 Sleaze with cheese and Mayo. 
The 1962 Midwood Books sexploitation novel Scandal was written by Dallas Mayo, aka Gilbert Fox, and has uncredited cover art. Some of Midwood's offerings were tamer than others. Scandal falls on the mild side, with a story set in the fictive burg of Sedgemoor, where a set of local bros are about to throw a big stag party around the same time a Hollywood producer rolls anonymously through scouting for a possible movie location. The tale is told round robin style, with a name mentioned at the end of each chapter preceding the next chapter told from that person's point of view. In this way Mayo keeps cycling through about eight characters. By the end, the Hollywood producer loves one of the stag party strippers, another stripper finds lesbian love, a married couple rekindle their sex life, and so forth. It's cheesy stuff, but Scandal is interesting for the social attitudes on display, even it isn't very hot. Get extra Mayo here.
 It was a place filled with natural wonders. 
We found this advertising flyer for Abe Weinstein's famed Dallas burlesque venue the Colony Club floating around online, and we think its lovely model and deliberately skewed text make it interesting enough to share. An image search doesn't reveal where online it originated, but its size (1,600 pixels wide) causes us to suspect it first appeared on someone's blog. Abe Weinstein, along with his brother Barney, was a big player in the Dallas nightclub scene, and dancers that passed through his clubs included Lili St. Cyr and Candy Barr. As the line-up from May 10th to 23rd 1954 indicates, musical entertainment was part of the draw too, helping to attract not just men, but couples. The lingerie-clad woman, presumably a dancer, gracing the front of this flyer is not known to us. We figure she could be the Joan King mentioned, but there were no images of Joan King online when we searched.  We'll keep an eye out. In the meantime, if any of you can identify this person, feel free to get in contact.
The infamous Jack Ruby owned a club called the Carousel on the same street as the Colony. While the Colony worked to cultivate an aura of reputability, Ruby's club was a dive that he opened above a delicatessen two doors away in hopes of capturing Colony's overflow. His musical entertainment was a bump and grind band, he sometimes showed porno reels before the dancers went onstage, and some of the girls were said to moonlight as prostitutes. Ruby and Weinstein didn't get along. Weinstein even barred Ruby from the Colony for trying to hire away the staff, and, according to Weinstein, Ruby threatened to kill him a week before he shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Just another tidbit from the dark annals of American history. But back to the original subject of burlesque, we have dozens of entries about it. We can't find all of them right now because time is short today and there are more than 6,400 posts in the site, but we located some good ones here, here, here, here, here, and here.
 Abe Weinstein surrounded by some of his dancers.
 Whoever said the Barr examination is a terrible ordeal is just wrong.   
These photos dating from 1957 show burlesque dancer Candy Barr mid-routine, entertaining a crowd with the help of a live band, possibly the Johnny Cola Band, and we suspect these photos were shot at the Colony Club in Dallas, where Barr often performed. Don't quote us on it. We keep meaning to write in detail about Barr but she keeps getting superseded by other subjects. But we will get to her eventually, because she's a very interesting historical figure and fits perfectly into the pulp mold. For now just enjoy these three shots of her shedding her striped costume all the way down to a sequined g-string and striped pasties. See more Candy here.
 I'm going to devour you like a rotisserie chicken and pick my teeth with your bones. I hope you don't find that too terribly forward. 
Here's another mid-century novel for the ever growing lesbian corruptor bin, When Lights Are Low, by sleaze maestro Dallas Mayo, 1963, for Midwood-Tower. Mayo was a pseudonym inhabited by Gilbert Fox, who apparently wrote this when Midwood honcho Harry Shorten conjured the title out of thin air at lunch and told Fox to produce a book to go with it. You can read that tale at paulrader.com. Fox was super prolific, writing many books as Mayo, as well as under the names Kimberly Kemp and Paul V. Russo. The cover art is yet another brilliant effort from Paul Rader. It's inspired us to go have a snack of our own.
 Nothing impresses a girl like nice hard rod. 
Jack Ruby was a nightclub owner, which of course meant he knew many women. After he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald several formerly obscure or mildly famous women became widely known for their associations with Ruby, including Gail Raven, Candy Wells, and Candy Barr. This cover of National Star Chronicle from yesterday in 1964 shines the spotlight on another Ruby acquaintance—Tammi True. Born Nancy Myers, True danced at Ruby's Dallas nightspot the Carousel Club. She kept her career under wraps, but when Ruby shot Oswald she was identified as a Ruby associate and her anonymity evaporated. National Star Chronicle is one of many tabloids that delved into True's life.
 Is its headline about her touching the gun that killed Oswald factual? Well, Ruby was arrested at the scene of the shooting. The only time True could have touched the gun was before the murder. Ruby always carried a weapon because he always had club receipts on him, so it's very possible he let True handle it at some point, but True has never confirmed the story. The main reason we tend to doubt it is because she has always been vocal about how angry she was to be outed as a stripper. Before the shooting only her friends and family knew she danced. We can't imagine her sitting down and giving Chronicle an interview. But you never know. See more from National Star Chronicle by clicking here or here.
 An equitable exchange of services. 
Are you old enough to have experienced the swinging craze? We aren’t, and we wouldn’t have taken part anyway (are you reading this, Pulp Intl. girlfriends?), but it does look kind of fun on vintage paperbacks (you aren't reading this are you, Pulp Intl. girlfriends?). We’ve shared a few covers in the past dealing with the subject of swapping, and you can see a few here, here, and here. For today we decided it was finally time to do what every pulp site must—put together a large, swap-themed collection of sleaze paperback covers. So above and below is a vast assortment for your enjoyment. The trick with these was to make sure they weren’t all from Greenleaf Classics, which is a company that through its imprints Companion, Candid, Adult, Nightstand, et al, published hundreds of swapping novels. That means we had to look far afield to avoid having the entire collection come from that publisher. We think we’ve done a good job (though we will put together a Greenleaf-only swapping collection later—it’s mandatory). Want to see even more swapping books? Try the excellent sleaze fiction website triplexbooks.com.                                      
 Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer shares his thoughts on dying in the electric chair. 
Above is a typically lurid front of Inside News from today in 1964. Sugar Ray Robinson gets a mention in a topside banner, but stripper Candy Wells and killer Jack Ruby dominate the cover. Ruby had fatally shot alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald the previous year. Thanks to television cameras that recorded the event he had no chance at any real defense except to plead insanity, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. In the article a suicidal Ruby reflects on his pending appointment with Old Sparky. The money quote: “You know, I was the first to ever shoot somebody on TV, and I was the first to have a death sentence handed me with TV cameras on. But if they think I’m gonna be the first guy they see fry in the hot seat on TV, they're nuts." He also offered this: “They say it don’t hurt—it’s over faster than a wink, but I don’t think so. I saw a guy get it once. It don’t hurt? Hell when that jolt hit him he jumped so hard he would have hit the ceiling if he wasn’t strapped down.” And one more interesting quote: “Sometimes I feel like a caged freak, like a million people out there are waiting to see me fry.” What is Candy Wells’ role in all this? She danced at the Carousel Club, the Dallas strip establishment owned by Ruby, and Inside News asks her for insights about her boss. She’s really just an excuse to slip some skin into the story, but she does offer this about Ruby’s suicide threats: “If he said it you can believe it. I don’t know what he’ll do, but I’ll bet my last pair of pasties he’ll do something.” Hah hah, her last pair of pasties. Do you believe she said that? We don’t either. But it’s an interesting article, and the Ruby quotes, if true, are revealing. He was wrong about one thing, though. He said a million people were waiting to see him fry. Actually, because he ruined the opportunity for the public to get answers regarding the Kennedy assassination from the alleged assassin, probably more like one hundred million people were waiting for him to fry (for those unfamiliar with the history, a Gallup poll conducted just days after the assassination showed that a majority of Americans believed Oswald was not the only one involved, and that number has only gone up since). But the people never got to see Ruby ride Old Sparky, because he died of a pulmonary embolism related to lung cancer in January 1967. 
 Police Gazette gets readers up to date with Ava Gardner but it’s their Castro story that leads someplace interesting.  
Above are a couple of scans from an issue of The National Police Gazette published this month in 1963 with cover star Ava Gardner. Gardner had been living in Spain and hadn’t been in a movie in three years, but was about to appear in the historical war drama 55 Days at Peking with Charlton Heston and David Niven. The Gazette discusses how she’d gotten fed up with the U.S.—particularly the American press. She had been particularly annoyed by the rumor that she was involved with Sammy Davis, Jr., a story that took flight after several magazines published photos of the two holding hands. When asked why she was returning to Hollywood after being out of circulation for so long, Gardner, in typically blunt fashion, replied, “I need the money.” Moving on, we’ve pointed out that the Gazette made a longstanding habit of using Adolf Hitler on its covers, but his wasn’t the only face that moved magazines. After Fidel Castro assumed leadership of Cuba, the Gazette regularly wrote scathing stories about him. We’ve already learned that he let Viet Cong killer squads train in Cuba, and that he planned to “arm southern Negroes” in order to foment revolution in the U.S. Well, now we learn he was also a rapist. Figures, right? He might have been supreme leader of an island filled with beautiful women, but people always want what they can’t have—in this case, a teenaged ship captain’s daughter named Lisa. Gazette writer Bob Hartford cranks up the melodrama: Castro laughed drunkenly as he weaved his way into Lisa’s sitting room. “Have you changed your mind, my pet?” he demanded. “No,” replied the brave but frightened girl.  All Castro needs at that point is a Lacoste sweater and a fraternity paddle and his transformation into pure evil would be complete. But as fanciful as the story seems, Lisa really did exist. Her real name was Marita Lorenz and she was Castro’s live-in mistress for several months in 1959. While Lorenz herself never suggested she was ever raped by Castro, the two did have a falling out around the issue of her unplanned pregnancy, which was terminated in its sixth month. Lorenz later said the abortion was forced on her while she was drugged; Castro’s associates claim that she wanted it. Lorenz went on to join anti-Castro activists in the U.S., and on a fundraising visit with the deposed Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, became involved with him. She was still traveling to and from Cuba, and was recruited by the CIA for a Castro assassination attempt. But instead of poisoning his food, like she’d been instructed, she abandoned the plot, supposedly because she still felt strongly for him. Lorenz later wrote about all this in two autobiographies. In 1977, Lorenz told the New York Daily News that she met Lee Harvey Oswald in autumn 1963 at a CIA safe house in Miami. She claimed she met him again weeks later along with a group of anti-Castro Cubans and they had Dallas street maps. We all know what happened next. Lorenz eventually testified about this before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but her story was deemed unreliable. We suppose bouncing between two dictators and acting as a double agent will tend to raise a red flag with American congressmen, though these things have no bearing on whether she was telling the truth. It’s interesting though, isn’t it? You’d think that if a single man of his own accord assassinated another man the surrounding circumstances wouldn’t be so… labyrinthine. Yet lurking near the supposed black swan event of the Kennedy killing were double-agents like Lorenz, spooks like E. Howard Hunt, underworld figures like Eladio Ceferino del Valle and others. Just saying. In any case, we’ll have more from the Police Gazette and more on Fidel Castro soon.
 Close only counts in horseshoes and h-bombs.  
We came across two more postcards celebrating Las Vegas’s distinction as a city from which it was possible to see nuclear test shots. You may remember we posted a couple of similar items in December. These two promote not just Vegas’s dubious proximity to planet-killing nuclear ordnance, but also the venerable Horseshoe Club, a casino owned by Vegas legend Benny Binion. This is the 1950’s we’re talking about, so of course Binion was mobbed up. He started as a thief and killer in Dallas, and ended up with a commemorative statue on Freemont Street (later moved to the Strip). That simple fact probably says more about old Las Vegas than entire books. We’ll get back to him a bit later. No pulp site could be complete without him.
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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.
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