Risque Party Brief Panties from Pennsylvania

A small cure for the winter blues...Risque party pants from Pennsylvania! There was at least one other similar example with jokes about Pensacola.  Circa 1950 Collection Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Love During Wartime Risque Matchbooks of World War Two

Risque set of graphic Matchbook Covers circa 1940 - 1945.  Somewhat primitive renderings of "what the boys are fighting for" pinup propaganda.  Several manufacturers produced them, and they were dispensed as give-a-ways in places men gather.  Collection Jim Linderman.
Love During Wartime is a continuing series on Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Folk Art Risque Sliding Novelty Erotic Carving Large!

Folk Art Risque Sliding Novelty Erotic Carving Large!  Circa 1930.
Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Embroidery Pair Risque Man and Woman with Trapunto Butts

Trapunto is the technique of padding sections of a textile to create a puffy, stuffed decorative feature.  These "morning ritual" padded butts qualify!  Matching hand towels.  Man holds razor, woman a powder puff.  Circa 1950.  Collection Jim Linderman

Home Visit from a Burlesque Queen c. 1950 Original Photographs

Home Visit from a Burlesque Queen and her trunk of changes.  Group of original photographs, circa 1950.  Collection Jim Linderman

Risky Risque Sequential Real Photo Postcards

Risky Risque Sequential Real Photo Postcards circa 1940

B E RIDDICK Bizarre African-American Outsider Art of the 1970s

B E RIDDICK Bizarre African-American Outsider Art of the 1970s.
Marker on Flattened Shopping Bags.  Virginia.

Masked Woman snapshot Collection Jim Linderman

Happy Halloween.  
Masked Woman original snapshot no date (1950?) Collection Jim Linderman

Denying Dinah Washington Airplay Big Censored Slidin' Thing

 Why is Dinah Washington's single here rare?  The answer lies not in the groove...but the censorship handwritten instruction to the disc jockey as much as the song title.  How's a girl to get sales without any airplay?

You can listen and determine the obscenity level yourself.  It IS filthy.  In fact, it may be the most filthy song ever recorded, and it came without a parental guidance sticker!  QUADRUPLE entendre!

I won't give away what the song is about, but it isn't a trombone.


Dinah Washington was singing in Chicago club "Dave's Rhumboogie" by the time she was eighteen, so I am going to guess she knew her instruments.  Born Ruth Jones but soon to be known as Dinah.  Her first record was written by Jazz scholar Leonard Feather.  She was married seven times, all by the age of 39.  It is not clear is the United States Post Office heard "Big Long Slidin' Thing before the put her on a postage stamp in 1993.  It was a lickin' thing.

Thank you Dinah.  You keep on, despite being hassled by the man!

BOOKS AND AFFORDABLE EBOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN ARE AVAILBLE HERE

The Tawdry Origins of Glamour Photography Proto Porn the Book

During the 1950s, under the ruse of "Art Studies" and "Figure Studies" businessman skirted the law publishing hundreds of digest-sized primitive camera art photographs of nearly nude women. Seldom dated, by somewhat disreputable publishers, the digests featured burlesque dancers and models such as Bettie Page in makeshift studios, and were among the first books to challenge censorship and the conventions of the times as it related to photographs of the female form. The tawdry origins of Glamour Photography! The booklets are today scarce and seldom seen. Dubbed Proto-Porn, over 100 have been collected in book form by the first time by Jim Linderman. Proto-Porn details the publishers and addresses the conflicting notions of art and nudity of the Eisenhower years. Colorful, disreputable and quasi-legal, the books nonetheless pre-date modern-day fashion and nude photography. Tame by any standard today, the books have not been shown in over 50 years, and never before collected in a book.

The book PROTO-PORN : THE ART FIGURE STUDY SCAM OF THE 1950s is available as a $5.99 ebook download for iPad or Paperback HERE

Article "Proto-Porn from the 1950s" by Jim Linderman

NOTE: The following is an article I wrote which was just published at Sugarcut Magazine. Sugarcut is THE premier erotic art and photography site, and I thought some of the camera and visual arts folks who follow Dull Tool Dim Bulb might enjoy seeing it without clicking onto a NSFW site! If you DO want to see the original article on Sugarcut, you can find it, and it has 25 illustrations in a slide show.

Proto-Porn from the 1950S

By Jim Linderman

6 March 2012

Shown is a wide-angle lens full of vintage camera club pinup digests from the early 1950s. Long ignored progenitors of pinup pulchitrude! It was illegal to sell nude photographs in the Eisenhower days, but some enterprising and greedy shutterbug gahoots found a way around the law, frequently in cahoots with the guys downtown, if you know what I mean.

“Figure Study” publications for the artist and photographer!

These obscure digests were all purportedly aimed at the burgeoning nude photography hobbyist, or at least they claimed to be. They were available under the counter or through the mail, at least until Uncle Sam got wise. The models, some famous (Blaze Starr, Judy O’Neal, Bettie Page and many more) were pulled from burlesque routes and strip clubs…others were amateurs who replied to ads. There are no less than five devoted to Ms. Page alone from various publishers. All are hard to find today. Each is now over 50 years old… and since they were published in small editions by phony companies, then carried by trunk and hand to the shop, few survive today. Many have no return address or date. Shop owners priced them at what they thought the risk was worth.

The models in these “proto-porn” periodicals never had pudenda or pubes. The photographs were black and white, and each digest-sized booklet ran from 20 to 50 pages. The colorful covers belie the blurry pages inside. The men behind the camera were seldom identified, but with care and a loupe, one can often identify the photographer’s swinging pads from the wall decorations and curtain designs.

Who was responsible for these stroke books masquerading as figure studies for photographers? At least one series was produced by a later prominent publisher of fetish pinup periodicals. Others came from a husband and wife team living in Midtown Manhattan a few doors down from Bettie Page, and a big load from a mysterious photographer with a Florida address…a sunny address he began using after apparently thinking the city up north was “too hot” and left Brooklyn behind. Nearly all were published in series, but a complete set is unheard of.

The books are today relics of days gone by. Despite history books which credit Hugh Hefner with starting the modern revolution in nude photography, not to mention sexual mores, it was a dozen independent small presses with moxie (and buxie) with a few mob-connections who got the balls rolling.

Jim Linderman is an author, collector and editor of the daily blog VINTAGE SLEAZE. This group of original “Figure Study” digests come from the author’s collection and date circa 1950 – 1955. Vintage Sleaze the daily blog is HERE.

Vintage Sleaze

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