Montreal based Le Rendez-Vous is one of the more interesting mid-century tabloids. It faithfully catalogued celebrity, crime, and nature's misfortunes and atrocities—the classic tabloid formula—but did so with an extra layer of brutality that's amazingly raw for a Canadian publication. Was it that way because Canada was such a safe country and its readers liked to walk on the dark side? We think that could be a factor, though it's true to an extent for all tabloids that their readers seek exotic thrills. But as if to prove our point about Le Rendez-Vous, the crime stories in this issue from today in 1969 all come from outside countries: Mexico, South Africa, and the good ole USA. Canada seemingly wasn't a good source of chaos and killing.

The editors first pump up the sex factor with British actress Margaret Lee on the cover, then, to the right, you see a stack of text about a “fillette de 16 ans.” No, it's not about a dry-aged steak. It says: 16-year-old girl kills her sister... Because she stole her lover father. Lover father? That sounds ominous. And indeed, turns out a Mexico City girl named Amalia Martinez, her sister Cristina, and father Ernesto, were in an incestuous love triangle. Amalia solved this family beef by shooting her sister in the head. “That little silly girl,” she said after being arrested, “got what she deserved.” Clearly she still hadn't quite worked through her anger. Probably she always had to share everything with her sister, and usually got the short end of the stick. It's quite a story from Le Rendez-Vous—100% prime tabloid journalism.

Elsewhere in the issue readers get a feature on circus performers, including a photo of a contortionist that brings to mind the time we saw a woman in Marrakech crawl through a tennis racket (we were searching for a cursed monkey's paw, but seeing that feat was a worthy consolation prize). Also inside is Croatian actress Sylva Koscina on the Côte d'Azur, Italian actress Antonella Dogan in the centerfold, ex-first lady Jaqueline Onassis in Greece, and our old friend, model and actress Donna Marlowe, in a bikini. We have plenty of scans of those items and more below, two other issues of Le Rendez-Vous here and here, and more from this publication to come.

There’s an interesting item making the rounds today, not strictly pulp, but worth a mention. Apparently a 1684 sex manual entitled Aristotle’s Compleat Master Piece will be offered for sale by Lyon and Turnbull auctioneers in Edinburgh, Scotland. The book, which was written in English and published there but banned until the 1960s, is part reference guide, part medical manual, and part anti-sex screed. For example, while the text offers suggestions for sexual enjoyment, and contains medical style drawings, it also warns couples what can happen if children are conceived in sin—namely that it would be born covered with hair or that Siamese twins would result. The author of the Compleat Master Piece is not known, but it's clear nothing Aristotle wrote made it into the text. Which could be considered a good thing. Great thinker and all, certainly smarter than we’ll ever be, but nobody’s perfect, and he whiffed badly a few times when it came to sex. Like for instance, he believed testicles were merely weights, and semen was produced from blood via body heat, with the best stuff coming from the area around the eyes. Given the choice, maybe we’ll take our sex advice from the anonymous hack. Auctioneers expect the book to fetch up to $650.

Above, a September 1966 Confidential with a rivalry theme featuring Ursula Andress vs. Claudine Auger, and Jackie Kennedy vs. Princess Grace. Andress and Auger are compared merely for their Bond girl qualities, but Kennedy and the Princess actually did have their resentful moments. These were detailed not just in the tabloid press—even supposedly sober magazines like Time reported on the feud. Perhaps it was inevitable. The two began as friendly acquaintances and ascended to positions of American royalty, a level that was surpassed by Grace Kelly when she became an actual royal with her marriage to Prince Rainier III of Monaco. A widowed Kennedy later married Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis, who happened to be an epic business and political rival of Rainier. How epic? Rainier actually suspended Monaco's constitution to put an end to Onassis’ meddling in its internal affairs. So taking that into consideration, it’s amazing Jackie and the Princess never tried to choke each other out. But like everyone says, that was a much more polite age.

The above issue of the venerable National Police Gazette from July 1969 stars German bombshell Elke Sommer, who is described as “Hollywood’s No.1 Nudie.” In the interview, Sommer reveals that when she paints on a hilltop outside her Beverly Hills house she does so naked. The reason? "It's the best way to get a tan all over." She also states that she thinks film nudity is fine as long as it isn’t done for purely erotic purposes.

Very interesting, considering she had already posed—purely erotically in our opinion—for Playboy magazine, and would appear nude in men's magazines several more times. The photos in panel two (at top) are from Sommer's 1963 war drama The Victors, and as happened often in those days, even though she did not appear completely nude in the finished film, she performed the scenes that way. Which of course means the excised frames ended up in various people's pockets, and soon became public. Whether this was an accident or a publicity technique is impossible to say, but we suspect the latter.

In any case, it's clear Gazette editors had an uncensored shot. Back then they had to cover Sommer's naughty bits, but we don't, and you can see the uncovered version, along with another image from the same scene, just below. Elsewhere in this issue you get Aristotle Onassis, Jake LaMotta, Denny McLain, the hidden sex problems of American husbands, and more.

Above, a Midnight newspaper with an article on Aristotle Onassis and his wife of one year, former First Lady of the U.S. Jackie Kennedy, published today in 1969. Jackie O., as she was known, was a full time obsession for the American tabloid press, though she lived on Skorpios, a private Greek island that was inaccessible to just about anyone outside the Onassis inner circle. But Midnight made up all its stories anyway, so isolated isle or not, they claim here to have the inside scoop on her marriage. Interspersed among that and other celebrity content is a lot of gore—i.e., unflinching photos of people in varying stages of mutilation, dismemberment and decay. Most of the images come from police files, though some are Vietnam War shots. Either way, they’re not for the faint-hearted. We have several more Midnights we’ll show you the inside of soon, including the blood and guts.