Rating: 
Summary: Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia
Review: Anyone with an interest in beautiful, glamorous women past and present is urged to check out "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" by Steve Sullivan. Whether you're looking for incisive biographical sketches or merely gorgeous photographs, you'll find them here.The research that went into this book was staggering, with biographical entries on 1,750 women from the 1890s right up to today. Many of these women have never been covered in any previous book, to my knowledge. This goes far, far beyond the obvious glamour superstars of the past century. You'll also learn about an amazing array of cult movie starlets, burlesque queens, figure and fashion models, Broadway performers, singers and dancers...virtually any category of female entertainers that you can name is represented in this remarkable volume. One of the many pleasurable things about the book is that it's a broswer's delight. Pop it open to any page (320 pages in all), and you'll find something to genuinely engage the mind or please the eye. The biographical entries are detailed enough to be extremely informative--date and place of birth, date of death if applicable, vital statistics, career summary, key movie or TV appearances, major magazine appearances--but also concise and to the point. And the book's 400-plus photos include some real stunners, including a color section. It is very clear that author Steve Sullivan wrote this book out of deep affection and admiration for the women he profiles. He set out to pay tribute to many hundreds of women who have never received proper appreciation in print before. That goal was achieved, and then some. "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" is fully worthy of a 5-star recommendation!
Rating: 
Summary: Ill Conceived
Review: First, the good news. Steve Sullivan introduces the reader to (or reminds him of) such legendary glamour girls as Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield. In addition, Mr. Sullivan hasn't neglected such less well-known lovelies as Barbara Nichols. Now, for the bad news, which outweighs the good. There aren't 1,000 glamour girls -- one would be hard pressed to find 100 truly worthy of the title. Equally misguided is Mr. Sullivan's gratuitous and hopelessly arbitrary attempt to rate these women in descending order. Why not just list them chronologically? Last, but not least, Mr. Sullivan's assessment of what glamour is leaves an enormous amount to be desired. For example, what on earth is Madonna, that apotheosis of vulgarity, doing in a book about glamour girls? And what's with including porn stars, who are the very antithesis of glamour? Too bad, because it could have been so good.
Rating: 
Summary: What part of "glamour" confused you, Steve?
Review: For those of you who like to skim, here's the short review: cheesy, self-promoting "nudie" stars mixed with actresses we've all heard too much about. "Glamour" has nothing to do with it, only a woman's breast size (every bio includes a woman's measurements). And for those looking for, as cheese-ball Steve would put it, "mammarian satisfaction", look somewhere else: the pictures here are terrible, small and silly. Any other review that says otherwise was probably written by a friend of the publisher. Look for better information on many websites. For those of you, like me, who picked up this book thinking you would actually learn something about glamour girls (maybe get some movie recommendations)--wow, no chance. Here's the world according to Steve: Audrey Hepburn gets this rating: 96. He comments: "[she substituted] a delicacy masking inner strength in place of sex appeal". What a wonderfully backhanded comment. Kitten Natividad, on the other hand, has a ranking higher-than-Audrey ranking of 62 (as does other classless, un-glamour girls like Heather Locklear and Pam Anderson(!)). His comments on Kitten: "The essential quality that endears [her] is not her seductive face or epic-scaled breasts; it is her utter joy in performing." Um, yeah, *that's* what you're selling. The writing is hackneyed, and the constant references to his other books weigh the whole effort with the smell of despiration. I'm not even going to sell this book or give it away--it goes right in the trash.
Rating:
Summary: Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia
Review: From the perspective of a longtime collector of vintage men's magazines and glamour/pin-up memorabilia, "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" is a book I've been waiting for all my life. The concept is terrific, and the execution is even better; it's a slam-dunk 5-star winner. Hundreds of the 1,700-plus women covered in this remarkable book are ladies I'd long admired, but knew relatively little about. Author Steve Sullivan rectifies that problem with the in-depth information and sizzling photos provided here. Just a couple of examples: 1970s burlesque star Morganna was widely known as "The Kissing Bandit" for running out on baseball fields and kissing players. But thanks to the Glamour Encyclopedia, now I know when and where she was born, what she's been up to in recent years, what her best magazine appearances were, and an address to write to her. (The book includes hundreds of fan-mail and website addresses for pin-up stars past and present.) The photo is terrific, too. Men's mag collectors may vaguely recall the name of Jane Dolinger, who was featured in many magazines during the '60s. But author Sullivan gives us the full lowdown on her biography, including the seven books she wrote about her adventures visiting with headhunters in Ecuador, exploring voodoo rites in Trinidad, etc., accompanied by one of her most gorgeous magazine cover photos. As we learn in this book, many of these glamour gals led pretty remarkable lives--they had far more going on than met the eye! I could give many other examples, but you're better off discovering them for yourself. "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" is an absolute treasure trove of information and scintillating photos (both clad and unclad!) on more than 100 years of the world's most exciting women. This is a book I'm going to spend many hours delving into at my leisure, and I think I'll enjoy every minute.
Rating:
Summary: Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia
Review: From the perspective of a longtime collector of vintage men's magazines and glamour/pin-up memorabilia, "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" is a book I've been waiting for all my life. The concept is terrific, and the execution is even better; it's a slam-dunk 5-star winner. Hundreds of the 1,700-plus women covered in this remarkable book are ladies I'd long admired, but knew relatively little about. Author Steve Sullivan rectifies that problem with the in-depth information and sizzling photos provided here. Just a couple of examples: 1970s burlesque star Morganna was widely known as "The Kissing Bandit" for running out on baseball fields and kissing players. But thanks to the Glamour Encyclopedia, now I know when and where she was born, what she's been up to in recent years, what her best magazine appearances were, and an address to write to her. (The book includes hundreds of fan-mail and website addresses for pin-up stars past and present.) The photo is terrific, too. Men's mag collectors may vaguely recall the name of Jane Dolinger, who was featured in many magazines during the '60s. But author Sullivan gives us the full lowdown on her biography, including the seven books she wrote about her adventures visiting with headhunters in Ecuador, exploring voodoo rites in Trinidad, etc., accompanied by one of her most gorgeous magazine cover photos. As we learn in this book, many of these glamour gals led pretty remarkable lives--they had far more going on than met the eye! I could give many other examples, but you're better off discovering them for yourself. "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" is an absolute treasure trove of information and scintillating photos (both clad and unclad!) on more than 100 years of the world's most exciting women. This is a book I'm going to spend many hours delving into at my leisure, and I think I'll enjoy every minute.
Rating: 
Summary: I just want to correct something
Review: Given its subject matter, there really should be a photo for every entry. Also the picture in the color section labeled "Heather Thomas" is clearly "Donna Dixon". Hopefully this is the only mislabeled photo in an otherwise very good book.
Rating:
Summary: very good book
Review: Given its subject matter, there really should be a photo for every entry. Also the picture in the color section labeled "Heather Thomas" is clearly "Donna Dixon". Hopefully this is the only mislabeled photo in an otherwise very good book.
Rating:
Summary: A Different Definition of Glamour?
Review: Glamour girls, to me, are women who have been in the spotlight, admired by men, and have had their faces and bodies plastered all over the print media. This book, however, has far too many no-name Playboy centerfolds and far too few of today's REAL glamour girls like Cindy Margolis (way too far down the list for me), Brooke Burke (absent!) and Laeticia Casta.
Rating:
Summary: A Different Definition of Glamour?
Review: Glamour girls, to me, are women who have been in the spotlight, admired by men, and have had their faces and bodies plastered all over the print media. This book, however, has far too many no-name Playboy centerfolds and far too few of today's REAL glamour girls like Cindy Margolis (way too far down the list for me), Brooke Burke (absent!) and Laeticia Casta.
Rating:
Summary: Awful book - Hollywood legends mixed with porno models!
Review: I am so glad I was able to see a copy of this book before I ordered it because I would have hated to shell out good money for it. In this author's eyes, the legends of Hollywood be they Harlow or Hayworth are no more accomplished or important than last month's Playboy centerfold! I feel there are two very different markets the author is trying to combine, those who love Hollywood and those who love "retro raunch" as they call it or contemporary nudie models and this book is quite clumsy in its attempts to equate the two. Most audaciously, the author lists these 1,000 women in some sort of sexy importance order and somehow a number of women with no more accomplishment than being say Miss April in Playboy may rank above a Hollywood legend. Thus you have Clara Bow, THE sex symbol of silent films, and Mae West, whose sexy films truly changed the film industry barely making Sullivan's top 100! And you have Dorothy Lamour, one of the top four pinup girls of World War II barely making the top 350! And worse of all are these little small paragraph biographies of the women that anyone with the slighest knowledge of movies could have written (and written better because I noticed several factual errors even in this short space. Indeed the author seems to know little about general film history, despite claiming this is an "alltime" sex symbol list I spotted maybe only three women from the silent era) There are several topless photos of several completely obscure women that are totally meaningless to anyone unless you are really into porno. I'm not a prude and I don't mind at all that someone may be interested in more data on these nudie girls (if you can call tiny paragraph bios "data") but please have a little respect for the legitimate film stars and their legacies and don't be so sexist as if to suggest they have nothing more to offer than the visual appeal of a men's magazine model.
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