'Here they are - Jayne Mansfield' a TV presenter once quipped, making her the perfect subject for 3D
The greatest show on earth is rock and rolling to a close and I’m missing it already. This year’s celebrity Big Brother will be the last one made and with sex in the first reel it’s crashing its way to a climax that will have to be scripted by Charlie Brooker to top the story so far.
MC Davina McCall is still the hottest mum in the playground and inside the house the slebs are slugging it out with what limited faculties they can muster. Along with the sulky teenage vampire and the woman who sounds a bit like the queen are a charming and emotionally intelligent cross-dressing cage-fighter and a peace ‘n’ love Christian, boiling in his own righteousness and a prayer away from heart attack. What’s not to love?
Critics argue that it’s got nowhere else to go but I can think of a few ways to give the format another dimension. Give the inmates their drugs, for a start, or better still each other’s drugs. That should make for an entertaining evening. The real shame is that it all had to end before the advent of 3D TV. Walking around inside Ivana Trump’s wrinkles or flinching from Baldwin’s jabbing finger would have the nation back in their millions but it’s an innovation too late. The first two losers have already sped off in limos to the comfort of clinics and cocktails and the rest are left blinking in the spotlights, half mad and with only each other for company.
That’s always been a description of celebrity. This week’s book, the first of the year, features Jayne Mansfield, the first of the modern B-listers who lived and died in flashbulbs. She was the poor man’s Marilyn Monroe and her car crash career of sex, drugs, fame and shame ended logically under a truck on U.S. Highway 90 in 1967. She was made for the media and exploited it for a living, popping out of dresses and moving briskly from marriage to affair via scandal and disgrace. I love her.
She had the sense to appear in the first major studio film to feature nudity, Promises Promises, and the nous to do a few sessions in front of the new fangled 3D cameras that were being touted as the next big thing. Those snaps are the basis for this week’s book, actually a slim little magazine. The introduction announces that a snapper with her own fame, one Margette, took the photographs and this is their first publication.
Written two decades after her death, adding yet another dimension to the exploitation that framed her life.
Like the effects it promises to deliver the mag is a con. It looks as if it’s vintage 1950s but it’s actually from August 1987, one of a series published by The 3-D Zone which include Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The 3-D Presidents. Without the glasses it’s a collection of blurred photographs interspersed with comic strips but put them on and hey presto – it’s exactly the same except it makes your eyes hurt.
Although as old as photography itself that extra dimension didn’t really work in the fifties and it was no better in the eighties. A generation later the tech has caught up with the expectation. A decade from now we’ll all be watching starlets spiral downwards in crystal clear 3D and this week’s book will be in demand as collectors seek to order and chronicle the phenomenon. The Mansfield aura means there are no copies of this issue for sale anywhere on the net but you can find others from the series here.
As you can see I’ve added a new dimension of my own to the site by including a blog for your comments. Apart from that it will be the same as last year. Old books are not just dusty brown things – they’re beautiful, relevant, stylish and cool. I’ll also be providing the usual hints, tips and new ideas for collecting so you can stay ahead of your enemies, and indeed friends. Join me each Sunday evening here on an new look at old books.
Bought in January 2009 from A and Y Cumming in Lewes for £20.
Good skit Mr Lines. Wondering whether Katie P and her like will eventually take their place alongside Jayne among the pantheon of good time gal-godesses? Or do the tits and sleeze celebs of today lack the collectability of their past equivalents?
I wonder how many of your readers actually were around to see 3D films back in the fifties? I was and as a kid went to a couple of them in my home town. I recall them as being perfunctory in plot which mainly revolved around setting up situations where fights could break out and chairs (for instance) could be thrown suddenly at the screen and thus make the paying public duck in unison. It was a bit primitive, was never going to last but was quite effective in its own little way.
This website is great!
Woah there Mr Lines – Would your record seller mate say that vinyl was dead just
because it has been replaced by new and improved ways for the common clay to spend their wad? Has not the printed paper book now achieved its inevitable (collectible) apotheosis, as with the 12″ extended version gatefold sleeve?
You can check out a list of 3D books at http://www.totally3d.co.uk/3d-books.html