script for no apparent reason at all. Phenomenally popular in Commonwealth nations, they've since became a mainstay in the popular culture. It's no exaggeration to say that an entire generation of young men grew up checking the weekly news guide to see when the latest episode of Dick Emery or The Two Ninnies was coming out.

As mentioned elsewhere, Sid James probably started it all off with the Carry On franchise, of which 1961's "Regardless" is still one of the best known examples.


As suggested by the image posted above, the humor was similar to The Benny Hill Show and the girls just as beautiful. It's interesting to see how lingerie styles changed over the years. For example, in the early 1960s, the girls wore suspenders and stockings:
 

 
...while a few years later, they wore only bra and panties:



 
By the 1970s, fashions had changed completely:

 
 
Then suspender stockings made a brief comeback (for one film) in 1972...



In British comedies, young girls weren't embarrassed to walk around in their lingerie, even if there were men watching. They were completely innocent, and seemed to enjoy modeling their underwear in public. It's unfortunate they don't make movies like this any more.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Old Time Flamenco

There were a few occasions when old-time Flamenco Dancing rivaled the Cancan in terms of sheer exuberance and exhilaration. The similarities between the two dance-forms can hardly be denied (though Flamenco is generally performed by a duo while CC is more often an ensemble effort). Some superb examples of classic Flameno were offered (believe it or not) by Disney Studios way back in the day: