Men's Adventure Magazines

[BlueTrain]

Innocent, as I've used the term, means that you weren't aware of something or hadn't done something. It isn't to suggest the 1950s were pure in any way, no more than any other decade. Life usually has a dark side. Most of us who lived through the 1950s were children then and saw things as children. There was a lot we didn't know about.

Things have always been changing, not always for the better. Of course, it also depends on your station in life what difference the changes make. Some periods of history were exciting, others just deadly and dangerous, again depending on where you lived. Thinking about different periods in the past is difficult for several things. You lose context, for instance, meaning it is difficult to keep in mind everything that is happening at a given instance and how much difference that makes, if any, to how something should be thought of. Another thing is that historical time gets compressed. We tend to speak of, say, a thirty-year period in a way that makes it more like a few months. Likewise, we sometimes also think that when something happened in the past, everyone knew about it right away and everyone's lives changed. A workable airplane was invented in the first decade of the 20th century and we made it to the moon, what, 60 years later? But air travel for ordinary people like me did not become common until after WWII.

Those men's adventure magazines came and went before I read the first one. I glanced at them on the magazine racks at the drug store but never bought one. I can see their appeal, though. In as sense, car magazines like Road & Track had and have the same appeal.

 

[BlueTrain]

I've never heard the term "smooshes" before but that's not saying anything. I guess I'm still innocent.

However, these magazines seem to have had their heyday before the 1950s, from what I read. They sound like something to appeal to somebody whose everyday life is devoid of all excitement and adventure and if it ever had any, it was at least twenty years earlier. In fact, the older you become, the more adventurous your youth becomes, at lest in the telling of it. You become a professional veteran even though you know your obituary won't be half as interesting as some that you read. You love your job but are almost embarrassed to mention it to anyone and even wonder what you'll do after you retire, even if that no longer is an issue.

We have a sort of cross-training program at work called "shadowing." I guess the idea is to give other people in the company an idea of what you actually do at work. Well, I'm an accountant by trade and twice last week I had someone "shadow" me, people who do totally unrelated work and in fact, even work at another location. I had to admit to my boss that I was unable to get across the excitement of my job as an accountant.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

There was a sharp divide in the magazines around 1950. Pre-50, the pulps prevailed. Whatever the genre, they were primarily short fiction (with an occasional novel published in installments). In the postwar era the paperback book took over the cheap fiction field and the men's adventure magazine bloomed. These were primarily nonfiction, or at least purported to be so. They could be unbelievably lurid and sensationalistic, especially the cover art and titles. "Nympho Sex Goddess of Jap Brutal Camp" stands out in my memory, for obvious reasons. Incidentally, Frank Zappa appropriated the title "Weasels Ripped my Flesh" for one of his albums. There is a coffee-table book of Men's Adventure covers, with text by Max Allen Collins.

 

[filfoster]

I had to admit to my boss that I was unable to get across the excitement of my job as an accountant.

This strains credibility! I'm an attorney/bank trust officer, which is only just less exciting, I'm sure.
Didn't all the kids play 'accountant' and 'trust officer' in the neighborhood, on summer afternoons when we were kids?
Beats reading them turgid men's adventure magazines.

 

[BlueTrain]

Oh, one of them, eh? Everyone wants to be your friendly neighborhood banker. Since I've been here, I think we have dealt with every bank on every corner within five miles from here. We have built two large warehouse-type buildings, too, (for our own use) and that really gets bankers interested--and vice versa.

In all honesty, I can't imagine myself ever having done anything else over the years. I actually had a roll-top desk when I was a small boy. I even had a desk set with a pen holder. My first job out of college was working for a savings & loan. I'd probably have been just as well off working as a truck driver, which is what my father did his whole life.

 

[MikeKardec]

Innocent, as I've used the term, means that you weren't aware of something or hadn't done something. It isn't to suggest the 1950s were pure in any way, no more than any other decade. Life usually has a dark side. Most of us who lived through the 1950s were children then and saw things as children. There was a lot we didn't know about.

Do realize that I know exactly what you mean and agree ... I was just commenting on what you made me think.

I had a vision or recognized a metaphor or something as I read Lizzie's post above of something emerging from underground; that is what was happening with aspects of our culture that were considered more sexual or "perverse" in the late 1940s. Anything that emerges from underground is initially sort of icky ... and may stay that way or be purified by the sun depending on what it is. I don't think it helped that the entire culture had been exposed to both extreme violence and large populations of poor and desperate people in the years prior to the flourishing of the Men's Magazines. A bad combination.

 

[BlueTrain]

Everyplace in the world has gone through violent times and lean times, although that doesn't mean everyone did. As a kind of magazine (literature!), the men's magazines perhaps should be viewed as a phenomenon until themselves. There were similar publications fifty years earlier, too, the dime novels that romanticized the old west. They were making Westerns (movies) as soon it became possible. I don't think people have changed so much as the publishing business has. And nothing gets called "spicy" anymore except food.

On the other hand, it might be that the subject itself isn't the part that's so bad but rather where it came from. It isn't the message; it's the messenger. Jazz music is not inherently bad but it had it's origins in the New Orleans red light district. Therefore it must be bad. There has always been pornography but it only became bad when it was available to you and me, or so it would seem. I suppose, though, that most pornography is degrading to women and perhaps men, too.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Cover of a typical "smoosh" pulp, from 1934. See how many "hot buttons" you can get into one image. Incidentially, "Spicy" in any magazine title in the Era meant "as close to porn as you can get away with."

 

[BlueTrain]

Not to detract from the spiciness of the cover but the young woman's hairstyle rather dates the picture. Everything else, however, has timeless appeal.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

All it lacks is the "yellow peril" factor.

 

[LizzieMaine]

 

[Tiki Tom]

And we have a winner!

 

[BlueTrain]

Those magazine cover remind me of the comic strip "Terry and the Pirates." All the elements were present, even to include (somewhat) spicy girls...uh, I mean, women. The comic strip, with some literary license, tended to follow international events as best as it could and actually lasted almost 40 years. There was a serial by the same name but relatively tame in comparison to the comic strip.

Although I've never read any of the stories, the covers were interesting enough and probably inspired more B-movies than the stories themselves. Most people live lives that are mushy and overcooked and probably need a little spice in their life and those magazines were a good source of it in manageable doses. I'm not sure where the best place for that kind of stuff would be today.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Those magazines seem like the type of crap I'd find lying around at the local barber shop. It's one of those places that hasn't seen a coat of paint or a good scrubbing in decades, looks as if it was decorated by Archie Bunker's microcephalic cousin, and where they push the not too subtle "when men were men" bilge. Of course, they're STILL too prissy to give the one truly sublime old time male pleasure that a man can get from a barber: a straight razor shave- with hot lather, hot towel, etc.

 

[filfoster]

Those magazines seem like the type of crap I'd find lying around at the local barber shop. It's one of those places that hasn't seen a coat of paint or a good scrubbing in decades, looks as if it was decorated by Archie Bunker's microcephalic cousin, and where they push the not too subtle "when men were men" bilge. Of course, they're STILL too prissy to give the one truly sublime old time male pleasure that a man can get from a barber: a straight razor shave- with hot lather, hot towel, etc.

You need to get to Cincinnati more. Don't know the geneology of my barber's decorator but I can assure you he gives a fantastic shave. Of course the straight razors are not the old fashioned Solingen steel jobs grandpa used but disposable X-Acto things. The ritual is still the same: two lathers, repeated hot and cool towels, witch hazel...it's the most fun a man can have with his pants on.

Get your shaves before the plaintiff's lawyers and health department kill them for good.

The barbershop milieu for these rags was previously referenced.

 

[MikeKardec]

Cover of a typical "smoosh" pulp, from 1934. See how many "hot buttons" you can get into one image. Incidentially, "Spicy" in any magazine title in the Era meant "as close to porn as you can get away with."

Thanks for posting these. You got me doing some research and I'll have to amend my theory a bit; it seems the straight adventure didn't morph, it died away leaving only it's creepy cousin to lumber on through to the early 1960s.

I notice in one of the sources that Ten Story Book is mentioned. I never really considered Ten Story Book to be one of these or part of the Men's Adventure genre, though they did have those "spicy" pictures. The content wasn't so much the "Men's" style that seems to exist in "Spicy" or that you would find 15 to 20 years later. My father's first sale was to Ten Story Book in '33; a slice of life about hobos with a bit of a socialist slant. He also wrote for some of the Men's Adventure rags in the 50s, including the great granddaddy of all magazine fiction: Argosy.

Argosy ran the gamut, starting as a kids magazine in the 1880s, drifting through straight pulp and ending with True Crime and Men's Adventure. It survived in relatively continuously for more than 90 years.

 

[BlueTrain]

My theory, which I've probably mentioned somewhere here before, is that magazines become attached to a given generation, or vice versa, and when that generation either dies or otherwise grows out of that sort of magazine, then the magazine either dies, too, or it changes into something else to suit a different readership. But it goes without saying that other things are also happening at the same time.

 

[filfoster]

My theory, which I've probably mentioned somewhere here before, is that magazines become attached to a given generation, or vice versa, and when that generation either dies or otherwise grows out of that sort of magazine, then the magazine either dies, too, or it changes into something else to suit a different readership. But it goes without saying that other things are also happening at the same time.

For example, 'Playboy'...?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Another thing worth noting is that none of these trends happened in a media vacuum. The rise of the "mens adventure" rags in the postwar era coincided almost perfectly with the rise of similar lurid comic books. And on radio, a series called "Escape" offered a heavily-sanitized sex-deleted take on such themes -- it often featured hypertrophic stories about lone men fighting rats, killer ants, jungle shamans, pirates, etc. etc. etc.

 

[BlueTrain]

I didn't have Playboy in mind but it's a good example of how things change and a magazine slips away into history. In the case of Playboy, I don't know what teenage boys and young men are looking at (not necessarily reading) now instead of Playboy.

What I was suggesting was the changes in the publishing business. There are still magazines being published, of course, not that I buy any, but it seems like the distribution channels have changed. The local drugstore doesn't seem to stock as many titles as they might have at one time. Yet a bookstore will have lots and lots and lots of titles, a lot more than there used to be. There are a lot of specialist hobby or special interest magazines, but not so many general interest magazines. For "adult" magazines you have to go somewhere else and if you want them, you already know where.

Then, on top of all that, in addition to the readership changing, the writers, the illustrators and the publishers and editors change, too. Nobody lives forever.

I wonder what LizzieMaine would have to say about Playboy (not similar magazines--just Playboy).