Susan Howard

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Please Don’t Make Me Laugh

No, please don't make me laugh, said SUSAN HOWARD, I get all giggly and it won't go away.

I'm learning Esperanto, you see, and you need to be terribly serious about it and concentrate like a girl sticking on her false eyelashes for her most important date.

And then my dad comes along and says something comical and I giggle all over my books and the pages blow apart. He says I ought to get a job as assistant to a TV funny man, he says I’d be just right for that.

I hope you don't mind girls who giggle a lot, do you? Oh, thank you. You're a very sweet photographer. Oh, no, don't start making funny faces or I'll get all hysterical.

I’m sorry, I just thought you were, I didn't realise your face was always like that.

Helen Du Bois

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In Regard to Your Insurance

For a premium you’ll think is quite ridiculous (said the insurance man) you can be covered for any kind of personal accident. Every day people fall off ladders, cartwheel down fire escapes, walk into walls—

Yes, yes, that's all very well said HELEN DU BOIS but how ridiculous is quite ridiculous? I have quite a job to keep up with the cost of living as it is. Being a shorthand-typist does not exactly cover me for tripping off to Davos in the winter and Cannes in the summer, and I can't even buy all the clothes I'd like. So how I can afford more insurance, however ridiculous the premium is, I really don't know.

Oh, my dear young lady, I can assure you it would scarcely raise a rattle in your purse. And what you must consider is not whether you can afford it but whether you can’t—

I've already considered that. What I’m considering now is how often I fall off ladders, tumble down fire escapes and walk into walls. Actually, it was very intriguing the other day. The most heavenly man suddenly appeared as I left the boutique and I was so invigorated by his obviously magnetic vitality that I walked straight into him. We parted the best of friends and he sent round a bunch of flowers. I don’t need to be insured against that. Goodbye, Mr. Pinecrust.

Fifi Martine

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But What Will Henri Think?

Ah, said FIFI MARTINE, Paris model, as she modelled the latest ensemble in lingerie a la femme, it is fine for the designers who wish to make the big impact, but what will Henri think?

Henri, of course, is the average Frenchman, of whom the average French girl is passingly fond. They speak the same language for a start.

The designers, said Fifi, say this is what every fashion-conscious Frenchwoman will be wearing at St. Tropez. Ah, it is a point of view most formidable, but it is as well such a fashion is not for the eye because it is so long and I do not think Henri will regard it with the same pleasure as he regards the bikini, no?

Well, you can't deprive any girl of her own opinion and call yourself a democrat. No doubt Fifi suspects the French designers are confused and a little frustrated at the moment, for temporarily they have lost the initiative in the matter of fashion. They don't know whether to ignore Mary Quant or catch up with her. So naturally models like Fifi are becoming confused too. It must be Henri's move.

Elizabeth Gallacher

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Nice To Know

Come here, faceache.

I beg your pardon'!

You heard. Listen, cocky, I saw you.

I daresay you did. I ain't the invisible man.

You will be if I catch you at it again. You been looking at my girl. Yeah, I was thinking what a nice bracelet she was wearing. I’d like to get one just like that for my mother. What's her name, by the way? I’d like to introduce myself.

Oh, you would, would you? Why?

Because I'm six feet one and you're only five feet four. Any other questions? No, none. Sorry I called you faceache. Now I know you better I can see I shouldn't have. If you’d really like to meet her then her name's ELIZABETH GALLACHER and she’s extremely nice to know. And see that guy who’s just bought her a drink? He’s six feet three, he’s her brother, and he’s nice to know too. Come on over.

Pardon me, I got a train to catch, I gotta be in the Isle of Man by midnight.

Maureen Beech

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Adaptability

Most of you know that adaptability and housewifery go hand-in-hand. Take the case of MAUREEN BEECH, for instance. Maureen not only runs a home, she is also a fashion model and the holder of the title " Miss Brighton and Hove Albion 1965.” Besides adaptability, how's that for getting around?

Liz McEwen

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Parley – Vous Francais?

Oui !

Girl with the engaging smile and a natural flair for looking lovely in white lingerie is LIZ McEWEN.

Liz spent a holiday in France this year. She went with some girlfriends. Naturally, they all wanted to test their French. Liz saw the most ravishing gendarme, lean, long, shatteringly Gallic and absolutely dishy. “When the traffic stops,” she said, “I’ll pop over to him and ask him the way to the Eiffel Tower.” “But we're not going to the Eiffel Tower,” said Shirley,” we went there yesterday.” You can't do anything with a girl as unimaginative as Shirley, so Liz just gave her a look and popped over to ask her dishy gendarme the way to the Eiffel Tower. As soon as the gendarme saw her coming he blew his whistle and all the traffic went into reverse. He bowed when Liz arrived and Liz, in her best French, which is not at all bad, popped the question apropos the location of the Eiffel Tower.

She returned to her friends dreamy-eyed and in an ecstatic tizzy, as they say in all the modern novels. “Well?” said Shirley. “He said it was twenty minutes after eleven,” said Liz tenderly. “Some answer,” said a girl called Daffodil, “he couldn't have understood your French.”

“His name is Maurice,” said Liz,” and when he comes to England he's going to bring me one of those big bunches of onions.”

Joanna Carlton

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Back To The Blackboard

It was just one of those days. JOANNA CARLTON went out shopping and came back with the wrong change. It could happen to anybody, and it certainly happened to Joanna, a Nottingham housewife.

“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Carlton, “but it happened last Christmas as well. Back to the blackboard for you, dear wife, and we'll start with practical mathematics and end with trigonometry, and though it'll hurt me more than it’ll hurt you we’ll both feel all the better for it.” “I don’t think it will make me feel better at all,” said Joanna. “Can't I just go out to knitting classes?"

“Back to the blackboard,” said hubby and back to the blackboard it was, and Joanna started with how many beans make five and what happens when you buy seven oranges and give a quarter of them to that nice bus conductor on the way home.

Then she went on to practical mathematics and wished fervently she'd stayed with the five beans and seven oranges, because she was never very good at any kind of mathematics and likes just being a happy housewife and a good cook and a great help to her husband when he's having trouble mending a fuse.

“What,” said hubby, “is the distance between A and C?”

“Five and a half oranges,” said Joanna.

Never mind, it was a gallant try and she felt all the better for it, even if he didn’t.

Lisa Scott

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Vintage Year

Year of origin 1945.

That was the year when we all stopped throwing hot lead and sizzling iron at each other and the sexy but militant girls in the Army, Navy and Air Force went happily back to civvy street to forget their militancy and rehabilitate their wriggles.

It was also the year when lovely LISA SCOTT was born. It was a vintage year for babies both beautiful and cuddly. When Charley Grapevine was born the top fell off a mountain somewhere and in the Falkland Islands it rained for six months solid. Charley’s year was non-vintage.

Latterly a secretary, Lisa’s current ambition is to be a successful model, and she’s got a yen for eating candy or washing whiter than white in TV commercials. Well, if we have to have all those soap flakes, let’s have them wrapped around Lisa.

Washing-machines and soap powders are purely utilitarian.

But washing-machines and soap powders and Lisa are delightful. “Mum, come and turn the telly off—dad's temperature’s gone up again.”

Karin Reali

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Excuse Me

Caught with a slipped clip as she prepares to alight from her car is KARIN REALI, West German film starlet, wondering, like so many other girls, why nobody makes a car from which a lady may alight without a leg show.

Jackie Taylor

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Follow the Girls

One can’t help but follow them these days.

Down the Strand, up Regent Street, down the Mall and all the way along the Embankment.

They’re a joy to the eye and one’s feet hardly notice at all, though the big toes don’t half play up when one at last gets home.

Cast an eye upon JACKIE TAYLOR, for instance. One could follow her from Land’s End to Edinburgh Castle and never notice a single blister.

Here she is against London backgrounds, and the whistles could be heard from every window.

Helen Baxter

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Anyone Looking

It’s a bit of a problem when you want to change your dress in the back of a car, for there’s always the possibility that some knickerbockered bird watcher may be looking or so thought HELEN BAXTER.

And when you have changed, isn’t it just absolutely ridiculous to find your dress caught up in the car door and that tweedy-headed B.W. twittering at you over the hedge

Anne Scott

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Cooling Off

"I don’t usually appear out-of-doors like an absent-minded professor," said ANNE SCOTT.

"What brand of absent-mindedness did you have in mind?"

"Oh, you know." A bit of a giggle here. “The ones who leave for work minus their trousers. I didn’t leave home minus my dress, I assure you. It’s the weather."

"What weather?"

"All this gorgeous hot stuff. I didn’t think there was any left."

"Oh, come now, Miss Scott, weather has always been a matter of the four seasons."

"Do you have to talk like some diddly-fiddly old dodderer from the Ministry? I’m only trying very simply to explain why I look like this."

"No explanation necessary. Miss Scott. It’s all a very natural development process singularly special to lovely young ladies, and there’s no one it pleases more than an old dodderer from the Ministry."

“There’s no need to make all that much of it. It just happened to get a lot hotter than I expected, so I thought I’d do some cooling off."

"Pardon us while we go jump in the lake. It’s the only way to get our temperature down.”

Maggie McCully

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A Work of Art

A work of art more often than not is something they put on a pedestal or hang on a wall and is frequently called a museum piece. There’s the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo and MAGGIE McCULLY, only don’t try hanging Maggie on a wall, even at a Bond Street gallery, or you’ll find yourself in a six-foot frame and with a bump on your head that’ll fit a half-pint skid-lid.

Of course, if you’re a lover of art and subject to fragilistic trembling’s in the presence of the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo, you won’t be without palpitations in the presence of Maggie, either. As the epitome of all that is inspiring about the modern girl,

Maggie is even better than a work of art.

She lives and breathes and loves a sleigh ride.

Nancy Sinatra

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New Image for Nancy

Having created one image for herself as a top pop star,

NANCY SINATRA is now being groomed for a different role.

It was those boots which did it. Everyone heard her when she arrived and those who are in business to bring the world to those who want it decided Nancy had what it takes to become a film star.

So, in a new cloak-and-dagger story called “The Last of The Secret Agents,” Nancy will project her new image as a sex kitten. She’ll be seen, for instance, in this outfit made of sexy lace complete with garters and if that doesn’t launch Nancy into an exciting world of film fame it won’t be her fault.

It’ll be because people have gone off garters.

Patricia McGregor

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Just Right For A Walk In The Park

The day was fine, PATRICIA McGREGOR was looking beautiful, and everything seemed set fair for a walk in the park.

But first, of course, Pat had to make sure that her seams were straight and her nails were polished.

Not to mention her shoes. A fashion model like Pat just couldn’t be seen in public without a shoeshine.

A final check on those seams—a last suspender adjustment, and we’re all set.

Apart from—no, not just the hat, Pat. What about the skirt? Well, you might get away with it if you keep your coat buttoned up, but suppose you get asked into tea somewhere?

“Hallo! Hallo-Sally? Sally, did I leave my skirt at your place yesterday? I did? Well, good heavens, what did I come home in, then? I did? Gosh, no wonder I thought it was draughty on my bike!”