#418 - Flirt 1948 Harrison

Flirt, Volume 1, Number 4
August, 1948
Whisper, Inc.


digital replica
and
optimized for ebook viewing

In the 1940s and 1950s, Robert Harrison published “girlie” magazines on pulp paper with titles like Beauty Parade, Wink, Titter, and Eyeful. The models included chorus girls, strippers and burlesque entertainers, with text and comic images frequently referring to Broadway.

The original layouts were often like burlesque presentations, with an accent on jokes and gags, often involving puns. This issue of Flirt has cartoons, fake letters, puzzles and innuendo-driven silliness that's all about the allure of women in lingerie, hosiery and exotic footwear.

This may be but the fourth issue of Flirt ever published. Peter Driben's cover informs news stand browsers that contents include Bevies of High-Heel Honeys. Indeed, most of the models wear pumps and slingbacks with five- and six- inch heels. The quantity of photographs with heels that are truly high exceeds the number appearing in any of Mr. Burtman's High Heels magazines. Models also show off in stockings, garters, garter belts, gloves, boots, and few excellent corsets.

Many pictorials have alliterative titles, such as Broadway Backstage, Bright-Lights Beaut, Fightin' Furies (wrestling), Be-Bop Baby, Poised Pretties, and Luscious LuCellia. Corsets Make Curves describes the agony of glamor and demonstrates the curvaceous consequences of tight-lacing.

Comedian Morey Amsterdam appears in a two-page spread with June Frew in cowgirl hat and high-heeled boots. The layout quotes lyrics to his song, I Can't Get Offa My Horse. He later created a wise-cracking TV character on the Dick Van Dyke Show.

Ads offered magic dice, stage-undies, correspondence club romance, bust cream, ancient secrets, hair coloring, whirling electric Swiss chalet clock, height enhancers endorsed by scientists, and honeymoon love drops. Actual photographs, real action photographs, girlie photos, photographs of smart pretty girls in snappy poses, and keyhole photos are promoted.

The Pleasure Primer, Decameron, Carnival Girl, Sex Today in Wedded Life, Bachelor's Quarters, Fast & Loose, Secret Museum of Mankind, Police Jiu-Jitsu, Private Letters to a Stripper, and Shanghai Honeymoon are some of the advertised books. Comic, cartoon and joke publication ads promised fun for adults. Other products promised to teach magic, how to loose weight, dancing, Spanish, hypnotism, marry rich and win at the racetrack.

The digital replica shows all content of the 64-page magazine (plus covers) in the original page sequence. Picture tonality has been adjusted in pursuit of clarity. Except for the splendid Peter Driben cover painting, all photos and illustrations are monochrome.

The optimized ebook collects more than 40 photographs from the magazine and presents them on wide ebook pages with images that fill screens from top to bottom. Precious fetish details, such as legs, stockings, high heels and corsets, are repeated, enlarged, beside the complete image or on the following page.

The product is a convenient fetish album that serves dreamy cheesecake wrapped in silk, nylon, satin, lace and leather. Light and cheery, this early Flirt issue laughs at the irresistible appeal of female beauty for men. The ebook versions provide the best mechanism to enjoy post-war, pin-up fun for regular guys.

Two ebooks, one optimized, delivered by download from your 30th Street Graphics account.