Though they are at a glance aesthetically very different, the pulp era and the art deco era were contemporaneous, both in full bloom during the 1920s. Above you see the dreamy cover of a 1925 issue of the art deco style magazine Paris Plaisirs, i.e. Paris Pleasures, which was published from 12 Rue Georges-Berger in Paris. The cover star is dancer Isabelitta Ruiz, shot by R. Sobol. It looks to us as if Sobol provided the original image, but it was tinted by a second artist in the employ of the magazine. At least that’s our suspicion. We think that because we can see a second signature on the cover at lower left—it looks like, maybe, Cuaillant? No, that sounds wrong even for French. Maybe C. Jaillant? Better, but still quite possibly wrong. Here we go again with these French artists. And the magazines never seem to bother with masthead credits either. Too prosaïque maybe. We can hear our French friends say, “Comment typique! You Americans, always wanting to know exactly who did what. Learn to embrace uncertainty!” Okay, then. Twenty-two scans below, and you can see a lot more Paris Plaisirs art at the excellent webpage aucarrefouretrange.

Paris Plaisirs was devoted to lifestyle and arts, with an emphasis on dance. We’ve featured it several times, such as here and here. The above issue appeared this month in 1925, and the cover shows golden Ginette Maddie, who in addition to performing at the Cinéma Français appeared in twenty films between 1922 and 1958, including under the direction of Alfred Machin and Julien Duvivier. At one point she scored a contract with MGM, and was whisked to Hollywood where she sat in a villa waiting for work that never came. Her complaints confused her acquaintances—after all, she was drawing a salary, so what did it matter if she worked? She wasn’t even the only idle foreigner on the scene. Russian actor Ivan Mosjoukine was also wandering about town drawing checks while waiting for roles that never materialized.

But Maddie had been a shining star in the City of Light. Transforming into an earthly nobody in Hollywood didn’t sit well. Eventually she fled back to her home. She dismissed Hollywood as a “ville factice et sans âme peuplée de gens superficiels et insignifiants.” Loose translation: a dummy-populated city without soul, for superficial and insignificant people.” Joke’s on her, though—that’s what everyone from Hollywood thinks too. The time away had kept Maddie idle for three years, damaging her career, but she finally scored a new role in 1930 and acted in two films that year and the next before pretty much fading from the cinema scene. Inside Paris Plaisirs you get more dancers, some photography, plus art deco style drawings from Mario Laboccetta, J. Bonnotte, and others. All below.

This issue of Paris Plaisirs goes back farther than any we’ve featured—to 1924. But the pulp era officially began in the late 1800s, which means this art deco influenced publication fits right in. It debuted in 1922, lasted into the late 1930s, and was published out of Rue Georges-Berger in the Plaine de Monceaux quarter, fashioning itself as a specialty publication for Parisian music halls. Though this issue is very grey, the magazine became more colorful as time went by, which you can see in our other posts. That’s about all we can tell you about Paris Plaisirs because the mastheads in these are not exactly packed with information. We’ll find out more eventually, but in the meantime we’ll just enjoy the racy photographic vignettes and many ink drawings evocative of the Jazz Age.

Above is the cover of a March 1932 issue of the French “esthétique, humoristique, théâtral” monthly Paris Plaisirs with cover star Marjorie King cheerfully wielding a field hockey stick from a position that suggests she’s been knocked on her ass. If you tilt your head you can see that she was really striking. When this issue appeared she seemed to be on the cusp of a cinema breakthrough, having appeared in four films in quick succession. But she only made two screen appearances after this cover—1933’s My Weakness and 1936’s J’ai gagné un million. However, she had some Broadway roles and appeared on and in many magazines, so when you add it all up she seems to have had a nice career. Regarding Paris Plaisirs, it launched in 1922 and ran until at least 1938. We’ve shared several of these before and you can see those by clicking here. And we also found another photo of King from the same field hockey session, as well as a nice shot of her by photography legend Alfred Cheney Johnston which we’ll share a bit later.

Above is a nice little artifact from the Jazz Age, a cover of Paris Plaisirs, numbered 88 and published in October 1929, the month disaster struck when a massive speculative bubble that had built up within the lightly regulated New York Stock Exchange burst and led to a collapse that dragged the world into a global depression. The background pattern here looks like superimposed bar charts, but since it comes about thirty days before the actual crash, we’ll just go ahead call the graphic coincidental. But how eerie. The cover star is a Folies Bergère dancer known only as Eva, and inside you get the usual assortment of flappers, showgirls, art, and photography from Studio Manassé.

Below, the polo-themed cover and several interior images from Paris Plaisirs magazine July 1932. See more Paris Plaisirs here.

Below, selected scans from the French erotic magazine Paris Plaisirs, which consisted of photos and photo-illustrations of various cabaret dancers, 1932. See another issue here.