Robert Maguire painted the cover for Ed Spingarn’s 1957 novel Perfect 36, and came up with something beautiful and colorful that drew our eye. The tagline—A revealing and riotous story of the bosom business—did the rest of the sales job. The book tells the story of nineteen-year-old Rosalie Gershon, who’s determined to make something of herself professionally, and, thanks to her outstanding figure, stumbles into the ladies undergarment business. Seems she’s a perfect model for the newly created Brooklyn Bridge Bra, designed along architectural principles. Rosalie wants to succeed, but she’s also a virgin with insistent hormones, and the high rolling fast talkers of the NYC fashion business are lining up to take her on her first mattress ride.
In other words, what you have here is a virtue-in-danger novel, but one that’s better than most. Will Rosalie give in, and if so to whom? The poor but sincere co-worker? The business mogul’s slick son? The rich man who offers her mink coats? Everybody wants her and they’ll play dirty to get her. Only in fiction is it so difficult being gorgeous. As the plot develops, Rosalie’s virginity—actually her possible lack of it—becomes worth potentially $100,000. It’s an unlikely twist, and Rosalie’s an unlikely character, but Spingarn manages to make her sympathetic, and he does it by using high quality literary skills and (we suspect) inside knowledge of the fashion industry. We’d read him again, for sure, but unfortunately Perfect 36 seems to be the only novel he ever wrote.
