Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Popculture sirens - Betty of two worlds

Once again this is not the post I expected to do next but it´s time for another tribute to one of pop cultures most famous cult sirens. After our last post about Wonder Woman Lynda Carter today famous pin up model Betty Brosmer celebrates her 75th anniversary who was once described as a combination of Jessica Rabbit and Traci Lords.


Betty Brosmer will go down in pin up history for many reasons, the most notable of them being her very pronounced hourglass figure.


During her heyday in the 1950's, her measurements were somewhere around 38 - 18 - 36.


Brosmer was the epitome of the Californian girl, with that girl - next - door look not unlike Marilyn Monroe.


But whereas Monroe's and other glamour model's careers focused on the movies, Brosmer stayed with modeling, both commercial and pin up. Betty's classic beauty put her on over 300 magazine covers, which covered everything from movie mags, gossip papers, pulp magazines, funny mags and books.


She was in thousands of magazine spreads. Her face appeared on full - page ads in Life, Time, Fortune, Look, Saturday Evening Post and other leading magazines of her day.


She won over 50 beauty contests before the age of 20.


Betty, the ultimate Calendar Girl, appeared on hundreds of calendars, she was on numerous music album covers, on billboards in Times Square and billboards across the country and on life - size cutouts in retail stores selling Kodak film, Thom McAn shoes and other products.


Every time you see a green tree hanging in an auto windshield, think of Betty. It was her effervescent smile on display cards that started that trend and made these tree air fresheners famous throughout the world. They are still sold today.


Betty was the first model to receive residuals every time her picture was published.


She was one of the first models to own the rights to many of her negatives and photos.


She was the highest paid model of that time period.


Betty was the first true Super Model and a personification of what the word " glamour " really means : beauty, allure, charm, elegance, magnetism, desirability and charisma.


These words have all been used in publications describing Betty, including awesome, engaging, captivating, irresistible, dazzling, radiant, exquisite, enchanting, stunning, fabulous and sensational.


It could not have been said any better than by Steve Sullivan, foremost author of several books specializing in the Great Glamour Girls of the 20th Century. In one of his books he wrote about Betty : "...there will never be another glamour girl like Betty Brosmer.


Her classically sunny, all - American blonde beauty was a worthy counterpart to that of Marilyn Monroe.


Her magnificently contoured - beyond - perfection figure was without equal.


Further, there was a glow, an incandescence about Betty that was not to be found in any other model.


And the total package was so utterly winning that Betty -- without every revealing much more epidermis than one would be likely to see at the beach --


was the definitive super model of the 1950's."

At one point in the 50's she she turned down Playboy because of her rule of never doing anything more than just chaste cheesecake shots.


In the 1960's, she stopped her pin up career when she married publisher of fitness magazines Joe Weider. Since then, she has been a regular model and writer for his publications and a role model for good health and fitness in later age.


What is kind of ironic is the fact that Joe Weider prohibited female contestants for fitness competitions to do nude photoshoots while being married to a former pulp magazine model. Of course he changed his mind on this matter when he realized that it would help promote female bodybuilding as something sexy and attractive.

There is really not much to find about Betty on wikipedia so here are the pages I used for research on this post ( I´m not THAT old, thank you very much ) where you can find more pictures :

betty brosmer number 1 on the ultimate hourglass figure list

betty brosmer on javas bachelor pad

betty brosmer fansite english / german / spanish

tribute to betty brosmer / betty weider homepage

Today´s video has to be - of course - of Betty Brosmer just for those who think all the pictures were altered. This is the real deal, baby.



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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

All I can say is DROP DEAD GORGOUS

Anonymous said...

I have to agree....never been another close to her total appeal, never will be.

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