Uploaded September 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Here's an authentic look at 1950s American life. Not as misremembered by grandma, or portrayed in Hollywood by people not even alive back then, but by something real--the September 1955 Ladies' Home Journal. Now boys, don't go away. There's plenty of interest for you too here, stylish ladies in brazziers, and plenty of other stuff too.
It's the ART that makes this magazine a standout. The advertising art is superb. Plus the magazine itself employed some of the best illustration artists that ever lived--as you will see--to illustrate the feature stories in this magazine.
An ad for Cannon towels and a toothpaste ad. It's all here, along with fashion, travel, new gadgets, and the fiction I mentioned, all with great photography and art. Oh, and I think I have a tube of that Ipana.
Yes, Ipana toothpaste. This particular tube is from around 1959, during the period of time they boasted of it having "Hexa-Fluoride"--which was later found to be, as Wikipedia puts it,.. dangerous. Great graphics though, and all in glorious two-dimensional art which makes no attempt to fly out at you, but rather draws you in with good design. Oh, and Stripe toothpaste had the same chemical, which they called by its generic name, Hexachlorophene.
And here's Jell-o. "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe".. and.. fed her kids Jello. Swell.... Spicy Raisin Pie.. made with Armour Star Lard. Mmmmm... lard.
Let's see.. Chase and Sanborn coffee. It's fresher, we are told, because the "whoosh" is bigger when you open the "pressure packed" vacuum sealed can. Well, alright... Now here's another toothpase, Gleem. This is the first product I remember having a completely fabricated advantage, given a high tech name you were supposed to be impressed by, and not to question. Gleem had GL-70. The way they flatly stated that, you were made to believe that everybody knows what it is, so don't ask or you'll sound stupid. And it's obviously great, or they wouldn't be touting it, right? Only the truly cynical and self-confident will still ask: yeah, but what IS it? Is it even a real thing? If you think about it, you can probably come up with a dozen or more of these sorts of terms concocted over the years to sell the mundane as the fabulous. I know that, to this day, whenever I hear one of those fabricated advantage claims about a product, I still think of "GL-70."
Here's an ad for brushes by DuPont--hair brushes, and cleaning brushes "with sty-lively bristles of DuPont Tynex nylon." ...
These are fictional stories, back when people read fiction in magazines as entertainment. You can still find fiction in magazines these days--the only difference is that now they call it news, and claim it's true.
Let's look at one last story illustration, this one from a different issue of the Ladies' Home Journal, from February of 1956. I saw this illustration reproduced in an art magazine and went and found it in its original publication form, which you see here. The artist here is Jon Whitcomb. Look at this great art--the couples are all dancing, while holding balloons between their heads in some sort of fun and silly party game. The text at the top reads, "Goggle really believed he would never get married. Would it be fair to all the other girls if I tied myself down to one, I ask ya?" And is this that guy, Goggle--over here?--with that stern troubled look. Or is this guy just intently and intensely trying to win this party game and not lose the balloon. Either way he's an idiot for thinking of anything in this moment but that beautiful and willing woman in his arms. But why is he so serious? There's like a whole movie contained in this one picture. "A Dance Is Like Hollandaise Sauce" is the title of the story. I should really read this. But yet, no, the story might explain the picture, and I don't want it explained. There's no way the story could be anything but a letdown compared to the beauty and tension exquisitely expressed in this illustration.
In today's world, we are exposed to many more images every day than we were in the 1950s, when this magazine was published. And you'd think with all the image creators out there today filling up our visual world with signs, print media, and most of all online-- you'd think that image expression and quality and meaning and heart,.. would be better than ever... Uh, yeah. You'd think.
Here's an authentic look at 1950s American life. Not as misremembered by grandma, or portrayed in Hollywood by people not even alive back then, but by something real--the September 1955 Ladies' Home Journal. Now boys, don't go away. There's plenty of interest for you too here, stylish ladies in brazziers, and plenty of other stuff too.
It's the ART that makes this magazine a standout. The advertising art is superb. Plus the magazine itself employed some of the best illustration artists that ever lived--as you will see--to illustrate the feature stories in this magazine.
An ad for Cannon towels and a toothpaste ad. It's all here, along with fashion, travel, new gadgets, and the fiction I mentioned, all with great photography and art. Oh, and I think I have a tube of that Ipana.
Yes, Ipana toothpaste. This particular tube is from around 1959, during the period of time they boasted of it having "Hexa-Fluoride"--which was later found to be, as Wikipedia puts it,.. dangerous. Great graphics though, and all in glorious two-dimensional art which makes no attempt to fly out at you, but rather draws you in with good design. Oh, and Stripe toothpaste had the same chemical, which they called by its generic name, Hexachlorophene.
And here's Jell-o. "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe".. and.. fed her kids Jello. Swell.... Spicy Raisin Pie.. made with Armour Star Lard. Mmmmm... lard.
Let's see.. Chase and Sanborn coffee. It's fresher, we are told, because the "whoosh" is bigger when you open the "pressure packed" vacuum sealed can. Well, alright... Now here's another toothpase, Gleem. This is the first product I remember having a completely fabricated advantage, given a high tech name you were supposed to be impressed by, and not to question. Gleem had GL-70. The way they flatly stated that, you were made to believe that everybody knows what it is, so don't ask or you'll sound stupid. And it's obviously great, or they wouldn't be touting it, right? Only the truly cynical and self-confident will still ask: yeah, but what IS it? Is it even a real thing? If you think about it, you can probably come up with a dozen or more of these sorts of terms concocted over the years to sell the mundane as the fabulous. I know that, to this day, whenever I hear one of those fabricated advantage claims about a product, I still think of "GL-70."
Here's an ad for brushes by DuPont--hair brushes, and cleaning brushes "with sty-lively bristles of DuPont Tynex nylon." ...
These are fictional stories, back when people read fiction in magazines as entertainment. You can still find fiction in magazines these days--the only difference is that now they call it news, and claim it's true.
Let's look at one last story illustration, this one from a different issue of the Ladies' Home Journal, from February of 1956. I saw this illustration reproduced in an art magazine and went and found it in its original publication form, which you see here. The artist here is Jon Whitcomb. Look at this great art--the couples are all dancing, while holding balloons between their heads in some sort of fun and silly party game. The text at the top reads, "Goggle really believed he would never get married. Would it be fair to all the other girls if I tied myself down to one, I ask ya?" And is this that guy, Goggle--over here?--with that stern troubled look. Or is this guy just intently and intensely trying to win this party game and not lose the balloon. Either way he's an idiot for thinking of anything in this moment but that beautiful and willing woman in his arms. But why is he so serious? There's like a whole movie contained in this one picture. "A Dance Is Like Hollandaise Sauce" is the title of the story. I should really read this. But yet, no, the story might explain the picture, and I don't want it explained. There's no way the story could be anything but a letdown compared to the beauty and tension exquisitely expressed in this illustration.
In today's world, we are exposed to many more images every day than we were in the 1950s, when this magazine was published. And you'd think with all the image creators out there today filling up our visual world with signs, print media, and most of all online-- you'd think that image expression and quality and meaning and heart,.. would be better than ever... Uh, yeah. You'd think.
