 She's going to drop a Yakuza in the corner plot. 
This hansai style promo is an addendum to the tateken promo we previously shared for Onna mekura hana to kiba, known in English as Blind Woman: Flower and Fangs. Basically, you get the same idea as the previous poster, with Arai wearing the same cool cheongsam but posed in a striking—if impractical—shooting posture. She hits practically everything she shoots at anyway, though. The magic of movies. Onna mekura hana to kiba premiered in Japan today in 1968.
 With Bogart and Bacall in the starring roles an unusual fugitive movie takes flight. 
This beautiful poster for La fuga was painted by Italian artist Luigi Martinati, and you doubtless recognize Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. They starred in four movies together and had a dual cameo in a fifth. This promo was made for their fourth outing Dark Passage, retitled to “the escape” in Italy. And therein lies the plot. Bogart breaks prison and undergoes a backalley cosmetic surgery procedure on his face in order to evade the cops and have a chance to solve the crime for which he was unjustly sent up the river. The filmmakers decided to use the gimmick of having the first section of the film in Bogart-vision—i.e. first person pov until he gets his new face. It makes sense. Otherwise they'd have needed to have another actor play pre-surgery Bogart, or have resorted to clunky make-up and prosthetics. Bacall co-stars as unlikely shelter and succor, plus the prospect of love—if Bogie can survive. It's a good movie.
But we're going to tack upwind at this point and suggest that Dark Passage, while good, isn't as scintillating as its reputation. Certainly it isn't in the class of To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, or The Big Sleep. But hey—it stars B&B, and that's all audiences of the era really cared about. Three years into her film career Bacall had grown into superstardom—or stardom as it was called back then—and dished out a performance here that did plenty with a thin script and a belief defying scenario. The other star here is San Francisco, where most of the movie was shot. The city appeared in many period productions, but we can't think of it ever being used to such an extent as in Dark Passage. Since we lived across the Bay in Berkeley for a couple of years, we got to know San Fran well and it's fun to see it as it once was. Dark Passage—slightly overrated and all—is fun too. It premiered in the U.S. in 1947 and reached Italy today in 1948.
            
 Of course I had a mental health screening before buying my gun. And I uh... got a perfect score. 
We have a bit of Dutch pulp today, Das Schwarze Phantom by Francis Hobart, published in 1959 by Constantin-Verlag, with uncredited art of a crazy-eyed femme fatale pulling from her purse the last thing any person who's cognitively all there wants to see. Let's see if we're all there: Person, woman, man, camera, TV. Yup—we're golden! This cover was a Flickr find, which we lightly cleaned. Thanks to the original uploader.
 Be quiet! I'll deal with you in a minute. It's the bottom of the ninth and the Dodgers are batting.   
This promotional photo of Veronica Lake was made for her 1944 war thriller The Hour Before Dawn. It's the second promo from the film we've shared. It's hard for us to even conceive of Lake apart from her three major noirs This Gun for Hire, The Blue Dahlia, and The Glass Key, but she made more than thirty other movies we're guilty of not seeing. We'll remedy that soon.
 When the worst that can happen actually happens. 
Nine years ago when we discussed Nightmare Alley we shared its West German poster, so we thought we'd circle back to the movie today, first because it was excellent, second because we wanted to share the U.S. poster, and third because Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro remade it a couple of years ago, which made us think we needed to remind people there was a previous version. Well, here's the reminder: the original Nightmare Alley is one of the darkest films of the mid-century period. Tyrone Power is great in it, and Coleen Gray never hurts to have around, but what really makes the film worthwhile is that it's loaded with interesting subtext. If you want to know more about it, our previous write-up is here. Nightmare Alley premiered in the U.S. today in 1947.
 Welcome to the greatest show on Earth 
Renato Casaro was a celebrated Italian movie poster artist, but he worked in other media, including album sleeves and portraiture. Above he's created an advertising poster for Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione, a Parisian circus that traces its roots back to 1852, when Charles de Mornay, commonly referred to as Duc de Morny, undertook its creation and named it after his half brother Prince Louis-Napoléon III. When the circus finally opened in 1859 it featured equestrianism, animal acts, and aerial acrobatics from the famed Jules Léotard. After being interrupted by World War I, the business passed over to Gaston Desprez in 1923, and again in 1934 to the Bouglione Brothers, who were Italians who'd made a name for themselves traveling France with a menagerie and wild cat act. The circus was halted during World War II and the occuptation of its buildings by the Nazis, but emerged post-war to continue its growth and fame, known by then as Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione, the name it bears today. Casaro's lovely poster dates from 1970.
 Abracadabra! Bim-skala-bim! Wherever my clothes were sent, return them from where they went! 
This photo from an issue of Weekly Playboy features Japanese model Yuko Sugiyama looking a bit witchy, which fits for this time of year, if you happen to celebrate Halloween. Normally we only feature shots of actresses, which she never was as far as we know, but we like the image so much we thought we'd use it anyway. It's from 1968.
 He can run from the past but he can't hide.  
It took us a while but we've returned to Richard Stark, aka Donald E. Westlake, and his Parker series. We read entry one a few years ago. 1963's The Man with the Getaway Face is number two. The cover art here is by Harry Bennett and he basically copied his cover for book one, but changed the background and added the facial bandages. Those bandages reveal the premise—Parker has had a cosmetic surgeon change his face in order to help him evade “the Outfit,” who owe him in spades for various transgressions.
But Getaway Face doesn't focus on Parker's pursuers. Clearly, that's coming in the future. In the here and now he needs money, so he signs onto an armored car robbery, which, in adherence to the pulp law of tenuous connections turning into huge problems, boomerangs in such a way that his face doctor is murdered and Parker is blamed for it. His hands are full: deadly enemies, armed robbery, betrayal, murder, pursuit, and revenge. But he has very big hands. Nice work. We'll read book number three in the series soon.
 Would it help to entice you if I told you my shoes actually fit my feet perfectly? 
Above: a 1966 cover for The Hungry Ones by Craig Douglas, for Crescent Books with art by the ultra-talented Elaine Duillo. Wanna buy this book? It's only between two-hundred and four-hundred bucks, depending on which site you visit. The vendors might be the real clowns. That's high even for Duillo's work. Click her keywords below to see a little more. It's free.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1926—Aimee Semple McPherson Disappears
In the U.S., Canadian born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach, California in the middle of the afternoon. She is initially thought to have drowned, but on June 23, McPherson stumbles out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people named Steve and Mexicali Rose. However, it soon becomes clear that McPherson's tale is fabricated, though to this day the reasons behind it remain unknown. 1964—Mods and Rockers Jailed After Riots
In Britain, scores of youths are jailed following a weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers in Brighton and other south coast resorts. Mods listened to ska music and The Who, wore suits and rode Italian scooters, while Rockers listened to Elvis and Gene Vincent, and rode motorcycles. These differences triggered the violence. 1974—Police Raid SLA Headquarters
In the U.S., Los Angeles police raid the headquarters of the revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army, resulting in the deaths of six members. The SLA had gained international notoriety by kidnapping nineteen-year old media heiress Patty Hearst from her Berkeley, California apartment, an act which precipitated her participation in an armed bank robbery. 1978—Charlie Chaplin's Missing Body Is Found
Eleven weeks after it was disinterred and stolen from a grave in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland, Charlie Chaplin's corpse is found by police. Two men—Roman Wardas, a 24-year-old Pole, and Gantscho Ganev, a 38-year-old Bulgarian—are convicted in December of stealing the coffin and trying to extort £400,000 from the Chaplin family. 1918—U.S. Congress Passes the Sedition Act
In the U.S., Congress passes a set of amendments to the Espionage Act called the Sedition Act, which makes "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces, as well as language that causes foreigners to view the American government or its institutions with contempt, an imprisonable offense. The Act specifically applies only during times of war, but later is pushed by politicians as a possible peacetime law, specifically to prevent political uprisings in African-American communities. But the Act is never extended and is repealed entirely in 1920.
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