| Femmes Fatales | Feb 22 2021 |
The calm at the center of the storm.
Christine Keeler, who died several years ago, was born today in 1942. You've seen this image of her before. It shows her in 1963, infamous at the time due to her relationship with the married British Secretary of State for War John Profumo. You know that episode as The Profumo Affair. While we've seen this shot many times, today it really struck us how nice it is—as is its variation below. They were made by Lewis Morley to promote The Keeler Affair, a film that was never released. But Morley's shot was leaked to The Sunday Mirror, and it exploded over the stuffy British public like a bomb and remains one of the most iconic images of the 1960s. Some websites say Keeler is straddling a chair made by famed designer Arne Jacobsen, but it was actually a cheap copy. We've written on Keeler before—as has everyone else—but if you want to see what we did, you can check here, here, here, and here. We also have one more link for you. If you follow it, you'll see that the above shot is the latest in an ongoing series featuring famous women in unusual chairs. Trust us, it's worth a look.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 21 2021 |
Let's see, I'll need one bullet for my blackmailer... one for my betrayer... a couple for his henchmen...
Above is a rare promo poster for the film noir Cry Danger, starring the ever reliable Dick Powell, face of such classic winners as Pitfall and Cornered. In this one he plays a criminal tossed into prison for a robbery and murder he didn't commit, but who's released when someone provides the courts with an alibi. To Powell's surprise, this rescuer isn't someone he knows, but rather an opportunist who figures to benefit when Powell goes after the hidden holdup loot. Powell, though, really didn't commit the crime. He was framed, so he goes about trying to clear his name. Since that necessarily means locating the cash, he finds himself an unwilling and unlikely asset of the police, who are following him night and day.
That's a good set-up for a movie, and with competent acting assured thanks to Powell's participation, along with that of Rhonda Fleming and William Conrad, you end up with a solid film noir that generates all the anticipated darkness and personal disaster. The movie looks good too, thanks to first time director Robert Parrish and cinematographer Joseph F. Biroc. Much of it is set in a Bunker Hill trailer park with a nice view over Los Angeles, including Chinatown. Two thumbs up on this. IMDB and AFI disagree on the premiere date, but we'll go with IMDB because it specifically mentions the premieres took place in New York City and Birmingham, Alabama. That was today in 1951
Los AngelesBunker HillCry DangerDick PowellRhonda FlemingWilliam ConradRichard ErdmanJean PorterRobert ParrishJoseph F. Birocposter artcinemafilm noirmovie review
| Femmes Fatales | Feb 20 2021 |
I call this next punch the goodnight kiss.
Virginia Mayo wasn't much of a boxer. In addition to being very light, she telegraphed her punches, like this haymaker roundhouse right she's about throw after winding it up from somewhere around Sausalito. Good thing she could act. She appeared in such classic films as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Flame and the Arrow, South Sea Woman, and, interestingly, in 1946 starred in both White Heat and Red Light. That sounds like a must-watch double bill, and despite the hundreds of vintage crime flicks we've seen, amazingly we've never seen those. So our night is all mapped out.
South Sea WomanWhite HeatRed LightThe Secret Life of Walter MittyThe Flame and the ArrowVirginia Mayo
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 19 2021 |
It's the sad songs that always come back to haunt you.
Above is a stunning Belgian poster in French and Dutch for François Truffaut's comi-tragic crime tale Tirez sur le pianiste, known in Dutch as Schiet op de pianist, in English as Shoot the Piano Player, and which starred Charles Aznavour as a hard luck nightclub musician. We talked about the movie in detail back in November. Shorter version: when French New Wave meets film noir strange things happen. There's no release date for Belgium but the movie probably opened there shortly after its premiere in France, which was in November 1960.
BelgiumFranceTirez sur le pianisteSchiet op de pianistShoot the Piano PlayerDavid GoodisCharles AznavourFrançois Truffautposter artcinemafilm noir
| Intl. Notebook | Feb 19 2021 |
Only her ex-boyfriends recognize her.
We keep sharing Technicolor lithographs and pleading ignorance of the models' identities. Today we have an excuse. She's wearing a mask—a much more interesting and fun mask than the rest of us have been wearing through the last year. We won't bother to ask for help with her identity—unless someone recognizes her from her body alone. In which case—you lucky devil! This is from the early ’60s.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 18 2021 |
When ragtag crooks hook up with a bevy of Bahama mamas a tropical storm breaks.
Basil Heatter 1963's novel Virgin Cay was an enjoyable tale, so when we saw this Robert McGinnis cover for Harry and the Bikini Bandits we couldn't resist. The novel, which came in 1969 with Fawcett/Gold Medal's edition appearing in 1971, is the story of seventeen-year-old Clayton Bullmore's trip to the Bahamas to see his nutty uncle Harry, who lives on a raggedy ketch and has a magic touch with women of all types. This is where the bikinis come in, but the bikini-wearers are not the bandits (except, technically, one). The bandits are Harry, a couple of his acquaintances, and Clay, who's dragged into a scheme to rob the big casino in Nassau. The combination of coming-of-age story and casino caper is fun, and Heatter mixes in humor, sex, and action, and folds it all into a winning waterborne milieu. He even manages to add a shipwreck, a deserted island, and buried treasure, so we'd say he includes all the most beloved tropes of tropical adventures. It'll make you want to run away to the Caribbean. Heatter is two-for-two in our ledger.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 17 2021 |
This comes as a surprise to me, but I think I'm too wiped out to have sex again today.
There's so much sleaze out there. We continue to be amazed at the sheer volume of it. Above is a cover for Ralph Whitmore Jr.'s 1965 sleazer Passions Unlimited, from All Star Books. We would give a lot to know how much all these smut books sold compared to regular fiction, but that info is not available to us. Considering the sheer number of these we run across, though, the profits must have been considerable. We have several sleaze novels lined up for reading, so we'll be back on this subject soon.
| The Naked City | Feb 17 2021 |
There's not much you can do when the river runs dry.
Above is a vintage photo taken in the concrete basin of the Los Angeles River showing police detectives standing near an unidentified corpse. Some websites call this a suicide, but if you look closely you can see that the body is pretty far from the bridge. If this person committed suicide, it wasn't by jumping. The photo first became publicly known thanks to a photographic 2019 exhibition by the Lucie Foundation, which shared 79 other shots of a similar type. They all came from a collection of about 2,000 photos taken by LAPD personnel between 1925 and the mid-1970s. This is a lonely end for a man, which the handwritten date tells us was today in 1955.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 16 2021 |
In giallo it's not the final destination that matters. It's the endless journey in circles.
Spasmo is what you used to call your little brother, but amazingly it's also the name of an Italian giallo flick, and like other giallos, this one comes with sly looks, loaded dialogue, appearing mannequins, disappearing bodies, creepy bit players, coincidences that aren't really coincidences, and baffling extraneous events. The plot here here is set into motion when Robert Hoffman shoots an intruder. The body disappears and he spends the rest of the film trying to figure out what happened. Which is impossible, of course, because in giallo the plots are often nonsensical and the characters behave irrationally in ways both minor and major. At one point co-star Suzy Kendall, who needed a long soak in a tub after this torturous journey, says, “I don't understand. I don't understand anything!” And that neatly sums up the film. But giallos (or gialli for you purists) aren't usually meant to be understood. They're puzzles with no solutions. Extremely self-conscious and stylish mindfucks. Some are better than others, but for us, everything about this one falls short except the three excellent, creepy promo posters you see above. Spasmo premiered in Italy today in 1974
I am a normal... and well adjusted... adult female... human being.
Hide? Heh-heh. What makes you think I have anything to hide?
I just pop up and scare the shit out of people when they least expect it. I'm really good at it, too. I'm like the Hendrix of that.
Giuseppe said my plaid leisure suit was ugly and now he must die.
| Femmes Fatales | Feb 16 2021 |
The woman who set fire to France.
First degree Arsan is the highest level of Arsan, which is the act of starting a fire or explosion with the intent to destroy or damage something. So above you see Thailand born Emmanuelle Arsan, who did exactly that, setting fire to and destroying French censorship standards. She was known by several names, including Marayat Rollet-Andriane and Marayat Bibidh, but it was as Arsan that she found fame in France by writing the erotic novel Emmanuelle, which was immediately banned. While its publisher Eric Losfeld was jailed and fined, the book was clandestinely and anonymously sold from 1959 until its official publication in 1967.
Today the novel is thought to have been written by Arsan's husband Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, and “Emmanuelle Arsan” is thought to be a pseudonym they shared, with he as writer and she as its public face. Arsan parlayed the literary recognition into modeling, acting, an uncredited directorial turn at the helm of the 1976 sexploitation flick Laure, and celebrity status as the personification of France's naughty libido. This wonderful image is from 1976, and she's 40 in it. You can see numerous more impressive shots of Arsan in the write-up we did on Laure a few years back.
ThailandFranceEmmanuelle ArsanMarayat BibidhMarayat Rollet-AndrianeLouis-Jacques Rollet-AndrianeEric Losfeldliteraturenudity
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