Magazine Cover Comics: Pretty Polly

 

In a dream team matchup, Nell Brinkley and Carolyn Wells got together in late 1928 to create the Sunday magazine cover series Pretty Polly. Brinkley did her customary beautiful job delineating those signature well-noodled beauties, while Wells spun a story in vignettes of a girl who feels that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

Polly emulates women in professions she admires, takes on the personality of admired film stars, and  it just never works out well for her. Naturally in the final episode, Polly fails to be a copycat and immediately finds true love from a tall, dapper gent who falls in love with the real her. 

Pretty Polly started out under the banner of King Features Syndicate on November 18 1928*, and switched over to another Hearst syndicate, International Feature Services, on February 17 1929. The series concluded on March 3**.

A bookkeeping note about this feature as it is listed in my book. I claimed then that there was another series of Pretty Polly that ran in 1927. This was based on a sample from that series I (supposedly) had in my collection. Well, since then I have combed through the collection looking for this 1927 Pretty Polly to no avail, and also failed to find any supporting evidence from online sources. At this point I'm pretty darn sure that the sample I supposedly have is a mistyped record or a cross-linked listing from some other series. 

* Source: Philadelphia Bulletin

** Source: Cincinnati Enquirer