In the 1960s, a stiff-jointed, knee-high doll with brown hair and rosy cheeks named Little Marcy was promoted as a model toddler who sang simple Christian songs on dozens of record albums that sold for $1.98 each.
The albums, which today can be found only in thrift store bins, featured on their covers photographs of Little Marcy and her world.
"Marcy Goes to Nashville" shows her staring at a horse. In "Marcy Sings to Children," she is standing stock-still in front of a microphone and watched by children (real ones) beaming with joy. "Little Marcy with Smokey the Bear" comes with a cartoonish image of her picnicking with forest creatures, including 10 happy skunks.
Depending on one's point of view, the images can be corny or kitschy, well-intentioned or sweet. But no matter the interpretation, they're sure to prompt a reaction, which is why they have earned a place in an exhibit of religious album covers. Titled "Within Heaven's Earshot," the exhibit opens March 13 at Synchronicity Space gallery in Los Angeles.
Exhibit curator Kieran Sala said the 200 album covers -- most produced in the 1950s, '60s and '70s -- were culled from private collections, thrift stores and estate sales.
They are strikingly graphic relics of the post-World War II era of hula hoops and Cold War anxiety, when men still wore starched white shirts and ties to church and religious records were produced on the cheap with the most rudimentary marketing and packaging strategies.
"They're also funny, without intending to be," said Sala, an actor who works as a substitute elementary school teacher in Los Angeles. "These people tried so hard to be hip and cool that they came off seeming incredibly square. We're not trying to embarrass Christians or anyone else, but judging from these album covers, their quest to save souls was often stronger than their proficiency in visual arts."
Examples include charismatic Pentecostal preacher A. A. Allen's "I Am Lucifer," which features a devil with catlike blood-red eyes under this caveat: "An actual recording of a demon spirit that possesses a woman and speaks from within her, using her voice, declaring, 'I am Lucifer.' "
Under the title "Aboard Heaven's Choo-Choo" -- and a drawing of a speeding train moving left to right over their heads -- the five members of the Crawford family, clad in their Sunday best, smile collectively at something off camera in an astonishingly mundane group portrait.
