| Musiquarium | Sep 4 2019 |
Let the record show that Ann-Margret can sell anything.
We don't think of Swedish actress Ann-Margret as a poster girl for soul music, but a South Korean label called the Oscar Record Co. thought differently and decided to plop her on the cover of their 1971 compilation disc Soul. Oscar wasn't the only label to do this. In fact, it wasn't even the only label from South Korea to do it. Tae Do, Top Hit, Paramount, and Joong Ahng all borrowed Ann-Margret to front compilation discs too.
But this particular platter is probably the best of the lot. It has Tom Jones. Johnny Rivers, Wilson Pickett, The Animals doing “Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood,” Mitch Ryder, The Rolling Stones doing “Satisfaction” and “Paint It Black,” Cliff Richard, James Brown, and The Mamas and Papas doing “California Dreamin',” our personal favorite of the extensive offerings. You also get two songs from The Supremes, so all in all, it's a top quality collection.
The cover was posted last month at the album art blog lpcoverlover.com, a worthwhile stop for vintage vinyl art. Their scan was a little crooked, so we squared it up, separated the two Ann-Margret images, and uploaded them below. We kept the full cover scan at large size, so if you want it you'll find that it's 2500 pixels wide, pretty much twice the size of an actual LP sleeve, suitable for framing. Help yourself, and thank lpcoverlover.
The cover was posted last month at the album art blog lpcoverlover.com, a worthwhile stop for vintage vinyl art. Their scan was a little crooked, so we squared it up, separated the two Ann-Margret images, and uploaded them below. We kept the full cover scan at large size, so if you want it you'll find that it's 2500 pixels wide, pretty much twice the size of an actual LP sleeve, suitable for framing. Help yourself, and thank lpcoverlover.
| Femmes Fatales | Sep 3 2019 |
There was a thirty chinchilla wrap, but I bought one made of twenty chinchillas. We all need to cut back to save the planet.
Above is a beautiful color promo photo starring b-movie femme fatale Cleo Moore looking like a Christmas wish come to life. The image was made for her 1956 crime drama Over-Exposed. We talked about it. Shorter version—clumsily moralistic but pretty fun. You can peruse our thoughts in more detail here, and see more Moore here.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 3 2019 |
Ida done it better.
Occasionally we run across a VHS box we really like. This one for the 1954 film noir Private Hell 36, with Hollywood legend Ida Lupino in repose on the front, caught our eye with its simple but beautiful design. Anything with Lupino involved is worthwhile, including this film. We talked about it earlier this year, here.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 2 2019 |
Okay, Galahad—I want you to forget you're the most gallant of all the knights and beat this guy like a circus monkey.
Above, a cover for Kid Galahad by Francis Wallace. You get all the elements here—the natural talent, the meteoric rise from obscurity, the weakness for women, the predatory gangsters, the big fixed fight, etc. The book is originally copyright 1936 with this Bantam edition fronted by Charles Andres art appearing in 1947.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 2 2019 |
Schell, Mercouri, and Ustinov plan a field trip to the local museum.
This French promo poster was made for the big screen Technicolor thriller Topkapi, which was based on a novel by Eric Ambler, who was such a popular author that the book was optioned before it even hit bookstores. The sedateness of the poster, which was painted by Yves Thos and René Ferracci, belies how outlandish the movie is at points. It starred Greek actress Melina Mercouri, British actor Peter Ustinov, and Austrian actor Maximilian Schell, with American Jules Dassin in the director's chair, filming mainly in Istanbul and using the location to voyeuristic effect as he documents exotic aspects of Turkish life. Inside all the window dressing is a heist flick about a group intent on stealing a priceless jewel encrusted dagger from the Topkapi Palace Museum. Aspects of this will look familiar to fans of the Mission: Impossible films, but Dassin adds extravagances such as direct-to-audience narration by Mercouri, a touch of Hitchcockian vertigo, and some overly broad comedic digressions that make the final result thrilling and bizarre in equal parts. While we had issues with the movie, who are we to argue with the top critics of the day? They mostly liked it and audiences did too. Topkapi had its world premiere in France today in 1965.
TurkeyFranceGreeceIstanbulEric AmblerMelina MercouriPeter UstinovMaximilian SchellYves ThosRené Ferracciposter artcinema
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 31 2019 |
Etsuko Shihomi looks soft but hits hard.
This rare poster was made to promote Onna hissatsu ken, aka Sister Street Fighter, which premiered in Japan today in 1974. The movie is fourth in the Street Fighter series, after The Street Fighter, The Return of the Street Fighter, and The Street Fighter's Last Revenge. In this one karate master and undercover drug agent Sonny Chiba goes missing in Tokyo, prompting his bosses to recruit his sister Etsuko Shihomi to search for him. Shihomi collects clues, allies, and esoteric enemies, but of course finally learns her brother is exactly where any viewer would expect—in the villain's lair, where he's been forcibly addicted to drugs.
Generally, penetrating these evil underground strongholds is perfunctory, but in this film Shihomi has more problems than usual. She'll get there, though—what's a ’70s martial arts film without a subterranean showdown? It's all a bit silly and clunky, if surprisingly gory at the end. Interestingly, the movie tries to be instructive, actually freeze-framing to label certain martial arts techniques, weapons, and important characters. Weird, but okay. In the end Shihomi wins using basic stick-to-itiveness—with nunchakus upside multiple male craniums. Oh, and by the way, there are lots of reversed swastikas in this film. We talked about those, but if you missed that discussion check here.
JapanTokyoOnna hissatsu kenSister Street FighterEtsuko ShihomiShin'ichi ChibaSonny ChibaSanae Ôhoriposter artcinemamovie review
| Intl. Notebook | Aug 31 2019 |
Sophia Loren applies personal experience to her ideas about marriage.
Above is a cover of Midnight with a nice photo of Italian superstar Sophia Loren, and a header suggesting trial marriages for couples over twenty-one. Did she say it? Quite possibly. Her marriage to film producer Carlo Ponti was an international scandal thanks to popes and others sticking their noses into her private business. But back then they thought it was their right—actually, their holy duty—because divorce wasn't legal in Italy and Ponti was still married. He and his wife had split and had nothing to do with each other, but the Catholic church assured Loren she'd go to hell if she married Ponti. Well, she did it anyway by proxy in 1957 and officially in 1966. So in August 1970, when this issue of Midnight appeared, we think it quite likely that she had some well formed ideas about marriage. In any case, nice cover.
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 30 2019 |
Certain breeds of insects are going extinct, according to scientists. We didn't need their help to figure that out.
Above is an alternate cover for James M. Cain's racy 1947 novel The Butterfly. The edition we showed you previously (paired with a short write-up of the disastrous movie starring Pia Zadora) was from Dell, with art by Frank McCarthy. This one came from Signet in 1955, and it's really hard to find. By far it's the rarest of any of Cain's Butterfly editions. But it's worth seeking out because the cover is great. It's uncredited, though. See the previous cover here.
| Mondo Bizarro | Aug 30 2019 |
Scientist takes 7,000 pound elephant on a one way trip.
We don't just read fiction around here. We're deep into Tom O'Neill's Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. We may talk about the book later. It's full of anecdotes from the ’60s, and last night we came across the story of Tusko and his acid trip, which occurred in August 1962. Tusko was an eleven year-old Indian elephant that had the misfortune of finding himself at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City at the same time a crackpot scientist named Louis Jolyon West was at the University of Oklahoma studying the effects of LSD. Why West wanted to dose an elephant is too complicated to go into here, but let's just say he anticipated the resultant data having human applications.
In order to perform the experiment West had to calculate how much acid to give Tusko, and he decisively fucked up. He administered via syringe more than 1,400 times the human dosage (other accounts vary in this regard, but O'Neill relayed the story directly from West's notes). After the injection West stood back to observe the result. Said result, according to West's notes, was “Tusko trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily onto his right side, defecated,” seized, and died. Other versions of the story contain more detail. Apparently Tusko ran around his pen trumpeting (presumably the elephant equivalent of “I am tripping balls, dude!), before falling over. West, his keen scientific senses detecting trouble, decided to calm Tusko by injecting him with either Thorazine or promazine-hydrochloride (accounts vary) and phenobarbital. These doses were also massive, because once you've wildly overestimated the amount of LSD to give to an elephant, it's best to also wildly overestimate the amount of tranqs he might need. These second injections, running into the thousands of milligrams, may have been the actual cause of Tusko's death. We have profound sympathy for all the animals stuck on Earth with us casually murderous, ravenously omnivorous humans, but even in the endless annals of animal cruelty there are episodes so bizarre you can only marvel. Committing elephanticide using LSD is one of them.
After the Tusko fiasco West eventually made his way to a research position in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and was there at the same time as Charles Manson, which is why his story appears in O'Neill's book. You'd think he'd been run out out of Oklahoma City on a rail, but you'd be wrong. He had CIA connections, and cruelty is an asset in those quarters. He had already dosed humans without their permission during his days at the CIA's MKUltra program, so it actually represented an improvement in his ethics to do the same to an elephant. They say LSD can bring you into contact with the divine. That must be true, because the story of Louis West and Tusko is a work of divine comedy. And just to give it a tinge of pathos, below is a photo of Tusko on his first birthday, when he had no inkling his life would be cut short in the service of pseudo-science.
After the Tusko fiasco West eventually made his way to a research position in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and was there at the same time as Charles Manson, which is why his story appears in O'Neill's book. You'd think he'd been run out out of Oklahoma City on a rail, but you'd be wrong. He had CIA connections, and cruelty is an asset in those quarters. He had already dosed humans without their permission during his days at the CIA's MKUltra program, so it actually represented an improvement in his ethics to do the same to an elephant. They say LSD can bring you into contact with the divine. That must be true, because the story of Louis West and Tusko is a work of divine comedy. And just to give it a tinge of pathos, below is a photo of Tusko on his first birthday, when he had no inkling his life would be cut short in the service of pseudo-science.
OklahomaOklahoma CitySan FranciscoCIAMKUltraChaos: Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the SixtiesTom O'NeillLouis Jolyon WestCharles Mansondrugs
| Intl. Notebook | Aug 29 2019 |
Have typewriter, will travel.
This shot shows Jane Dolinger, who began public life as a model but later became an acclaimed travel writer during an era when people who made a living that way were exceedingly rare. Her career began when she took a job as secretary to adventurer Ken Krippene, who nurtured her ambition and helped her get a start in the publishing business. She married Krippene, and between 1955 and 1995 traveled the world and wrote about her exploits, from the Amazon to the Sahara, publishing eight books and hundreds of articles. She wrote mainly for men's magazines, so her stories dwelled on nightlife, sex, and prostitutes. But she also managed to risk life and limb gathering facts on Jivaro headshrinkers and Inca gold.
The nude photos of her below were published in the 1960s but were probably shot in the late 1950s. This was common practice with her. A 1971 article she wrote for Bachelor about Ibiza was accompanied by topless photos of her from 1959. It was shameless pandering, of course, but it would be a mistake to assume this was the practice of some benighted, long passed era. Today female pop stars such as Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, and Azealia Banks routinely publish or leak nudes in order to boost sales. New decade, same game.As pulp people we don't judge. Fame can be a long, hard climb and there are various ways to reach the mountaintop. Dolinger was fine with her nudes, as have been ambitious trailblazers stretching in a line from Hedy Lamarr to Marilyn Monroe to Madonna. The liberated ’70s even saw a few brave males posing nude for publicity, for example Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson. Dolinger's shots were stepping stones to a dream career, literary respect, and a lasting place in the pantheon of daring travelers. She published Gypsies of the Pampa, Behind Harem Walls, The Forbidden World of the Jaguar Princess, and other books, and became the subject of a book herself in 2010 when Larry Abbott published the biography Jane Dolinger: The Adventurous Life of an American Travel Writer. Dolinger died in 1995 at the age of sixty-two, but her legend lives on
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