March 1960 Action for Men with cover art by Julian Paul. This trio will soon have some serious issues to sort out, because once immediate danger passes the male mind focuses entirely on getting laid. Usually two virile guys and one beautiful, sarong-clad girl means there’s one too many swinging dicks in the picture, but it could also be the girl who’s the obstacle to hot tropical love. You better recognize. Regardless, somebody’s getting cast adrift. 

Above are selections from a March 1952 Adam magazine, with interesting cover art of a blonde being narrowly missed by several rounds of machine-gun fire. By the 1970s Australia’s Adam was publishing pages of fully nude women, as you can see for yourself here and here, but in this early issue there’s exactly one photograph—American actress Sally Forrest, who you see in panel two. Forrest is pretty much unknown now, but she appeared in notable films such Fritz Lang’s noir While the City Sleeps, Joseph Pevney’s horror flick The Strange Door, and Hard, Fast and Beautiful, which was directed by Ida Lupino, who as a woman director during the forties and fifties kicked open some of the doors that led to Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win last night. More Adam magazines soon. 

February 1934 issue of the humorous movie monthly Film Fun, with a cover by the legendary Enoch Bolles. Shown on the interior pages are Toby Wing, Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Harriette Mendel, Ginger Rogers and others. You can see all the issues of Film Fun you ever wanted at the web archive filmfun.info. 

Assorted automotive magazines from the U.S. circa 1950s, with some mighty pretty cars on the covers. 

Amazing cover of Amazing Detective Cases, published seventy years ago, February 1941. 

Short Stories was one of the most successful and longest-running pulp magazines ever published, appearing on the tenth and twenty-fifth of every month from 1890 to 1949, at which point it became a monthly. In 1918 it adopted a distinctive red sun motif, and kept this visual identifier—with rare deviations—until the magazine was redesigned in the late 1950s in an effort to attract a wider readership. But the pulp market was dying and change failed to save Short Stories. After more than 1,100 issues it closed it doors in August, 1959. The issue above was published today in 1947, and you can see our previous post on this subject here. 

Two Terror Tales pulp magazines with woman-in-danger cover art by Rudolph Zirm, 1934 and 1935. Zirm’s work is collectible today, but he never had much chance to make a go of being a fulltime artist. He did about thirty pulp covers during a six-year career, including several for Short Stories, but financial needs prompted a move into the field of lithography, where he worked for the rest of his life. The two examples above show what a loss that was for the world of pulp illustration. You can see more Zirm covers at the comprehensive website pulpartists.com. 

Cover and assorted interior pages from the January 1974 issue of the great Australian men’s magazine Adam. Incidentally, that suspicious stain on Heidi's leg in panel twenty-four was put there by a previous owner, we swear. Click keyword Adam below to see the other issues. 

Here’s a January 1965 True Detective with a report on the Boston stranglings that had occurred from June 1962 to January 1964. At the time of this issue, a suspect had not yet been taken into custody, and the Boston area was still in a state of shock. But two months later, police would arrest Albert De Salvo and charge him with the crimes. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life, but was killed in prison by another inmate. All along, many had doubts he was responsible for all the murders. The Boston victims ranged in age from 85 to 18—an unusually wide span. And the modi operandi were different in some of the killings. With the eventual advent of genetic analysis, finding the answers to lingering questions seemed possible, so in 2001, De Salvo and one of his victims were exhumed and subjected to DNA tests. The results revealed that foreign DNA found on the victim did not match De Salvo. Which means the Boston Strangler—or at least a man to whom some of the Strangler’s crimes were attributed—was very likely never caught. 

Paris-Hollywood was a cinema and cheesecake magazine published every two weeks in France from 1947 to 1973. Its first issue featured Rita Hayworth on the cover, and over the years dozens more movie stars, as well as scores of unknown models, graced its cover. This issue, from 1952, features not just a provocative cover shot, but one of the magazine’s favorite interior treats—a centerfold that strips. It’s ingeniously simple. The centerspread is a piece of semi-transparent white paper inked in such a way as to strategically block portions of the pages beneath. In this case, a silhouette of black ink creates the image of a woman in a catsuit. But lift the white paper and you see the same figure nude. The coolness of this trick can only be described using the word on the magazine’s cover: “espièglerie”—the state of being mischievous or frolicsome. Take a look below and see if we aren’t right.