More Pin Ups!
My Gallery... Free access!
Do you love 50s and 60s style? It was somewhat magical with those cars, that music, the neat ladies, and all the abundance, the optimism, and so on.
Do you wanna know more about your favourites Pin Ups?
Are you looking for an original vintage photo?
Get access to my Private Collection.
1 comment:
Virginia "Ding Dong" Bell (born 1932 in Montrose, California) was an American pin up model and burlesque dancer. Standing only 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m), with a 48-inch bust, she started her career in the 1950s.
Virginia was a burlesque dancer in 1954, who shot up to the top of the burlesque circuit earning upwards of $1500 per week. She was known for a cowboy striptease routine. In addition to exotic dancing, Bell was featured in a number of 8mm loop films, and also appeared in various men's magazines such as Night and Day and Fling.
Bell also starred in the feature film, Bell, Bare and Beautiful (1963). Bell's husband, burlesque theater-owner Eli Jackson, had contacted exploitation filmmakers Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman about making a film featuring his wife. Bell was pregnant at the time, and Lewis recalled, "I guess it was her first pregnancy because no one was sure that she would emerge from it and still be able to perform in burlesque. These fellows wanted to capture her on film before she lost her figure."
One of Bell's last performances was in the role of Julia in Fraulein Doktor, a 1969 Dino de Laurentiis World War I espionage story which Variety called a promising film concept that "emerges merely as another sloppily-made Italian import." Virginia Bell retired in 1970.
Filmography:
- Gertie the Grapefruit Girl and Friends
- Bell, Bare and Beautiful (September 13, 1963)
- Lullaby of Bareland (1964)
- Fräulein Doktor (1969)
Magazines appearances:
- Fling (digest) # 10 (1958)
- Fling Festival Vol 2 (Winter 1959)
- Fling (digest) # 16 (1959)
- Fling Festival Vol 5 (Holiday 1960–1961)
- Fling Festival Vol 6 (Spring 1961)
- Fling (August 1964)
Measurements:
48-24-36 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
Russ Meyer (photographer, cult film maker, and patron saint of dirty old men) had a knack at finding women with large...uh...talents. Case in point, California burlesque cutie Virginia "Ding-Dong" Bell. In the era of buxom bombshells like June Wilkinson and Jayne Mansfield and other big-named strippers like Tempest Storm, Bell is the mountain among the molehills. Packing a 48-24-36 figure into a five-foot-two-inch (!) frame, Bell really but the "bump" in bump and grind. Even though her career was short, she sure made an impact into the glamour/pin-up culture. And impact that lives on today. It seems she has as many fans now as she did during the height of her career over forty years ago.
Most of her famous pictorials, done by Meyer, basically show Bell doing her dance routine...which shouldn't be seen by anyone with a heart condition. In fact, it's hard to open a men's magazine from the late 1950's and not find a photo of the buxom miss Bell. Besides her famous pictorials, Bell also appeared in many film loops including the famous 1964 nudie-cutie flick "Bell, Bare and Beautiful."
Post a Comment