If sex sells, pretending sex is bad sells even better. Here’s another Vice Squad magazine, published this month in 1964, with cover star Sophia Loren and several other interesting offerings. You’ll notice the banner about bare-bosom bikinis. Believe it or not, back in the mid-sixties bikini evolution reached a point where bras vanished entirely. The most famous of these suits were known as topless Maillots, and Vice Squad breathlessly claimed they were popular with liberated young women on the beaches of Saint Tropez. As far as their popularity Stateside, we weren’t around yet, so we can’t say with certainty whether they were widely worn. However, we did find a 1964 photo at bikiniscience of a brave Chicago woman named Toni Lee Shelley being hustled away by a local cop after wearing a topless Maillot on North Beach. Interesting, isn’t it, that the same thing would probably happen today, half a century later? (At Pulp we tend to snicker about this, because on our beaches many sunbathers go entirely nude—and we wish most of them would cover up). Anyway, the leering tone of Vice Squad’s text (along with censored pix) was designed to inflame the magazine’s mainly conservative readers while giving them involuntary stirrings in the pants. Imagine thousands of Archie Bunkers getting heated up over the magazine’s scandalous contents, slamming it down in disgust, then sneaking a closer look after the missus had gone to bed. The same formula is at work in the stories about beauty queens, the “mink and champagne girl,” and Sophia Loren, who is pictured here in her film Leri, oggi, domani, aka, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Loren was always dogged by rumors that she turned to prostitution briefly during the dismal post-war years in Naples, when she was a teenager. The Vice Squad story, while not going that far, certainly suggests that Loren was a bit of a wild child. We can’t say if she was ever a member of the world’s oldest profession, but we can definitely say Vice Squad editors were experts at another ancient endeavor—spreading vicious rumors. That said, if any proof exists that the great Sophia Loren was a lady of the night, we’d pay to see it. How does fifty bucks sound?
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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