By 1960, Playboy was a juggernaut that couldn't be ignored. There were Playboy Clubs and a late night TV show (Playboy After Dark) and of course, the magazine. At this point in time, Playboy was eclipsing every other girlie magazine on the stand and in the press.

Which was not to say that the others were dead. Adam, still one of Playboy's staunchest competitors, was just coming into its own as a magazine. Sharing a name with Fawcett's much tamer (and now defunct) Adam, the Knight Publications version was outselling its parent company's original mag, Sir Knight. Along with Modern Man, Adam was giving Playboy a good run for its money on the newsstands, if not much anywhere else.

Adam was coming into its prime in 1960, with fancy articles and fiction by big-name writers and some of the sexiest women between the covers. Granted, the images were pretty mainstream, even for the time, but that seemed to be what the public wanted, as Adam easily outsold more fetish-oriented magazines from Selbee and other such publishers.

This issue includes pictorials of Liane Morrelli, Wendy March, Gloria Gilbert, and Darlene Carr. The covergirl is Dane Arden. There's also fiction and articles by the likes of Arnold Stover, Charles Steele, Charles Dennis, Richard E. Geis, Connie Sellers, Leonard Shannon and others. You've probably never heard of them, but some (especially Richard E. Geis) were authors of some note.

Our most recent offering is Gaze from August of 1959. Gaze was one of those digest-sized cartoon magazines from Humorama. Among the ladies presented are Mona Miller (2 pictures), Virginia De Lees (3), Marle Sanderson (5), Donaldo Jordan (2), Cozette Hutner, Cherry Knight, Sherry Britton (4), Nancy Kirsten (4), Jean Carmen, Joanne Mayer, Carol DiCarlo (2), Celia Fields, Carol Hill, Lynn Barton, Joanne Jordan (7), Jayne Hayden (4), Suzi Peterson (4), Laura Vickers (4), Simone Auger, Jonnie Smith, Joanna Lee, and Niki Gibson.

Humorama was a division of Martin Goodman's publishing empire, Magazine Management. Goodman published an incredible variety of magazines and comic books including Marvel Comics (Captain America, Spider-Man, etc.), Red Circle (pulp magazines such as Uncanny Tales and Western Supernovel Magazine), paperback books (Lion Books), and men's magazines (For Men Only, Male, Stag, etc.)

Humorama was managed by Goodman's brother, Abe, and published up to 20 different magazines of this type over the years, all with the same mixture of racy cartoons and semi-clad ladies. Usually the pictures of the girls were images that had already been published elsewhere and the photographer could pick up a few extra bucks selling them a second time to Hurmorama. The Humorama line was printed on newspaper stock, so the photos weren't particularly clear, but they got the point across.

These magazines, like Sex to Sexty, are much-treasured by collectors and while they're easy to find on places like eBay, they're usually expensive. Bill Ward was a big contributor to the Humorama digests. Oddly he's not represented in this particular issue, which is probably why I managed to get it in an auction for less than $8. There are a LOT of great cartoons though, and a lot of beautiful babes, so enjoy a rare treat!

I've mentioned Sampson Publishing before. Although I really have no info on the owner or publisher, I do know that Sampson was the same company as Delilah Publishing, as their addresses are the same. I also know that they had a tendency to slap books together quickly, often without much order to the pages or even a proper indicia (the text, usually at the bottom of the index page, that lists the publisher, the date, and the number of the issue). Compare this issue of Eve with the one I have posted by Delilah. While the girls are about the same, the Delilah Eve is put together hastily and sloppily. Perhaps to obtain a copyright as quickly as possible.

Sometimes Sampson aspired to the quality of Selbee, as witnessed in the magazine French Frolic. Other times, they seemed to just publish what they could get their hands on.

Sampson's Eve was not the first girlie magazine to use that name. Knight Publications started a mag called Eve in the mid 50's, along with their Adam magazine. Eve didn't last long; Adam did. Sampson's Eve may not have lasted long, either. I've never seen an issue past #3, although that doesn't mean there weren't any.

In this issue, we have pictorials of Ann Wesley, Maria Clarance, Christine Ballard, Marlena Loren, Nina Corol, Audrey Nichols, and Bambi Martino.

There's also one-each clothed pictures of Peggy Evans, Arlene Stevens, Jacquie Bernard, and Laura Thurlow, all in Fredrick's of Hollywood Lingerie. Not an ad, but an article entitled "Hollywood Starlets Love Fredrick's Fashions". After seeing them, I love them too.

Our latest magazine is from the mind of Robert Harrison, publisher of such delights as Titter and Beauty Parade.

Harrison worked for Motion Picture Daily in 1941 when he began cutting and pasting pictures to make Beauty Parade after everyone else had gone home for the day. Harrison knew what he liked, and his tastes were a tad more fetishistic than the girlie mags on the stands at the time. Harrison liked high heels and lingerie. In fact, he liked them so much that the models were never without them in his publications. Never.

While there was no nudity, Harrison's mags had a sense of style, gaudy though it may be. He featured models like Bettie Page and strippers of the day in pictorials with baggy-pants comedians that looked like they came right off the burlesque stage, which in fact they had.

Magazines like Modern Man and Playboy eventually drove Harrison off the newsstands, but not before he reigned supreme for over a decade, giving us a more innocent girlie mag.

Our magazine for today is Exotica, and it's a Selbee Publication, so in my eyes it's already a gem.

Leonard Burtman founded Selbee. Burtman worked in the electronics industry in California in the 1940's. After some trouble with the authorities involving the transportation of false securities, Burtman felt it best to set up business elsewhere, and an entirely different business at that. He became a photographer and reportedly did some work for Irving Klaw before founding his own company in the early 1950's and his first publication, Exotique.

Lenny must have learned some things from Klaw, because he had the same fetish-bent attitude for the pictures: lots of heels and hose and leather and lingerie. The girls were usually strippers and nude models and you saw a lot of the same settings and props in the pictures. One model, the sexy Tana Louise, became Mrs. Burtman and had a column in every issue of Exotique.

Exotica had no date in the indicia, hence I'm unable to know the exact date. The magazine was published in 1962 OR 1963. (Thanks to Mushashi7 for determining that for us all.) This lack of publication date was a common tool for men's magazines at the time. If there was no date on it, customers were less likely to ignore it because it was last month's magazine. Besides, Burtman wasn't always able financially to print on a monthly basis. He often sold content to a couple of Canadian printers (Acme and Health Knowledge) who would make his magazines. In exchange, Burtman got some much-needed cash and copies of the magazine to distribute for himself.

Exotica continued in the same style of leather and heels as Exotique and featured a lot of sexy strippers and odd articles. This type of magazine is much to my liking and I hope to yours too. Enjoy.

The newest magazine is Cabaret from September of 1956. Although it eventually became just another skin rag behind the counter, Cabaret started as a unique publication that prided itself on providing inside information on nightclubs and the burlesque circuit.

I love magazines by Selbee: Slightly feishistic (high heels, leather, lingerie, etc.) and beautiful women, usually strippers and models. This is High Heels, one of Selbee's premier magazines. Not as many heels as the title suggests, but still some great pictures, with little text. Enjoy!

Another issue of Adam, and this one is a gem.

My favorite era for girlie mags is the 1960's, and I'm torn between the early 1960's, when the lingerie and heels were more to my liking, and the mid 1960's, when hairstyles and makeup are my fave. In this case, it's the mid 60's, with one of my favorite covers on a girlie mag. She just looks so Raquel Welch-ish to me, and that sexy smirk as she looks over her long cigarette holder at the viewer just floors me. Wow!

Adam was mainstream, as I've said before, but it often rose above Playboy in terms of sexiness. It sure does this time. Enjoy!

The latest addition is Adam from November of 1959.

Adam was about as mainstream as you could get, and it was one of only two publications (the other being Modern Man) that gave Playboy a run for its money.

The girls were beautiful, of course, but Adam also concentrated on the best articles and fiction it could find. Not only that, but they sold a lot of Adam-related merchandise, from calendars to party albums to their Adam Bedside Reader, a thick magazine containing mostly reprints of articles and fiction from Adam, with a couple of pictorials thrown in for good measure.

Adam was published by Knight Publishing, which also produced Sir Knight, but Adam sold better and lasted longer. It lives on today (in name only) with the publication of Adam Film World, a magazine that reviews adult films.

Another new addition comes your way with Ace Vol 04 No 05 from 1961.

Ace was the poor man's Adam. About the same mixture of articles to pictorials, but Ace didn't have the merchandising that Adam had. Adam sold everything from calendars to party albums, while Ace sold just, well, Ace. Still, while Ace couldn't seem to draw the big-name writers that Adam boasted, it did manage a few more color pictures.

Enjoy.

Gala, like its sister magazine, Frolic, was noted for featuring starlets and strippers in non-nude pictorials. In fact, the nudity ban was so prevalent that photographed nude breasts usually had hand-painted tassels on them. Still, the magazine flourished for many years before succumbing to demand and allowing topless models. By the time this issue was published, a little nudity was showing, if not a lot.

Still, you had to admire the quality of the women if not the quality of the photographs. Well done cheesecake throughout the long run of this magazine.

The latest magazine for your viewing pleasure is Cocktail Vol 01 No 03 1958. This magazine was created by Studio Publications and should not be confused with the Parliament magazine of the same name that started a year later. Both had the same concept, though: pictures of beautiful women and mixed drink recipes. Somehow, it works. There are a lot of pictures and the women are beautiful, so make a Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster and enjoy the show.

Here's a fun little digest from 1962 called Garter Parade. Digest magazines of this type are pretty much pictures, pictures, pictures, usually with a single page thrown in about how the digest magazine is to assist the photographer or model in their studies (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). Text pages were often used to get around postal regulations for second-class mail that required them of magazines and comic books. That's why mags and comic books originally had letter pages.

Anyway, this magazine is very cool, with one picture per page and a LOT of lingerie.

Enjoy.

Our next resurrected magazine is Eve Vol 01 No 01 from the early 1960's and Delilah Publishing.

As noted before with Magnifique, Sampson and Delilah were the same company. They often published magazines with the same name, if not the same effort. Last time, Magnifique, published under the Sampson name, was the issue with pages out of order. This time, it's Delilah who has that honor. I also have Eve Vol 01 No 01 from Sampson, which I'll post at a later date. The Sampson Eve, in this instance, is the one that has the slicker logo and the effort to print the pages in some semblance of order.

I wonder if this magazine might have originally been an ashcan issue? An ashcan issue is a magazine printed as quickly and cheaply as possible for the sole purpose of obtaining a copyright. Content really doesn't matter with such magazines; only that the issue tells who the publisher is. And if you went through the trouble of printing an ashcan issue, well, why not print up and bunch and sell them? That's all conjecture, of course, but that's my theory.

Like Magnifique, Eve is a good read, with tons of girls, just not a lot of logic.

Our continuing growth brings us to Magnifique and a few comments about documentation versus guessing.

I used to collect comic books, and as anyone involved in that hobby can tell you, the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide is an indispensable tool for building your collection. It not only tells you what the comics are worth (although that's debatable), but who published them, the dates of publication, and how many issues were published.

Oh, how I wish there was something like that for old men's magazines! A lot of information I can gather about the magazines is logical deduction. For example, I know that this mag was published by Sampson Publishing & Distributing Co. I also know that the address for Sampson is the same address for Delilah Publishing & Distributing Co. They're the same company! Why did they use two different names? Here's where we get into logical deductions, or guessing, take your pick.

Sampson and Delilah sometimes published magazines with the same title. For example, both published a magazine called "Eve", complete with different logos and different (alrthough about the same quality) content. Where they differed is that one version was usually more cheaply produced than the other.

Take this issue of Magnifique, for example. Although I don't know if Delilah also published a Magnifique, I get the distinct impression that this issue was thrown together as quickly as possible. The pages are in no particular order and in fact have no page numbers. The indicia is divided between pages 3 & 54. There's no actual date listed anywhere (although it looks like early 1960's, based on hair, clothing, and makeup.) I scanned the issue and labeled the pages exactly in the order they appeared in the book, so you can see how confusing this gets.

The pictures are sexy, of course, and the one or two cartoons present are ones I've seen in other Sampson/Delilah magazines. All-in-all, not a bad issue, if a bit confusing.

Our latest addition is Diamond Stud. Diamond Stud was published by Comet Publications, a Los Angeles based outfit whose output bore a striking resemblance to New York's Eve/Sampson Publications.

Continuing with our parade of old and new vintage magazines, I've added a classic: Cabaret Yearbook for 1956.

Cabaret was unique among men's magazines. Although it eventually became a standard skin mag, it started as a magazine that specialized in exploring and advertising the burlesque circuit. It featured the clubs and the girls in its picture-heavy articles and its back pages listed clubs in various metropolitan areas of the U.S. It's a peek into a world long since gone.

It was also unique in its publication techniques: Cabaret Yearbook was a wire-bound book. At the time, the advantage was that the publisher was not limited to the 4-page fold-and-staple method used by most mag printers.

For my scanning it's great because every page lies flat. With fold-and-staple books, I often have to remove the staples to get the pages to lie flat, then carefully replace the staples into the original holes. With square-bound, glued books, I often have to destroy the magazine to scan it properly.

Anyway, it's the latest in a long line of returning magazines to the site. Enjoy.