Copies of Esquire flew off the racks. Distributors begged for more. One newsstand sold 2,000 copies in a week. The surging sales silenced doomsayers who predicted its 50-cent price (five times the normal magazine cost at the time) was too high. They said a publication devoted to fashion and leisure and aimed solely at men would flop in the grim Depression Era market.

Obviously, though, the magazine offered something readers wanted.

Tucked in those pages of fiction, fashion, and commentary were also some cartoons that featured leggy women poured into slinky gowns, usually accompanied by some short, balding old geezer who was drawn with far less detail than the women.

George Petty was paid $25 for his first Esquire cartoon. It's doubtful Petty or David Smart, a founder and head of Esquire's Chicago editorial offices, realized they were about to play midwife to the birth of the American pin-up and spark the rebirth of the airbrush.

The evolution of the Petty Girl, and later the Varga Girl, in Esquire brought the airbrush into its heyday.

Petty and Alberto Vargas became household names, as did their mildly erotic but coyly innocent images of women. And so did the tool they used.

Before the Petty Girl began her monthly appearance in Esquire, use of the airbrush had declined from its earlier peak in the 1920s when fine artists experimented with it,and it was popular for poster art.

As it did when it fell from favor among artists and art directors during the 1950s, the airbrush crept into the background. It survived because of its utilitarian but pedestrian ability to retouch photographs. People buying commercial art may not have sought airbrush work, but it was still the best tool for removing blemishes from photographs.

It's probably no coincidence that Petty and Vargas, the era's dominant airbrush artists, were sons of photographers, exposed to the airbrush in their fathers' studios.

Though Vargas may be better known today–mainly because of his 18 years with Playboy that lasted into the 1970s–Petty started it all and achieved the widest exposure.

"He became a household name, and the airbrush did too," says Dave Willardson, who met both artists and has studied the airbrush's history. "I don't see anybody from that period who has as high a profile using the airbrush and was associated with it like Petty was."

It was Petty's airbrush technique that allowed him to achieve the tone and warmth of skin. He applied thin layers of colors and glazes, a technique almost unheard of in the 1930s when the airbrush was used mainly to produce flat, graphic images for commercial artwork.

Petty worked only in the three primary colors of printing–red, yellow and blue. He applied them in layers to create all of the other colors of the painting. Willardson likens it to a printer's color separations. Petty never used black for shadows or depth.

The rest of his technique, masking and cutting, was very similar to what artists do today. The airbrush itself has changed little from the design Charles Burdick patented in 1893.

Today it's difficult to imagine the fame and exposure Petty and Vargas generated from 1933 to Vargas' end with Esquire in 1946. At the time, there was less competition for the public's attention. There was no television and certainly no Internet. People relied on radio, print, and movie news reels for their news, entertainment, and information. Magazines had a powerful effect on public opinion and taste. Vargas and Petty weren't the only artists magazines made famous. Norman Rockwell achieved even more exposure and fame than the two airbrush artists, mainly from his Saturday Evening Post covers.

Petty and Varga girls were everywhere. Esquire was a magazine powerhouse. Its circulation reached 650,000 in December of 1940, and a year later, hit 775,000.

During World War II, Esquire published hundreds of thousands of copies without advertising and sent them to servicemen for free. In 1940, a Vargas calendar for Esquire sold 320,000 mail order copies.

The magazine promoted the artists like celebrities, using house ads to herald coming calendars, playing cards, and date books, or just to tout the artists themselves. It's clear the popularity of the artists helped circulation. And the more magazines that sold, the more exposure the artists gained.

Once World War II started, the gatefolds of Varga and Petty girls were plastered on barrack walls. Some were copied on the noses of airplanes, including a Petty painting on the Memphis Belle, the first bomber to finish 25 missions without losing a crew member. Besides publicity from newsreels, more Americans saw the copy of the painting when the aircraft returned here to tour the country as a morale boost.

But magazine exposure was just a springboard. Both artists did advertising work. Jantzen swimsuits was among the largest clients. There was also Old Gold cigarettes, Pepsi Cola, war bond and recruiting posters, movie posters, and beer companies.

Petty's work was even reproduced on a set of glasses and used as a design for hood ornaments on Nash automobiles from 1951-54.

He also is the only airbrush artist to be the subject of a Hollywood movie. In 1950, Columbia Pictures released The Petty Girl, starring Robert Cummings and Joan Caufield. It wasn't exactly as successful as Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve, released the same year, but it still put the airbrush on the big screen.

It also showed the impact Petty had on the 1930s and 1940s. He and his creation were well enough known for General Motors to pay him $5,000 to design a hood ornament, and movie executives thought his girls were famous enough to become the title of a film.

Petty and Vargas weren't the only artists utilizing the airbrush, but the tool's use was not widespread. Willardson says he's found few examples of airbrush art in the era's showcase annuals, where commercial artists display their work. "It wasn't a significant technique," he says.

What little airbrush work there was included Disney, where artists used the airbrush extensively in the classic Fantasia. Some artists in the industry used it for product illustration. Otis Shephard, the art director for Wrigley Gum used the airbrush to create simpler images, but they received huge exposure well into the 1950s.

Petty and Vargas, however, were the kings, and Petty was the first on the throne.

At the end of a three-year program for art appreciation, 3,733 Chicago high school students ranked Petty as their favorite artist. Others, whose names were actually on the ballot, included Rembrandt, Monet, and Van Gogh.

At first, Petty's cartoons were cluttered with those old man and some backgrounds. The Petty Girl evolved as it became clear that readers were interested only in the woman. It didn't take long for the backgrounds and the chrome domed geezer to disappear, leaving just The Petty Girl.

By today's standards, the paintings aren't exactly packed with high powered sex, but in those days, women weren't supposed to have nipples. Even hinting at them (as Petty did in two early paintings) was a scandal. Even the tame images both artists created drew the government's occasional wrath.

Petty's girls were rarely nude. One in a swing had to be clothed with a brief gown in issues being sent through the mail.

The Postal Service also launched an obscenity lawsuit against Esquire, trying to revoke its mail privileges. About the only thing in the magazine that officials pointed to was the Varga Girls.

Petty's pay soon climbed from the rate of $25 a cartoon. From 1936-9, he got $100 a page and $1,000 for a 1939 issue that included a gatefold. By 1940, it was $500 a page. That same year, other artists were getting $20 for a page and $30 for a gatefold. One other artist got $100 a page and $125 for a gatefold, and Esquire owned his work.

Petty sold only the first reproduction rights, a deal that let him recycle images. The 1939 gatefold was recycled from a beer ad Petty did in 1937. Even years after he retired, royalty checks, some five figures, continued to arrive.

"He always thought of himself as a businessman," Willardson recalls. "Not so much as an artist."

Petty's rising fees and increasing demands, such as taking a few months off or getting the magazine to pay for a hunting safari in Africa, were beginning to chafe Esquire's strong-willed Smart.

The tension increased as Petty sent Smart less-than-finished works with red outlined images and less done in full color. Though The Petty Girl was the big gun of his magazine's artwork, Smart was always searching for a replacement, preferably one more pliant and less expensive.

He got exactly what he wanted in 1940 when Vargas came looking for work. The Peruvian artist was down on his luck. A move to the West Coast to get work with movie studios flopped, but the move had severed any ties he had to the other coast.

Smart got his artist at what was almost indentured servant wages, a whole $75 a week. Since he was an employee, the magazine owned everything Vargas did. And Smart could order Vargas to paint anything.

That slave wage made it possible for Smart to publish the 1940 calendar. Instead of buying individual and probably recycled images from Petty, Esquire simply had Vargas crank them out as part of his job. At one point, Vargas was doing 60 paintings a year at the direction of Esquire.

By 1942, Petty was pretty much out of Esquire's pages and the new kid was in and heavily promoted by the magazine. Smart did all he could to help his new king replace the original.

In a move to replace The Petty Girl with the Varga version, Smart even had Vargas do a free painting for Jantzen to use in ads promoting a new suntan lotion.

He let the word out to advertisers, movie executives, and ad agencies that he had a new artist who would benefit from the magazine's powerful publicity machinery.

When Petty donated a painting for the cover of West Point's Pointer magazine, Smart had Vargas paint one for an issue three months later.

Vargas found himself creating versions of his girls for make-up, hair products, and a brewery, in addition to movie posters. At first, he struggled to duplicate Petty's style with the airbrush, but he had plenty of opportunity to develop, considering the heavy work load his boss imposed. By 1943, Vargas had achieved the level of ability he wanted.

Smart even swiped his artist's name. When Vargas submitted his first painting for Esquire, Smart suggested dropping the "s" and calling it a Varga Girl. Vargas, thinking it was no big deal, agreed, essentially letting Esquire have full ownership of the name he was to make so famous.

Even after he parted with Esquire, Vargas couldn't use the name Varga Girl. He sued Esquire but lost. He had to return to signing his own name to paintings, though the public thought of them as Varga.

By 1946, Vargas' relationship with Esquire was in no better shape than Petty's had been when he left.

For the next four years, Vargas did little except a deck of playing cards with 53 different Vargas Girls, an output that was less than he produced in 1944 alone.

By 1950, the sun was setting on the Golden Age of airbrush-ing. Except for rare reappearances by Petty in Esquire and less sophisticated work that appeared in True magazine, exposure for both artists was waning.

Other painting techniques were becoming popular. Illustrators like Austin Briggs, Mark English, and Jack Potter were wowing art directors with brush work. One technique included adding soap to acrylic paint to produce bubbles in the brush stroke.

"These techniques were new and refreshing," Willardson says. "The style was very painterly and contemporary. Everybody picked up their brushes."

Petty and Vargas didn't completely vanish in the 1950s, though. Petty did work for the Ice Capades from 1959 through 1964 and returned briefly to Esquire in 1954. He also did two calendars for Ridge Tool Co. As late as 1959, Petty's images were licensed to use on boxer shorts.

Vargas, doing little work since leaving Esquire, was finding his own avenue to show his art. It would push his name into a new generation.

In 1954, he hooked up with a new, more sexually adventurous magazine in Chicago. Its publisher admits that a Petty Girl in a rabbit costume that he saw as a boy was probably the genesis of the Playboy Bunny.

Vargas took nude paintings he'd worked on since the late 1930s but never sold and provided Playboy with a five-page layout of nudes that appeared in the March 1957 issue.

In 1960, Vargas became a fixture in Playboy. That 18-year run with Playboy pushed his name ahead of Petty in modern memory.

"Had Petty had that into the 1970s, he would have been as high profile as Vargas," Willardson says.

As he worked for Playboy, Vargas used the airbrush less, Willardson says. "He would use the airbrush to kind of retouch his watercolors and smooth them out."

The popularity of the airbrush was sinking again by the middle to late 1950s. Photography was replacing illustrations, and even those were being done in different techniques. Artists were experimenting with oils and acrylics, paints that were at the time extremely difficult to run through an airbrush.

And the airbrush's two biggest stars of the previous decades were fading. By the early 1960s, Petty was all but retired. He died in 1975.

Vargas kept producing for Playboy until 1978, but changing times and attitudes reduced the fame he achieved with his years at Esquire. Vargas died in 1982, but the Golden Age of airbrushing had died long before that.

"By the early 1960s, the airbrush was completely obliterated," Willardson says.

Note: For a more in depth look at the two champions of the Golden Age, we recommend two books by Reid Stewart Austin: "Petty" and "Varga." Both provided extensive background for this article.

Look for our next installment of "History of the Airbrush" in an upcoming issue.