It’s a fallacy that fellers don’t make passes at girls in glasses—when girls in glasses are as attractive as LORRAINE BURGE. Lorraine works in an income tax department, where all the girls naturally have very taking ways. We’ll pay up with pleasure when our demand comes from Lorraine.
Her day-to-day forte may be shorthand-typing, but seen at home there’s no doubt SUSANNE FERRIER does a great deal to make the decor look bright and right. It’s just that any home needs a pretty girl around to make the decor worthwhile—a lawn mower or a sewing machine don’t give the same effect at all.
London secretary PEGGY SMITH uses the springtime and the adjacent countryside to breathe in lots of fresh air.
Peggy commutes daily to and from her office, and to keep going and still look attractive as well as efficient what's more re-invigorating than bags of fresh air free from the dust of London?
In week-end dress and filmy frills. Peggy is cutely complementary to the spring sunshine, and it all helps to take her back to the office on Monday morning with a smile. It also helps her to see off the week’s work without coughing her way through Thursday and Friday.
Peggy is 20. is pretty good as a secretary and pretty attractive as a girl, and if her expression above is indicative of a sudden realisation that she forgot to get her boss to sign his post last Friday evening, well, that can happen to anyone, can’t it?
There are any amount of Miss Smiths.
Some are sort of negative, some are quite divine.
Our Miss Smith is simply herself. Ravishing.
Full name? SARAH SMITH. She's a Glasgow girl with a lovely Scottish accent, she works as a secretary and models in her spare time. She wears mini-kilts in tartan recognition of her clan and the loveliest, briefest mini-dresses in delicious acknowledgement of her shapely legs.
She's whistled all the way to the office in the mornings and all the way home at night.
And what's fairer than that?
Country girl JULIE MARSDEN likes the rural life in the quiet, unspoilt environment of the Cotswolds. She's married to an American and neither she nor hubby yearn for the clash of trams, the howl of sirens and the creaking of high-rise concrete.
They like their country cottage, and enjoy walks down the lane to the whispering woodlands, where they first met. Julie was picking bluebells and he was wondering whether he was lost. It was mutual enchantment at first sight, like.
Some film stars can't stand it unless they've got six birds or six fellers always ready and willing, but Julie reckons romance isn't dead yet if you can appreciate the simple life.
This is of interest to some more than others I know, and some of you may have seen it before, but I was certainly not aware of it. I would like to thank Max for sharing and passing it on. At the time of the interview, I reckon Ken would have been about 49 years old, as this is a good few years after the demise of Town and Country Publications.
During the interview, Ken refers to a Spick and Span set that was taken with a local girl falling off a bike in a country lane. I thought that sounded familiar. - check out Nicola Taylor, Spick No 169 - December 1969 (Can you see Ken’s marker stone in picture 4?)
I have not reproduced the whole interview here, as it is quite long. Just the introduction and the first two sections. The full interview is placed at the bottom of the Ken Howard page (The Glamour Book Interview)
"The Glamour Book" (1982) - BFP Books - ISBN 0 907297
Introduction
Like many keen photographers, Ken Howard works in an office from Monday to Friday. But on Saturdays, at his bungalow in Bournemouth, the lounge becomes a studio.
Glamorous girls travel up to a hundred miles to the quiet housing estate, where they are photographed by one of Britain's most successful “amateur” glamour photographers.
Despite the disadvantages of working as a part-time freelance, Ken Howard has managed to find a regular market for his work. Photographs taken in his home studio have appeared on the covers of Amateur Photographer and Practical Photography, and have been used in national newspapers and foreign magazines. During the last twenty years, Ken Howard has proved that it is possible to break into some of the major glamour markets without being based in London, and without becoming a full-time professional.
The Beginning
It was in 1951, on a boat to Malaya, that I first became interested in photography. I was a regular serviceman - one of the idiots that signed on!
An Ensign Ful-Vue was my first camera, soon followed by an Agfa Isolette. I found out all about developing and printing films in the RAF station photographic section as a sort of hobby.
Ken Howard - Home Studio
This hobby continued after I left the services. At first, I could only make contact prints from the roll-film negatives, but persistent hints finally produced the much-needed enlarger as a present one Christmas.
Early subjects were the usual family snaps and landscapes. People liked the sort of work I was doing, though, and I soon started receiving requests from neighbors to photograph their babies and kids.
From these beginnings, I progressed to photographing girls from the typing pool at work I am not too sure of the connection. I just fancied women, I suppose!
So far, all my indoor pictures had been taken with a single Photoflood Bulb in a small Photax reflector. This was fitted with a clip, so that it could be attached to the back of a chair, or shelf.
Something a little more professional was obviously called for, so I found two large tins, stuck a pole in each and filled them with concrete. Then I bought another clip-on reflector to go with these new lighting stands.
One of my very first glamour sessions was on a Photo News Weekly outing to Hastings. We had great times on the beach, though you took pot luck with the weather.
I submitted some of my beach shots to Photo News Weekly shortly after - and one of them was published.
It was this success which encouraged me to answer an advertisement in Photo News Weekly. "Photographer by the sea," ran the heading. ‘Would you like to be the staff photographer on a woman's magazine?"
My application was successful and I moved down to Bournemouth early in 1960.
Miss World and Magazines
Within a couple of weeks of joining the magazine, I had a row with the editor about covering a local beauty contest.
‘You’re a woman’s magazine,” I argued. "If a local girl wins, it's good publicity. Why are you haggling about it?"
In the end, the editor agreed. “But don't make a meal of if" he warned.
Ann Sidney - 1979
It was at this contest that I first met Ann Sidney, who went on to become Miss World!
But things were not going so well for the magazine. One day, I got a call from the editor. "Howard, you are a luxury I can no longer afford," he said. “Go out and get yourself a job. When I've got more money, I might take you back”
So, it was back to office work. But at least I now had a few contacts. I continued to photograph Ann Sidney, and she was the subject of my first cover success with Amateur Photographer.
However, when Ann won the Miss World title, I lost my model. But quite a lot of my work had been published by now and was getting known. I actually had girls coming and asking me to photograph them!
By today’s standard, my photography sessions with Ann Sidney would hardly qualify for the glamour label, there were no topless shots. But a new model agency opened in Bournemouth and I hired two or three of the girls, submitting the pictures to magazines such as Parade.
Then I started having some success with Spick, Span and Beautiful Britons publications. I received commissions from them nearly every week - the old stockings and suspender stuff mostly.
Every commission came with a shooting script. This was fine to a point, though it became a bit of a bore after a while.
But the shooting sessions could always be relied on to liven up the area. I remember one where I was photographing a local beauty queen riding a bike.
The first part went as planned. I put a small stone down on the road so that there was something for me to focus the camera on. Then I told her to ride slowly by with her right foot on the handle bars and the left foot down on the pedals. She had to show her briefs, you see. And as she passed over the small stone, I pressed the shutter release to capture the picture.
Then we came to the last shot, where it had to look as if she had fallen off the bike. She sat on the road and I lowered the bike on top of her. She lay spread-eagled, showing all she had got. And just as I was about to take a picture, a tractor and trailer with a load of hay came around the corner of the country lane. So, I had to lift the bike up and drag her to her feet. We stood there on the side of the road while he drove past very slowly, staring at us as if we were something off another planet - he just could not believe what he had seen.
He kept looking and looking - until he drove straight into a ditch - tractor, trailer, hay and all!
I put the girl back on the ground, took the final picture and then cleared off home as quickly as possible.
Originally, very few of these magazines featured nude or topless models. It was mostly glimpses of underwear, which quickened the pulses of purchasers.
Then a new type of magazine started to appear - and the girls they featured were definitely not wearing briefs and bra. Or much else!
Some of the magazines I was working for felt they had to offer their customers a little more, but I decided I did not want to get involved some of the requests were bordering on pornography and I did not want my girls getting into that kind of work.
There was Sir James in his deerstalking outfit and there at the gate was a beautiful bird. In his deerstalking gear Sir James naturally never went after birds, as it wasn't ethical except when he was wearing his grouse get-up.
However, any man would be a fool to commit himself to ethics as inelastic as that.
"Gad," he muttered, "a young dear is as good as an old doe any day, never mind if me suit is inappropriate."
He doffed his hat and bowed. The beautiful bird looked up, Sir James heard a swish of wings and there she was, flying away.
Some birds always fly away when aristocracy gets too close. You can't trust those pent-up deerstalkers. LOUISE BURTON is just such a bird, and Sir James didn't need his binoculars to see she was a beautiful one.
Louise lives in Brighton, spends the summers on the beach and her holidays in Spain. The matadors out there don't half give the bulls what for when Louise is around.
"Cor, what a life," panted Ferdinand, "I wish she'd go away."
MARGARET CARMICHAEL is an ice-skating star but this was one time when she'd hung up her skates to spend a quiet week-end relaxing at home. Margaret is nineteen, is a petite young lovely at 5' 1” and measures 35-23-36.
On ice Margaret is a flashing figure of grace and speed, and she doesn't look so bad reading a book in front of the fireplace, either!
But if there's one thing that can get her off the carpet it's a phone call from a boyfriend who wants to know if she'll go skating with him at the local ice rink. What's more enjoyable than a busman's holiday on ice?
Today it is not sufficient for the well-dressed girl merely to clothe herself expensively from head to toe. Today it is not even remotely inspiring to go into any shop and casually order six different outfits a la the latest look from Paris.
Today the well-dressed girl only considers herself well-dressed if she looks not like everyone else but like her friends. Eventually this is bound to produce the same result, with one girl’s friends looking like every other girl’s friends. But at the moment only the brave, bold and beautiful wear the kinky, kooky garments so beloved of the kinky, kooky designers.
One very nice girl we know JANET PAYNE is absolutely crazy about everything kooky, and adores high boots and colourful leg-gear and crazy chapeaux. Janet works in a Newcastle departmental store, and as she commutes to and fro on the buses is a delight to the eye of every conductor.
Glasgow secretary JANE PAUL has always been our idea of a girl in form, and latterly she’s been just beautiful.
With vitalistics of 38-22-36, she’s a natural for stunning the eye of every man lucky enough to get her in focus. Some men get so eye-smitten they start falling about or lurching sideways. We men are so impressionable, you know, that sometimes we think corking charmers like Jane are unfair to us. Either they shouldn’t be so corking or they should dress in tents. We mean wear tents.
Even then, think how lovely Jane in a tent would be like on a camping site in Pogo-Pogo, wherever that is.
Garter-clad CHERRY LENNOX is letting nothing, not even summer holidays, divert her from her swotting, for Cherry dearly wants to graduate with honours from her university.
Considering the millions of girls who are all representative of the absolute fascination of their kind today, it might be difficult for people like geologists and back-room boffins to decide which girl is more representative of our times than all the others.
It's not difficult for us.
We pick DAWN GRAYSON.
Glorious auburn hair, great big eyes, a laugh like the gurgle of a mountain stream and legs so photogenic you can hardly focus proper. That's Dawn. You’ve never seen her before?
Where have you been? Down a gold mine?
What's more Irish than Bridget?
And who's more Irish than BRIDGET McKENNA? Only the leprechauns.
Bridget emerged lustrous and dark-eyed from Dublin to make her way to Britain, where she'd heard they liked swinging shapes. And with her shape of 37-24-37, she felt pretty sure she wouldn't go unnoticed.
She was right. The photographers fell all over her in a manner of speaking. She's a glamour model now and shares an apartment in Islington with another model from Dublin, and this part of Islington has begun to sound just like old Ireland.
No, young Ireland.
Do you wake up in the mornings with Swiss cowbells ringing in your ears? Are there still spots in front of your eyes as you walk over London Bridge to your office? Do curt cabbies make you want to spit? Are you driven off your simple nut by the never-ending chat of the insurance man?
Do you collect old pieces of wood and large lumps of timber because you can’t bear to see them littering the countryside?
If so, have a comfy, consoling heart-to-heart with HELEN MILLIGAN, for Helen is a girl without complexes and frustrations and a piece of wood or a large lump of timber is no bother to her.
That’s what comes of being educated at a very exclusive and very expensive girls’ school. It teaches you to approach life with a very clear-cut idea of how to get your picture in the papers. Simply look extremely enchanting in a flowered frock and a frilly petticoat. Don’t have anything to do with mixed-up people who carry some large bundles of firewood.
Honey blonde JANE BREWERTON has recently got married.
Notwithstanding all that permissive talk which floats carelessly about, Jane wasn't interested in anything but the old-fashioned way of doing things. In white, in church and in June she was married.
Dental receptionist and glamour model, Jane is still happy to be a housewife, and is settling down so well to being a lovely one that hubby is going around murmuring, "Fantastic—why didn't we think of this before?"
And he doesn't just say that because of her delicious Continental cooking, you know.
