1) Everything old is new again.
2) No unresolved detail will simply become resolved.
Maybe the second point isn't quite as universal as the first. But us students of history (snobby sniff) do encounter these rules rather often. In a previous post on those wonderful items I found advertised in Intimate Story, it was stated that only Lanacane is still being offered today. I was wrong about that. Or rather, I was right about it until I opened my mail today.
It's the stretchy bustline improvement thingy! To refresh your memory, here it is in its 1950s era manifestation.
Again, you are cautioned that 'Exciting Bustline Beauty' will soon be a trademark of yours truly, for use either as my biography title or that of an instructional yet melodramatic video presentation. Interestingly, the new version is being sold without any sort of product claim, other that carrying the Bally's Fitness seal of approval. Back during the 1950s Bally's made bowling balls and pool tables. They are more an old name in the world of useless crap than they are in fitness.
You will note that the new version has instructions printed on it. There's something wrong about printing instructions on an item which, if used at all, will eventually be worn off. I guess the idea is that the instructions taunt you until you use it enough for them to become unintelligible. At that point you can safely store it in your hamper or on your bedpost. Mine was always quite the conversation piece.
By the way, the young lady pictured is either endowed with super human abilities or hers has been worked enough to have the instructions be already worn through. Unless they are making them differently today, they don't really have much give out of the box.
Which brings me to Snappy Stories, a subject which does seem to have an unusual amount of give to it, historically speaking. I first covered the magazine Snappy Stories back when I did my piece on Young's magazine empire. (The Laughing Wallflower, in the Modern Thrills section of the Hil-Gle site.) It was a bit of an anomaly, with sources conflicting as to who published it. My contention was that it was published by Young, but other histories stated that it belonged to the early Black Mask (Smart Set, American Mercury) group or that it had originated out of Clayton Magazines. To make matters more murky, there was also a Snappy Magazine--and Young's Magazine also called itself Snappy Stories.
Even for someone as intensely interested in this stuff as I am, there is a point where you decide to be lazy. Who really gives a damn and how will a detail this small ever possibly be relevant to anything else ever again. You say "It was a long time ago", note the conflict and move on, content that the subject will never become key to anything else ever again.
So I have moved onto doing the blurbs for our Ballyhoo section. While doing so I blundered onto this evoking factoid: Ballyhoo's publisher got his start as the sales manager for Snappy Stories. In fact, he founded his entire pulp empire off of the $10,000.00 payoff he got from the publisher of that magazine. That means that knowing which publisher is an essential detail.
A similar 'return to Krypton' event has cropped up in my research on Ideal Magazines. It seems William Cotton did not emerge from a half shell to start pumping out movie magazines. He previously worked for Fawcett and when he stepped out from that publisher's shadow, he did not do so alone. He was part of that other great historical tar baby Centaur Comics.
Clearing up these two items will be the subjects of future posts. Provided there isn't some breaking news, a three parter on Ballyhoo will be our next posts.
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