Above and below, the cover and assorted interior scans from Tab published this month in 1966. We assume “Tab” is short for tabloid, and that is indeed what this publication is, a pocket sized celeb and gossip magazine, new for our collection and a nice addition to the approximately four hundred we already have inside the website. However Tab is was also at this stage partly a nudie magazine, with the random glamour shots of young models that term implies. We’ve talked before about how large numbers of mid-century publications transitioned from tabloid or adventure magazines to pure porn during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and we seem to have caught Tab in the midst of just such a transformation.
The magazine was put together bi-monthly by the New York City based Carnival Magazine Corporation, was launched back in 1952, best we can determine, and lasted as late as 1971. It may have been pocket sized in terms of dimensions, but it was one of the thickest offerings on the market in terms of page count—this one is an amazing one-hundred and forty-eight pages featuring Carroll Baker, Angela Webster, Bobbie Carlino, Terry Higgins, Linda Veras, the KKK, grand prix racing, eight million sex starved women, and more. The pocket size also means that the text is of readable size on our website, so we don’t have to bother with a detailed description of the contents—you can read it for yourself, in more than sixty panels.
