"Is it a play for the women?" he asked Severance in the early days of
the development.
"No."
"You're certainly specializing on femaleness."
"For the men. Not the women. It's an old lure."
Banneker frowned. "And not a pretty one."
"Effective, though. I bagged it from the Police Gazette. Have you ever
had occasion to note the almost unvarying cover appeal of that justly
popular weekly?"
"Half-dressed women," said Banneker, whose early researches had extended
even to those levels.
"Exactly. With all they connote. Thereby attracting the crude and roving
male eye. Of course, we must do the trick more artistically and less
obviously. But the pictured effect is the thing. I'm satisfied of that.
By the way, I am having a little difficulty with your art department.
Your man doesn't adapt himself to new ideas."
"I've thought him rather old-fashioned. What do you want to do?"
"Bring in a young chap named Capron whom I've run upon. He used to be an
itinerant photographer, and afterward had a try at the movies, but he's
essentially a news man. Let him read the papers for pictures."
Capron came on the staff as an insignificant member with an
insignificant salary. Personally a man of blameless domesticity, he was
intellectually and professionally a sex-monger.
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