Photographs by Peter Stackpole/Time & Life Images/Getty

This weekend, I was looking through old issues of Life magazine when I happened on some photos illustrating the “correct conjugal undressing technique.” In what may well have been considered Valentine’s Day advice at the time — these were published 75 years ago this week — two sequences of pictures demonstrate how a wife should and should not undress for her husband.

In the captions that accompany the photos, Allen Gilbert, who founded the School of Undressing in Manhattan, is quoted as saying, “Such good bedroom manners … are essential to married happiness once the honeymoon is over.”

Photographs by Peter Stackpole/Time & Life Images/Getty

And when it comes to such “manners,” here’s a bit of specific counsel: “Two excellent purposes are served by rolling down stockings instead of merely pulling them off by the toes. Economically, a husband is pleased by the absence of runs; romantically, he is gratified by his wife’s graceful method of displaying her legs.”

Photographs by Peter Stackpole/Time & Life Images/Getty

No word on what the husband should do with his own stupid socks.