National Star Chronicle makes use of the classic vamp/victim stereotype. And as long as we’re at it, here’s a cover of the continually provocative National Star Chronicle, from today in 1967, with a story about an undertaker/rapist. Are you sensing a theme? Is this cover and the one in the post above not a case of two pigs feeding at the same trough? These stories, which are of course both fictional, represent the diametric extremes of ’60s sleaze tabloids—woman as ravaged sex victim/ravenous sex beast, which is a slight variation on Freud’s Madonna/whore complex, the twist here being that the Madonna loses her purity at the hands of a rapist. At least that’s how it seems to us. But what do we know? A psychologist or sociologist might have something useful to say, but in school we majored in vodka, so our insights are probably limited. Maybe we’ll get back to this after we consult our resident experts on the evils of men—our girlfriends. More tabloids coming soon.
He was only trying to minister to his flock. National Star Chronicle cover from today 1965. You can see nine more weird and wonderful Chronicle covers by clicking here.
Maybe she should have just washed his mouth out with soap.
Here’s more from the National Star Chronicle with a cover from today in 1964. Just FYI, ammonia boils at –28 Fahrenheit, which means it’s pretty difficult to handle as a liquid, and is a gas at room temperature. True science, untrue story.
The trick of tabloid journalism is to always keep you guessing. Above is a cover of National Star Chronicle which appeared this month in 1964 with a story about a twenty-year-old Argentine woman named Margarita Andrade, who we’re told was kidnapped and forced to take part in an orgy. “I was compelled to perform sexual acts that I had never heard of before,” she says. “I’m too ashamed to describe what I had to do—and what was done to me.” And then she goes on to describe it. Short version—she was stripped and shoved into a room filled with naked men and women engaged in unnatural sex acts. Which raises the question—if they had enough consenting perverts to fill a room why did they need someone who would scream, scratch, and kick various fat dudes in the nuts? And considering the severity of the crimes, why did they later take her "to a deserted spot near the town of Monte Grande and shove her out of the car," thus allowing her to be a witness and make it onto the cover of national newspapers? Mystifying, no? But this story may not be a complete fabrication. National Star Chronicle was mostly fiction, but it was often mixed with a speck of truth, kind of like here. So in the end we'll never know. That's the trick of tabloid journalism—just when you think you can write it off, they throw something (semi) real at you.
National Star Chronicle gets udderly ridiculous. Above, a cover of the New York City-based National Star Chronicle published today 1965. This is a page from our big book of tabloid covers, which means we don’t have the inside and can’t tell you which illness these cattle supposedly had. Mad cow disease maybe? Well if they were mad before, they must be furious now. Bada-bing!
Truly awful stories about really deranged people. National Star Chronicle devotes its cover from today, 1965, to the story of Micaela Ramirez, a pregnant wife stabbed to death by her husband of twenty years. Apparently, the extremely jealous and very drunk Vidal Ramirez expected his wife Micaela home at 4 pm, but she arrived at 4:13, so he deliberately stabbed her thirteen times to match the amount of her tardiness, then kicked around her corpse a bit for good measure. Vidal’s daughter ran from the house screaming, alerting neighbors. When the neighbors arrived and found Micaela and her unborn child dead, the rescue party transformed into a lynching party, forcing Vidal to barricade himself in a bedroom. Police finally arrived, calmed the neighbors, and carted Vidal to jail. The cover photo shows Micaela Ramirez after she’s been carried outside by the coroner. Lawrence Block once memorably wrote that there are eight million ways to die. Dying due to jealousy is surely one of the most banal. According to the Chronicle, Vidal Ramirez showed no remorse during his booking. He explained simply, “She had a lover. It was my duty to punish her.”
National Star Chronicle had a catchy slogan, but occasionally had a hard time living up to it. This National Star Chronicle published today in 1965 forgoes its usual cheesecake cover in favor of screaming text about a torturer. The person in question is Alfred Poettinger, who indeed tied a nude woman to his bed and tortured her the last three days of December 1964 in the village of Studl-Paura, Austria. The torture took the form of whippings, followed by insertions of red hot needles. It’s at this juncture that the Chronicle’s account veers into pure fiction. In the real world, the woman, Monika Einoeder, managed to slip her bonds and flee naked to an adjacent house, where she called the police. Cops arrived at Poettinger’s only to find that he had hanged himself. But in Chronicle world, Poettinger didn’t die, but rather was trundled off to jail, where Chronicle house scribe Ernst Brookman allegedly scored an interview. The point of such a blatant lie, we presume, was to convince readers that the Chronicle had a network of intrepid reporters blanketing the world. It probably worked, too, but then this little thing called the internet came along and now we can look up articles from Jan 2 1965 and read for ourselves over and over that Poettinger was swinging from the rafters when police found him. So much for the Chronicle’s motto: True Stories About True People. Well, at least they got half of it right, and to their credit the editors didn’t forget the cheesecake entirely. Inside, it takes the form of Evi Marandi, Pilar Pellicer, Janis Paige, and Paola Penni, all of whom you see below. More from National Star Chronicle later.
Hearing the same word differently. Glancing at this cover of National Star Chronicle from today in 1966, most guys’ reaction is probably to assume "love slave" is a pretty good gig. Just remember that sometimes when a woman says “love” what she means is “back rub”. That’s not a knock. Sometimes when men say “love” what they mean is “fellatio”. So it’s an all around case of that Mars/Venus thing. See more from National Star Chronicle by clicking its keywords below.
When is a stupid idea also clever satire? We debated whether to post this, but like we always do when we get hold of crude material, we decided to share it anyway. So here you have a cover from the National Star Chronicle published today in 1966 that is intended, we are pretty sure, to be satirical. As we’ve mentioned before, except for a few bizarro news stories, nearly everything these bottom tier tabloids printed was fabricated to match photos that were already on hand. So when you’ve got the two photos above, a back-to-Africa story is an almost inevitable result. What would really make this cover brilliant, and a lot less obvious, is if they had also printed an inset photo of a Native American at the bottom of the page: "And inspired by white bigot, Indian reveals plan to ship white men to Europe.”
Losing herself to find herself. Above, a National Star Chronicle published March 16, 1964, with cover star Claudia Cardinale. Born in Tunisia, Cardinale’s career was launched in 1957 when at age eighteen she won the title Most Beautiful Girl in Tunisia. The prize was a trip to Venice. She didn't speak one word of Italian and knew little about Italy, but she was spotted by some film producers and the rest, as they say, is history.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1910—First Seaplane Takes Flight
Frenchman Henri Fabre, who had studied airplane and propeller designs and had also patented a system of flotation devices, accomplishes the first take-off from water at Martinque, France, in a plane he called Le Canard, or "the duck." 1953—Jim Thorpe Dies
American athlete Jim Thorpe, who was one of the most prolific sportsmen ever and won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball, dies of a heart attack. 1958—Khrushchev Becomes Premier
Nikita Khrushchev becomes premier of the Soviet Union. During his time in power he is responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, and presides over the rise of the early Soviet space program, but his many policy failures lead to him being deposed in October 1964. After his removal he is pensioned off and lives quietly the rest of his life, eventually dying of heart disease in 1971. 1997—Heaven's Gate Cult Members Found Dead
In San Diego, thirty-nine members of a cult called Heaven's Gate are found dead after committing suicide in the belief that a UFO hidden in tail of the Hale-Bopp comet was a signal that it was time to leave Earth for a higher plane of existence. The cult members killed themselves by ingesting pudding and applesauce laced with poison.
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