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“Naturally, the best manner of selling St. Petersburg’s sunshine was through the medium of the pretty girl,” disclosed columnist Jane Graham on the topic of bathing beauties in 1919; and St. Pete’s publicity director John Lodwick became master of the medium in 1922.
Although Miami Beach’s Carl Fisher gave birth to the Bathing Beauties, which soon became that city’s trademark, St. Petersburg boosters took the scantily clad sea-nymph theme in a new direction. Through a mix of practical jokes and pure sensationalism, propaganda guru John Lodwick and Mayor Frank Pulver devised the St. Petersburg Purity League.
The spurious organization felt it their duty to extend the Purity League’s puritanical values to St. Petersburg’s shores. Supposedly outraged at the nearly nude nubile women parading on the sandy playgrounds in their newfangled one-piece suits, Purity “members” insisted on moral enforcements and inspections. All of which the mayor was very happy to oblige. As planned, word of the swimsuit shakedown made national news.
In a classic example of feeding the press, boosters must have stifled a snicker as they sent the wire northward:
Florida Purity League Moves
“To Protect the Married Men.”
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Jan 25 – Mayor Frank Pulver had a request today from the St. Petersburg Purity League that he appoint a bathing suit inspector, a formal communications from the organization stating that “the league intends to protect the married men from the wiles of the sea vamp.” The Mayor said he would personally visit the beach and look ‘em over.
For weeks newspapers from Miami to Chicago to Tulsa ran articles regarding the “sea vamps” of St. Petersburg. The day after the Purity League sent in their demands for beach inspectors to the Times, scores of men flocked to Mayor Pulver’s office to apply for the position of bathing suit inspector.
“At this time,” the mayor said in a formal statement, “In am waiting for the opinion of (City) attorney Mack. I will make frequent inspections of the bathing suits myself to learn firsthand as to whether the protest is well founded.”
By springtime, other national newspapers were in on the publicity stunt, declaring St. Petersburg’s clever advertising campaign a success, and for the Sunshine City to expect waves of tourists from the shenanigans of John Lodwick and Mayor Pulver.