Prince pops up on a fag packet

I mentioned a while back who I thought a fake cigarette had been painted on a photograph of Edward, Prince of Wales in 1919.

And now I’ve come across this advert in a 1923 issue of Printers’ Pie for the Prince Charming cigarette brand. He’s painted on a packet of cigarettes rather than a cigarette being painted oh him!

The brand was made by Moustafa of Piccadilly and the character is clearly based on the Prince of Wales, in a pose and uniform just like the ‘doctored’ photograph.

Celebrity endorsements were popular at the time, but they were usually by stars of screen and stage, rather than the next-in-line to the throne. There is not sense that Edward was involved in this.

 

 

Mr Barraud’s photographs

Advertising page from 1883 Merry England magazine for photographer Herbert Rose Barraud

This advertising page from the May 1883 issue of Merry England magazine is for the photography studio of Herbert Rose Barraud in London’s Oxford Street. He specialised in portraits of Victorian society and celebrities. The National Portrait Gallery has 500 of Barraud’s photographs.

The advert quotes John Ruskin, ‘the great art critic’ and one of Barraud’s sitters, writing about Barraud’s photographs:

They are wonderfully and singularly beautiful, and go as far as the art can at the present day, and I do not see it can ever do much better.

It’s not the sort of advert you can imagine a photographic studio running today. There is lovely detail in the engraving, with many literary and artistic allusions:

• The laid-back, cheerful Old Father Time points to his scythe, on which is written: ‘In the twinkling of an eye’.
• He has wings and one arm rests on his hour glass. A steam train runs below him and there is a spider’s web and ‘head rest’ by his feet.
• In the rays smiling rising sun is a quotation from Shakespeare: ‘The sun stayeth its course to play the alchymist.’ In each of the flames of the sun is a number or letter spelling out the photographer’s address: ‘Barraud. 263. Oxford. St. W.’
• In the background to the left is a horseman vaulting a gate, and a windmill with birds and an arrow flying overhead. To the right is a camera, and a palette with ‘truth’ written on it, and paint brushes. In the centre is an easel offering image sizes: life size, panel, promenades, cabinet and cartes.

This detail shows how the flames of the sun spell out Barraud’s address

Barraud’s studio was renowned as being one of the largest and best-fitted studios in Europe, complete with a lift, so the visiting dignitaries – who included Gladstone and his family, Darwin, Tennyson and a raft of leading actors – would not have to climb the stairs.

Girls in champagne glasses

What is it about women celebrities sitting in champagne glasses? The US actress Goldie Hawn was shown in a champagne coupe by photographer Arny Freytag for the cover of Playboy magazine in January 1985. But she’s not the first, and probably won’t be the last, actress to be so portrayed.

Below, we have Kylie Minogue on the cover of fashion monthly Vogue in a suitably celebratory Christmas shot by Nick Knight as the ‘Princess of Pop’ (December 2003).

And Demi Moore was never one to be left out in the leggy glamour stakes, so took to the cover of the Observer Magazine (7 October 2007) after her divorce from Bruce Willis. This looks more like a glass globe seat than a champagne glass, but the look is very similar.

And here’s a variation on the idea, going back 105 years. This 1915 cover of women’s weekly Home Notes was painted by no less than Mabel Lucie Attwell (May 29). Atwell’s cute toddlers were a favourite around the home on china and all sorts of goods for much of the 20th century.

Mabel Lucie Attwell painted this 1915 cover of Home Notes with a cherub perched on a glass cup of custard

Finally, another illustration. This leering toff appeared inside the issues of the men’s monthly pocket magazine Razzle in the late 1940s, with a girl bubbling away in his glass.

 

 

Vogue outs bonkers celebrity

Vogue, or at least the British edition of the Condé Nast monthly, finds itself credited in today’s Sunday Times for its sound judgment in spiking an interview with Maya Arulpragasam, better known as the singer MIA. ‘Thank heaven for Vogue,’ says Sarah Baxter, in condemning MIA’s ‘bonkers’ attitude towards taking a vaccine coronavirus.

The row came after MIA had tweeted that death would be preferable to taking a vaccine. ‘if I have to choose between a vaccine or chip [against the coronavirus], I’m gonna choose death’. She said that Edward Enninful, the editor of British Vogue had withdrawn his offer for a feature. She has since removed the post.

Enninful, editor of British Vogue – known as Brogue – responded:

Considering . . . we’re chronicling the struggles of the NHS to cope, we don’t feel we can have her involved. It just wouldn’t be right.’

Even after deleting her messages, MIA responded to Vogue: ‘I missed a lot of vaccines and PLOT TWIST. I’m still alive. If I don’t make it past this age, that’s okay.’ Is she loopy or what?

Baxter adds the tennis player Novak Djokovic to the list of bonkers celebrities as another ‘anti-vaxxer’ in an article that compares their warped attitudes with the madness of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr Strangelove.

It’s not all glory for Vogue, though. The columnist also recalls that the US version of the glossy fashion magazine once described the wife of the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, as the ‘rose of the desert’ just as the country’s civil war broke out.

The art in advertising

Edwards’ Harlene hair dressing advert from 1902

Engraved advertising in Victorian and Edwardian magazines looks so dramatic with its hard back and white lines, particularly as the big brands employed some of the best illustrators.

This engraving is from a page advert in Alfred Harmsworth’s London, a monthly magazine, dated June 1902. The face in the unsigned illustration for Edwards’ Harlene hair dressing has the look of a painting or leaded window by the Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne Jones. Overall, the image is influenced by the works of Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau, with detailed patterning for the clothes and background; everything, except, ironically, for the snaking hair itself.

The Wellcome Library has a chromolitho print of the Harlene artwork without the text from the lower part of the advert.

It was clearly a brand that took advertising very seriously with celebrity recommendations by music hall artiste Lillie Langtry and, it seems, half the royal houses in Europe. But then, Harlene was a miracle potion, promising that it:

Restores the hair,
promotes the growth,
arrests the fall,
strengthens the roots,
removes dandruff,
beautifies the hair.

Pre-Raphaelite face in the engraving

The Art of Advertising exhibition was to open at Oxford’s Bodleian library this month, but has been postponed. It tells the story of British advertising from the mid 18th century to the 1930s based on the John Johnson collection of printed ephemera.

Other places to research advertising imagery include the History of Advertising Trust, the Maurice Rickards collection and the Advertising Archives.

>>More about magazines at Magforum.com

Kitchener poster and the Washington Post film

The cover of Art Buchwald’s 1968 book is on the wall of the editor’s office in The Post

I rabbit on so much about Alfred Leete’s Kitchener poster that I wrote a book about it, but it still never ceases to amaze me the way that Leete’s Kitchener image – and the many derivatives of it – keep popping up. One example is in the Steven Spielberg film, The Post.

A poster for Have I Ever Lied to You?, a book by the Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald, is on the wall of the editor’s office. It can be seen in several scenes. Buchwald is portrayed as Uncle Sam from the 1917 recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg.

The Flagg image, which, like Leete’s, first appeared on a magazine cover (Leslie’s Weekly), was a blatant copy of Leete’s September 1914 cover for London Opinion magazine. Flagg simply replaced Kitchener with himself as Uncle Sam, and the poster has been as big a hit in the US as Leete’s was in Britain.

In The Post, Tom Hanks plays the editor, Ben Bradlee. It comes across just like the 1980s TV series Lou Grant. In that, Mrs Pynchon, the widowed owner of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune, was based on two women: Katherine Graham, the widowed owner of the Washington Post; and ‘Dolly’ Schiff, owner and publisher of the New York Post.

What to do with old magazines

Tommy Handley was a famous face in 1955

 

People often ask me about selling old magazines and I’ve done several posts about selling on Ebay and the rare titles that are worth taking to auction.

But what about those that don’t sell or even the charity shops don’t want?

Chatting on eBay with a woman from Oxfam reminded me that care homes are another option.  I had a correspondence a few years ago with a dementia nurse who was trying to trace a particular magazine that one of the women in her care had appeared in. It was a needle in a haystack and we never found the specific issue. However, in the process I sent her some 1950s women’s weekly magazines. She said the result was amazing when she passed them around!

The people there, particularly the women, kept each other entertained for weeks afterwards with their reminiscing sparked off by the magazines. Pop and film stars, celebrities and household names they were then, but they are hardly known today. The likes of George Formby, Tommy Handley and Frankie Vaughan have all long since died, but these women were teenagers at the time and the oldest memories live on the longest.

 

 

Where did you get those teeth?

Shiny teeth, no skin blemishes and clear white eyes. It’s standard practice nowadays that celebrities on magazine covers such as Vogue look perfect. But when did these little white Photoshop lies start?

It’s well known that the publicity photographs in Hollywood were taken by experts in the art of making anyone look good. And that they were then put into the hands of expert retouchers to take out any real-world blemishes.

But this cover image shows the practice goes back before Hollywood even existed, It’s from a 1898 copy of The Harmsworth, a monthly pictorial magazine that competed with the likes of the Strand. The teeth on the girl have clearly been altered to become perfectly white blocks.

One for Madonna fans

Madonna strip cartoon of her life: The Story So Far

Hotspot-5 has 156 Madonna issues up on ebay at prices ranging from £4.95 to £24.95.

One of the earliest issues dates back to January 1986. It’s issue 2 of Look-In, the weekly TV magazine for teenagers, which carried a cartoon strip of Madonna’s life called ‘The Story So Far’.

In response to queries, I’ve done several Madonna posts, including identifying the first Madonna magazine cover (and it’s not Smash Hits or i-D).

Madonna on the cover of Esquire magazine in September 1994, dressed up to meet Norman Mailer!

Hotspot-5’s Madonna issues.

 

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To see almost 500 magazine covers and pages, look out for my book, A History of British Magazine Design, from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the world’s leading museum of art and design

 

 

 

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De Niro can play Sherlock Holmes in Joe Allen’s Exeter Street building

Haite’s sketch of Burleigh St from the Strand showing the Tit-Bits office with its huge rooftop sign on the right

The former Tit-Bits and Strand office at 12 Burleigh St, without the rooftop sign. Exeter St runs to the right

Queen occupied the old Tit-Bits office in 1947. Another former occupant was Health & Strength in 1910

Joe Allen’s, an American-style bar and restaurant in London’s Covent Garden, is moving from its present site in Exeter Street round the corner into Burleigh Street. I’ve been going there since the 1980s, which I worked for Redwood Publishing in Long Acre, and had one of my favourite meals there – blackened blue fish!

A few years ago when researching my book on magazine design, I learnt that the offices of Tit-Bits and The Strand magazines were on the corner of  Exeter and Burleigh streets in the 1890s, under their founder George Newnes. The southern-most part of Burleigh Street is shown on Haité’s famous Strand cover. The building is still there and later housed Queen magazine. I suspect the Joe Allen premises were the printing works for the magazines.

Joe Allen says its site has been acquired by the actor Robert De Niro,  who plans to open a boutique hotel, The Wellington, in its place. He’s a part owner of the Nobu chain of restaurants and two other hotels. Newspaper reports suggest he is planning to retain the façades of the historic properties on the block that will be knocked through for the development.

If he is looking for a celebrity theme, it could well be Sherlock Holmes, most of whose stories first appeared in The Strand. The site has as much claim to being the spiritual home of the famous detective as any other (221B Baker Street was a fictional address).

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To see almost 500 magazine covers and pages, look out for my book, A History of British Magazine Design, from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the world’s leading museum of art and design

 

 

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