Hilda Fergason On Theatre Magazine September 1925
A Ziegfeld Beauty, Miss Hilda Fergason by Peruvian Artist Alberto Vargas (1896 – 1982); for his alluring and exquisite pin-up girl art and considered to be the most famous of the pin-up artist genre.
Theatre Magazine September 1925 featured A Ziegfeld Beauty, Miss Hilda Fergason; who’s actual name was Hildegarde Gibbons, and was one of six children (1903 – 1933), and at the age of 19 made her Broadway debut in the show Music Box Revue.
Then in the fall of 1923 she was asked to join the Ziegfeld Follies, and was known for her known for her “shimmy dancing” as well as for her many relationships with musical composer and stockbroker Arthur Gershwin (1900 – 1981), actor George Raft (1901 – 1980) and Enoch Lewis “Nucky” Johnson (1883 – 1968) who was a political boss, sheriff, businessman, crime boss and bootlegger.
This is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image that is available as metal, acrylic, wool and rolled canvas print online.
Info Below From Wikipedia.org
Born in Arequipa, Peru, he was the son of noted Peruvian photographer Max T. Vargas. Alberto Vargas moved to the United States in 1916 after studying art in Europe, Zurich, and Geneva prior to World War I.
While he was in Europe he came upon the French magazine La Vie Parisienne, with a cover by Raphael Kirchner, which he said was a great influence on his work.
His early career in New York included work as an artist for the Ziegfeld Follies and for many Hollywood studios. Ziegfeld hung his painting of Olive Thomas at the theater, and she was thought of as one of the earliest Vargas Girls.
Vargas’ most famous piece of film work was for the poster of the 1933 film The Sin of Nora Moran, which shows a near-naked Zita Johann in a pose of desperation. The poster is frequently named one of the greatest movie posters ever made.
He became widely noted in the 1940s as the creator of iconic World War-II era pin-ups for Esquire magazine known as “Vargas 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, as well as those of George Petty, and other artists.
