Pepper People: The Sgt Pepper Cover Continued

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Continuing a look at the people on the Sgt pepper cover. . . 

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A Vargas girl:

(and yes, I know that she is missing from the above list although shown as Number 11).

• Alberto Vargas (1896 – 1982) was a noted Peruvian painter of pin-up girls and often considered one of the most famous of the pin-up artists. 

• Numerous Vargas paintings have sold and continue to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• He became widely noted in the 1940s as the creator of iconic World War-II era pin-ups for Esquire magazine known as "Varga Girls." Between 1940 and 1946 Vargas produced 180 paintings for the magazine.

• The nose art of many American and Allied World War II aircraft was inspired and adapted from these Esquire pin-ups.

'Honey Bunny', a Lockheed P-38 Lightning

• In 1959 Playboy magazine began to use his work. Over the next 16 years he produced 152 paintings for the magazine and his career flourished, including major world wide exhibitions of his work.

• The death of his wife Anna Mae in 1974 left him devastated and he stopped painting.

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Huntz Hall:

• Henry Richard "Huntz" Hall (1920 – 1999) was an American radio, theatrical, and motion picture performer noted primarily for his roles in the "Dead End Kids" movies, such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), which gave way to the "Bowery Boys" movie franchise, a prolific and highly successful series of comedies in the 1940s and 1950s.

• Hall played the increasingly buffoonish Horace DeBussy "Sach" Jones in 48 "Bowery Boys" films, gaining top billing when his longtime partner, Leo Gorcey, left the series in 1956.

By the way:

Leo Gorcey was originally in the Sgt Pepper cover but was painted out after demanding a $400 fee to use his image:

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Simon Rodia:

• Sabato "Simon" Rodia (1879 – 1965) was an Italian-American artist who moved to the US when aged 15.

• After bouncing around the U.S. for nearly a quarter of a century, he settled in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. In 1921, he began creating the Watts Towers, a grouping of 17 different conical structures, the tallest of which reached 99 feet. It took him 33 years to complete them all.

Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers

• The Watts Towers were frequently vandalized by neighbours, and Rodia gave this as the reason he moved to Martinez, where he remained until his death in 1965.

• It is believed that Rodia never returned to Watts after moving to Martinez.

• The Watts Towers were designated a National Historic Landmark and a California Historical Landmark in 1990. They are also a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, and on the National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles.

• The structures are today granted respect by the local and surrounding communities.

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Bob Dylan:

• A close friend of George Harrison (and later, with Harrison, to be part of The Travelling Wilburys), the Beatles and Bob Dylan both held each other in high esteem from nearly the beginning. 

• Dylan was credited with introducing the Beatles to marijuana at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City in 1964. He allegedly mistook the lyric “I can’t hide” for “I get high” in their song ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ and assumed that they were already cannabis users.

• George Harrison: “Dylan is so brilliant. To me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel.” 

• Bob Dylan: “George got stuck with being the Beatle that had to fight to get songs on records because of Lennon and McCartney. Well, who wouldn’t get stuck? If George had had his own group and was writing his own songs back then, he’d have been probably just as big as anybody.” 

• The Sgt Pepper image is taken from the cover of Dylan’s 1965 album ‘Highway 61 Revisited’.

The Traveling Wilburys:  

Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison