Rainy Day Wonderings

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Pin ups and gifts

Joyce Ballantyne Brand, the artist who created the bare-bottomed Coppertone Girl of the famed suntan lotion ads, died Monday. She was 88.

Joyce Ballantyne Brand used her 3-year-old daughter, Cheri, as a model for the Coppertone ad in 1959. The Coppertone Girl, it turned out, was as American as a Moon Pie. Mrs. Brand was paid $2,500 for the painting.

"But you know, I get tired of talking about the Coppertone Girl. Yeah, it was a good billboard, but it was hardly the only art I ever produced. But that's what everybody remembers. That's what everybody wants to talk about. The Coppertone Girl."~Joyce Ballantyne Brand

Joyce won a scholarship to Disney's School for Animation in California. She remembered the day when the Disney representative heard her girlish, teenage voice over the phone and rescinded the scholarship. "Women married and had babies and gave up careers," she was informed. "A woman was a poor investment."

Ballantyne also did much advertising work for other national clients, including Sylvania TV, Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, and Schlitz Beer. She painted pin-ups for the calendar companies Louis P Dow and Goes and illustrations for such magazines as Esquire and Penthouse.

"The trick is to make a pin-up flirtatious," Joyce said. "But you don't do dirty. You want the girl to look a little like your sister, or maybe your girlfriend, or just the girl next door. She's a nice girl, she's innocent, but maybe she got caught in an awkward situation that's a little sexy. Mine always had some clothes on or at least a towel on. I didn't go in for dirty stuff like they do today."

I agree with her, leaving a little to the imagination is always best. And like my Aunt Yvonne used to say "If there are two girls in a room (full of men) one dressed and the other naked, the girl that is naked will always be olged at, but the dressed one always gets the marriage proposal."

Joyce B Brand will truly be missed and if by chance you have any of her art work on hand hold on to it, prices are now going thro the roof!

When I got home this evening I was given a present from my Dad. Tickets for both days...Just because he loves me, isn't that neat? I am so excited! Again this year The San Diego STREET SCENE 2006 will be held at Qualacomm Stadium on August 4 & 5. Four Stages will headline feature artists KANYE WEST, TOOL, YEAH YEAH YEAHS, MODEST MOUSE, SOCIAL DISTORTION, AFI & SEAN PAUL. Oh yeah...we will be shaken some serious bootay and eating some fabulous food! I am doing a happy dance. Come on and join me...Happy, happy,dance...Shake, shake your bootay! Thanks Dad, I love you!

I wonder...

Are you a collector of Pin-Ups?
How many painters out there use their own bodies as models like Joyce did?
Besides Bettie Page, who else modeled for pin-ups?
I wonder if posing for these things really was worth the money in the 30's, 40's and 50's. At the cost of her reputation and families reputations?

N Posted by Rain at 5/24/2006 12:05:00 AM

3 Comments

Anonymous posted at 5:17 AM
I love the old Vargas stuff for pinups. If I had money I would collect all his stuff.

Rain posted at 11:54 AM
Hi Jules! The Vargas Girls ROCK! And it is true, his stuff is truly priced through the roof! Thanks for stopping by!

Brian Dixon posted at 6:06 PM
Yes, I collect Playboys and write about them at my blog, Reflections on Playboy. (At the time of writing, you and I both have blogs designed by LunaStone, by the way.) Was posing for a pin-up worth the money in the 1950s? One might well ask the same question about the 2000s. People tend to believe, somewhat smugly, that their time is more liberated than the past. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. As recently as 1991, a made-for-TV movie plausibly claimed to be "inspired by three real stories" of unlikely women who posed for Playboy. All three of them paid dearly (and showed courage in the process). I wrote a blog post in praise of the movie.