 The key to a successful assassination? Time management. 
Just that quickly we have another Adam for you today. This issue is from this month in 1978, with a cover illustrating Norman G. Bailey's story, “The Assassination.” We're still trying to make sense of this take on the classic international hitman motif. If we understood it correctly, a highly skilled killer is hired for a hellishly difficult hit on a head of state in the fictional country of Damahomey. He travels by plane, boat, and train, cases the job, beds the femme fatale, pulls off the job, and returns home carrying a valise bulging with Damahomeen currency. But once back in the U.S., he finds he can't exchange this money for dollars because it went out of usage in 1930. Well, that's weird, considering everyone was using it in Damahomey. He subsequently finds that the man he assassinated was killed in 1930. So, seemingly, unbeknownst to him—or the reader—he traveled back in time and shot a guy. All without a machine or any bells and lights of any sort. We went through the tale again to see if we missed the part where he pushed a big red button marked, “Press Here To Travel Back in Time,” but nope, wasn't there. So the assassin was hired by time travelers, and somehow also time traveled through no agency of his own. Fine, we guess. Give Bailey credit for thinking outside the box. We have thirty-plus scans below, including rarities of Sharon Tate and members of the Manson Family, accompanied by Adam's take on the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders.                                      
 Yesterday seems so very far away. 
American singer Abbe Lane, née Abigail Francine Lassman, lurks in shadow and light in this very noirish photo made during the 1950s when she was at the height of her fame. She became a star while only twenty or so and is still around today at the tender age of eighty-three. We recently shared several fun album covers featuring her and her husband Xavier Cugat and you can see those here.
 There’s nothing like the pitter patter of little jackboots.  
Check an English language bio on Gisela Fleischer and it’ll likely say she’s a West German woman who claimed to be Adolf Hitler’s daughter, and that the Swiss paper Tribune de Genève broke the story in 1966. Well, guess what? The above Midnight is from today in 1965, and inside, readers are told that Abigail Van Buren—aka Dear Abby—received a letter from West Germany that began: “I need some advice in a hurry. Should I marry a rabbi? I am the daughter of Adolf Hitler.” Fleischer’s mother Tilly Fleischer had competed in javelin at the 1936 Olympic games. According to Gisela, Hitler was impressed enough to invite her mother to the Berghof for dinner and that meeting in Obersalzberg was the beginning of an eight-month affair. Gisela claims to have been born in December 1937 at a special Nazi clinic, but never knew who her father was until later in life. Midnight journo Cyrus Bell claims to have spoken to Fleischer, and the gist is basically that learning she was Hitler’s daughter was a good thing, because it helped her finally know and accept herself. She says at the end, “Now I can say, like Antigone in the tragedy by Sophocles, that I was born for love and not for hate.” But by now you know that Midnight couldn’t land a scoop if you dropped the entire editorial staff into a Breyer’s factory. While the Dear Abby connection might well be true, it turns out Fleischer first made her Hitler claims in mid-1965 in the European magazines Oggi, Ici Paris, and Bunten, and Midnight merely reprinted them.  Fleischer was mostly ignored until she revealed all in a 1966 book called Mein Vater Adolf Hitler, published in France as Adolf Hitler mon père. Reactions to this event were skeptical, to say the least. A famous wit of the day wrote a satirical piece called, “I was Hitler’s toothbrush.” Fleischer kept her story alive with interviews in other magazines, but she had stiff competition—two people claiming to be the offspring of Hitler and Eva Braun had surfaced, a woman named Eleanor Bauer claimed to be Hitlerspawn, and the same assertion was made by a Frenchman named Jean Marie Loret. Even Martin Bormann’s son claimed to be in reality the result of an encounter between Hitler and a girl known only as Uschi. Proof will probably never turn up in any of these cases, but is it very hard to believe a man with Hitler’s power and obsession with Aryan womanhood was sowing his seed whenever the urge struck? As Goliath books and Hans von Bockhain have documented, 1930s Germany was an extraordinarily decadent time anyway. In addition, it’s rare that dictators do not have mistresses. From there it’s easy to imagine children being the result. Some historical researchers have portrayed Hitler as a sexual deviant—impotent shit freak seems to be the favored theory—but most historians believe he had a normal sex life, whatever that is. We’ll have more from Midnight later, and you can see other issues by visiting our tabloid index.
 Mobile army surgical hottie. 
Photo of British-born actress/singer Abigail, née Abigail Rogan, who became Australia’s top sex symbol by starring in the 1972 season of the television show Number 96.
 Bye bye Miss American Pie.  
Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent were murdered forty years ago today in Los Angeles, California. The killings took place just after midnight, and the bodies were discovered in the morning. Popular wisdom tells us this event brought a bloody end to the Summer of Love. As a rule, we don’t buy such easy labeling, but there’s no argument Tate was unusually lovely and her slaying while eight months pregnant was shocking, cruel and almost cosmically unfair. Her death also marked the beginning of the Sharon Tate and Charles Manson celebrity cults. The Tate cult consists of internet sites that rhapsodize over her beauty and talent, along with real-world victim advocacy groups determined to see that the Manson killers, and murderers in general, remain behind bars. And at the opposite end of the spectrum are the Manson fetishists, who mainly think he was innocent and who operate at least a few well-trafficked websites where crime scene photos are picked apart for supposed inconsistencies, and assorted straw man arguments are constructed and torn down. We were particularly fascinated by one forum dominated by a person who kept urging others to read up on the facts of “rigamortis.” Our view: if you posture as an expert on a subject, at least learn to spell it correctly. Below we offer up a selection of Manson/Tate images, and you can be sure we'll revisit this subject later.
          
|
 |
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1933—The Gestapo Is Formed
The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond. 1937—Guernica Is Bombed
In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced. 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.
|
|
|
It's easy. We have an uploader that makes it a snap. Use it to submit your art, text, header, and subhead. Your post can be funny, serious, or anything in between, as long as it's vintage pulp. You'll get a byline and experience the fleeting pride of free authorship. We'll edit your post for typos, but the rest is up to you. Click here to give us your best shot.
|
|
