PRAISE
Anita Ventura, the streaked-hair model with the most beautiful breasts
in history. Questionable? Nope. Anita Ventura. I need one too. We
all need a Ventura, and now more than ever.
The only woman
with the most beautiful breasts in history who was arrested in a topless
batgirl costume. TWICE! Anita was courageous, unflinching, liberated
and shameless in her curves. Anita was a pin up with the power to
reach right out of the folded paper, grab you by the tie, pull you
close and whisper "see anything you like, chump?" before dropping you
into a pile of your own perspiration.
Anita's figure
made Bettie Page look like a victim. Anita made Tura Santana look like
she needed a good meal…and Dita Von Teese? Please.
Anita
looked incredible in clam-diggers, but in a corset? Life was worth
living until your time was up and you brought the memory to St. Peter
for a free pass.
One of Leonard Burtman's favorite models. as
she would delight in wearing, or NOT wearing…anything. Fortunately, God
perfected color film during Anita's career. If your shaking hands
could thread the sprockets, you would stay in the darkroom all day.
When emerging, your fingers wrinkled by a chemical bath and nasal
passages burned by acid fumes, you would believe alchemy came with a 24
karat swatch of hair.
God made women, but he kept
practicing. Anita Ventura resulted. Five-foot 8inches of power, and
when she became engaged to "Tun Tun" the great Mexican dancer (who was
only Three-foot 9 inches tall) no one even noticed him. All eyes on
Anita, a full two feet taller than Tun Tun and twice as fun.
Anita
would bathe in a bikini in the pool on Park Avenue just because she
could. Once at a POLICEMAN'S BALL a burglar snuck in the dressing room
and stole Anita's lace panties.
Anita performed a belly dance
under the slogan "SEX SATIONAL DANCE OF THE DRUMS" but no one heard
them. The percussion was on Anita. Star of the films Teenie Tulip and
Orgy at Lil's Place.
CONTINUED...
EXCERPT FROM THE FORTHCOMING BOOK TIMES SQUARE SMUT © by Jim Linderman All rights reserved.
Books and affordable Ebooks by Jim Linderman available HERE
Irving Klaw poses Bettie Page in one of his lesser known images. Klaw would fill "special requests" at his studio, and allow the paying customer to watch the photo session take place. It is estimated after the Senate (and other organizations) stopped his mail-order business, Klaw burned up to 80 percent of the original negatives.
If there is a heart to this book, it
is in the digest-sized books which grace the first 100 pages. Artist
Eugene Bilbrew has been long recognized as a quirky talent in the fetish
underground, and a good many of the books here were illustrated with
his peculiar talents. Others have their covers done by Eric Stanton,
another illustrator capable of extraordinary odd and erotic drawings.
Printed in editions of a thousand or so at a time, the books were mostly
carried by hand to Times Square Bookshops where they were generally
shrink-wrapped and sold at prices ten times more than regular paperback
books. They were produced at a time when smut was for the first time
becoming truly profitable, or at least that was the intention of the
folks involved. (And the primary folk involved was Edward Mishkin, a
minor level mobster living in White Plains, New York who owned some of
the bookshops which sold his wares.) Also publishing early Bilbrew illustrations were Leonard Burtman and Irving Klaw, both operating mail-order houses.
A
good share of the books illustrated here for the first time were
confiscated by authorities and became evidence in obscenity trials of
the era. Scarce to begin with, this makes them even harder to find
today. Like early recordings made by Delta blues artists in the 1920s
and 1930s, it is not surprising that some of these books may exist in
fewer than a handful of copies today, and not only are they being shown
here for the first time in over 50 years, many of them may exist in only
one copy. It is hard to comprehend their scarcity.
Is
anyone collecting Eddie Mishkin's sleazy early pornography digests?
Leonard Butman's early fetish digests from the 1950s? Well, the
author has and does...the collection is shown in TIMES SQUARE SMUT.
While browsing, you will see passages of text which tell a curious tale
indeed, as the principles here were not only gifted in under-appreciated
ways, they were living on the edge of legality, which makes them pretty
interesting by nature of their day jobs alone...Imagine their night
jobs! Despite true
"soft-core" illustrations and even tamer text, at the time these were
considered dicey indeed, and the authors and publishers (nearly always
using pseudonyms) were hounded and grilled by the law and politicians.
In fact, the mobster was forced to testify at the very same senate
hearings which lead to the big crack-down on comic books.
Let us consider one more aspect of
scarcity...if YOU came across one of these in Dad's trunk before the
estate sale, what would you do with it? That's right, you would, and
probably sheaved amongst the old National Geographic and Life magazines
so the junkman wouldn't see it either. Add
in the fact that they were so badly written they weren't worth saving
anyway and you have a little reason to see any around today. Mishkin
wasn't running a "lending library" and when you got home and tore the
wrapper off, there would be nothing to do but suck it up and toss it out
the window of your coupe in New Jersey. There
was no resale market, few of the folks who ducked into Eddie's store
had "trading friends" and not too many would leave a spine titled
"Slave Mistress" or "Dominant Desires" on the shelf, even in the
workshop downstairs.
This is the real stuff. You know...Hot. And there were many government forces who did not want you to have them.
TIMES
SQUARE SMUT will be available in a Limited Edition Late 2012. It will
contain hundreds of illustrations, many not seen since the 1950s, most
from the Jim Linderman collection of fugitive and scarce soft-core literature.
Leonard Burtman publishes his first digest, Exotica in 1954. Private Collection
From the forthcoming book Times Square Smut by Jim Linderman
Selbee Burmel Mail Order Catalog for featuring Leonard Burtman and Ben Himmel material.
Bilbrew illustration from the cover of the Burmel One-shot Booted Discipline 1959
From the forthcoming book Times Square Smut by Jim Linderman
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