SULLIVAN, Steve (Joseph) 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954.

ADDRESSES:

Office—P.O. Box 34501, Washington, DC, 20043. E-mail—stevesul@aol.com; steve@ggtan.com.

CAREER:

Journalist and author. Glamour Girl Then and Now (magazine), founder and publisher; also owner of legal publishing firm.

WRITINGS:

Pop Memories: The History of American Popular Music, 1890-1954, Joel Whitburn's Record Research, 1986.

Va Va Voom: Bombshells, Pin-ups, Sexpots, and Glamour Girls, General Publishing Group (Los Angeles, CA), 1995.

Bombshells: Glamour Girls of a Lifetime, St. Martin's Griffin (New York, NY), 1998.

Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, St. Martin's Griffin (New York, NY), 1999.

Contributor to books; contributor to Web sites, including Gateway to Eden. Author of column "Top 30" and of "Eden Newsstand Reviews."

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Updating Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia.

SIDELIGHTS:

A journalist for over twenty years, Steve Sullivan has become something of an expert on the glamourous models, actresses, and "pin-up girls" that have achieved prominence over the decades. In addition to three books, Sullivan has also founded a magazine, Glamour Girls Then and Now, which is devoted to the subject.

Sullivan introduced his passion for glamour girls to the public in his first book, Va Va Voom: Bombshells, Pin-ups, Sexpots, and Glamour Girls. The book contains photographs and biographical information on over one hundred women in the entertainment industry. Not all reviewers were pleased with the book's semi-nude photographs and sexual portrayal of women. In a review for Library Journal, Rob Melton declared that the book "documents and contributes to the exploitation of women": while Sullivan worships these women, "he seems to want it both ways" by noting the length to which some of the women would go for fame, but also "relying heavily on titillating … anecdotes and quotations … with repeated emphasis on the subjects' bust size." Sullivan intended the book to be much more than a collection of rare, half-naked pictures, however. Each woman's life story is told, a result of the author's extensive research.

Sullivan highlights the lives and careers of ten of the twentieth-century's most noted glamour girls in Bombshells: Glamour Girls of a Lifetime. Among the subjects included in the book are burlesque queens, a Playboy playmate, and several actresses. Like Va Va Voom, the illustrations in Bombshells provide the book's major attraction. In a Booklist review, Mike Tribby described the photographs included as "sometimes garish and stagey, but often displaying a sincerity most absent in modern-day porn." In an introduction to the book, former Playboy model June Wilkinson writes that the photographs "help readers understand why these women have been considered sexy and fun, but they also show that they had much more to offer than sex appeal."

Sullivan's most comprehensive book, Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, was published in 1999. The volume contains profiles of over 1,500 women from various fields of entertainment, including actresses, models, porn stars, "cult queens," and even women from television news. The star-studded lineup includes classic beauties Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield alongside modern-day glamour girls Kim Basinger and Pamela Anderson. A Maxim reviewer dubbed the filmographies and other biographical information in this book "minutiae," implying that racy photographs would serve as the main attraction. In an interview with Doug Combs for the Gateway to Eden Web site, Sullivan revealed his own sentiments about the book: "For over twenty years I'd dreamed of a … reference source for glamour girls—one that comprehensively covers not just the obvious stars, but also the top figure models, strippers, and cult starlets, past and present.… In a lot of ways, this book is a dream come true for me."

Sullivan continues to illustrate his passion for beauty with the publication of his magazine Glamour Girls Then and Now, which showcases a star a month and contains pin-ups, bulletins, and many full-color photographs. The magazine has two special issues in digest-book format: Glamour Girls Then and Now Volume Two and Glamour Girls of the Century.