Chance meeting

More vinyl, more totty. This is actually a well-known album cover, Country Life by Roxy Music (1974), predictably banned by various dull people over the years. The reason for this posting now is that I now learn that the models, Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald, were two German girls that Bryan Ferry met on holiday. Would they pose on the cover? Of course!! Excuse over....

The back of the sleeve is much less interesting

Sixties Style

Model Bobo White, about whom I can find nothing, adds even more elegance to an E-Type Jaguar on the cover of Motor, issue dated 9 May 1964. The photographer was Marc Dimac.

Playmates of '64

A review of the previous year's Playmates, as featured in Playboy magazine, January 1965.

Frank's Girl

Nancy Sinatra was born to Frank and Nancy Barbato on 8 June 1940. I knew of her pop songs, These Boots are made for Walkin' being the most famous, along with Somethin' Stupid, which she performed with her father, both records reaching number 1 in the UK in February 1966 and April 1967 respectively. The first song was a favourite of my dad, although the vision of Nancy wearing go-go boots and a mini skirt may have had something to do with it.....

She also did some modelling in the 1960s, this little selection being from the pages of King magazine, issue dated September 1967. King ran from 1964 until taken over by Mayfair in 1968.

My dad was right!

Nearly thirty years later, Nancy appeared in Playboy, still lookin' good........

Bloody Mary

Illustration by Alberto Vargas (1896-1982), from Playboy magazine, March 1967.

Birds & Dollies

Three Spick & Span Extra covers from the early 1970s.

Three little Jems

Eva Meyer, Jayne Mansfield and Lili St Cyer, from Jem magazine, November 1956.

And now in colour.......

The postman brought another bundle of 1950s Blighty magazines yesterday. These are from 1955 onwards and now sport a colour pin up on the cover (and still cost sixpence!).

All of the models featured, Molly Stevens, Jeanette Pearce, Margaret Simons and Toni Dais, hoped, as they say inside the magazine, to break into show business. Sadly, it seems that none got very far, at least under these names.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....

.....as Keats would have it, is now upon us. Although our model is hardly dressed for autumn, she appears to be enjoying the effects of a strong breeze, as indeed are we. The park-keeper may not be so happy about the improper use of a litter bin however, she is no doubt in contravention of several council by-laws.

Of Steam and Suspenders

When searching through pictures of vintage pin-ups for inclusion in this blog (it's a tough job, etc.), I try to include something else in the pose. Thus, we have had Amanda climbing a stile, Jayne with her Jag and Fiona Richmond sandwiched between to big blokes and so on.

Sorting through some pictures recently, I came across this. Unremarkable, you may say. Model Jane Fairbanks looking a little distracted whilst disrobing in someone's living room from a 1970s issue of Spick magazine. What caught my eye however, was the record standing next to her right foot. Not just any old record, but a record of the sounds of steam engines, a copy of which I have had in my collection for many years.

The recording of the sounds of steam locomotives at work and subsequent sale on vinyl had been going on for many years, notably by O Winston Link in the USA and Peter Handford in this country. The record in this picture is Memories of Steam, recorded by Kenneth Grenville Attwood on the Longmoor Military Railway in 1969/69 and at Carnforth in the summer of 1968, during the dying days of steam on British Railways.The colour photographs on the cover of the album were by Ian Krause, but are misleading as none of the locations illustrated actually appear on the record itself. Further evidence of the photographer's (or the owner of the room's) interest in railways is the model of a Canadian National locomotive on the shelf behind. It's always nice to combine one's interests!

Welcome to Bournemouth

These two illustrations provided the frontispiece to official guides to Bournemouth published in 1935 and 1965. The top view was entitled Bathing from the Pier, and appears to be a of a smaller area especially built lower down for that activity. One-piece swimsuits are certainly the fashion!

The lower view is, well, self explanatory. I'm not sure whether as a nine year-old, I would have been interested in the girls on the beach, although I certainly appreciated singer Susan Maughan when she appeared with Morcambe & Wise at the Winter Gardens Theatre the following summer! My 1965 holiday would have included riding on the yellow Corporation trolleybuses and serious train-watching, as most services through Bournemouth then were still steam-hauled. An evening treat would be a drive through the town's illuminations in Uncle Billy's Ford Consul. Now, where's my time machine.........

The sobering thought is that the carefree group from 1935 have probably all died and that the game gals from 1965 are all now pensioners!

Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield appearing on the cover of Picturegoer, issue dated 16 March 1957. This was all to promote the release of the musical comedy film The Girl Can't Help It, advertised within the paper, which also carried a feature comparing the actress with Marilyn Munroe.

DS meets XK140

A nice pair of automotive imports into the USA in the 1950s; two pictures from men's magazine After Hours, an issue from 1957. The Citroen DS would have been at the beginning of it's popularity, being sold in the States between 1956 and 1972. The Jaguar XK140 (which I am assuming is the correct model, or so my friends on Flickr tell me), was on the way out, being superseded by the XK150 from later in 1957. The model is Grace Curry, of whom I sadly know nothing.

What glamour shoots are really like.........

We wish.

From High Heels, July 1965

Beehives and Petticoats

Three young ladies cavort in the countryside in the 1960s; since these pictures came from a magazine actually called Beehive Girls, the one on the left doesn't appear to be playing the game!

Two Big Blokes and a Bird (and a Jag)

Remember Fiona Richmond? In the 1970s, she was a model, an actress and also wrote all sorts of naughty books supposedly about her own sexual experiences, not to mention being the girlfriend of publisher and club owner Paul Raymond. Today she apparently owns and runs a couple of hotels. This picture comes from a 1976 issue of Spick magazine, photographed at a contest to find Britian's fattest man (how very non-PC!!). Mighty George Macaree looks rather startled; I wonder what Fiona was doing with her right hand........?

Whilst trying to find out what else she had got up to in recent years, I came across her in the excellent BBC series The Car's the Star, where she was interviewed in the programme featuring the Jaguar E-Type in 1997. In the 1970s clip she is driving FU 2, not now on the DVLA database, though has probably since been re-registered, whilst JCT 1N is still on the road in 2012 (Unless they are the same car, of course.........)

Jane & Jag

Model Jane Mercer, not her real name, I'm sure, adorns 1960s Jaguar XKG 318 amongst the pages of Span magazine for March 1975. My father did some glamour photography from a studio set up in the spare bedroom (which made my early teenage years interesting!) and also owned a Mark 2 Jag. I don't think that he ever combined the two interests, although I suspect that my mother would have taken a dim view if he had!

Carry On Rambling

With the spring weather upon us, The Ramblers Association have unveiled their new lightweight clothing range. Model Amanda Jansen gets the Vintage Stuff seal of approval as she climbs a fence on the South Downs. Mind your step there, Amanda!

From Beautiful Britons, August 1969