Fun party: check out old "Esquire" bound volumes...add cocktails...stir

[JeffOYB]

Here's something I did a few years ago for a party. I had a gas. I think our guests did, too.

We live near a state univ with a good library that anyone can get a check-out card for.

Since I was a highschooler, decades ago, I've known that they had all the issues of "Esquire" magazine from when it started (also many other mags) bound in large folio books of a whole year each.

So I checked out representative folios from the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's.

We invited friends over for a cocktail party and I had these volumes opened up on podium-type arrangements on tables around the house.

It was GREAT FUN really. I should do it again!

There were wandering groups of people dipping into these amazing windows that opened onto amazing periods.

The *ADS* were perhaps the coolest things. And perhaps the 30's were strongest there---this was the Gatsby age of Glamor, it seemed to me. Talk about high life and elegance used in every way...always understated and artful. Clothes, furs, cars, yachts...all with grand Deco buildings in the backgrounds, all those tall ceilings and grand decor. All that understated typography.

It was also neat seeing original Hemingway and Faulkner articles as they first appeared. Later on Tom Wolfe and Norman were shaking things up.

Anyway, as we liked we could dip into Glamor, War Fever, Office Frenzy, Hippy/Pop and Disco.

I might have been celebrating my acquisition of a velvet smoking jacket...

Come to think of it, we were probably just then getting into Linda Rondstadt's Nelson Riddle albums, too.

Swank!

 

[KittyT]

What a fun idea! I will definitely have to check them out. I recently discovered that I am related on my father's side to an artist who used to draw pin-ups for Esquire (and their calendars) in the 40s, as well as advertisements that were featured in various magazines during the 20s through the 40s. I'd love to see his work in an old bound volume of Esquire. I'd also love to see if there is any work of his that I haven't been able to find online! Would love to get a scanned collection together for my father.

Esquire pin-up, Jan 1948

Esquire pin-up, "Calamity", Aug 1947

 

[Chas]

I have a January 1944 edition that has all 12 months' Vargas pinups in it. A prized possession.

 

[Vintage Betty]

JeffOYB: What a GREAT idea! Did anyone come dressed in a particular era of clothing?


KittyT: Ben-Hur Baz is a well-known pinup artist. I shouldn't think you will have too much trouble finding material and a history of the artist.

Ben-Hur Baz, biography at American Art Archives

Ben-Hur Baz, biography at Wikipedia

Does any of your family still have his artwork, in any medium?

Vintage Betty

 

[KittyT]

J
KittyT: Ben-Hur Baz is a well-known pinup artist. I shouldn't think you will have too much trouble finding material and a history of the artist.

Well I've found little biographical information on him and only a limited amount of his art online. I search on Ebay occasionally and find ads or Esquire pinups that he did that I have not seen before in my prior searches online (found one today, in fact, in an old copy of Esquire). I bet he has a lot of material out there that was published but not necessarily recorded in archives.

Does any of your family still have his artwork, in any medium?

Well I know he only died 5 years or so ago. If anyone has his work, it may be his immediate family or perhaps relatives in Mexico. He was a distant cousin of some sort (same family name though!). My dad might know, as he has remained somewhat in touch with various family members in Mexico.

 

[Alex Oviatt]

Equally fun are bound sets of The New Yorker and The Illustrated London News. Generally, I pour over these in the library of my old university, so the cocktails are sadly missing in the stacks. Next time I'll pack a sidecar in my flask and see how it goes.