The Fly Girls by Bernard Glemser, Bantam 1969
Benard Glemser’s novel about prospective stewardess Carol Thompson was originally published by Random House as Girl on a Wing in 1960, with a much classier cover. It 1963, it was made into a movie entitled Come Fly With Me and re-issued by Bantam as The Fly Girls. In 1969, Bantam brought out a new paperback edition with a sexist cover design that obviously jumped on the bandwagon of the top-selling Coffee Tea or Me from 1967.
I’m adding it here because of the cover typeface which hasn’t come up a lot on Fonts In Use before: West Roma is wider than Caruso Roxy, but has an overall similar feel. Drawn by Dave West in the second half of the 1960s, Photo-Lettering grouped it together with Roxy, Roxanna, Loose New Roman and Fantasia in a section named “Curled Casual Latins”.
Glemser and Bantam tried to squeeze even more out of the trend, and issued the sequel The Super-Jet Girls and a new edition of Here Come The Brides in 1971. Despite playing it safe with Caruso Roxy on the cover, these books weren’t as big a hit. What they did succeed in was further tainting Roxy as the stereotypical typeface for the lewd aspects of the Swinging Sixties.
