I’m a shade too young to have owned the famous poster of Farrah Fawcett (or, as I believe she was known at the time, Farrah Fawcett-Majors). It was originally released in 1976, and I wouldn’t become interested in hanging my first girlie poster until sometime in the ’80s. Nevertheless, anyone who was alive and had their eyes open during the late ’70s surely knows that image of Farrah: the billowing mass of blond hair, the red swimsuit, the big, scary, “say cheese” smile. It’s an icon of its age, so much so that movie-set decorators often use it to help evoke that long-lost time when collars were wide and sex was just good, clean fun.

It turns out there’s an interesting story behind the poster, a tale of two brothers who started small, made a fortune, then lost everything, including each other. If you don’t have much on the agenda today and need something to while away your afternoon, check out this article about Mike and Ted Trikilis and their one time poster-publishing empire, Pro Arts Inc. It’s a pretty long piece, but I found it fascinating. It’s also rather sad, but then, many of the best stories are, aren’t they?

(For the record, the first pin-up to grace my bedroom wall was as much an icon of the ’80s as the Farah shot was of the ’70s, specifically that one of Heather Thomas in a pink bikini. Don’t know who Thomas is? She used to provide eye-candy for a TV series called The Fall Guy. Which, oddly enough, starred Farrah Fawcett’s ex-husband, Lee Majors. Hmm. There’s gotta be some kind of cosmic symmetry there, don’t you think?)