Susan Douglas

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Patricia Garland - Update

Pat Garland

I had a nice email from Susan Douglas’s eldest son this week, after his daughter found her grandmother’s profile page by accident. He has been kind enough to fill in a few gaps for me. Some details  I will cover here, but I have updated her page to reflect others.

Susan (Pat) sadly passed away 22nd February 2010 when she was 73, I am now also able to correct her date of birth to April 1938. I am told, though, that she would have been delighted that we always thought her younger than she really was! Susan Douglas was not her real name of course, She was really Patricia Garland, which I think we all knew anyway (but she did prefer to be called Pat). She decided on the name Susan Douglas so she was harder to trace - with Susan coming from a friend’s daughter and Douglas coming from the actor Kirk Douglas, whose films she was fond of.

Susan was one of the most photographed ToCo models. She was born and lived reasonably close to the Croydon office and was obviously well in with the staff, as she and her family used to holiday in Cornwall at the editors (Staples) house. It would appear that when she wasn’t modelling she helped in the offices and advised other models on their make up and clothes, Susans oldest son used to go along to the Croydon office in the school holidays when his mum was working. It would also appear that Staples ran a sweatshirt printing business and we can see Susan modelling one of his shirts in Spick No 180, possibly leaning against his Jaguar.

One other thing that always intrigued me about Susan was  that bangle that she frequently wore on her left arm above her elbow. The bangle was her Grandmother’s and was a lucky charm to her. Susan was always fond of jewellery and was always one for doing things her own way.

Luckily for us.

Christina Horn

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Catchy Christina

Model of advancing international repute is CHRISTINA HORN of West Germany, and if we haven't yet seen her modelling in London it can't be a pleasure that will be delayed much longer now.

 Christina has a catchy look that goes just right with her jazzy stockings and we hope that when she does appear in London we'll have the additional pleasure of seeing her catchy look even catchier as she mounts a high bus from a low kerb.

Susan McKay

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Stylist

Stylist tress chic is SUSAN McKAY, not only in her clothes but in her job. Susan works as assistant to a prominent Glasgow hair stylist, and having her put a kink in your hair if you’re a customer must be a joy.

Customers being of the fair sex only, we’re left without a kink—apart from the one the psychiatrist told us about—and we rather wish Susan would stop lying around on walls and beaches and join our barber’s shop.

Very few barber’s shops have lady assistants, and those that do don’t have any quite like Susan, with her gorgeous brown eyes and her photogenic legs.

Pinky Sands

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Gone Fishing

When good old Joe turned up to take PINKY SANDS for a ride on the back of his bike, Pinky was conspicuous by her absence. Good old Joe having been very precise about the time he’d arrive. Pinky had gone fishing. She preferred that to riding on the back of his bike and listening to him talking about his bicycle pump. Pinky got into a little difficulty with her line and hook but it was all a lot more fun than good old Joe.

Sylvia Ternes

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Outdoor Style

Looking pretty in the Berlin park is SYLVIA TERNES, and if the season is a cold one and the outfit an anti-rain affair, the style of the whole thing is just right.

Vicki Ashley

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More Before

Final last fling before the camera before she went off to Australia resulted in more pics of VICKI ASHLEY, and these are some of them.

Very popular as a photographer's model in England, Vicki should do more than well in Australia. She'll show up more in all that hot, bright sunshine and there won't half be a rush for front seats.

What front seats?

On the quayside, we suppose.

But she's going to fly.

Okay, push a few chairs out onto the tarmac, only don't let the madly infatuated ones get in the way of the wheels. They make a mess of you.

Mandy Peters

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It’s a nice change

Not long ago there was an awfully nice nurse in the local hospital around the corner. Her name was MANDY PETERS.

Then along came a patient who turned out to be a professional photographer, and all for the sake of his art he told Mandy what a lovely model she would make. At the time, she was a lovely nurse, about which all the other patients were indescribably content.

However, Mandy thought it would be a nice change of careers, so now she's given up nursing and has become a model.

She's a brown-eyed brunette, loves the countryside and, of course, looks absolutely saucy in a rural background.

Lorraine Burge

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Girls In Glasses

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.

Susanne Ferrier

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The Right Décor

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.

Peggy Smith

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Time Off from the Office

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?

Sarah Smith

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Our Miss Smith

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?

Julie Marsden

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Rural Type

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.

Ken Howard - Interview (1982)

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Ken Howard - The Glamour Book Interview.

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.

Ken Howard Page

Louise Burton

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Some Birds Fly Away

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

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Ice Skating Star

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?