Carnival

Carnival was first published in July 1955 and took the place of Beauty Parade (not to be confused with the American magazine Beauty Parade which was popular during the 1950’s).

Beauty Parade was popular for its £50 beauty contest but not so popular for its size. The excerpt below is from the editor of the first edition of Carnival.

A brand new magazine blossoms into print with this, the first issue of Carnival. New, novel and - we hope - entertaining. Plenty of pictures, galaxies of glamour, fascinating features and, thrown in for good measure, the famous £50 Beauty Contest that proved so popular in Beauty Parade.

Regular readers of Beauty Parade may well ask what has happened to the old magazine. Why this sudden change? The answer is really quite simple. Dozens of readers were writing in each week, asking us to publish more features, more articles of general interest along with the competition photographs. Other readers were writing to suggest that we altered the size of the magazine, so that it could be carried around in a coat-pocket. And all the time everyone was asking for more photographs, more pictures, more pin-ups - more everything. Carnival is the result of all these requests. Here we have a magazine that slips easily into the coat - pocket, cram-packed with more than fifty pages of interest: pictures galore, articles ad lib and all the glamour you could ask for. We feel that there really is something here to suit everyone, and we hope that all our readers will agree.

A hugely popular aspect of Carnival was the Beauty Parade Contest, allowing any girl to enter with the winner being judged by Carnival readers, who sent in a vote for their favourite via a reply-paid card to the publishers. The winner of the competition received £50 for sending in their picture, which was a lot of money in 1955 - equivalent to about £1300 today - and not to be sneered at.

Some editorial about the competition:-

Girls! Gaiety! Glamour! - these are the keynotes of Carnival, a success story that has no secrets about it. Every issue brings forth a fresh galaxy of talent from every part of the country and it is our particular pride that so much of that talent is genuinely fresh. Beauty belongs to everyone and there is so much undiscovered loveliness in the girls of Great Britain that we have undertaken a kind of monthly voyage of discovery. New faces appear in every issue, not only as might be expected in the Beauty Parade contest itself, but in the rest of the magazine as well. It is all very well to see the constantly recurring faces of Hollywood film-stars - which all seem to be very much alike in any case - but it is far, far more interesting to find that the girl next-door can look every bit as glamorous as Marilyn Monroe. And it really is amazing how many “ordinary” girls can look glamorous in the right circumstances. It is simply up to us to find those circumstances - and that is exactly what we are doing. Carnival provides the opportunity for every pretty girl to make a name for herself, as well as the possibility of winning £50 in the contest. So now girls, it’s up to you! Let’s see some of those glamorous snapshots making their appearance in these pages.

Looking back through the competition entries, lots of the girls’ names are familiar to us, as well as a great many of the photographers. For some of them this would have been their entry into the world of semi-professional modelling, with a great many of them having pictures published in popular men’s magazines throughout the 1960’s

As with similar titles from this era, full colour was rare. This was not only because it was expensive, but also that the materials needed were still in short supply with rationing having only ended in 1954. For its first year, Carnival used just spot red on the cover for its masthead, very much like the early editions of Spick.

Content was mainly based around glamour photography and helping the amateur or budding professional take good quality posed pictures. Russell Gay was a regular contributor to the magazine, with many pictures and monthly articles being submitted by him. There were also general features on health and beauty, lingerie and clothing and a letters section. From 1956 onwards more colour was introduced, with the magazine featuring a colour double page spread. Four specials were published per year based around the seasons.

Carnival in its digest form ran (as far as I am aware) until 1959. I do not have a copy beyond August, but I am not saying that is the last copy, I have just not seen one later than that. There is nothing in the August issue to suggest it is the last one. It only ran for 4 years and who knows why it ceased to be published? I would hazard a guess that circulation was falling (which would explain why the later copies are harder to come by). Competition around this time was considerable, with the ToCo collection of magazines becoming very popular towards the end of the 1950’s. I would suggest that ToCo’s content was slightly racier, with many of the girls that had appeared in the earlier editions of Carnival as competition entries popping up in the other more popular titles of the time. Carnival the name was resurrected in the 1960’s as a larger format magazine.

Carnival’s numbering can be very confusing for the collector, with numbering reverting back to Volume 3 from April 1958 (the first 3 issues of 1958 are marked as volume 4 though) but the whole of 1957 was also marked as Volume 3; Volume 4 then carries on from January 1959. It is best to follow the years, as these were correct regardless of the volume number.

The information I have on Carnival is all derived from the magazines themselves and my collecting. I would love to be able to fill in some of those gaps and also a few of the later copies that I am missing from my collection. If you can help then I would be delighted to hear from you, please do get in contact with me.

Carnival was first published by Liverpolitan Ltd, Birkenhead