PHOTO STORIES

This is a tribute to all those Photo Stories that were around in the seventies and eighties.

Well actually this is only a tribute to those that I was in which were done in the eighties ! They were great fun to do.

I was either the heroine or the bitch!

South Africa used to "swop" books with Italy. (Can you picture Kid Colt speaking Italian???) To be in photo stories in Italy was very highly thought of. It was rumoured (by the photographer - Franco - from Republican Press) that Sophia Loren started her career in photo stories and that the heroines and heroes of the books received fan mail in Italy.

Well, that never happened here in South Africa!!! I guess the people that had their own books got a fair amount of money but in the eighties, we used to receive R40,00 per book, which still got taxed, so you received a R30,00 cheque in the post a few weeks after shooting the book.

So why did we do them??? Well, they were great fun, it helped me pay for dogfood and yes, I admit, I loved seeing myself on the covers of these books in all the stores. I even occasionally got recognised.


This was my very first book. I was horrified when I was told a while ago that these books (specifically the "Tessa") were referred to as "poesboekies". If you don't understand Afrikaans, I'm not going to translate for you - it's very derogatory!

The whole Tessa "thing" was to go running through the bush in her high heel shoes and bikini. In this shot, we are in the gym, working out ... in our high heel shoes and bikinis.
This is a classic example of how you had to bend down to pick up things in a "Tessa" - hitch the skirt up to flash lots of leg!
This was a "Keur".

These were romantic, live happily ever stories.

Looking back on it now, I can't believe I used to have a flat tummy!
"Luipard" was in the cowboy era. It was fun because we got to go through the wardrobe and wear these wierd old clothes and as an added bonus, we got to ride horses!

This is Steve - one of my favourite "heroes".
This is Valentino - my other favourite "hero".
This was my favourite book. I was supposed to be a "good" sister and a "bad" sister. Here I am as the "bad" sister.



Most of the filming was done at Republican Press in Mobeni, Durban. They had a separate section which was used for photo stories and they had various "sets" arranged. We had a jail, operating theatre, doctors office etc.

On the whole, it only took a morning to shoot the entire book. We used to get there by 08h30 and were finished between 12h00 and 14h00 depending on your part in the book. Dennis Griffiths was the co-ordinator and he would phone and tell us (for example) to bring 3 day outfits, 1 evening outfit and a bikini. Obviously in the "period" books like "Ruiter in Swart" or "Kid Colt" we would wear the outfits from that era in which case we had to take off our watches and were not allowed to wear nail polish.

We used to shoot all the scenes in location: all the scenes in the doctor's office, then all the scenes in the restaurant etc. A note was made of what outfit was worn so that there was continuity and we used to have to change clothes countless times during the shooting of a book. All of us were quite adept at changing in the back of the Combi! Even then, it was a good laugh to go through the books when they were published and see all the mistakes that were made ...!


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