Millie the Model was created in 1945 by pioneering women comic book artist Ruth Atkinson, who passed away in 1997. Atkinson is also credited with co-creating Patsy Walker. Though Atkinson seems to have only had a hand in the first issue of the series, Millie comics were published continuously by Timely/Atlas/Marvel until 1973, which at nearly four decades makes it the compny's longest-running humor book. 
In the first issue, we are introduced to 19-year-old Millicent "Millie" Collins, a beauty contest winner whose conservative parents allow her to move the New York City with her best friend, the more down-to-earth and less glamorous Marge Gregory. Throughout the first issue Atkinson reveals some knowledge about the modeling industry as it existed in New York City in 1945. My guess is that Atkinson wasn't necessarily intimately familiar with that world, but gleaned her understanding from the popular press and the movies, specifically, a book and subsequent movie called, The Powers Girl (1943).
The first issue of Millie the Model presents four stories that set up, more or less, the series as it will exist for the next four decades. Throughout its run, Millie comics will vary in tone, from light romance to teen comedy, but overall the set up of the book is set in the first issue.
The first story opens with Millie winning a town beauty contest and being crowned Miss Barberton of 1945. There is and was no "town" of Barberton in the United States, but there was a small industrial city in northeast Ohio by that name. Founded in 1891 by O.C. Barber, Barberton came to be known as the "Magic City" because of its "rapid population growth" during its formative years.
Millie is happy to have won the beauty contest, but she's also worried. She asks a reporter to not use her name in the newspaper and only refer to her as "Miss 4th Ward." [Presumably, each ward in the town sent a contestant to the beauty contest.] The next day, we learn why Millie tried to remain anonymous. Her parents, Jonathan and Lisbeth Collins, are extremely conservative. Seeing Millie's picture in the Barberton News [or Barberton Gazzette], her father cries, "Look at this! You disgraced us!"
"Heavens to Betsy! What will the neighbors think?" asks Millie's mother.
Grounded until the "scandal blows over," Millie commiserates with her friend, Marge Gregory. Marge hatches a plan to take Millie to New York City and to live with Marge's sister, Bessie. Though Millie's mother has doubts, Millie's father is all for it, allowing her to stay in New York "until this blows over."
The movie I mentioned above, The Powers Girl (aka Hello Beautiful), also starts with a small-town scandal that affects the reputation of a small-town girl. You can watch the movie on YouTube or on the Internet Archive.
In the movie, Carole Landis plays Kay Evans, who works as a schoolteacher in a small town. Leaving a town fair in a rainstorm, she slips in the mud and is assisted by the town drunk, who picks her up in his arms. A big city photographer happens to be in town and he snaps a picture of the drunk holding Kay, and when the picture is published, the conservative school committee sees the picture as evidence that Kay was somehow partying with the town drunk indecently and fires her. Kay Evans hops on a train to New York, to stay with her sister Ellen Evans, played by Anne Shirley, while she tracks down the photographer, Jerry Hendricks, who took her picture without her permission and ruined her life.
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| Flicker Holbrook |
Though the movie is ostensibly about the career of a Powers Girl, that is, a woman under contract to the John Powers Modeling Agency, it's mostly about photographer Jerry Hendricks, as played by song and dance man George Murphy. Jerry Hendricks is a fast-talking music aficionado with an eye for the ladies and a clear inspiration for the comic book character Flicker Holbrook, Millie's main love interest in the comic. [In issue 15 Flicker experiences an unexplained name change to "Clicker." I have a theory about that. See the footnote below.]
But let's back up, because we haven't met Flicker in the comic yet. We find Millie and Marge are on the train to New York, discussing Millie's career opportunities.
"It says here that John Robert Towers has a famous models' agency," says Marge.
"I'll try him," replies Millie, "and Larry Hanover too!"
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| John Roberts Powers |
In 1945 New York City, the "big three" modeling agencies were run by three men. John Roberts Powers, Harry Conover, and Walter Clarence Thornton.
Savvy readers in 1945 would recognize that the names John Robert Towers and Larry Hanover are thinly veiled stand-ins for the real-life John Roberts Powers and Harry Conover. In the comic, Larry Hanover, the boss of the agency that ultimately hires Millie, becomes Flicker's romantic rival for Millie's attention.
The Powers Girl movie is based on a book, The Powers Girl, written by John Roberts Powers, who is played by actor Alan Mowbray in the movie.
The next day, fresh off the train from Ohio and after staying a night at Marge's sister's apartment, Millie and Marge visit the Towers modeling agency, only to be told by a receptionist that being Miss Barberton of 1945 "will mean little to Mr. Towers!" In the next panel, Millie and Marge can be seen leaving the Chrysler building at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. This address is important because the third modeling agency I mentioned above, the one owned and operated by Walter Clarence Thornton, was located in the Chrysler Building.
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| Walter Clarence Thornton |
Walter Clarence Thornton was extremely famous for his good looks throughout the first half of the 20th century and worked as a model for the John Roberts Powers Agency until 1929 when he founded his own modeling agency.
As an artist's model Thornton was known in the late 1920s as "the profile." He went on to "pose for most of the leading artists, illustrators and photographers of the first half of the 20th century," and mass-marketed plaster copies of his head so artists could use his likeness without him having to pose. From Wikipedia: "The Minneapolis Tribune article referred to Thornton's face as one of the most well-known in America, due to his ubiquitous presence in 1920s advertisements. In 1928, Thornton created a small "head factory" (Walter Thornton & Co.) in a brownstone building near Grand Central Station, where he hand-crafted and sold plaster copies of his own head until 1931. Thornton's agent, John Robert Powers, offered the plaster heads to artists and sculptors to work from instead of the model. Reportedly, over 1,500 of the replications of Thornton's own head had been sold by 1930."
In The Powers Girl movie, actor Rafael Storm plays Vandy Vandegrift - a thinly veiled Walter Clarence Thornton - as a male model that everyone recognizes, but can't quite place where.
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| Larry Hanover |
At this point in the comic, we have been introduced, obliquely or directly, to the top three New York City modeling agencies. In the course of the comic, with the help of Flicker, Millie comes to work for the Hanover Agency, and as I said, Larry Hanover will be Flicker's chief romantic rival for Mllie's attention.
Interesting facts about Harry Conover, the real-life model for the comic book character Larry Hanover: He founded his modeling agency with a $1500 loan from his "best friend" - former President Gerald Ford. His modeling agency collapsed in 1959, and he was sued for withholding money from his models. He later went bankrupt.
It would be wrong to say that Millie the Model is somehow a rip-off of The Powers Girl movie. The movie was simply one inspiration for the comic, as was the real-life goings-on the New York City's various modeling agencies. Other inspirations, such as Millie picking up a modeling rival, brunette beauty Lila Laguid, (setting up a Betty and Veronica-style rivalry) were also part of the mix.
Far from being derivative, however, Millie the Model was staking out some new and interesting ground in comics. Unlike a traditional romance comic, with a series of unrelated stories, and unlike a teen humor comic a la Archie which presented the adventures of teenagers, Milli the Model, and other books from Timely such as Nellie the Nurse and Tessie the Typist, established romantic heroines who pursued careers. They were independent working girls, in charge of their own money and making their own decisions.
Born out of WWII, when women went to work in factories to replace the men drafted to fight overseas, working women became "Rosie the Riveter" - a name that could easily have been the title of a fourth Timely Comics working girl series. As the war ended and the United States began pursuing economic policies that put women back in the role of homemakers and men back into the role of breadwinners, Nellie and Tessie found their books canceled. But Millie carried on for decades, in part because her adventures could be done as only slightly more mature teen adventure stories, but mostly, I think, because of the exceptional comic art of wunderkind Dan DeCarlo, who later did definitive work for Archie Comics and invented Josie (of Pussycats fame) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. His decades-long work with Stan Lee on Millie the Model is vastly underappreciated.
Other first issue mentions:
Footnote: "Flicker" Holbrook had his name changed to "Clicker" Holbrook in issue 15 of Millie, with no explanation. It seems that his name was always Clicker, and the name Flicker was long forgotten. But I believe I have a possible explanation, even though this is total speculation.
In comics, all letters in word balloons and captions are usually capitalized. The word Flicker, when capitalized is rendered FLICKER, which if viewed quickly or isn't lettered with care, may appear as FUCKER. The word CLICKER doesn't have this problem.
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