 Boys, there's no need to fight over me. I can be icy and unobtainable enough for both of you. 
A couple of months back we shared a cover from Spain's Ediciones G.P. for Franck Marchal's Natalia enciende la mecha, which we mentioned was part of a series written by French authors Pierre Aspetéguy and Monique Henry. Above is the first entry in that series, simply titled Natalia, featuring the 1959 debut of their part-time fashion model/full-time ass whipping super spy. We're sharing this today because we've dug up some new info on the series—we couldn't identify the cover artist on the previous example, but we we think this one may have been painted by a Spanish artist who called himself or herself Chaco. That's all the info we have, but we'll keep digging. Anyone out there know anything? Drop us a line.
 I call this game Project Runaway. A model—that's me—points one of these shotguns at a pest—that's you. Guess what you do next? 
Above, Natalia enciende la mecha, or Natalia Lights the Fuse, from Ediciones G.P. out of Barcelona, 1961. This was one of a series of books about Natalia, a French model who leads a double life as an international spy, with Marchal serving as the shared pen name of French authors Pierre Aspetéguy and Monique Henry. We first saw a front for this paperback over at the blog Spanish Book Covers way back, but this scan comes from a different copy, so we thought we'd share it here. Spanish Books Covers has been on hiatus a long while, but the site is still live and there are numerous interesting fronts there worth viewing. What we'd really like to know is who painted the cover art. Often with these European editions you get art reworked or copied from U.S. paperbacks, but in the case of Ediciones G.P. we think not. Put this one in the unknown file until further notice.
 Tate gives chase in an international fortune hunting comedy about a missing chair. 
In ¿Las cual de 13?, aka 12 + 1, aka Twelve Plus One, an Italian barber played by Vittorio Gassman inherits thirteen chairs and, deeming them useless, sells them to a London antique shop. He later discovers one of the chairs contains a fortune, but when he returns to the shop he's told they've all been sold. So he offers the antique shop employee Sharon Tate half of the fortune to help him track down the chairs, which of course have scattered to the four winds. Their search takes them to Paris, Rome, and beyond, in 1960s screwball fashion with its expected pratfalls, mix-ups, and sticky situations. Gassman and Tate do reasonable jobs with the goofy script that's been made of Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov's satirical source novel, and the film is boosted by appearances from Vittorio De Sica, Mylène Demongeot, Terry-Thomas, and Orson Welles. This was an Italian production, but the poster above was painted for the film's Spanish run by Carlos Escobar, who signed his work “Esc.” This is the best we've ever seen from a very good artist. Since the movie didn't premiere in Italy until after Tate had been slain this month in 1969, and didn't reach Spain until mid-1970, the poster very likely was painted post-murder, which means Escobar probably was thinking of how to best portray someone who'd become a tragic figure. We suspect he put special effort into his work as a tribute, and if so, a fitting tribute it was.    
 Like Shakespeare wrote, what's past is prologue. 
This unusual poster was made to promote the Spanish run of Retorno al pasado, a movie better known as Out of the Past. The title says it all. A man who thinks he's left his sordid past behind sees it rear its ugly head and threaten to ruin the good future he's planned for himself. Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas, this is one of the top noir thrillers, in our opinion. Certainly it's one of the most beautifully shot, thanks to director Jacques Tourneur and cinematographer Nicholas Mesuraca. Like the poster art by Macario Gomez, the film is richly textured and lushly black, which makes for a nice sense of gathering danger, especially in the pivotal fight sequence about forty minutes in. Plus it has the always compelling Mexico connection used by many excellent noirs, as well as nice location shooting around Lake Tahoe and Reno. Highly recommended, this one. After opening in the U.S. in November 1947 it had its Spanish premiere in Madrid today in 1948.
       
 Nobody gets out of here alive. 
We wrote about Spanish director Jesús Franco not long ago. Sort of. When we noticed another premiere date approaching for one of his films we thought we'd check it out. El reformatorio de las perdidas, originally titled Frauengefängnis, and called Barbed Wire Dolls in the U.S., is a nearly plotless exercise in sadism featuring Lina Ronay, Monica Swinn, and other overheated female convicts dealing with predatory guards and an evil wardeness. There's an escape, as usual in these Franco films, and as usual it fails. That's giving nothing away because the escape isn't the point—the nudity and sex are. Last time we discussed Franco we made a joke of it without really talking about the quality of his films. So here's the deal—they range from the arty to the ridiculous to the outright terrible. This one falls unambiguously into the latter category. That is all. Hey, but you gotta love that Spanish poster. Frauengefängnis premiered in West Germany today in 1976, and hit Spain and other countries in 1977.  
 Experts reach consensus—she was exquisite. 
Above is a little artifact from our last swing through Spain, discovered at the Mercat del Vell de l'Estació de Sants in Barcelona. It's an issue of Colleción Idolos del Cine, a magazine that devoted itself each month entirely to one celebrity, with rare photos and personal anecdotes. This one is from 1958 and features Ana Maria Pierangeli, who adopted the lyrical stage name Pier Angeli after debuting on the international cinema scene in Vittoria De Sica's Domani è troppo tardi and winning a Nastro d'Argento, or Silver Ribbon, from the Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani. Angeli was a dewy eighteen in that role and looked so young as to be almost half-formed, which was perfect for her portrayal of a teen in the throes of first love. She maintained a youthful and innocent appearance for twenty more years, and is another actress who died young, in her case aged thirty-nine, via drug overdose, though accidental, officially. The printing quality of Colleción Idolos del Cine isn't the best, but the photos are very interesting. Mucho más Angeli below, and we managed to buy five other examples of this magazine, with stars such as Ava Gardner, Analia Gadé, and Belinda Lee, so look for those later.              
 Round after round she goes and where she stops nobody knows. 
Above, an unusual and provocative promo image of Japanese singer and actress Mari Natsuki, née Junko Nakajima, who appeared in 1983's Satomi hakken-den, aka Legend of Eight Samurai, and 1998's SF: Episode One, better known as Samurai Fiction. Does the latter movie sound familiar? We talked about it a bit when we saw it at the amazing Cinema Caravan during the San Sebastian Film Festival back in 2013 .
 She’s a classic work of art, and the sculpture isn’t bad either. 
American actress Christa Lang is known for her many collaborations with director and husband Samuel Fuller, including The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, Underworld U.S.A., and his underrated racial drama White Dog. She also appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? and has already wrapped The Queen of Hollywood Blvd., to be released later this year. The above shot, showing her in front of a backdrop depicting Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s famous sculpture "La danse," which is located on the façade of the Opera Garnier in Paris, appeared in the Spanish magazine Triunfo in 1965
 Musically talented but not particularly handsome? No worries. Put your hot wife on your album covers. Spanish bandleader Xavier Cugat and his wife, singer Abbe Lane, were one of the most famous musical couples in the world during the 1950s and early 1960s, performing live together and releasing albums. These four Cugat album sleeves featuring Lane as the cover model evoke pulp fiction and film noir rather nicely, we think. Also, they kinda make us want to dance.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1962—Marilyn Monroe Sings to John F. Kennedy
A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's breathy rendition of "Happy Birthday," which does more to fuel speculation that the two were sexually involved than any actual evidence. 1926—Aimee Semple McPherson Disappears
In the U.S., Canadian born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach, California in the middle of the afternoon. She is initially thought to have drowned, but on June 23, McPherson stumbles out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people named Steve and Mexicali Rose. However, it soon becomes clear that McPherson's tale is fabricated, though to this day the reasons behind it remain unknown. 1964—Mods and Rockers Jailed After Riots
In Britain, scores of youths are jailed following a weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers in Brighton and other south coast resorts. Mods listened to ska music and The Who, wore suits and rode Italian scooters, while Rockers listened to Elvis and Gene Vincent, and rode motorcycles. These differences triggered the violence. 1974—Police Raid SLA Headquarters
In the U.S., Los Angeles police raid the headquarters of the revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army, resulting in the deaths of six members. The SLA had gained international notoriety by kidnapping nineteen-year old media heiress Patty Hearst from her Berkeley, California apartment, an act which precipitated her participation in an armed bank robbery. 1978—Charlie Chaplin's Missing Body Is Found
Eleven weeks after it was disinterred and stolen from a grave in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland, Charlie Chaplin's corpse is found by police. Two men—Roman Wardas, a 24-year-old Pole, and Gantscho Ganev, a 38-year-old Bulgarian—are convicted in December of stealing the coffin and trying to extort £400,000 from the Chaplin family.
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