Prosecution maintains that the only way to know if these are in fact the witness's panties is to have her try them on.
As the great defense attorney Johnny Cochran once so memorably intoned, “If the panties don't fit you must acquit.” Lawyering is all about snappy rhymes. Robert Traver knew this because he was in reality John D. Voelker, first a prosecutor, second a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court, and all the while the author of numerous novels. The most famous of those was Anatomy of a Murder, which became an Otto Preminger motion picture starring Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick. Looking at the odd cover scene above, you probably want to know what's happening. An assistant prosecutor is trying his first case, which centers around a house painter who “did ravish and carnally know” a young woman named Gloria. But it turns out Gloria's mother had interrupted what was actually a consensual encounter, exploded with shame and outrage, and forced her daughter to file rape charges. The case falls apart in court and the young prosecutor is made to look like a fool, so the cover art tries to capture that event. Trouble Shooter was originally published as Trouble-Shooter: The Story of a Northwoods Prosecutor in 1943, with this Bantam paperback edition coming in 1947.
Neglected baseball comedy reminds viewers that the American pastime was also the African American pastime.
Major League Baseball is known as America's pastime. But for decades it was really only the pastime for whites, due to the fact that black participation was banned by every team, and black spectatorship was limited by apartheid laws. But during that time African Americans formed their own leagues, and those teams and players are part of wider baseball lore. As far as we know The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, which is set in 1939, is the only major movie about black baseballers during the pre-integration era. That alone makes it worth a gander. James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams in the starring roles are bonuses. The plot involves various Negro League athletes who band together and barnstorm around the U.S. They're trying to get out from under bad contracts with their original teams, or bad jobs in mundane professions, but of course this break toward freedom leads to trouble. The film benefits from excellent exterior location work. Director John Badham makes use of the old sharecropper cabins, winding rural roads, and rickety wooden stadiums of the American countryside. These would have existed in abundance when the film was made in the mid-1970s, requiring little in the way of set design. The authenticity is palpable. In other areas the film misses the mark, particularly in the tone of the performances, which are Vaudevillian and over-vernacularized. Butone aspect of the film hits a bullseye. James Earl Jones expresses it succinctly when he hears that the Major Leagues are scouting black players: “So the white man is finally moving in,” he says, as if speaking about the mafia. He goes on to predict the death of Negro League Baseball. Jones's point is crystalline: the Major Leagues broke the color line not out of altruism or justice, but in order to protect its product. The oldest Negro League team had been around since 1885. By the 1940s Negro League players had competed against white players and proved to be capable, and in some instances, superior. MLB had a legitimacy problem. It couldn't truly claim to contain all the best baseball players. People were growing more interested in black baseball. Money was being made on the sport beyond the confines of MLB. A lot of money. Breaking the color line cemented the legitimacy of MLB's talent claims, and it obliterated competition from Negro League baseball, which died on the vine. Today black ownership in Major League Baseball is basically 0%. Only the Miami Marlins, with Derek Jeter possessing 4% of the club, can claim—and just barely—to have minority ownership. But a merger of Negro teams into the league rather than a raid of players might well have led to a different story. MLB integrated the field, but ensured future segregation of the owner's box.
Though the color line for players was broken all the way back in 1947, today MLB has another legitimacy problem. Black participation has declined over the decades. Organized baseball requires fields, equipment, sponsorship, and other elements that are scarce in poor communities. Of course, they've always been scarce, but as public money dries up and individual wages stagnate, community support for baseball and family income allowing for participation in it are lacking. African American rostering on Major League Baseball squads is at 1956 levels. Many consider that a travesty; but America being America, many don't. MLB's front office just lately has made some minimal efforts to address the problem. It will be interesting to see how those go. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings premiered in the U.S. today in 1976.
This little guy is a jailbird and he just got his parole today. Who says rehabilitation doesn't work?
Above is a photo of U.S. actress Teresa Graves, whose primary claim to fame was starring in the blaxploitation inspired television cop drama Get Christie Love! It ran for one season on ABC from late 1974 through early 1975. We've never seen it but it seems to have developed a cultish following—no surprise, with Ms. Graves in the starring role. Below you see another shot, and her signature line from the show: “You're under arrest, sugar.” Get Christie Love! is being rebooted for a 2018 cable movie with a celestial being named Kylie Bunbury in the starring role, but maybe we'll watch the original first. If we do you can be sure we'll report back.
First the airline loses her luggage. And now this.
Above you see an incredibly rare alternate poster for Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, aka The Kyoto Connection. Notice how it promises SEX in big letters. That English word appeared on many Japanese promos of the era, as we've documented before. Basically, the movie is about a Swedish woman who visits Japan and is abducted by a wacko taxi driver. See the original poster and read what we wrote about the flick at this link.
Woman in critical condition after accidentally swallowing ice pick. Eunice Sudak was a prolific author, but one whose bibliography is padded by numerous film novelizations, including X—The Man with the X-Ray Eyes and The Raven, after Roger Corman's tongue-in-cheek version of the Poe tale. One of her original pieces of fiction was 1966's The Ice Pick in Ollie Birk, a comedic romp about a widow forced to become a prostitute to survive. That concept is just ripe for humor, right? Almost writes itself. Anyway, the widow discovers the eponymous Ollie Birk dead on her living room sofa with her ice pick in his ear, and of course must extricate herself from this sticky situation. Who did it? Perhaps the rowdy Russians down the hall. The novel is notable for its beat slang, if not its technical merit, and the Lancer Books paperback is notable for its unusual cover art of the lead character Leona Trafalgar dancing with an ice pick in her mouth. We love this image, but it's uncredited, sadly.
This is my disappointed face. You know why I'm making this face? Because I'm fucking disappointed is why.
Originally written by the mysterious B. Traven and published in 1927, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre appeared in the above Pocket Books version in 1948 with Barye Phillips on the cover chores. We have to say, he did a bang-up job capturing Bogart's world weary mug. You already know the story in this book: lust for riches lays a greedy man low. But it's a particularly good riff on that theme. A highly recommended read.
Got a little porn in your past? Don’t worry—the internet will find it.
This Japanese poster promoting a double bill of 1974’s Gosh! (aka Alice Goodbody) and 1975’s The Fireworks Woman features softcore/hardcore actress Sharon Kelly/Colleen Brennan front and center, but she appeared in only one of the films. The other starred Jennifer Jordan, aka Sarah Nicholson, who also appears on the poster, though in the background. Gosh! is a softcore comedy directed by Tom Scheuer featuring Kelly/Brennan as a waitress/wide-eyed ingénue trying to survive/succeed as an actress in Hollywood, while The Fireworks Woman is a fully hardcore tale about a man who joins the priesthood to escape an incestuous relationship with his sister. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t work. It was helmed by Wes Craven—yes, that Wes Craven—under the pseudonym Abe Snake. Porn, whether softcore or hardcore, just makes people want to hide in fake personas, doesn’t it? Scheuer was the only one who didn’t bother and he never worked in cinema again, so the incognitos had it right. But the beauty of the internet is that everyone gets outed in the end. Schwarzeneggar, Stallone, Cameron Diaz, everyone. Happy New Year.
Anthropologists stunned as new research shows Native Americans funneled beer centuries before frat boys. We have no idea why scientists are surprised. Native Americans brewed many types of alcoholic beverages, so it follows they’d come up with ridiculous ways to drink them. Jean d’Ascain wrote L’or qui tue in 1946 for the Paris based publishing company La Caravelle as part of its Collection Le Ranch. On the cover Albert Chazelle art shows an early American colonist named Trish learning how to funnel, while one of the boys cops a cheap feel. The natives would later improve the funneling process by adding a tube, as well as sexually suggestive, horribly out-of-pitch singing. Genealogical note—Trish is the many-times-great grandmother of this person. Also, d’Ascain wrote a sequel where natives invent the drinking game Edward Fortyhands.
McBroom pokes a toe in the Hollywood waters. Marcia McBroom’s film résumé is sparse—seven roles total, including in Willie Dynamite and the underrated The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings. She’ll likely never be forgotten, though, because she portrayed Petronella Danforth, one third of the beautiful girl group The Kelly Affair, later called The Carrie Nations, in the eternal camp classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. When we first saw the movie in college it helped make the distinction between bad and “bad” crystal clear. Today it remains a Friday night dorm room favorite and an indispensable gateway into the realm of bad-as-in-hilarious cinema. This photo dates from around 1970.
No, not gill like a fish—gill like a Gillian. Gillian Duxbury is a British actress who appeared in only a few television shows, but managed another type of fame, starring on many magazines, tabloids, album covers, and—importantly for this website—1970s crime paperbacks. Movie stardom it isn’t, but it’s good enough for us. We have a few examples below.
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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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