It’s hard to correct something once it’s out there on the internet. Just look at the confusion over the Amazing Stories (August 1928) cover.
There’s another assumption that keeps getting passed around that needs correcting. The woman reading the March 1947 number of Weird Tales in the photo at right is not pulp artist Margaret Brundage.
This photo (or another one taken at a slightly different angle) regularly appears in social media posts and on websites with Brundage’s name attached, and it’s easy to see why. The woman has a passing resemblance to Brundage, and to add to the confusion, she’s reading Weird Tales.
I remembered reading somewhere that the photo had first appeared in Life magazine. But it took some digging to find which issue.
Unfortunately, the Weird Tales photo didn’t make the final layout, nor does it appear that the woman shows up in any of the published images.
But the photo is among a larger group from the same shoot included in the Life Photo Collection at Google Arts & Culture. The pictures were taken in January 1947 by Life magazine photojournalist Allan Grant.
It’s a shame we don’t know the woman’s name. But one thing’s certain: She isn’t Margaret Brundage.
