There’s no horse or carriage, but if you want, we can go on a different type of hayride.
This week’s page from the Goodtime Calendar of 1963 features the work of German born glamour photographer Peter Basch, whose photography appeared in magazines like Life, Look, and Playboy. This particular model is unknown to us, but during his career Basch photographed pretty much every prominent celebrity, among them Mansfield, Bardot, Andress, Belmondo, Mastroianni, Brando, Dali, Cocteau, Monroe, et. al., and published them in numerous photography books that sold well and made his name internationally known. Some of those appear below, with cover stars Candice Bergen, TIna Louise, and Brigitte Skay.
As the end of the year grows near, the Goodtime editors seem to be running on empty with their quips. We still can’t figure out why they can get images from some of the best photographers of the day, but can’t find better quotes. Since speech is free for anyone to use as long as it’s attributed, they have access to pretty much everything that has ever been said by humans in all of history, but instead settle for the wisdom of guys like Jim Conway and Johnny Morgan. Oh well. It’s a mystery.
Sep 29: Men really understand women—some say they don’t because it’s cheaper that way.
Sep 30: A fence between makes love more keen—German Prov.
Oct 1: Women’s slacks: Cutting to get to the bottom of every figure problem.
Oct 2: Modern wife: A woman who knows her husband’s favorite dishes and the restaurants that serve them.
Oct 3: “A man never knows that a woman has any old clothes until he marries her.”—Jim Conway
Oct 4: “If it wasn’t for marriage, husbands would have to fight with strangers.”—Johnny Morgan
Oct 5: “The only time an experienced husband puts his foot down is when his wife’s finished vacuuming under it.”—Henry Morgan
The chameleon has no clothes.
This page from the Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 marks the week beginning forty-nine years ago today, and has an image of a very rare, wild American chameleon. You may be thinking that the photographer, credited only as L.G., photographed this one before she shifted to blend in with the background. But no—this is after she’s changed. These unusual creatures have woefully inadequate camouflage skills. Their skin only changes after a lot of exposure to the sun, and then it only turns brown. But they don’t know that. Notice the smirk? It’s because she thinks she’s totally invisible. Sad, really.
Sep 8: “It’s amazing how many things a girl can do without before she’s married.”—Henry Morgan
Sep 9: Aftermath: A retired math teacher.
Sep 10: “Women’s clothes should express what they're doing. From the looks of things, some dames don’t do much.”—Arnold Glasow
Sep 11: A lot of women are like cats. They lick themselves with their tongues.
Sep 12: “Adding machines are really trustworthy; you can count on them.”—Sam Cowling
Sep 13: He who is a fool kisses the maid when he may kiss the mistress.
Sep 14: Love can make any place agreeable—Arabian Prov.
Goodtime Inc. makes the end of summer a little more bareable.
The end of summer is always bittersweet, but the Goodtime Calendar of 1963 softens the blow with another image from the mysterious L.W., this one of a barbecuing beauty tending some hot meat. Goodtime’s weekly quips often include insights from unexpected sources. Just last week it was Fred Flintstone. This time it’s none other than Albert Einstein. His inclusion actually makes sense, since he is well known for a quote about a hot stove and a pretty girl. Well, not a quote, really. It was the abstract from a paper he wrote for the Journal of Exothermic Science and Technology in 1938. If you don’t know it, in its full, original form, it goes like this: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That’s relativity.” His and others’ insights below:
Aug 25: “The strangest dog is the hot dog—it always feeds the hand that bites it,”—Sam Cowling
Aug 26: Women: The sex that believes that if you charge it, it’s not spending.
Aug 27: “Unless a woman can read a guy like a book he’ll never make her best fella list.”—Henry Morgan
Aug 28: The trouble with being faithful is that you got to have a chance to prove it.
Aug 29: Women often do not understand opinions but seldom mistake acts.
Aug 30: “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”—Albert Einstein
Aug 31: It's forbidden fruit that’s responsible for many a bad jam.
Brigitte Bardot really knew how to steam up a camera.
This week’s Goodtime Weekly Calendar image comes from Brigitte Bardot’s 1961 comedy Le bride sur le cou. In the movie she performs a little dance, first while hiding behind a towel, and later undraped. Lots of reviews describe the scene as a nude dance, but it isn’t really. Bardot was famous for showing her lovely backside, but in this particular scene her body is blurred because she faces the camera, and it’s obvious as well that she’s wearing something to cover what would have been a pretty sizeable ’60s bush. If you watch the scene, you’ll think you’ve suddenly developed cataracts. But shooting her through what looks like a thick layer of sauna steam makes sense within the film’s reality because the dance is basically the daydream of another character. Director Roger Vadim, who was also Bardot’s husband, created some sharp focus promo stills, and those are the source of the above image, with tinting and a nuclear explosion added by the good folks at her promotional agency Parimage. A couple of unaltered shots appear below, along with those weekly Goodtime quips we know you can’t live without. Oh, and to our French friends and readers, yes, we know that “bride” doesn’t mean the same in English. We’re just taking license because, hey, after four years of thinking up headers we’ll grasp at anything.
July 14: “Once you’ve seen a Brigitte Bardot movie you’ve seen her all!”—Henry Morgan
July 15: “Foreign pictures are getting so popular, they’re starting to make them in this country.”—Simmy Bow
July 16: Honey-dew vacation: Vacations you spent in hearing, “Honey, do this and Honey do that.”
July 17: “A learned man: One who used to keep his money in his sock till a midget picked his ankle.”—Mitch Miller
July 18: Henpecked husband: A man who gives his wife the best ears of his life.
July 19: Courtesy: Smiling while your departing guest holds the screen door open and lets the flies in.
July 20: Hangover: Something orbiting in the head you didn’t use the night before.
Be a darling and get me an iced tea with lemon.
The Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 opens the month of June with a tropical-themed shot by Tom Kelley, whose name may be unfamiliar but whose work isn’t, if you’ve ever seen those famous nudes of a young Marilyn Monroe stretched on red velvet. Kelley shot those timeless photos in May 1949 for a pin-up calendar, and they were acquired by Playboy for its debut issue in 1953. The model above is unknown to us, but we love the shot. Kelley uses a standard-issue studio backdrop, but makes magic with a hammock and a great reclining pose. Kelley has another page in this calendar but it won’t come up until December. Guess you’ll have to keep visiting our website, right? Don’t answer that. The quotations this week focus on the institution of marriage. See below.
June 2: June is the month when the bride who has never had a broom in her hand sweeps up the aisle.
June 3: “A bridegroom is a wolf who paid too much for a whistle.”—Henry Morgan
June 4: Generally, the bride looks stunning and the groom looks stunned.
June 5: “Marriage is like boxing: the preliminaries are often better than the main event.”—Quin Ryan
June 6: “A Hollywood wedding, as a rule, is generally a retake.”—Rip Taylor
June 7: “15 percent of all tornadoes in this country fall in June. And so do most marriages.”—Phil Bowman
June 8: “There’s no use giving the groom a shower because he’s all washed up anyway.”—Henry Morgan
Gowland takes his camera underwater with perfect results.
This week’s image from the Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 features glamour model Joanne Arnold and was made by Peter Gowland, whose name is probably familiar to all the photographers out there, but perhaps not to everyone else. Gowland, the son of actor Gibson Gowland and actress Sylvia Andrew, was not only one of the most famous glamour photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, but he also built highly precise cameras that are still sought after today. These cameras ranged from handheld to studio-sized, and he also built special underwater cameras, one of which we can assume he used in making the image above. Gowland’s work appeared in too many magazines to name, and he shot everyone from Tallulah Bankhead to Muhammad Ali during a career that only ended with his death in 2010. There are several more Gowland images in the Goodtime Calendar—none of which have ever appeared online as far as we know—and they’ll be coming up in due time. Calendar text appears below.
May 12: Mother’s Day. Today a fella can tell his wife truthfully that he’s off to see his best girl.
May 13: “A lot of self-made men should deny it.”—Henry Morgan
May 14: A girl used to get her good looks from her mother; now from the beauty parlor.
May 15: Parents used to worry when their teenagers were out driving—now it’s their parking.
May 16: “In Hollywood many a girl carries a torch for a man… she doesn’t trust him in the dark.”—Peggie Castle
May 17: “We doubt that swimming is good for the figure. Ever take a good look at the whale?”—Alex Dreier
May 18: “A deep sea diver got a message: ‘Come up quickly—the ship is sinking!”—Simmy Bow
