Chicago Spanking Review Special Presentation

Humorama Spanking Positions

We've posted a few of these models in various spanking positions in the Forum under the title "Missed Opportunities in Humorama" but we'd like to add a few more, perhaps stretching the definition of "spanking position" to include a few very spankable models not exactly in position, and to begin with we'd like to also include some "positional" cartoons.

First up are these secretaries' bottoms in two versions of the time-honored "bend over the files" gag. This gag has appeared in cartoons, movies, and TV shows (Get Smart, Benny Hill) - in fact, the basic idea of finding some flimsy excuse for a pretty girl to face away from the audience and bend over probably goes back to the days of Burlesque, which we're a little too young to remember. We have documented an instance of this from the film version of the musical Gypsy, where the stripper also gets a paddle swat after she assumes the position, making it that much better!

The coloring and low resolution in the cartoon at left indicates that we took it from the front or back cover of some digest, but we forgot to note which one it was. We do not have a full-size version, but it appears to be the work of Lowell Hoppes, a frequent Humorama contributor who unfortunately did no "spankers". It's too bad, because he does the bending over position very well here with legs nicely aligned and knees kept perfectly straight. The cartoon at right is by Leo Garel and came from the September 1966 issue of Romp.

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Strangely similar (o.k., it's not so strange) is this one (below left), also set in an office, where the girls bend over a window sill intead of the filing cabinet. It gets the job done.

Below right: we return to the stage as an entire line of chorus girls bends over simultaneously! Good hands-on-knees paddling position. You've got to admire their choreography.

From Comedy (July 1967). Click to double-size.

Cartoon by Lloyd Baker, from Gaze (June 1958). Click to double-size.

Frank Beaven, who did several true "spankers", gives us a pretty salesgirl bending over into spankable position here. And what is she selling? Hairbrushes! We have to wonder if Beaven intended to bring hairbrush spanking to mind.

George Troop provides a rare example of OTK positioning without any spanking: a very dedicated (or lascivious) tailor mends a female customer's panties without her having to remove them! He does pull them down, however, giving us another Humorama rarity - a completely bare bottom, although we don't actually get to see it clearly. This cartoon seems stranger the more you think about it, so we'll just try to enjoy the OTK position.

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From Gaze (August 1957). Click to double-size.

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Our last cartoon is the least in terms of spanking position - standing up with only a slight bending at the waist - but the most in terms of actually implying that a spanking might or even should occur. "You know what my husband would do to me if I just got a scratch on the car?" asks this wife, not knowing her own husband has just walked through the front door and appears to be taking aim with a rolled-up newspaper. Not the best implement (I tried one once), although Dick Van Dyke did use one on Mary Tyler Moore on the old Dick Van Dyke show, but we had to think about this for a while before deciding that it didn't qualify as an actual "spanker". Stiles does give us a fairly shapely target though, and doesn't have the thighs bulging out as he sometimes did.

So, did the wife get the swat one second later? We think there's a good chance. We'd also like to know what happened to Peggy (the other wife at the other end of the phone call) when her husband got home to find out she'd totaled their car (as we may infer since we know it's more than just a scratch). We think both wives should have gotten spanked - but then, we're slightly biased.

From the October 1964 issue of Stare (Web-Ed's collection. Click to double-size.) Stare, by the way, was not a good place to find spanking cartoons - the early issues didn't have many cartoons of any type, and the only "spankers" we know about in it only showed up after first being printed somewhere else.

From the October 1954 issue of Stare (Web-Ed's collection. Click to double-size.)

Next, let's take a look at some pin-ups (c'mon guys - force yourselves!). These first two aren't really in spankable position, but to us they do seem just plain spankable. On the far left we have Laya Raki, a German-born actress whose photos occasionally wound up in the pages of Humorama. Now, one common "flaw" that many women have (through no fault of their own) is too-short buttocks, that is, the distance from the top to the bottom of the bottom is disproportionately short. It's like men with too-short biceps - nothing you can do about it. You can certainly spank these women, but it seems to us there's just not as much target area as we'd like. You can see that's one problem Miss Raki didn't have - we can easily imagine fitting a 3-1/2 inch wide paddle right across her seat with ease!

At near left, we have Kim Novak, from exactly ten years earlier in 1954. Now by that time, she had moved from Chicago to L.A. and was just starting to break into pictures there. She ended up with a more successful film career than Laya, but we'd guess the photo we see here dated back two or three years earlier to when she was still modeling in Chicago. Humorama digests featured many good-looking models, including of course Bettie Page, but Novak may very well have been the most beautiful woman ever to appear in its pages. No, she's not in spanking position, so we'll just have to use our imaginations. We certainly have no trouble picturing her as a spankee!

From the July 1955 issue of Comedy (Web-Ed's collection. Click to double-size.)

From the July 1962 issue of Comedy (Web-Ed's collection. Click to double-size.)

We mentioned Bettie Page a moment ago, so lets take a look at her where she's at her bikini-best! Bettie did a lot modeling in bikinis when she wasn't doing silly bondage stuff for Irving Klaw. We think her appeal as a model was her unique combination of a good though not spectacular figure along with her girl-next-door looks - it made her appear more available, like a friend of your big sister's, someone you might actually be able to date as opposed to blonde bombshells like Marilyn Monroe or Kim Novak.

Bettie had a nice, spankable bottom as can be seen from these water recreation-themed pictures in which she bends over slightly, revealing her assets.

From the October 1971 issue of Romp (Web-Ed's collection. Click to double-size.)

Sticking with swimsuits for a moment, Carol McBee advises us (or the editor does, assuming her voice) that "Most girls who exercise have an end in view!" Not a great joke, and it may have been recycled from Abe Goodman's days as editor (Goodman couldn't still have been editing Humorama during the 70's and 80's), but it gets the job done.

Below, Margaret Lee enjoys a nice view of what may be one of the Great Lakes rather than the ocean, while we enjoy a nice view of her rear end. We don't recall seeing any other photos of either Lee or McBee.

From the October 1969 issue of Romp (Web-Ed's collection. Click to double-size.)

From the October 1964 issue of Stare (Click to double-size.)

From the April 1967 issue of Stare (Click to double-size.)

From the September 1967 issue of Romp (Click to double-size.)

Above we have two very similar poses and two completely unintelligible gags. Both of them came from Stare, which perhaps was trying to live up to its name and provide more eye candy than the clever wordplay one might naively hope to find in other Humorama digests like Jest and Joker. Certainly any humor in these two pages was purely accidental, and they perhaps reveal why Humorama couldn't go on forever. Amazingly, it did stumble along (in reduced form) for another sixteen years after the second of these pictures were printed in 1967!

No attempt at humor is made at left except for Goodman's old and rather dim pun "Easy on the Ahs", but perhaps none is needed when Shirley Frey bends all the way down and touches her toes. Now, that's spanking position!

Like Bettie Page, Diane Webber (a/k/a Marguerite Empey, her real name) appeared both as a Playboy Playmate (twice!) and in various Humorama digests. We mentioned Bettie's "girl next door" appeal, but we think Diane was popular with the readers for a very different reason: as you can see by her pose below left, she was something of a free spirit who felt that clothes were optional. She was actually a practicing nudist (in her case, practice did make perfect), and in the 1950's it must have seemed to a lot of male readers that a girl like that just might be willing to try some other interesting ideas as well.

Diane also possessed distinctive features, a very fine figure, and a graceful physical appearance, which combined have made her very nearly as recognizable and well-remembered as Bettie herself. We almost forgot to mention one thing: she also had a very spankable bottom!

Let's try to get back to our alleged subject of spanking positions with Melissa Wright, who wasn't as well-known as Diane and Bettie, but did appear along with Diane in the April 1965 issue of Gaze. Actually, having the spankee place her knees on a chair only works well if she's kneeling over the back of it, usually with her hands on a second chair. The rear end dangling over the chair makes a difficult target, although we have seen several spanking drawings utilizing this strange position.

The duplicate picture of Melissa inset into the first is not our doing, and we have absolutely no idea why the photographer or editor would have placed it there.

Next up are a seemingly-matched pair of poses. First, the splash page of the May 1962 issue of Jest (left) features Carol Blake bending over for us to reveal her white panties.

We've always liked sheer-backed panties much more than white ones, and we like them even better when a model is stretching them tight by bending over! Pat Turner is the very pretty girl here (right) as seen in the April 1959 issue of Joker. The 3-cent stamp gag really dates this one, but Pat's attractive behind provides a timeless paddling temptation.

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Meg Myles, from the October 1961 issue of Gaze.

June Wilkinson, from the June 1960 issue of Stare. (click to double-size - heh-heh)

And speaking of matched sets, let's take a look at Meg Myles and June Wilkinson, who are fondly remembered for four very obvious reasons! There are a lot of photos of Meg and June on the web, but we haven't seen either of these before. Meg Myles was a pretty good vocalist, but her records weren't greeted with a whole lot of critical respect. It may have been that her physical characteristics got in the way, so to speak, or it may have been that her terrible movies like Satan in High Heels (with some equally-terrible songs for her to sing) simply dragged her down by the weight of their sheer awfulness.

We remember June from an old issue of Playboy. She wasn't the Playmate of the month, although we think she was a Bunny at one of the clubs or on the old Playboy After Dark TV show. There was a picture of her balancing two full champagne glasses on her bosom, a feat few women could equal and even fewer would think was a good idea to attempt. While neither June nor Meg is in what you could call a spankable position, we didn't have the heart to exclude them from this feature, and given their measurements we're not expecting a whole lot of complaints on the subject. June's photo does bear the legend "target for tonight", but we don't think that was a reference to her bottom, unfortunately.

Irish McCalla, from the December 1960 issue of Gaze.

A beach bunny obligingly bends over on the cover of the August 1956 issue of Rogue.

Before she was TV's Sheena, Irish McCalla was a pin-up girl, and her photos turned up occasionally in the pages of Humorama digests. We're not sure why the photographer had her wear skiis to the beach, unless it was because trying to use the ski poles would cause her to bend over somewhat.

Rogue was not a Humorama publication, but we didn't know where else to fit this cover shot in. The cover was apparently intended to reference an article called "Bottoms Up Abroad" which, if we had been able to obtain a copy, might have provided even more material for us to use here.

We generally love seeing models in a bending-over position, but this one, from the October 1954 issue of Stare really makes us wonder about the photographer. The shot is at least a spankable position, but why did he use a cramped little room for his setting? And why did he have model June McCall balancing on her head, like a before-its-time attempt at break dancing, when a straight "touch your toes" instruction would have filled the bill nicely? Maybe she had been doing a head stand and he clicked the shutter just as her legs came down from the wall.

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These next three all bear a suspicious similarity to each other and to June McCall's pose above. We posted them in the forum some time ago, but they're worth seeing again. All of them take place at the beach, and all of them feature the model bending over nicely, leading us to believe they were taken by the same photographer. In the first, model Barbara James is wearing fishnet stockings, rather unusual swim attire.

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Next to assume the position for our approval is Nan White, with a wide stance and a nice smile.

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Last to stretch the material tight for us is Vicki Carpenter, who by bending over the furthest while maintaining a nice wide stance probably provides the best target for the paddle of the three. We'd bet that when the photographer told her he was going to feature her best side, she didn't know this was what he had in mind!

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Some time after we first put this article together, we got a few more digests and there's no way we could have left out this picture of Sally Mansfield from the June 1963 Laugh Digest. No doubt this is the same shutterbug who gave us the proceeding three, but this is the best by far in terms of clarity and pose - yowza! We've always thought that photographers must use a certain amount of tact when posing models for glamor shots, but how could you gently coax a model into this position?

"O.K. Sally, now keep your knees perfectly straight, bend over, and hold your ankles." That's not exactly subtle, but it's the only way we know because it's what we'd say if we were going to paddle her in this position. Credit Sally for keeping a big smile on her face all during this shot, which is putting a big smile on our face right now as she provides us with a perfect target!

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It's hard to remember that far back, but we think we started this article with an erudite discussion of the sophisticated "bend over the files" cartoon gag. Let's return to it long enough to see a real-life version from the April 1961 issue of Gaze. Lorraine Miller does the bending over here, providing us with a fine opportunity to administer some office discipline, at least in our imagination.

"This will help you remember to check your spelling more carefully next time, Lorraine. Bend over!"

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Spanking position? Not really, but spankable? Oh, yeah! This is the best black & white picture of British model Gaby Ryke I have ever seen, and perhaps the best picture overall, which is saying something because as I've mentioned before I greatly prefer my erotica in color. This one beautifully displays Gaby's spectacular figure, and came from the July 1966 issue of Fun House Comedy.

And since we really should conclude with a model in actual spanking position, let's sally forth with Sally Newton and her Bare-Bottom Brigade! Until we found this recently, we had practically forgotten about the occasional feature known as the "Rear Admirable". This is a typically Abe Goodman-sounding play on the rank of Rear Admiral, although we don't remember seeing it in the old Humorama digests that were printed before the late 1960's, when the digests were replaced by full-sized magazines (two of which, Romp and Joker, kept their old digest names), and so we're not sure that it was in fact Goodman who coined the term. "Rear Admirable" is the kind of feature you'd never see today, so hopelessly dated it makes you laugh out loud, but you've got to love it for its innocent (by today's standards) appreciation of the female derriere!

This one came from the February 1973 issue of Popular Jokes, and we think you'll have to agree that Sally's rear is indeed admirable, not to mention spankable! Her head is up, arching her back and turning her bottom up to meet the implement of our choice - excellent position! There are some pillows readily available for her to sit upon afterward, too. Meanwhile, the other three girls have obligingly lowered their panties, ready to accept their bare-bottomed correction!

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We saved a surprise for last: probably the longest legs ever seen in the pages of the Humorama digests had to belong to six-foot-tall Julie Newmar! We were surprised ourselves, because unlike Irish McCalla and Kim Novak, who had begun their careers as models, Julie had been a dancer and actress right from the start, never having been a professional model as far as we know. That makes us wonder where this amazing photo of Julie bending over could have come from. The explanation that makes the most sense to us is that someone snapped this picture during a dance rehearsal while Julie was limbering up, although dance studios aren't generally as well-lit as this setting appears to be. Maybe Julie did one or two modeling gigs in-between acting jobs very early in her career. Either way, this one's a rare find indeed!

Julie was in a number of films and TV shows, with perhaps her best-remembered role being that of the Catwoman on the old Batman series. We mentioned earlier that Meg Myles wasn't taken that seriously as a vocalist, and some good-looking actresses had a similar problem. We think Julie was one of them, and that she deserved more acclaim because she was generally as good as a given part would allow her to be. We know she worked hard on her acting, taking it more seriously than perhaps most Hollywood producers were willing to take her. And despite her imposing stature and confident manner, no actress could be more feminine than Julie when she wanted to be - or when Hollywood's typically-weak scripts would allow her to be.

O.K., these two aren't from Humorama, but I like Julie, so let's enjoy them anyway. First, here she is as Catwoman on the old Batman series. This was the most spankable position from the show I could find her in.

Second, here's Julie from a source I can't identify, but what a pose! This is very close to the classic hands-on-knees paddling position - if only it were in color!