Last Call · Ladies' Home Journal

A recent arrival to Exhibit B.’s magazine shelf* made for interesting reading before I inventoried it. It’s the November 1988 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal, and I stocked it for the Marina Oswald story, which I’ll get to in a moment. But there’s also an excerpt from Dena Kleiman’s A Deadly Silence, the book on the Cheryl Pierson case, which I vaguely remember from the ’80s. (Which of course became a TV movie starring, among other people, David “Ross” Schwimmer as Cheryl’s then-boyfriend. Watch below!)

The writing is about what you’d expect, but the layout is…not great. For starters, the story’s first page is across from an ad for Dynasty’s branded perfume, Forever Krystle, which is headlined “The Romance Continues…” Guys: no. The next page is even more tone-deaf, with a Nivea ad (a man’s hand is resting on a woman’s bare shoulder; guys, again: no) and a burbly pitch for no-stick bakeware (“NO MORE BURNT COOKIES”…guys: no!).

But it’s the last page of the piece, as Cheryl is describing how her father assaulted her, that really sends the production design into Cringeville.