As of the date of the issue I have, October 1959, Intimate Story is still being put out by its original publisher, movie magazine mogul W.M. Cotton. At some point in the 1960s Cotton sold out to Filmways Corporation, famous for its hillbilly line-up of television shows (Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction ect.) In fact, it seems to have owned Ideal at the height of its prowess as a media player. It fell from this height rather shortly afterwards and wound up being bought and divested itself. At what point Martin Goodman jumps in is a little unclear. *
Goodman would not have had any problem with Intimate Story Magazine. It’s right in his wheel-house presentation and content wise. One of the problems Goodman had was that his editorial staff often got snooty about the low-brow advertising he stuck in his magazines. Goodman treated ads like they were free copy. He didn’t care what the ad was for. (Thus there were a lot of truss and trade school ads.) The ad gave him some money and saved him money on page space he otherwise would have to pay to be filled. It did have the effect of making Goodman’s editors think that their magazines were directed at trailer trash or worse.
The people at W.M. Cotton’s Ideal come from the same school as Goodman. They go one step further by placing in a few house ads for Ideal’s demented sister company Conel Books—a purveyor of literature hell-bent on making the average woman feel inferior. If you want to judge what a publisher thinks of a magazine’s audience, checking out the ads isn’t a bad place to start. It’s clear from the ads carried in Intimate Story that the publisher was sure its audience…
Stinks, stinks real bad
It would be one thing if there were other types of deodorant advertised in this magazine. Intimate Story did have other advertisers, some of them quite mainstream. The interior cover features a quite normal and on demographic ad for Maybelline. There are also ads for some trade schools and book of the month club type promotions, typical of the entire pulp magazine industry. What makes this love pulp a little different is that it has two display ads up front for a particular type of anti-smell product. The one directly above is taking advantage of the magazine’s spot color process, which is a little tricky and shows quite a bit of forethought on the part of the advertiser and the publisher. Pink overlays do not come cheap and they do not just “happen” in what was essentially a black and white magazine. Intimate Story, as was typical for the time, was not a true pulp, but rather a photo offset slick, mechanically identical to its sister movie magazines. In pulps, sometimes you have to read between the lines—and this is especially true of the advertisements. This ad does not say that Norforms help prevent STDs or are effective as birth control, but it is implied.
Our second down under deodorant isn’t really making any product claims. Of all the things to call it—Quest! Quest for what, one wonders? The curious couples scene certainly does spark the imagination. (My Added Caption: Down, Prunecake! Shop’s closed!) That was it for the deodorant offerings. Most of Intimate Story’s other advertisers were targeting your problems above the navel, specifically…
Your breasts are too small.
That’s more or less what this woman’s exciting full column advertisement has to tell you. She’s hawking something called PRO-FORMA, tablets made from Extract of Galega (apparently not the video game) that when taken three times a day will restore your natural contours. They naturally cannot resist the lie that this fictional extract was originally sold in France. In pulp terms, any reference to France or the French means that you will instantly be having amazing amounts of sex. If you were a little shy about popping pills, don’t worry. Intimate Story’s sponsors had a number of ways to kick you off the itty bitty titty committee, including…
It’s an erector set for your chest! Please keep in mind that the two biggest lies in pulp magazines are the words ‘French’ and ‘Free.’ Also, it should be noted, Maurice d’ Paree is very likely to really be Levi from the Bronx selling merchandise remaindered from the pointy boobs fad of the 1940s. This is one of only two products advertised in Intimate Story which are still in existence today. I am told that today’s French Lift bras are not quite as pointy and make considerably less use of whale bone and wire.
Like PRO-FORMA above, this advertisement for Allure Cream would get you in trouble with the FDA today. The text of this ad is rather unclear. Either Allure Cream actually grows the breasts or contains something to help you forget that they are small.
La Vive Crème, by contrast, bends over backwards not to make any product claims at all—other than it does something for the skin of BUST AND BODY. For the seriously science minded, the text touts that this cream is “compounded with 40,000 units of Estrogenic Hormones.” (WTF!)
New CurVees is a more modest take on the French Lift bra and is intended for those whose endowment is so modest that they need help looking as if they have any endowment at all. It modestly proposes to turn bee bites into ant hills, all the while decrying ‘Falsies’ even though that’s what the product actually is. Although not stuffing, it is shoving from the bottom up. Sounds uncomfortable.
Then there’s the good, old fashioned ‘work’ solution to your chest underdevelopment issue. I actually owned one of these things. It’s a section of non-vulcanized rubber that you pull and contort to your heart’s content. Not being a woman nor a doctor, I can’t tell you what it would do for non muscle tissue.(Make it migrate upwards is my guess.) The thing gave me linebacker shoulders. It should also be noted that these things break—and when they do, sections of it are quite capable of flying through two panes of domestic window glass. Mine had the hoop holders, as most do. With the hoop holders it was possible to fire the entire contraption onto expressway overpasses. Not that this is its intended purpose.
Given how popular the category was with its advertisers, Ideal just had to get into the act. Here Ideal’s sister company Conel Books is offering a paperback on how to… think your breasts bigger? I’m just guessing here. The only salient product claim mentioned in the ad’s text is offering advice on how flat chested women should dress. As a variant to the no boobs problem, a solution was offered to the knob legs issue. Again, science had the answer. It came in a book. Whatever the procedure was, it could be done 15 minutes a day in the privacy of your own home—apparently without assistance. Note the copious non-mention of the word ‘exercise’. Beyond being deformed, it appears our publisher was fairly convinced that Intimate Story’s readership was…
Fat, Toothless, Itchy and Broke.
For the fat, of course Hollywood has all of the answers. In pulp terms, the word ‘Hollywood’ denotes a method involving a minimum of actual participation. In short, these are quick fixes involving no work. B-Slim here is a diet pill, the type that ruined the health of many an actress. And then there’s the eat yourself thin method, here touted Hollywood style by Ideal’s own Conel Books with Magic Hollywood Diet Guide. Calorie counting schemes and put air and chalk into foods methods are still sadly with us. Again no actual physical activity or control of portions is advised.
This is apparently the same ad from two firms, both located in Chicago. It’s cut rate dentures, made from the impression of your remaining teeth. (Again, I am guessing.) There are just some things that you should not buy mail order. 
Before the authorities cracked down on it, much of the advertising in publications of all sorts were for patent medicines. Unlike real medicines that you have to see a real doctor for, patent medicines and their evil spawn, the over the counter remedy and the nutrition supplement, do not have to demonstrate any efficacy.** At best, they can’t hurt you unless you abuse them. Given the range of ailments AMBULEX is claiming to ‘treat’, it is probably something similar to TUMS.
This is actually an early ad for Lanacane, here being touted as a treatment for itchy woman bits. Lanacane, a mixture of Ethanol, Isobutane, Glycol, and Acetate, has since gone bi-sexual and sexual, today being advertised as a help for anything that isn’t quite rubbing the right way. 
Before Alcoholics Anonymous gained traction after WWII, advertisements similar to this were fairly widespread. From what the text seems to say, this appears to be a for profit repackaging of the Twelve Steps. Loan sharking by mail thankfully never really caught on in the United States. Miss a payment and I guarantee you that the man who comes knocking on your door will look nothing like the fat, friendly gent we see in the advertisement.
As I mentioned, some pulp ads require a little reading between the lines. Both of these ads seem to be pimple removers—at least overtly. Mercolized Wax Cream and the aptly named Whitex actually are chemical peal concoctions. Pulp magazines had considerable minority readership. These are skin lighteners intended to help people pass as white, ala Michael Jackson. Products like these were very common until the late 1960s.
Now that your breasts are properly defying gravity, your wallet filled with the juice man’s juice, your legs all nice and curvy and all of your itch and teeth problems have been contoured and conquered, it’s time to get that man. Actually, this ad is for perfume. (Perhaps another product one should refrain from buying via the mails.) Gosh knows what’s in it or what it smells like. That only ‘a tiny drop’… ‘lasts for days’ is possibly a clue that whatever this is should be avoided. Pulp magazines, being peddlers of sensation, often attracted people who were not quite in on the joke. Which is to say that the publisher of Intimate Story was fairly sure that at least a portion of its audience was…
Insane
The mystical powers of Elvis had become a proven staple in many pulp and fan magazines, long before he began making post death appearances. Strangely, the identity of the disfigured Hollywood starlet Elvis cured with just his words has never been revealed.
If you can’t get a visit from the ever-healing King (of Rock & Roll), there’s always Chi-Ches-Ters, which went Midol one better in the turning your frown upside down department. Whereas Midol just claims to make life tolerable (and perhaps reduce the homicide rate), Chi-Ches-Ters promises to put the party back in your prance where it belongs! Please keep in mind that whatever Chi-Ches-Ters was (LSD?), it is no longer available.
Then there’s the direct approach to solving all of your problems, be they physical, monetary or social: a four inch German made automatic pistol. “Suitable for Sporting events” such as suicide and piling the bodies of your helpless enemies like cord wood. This RG2 (Ruger) six shot automatic comes complete with live shells and a self extracting clip—in case you have more than six enemies. And if that’s not good enough…
OK. It’s only six feet long, but it is a tank. As for the product claims, I am hoping they were all false.
Coda: Before any of you buttinskis tries anything fast, I am putting you all on notice that I intend to trademark ‘Exciting Bustline Beauty' as the title of my own porn magazine/biography. So no taking it!
*It should be noted that Marvel renewed the copyrights on Lev Gleason’s Daredevil without any type of money having ever been exchanged between the two firms. Marvel just waited for the Lev Gleason Daredevils to dump out of copyright and then republished the title as an ashcan. An ashcan is a short run printing of a magazine, generally intended to provide proof of title and trademark ownership. Most ashcan editions are literally just stapled together veloxes. In the cases of both Daredevil and the Ideal Magazines, Marvel renewed the copyrights by republishing velox editions containing several issues at a time. This may have been done to protect Marvel’s Daredevil trademark going forward and to keep in copyright any material from Ideal that they wished to recycle. Whereas Marvel’s renewal of Daredevil may have been a case of squatting, I am inclined to believe their renewal of Ideal’s titles was a part of an actual sale. The Marvel people did a fairly comprehensive job on the Ideal line. They renewed the titles as Marvel Entertainment, Cadence Industries and Magazine Management, which indicates a long-standing effort.
**Efficacy is a technical term. It has nothing to do with whether the product works. In real efficacy a product has to prove that it works better or differently than other products already on the market. And real efficacy only applies to drugs.
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