| Vintage Pulp | Sep 30 2021 |
Put me down, silly. The expression means I want to spend more time outside the cabin.
According to medical folklore you're actually supposed to starve a fever, but that doesn't work with this cover at all, so feed it is. Orrie Hitt's Cabin Fever was published in 1954. We've read five of his books, and while we don't want to claim that once you've read that many you've read them all, it sure seems like he hits on the same ideas every time. So we aren't going to acquire this one, but that doesn't mean we won't revisit him later. One thing about Orrie—he's a quick read. Harry Schaare art on this.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 30 2021 |
Some guys just can't catch a break.
The Breaking Point is the second of three Hollywood adaptations of Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not, and it's a very good one. You're already starting from an advantageous point when you have John Garfield in the starring role. He could act, and this part requires quite a bit from him. This was his next-to-last movie—he would be dead two years later, victim of a congenital heart problem, exacerbated by high stress, reportedly from his blacklisting that was the result efforts by commie hunters.
Casablanca director Michael Curtiz is on board here too, and he does a masterful job bringing the story to life. Curtiz, or Warner Brothers, or both, decided to transplant the novel's action from Cuba to Newport Beach, but the theme of a man caught in untenable economic circumstances remains. Those who wanted a reasonably faithful adaptation of Hemingway's story got it in this film. The first version, also called To Have and Have Not, was amazing but had little in common with the source material. The third adaptation, The Gun Runners, was also good but downplayed certain political themes. (There's also an Iranian version we haven't seen and which we'll leave aside for now.)
So, which of the three U.S. versions is best? Is it really a competition? They're all compulsively watchable, but this effort with Garfield is the grittiest by far, and the most affecting. It's strange—To Have and Have Not is supposed to be Hemingway's worst book, but with three good movies made from it, maybe it isn't that bad after all. Perhaps because it's a work from one of the most influential authors ever to write in English, the bar was just set too high. Maybe it really is Hemingway at his worst, but personally we think it's very good. The Breaking Point premiered in the U.S. today in 1950.
CaliforniaNewport BeachCatalinaThe Breaking PointTo Have and Have NotJohn GarfieldPatricia NealPhyllis ThaxterMichael CurtizErnest Hemingwayposter artcinema
| Femmes Fatales | Sep 29 2021 |
Excuse me, Miss? Could you *cough cough* smoke elegantly in the opposite direction?
London born Irene Needham found the need for a new name when she made the journey to Hollywood to become an actress. She chose a pretty cool one—Sandra Storme. Though these days, let's admit, it sounds like it belongs to a porn star. During Storme's short career she made five movies, including 1937's Artists and Models and 1939's Murder in the Night. She looks quite nice in this smoking shot, which is one of more than a hundred we've colllected. We may post a group of those later. We don't have a precise copyright on this one, but it's probably from around 1935.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 28 2021 |
Leave it to Nazis to turn phys ed from your favorite class into the worst experience of your life.
This cover of Male from this month in 1967 has cover art of history's worst gym class, painted by the great Mort Kunstler, and leave it to Nazis to ruin the one thing you can get a good grade in just by showing up. Another thing ruined is the magazine. When it arrived it turned out some pages were razored out of the center. Probably the most interesting pages. It's an occupational hazard, we suppose. We generally assume the seller had no idea, as these mags are so often the leftovers of fathers and grandfathers, but if it was in fact deliberate, well then, cocks on their house! That's the saying, right? Or it pox? Doesn't matter. The silver lining was that we didn't have to worry keeping the magazine intact while scanning. We just ripped it apart, which sort of felt good.
There's still plenty of interesting material inside this mutilated Male. There's fiction and fact, art from Gil Cohen and Bruce Minney, plus more from Kunstler, a screed against motorcycles, a lot of pro Vietnam War content, with lots of digs at peace activists and draft fugitives. The magazine works especially hard to convince readers that draftees who fled to Canada faced lives worse than if they'd gone to Southeast Asia. We doubt quite seriously that anything could be worse than dying in a hot jungle for no rational purpose 10,000 miles from home. But maybe we're biased—our fathers were war vets, and they had one wish in life: that the military never get its mitts on us. Also that we never do hard drugs. Well, one out of two isn't bad. Twenty scans below.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 27 2021 |
Are we safe? Beats me. I don't actually know much about wildlife. I became a great white hunter strictly for the babes.
Instantly recognizable Bill Edwards art of a woman reclining in grass fronts H.T. Lord's 1963 sleaze novel Sin Safari. This was published by Europa Books with one of its rare foldout covers. You see both the folded front and the extended cover here, and you can see another example we shared several years ago at this link. We don't know how many of these fold-outs the company produced, but our guess is a mere five, because that's how many we've seen across a decade of searching.
Turning our attention back to Edwards, his style is usually distinct enough to identify at a glance, but assuming one is unsure and the piece is unsigned, it can be confirmed as his work thanks to his trademark—a mole on his women's cheeks. But he didn't do that 100% of the time, and in fact didn't do it here. Instead he's placed a Band-Aid on her thigh. We don't know what that's about, but he painted Band-Aids on his women at least a few times, giving his work another identifiable element. We'll have more from Edwards and Europa soon.
Turning our attention back to Edwards, his style is usually distinct enough to identify at a glance, but assuming one is unsure and the piece is unsigned, it can be confirmed as his work thanks to his trademark—a mole on his women's cheeks. But he didn't do that 100% of the time, and in fact didn't do it here. Instead he's placed a Band-Aid on her thigh. We don't know what that's about, but he painted Band-Aids on his women at least a few times, giving his work another identifiable element. We'll have more from Edwards and Europa soon.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 27 2021 |
She's pure pinku power in a pint-sized package.
This fantastic poster was made to promote the roman porno movie Joshidaisei: Sexy Dynamite, which was known in English as Female Coed: Sexy Dynamite, and starred the amazing Mari Tanaka, one of our favorite pinku actresses. Just as a reminder for the uninitiated, pinku is a Japanese film genre roughly analogous to sexploitation, though the definition can be more exclusive depending on where you look. Also, the films are not explicit, but manage to imply plenty with camera angles, props, and physical acting. Sexy Dynamite isn't available to us, sad to say, but we had to show you the poster anyway because it's so unusual. If we ever track down the film we'll update this entry. In the meantime, as consolation, check out the promo image of Tanaka below. Want to see more of her? Click her keywords below and start scrolling. Joshidaisei: Sexy Dynamite premiered in Japan today in 1972.
JapanJoshidaisei: Sexy DynamiteFemale Coed: Sexy DynamiteMari Tanakaposter artcinemapinkuroman pornosexploitationnudity
| The Naked City | Sep 26 2021 |
You're the lawyer, not me, but listen—I have an idea for a defense strategy. First, let me introduce my mother-in-law.
The above photo from the University of Southern California archive of Los Angeles Examiner crime photos shows an L.A. homemaker named Karen Jacobsen in the midst of a pre-trial conference with public defendant Victor S. Baker today in 1961. Jacobsen needed a lawyer for the most important of reasons—to beat a murder charge. She had stabbed her husband Lawrence to death while they were in his car. She said it happened after a terrorizing ride, and claimed it was in self defense of both herself and her two daughters. She was arrested but freed on bail, and this conference occurred during her pre-trial release period.
When she was tried later in the year a jury acquitted her, but we knew that before even reading about the trial, and you wanna know how? That's her mother-in-law Edith sitting next to her in the photo below, offering emotional support. Her attorney: “Your honor, I'd like to enter into evidence defense exhibit A, the deceased's mom, who's obviously fine with his death, so, like... defense rests.” If your own mom isn't in your corner when your killer is on trial, forget it. Probably Lawrence never visited her, so she'd been thinking of him for years as dead already.
Los AngelesUniversity of Southern CaliforniaLos Angeles ExaminerKaren JacobsenLawrence Jacobsenmurder
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 26 2021 |
In New York City people of a certain class live on the Upper East Side. Stockbrokers, lawyers, Nazis...
This poster would have sucked us right through the moviehouse doors had we been around when it was on display. It has beautiful colors, an air of mystery, a nice design, and dramatic graphics. The House on 92nd Street, which starred William Eythe, Lloyd Nolan, and Signe Hasso (who we've seen a lot of lately), definitely doesn't rise to the level of the promo art. It qualifies as a propaganda film, though the events depicted are accurate. But with J. Edgar Hoover appearing briefly in the prologue, a stentorian narration, stilted dialogue, and a soundtrack that veers toward the martial, it's pretty hard to immerse yourself in what is undeniably a Hollywood-on-FBI stroke job.
If you take the plunge, the movie turns out to be about a German American student who is recruited by Nazis but instead becomes a double agent for the FBI during the period when World War II was raging in Europe but the U.S. wasn't militarily involved yet. German spies had been deployed around the U.S., and the movie deals with a particular group that gets wind of an important military secret, the secret of—dum dum duuuuuuum—the bomb. You know. The big bomb. The A-bomb. The nuke. The edge. The be-all. The end-all. The mushroom cloud layin', eyeball meltin', city flattenin', effervescently fissionatin' ordnance both Germany and the U.S. thought would win the war. Good premise, actually.
But since World War II was almost over when the film came out, the plot's outcome was a given. Did audiences feel any suspense? We aren't convinced. Even if the FBI hadn't routed out the spies, the skyrocketing Upper East Side real estate prices would have. The Nazis would have moved to the Bronx seeking cheaper rent. With the conclusion not in doubt, the movie's thrills needed to be provided by the audience's attachment to double agent Eythe, who's in constant danger of being outed and de-cortexed by a Luger slug. Unfortunately, he's mostly an empty suit, therefore the movie fails on that level. It was well reviewed in its day, but duh, critics need to eat too. We doubt many would have panned the movie at that time. But the lens of history is cruel and today the film is considered substandard.
The best aspect of The House on 92nd Street is Signe Hasso as the cast iron Frau Farbissina style bitch operating the nest of naughty Nazis, but she's not enough to save the production—nor ultimately the spy ring. If the filmmakers had ditched the narration, the scare music, the scare Hoover, and gone less procedural and more personal, maybe there would have been a good film in this somewhere, but as it turned out it's just a middling crime melodrama considered to be a fringy film noir—certainly one the genre could do without. The poster, though, remains very nice. The House on 92nd Street premiered today in 1945.
GermanyNew York CityWorld War IIThe House on 92nd StreetFBIWilliam EytheLloyd NolanSigne Hassonazisposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 25 2021 |
He's not a bad guy. He's just a little conflicted.
Above: a beautiful French language Belgian poster for the suspense/horror film Dr. Jekyll et Mr. Hyde, aka Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner. We love this poster as much as we love the Finnish and West German ones. The art here depicts quite effectively Jekyll's inner battle, with his face half in light and half in shadow. The movie opened in the U.S. in 1941, was delayed from showing in Europe for years due to World War II, but we think it finally premiered in Belgium during the autumn of 1946, a range we extrapolated from the film's premiere in France today the same year.
BelgiumDr. Jekyll et Mr. HydeDr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeSpencer TracyIngrid BergmanLana Turnerposter artcinemahorror
| Hollywoodland | Sep 25 2021 |
Really? The foot on my back again? When the time comes this motherfucker is going to taste so good.
Did you know that generally lions were tranquilized for photo ops like this? This particular lion, though, tucked its tranq between its cheek and gum and spit it out when nobody was looking. Later it's going to eat human flesh for the first time, in this case embodied by Nat Pendleton, wrestler, actor, animal lover. He made this promo in 1936 when he was filming The Great Ziegfeld, and it's part of a series that includes this shot showing him and the lion on better terms.
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