Jenny Price

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Lovely & Learned

Anyone can be an egghead. All you need is the right kind of brain and a fixation on philosophy or economics or the kings of ancient Thebes. In that way, you not only become an egghead but because of your great learning you’re an old fogey before you’re thirty. You can’t talk about anything except logarithms or Theseus or Queen Nefertiti.

Cardiff student unlikely to ever turn into an egghead or a fogey is JENNY PRICE. She’s simply too dishy. There are female eggheads who wander around museums looking at Egyptian mummies, but that’s not for Jenny. She’s going to be a cool, elegant, indispensable, photogenic secretary.

Thank goodness for that.

Joan Paul

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Mini-Mania

It’s not something you need go to a psychiatrist about. JOAN PAUL doesn’t, but some people do.

“Rest comfortably on the couch, please. Comfy? Nice and relaxed? Good. Now then, what’s the trouble?”

“I’ve got a mania.’’

“Oh, have you? So have I. I was thinking of going to a psychiatrist about it.” “But you’re a psychiatrist yourself.”

“I can’t help that, we’ve all got our problems. Now about my mania—it comes over me mostly in the park.”

“Excuse me, but I’m the patient, it’s my mania I’ve come to discuss with you, not yours. Look, see that, I’ve got one leg in the air.”

“Is that your mania?”

“No, that’s my cramp. My mania is to do with mini-skirts. The whole thing is a terrible worry to me and I can’t sleep at nights.”

“Why is it such a worry?”

“I keep thinking they’ll go out of fashion. Ouch, there goes my cramp again.”

When one realises just how scintillating Joan is in her mini, one can’t help sympathising with all men who worry about when it will all end.

Maria Assin

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It Wasn’t For Want of Trying

There was this rubber canoe, see.

It was a new acquisition for MARIA ASSIN. Maria works all week in an office and spends all week-ends out-of-doors. That way a girl manages to keep pretty and vital.

Maria had the darnedest trouble launching the canoe and even more trying to get into it. It couldn't have been more difficult trying to get on the neck of an elephant with a rope ladder.

There's a classical method of launching and paddling a canoe, of course One, you swoosh it into the water. Two, you sling your left leg over the starboard side. Three, you sling your right leg in. Four—as Maria found out—you fall flat on your face over the port side.

No one can say Maria didn't try. She did. Both classical and un-classical methods. The canoe remained obdurately determined, Maria likewise. It became a fight to the finish.

“Pardon me,” called a wag from dry land, “but watch out for the torpedoes.”

“Blow the torpedoes,” said Maria, “I’m in at last and now it’s full steam ahead.”

It’s one thing to be an obdurately determined young lady, and quite another to be over-confident.

It wasn't the torpedoes.

It was the canoe.

It gave a wet cough and Maria went overboard. Not for the first time, either. “You’re all wet," called the wag from the bank.

“So are you," said Maria.


Janette Goodman

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It Can’t Be True

No, the fact is we didn’t think fashion model JANETTE GOODMAN would really go for these old-fashioned longs, no matter how much they’re currently being worn by those in the know. We really thought it couldn’t be true when Janette popped up in them, but as they say in the best technical tomes, the camera simply doesn’t lie.

Janette herself seems uncommonly tickled by them — figuratively, that is (we presume), not literally.

Well, she looks all right. They may be terribly old-fashioned, but Janette exudes no atmosphere of grandmother’s day. Maybe she needs a bustle for that.

Maybe a tall bonnet would also help. Janette doesn’t think so. The longs are back in fashion, she says, but not bustles or bonnets. So there.

Margaret Box

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Who’d Have Thought It?

A few years ago, a shapely young brunette from Catford called in to see us. Her name was Margaret Box and she looked just like she does in the photograph above. Her ambition was to make her mark in the cinema, and that didn’t mean gouging a lump out of the carpet in the middle row of the stalls.

Well, we thought good luck and all that, and reckoned she might or might not make it, we weren’t sure. We knew about the competition and how tough it was.

Well, in a nutshell, who’d have thought it? This year we’ve been receiving wildly-exciting photographs of Italy’s newest star MARGARET LEE, a blonde in the tradition of today’s eye-catching blondes, and the likeness striking a chord in the way it does when we’re a bit with it, we soon found out that Miss Lee was formerly Miss Box. Miss Box was delightful in Catford, but Miss Lee is sensational in Rome.

Sadie Milligan

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Oh, Hang It

That’s what SADIE MILLIGAN said when someone gave her an oil-painting for her birthday.

The reason for Sadie's remark was one, because she'd been expecting half-a-dozen pairs of nylons, and, two, because what can a girl do with an old oil-painting except hang it? So, do-it-yourself Sadie collected stepladder and hammer. She should have called in the man next door to hang it for her - then, like most do-it-yourself girls, she wouldn't have ended up on the floor.

Framed? Yes - the painting, not Sadie, because there's a consensus of opinion among those who value somebody else's grandmother in oils that this was deliberate sabotage on Sadie's part. All we can say is she makes a better picture than the picture.

Sadie, of the long and shapely legs, is a Bonny Scot from Ayrshire. And when she's not hanging pictures she works for a chemical firm.

Ann Mountford

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Glorious Devon

Devon is a county renowned for being glorious. Lovely golf courses, green farms and sea-washed beaches. Drake used to sail out from Devon. Not long-ago ANN MOUNTFORD sailed out herself and came to London.

Now, instead of gathering hay on farms in Devon she's a ledger clerk in the City. Some might think this isn't a change for the better, but Ann likes London and she likes her work.

She's good at figures.

And she's got rich auburn hair, lovely green eyes and long legs. She's nineteen. It's her world.

Barbara Boon

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Babs Figures

Very good at figures is BARBARA BOON, which isn’t surprising in a girl who wasn’t far short of being a mathematical marvel when she was at college. Not that the boys were breathless admirers of her mathematics—well, not as much as they were of her inches, which made her look lovely and shapely.

It’s all very well to go on a diet and finish up looking flat all the way down but it doesn't inspire the chaps as much as an oo-la-la shape of 37-24-36.

That figures.

Dawn Grayson

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How To Be Crazy Without Really Trying

Quite simple. Get yourself introduced to DAWN GRAYSON at a cocktail party for models with a flair for slaying the beholder. One look at our beautiful Dawn and you’ll be as crazy about her as we are. What real man can look into those soft eyes and dwell on that haunting shade of lipstick without wanting to be shot out of a cannon or something? Crazy it might be but undeniably exhilarating.

Anne Mattingley

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On The Doorstep

ANNE MATTINGLEY is a firm believer in fresh air. So, of course, the first thing she docs when she tumbles out of bed in the morning is to sit on the doorstep and do her breathing exercises.

After she's touched her toes a few times she feels a new girl. What was wrong with the old one? Nothing, as far as we can see. Everything looks in fine shape, at 37-23-38.

Lesley Lovell

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Boxer Fan

You might think this means LESLEY LOVELL is dead keen on watching heavyweights commit mayhem.

Not so. It only means that Lesley’s favourite pet is not Billy Walker but her large Boxer dog. How that Siamese cat crept into the picture we don't know. Where’s Bodger the Boxer?

Miserable truth though it is we have to confess Bodger is allergic to cats. They give him the heebie-jeebies. But it doesn’t affect Lesley’s fondness for his funny face. Lesley, by the way, does display work, lives in Middlesex, is a tall blonde with lovely legs and has trim, streamlined vitalistics of 35"-22"-36".

Margaret Cicek

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Put Your Feet Up

After a hard day at the office MARGARET CICEK likes to put her feet up. So, does Alfie Corkwright, he works in an iron foundry and he comes home absolutely beat-up by all those red-hot sparks.

Margaret comes home whacked out by the terrific tempo of electric typewriters.

It’s the same the whole world over.

Evenings are for putting your feet up, especially if you commute and the journey is a fight for survival.

Susan Howard

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Please Don’t Make Me Laugh

No, please don't make me laugh, said SUSAN HOWARD, I get all giggly and it won't go away.

I'm learning Esperanto, you see, and you need to be terribly serious about it and concentrate like a girl sticking on her false eyelashes for her most important date.

And then my dad comes along and says something comical and I giggle all over my books and the pages blow apart. He says I ought to get a job as assistant to a TV funny man, he says I’d be just right for that.

I hope you don't mind girls who giggle a lot, do you? Oh, thank you. You're a very sweet photographer. Oh, no, don't start making funny faces or I'll get all hysterical.

I’m sorry, I just thought you were, I didn't realise your face was always like that.

Sally Peters

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In the Middle of the Jungle

This is a wild nature story

Well then, dead in the middle of the jungle was an Edwardian town house of three storeys. All around it was concrete. It was about half-a-mile from Chelsea and you couldn't see the rest of London for all the bricks. In the charming bedsit on the top floor was an exotic orchid., blooming away despite the jungle.

You could have swiped us semi-conscious with a gardenia window-box when we met the orchid. She was SALLY PETERS. She had never been in a jungle before, she had come from a quiet country town to work as a secretary in London. The hoots of the taxis were like the roars of lions, but Sally was blooming all the same. Well, she had coped with whistling wolves for years, so roaring lions were no problem.

"I could eat them for breakfast," she said.

The first lion-eating orchid of all time.

Helen Du Bois

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In Regard to Your Insurance

For a premium you’ll think is quite ridiculous (said the insurance man) you can be covered for any kind of personal accident. Every day people fall off ladders, cartwheel down fire escapes, walk into walls—

Yes, yes, that's all very well said HELEN DU BOIS but how ridiculous is quite ridiculous? I have quite a job to keep up with the cost of living as it is. Being a shorthand-typist does not exactly cover me for tripping off to Davos in the winter and Cannes in the summer, and I can't even buy all the clothes I'd like. So how I can afford more insurance, however ridiculous the premium is, I really don't know.

Oh, my dear young lady, I can assure you it would scarcely raise a rattle in your purse. And what you must consider is not whether you can afford it but whether you can’t—

I've already considered that. What I’m considering now is how often I fall off ladders, tumble down fire escapes and walk into walls. Actually, it was very intriguing the other day. The most heavenly man suddenly appeared as I left the boutique and I was so invigorated by his obviously magnetic vitality that I walked straight into him. We parted the best of friends and he sent round a bunch of flowers. I don’t need to be insured against that. Goodbye, Mr. Pinecrust.