This Champion Line Technicolor lithograph entitled “Sultry Charm” features U.S. model Shirley Kilpatrick getting cuddly with a fur wrap. Kilpatrick was featured in pretty much every men’s magazine of her era, in a decade-plus appearing sexily clothed or nude in Caper, Gent, Scamp, Bold, Frolic, Stare, Gala, Tempo… Really, just make up a name and at some point it was probably a magazine and she got naked in it. Or semi-naked. Her heyday was during the pubic-hair-is-obscenity era. In recent years, though, sets of full nudes have been unearthed, and guess what? She doesn’t show pubic hair in those either. Ahem. But while the photos are nice, we appreciate Kilpatrick most for playing the she-monster in The Astounding She-Monster, a cheeseball sci-fi b-picture from 1957 that gave us a considerable amount of enjoyment. It’s a terrible movie, make no mistake—but in that good terrible way. Kilpatrick, on the other hand, is just good good.
This Technicolor lithograph, which is titled “Tiger Lil” and was printed by Champion Line, shows Neva Gilbert, a Playboy model who was the magazine’s July 1954 centerfold. The litho, which also dates from 1954, is generally identified as originating with Playboy, but it actually came from a group of photos first owned by the Baumgarth Calendar Company. Back then Hugh Hefner often paid outside photographers for images. For that reason it’s possible the photo is pre-1954, but if so, not by much.
