Looking back: December 1933

"Do you remember the picture of Betty Co-Ed and Joe College trimming the tree on the cover of the December 1932 Sunset?"

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You probably don't, but we knew when we asked this back in '33 that the cover illustration (shown above) had made quite an impression on at least one reader. Mrs. Chester H. Smith of Arizona used a pencil and scissors to enlarge and reproduce the image using crepe paper. She then glued it to a picture window, where it was backlit to create a sort of seasonal mural on the front of her home. The simple graphic shapes and bright colors of the illustration lent themselves well to the overall effect, and in those lean times, the project's total cost of 60 cents amounted to a suitable holiday-primping budget.

Even now, Sunset's vintage covers make for stylish decorative art (visit www.sunset.com/posters for select cover reproductions). But it's nice to know that way back then, when the magazine had a scant 34 years under its belt, it was as much a cover-to-cover idea book as it is today.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Sunset Publishing Corp.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group