Unsung Masterpieces


If the subject matter hadn’t been considered so ephemeral, these paintings of Thelma Todd, Gloria Swanson, and Norma Shearer might be hanging in museums right now. As it is, the canvases were probably junked years ago, their artists long forgotten. Like so much of the talent behind those great old pulp magazine and paperback covers, the people who contributed art to movie fan magazines never got the recognition they deserved. Graphics and mastheads obscured a lot of their work as well. Readers would sometimes go to torturous lengths to cut around these images on the cover in order to preserve them. As nice as these reproductions look, you can imagine how beautiful the original paintings would have been. Some of them are bound to have survived. They’d be highly collectable now.