Happy Father's Day!

For all of you dads out there (including me), here's a present for you: Striparama!

You all know how much I gush over Selbee Associates magazines. Well, this one's beautiful, even for them. Unfortunately, my soruce for this magazine (who requests anonymity) gave me the best he had, which is much smaller than our usual fair. Sorry about that, but that's the fault of whomever scanned it, not my contact or me or Selbee Assocaites.

Striparama concentrated on strippers of the time, and there are some famous ones between the covers. (More on that later.)

By 1963 the Burlesque circuit was on its last legs and the ladies working in the business were finding the nightclubs more attractive. The nightclubs had the benefit of waiters serving food & drinks to well-dressed couples and appearing (at least on the surface) to be more upscale than the Burlesque houses. They often presented the strippers as "artistic dancers" and limited some of the raunchier acts. Since the Burley-Q places were now falling into disrepair and being raided on such a regular basis, the girls were willing to work the clubs for less money. Their business network was dying out as local Burlesque houses closed down. They were being replaced by topless clubs that recruited local girls to dance and shimmy with their breasts showing. Burlesque, as a form of dance and as a business, was rapidly disappearing from the American scene.

That didn't matter to Lenny Burtman, owner of Selbee Associates. He knew what his readers wanted and he had good connections with strippers, thanks to his wife, Tana Louise, herself a stripper and model. Lenny got them lined up to appear in his Striparama magazine. It was a form of advertisement for the ladies and a source of the fetish content that Lenny loved.

Included in this issue are pictorials of Marie Davis, Evelyn West, Rosina Revell (the centerfold; here presented as just "Rosina"), Irma "The Body" (real name: Mary Goodneighbor), Dee Thomas and Chen Yu. There's also a reader submission of an "Amateur Stripper" called simply "Kristi".

But it doesn't end there! There's an article on strippers that includes some pictures of Lorelei, Lili St. Cyr(maybe?), Zorita, Tee Tee Red, Tinker Bell, Blaze Starr and Pat Amber Halliday. There's also an ad for another Selbee magazine on the inside back cover featuring Melvina Price. The letters to the editor section seems just an excuse to show more ladies, and they include Yvonne, Tana Louise (2 pics), Pamela Green (9), Paula Page, and Jennie Lee (4).

So all-in-all, I think, the lack of picture quality can be forgiven because of the historical significance of the magazine. Besides, the images are at least large enough that you can still enjoy the pictures, if not preserve them.