BONNIE LASS

She paints a memorable picture.

Bonnie Logan, née Bonnevier Bakken, was a glamour model of the 1950s and 1960s who as of last year was still making public appearances in her late 80s. She starred inside and on the covers of scores of magazines, including Adam (the U.S. version), Man, Photo-Rama, Knight and many others. When you hear people say women were curvier back in the day, they’re thinking of women like Logan, who had 40-24-37 measurements and had to wear custom bras.

During her heyday she also sang, appearing regularly at the Floating Island Lounge in Los Angeles. She moved into burlesque and in that capacity traveled all the way to Japan, where, strangely, she was once clobbered on the head by a bat-wielding American hater. Of that incident she said, “I wore an elaborate blond wig at the time, and I used to tuck my real hair underneath it. That happened to be where the bat hit me. It probably saved my life.”

The sultry shot of her at top comes from a session that provided the cover for the issue of Rapture you see above and right. The magazine is from 1962, which helps us date the photo somewhat, but we’re thinking the session occurred a bit earlier, say around 1960. We’ll have more from Logan later, so stay tuned.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.

1949—Dragnet Premiers

NBC radio broadcasts the cop drama Dragnet for the first time. It was created by, produced by, and starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. The show would later go on to become a successful television program, also starring Webb.

1973—Lake Dies Destitute

Veronica Lake, beautiful blonde icon of 1940s Hollywood and one of film noir’s most beloved fatales, dies in Burlington, Vermont of hepatitis and renal failure due to long term alcoholism. After Hollywood, she had drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post article briefly revived interest in her, but at the time of her death she was broke and forgotten.

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.
Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.
Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.
George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

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