| Vintage Pulp | Nov 19 2021 |
How do you spell murder in Italian? H-i-t-c-h-c-o-c-k.
Above is a beautiful Italian poster for Delitto perfetto, better known as Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, a movie we watch every five or seven years and always greatly enjoy. This semi-abstract effort isn't the only Italian poster for the film, but it's the best, in our view. We weren't able to find out who painted it, and considering it sold on a swanky auction site without that info, it seems as if nobody knows. Such good work uncredited, it's a shame. However, at this link you see another poster for the film, and that one is signed by Angelo Cesselon. Since both have a Hitchcock profile, and there's a stylistic similarity in other areas too, especially if you focus on the women's faces and the males' trench coats, we think it's possible Cesselon painted both pieces. The evidence wouldn't hold up in court, but it's good enough for us. Nice work, Angelo. Delitto perfetto premiered in Italy today in 1954.
ItalyDelitto perfettoDial M for MurderAlfred HitchcockGrace KellyRay MillandAngelo Cesselonposter artcinema
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 18 2021 |
Hold it! That's good. Now give me shock and dismay. Excellent! Now give me, “I-wonder-if-he-shot-me-in-that-sixty-nine.”
Why buy sleaze digests? Because some of them are very good. Jed Anthony's Divorce Racket Girls is categorized as a sleazer, but it's really a hard-boiled drama, telling the story of Frank Rodie, a New York City detective who specializes in gathering evidence for divorce actions. This basically involves catching his rich clients' spouses in bed. If he can do that by following them around, fine. If he needs to seduce them himself, well, even better. But there may be a price to pay for sticking his private dick into the lives of NYC's one percent. The book is extremely well written in parts, bringing to mind contemporary writers like James Ellroy. Have a read:
At Healy's later. Still about ten G's left. What to do with it? Tony Spinalli invites him to a big poker session. The weisenheimers are laying for the rolls of two fall guys from Alabama. On the third night of the limit game he is wiped out. Stickpin gone. New car gone. He signs a note for the three grand held in trust for Judith. Two nights later learns that the Alabama suckers had been sharpshooters in league with Tony and the others. In the gambling world there's no comeback. A lobster falls easiest. Well, easy come, easy go.
Another snippet:
Frank Rodie, undercover man. From city to city, all over the map. White light and red light and Bible sectors. Eyes roving, ears cocked, smiling his disarming way into people's confidences. Feeling his path along the sundry strata of the underworld, acquiring every trick of the game, posing as a “dip,” a “sheet-writer,” a “yegg.” A good detective must be a good thief. Dizzying whirl, the people and the places rotating about young Rodie. Cabarets, the racetrack, the pipe and coke in hip-joints, roulette houses, country clubs. The world bristling everywhere.
One more:
Always when the case involved a dame, he was assigned to rope her. Irresistible Rodie, making passes at drugstore blondes and exotic brunettes, dumb clucks and wise babies, the perfumed and the smelly, ga-ga gushers and junoesque heavies, joy-ladies and cherries—women of every complexion, nationality, and virtue. Look at them fall for the Big-Boy, his contagious grin, his busy hands.
So yeah, Jed Anthony has a strong voice and talent, and Divorce Racket Girls is a good book, even if it has an ending that values irony over credibility. We've seen it on sale for fifty dollars, but we've also seen it for five because nobody seems certain how to price it. Sleaze digests are usually expensive, especially if they have covers painted by digest specialists like George Gross or Rudy Nappi. But don't let magical art make you think the prose is magic too. Often the opposite is true. The photo front on this book isn't scintillating, but the writing shines. After we finished it we looked for more from Anthony and found nothing. Too bad. The man had style.
So yeah, Jed Anthony has a strong voice and talent, and Divorce Racket Girls is a good book, even if it has an ending that values irony over credibility. We've seen it on sale for fifty dollars, but we've also seen it for five because nobody seems certain how to price it. Sleaze digests are usually expensive, especially if they have covers painted by digest specialists like George Gross or Rudy Nappi. But don't let magical art make you think the prose is magic too. Often the opposite is true. The photo front on this book isn't scintillating, but the writing shines. After we finished it we looked for more from Anthony and found nothing. Too bad. The man had style.
| Femmes Fatales | Nov 18 2021 |
I do everything big—guns, smokes, uh, pockets. Acting, of course. Everything is over the top.
Above: a cool shot of Betty Lou Gerson, made when she was starring in the 1949 anti-communist scare flick The Red Menace. We talked about it many years ago. Shorter version: the real menace was toward the filmgoers. Gerson, who is known today for narrating the Disney film Cinderella and voicing Cruella de Vil in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, did most of her acting on television, appearing on such shows as Gang Busters and Adventures of the Falcon. Looking at the above image, we actually aren't sure whether the gun was big, or Betty Lou was small, but either way, it makes her look pretty menacing.
Walt Disney ProductionsThe Red MenaceCinderellaOne Hundred and One DalmatiansGang BustersAdventures of the FalconBetty Lou Gersontelevision
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 17 2021 |
Binger understates the obvious.
Above: a 1960 cover from Gold Medal Books for Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams. This was painted by Charles Binger and it's a beautifully simple watercolor composition, a very different approach from the almost fiery 1953 Barye Phillips cover. Of course, there's a good possibility that this is a random Binger not actually inspired by the book, but if so it's still interesting that Gold Medal would choose it. This is a reminder to track down more of Binger's work, and it's also a reminder that we're overdue to read another Williams. The cover says he was, “one of the best of all specialists in paperback-original suspense stories,” and it's true.
| Intl. Notebook | Nov 17 2021 |
A dozen movie stars share the Crown.
Not long ago we showed you a few Royal Crown Cola print ads featuring Hollywood superstar Lauren Bacall, and mentioned that other celebs had also pitched the brand. That was an understatement. In its efforts to claw away part of Coca Cola's dominant market share, RC signed up an entire stable of top stars, including a-list personalities such as Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, and Gene Tierney. Above you see a dozen celebrity ads produced by RC. There were others we left out of the group, for example with Sonja Henie, Irene Dunne, Diana Lynn, and even Bing Crosby. But how much cola can you really stand? Twelve is enough for one day.
Barbara StanwyckPaulette GoddardRita HayworthLizabeth ScottVirginia MayoLinda DarnellGene TierneyHedy LamarrLoretta YoungJoan CrawfordGinger RogersBetty GrableSonja HenieIrene DunneDiana LynnBing Crosbymagazine art
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 17 2021 |
Lindberg and her hair-do spice up otherwise blah Swedish sex drama.
Striking posters are usually the reason we're drawn to watch films, but lacking beautiful promo art or an enticing premise, we watched Sängkamrater, which is known in English as Wide Open, for two reasons: Christina. Lindberg. So what did we get? We got a story about a drunken old man who moves in with his son and his son's girlfriend Solvieg Andersson and disrupts their lives. The subplot is set off when Lindberg flies into town, and her acquaintance Gunilla Larsson's ambitions to make extra cash leads into some dangerous circumstances. There's not much recommendable about the movie at all, aside from the fact that Lindberg has one of her most famous nude scenes, a breast soaping photo session that also showcases her majestic black bush.
The sight of Lindberg's girlfur was like watching footage of an exotic animal that once roamed by the millions but is now near extinction. We felt deep sadness, and possibly even cried a little. We were also overcome by the certainty that a world that had let the bush come to near-oblivion is a world gone horribly, horribly wrong. But we digress. Sängkamrater is strictly average, except for Lindberg's majestic black bush, which you see below, because Pulp Intl. is one of the last bastions of beautiful nudity left on the internet, and we take our mandate seriously. Sängkamrater premiered in Sweden today in 1975.
SwedenSängkamraterWide OpenSolveig AnderssonGunilla LarssonChristina Lindbergposter artcinemasexploitationnuditymovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 16 2021 |
It's the year 11,959 and everything is screwed worse than ever.
We thought we'd hit the sci-fi genre, since it's been a while, and chose Edmond Hamilton's Star of Life. It's one of the books visible in the photo of a 1959 airport paperback rack we showed you in August. The story concerns an astronaut named Kirk Hammond whose lunar capsule goes off course toward the far reaches of the solar system. Hammond decides to end his life rather than starve in the void, and when he vents the capsule the absolute cold of space freezes him. He awakens in the hot spacecraft hurtling back toward Earth. Turns out he was frozen so rapidly that his cells sustained no damage, and re-entry has thawed and revived him.
He's thrilled to be alive, but when he lands he's stunned to learn he's made a long elliptical orbit through the solar system and returned to Earth 10,000 years after he left. He's immediately caught in the middle of a millennia-old conflict between two races—the Vramen, immortal humanoids who control all galactic space, and the Hoomen, descended from ancient humans, and imprisoned on Earth. At least that's how it all sets up at first. Revelations are in the offing. Hammond is rescued by the Hoomen, but the Vramen have seen the capsule arrive, and their search for this strange object sends Hoomen-Vramen tensions into overdrive, while Hammond himself, as a being 10,000 years old, has the potential to permanently alter the balance of power.
Star of Life has some big concepts and it's spread over a galactic backdrop, but like a lot of science fiction, it's written at basically a junior high level. We had to laugh when one of the characters dropped the nugget: “We made an hypothetical reconstruction.” Here's an helpful hint for Hamilton and his editors. Don't teach your impressionable young readers to talk like knobs. It's not good for them. Still, the book is entertaining—utterly weightless, mind you, but fun in an awkward, haven't-gotten-laid yet sort of way. This Crest edition is from 1959 and the psychedelic cover art is by Richard Powers. Now back to our regularly scheduled grown people fiction.
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 14 2021 |
Vintage glamour magazine produces treasure trove of rare celebrity photos.
Above you see the cover of Jem magazine, founded by famed bodybuilder Joe Weider as one of the first high budget competitors to Playboy. He also launched the similar imprint Monsieur. The scans above and below are from the very first issue of Jem, published this month in 1956. It came out during the heyday of the era when magazines of this type gave equal billing to Hollywood celebrities and erotic stars (something we try to emulate on Pulp Intl.), which means you'll not only see rare photos of actresses like Anita Ekberg, Jayne Mansfield, and Kim Novak, but also burlesque dancer and model Candy Barr (on the cover and in the beautiful masthead page), model Betty Brosmer (who was Weider's wife), and dancer Lili St. Cyr. Jem also poached July 1956 Playboy centerfold Alice Denham, which must have served as a shot across Hefner's bow. In addition to all those attractions, you get illustrations by Dwight Howe, Ken Wyeth, John Martin, and Jack Lyons. The magazine is so vibrant we uploaded every page that had either photos or art, making for a whopping fifty panels to enjoy below. We found this on Archive.org, but we're going to see if we can locate a few in real life.
Gem MagazinePlayboyCandy BarrBetty BrosmerAnita EkbergJayne MansfieldLili St. CyrGwen VerdonJoyce WinfieldEve MeyerAlice DenhamDwight HoweMonique Van VoorenJack LyonsKen WyethJohn MartinJoe Weider
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 13 2021 |
Finally! I've been waiting here an eternity for a man who looks like a success. Wanna get married?
This cover for 1951's She Had What It Takes by Kermit Welles is uncredited but it was definitely painted by Rudy Nappi, an amazing stylist, whose work is not always immediately identifiable due to the variations he showed when painting femmes fatales. The bangs and heavy eyebrows you see on this one mark her as Nappi all the way, but often his work resembled that of George Gross and Howell Dodd. We've never seen a less-than-excellent cover from him, though, and this one is especially good.
The story deals with a smalltown journalist named Jan Flowers who wants to make it to NYC, have her own society column, and marry rich. She dumps her true love Tony Bennett (not that one), jets to the Big Apple, and promptly finds every worm. The worst of her problems is probably that the cousin she's living with is consorting with a local gangster who's always in the apartment giving Jan the eye and threatening to take her by force. Or maybe the worst of her problems is the blackmail scheme she gets involved in to advance her career. Or maybe it's the employer who wants to play slip and slide and makes Jan feel that if she does he'll open doors for her.
Well, take your choice. The point is New York is can be rough on a single girl. But She Had What It Takes, while being a drama and a quasi-crime novel and a morality play about what can happen when you ride the sell-your-soul train, is also largely a romance, and a particularly saccharine one, which means things won't end up too terribly no matter what kind of bonehead decisions Jan makes. Despite the lack of real suspense, overall the book was alright. Ultimately lightweight, but readable and reasonably fun. For what we paid, we can't complain.
| Intl. Notebook | Nov 13 2021 |
When is a watershed not a watershed? When the water runs backward.
Above is a cover of National Star Chronicle from today in 1967 that references an event from our old HQ the Philippines. At that time the country, which has always had a problem with regressive males who view women as property, was going through a particularly bad stretch of gang rapes. In June of 1967, four men targeted, abducted, and, over the course of more than a day, raped a popular Filipina actress named Magdalena de la Riva. They freed her afterward, probably feeling safe from repercussions. Among the reasons were: they all came from influential families, men all over the country were getting away with similar crimes, and de la Riva probably would have to sacrifice her social standing and career to come forward.
But the quartet—Jaime Gómez José, Basilio Pineda, Edgardo Payumo Aquino, and Rogelio Sevilla Cañal—underestimated de la Riva's courage, and they also misread the mood of the Philippine public. De la Riva did indeed step forward, and the people were overwhelmingly behind her. The four men, as well as three accomplices who helped plan the abduction, were all arrested. After a sensational trial, convictions for all involved, and a few years of legal wrangling, three of the men who committed the actual rape were executed, with the fourth escaping his fate by dying of a drug overdose in prison. The proceedings were broadcast on Philippine national radio in May of 1972.
At the time the case was considered a watershed for women's rights in the Philippines, a sign of progress on the problem. The quotes in National Star Chronicle offer insight into the prevailing sentiment. One police official said, “These young hoodlums will think twice before 
carrying on the way they've been. The public is so enraged now, any would-be rapist knows he stands a chance of being torn limb from limb if he's caught.” But the problem persists all these years later, even despite a ramping up of penalties for the crime.
carrying on the way they've been. The public is so enraged now, any would-be rapist knows he stands a chance of being torn limb from limb if he's caught.” But the problem persists all these years later, even despite a ramping up of penalties for the crime.Recent backward movement on the issue is surely due to the fact that some influential people aren't interested in improving the situation. In 2016, then-presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte commented about the infamous 1989 rape of Australian missionary Jacqueline Hamill, taken hostage by inmates at Davao Prison, “I was mad she was raped, but she was so beautiful. I thought the mayor should have been first.” Duterte was mayor in 1989, so he was talking about himself. He went on to win the 2016 presidential election, despite his comments. In 2017 he said he would congratulate anyone who raped a Miss Universe, and in 2018 he said Davao City had the highest number of rape cases in the country because there were so many beautiful women there. Needless to say, watersheds are not always what they're cracked up to be—especially in the Philippines.
PhilippinesDavao CityNational Star ChronicleMaggie de la RivaMagdalena de la RivaJaime Gómez JoséBasilio PinedaEdgardo Payumo AquinoRogelio Sevilla CañalNational Star Chronicletrialtabloid
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