Unknown Frank Bellamy: Weather Satellite and Mirror Magazine

 

Mirror Magazine 1969 "Weather Satellite"

Thanks to Alan Davis saving some Polaroids from Frank Bellamy's studio after his death, we have been looking at various pieces of "unknown art" for want of a better title and have identifed some, but others remain - for now - a mystery.  

HISTORY OF MIRROR MAGAZINE 

In an attempt to cater to a different kind of reader, the Daily Mirror launched the "Mirrorscope" 4 page pull-out section on 30 January 1968. It was published ran on Wednesdays and Fridays, and was to deal with international affairs, politics, industry, science, the arts and business. Frank Bellamy drew for one special edition on the first Moon Landing.

In the Daily Mirror of 26 June 1969, Hugh Cudlipp, the Chair of IPC reported:

Our magazines, grouped into the new Magazine Division early in the year under review, enjoyed a turnover increase of £2 million to £49 million and a profit increase of 28%. Better facilities for advertisers, [etc.] 

and further he announced that:

In April we announced a major publishing development, the Mirror Magazine, a weekly colour supplement to be issued with the Daily Mirror newspaper every Wednesday from mid-September onwards. 

Well due to various circumstances, including an industrial dispute, the launch was delayed until 17 September. The cover was ready and it had a controversial image - even for the Seventies - and the British Poster Advertising Association was involved, as the size of the naked lady on a billboard was deemed too much. I suspect this encouraged the delay. Quarter page adverts in the Mirror proclaimed that the Mirror Magazine would start on the 1 October (a Wednesday) On Saturday 27th, a large column on the front page showed a Wednesday launch. On Wednesday 4 October 1969 the then Prince Charles appeared on the cover it was dated "Week Ending 4 October". The following issue then met the projected Wednesday deadline but retained the "Week Ending" date scheme.  Some later adjusted their issue dates due to Bank Holidays but basically came out free in the Wednesdays Daily Mirror. The Sunday Mirror advertised the magazine each week. Strikes still affected the production - particularly in March 1970when an announcement appeared apologising for the delay in getting the magazine out.

Weather satellite before colour panels added

FRANK BELLAMY'S [Non-] CONTRIBUTION 

The Argonne National Laboratory news-sheet of Wednesday 23 July 1969 was amongst papers Nancy Bellamy shared with us. The news outlined how Argonne's mass spectrometer would analyse returning Moon samples. Bellamy also owned a NASA press release of Nimbus II photos dated 13 September 1967 showing Hurricane Chloe and tropical storm Doris. Attached is a small scratchy sketch presumably by Bellamy,  showing what a satellite would communicate with. 

I wondered which satellite this image portrayed, and found a website, wrote to Gunter's Space Page and got a speedy reply: "The satellite shown is a meteorological satellite of the ESSA (a.k.a. Operational TIROS) series". and he added a TIROS 9 which apparently launched on February 26, 1969 which ties in more with a current article for a new magazine.

I suspect Bellamy was asked to draw this in the second quarter of 1969 as we know Frank and Nancy were expecting to be paid for the job in September 1969. However, a cheque was finally paid in on the 15 December 1969 - "Mirror Magazine Weather Satellite" £70-0-0. On the scribbled sketch Bellamy wrote:

Balloons, unmanned buoys, weather ships, satellites, dish aerials, unmanned stations on land, larger centres for data handling and computers". 

I'm guessing he scribbled this whilst talking to the person commissioning him, as he also added Peter Stubbs phone number at the New Scientist, presumably for information.  If we look at each of the items added, from top-right- we see an aircraft with a special nose-cone (anyone help?), tracking stations on the ground, ship, another antenna, landscape, a DC-3 (adapted for weather work?), a sea buoy, a blimp/balloon and a weather ship.  The final piece was coloured and 'spot colours' added (is that the right term for those shapes of overlaid colours?)

Were the delays around launching the magazine to blame? Did this article - whatever it was - get thrown out at the last moment? 

I checked all the Mirror Magazine from 4 October 1969 - 11 July 1970, the last copy and found no article to match this illustration. So I suspect it never saw print. Bellamy's notes regarding due payments includes a reference to the artwork and appears in September 1969. Generally the Mirror paid the next month, so I suspect Bellamy drew this and delivered in August 1969.

THE END OF THIS MIRROR MAGAZINE

Anthony Quinn tells us that  

Supplements had massive print runs on the country’s biggest gravure presses, and budgets to match because their economics were not the economics of a paid-for magazine. However, get it wrong on a supplement and the printing costs could kill you – as it did the Mirror Magazine. IPC launched the supplement but the massive 5 million print run was too long for the  copper cylinders on the gravure presses at Odhams Press in Watford. That meant two sets of very expensive cylinders – and the Mirror Magazine closed within a year having lost £7 million. 

Various papers reported on 4 July 1970 that losses on the magazine for the year to February 1970 were a staggering £1.5 million. Don Ryder was the new head of IPC and he said the magazine had been launched primarily to increase the sales of the Daily Mirror and to get fuller use of the Odham's Watford printing plant. "It was based on the expectation that the growth in the advertising industry would continue and that in the first year it would attract £7 million in advertising revenue."  

Daily Mirror 4 July 1970 FRONT PAGE

Later in the front page article the Mirror admits that £1,945,000 was lost in 1969 and that at the time of publication "the latest forecast for the present year indicates a loss at the rate of £3.000,000." It wasn't until 1988, the Mirror tried again with its Sunday Mirror Magazine.

Mike Molloy was at the helm of this new publication and shares in his autobiography "The Happy Hack":

During the planning stage of Mirror Magazine Cudlipp relinquished the chairmanship of the International Publishing Corporation and allowed Reed International to make a takeover. The men who controlled Reed were businessmen and to them the newspaper industry, with its festering union problems, diverted them from their real interest, which was simply to make profits. In the new Reed structure, Mirror Group Newspapers ceased to dominate. Paper manufacturers and packaging companies now called the shots.
Before the first issue of Mirror Magazine was printed, once again Dennis Hackett told me there was no way it could succeed financially.
'I was right: the unions have taken too much. It can't make a profit,' he said. Well, it lasted for a year before Dennis's prediction came true. But we had a hell of a good year. The readers and the advertisers loved us. The only people who hated Mirror Magazine were the majority of the Daily Mirror staff. Most of us on the magazine were under thirty, and so happy we could feel the jealousy in the air.
The last issue we produced but never printed was a Mirror Magazine guide to sexual knowledge. It was pioneering stuff then, but tame by today's standards. 

 

THE QUEEN COMIC STRIP

Using the data from Frank Bellamy's payments in and out, we can see reference to another mystery for the Daily Mirror.

In October 1970 a note was made that payment was outstanding for "Daily Mirror Queen" and then in January 1971, a cheque is paid in for £75/0/0d  for "Daily Mirror Queen strip"

As stated above, the Mirror normally paid within a month (confirmed by matching various entries against published works) so I searched from 1 September 1970 through to 31 October 1970 every page every issue and found nothing. I wondered if this might have appeared in Mirrorscope in the middle pages but no. Various topics were covered and artists such as Philip Castle, Alan Cracknell, Eric Austermann, and Les Gibbard drew caricatures, but no Bellamy.  I also checked the Sunday Mirror but that had the usual collection of cartoons, "Driving with Paddy Hopkirk" (drawn by Nick Faure) and "Andy Capp" as strips and also some illustrations accompanying larger articles, but no Bellamy!

Again I suspect he might have had to chase up payment as this was never used, but I'd love to be proved wrong!