I bought this book a few weeks ago thinking I had found myself another neat example of Vampira illustrative goodness. Yep, right there on the back cover of Esquire's Handbook for Hosts, sandwiched between Clifton Webb and a goofy grinning Groucho Marx caricature, (and hovering above some tasty hunks of toothpick impaled party cheeses too, no less), wearing her trademark crimson lips, inclinating eyebrows, and ghostly, blood-drained pallor, --why, this looks to be every bit of Maila Nurmi's famous, midcentury, KABC-TV horror hostess, Vampira. There's only one catch-- this book was published in 1949, and Vampira wasn't created until 1954. So who the heck exactly was cover illustrator L. J. Allen caricaturing here then?! The interior of the book provides no information, and when I put the isolated image into a Google search engine, it delivers wildly random hits for Tallulah Bankhead, Katy Jurado, Caroll Borland, Yvonne DeCarlo, Jean Brooks, and silent screen queen, Theda Bara. But none of these seem even remotely correct either. And while Charles Adams did indeed do work for Esquire, his Morticia Addams character was strictly for The New Yorker-- plus, this doesn't really resemble the Morticia comic character's sleek uniqueness anyway. The truth is, it only resembles one person on planet Earth, and that's Vampira. If anyone has a clue to this Hollywood mystery, we'd sure love to hear it! And don't say Bette Davis, --she's already featured on the back cover in pearls!
This is one heckuva mystery you’ve unearthed! Was L. J. Allen a time traveler? Would Vampira approve of those levitating cheese cubes in her bosom? What ARE “male-slanted food recipes”??? (If I’m reading that right, and I sincerely hope I am.) This book already has me fascinated and I haven’t even gotten to canapé #1 of 316!
ReplyDeleteWell, save your appetite after #316, because the crostinis, pinchos, and bruschettas are still a'comin'! If you couldn't tell, I love teeny toast treats!
DeleteIt's a stretch, because the eyebrows don't seem quite right, but how about Sylvia Sydney? Compare this picture: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/504614333222089544/
ReplyDelete(Worried that my previous post got suppressed because I tried to post an image URL) It's a stretch, because the eyebrows don't look right, but maybe it's Sylvia Sydney?
ReplyDeleteThat's as good a guess as any, I guess! Buuut I'm gonna say no...
DeleteI feel like the answer to this is gonna be found in the dark hair / exaggerated eyebrows. And probably no one as exotic as Lupe Velez, nor as obvious as Gene Tierney... it's possible she's not even an actress, it may even be a singer of the era
ReplyDeleteHah, Lupe Velez was going to be my guess. She was in the news a lot and caricatures tended to make her cheeks huge and chin small in ways that didn't really resemble her actual face. But then again, she died in forty-four, so it's hard to imagine she was still cover material five years later.
ReplyDeleteI'm stumped!
No idea who the woman is, but the head under the candles looks like a early 2000s 3D first person shooter model!
ReplyDeleteThe blonde guy under the candles has me stumped as well, (Richard Widmark, maybe?) I do recognize most of the caricatures though: Bergman, Hepburn, Bette Davis, Garbo, Victor Mature, Clark Gable, Groucho, Danny Kaye, Cary Grant, Basil Rathbone, Clifton Webb, etc… and one of those might actually already be Tallulah
ReplyDeleteMy best guess is Joan Crawford. I could imagine her brows and face shape being rendered that way, but I never did see her hair that flat…
ReplyDeleteI can see that… those black great white shark eyes are a bit Crawford-esque for sure, haha
DeleteI'm no good at picking out faces, especially caricatures.
ReplyDeleteMy wildest guess would be Greta Garbo, but that is just a long shot.
To tell the truth, these faces look like the caricatures of caricatures, or someone copied a copy, at least to me.
Whoever this starlet of the forties is, she sure made an impression back then, and now!
As mentioned in a previous comment, I believe that she’s already depicted on the back cover at the bottom next to Basil
DeleteIf she had bangs instead that part, I'd suggest she may be Laura Jean Allen herself. (And Google hits would include Anna May Wong.) Allen really did look a bit like that.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to have been the only Equire-related cover Allen did, so far as I can tell in ten minutes or so. And I don't see much else in the way of celebrity caricature, either.