Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,53
and set down the empty glass with a deep sigh. Chelsea signaled to the barmaid, who was already pouring another. She guessed Steinman was a regular here. It was an autumn afternoon, and the tired SoHo bar was stagnant and deserted. Maybe soon new management would convert it into something trendy; maybe they’d just knock it down with the rest of the aging block.
“I was working freelance, mostly. Shooting photo sessions sometimes for the magazines, sometimes for the mail-order pin-up markets, sometimes for the private photo clubs where you could get away with a lot more. Of course, ‘a lot more’ back in the fifties meant ‘a lot less’ than you can see on TV these days.
“Thank you, miss.” Steinman sipped his fresh beer, watching the barmaid walk away from their booth. “I remember doing a few pin-up spreads of Kristi for Harmony Publishing back about ’52 or ’53—stuff for girlie magazines like Wink and Eyeful and Titter. They’d seem tame and corny now, but back then.
The paunchy photographer rolled his eyes and made a smacking sound with his lips. Chelsea thought of a love-stricken geriatric Lou Costello.
“After that I shot several of her first few cover spots—magazines like Gaze and Satan and Modem Sunbathing. That must have been the mid-fifties. Of course, she was also doing a lot of work for the old bondage-and-fetish photo sets, same as Betty Page. I heard once that Kristi and Betty did a few sessions together, but if that’s true no one I know’s ever seen them.”
“Did Kristi Lane do any work for Irving Klaw?”
“Not a lot that I can recall. I remember introducing them sometime about 1954, or was it 1953? I think they may have shot a few sessions—high heels and black lingerie, pin-up stuff. No bondage.”
“Why not?”
“Word was that Kristi Lane was a little too wild for Klaw, who was really pretty straightlaced.” Steinman wheezed at his joke. “People said that Kristi could get a little too rough on the submissive model when she had the dominant role. I know some of the girls wouldn’t work with her unless they played the mistress.”
“Where did she get all her work, then?”
“Mostly from the private photo clubs. And from the mail-order agencies who’d change their dropbox number every few months. You know, the ones with the ads in the back of the girlie mags for comics and photos—‘the kind men like.’ They could get away with murder, and poor Irving got busted and never showed so much as a bare tit in his photo sets.”
While Steinman sucked down his fresh beer, Chelsea opened her attache case and withdrew several manila envelopes. She handed them to Steinman. “What can you tell me about these?”
Each envelope contained half a dozen black-and-white four-by-fives. Steinman shuffled the photo sets. “That’s Kristi Lane, all right.”
The first set showed the model in various pin-up poses. The white bikini would have been too daring for its day, and Kristi Lane’s statuesque figure seemed about to burst its straps. Her hair was done in her characteristic short blond pageboy, her face held her familiar pout (Bardot’s was a careful copy), and her wide blue eyes were those of a fallen angel.
In the next set Kristi was shown dressed as a French maid. Her short costume exposed ruffled panties and lots of cleavage as she bent over to go about her dusting.
“I shot this one,” Steinman said, licking his lips. “About 1954. She said she was twenty. Anyway, they ran it in Beauty Parade, I think.”
Kristi was tied to a chair in the next set. She was wearing high heels, black stockings and garter belt, black satin panties and bra. A black scarf was knotted around her mouth, and her eyes begged for mercy. She was similarly clad in the next set, but this time she was lying hog-tied upon a rug. In the next, she was tied spread-eagled across a bed.
“All shot the same afternoon,” Steinman judged. “Do a few costume changes, give the girl a chance to stretch between poses, and you could come up with maybe a hundred or so good stills.”
The next series had Kristi wearing thigh-high patent leather boots and a matching black corset. Her maid, attired in heels, hose, and the inevitable skimpy uniform, was having trouble lacing up Kristi’s boots. Over the subsequent poses, the maid was gagged and bound facedown across a table by Kristi, who then applied a hairbrush to the girl’s lace-clad bottom.
“Could have been done for Klaw,” said Steinman, “but