Featured A Very Good Day

Found these nice photos at a flea market. These are the ones I wanted. But, I had to take some others to get these. Which also means I spent a little more than I would normally. I think the painting on paper was worth the price.
This kid looks like it should be a vampire.

When Santa was scary.

This is just a nice looking family.

Cowgirls

Starlet wannabe

This woman is GORGEOUS

The painting by Gastauer. I can't find anything about them. This is just really cool.

This portrait is about 16" x 20". It's signed by the Cardinal. I did an image search and this portrait was used in Archbishop Williams High School yearbooks back in 64 and 66 (from what my old computer tells me). I had to ask AI to tell me who the Cardinal was. It was Richard Cushing. A famous Archbishop of the Catholic Church.

He married JFK and Jackie and eulogized JFK at his funeral.

If that wasn't cool enough. There was a folder for the photo and a large mailer. I took them both. I didn't realize the mailer wasn't for the Cardinal's photo, it had this print in it. It's got a lot of foxing. But, it's #1 of 250 by Bob Dixon.


There was a letter attached to the print from a Medical Center that was selling these prints. It was addressed to Coburn Britton who was a well known publisher. According to AI, his most famous series was called PROSE. But, the coolest thing was at the bottom of the folder, a small (stenographer sized note) typed letter to Coburn from his father who was worried about the trouble Coburn was in. His father was author Edward Dahlberg. Who supposedly wasn't a well liked man.

 

I do not know who Gastauer is, but I like the image! It would look perfect as a science fiction pulp cover. It's in the correct proportion of Strange Stories. I just superimposed the text from an existing cover onto your image.

 

That looks like a real magazine cover. Very neat.

 

It's certainly illustrative. And may well have been a copy.

Debora

 

Neat!

 

Nice painting!

Is the picture with Santa a real photo postcard? Looks like one of those where the subjects (the two girls) are sitting in a painted scene. The tree at the left might have been real, but the rest all painted? Santa could have been a real person, too. I'm not sure about that. If painted, he's done with more detail than the rest of the background. So maybe real.

 

It is a real postcard from way back when. I 100% agree with your assessment of what's real and fake. More than likely Santa is real. Which is just SCARY!

 

Something does seem odd about him... somewhat unsettling and creepy, but the girls don't look scared! I just noticed, since he is wearing a fake beard, he is probably real. Any respectable painting of a Santa wouldn't have a mustache and beard looking like that!

 

It's a mix. The faces were real photographs, printed into blank areas on the card. I'd bet these were made for one family, and that there are other versions with different faces. It was a vibe, if a creepy one.

You had me at Henry Kuttner. He was a Golden Age writer, married to CL Moore. She's the one people still know, if they know either name.

 

Not sure about that. It could be, but there are many other RPPCs with studio props from that time period (fake airplanes, trains, etc.) that are not altered in that way. This web page shows several of the type: https://www.ephemerasociety.org/poseurs/

It was just people sitting or standing in the surroundings. In this Santa picture, the arm of the girl to our left is casting a shadow on the fake sleigh. I do see why it looks like they were printed in, since the girls look darker than everything else. But I'm not completely sure, since they seem like all of those others in nature.

 

That's a possibility too. Either way it's a strange image. I bet the Nightmare Before Christmas/Krampus crowd would go for it.

 

That Christmas backdrop seems to have been widely used.

Debora

 

I found a few online yesterday, too.

 

The more kids, the creepier? If I were an Odd Art person, I'd amass a collection of these and frame them together.