"Good Girl" Artist Bill Ward Goes Black!

Though known for his...stimulating...renditions of buxom (and usually blonde) women...

...Bill Ward was one of several well-known comic artists who provided Playboy-style cartoons featuring Black women (and men) to Duke, a 1950s magazine intended to attract the young, male, African-American audience that other male-oriented mags didn't (yet) cater to!

You'l note that while the men are clearly African-American, the women have more of a "look" like Dorothy Dandridge (here as seen in her only genre film, Tarzan's Peril).

Since some of the cartoons in the issue showed both men and women as Black...

...we're not sure if it was editorial choice or Ward's lack of ability to portray attractive Black women with more "ethnic" features...
I don't know if Ward contributed any illustrations for the remaining five issues of the mag's run.

If anybody can provide more info, please contact me!

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Wonderful World of Bill Ward

King of the Glamour Girls

Fantastic Femmes: Dorothy Dandridge in Tarzan's Peril...UNCUT on TCM!

Saturday morning, 12:00pm (EST)
Right after two chapters of Ace Drummond (A pretty entertaining 1930s serial)

Dorothy Dandridge in her only genre role as Melmendi, Queen of the Ashuba.

The working title of this film was Tarzan's Mate in Peril.
It's an original story, not based on a Tarzan novel or short story.
The first Tarzan picture to have new footage featuring the cast shot in Africa, instead of Hollywood with Africa stock footage.
According to various Hollywood Reporter news items, exterior filming took place from July to September 1950 in Kenya (which was then British East Africa), including Meru National Park, as well as Uganda and Tanganyika.
After eight weeks of interior shooting at the RKO-Path Studios in Culver City, CA, the production finshed filming in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City.
Here's the trailer (in French)...

The shooting of one of the scenes in Tarzan's Peril is featured in the bioflick Introducing Dorothy Dandridge starring Halle Berry as Dorothy...

Fantastic Femmes PixPost: Dorothy Dandridge IS Melmendi, Queen of the Ashuba

In her only genre role, Dorothy Dandridge played Melmendi, Queen of the Ashuba in 1951's Tarzan's Peril.

An original story, not based on any of Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories, the film was the third of five movies starring Lex Barker as Tarzan and it was directed by Byron Haskin, who went on to A-list genre films like 1953's War of the Worlds.
It was also the first Tarzan film to have scenes shot on location in Africa.
(Previous films used existing stock footage from other movies.)

One of the scenes from the film is recreated in the biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge starring Fantastic Femme Halle Berry as Dorothy playing Melmendi.
Here's a comparison between a scene in the original film and the biopic's version of it.

Melmendi, nor her tribe, the Ashuba, have appeared in any Tarzan story (in any media) since...

Note: technically, this is a Pix Post, but it's also a Hero(ine) History and Fantastic Femme entry!