#200256 - Tomcat 6 1958 Walter Hale

Tomcat, Volume 1, Number 6
Walter Hale, Publisher
San Francisco, California
1958

digital replica

Probably first produced by Mr. Hefner in 1953, men's magazines have cartoons, comics, short stories, jokes, articles on subjects of interest to men and pictures of young models wearing next to nothing. You might call it a hunting magazine, in that some pages show trophies of the hunt and other pages describe techniques and equipment that facilitate the quest. Mr. Hale worked earnestly to cook that recipe in Tomcat with mixed results.

Tomcat announces that it was “Catering to culpable cats capable of cuddling a curvaceous cutie.” Expressed another way, Tomcat aimed at entertaining adult males who might misbehave while making contact with women.

Whoever Mr. Hale was, he chose to express himself in a men's magazine and created most of its prose. Issue 6 gives us a generous sample of his work and style – consistent, conversational, masculine, vernacular but not corny. He probably served some time as a journalist.

His long first-person short story (called a novel) about the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock presents colorful characters and dialog. The narrator works as journalist on assignment there in those world-shaking days of change and violence. Scenarios expose the hot spectrum of opinions about race at those turbulent times. With suitable modesty, the piece pursues a balanced view.

An essay recounts the life of Henry Christophe, who helped to organize and rule Haiti 200 years ago. Engaging anecdotes tell us about surprising incidents in his public life, including the words spoken by the king and his associates.

Other prose tells jokes, often with sexist bias. Like Humorama magazines, single-panel cartoons fill out pages and comment about the charms of women. Un-thematic clip art was also used as filler.

Models include burlesque performers but are mostly unfamiliar. Lovely young women pose in lingerie, but sometimes only lipstick.

The digital replica contains all content of the original magazine, including advertising. Ads tout photo sets, books, job opportunities, companionship clubs, and nutritional supplements. Pages appear in the sequence of the original. Some page layouts were revised. A few photographs were rotated for convenience, requiring square pages

The tonality of photos was adjusted, shadows reduced and many specks retouched.

All new scans.

This West Coast opus continued for a few years. It appears today as an engaging relic of 1950s culture with many of its blemishes. Mainly the work of Mr. Hale, the bi-monthly publication, and its author, have crumbled into obscurity. Despite some race and gender insensitivity, its pages express routine male occupation with women and their proclivities.

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