Vintage Pulp Aug 5 2010
HUSHED CONCLUSIONS
If you can’t be factual, at least be popular.

Hush-Hush magazine goes for broke in this issue from August 1963, offering up a slate of tales narrated in their usual breathless style. First, they tell us how Roddy McDowall took nude photographs of Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra and tried to sell them, but was thwarted when she “erupted like Mount Vesuvius”. They then demonstrate the limits of their imaginations by telling us that Italian singer Silvana Blasi reacted like “an uncontrollable Mount Vesuvius” when an African-American dancer was hired at the Folies Bergère. Two volcano similes in one issue is bad enough, but the same mountain? For investigative journalism, Hush-Hush shows us photographs of a dead Carole Landis and an unconscious Susan Hayward, and concludes that sleeping pills are bad. And finally, the magazine stokes the fires of paranoia with two stories: in the first, they explain how Fidel Castro plans to conquer America with heroin, which he’s growing with the help of two-thousand Chinese advisors; in the second, they reveal that the second wife of Dr. Sam Sheppard is a Nazi who plans to revive the Third Reich, and that she’s being helped by—you guessed it—Fidel Castro, who is somehow a communist and a Nazi. Neat trick that. As we’ve mentioned before, though these stories are laughable, people actually believed them, and believed them by the millions, as evidenced by Hush-Hush’s sales figures. The lesson is clear: the choice between popularity and truth is really no choice at all. 

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Vintage Pulp Apr 17 2010
CARIBBEAN QUEEN
Swimming the same deep water as you.

Every once in a while we come across a piece of art so amazing we have to post it rotated in order to ensure that it’s viewable at the largest possible size. In this case, it’s a Japanese promo poster for Jane Russell’s widescreen adventure Underwater!, in which Jane dives in the Caribbean for lost bars of gold, tries on a Cuban accent (which doesn’t fit at all), but wears a red one-piece swimsuit (that conversely, fits quite nicely). The film was the brainchild of Howard Hughes, who specialized in thinking of ways to show off Russell’s breasts. We can only assume he shot bolt upright in bed late one night and cried, “Eureka! I’ll make them float!” He succeeded wildly, but in terms of time and treasure he may have gotten in deeper than he planned, since the film took three years and cost three million dollars. And for all that effort what you get is mostly pretty dull. But if you happen to love Jane Russell, or are particularly adept at suspension of disbelief, then by all means give this one a go. For all its flaws, we must confess we liked it. In addition to the Japanese art, we have below a color 1955 magazine ad, borrowed from Ebay and also apparently exceedingly rare. Underwater! premiered in Japan today in 1955. 

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Intl. Notebook Dec 30 2009
CLUB PARADISE
Cuba’s Tropicana nightclub turns seventy years old today.

Above is a vintage image of the outdoor stage at the famed Tropicana nightclub in Havana, Cuba. The Tropicana, renowned as one of history’s greatest party spots, opened on December 30, 1939 on the Marianao estate of Guillermina Pérez Chaumont. The place simply blew people’s minds, not only because of its lush setting and luxurious amenities, but because of its extravagant and highly decadent stage shows. The place billed itself as “paradise under the stars,” and if you could afford to get in, it certainly must have seemed that way. On a given night you might see mob bosses, sugar barons, and captains of U.S. industry socializing, while acts such as Pérez Prado, Rosemary Clooney, and Nat King Cole performed onstage. All these years later, despite all the changes on the island of Cuba, the Tropicana is still open, and remains the hottest and most expensive ticket around. Below are more pieces of Tropicana memorabilia, mostly borrowed from Ebay.     

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Vintage Pulp Dec 1 2009
HIGH FIDELITY
Castro rails against capitalist stooges who stole his idea for oversized foam finger.
Castro is at it again, according to the rightwing scandal rag Police Gazette. These guys had Castro on the brain, and in this December 1965 issue they seemed to think the Beard was training Viet Cong killer squads in Cuba. This is amazing, considering the VC would have had to travel halfway around the world from Southeast Asia and penetrate a U.S. blockade in the Caribbean. Maybe they tunneled. With that kind of persistence, you can see why they won the war. You also get a speculative story on Porfirio Rubirosa’s fiery Ferarri crack-up earlier that year. Police Gazette suggests suicide is not outside the realm of possibility. We beg to differ—Rubirosa had just won the Coupe de France polo cup that day and was probably as satisfied as he’d ever been, which is really saying something, since the character of James Bond was based on him. Would James Bond commit suicide? We don’t think so. Did Police Gazette readers really believe all this faux news? You can bet on it. You can read more about the amazing Mr. Rubirosa here.

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Vintage Pulp Jun 8 2009
POST IMPRESSIONISM
Cuban firebrand graces the cover of one of America’s oldest magazines.


This Saturday Evening Post cover, with an article about worsening conditions inside Cuba, features one of the most dynamic Fidel Castro images from the 1960s. The story qualifies as propaganda, because it fails to mention the U.S. embargo as a cause of the problems, instead blaming them on corruption, administrative incompetence, and, ultimately, an inferior political system destined for collapse. The collapse never happened, and Castro remains a polarizing figure on the world political scene. He has appeared on thousands of magazine covers, both respectable and trashy. This issue of the venerable Saturday Evening Post first hit newsstands today, forty-six years ago.

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Vintage Pulp Mar 8 2009
HABANA VIEJA

Various issues of the magazine Cinema, published in Havana, Cuba, circa 1946. Cover stars are Amanda Ledesma, Mecha Ortiz with Roberto Escalada, followed by Myrta Silva, Maria Elena Marques, and Imperio Argentina. 

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Modern Pulp Jan 17 2009
TOUR DE GLANCE

Uruguayan author Daniel Chavarría was a miner, a model, and a museum guide, before landing in Cuba and launching a literary career. He’s since won the Dashiell Hammett Award for his novel Gijón and the Edgar Award for Adios Muchachos. His fiction is political, comical, and suspenseful, but most of all it is palpably tropical, the product of a languid and overheated island where material riches are few but passions run high. Read Chavarría and you’ll immediately perceive the difference between fiction written by foreign authors who maybe spend six weeks in Cuba, and a man who has lived there for decades and calls it home. For instance, what foreign author could hope to explain the concept of bicycle hookers, and all the subtleties associated with their trade? Chavarría does exactly that in Adios Muchachos—in fact he writes primarily about hookers. They’re his obsession, his muses, and he writes about them both unflinchingly and reverently. We won’t tell you more—except that we very much enjoyed the above two books. As a bonus, illustrator Owen Smith’s cover paintings serve as perfect encapsulations of the strange, dark beauty of Chavarría’s prose. More on Smith later.

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Intl. Notebook Jan 1 2009
CUBA LIBRE
Havana when it sizzles.

Fifty years ago on this day, U.S.-installed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, acknowledging defeat by socialist forces aligned with Fidel Castro. At the time Cuba was controlled by U.S. business interests and organized crime figures, with 75% of its land in foreign hands, and the capital of Havana serving as an international vice playground. It was known as the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean, and establishments like the Tropicana, San Souci, and Shanghai Theatre were famous for casinos, prostitutes, and totally nude cabaret shows. The El Dorado had an all female orchestra. Mobster Meyer Lansky was royalty. Luminaries such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Edith Piaf were regular headliners. Havana was simply the place to be.

Less than an hour from Florida by air, New York businessmen who’d told their wives they were at a Miami conference could be enjoying a Cuban whore by lunchtime, and be back in Dade County in time for bed and a phone call from the missus. Alternatively, they could stay all night, or for days at a time, and lose themselves in daiquiris, dancing girls, and the lure of forbidden Barrio Colón. It was paradise—at least if you were a foreigner or one of the wealthy Cubans in partnership with them. For thepoor 
Havana was pure hell. The billions in revenue earned by casinos and hotels trickled not down, but out—into foreign bank accounts. Malnutrition, illiteracy, and crime were rampant. When Castro ran Batista off the island the party cautiously continued, because his political intentions were not immediately clear. Everyone knew the old system would change; nobody knew exactly how much. But for a brief, post-revolutionary moment Cuba remained open to foreigners, and so the expatriate carnival went on—albeit under a cloud.

But the lines had already been drawn in the greatest ideological battle of modern times. U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower was using the CIA to train Cuban exiles for an invasion to oust the socialists, and Castro was planning to nationalize a corrupt capitalist economy that had excluded those who were too poor, too black, or too lacking in influence to get a seat at the big table. When Castro made nationalization official, the U.S. struck with an embargo, and followed up five months later with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Since then the ideological battle lines have occasionally shifted, but Cuba remains the prize jewel of the war.

As historical events go, the Cuban Revolution has been invaluable to pulp, providing rich material for authors such as Graham Greene, James Ellroy and a literary who’s-who of others. It has been the subject of countless revisionist potboilers. Stephen Hunter’s Havana is perhaps the best of these novels. In that one Fidel’s fate is in the hands of a goodhearted redneck from Arkansas. Sent by the CIA, the heroic marksman is more than a match for the hapless Cubans, but does he really want to kill Castro? Movies ranging from Errol Flynn’s piece-of-fluff Cuban Rebel Girls, to Wim Wenders’ inspiring Buena Vista Social Club, to Benicio del Toro’s heavyweight Ché, have also used the island as a backdrop. Doubtless Cuba will provide material for as long as authors write and directors film, as its history continues to inspire, and its future continues to be in flux.

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Featured Pulp
Paris Flash Magazine
Paul Rader Pulp Covers
Burlesque Queens
Two Japanese Strip Club Posters
Hong Kong Movie Flyers
Jane Russell Underwater
Joanna Cassidy Bladerunner Stills
History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
September 03
1941—Auschwitz Begins Gassing Prisoners
Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps, becomes an extermination camp when it begins using poison gas to kill prisoners en masse. The camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, later testifies at the Nuremberg Trials that he believes perhaps 3 million people died at Auschwitz, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revises the figure to about 1 million.
September 02
1967—Nation of Sealand Established
The Principality of Sealand, located on a platform in the North Sea, is established under the rule of Prince Paddy Roy Bates. Proving that paradise is a pipe dream as long as humans are involved, Sealand has already endured a coup, a war, and a hostage crisis since its formation.
1973—J.R.R. Tolkien Dies
English fantasy novelist J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, dies at the age of 82.
September 01
1902—French Go to Moon
Georges Méliès' Le voyage dans la lune, aka A Trip to the Moon, is released in France. It is the first science-fiction film ever made.
1939—Germany Starts World War II
Nazi Germany, along with the Soviet Union and Slovakia, attack Poland, beginning the chain reaction that leads to war across Europe.
1972—Fischer Beats Spassky
In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky and becomes the world chess champion. The match had been portrayed as a Cold War battle, and thus was a major propaganda victory for the United States.

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