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The Femlin is a character used on the Party Jokes page of Playboy magazine. Created in 1955 by LeRoy Neiman, Femlins became a mainstay of the magazine for more than five decades.
Some Femlin figurines produced in the 1960s have become much sought-after by collectors.
Femlins were created by sport illustrator LeRoy Neiman in 1955 when publisher/editor Hugh Hefner decided the Party Jokes page needed a visual element. [1] The name is a portmanteau of "female" and "gremlin." They are portrayed as mischievous black and white female sprites, apparently 10–12 in (250–300 mm) tall, wearing only opera gloves, stockings and high heel shoes. [2] They are usually drawn in two or three panel vignettes, interacting with various life-sized items such as shoes, jewelry, neckties and such.
Femlins have appeared on the Party Jokes page in every issue since their creation, and were featured on the magazine's cover numerous times, either as drawn by Neiman or in photographed tableaus of sculpted clay models. Neiman reportedly submitted two drawings of Femlin to Playboy every month for more than 50 years, working on the character late into his life, before his death at the age of 91 in 2012. [3] [4]
Femlins have been featured on a variety of merchandise throughout the years, such as ashtrays, shotglasses, and coffee mugs. A set of four plaster statues, the tallest approximately 14" high, was advertised for sale in the back pages of Playboy in 1963. (Like the drawings on which they were based, these statues were not anatomically detailed.) Originally priced at US$7.50 apiece in 1963, a complete set of the four statuettes was auctioned off by Leland's auction house in June 2004 for US$7,904.80, according to a Google cache of the auction.
In 2004, Playboy produced a new, updated figurine of a Femlin sitting in a champagne glass. Though now out of production, these are extremely common, and should not be confused with the older figurines.
Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles that provoked charges of obscenity.
Playboy is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother.
Roy Fox Lichtenstein was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the premise of pop art through parody. Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style. His artwork was considered to be "disruptive". He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting". His paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.
A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings. Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, and can serve a political purpose, be drawn solely for entertainment, or for a combination of both. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.
A Playboy Bunny is a waitress who works at a Playboy Club and selected through standardized training. Their costumes were made up of lingerie, inspired by the tuxedo-wearing Playboy rabbit mascot. This costume consisted of a strapless corset teddy, bunny ears, black sheer-to-waist pantyhose, a bow tie, a collar, cuffs and a fluffy cottontail. In more recent Playboy Clubs, such as Sin City that was re-opened in 2006, Playboy bunnies wore slightly altered costumes that were based on the original bunny suit.
Michel Vaillant is a French car racing comics series created in 1957 by French cartoonist Jean Graton and published originally by Le Lombard. Later, Graton published the albums by himself when he founded Graton éditeur in 1982. Michel Vaillant is the main character of the eponymous series, a French racing car driver who competes mainly in Formula One.
See also: 1964 in comics, 1966 in comics, 1960s in comics and the list of years in comics
Marmaduke is a newspaper comic strip revolving around the Winslow family and their Great Dane, Marmaduke, drawn by Brad Anderson from June 1954 to 2015.
Arthur Paul was an American graphic designer and the founding art director of Playboy magazine. During his time at Playboy, he commissioned illustrators and artists, including Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, and James Rosenquist, as part of the illustration liberation movement.
LeRoy Neiman was an American artist known for his brilliantly colored, expressionist paintings and screenprints of athletes, musicians, and sporting events.
Harold Stanley Marcus was president (1950–1972) and later chairman of the board (1972–1976) of the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas, which his father and aunt had founded in 1907. During his tenure at the company, he also became a published author, writing his memoir Minding the Store and also a regular column in The Dallas Morning News. After Neiman Marcus was sold to Carter Hawley Hale Stores, Marcus initially remained in an advisory capacity to that company, but later began his own consulting business, which continued until his death. He served his local community as an avid patron of the fine arts and as a civic leader. In a chapter titled "Mr. Stanley" — the name by which Marcus was known locally for decades — in his 1953 work Neiman-Marcus, Texas, Frank X. Tolbert called him "Dallas's most internationally famous citizen" and worthy of being called "the Southwest's No. 1 businessman-intellectual."
Sara Blakely is an entrepreneur and businesswoman who founded the well known shapewear brand Spanx. She was born February 27, 1971, in Clearwater, Florida. She attended Florida State University and received her Bachelor of Arts/Science in communications.
Jayne Mansfield was an actress, singer, playmate and stage show performer who had an enormous impact on popular culture of the late 1950s despite her limited success in Hollywood. She has remained a well-known subject in popular culture ever since. During a period between 1956 and 1957, there were about 122,000 lines of copy and 2,500 photographs that appeared in newspapers. In an article on her in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (1999), Dennis Russel said that "Although many people have never seen her movies, Jayne Mansfield remains, long after her death, one of the most recognizable icons of 1950s celebrity culture." In the novel Child of My Heart (2004) by Alice McDermott, a National Book Award winning writer, the 1950s is referred to as "in those Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield days". R. L. Rutsky and Bill Osgerby has claimed that it was Mansfield along with Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot who made the bikini popular.
Tom Kelley Sr. was an American photographer who photographed Hollywood celebrities in the 1940s and 1950s. He is best known for his iconic 1949 nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe, which were distributed widely as calendar art—one of which was featured in the inaugural issue of Playboy magazine in 1953. He paid Marilyn Monroe only $50 dollars for the shoot.
The year 2012 in art involves some significant events.
Woman with Flowered Hat is a 1963 pop art painting with Magna on canvas by Roy Lichtenstein. The work is based on a Pablo Picasso portrait of Dora Maar. In May 2013, it sold for a record price for a Lichtenstein work.
Roy Raymonde (1929–2009) was a British editorial cartoonist best known for his work in Playboy, Punch and The Sunday Telegraph. He was much admired for his stylish comic drawings and flamboyant use of colour.