Besides the “wispy” sort of drawing style, the thing that identifies the above illustration as from the late 1960s is, to use the technical jargon, the nipplization of the breastages. Which is to say, a fully naked breast has a nipple…and thus thru the 1950s and early 60s, breasts couldn’t be naked…showing most of it, but not the nipple, made that so.
Granted, the whole point of Gentlemen of a Certain Age is that in the old days, titillating didn’t mean anatomical…in fact, it could be accomplished clothed. The 2 examples below show an interesting contrast in styles between the 50s (left) and the 60s (right).
Still, there was a simple way to suggest a truly nude front…and that was with a completely nude back. And in researching this blog, I was dismayed to discover that one of my favorite bareback movie posters, from 1958, is a fake…
Look carefully…it’s 100,000 BC, and the invention of the flesh-colored — aw, nuts! You’ll also notice that Robert Vaughn is in the title role, albeit at age 26. It is often said this was his first movie but that is incorrect. According to the Internet Movie Date Base, it was the Man from UNCLE’s 3rd feature film, not counting “The Ten Commandments” where he was an extra, along with dozens of others, including Robert Fuller…and Herb Alpert of all people. And he’d been on numerous TV shows starting in 1955.
Getting back to…um, backs…they came in 3 varieties…with ass-crack (right), without ass-crack (center), and with a missing ass-crack (left). Not for nothing, but was this particular cover of “The Maltese Falcon” promising something that the actual text didn’t deliver? And not just Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s semi-nudity, but also what appears to be the unspooling of a man’s brains from his skull? Don’t recall any of that in the movie version, altho it’s been a while.
At any rate, glorious backs, eh? And if she would just turn around, you would see you-know-what…or maybe you wouldn’t…if she were wearing one of these odd contraptions that failed to catch on in 1968…tricky, very tricky…