There are authors and artists worth collecting, and maybe owners too.
When you sell books (which we never do, but stay with us) you can't know when someone will attach an inordinate value to a certain item and pay any price to get it. We've paid above market rate a few times, for different reasons. We'd certainly pay extra for this Phantom Books edition of Harry Whittington's 1951 novel Satan's Widow. Why? Because it's signed. Not by the author. By the owner. Lahoma Hustich scrawled her name across the front in ink. We feel like we're getting to know her, because it's the second time we've seen her name on a book front. Is that really a reason to buy a book? Well, why not? Interestingly, Phantom was an Aussie imprint, but the book we own with Lahoma's signature came from the U.S. publisher Original Novels. She must have been a prolific owner if she collected from two continents. We'd buy Satan's Widow but one guy who has it wants $145 for it, and another wants $250. Not a chance. Sorry, Lahoma.
Strindberg, Tamburi, Bisera and company wip it good in Italian sexploitation drama.
We ran across this poster for a movie we watched years ago, the exploitation drama Diario segreto da un carcere femminile, which premiered in Italy today in 1973 and is known in English as Women in Cell Block 7. Such films, for the uninitiated, are thought of by b-movie fans as belonging to a sub-genre known as women-in-prison or WiP. In honor of today's post we've gone back through the website and keyworded for them, so you can see what we've done on this unusual style of cinema by clicking “women in prison” at bottom.
The art on the poster is by Enzo Nistri, which makes it worth a share. The movie is sort of interesting too, though perhaps not exactly good. However, we've never been able to forget Olga Bisera's naughty correctional facility finger. You can see her using it in a couple of the production photos below, and following those are some of the stars, who comprise a who's-who of 1970s European exploitation cinema: Anita Strindberg, Eva Czemerys, Jenny Tamburi, Paola Senatore, Maria Pia Luzi, Gabriella Giorgelli, Olga Bisera, and Valeria Fabrizi.
I've shattered censorship barriers and redefined French cinema! My work here is done!
French cinema luminary Brigitte Bardot is easy to recognize even in a wig and wild costume, as shown here in an image from 1967. It was made when she appeared in singer Serge Gainbourg's music video (yes, a few visionaries were making them that far back and ever farther) “Comic Strip.”
Serge went the literal route for his clip, which is why Bardot is dressed as a superhero and echoed by a comic strip-like version of herself. The song is literal too, with lyrics that include fight sound effects: “J'distribue les swings et les uppercuts. Ça fait VLAM !Ça fait SPLATCH! Et ça fait CHTUCK!” That all translates as, “I distribute swings and uppercuts. It's VLAM! It's SPLATCH! And that go CHTUCK!” You can hear the tune and see the video at this link.
Bardot made other videos in 1967 and 1968. We think “Contact” is particularly interesting. But only a few years after achieving something as cutting edge as helping to popularize the most important promotional tool used by music artists even today, she retired from performances on both the small and large screen to focus on other pursuits. Below, you see her with Serge.
Yeah, gimme a Carlsberg. And when you get a chance can you put out more peanuts?
The above photo, another one of those shots that could only have been made during the 1950s, shows the interior of the Santa Monica watering hole Chez Jay, which owner Jay Fiondella opened 4th of July weekend 1959 with showgirls and a rented elephant in attendance. The elephant, according to stories, dented the bartop when one of the models annoyed it. Chez Jay exists today and the bar supposedly still has the dent. Later clients who were less disruptive—and only slightly less, we imagine—included Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen, who along with other celebs visited the bar partly due to a no paparazzi rule. You know what's most amazing about Chez Jay? We lived in L.A. for four years and never went there. And for those of you who don't know us, we do bars. Well, next trip maybe. By the way, elephants prefer Carlsberg because one of its logos features an elephant (and a swastika, but we'll set that aside for now). Drink up!
A single hard look is worth a thousand threats. Peter Held is another new author for us. He's a pseudonym used by sci-fi author Jack Vance. Take My Face was first published in 1957, with this Pyramid paperback coming in 1958 fronted by John Floherty, Jr. art featuring a clever upper body variation on the classic alpha pose. The book is about a teenaged boy whose face is burned and permanently scarred in a scooter accident. When he's later humiliated by four girls during a sorority initiation (one of whom had caused the original accident), he snaps and ends up in a reform school. The girls forget him and go on with their lives. Years later when the quartet start being murdered, there are no suspects—until someone remembers that long ago incident of youthful callousness toward the burned boy. But is he now grown up and committing the murders, or is something else going on? We thought Take My Face had a good premise, but it reads a bit dispassionately, which led to diminished involvement for us. We won't go running back to Held, but we won't run away either, should we encounter him again.
Fangs for your service. This promo image of Dominican actress Maria Montez in costume for her starring role in 1944's The Cobra Woman sells the movie for us. We'll definitely watch it—and hope it's better than the similarly named 1972 b-horror flick Night of the Cobra Woman. For that matter, we hope it's better than 1955's Cult of the Cobra. Our fingers are crossed. Montez was one of the top actresses in exotic escapist films, appearing in such fare as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, South of Tahiti, Moonlight in Hawaii, Sudan, Tangier, White Savage, Pirates of Monterrey, The Thief of Venice... you get the idea. She was still at the top of her globetrotting game when she was found dead in her bathtub in 1951 at age thirty-nine, but her legacy as a film star is assured—even if her movies were shot on Hollywood sound stages, she helped audiences travel the world.
As detective capers go, this one is a real Honey.
Victor Kalin painted this beautiful cover for Thomas B. Dewey's Go, Honeylou, published by Dell in 1962. The blurb describes the book as a “swift new caper,” and that's true. Private eye Pete Schofield is hired to drive a beautiful 6-foot bumpkin named Honeylou from L.A. to San Francisco. It's a strange request, considering a detective's high rate of pay, which is probably why Schofield doesn't seem surprised when he's immediately tailed, soon harassed, eventually beaten, and finally robbed of his human cargo. He next finds that all along he was delivering Honeylou to a whorehouse, that her guardian aunt has been murdered, and a massive cache of her money is in the wind. It all worked fine for us, however Go, Honeylou was written well into a Pete Schofield series, and we'd have preferred to start with book one. But whaddaya gonna do? We've since noticed a couple of earlier entries out there at good prices. Since this one was good, we might buy those and report back.
It's a type of animal to which the normal rules of logic don't seem to apply.
Above is a photo of the nuclear test Mohawk, part of a seventeen blast series designated Redwing. The 360 kiloton Mohawk took place on Enewetak or Eniwetok Atoll. The first few milliseconds of a nuclear blast tend to produce forms like the one seen here, a bulbous shape with vaporizing guy wires that resemble stubby legs. To us, these shapes look a bit like tardigrades, those microscopic life forms found everywhere on Earth from jungle to arctic to sea bottom, and which are so resilient and difficult to kill they can survive extreme high and low pressures, radiation, dehydration, starvation, and exposure to the vacuum of space.
Similarly, nuclear weapons seem able to survive anything, though their existence is proof of the folly of man. While we can certainly accept that we aren't an intelligent enough species to forgo the creation of armageddon causing weapons, the U.S. and Russia both have more than 5,000 nukes, an amount at which balance of power becomes meaningless. Weapon 4,999 is not the one that makes a nation secure. Nor is weapon 999. Military sources claim missile interception systems work at a rate of 80%, while arms control advocates say the real number is closer to 50%. In either case, in a full scale nuclear exchange hundreds of nukes would reach their targets.
He definitely isn't one of the great apes.
Bruno Fischer's 1950 novel The Lustful Ape has a strange title, which comes from an even stranger character, Ape Jones, so nicknamed not only because of his appearance, but due to his behavior. The protagonist, though, is a detective named Dirk Hart, whose amoral estranged wife is murdered. Explicit photos of a high society woman point to the killing being revenge for blackmail, but subplots abound as Dirk tries to solve the crime. He lives with a sister who's mixed up with the local crime lord's top henchman, has a best friend who knew his dead wife far better than he ever admitted, employs a secretary who's in love with him, and is hired by a client who commits suicide under suspicious circumstances. It's all in a day's existence for a mid-century private eye. Fischer weaves the threads together adequately and makes a readable mystery of it all, surprisingly punctuated by an extended sequence of cruel and somewhat sexualized torture. The episode makes sense, in terms of the narrative, but you don't usually come across stuff so uncompromising in tales from 1950. Our edition is from 1958 for Red Seal Books.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1957—Von Stroheim Dies
German film director and actor Erich von Stroheim, who as an actor was noted for his arrogant Teutonic character parts which led him to become a renowned cinematic villain with the nickname "The Man You Love to Hate", dies in Maurepas, France at the age of 71. 1960—Adolf Eichmann Is Captured
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents abduct fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who had been living under the assumed name and working for Mercedes-Benz. Eichman is taken to Israel to face trial on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He is found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962, and is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court. 2010—Last Ziegfeld Follies Girl Dies
Doris Eaton Travis, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, dies at age 106. The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. Inspired by the Folies Bergères of Paris, they enjoyed a successful run on Broadway, became a radio program in 1932 and 1936, and were adapted into a musical motion picture in 1946 starring Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, and Lena Horne. 1924—Hoover Becomes FBI Director
In the U.S., J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a position he retains until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. But he also used the agency to grind a number of personal axes and far exceeded its legal mandate to amass secret files on political and civil rights leaders. Because of his abuses, FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms. 1977—Joan Crawford Dies
American actress Joan Crawford, who began her show business career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, but soon became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, dies of a heart attack at her New York City apartment while ill with pancreatic cancer.
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