Parliament - American Art Agency

Midnight, Volume 1, Number 3
American Art Enterprises, Inc./A Parliament Publication
North Hollywood, California
1961

digital replica

Midnight presents as a pinup magazine for manly guys who like (1) lovely ladies with little dressing and (2) like to read advice about how to finesse them into saying yes. A light tone prevails throughout.

An editorial exposes the poetic intent of the title. “MIDNIGHT is a fabulous time of day, and the editors of MIDNIGHT have tried to make it just as fabulous a magazine, designed to bring on that twelve-o'clock glow regardless of the hour you pick it up.

“You'll get acquainted with some very interesting girls between the covers of MIDNIGHT . . . . You'll also pick up on some techniques for handling this curvy species, tricks of the trade passed along to you at no extra charge from some of America's foremost experts. . . .

“Remember, always, whether reading MIDNIGHT for entertainment's sake or applying the principles contained herein, that MIDNIGHT is a state of mind, not necessarily a time of day. As such, it can be with you always, lifting the dullest moment out of the ordinary, launching the imagination upon new and rewarding pathways. . . . it takes a man who is young at heart to realize the full benefit of it. MIDNIGHT'S writers, photographers, models and editors constantly have your pleasure in mind, and strive continually to give you exactly what you want in printed entertainment.

“Glamorous girls and words of worldly wit and wisdom await your pleasure, sir!”

As Midnight's content mixes trophies and strategies for getting them, you might call it a hunting magazine. With two short stories, seven articles, seven pictorials and other features, it works to be a men's magazine. While most men's magazines have advertising, this issue has 80 pages of alluring content. Pinup photos of a single model accompany several articles.

Topics include Midnight Lace, games to play at midnight, psychological seduction, why women say no, their moods and cocktail recipes. One piece describes and pictures a late-night pool party. Two pages have jokes and cartoons.

The copious prose (and one poem) serves as place-holder for photographs of relaxed models in the mood for fun. Most models aren't named, but Alice Denham is.

Pictorials show traces of lingerie. While many pretty posers are nude, limbs, panties and props (e.g., bongos) obscure pubic regions in 1961.

The digital replica presents all content of the magazine. Page sequence was revised to obtain continuity of one short story. No page layouts were revised.

Tonality was adjusted, shadows reduced and many specks retouched. Gratuitous regions of color in the original are retained in the ebook.

All new scans.

The last pictorial, Midnight in the Afternoon, features revealing snapshots of a zoftig brunette in a good mood and closes with these lofty sentiments:

“Midnight on a quiet summer afternoon is a delicious experience for man and girl alike, for it transforms the hum-drum into the memorable, the everyday into the once-in-a-lifetime. Midnight is composed of beauty and a desire to make such beauty sing in the way for which it was ultimately designed. It is a rapture of the flesh, and at the same time an ecstasy of the spirit. It is a coming-together of personalities, a welding of the stuff of life itself into something ephemerally greater than the sum of its mortal parts.”

Who wants to argue with that?

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