The Naked City | May 1 2010 |
He loves me, he loves me not.
This is one of the most common images on the Internet, but we’ve posted it anyway because it is, to our eyes, quintessentially pulp. Twenty-three-year-old Evelyn McHale jumped from the observation deck of the Empire State Building after breaking up with her fiancée. She wrote and then crumpled a note that said she "wouldn’t make a good wife anyway." A high fall will result in a catastrophic impact, crushing and often dismembering a human body, but McHale landed on the roof of a limousine, a soft surface (compared to concrete) which accounts for her intact appearance, remarked upon by Life: The body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier. She jumped today in 1947.