The problem with utterly tasteless tabloid covers is that they lock us into utterly tasteless attempts to make fun of them. We could refuse to be dragged to their level, true, but that would be boring. Anyway, behold The National Insider in all its muckraking glory, published today in 1965. This comes from the book of tabloid covers we scored online last year, which means that even though we’d love to tell you what this miracle cure for lesbianism is, we can’t because we don’t have those pages. Probably, though, there’s a standard twelve-step program, as in Alcoholics Anonymous, where, for example, step one is admitting that you’re powerless over alcohol. So, just substitute the word lesbians. We’re powerless over lesbians. Hmm. Maybe it’s just us, but that doesn’t sound like a problem at all. 

Hungarian-born Fred Fixler’s first career was as a diamond cutter, but by the early 1950s his focus shifted to art, which he studied in both the U.S. and France. He began illustrating paperback covers, and for years was an illustrator for the sleaze publishing imprint Brandon House. During that time his instantly identifiable style resulted in some of the most dynamic paperback covers ever seen on U.S. book racks. The piece above, with its shadowy lovers, is a prime example. Brandon House used Fixler as the primary illustrator for their line of lesbian paperbacks, and because of his talent, these books, which originally sold for around one dollar, go online today for in excess of seventy-five bucks. Fixler also worked in the commercial art field, and taught at schools like the California Art Institute, The Brandes Art Institute, and Parsons School of Design. Below are several more great Fixler pieces that we corralled from around the internet. You can see more of his art by searching online, and learn a lot more about him from his website. 

We’re back to the gossip magazine Uncensored today, with its info-packed cover telling us about gay Toronto, lesbian Hollywood, Sean Connery’s sex secrets and rumors about Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. But the standout item here (aside from the appearance of the non-word “rejuvination” and the misused term “capitol”) is the one on Cary Grant and his experimentation with LSD. Before the Beatles, Timothy Leary, and Carlos Castaneda, LSD was the drug of choice for a rarefied circle of glamorous elites who ingested it as part of their psychiatric therapy sessions. We’re talking about people as famous and diverse as aquatic actress Esther Williams, Time publisher Henry Luce, director Sidney Lumet, authors Aldous Huxley and Anais Nin, and composer André Previn. Cary Grant never tried to keep his LSD use secret. In fact, he spoke glowingly about it in a 1959 interview with Look magazine, saying that it had brought him close to happiness for the first time in his life. He also said that LSD taught him immense compassion for other people, and had helped him conquer his own shyness and insecurity.

But by 1968 the U.S. government—which had experimented extensively with LSD in hopes of using it as a truth serum or a form of chemical warfare, and had dosed thousands of people both willingly and unwillingly—was moving toward declaring the drug illegal. Grant’s wife Dyan Cannon had famously cited LSD usage as a primary factor in seeking a 1967 divorce, and the counterculture embrace of the drug was beginning to frighten middle America and the White House. That’s the backdrop against which this August 1968 Uncensored appeared, and by October of the year LSD was illegal. But the fact that public opinion had shifted—or more accurately, had been pushed by a steady, government-initiated anti-LSD campaign—did not particularly harm Grant’s public standing. When he died in 1986 he was still one of the most revered American actors ever. And about his LSD usage he had no regrets. Quite the opposite—he commented: “Yes, it takes a long time for happiness to break through either to the individual or nations. It will take just as long as people themselves continue to confound it. You’ll find that nowadays they put you away for singing and dancing in the street. ‘Here now, let’s have none of that happiness, my boy. You cut that out; waking up the neighbors!’ Those darn neighbors need waking up, I can tell you, constable!” 

Vila på sex, starring Marie Forså, was one of those mid-seventies softcore films that was also released in a fully x-rated version. Add to that the international releases and you get a film with many retitlings, among them Baby Love, Girl Meets Girl, and Confessions of a Sex Kitten. But basically, outside its native Sweden it was mostly known as Bibi, which is the title it retained for its Japanese premiere, today in 1974. Sixteen year-old Bibi is an innocent girl who leaves her home in the sticks for her aunt’s boarding school and immediately starts going at it hot and heavy with the resident lesbians—and one zucchini. Bibi decides she likes sex, whether animal or vegetable, and begins seducing her way around town. She sleeps with her aunt’s friend, the local stud, and a female swimming club, and in the process spends a large percentage of the second half of the movie naked. All good fun at first, but because there’s no such thing as consequence-free sex in cinema—even in the unfettered seventies—troubles soon result. But under Joe Sarno’s sedate direction Bibi never gets too heavy—in the end some tears are shed, confessions made, and lessons learned. Perhaps only the zucchini was truly harmed. As a side note, we aren’t sure yet, but we think much of Bibi’s footage was recycled for another sexploitation film called Flossie, released the same year by the same director and utilizing the same cast. We’ll check on that. In the meantime, we have a little slide show below.

Two posters for the Italian sexploitation flick Lesbo, one original, one restored. Lesbo premiered in Italy today in 1969.     

Here’s a little piece of modern pulp we found in a bar in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain. We had just finished a round of tasty apple-flavored shots, and there it was on the bartop at a place called Akerbeltz. The magazine is called Gehitu, and it’s published by a GLBT rights organization based in Northern Spain. The magazine is nicely put together, promotes a cause we respect, and is filled with events information, but what interests us most is their usage of an iconic photo of Ursula Andress, who they’ve given winglike appendages and depicted as wounded but unbowed. If we assume this is a visual reference to Hamlet’s famous “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy, then it’s a poignant and clever rebranding. Since we started this website we’ve discovered that small magazines, flyers and pamphlets are goldmines of pulp styled art. In those media we tend to find creators who truly get what pulp is about. We’ve been picking up these bits and pieces, and with today’s post have shared one of our many finds. We’ll have more for you down the line.     

Here we have another heavyweight author earning extra nickels under the guise of a pseudonym. This time it’s Lawrence Block, who’s won four Shamus Awards, three Edgars, seen his novels 8 Million Ways To Die, The Campus Tramp and Deadly Honeymoon made into films, and wrote the screenplay for the recent critically acclaimed film My Blueberry Nights. But it was as Sheldon Lord that he really let his hair down, penning salacious books like Stud, left, as well as the lesbian themed tales below. He also flaunted his utter immunity to writer’s block by publishing fiction under the names Jill Emerson, Chip Harrison, Paul Kavanaugh, William Ard, and Andrew Shaw. Quite a prodigious output. Clearly, when Block wrote Stud he was talking about himself.

Check out this issue of the tabloid On the Q.T. from May of 1963. As always, at least one of the stars referenced on the cover is no longer widely known. In this case it’s Sabrina. She was a British model and television actress whose real name was Norma Sykes, but who became a legitimate one-name celeb based upon the anomaly of her forty-two inch bust and eighteen inch waist. Sabrina had a thing for royalty, and allowed her hourglass measurements to be thoroughly explored by such personages as the Duke of Kent, the Marquis of Milford-Haven, Prince Christian of the House of Hanover, Knight of the British Empire Sean Connery, and King Dingaling of Las Vegas Frank Sinatra. Sabrina did indeed have a specific diet she credited with helping maintain her figure, and if you absolutely can’t go to your grave without that knowledge, it’s here.

Scanning the cover again, we see Shirley Bassey has made an appearance. Bassey is a Welsh performer who sang, among other hits, the title track to the Bond film Goldfinger. What may not be immediately apparent to those unfamiliar with her is that she is black. So the photo of her with a white man speaks implicitly of interracial scandal without trumpeting it to the heavens in a headline. Perhaps that sort of restraint is why On the Q.T. called itself the class magazine in its field. Of course, on the not-so-classy side of the ledger is the banner concerning lesbians, with quotation marks around the word “pass.” Either this is to emphasize the word as slang, or to suggest that a lesbian’s quest to blend in with straight folk is fruitless. In either case, there's no doubt it implies this is a burning desire for all lesbians. How times change. These days, lesbians are considered chic and quite a few straight folk have a burning desire to associate with them—preferably after getting a good charge on the dvdcam and making sure the lighting is sufficient. We’ll have more from On the Q.T. later.

The titles of these pinku flicks can be comically descriptive. Kyôfu joshikôkô: bôkô rinchi kyôshitsu, aka Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom is the type of title that might leave you thinking you’ve just learned all there is to know about the film. But that isn’t true because it isn’t plotting, but creative staging of sex, nudity, and violence that makes pinku so interesting. Director Norifumi Suzuki isn’t at the top of his game here, but a subpar effort from the Hendrix of bloodporn still blows most of his peers clean off the stage, especially when it stars Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike. Kyôfu joshikôkô: bôkô rinchi kyôshitsu opened in Japan today in 1973.