Fiesta

Fiesta was first published in June 1956 and ran until 1959. It was the partner magazine to Carnival, very much like Span is to Spick. Content was very similar to Carnival, but there was more emphasis on the photographer and picture composition than there was in Carnival. With Fiesta arriving just that bit later, it had some colour pages from the start.

It also started out with a £50 beauty contest, though from 1957 this was reduced to £25 and then still further to £20 towards the end of its run.

The excerpt below is from Fiesta’s opening page.

The Fiesta of beauty has begun. And to begin it with we feature a galaxy of exotic lovelies, lissom in limb and lightly clad in the frills and flounces of festival. Eyes shining with delight and bodies ripe with the vitality of youth, they mingle together in these pages from all corners of the earth.

What a load of old rubbish that was! We, of course, just wanted to see scantily clad, pretty girls.

Fiesta had 12 competition entries per month from its start until its end. It was different from Carnival though, in that it did not give the models’ names, just the name of the photographer. Who knows why they went that way; certainly a real disappointment to me that the models names and details were not included. I much prefer Carnival just because of that.

What does become very apparent though, is how familiar some of the photographers’ names are to us. They were, of course, entering these competitions for the money and the exposure, with some of them hoping to make careers out of it, I suppose.

J.B. Fullerton and Fullarton is a name that pops up frequently; interestingly with pictures of Janet Neill on a regular basis. J.B. Fullarton (with an a) did, as we know, go on to become one of the main stay photographers for ToCo, with Janet Neill being his first contribution to Span in 1956.

Russell Gay and Harrison Marks were regular contributors to the magazine, with many pictures and monthly articles being submitted by them. There were general features on health and beauty, lingerie and clothing - much the same format as Carnival. Content did generally become slightly more risqué from 1958 onwards, with familiar models appearing on a regular basis - Rosa Dolmai became a regular from Volume 3 onwards. Competition for your two to three shillings per month was really starting to heat up towards the end of the 1950’s!

Fiesta in its digest form ran until 1959; just three and a half years, with it ending at the same time that Carnival ceased to exist. The name Fiesta though is a name that went on and on and is still a name that we are familiar with on our newsagents stands today.

Fiesta’s numbering is straight forward for the collector, running to just 4 volumes, with 4 specials that were linked to the seasons of the year.