This issue of Paris Magazine features a beautiful Louis-Charles Royer cover of Ziegfeld star Claire Luce, one of the most popular celebrities of her time. Her heyday was the 1920s and ’30s, a period during which—though this is little remarked upon today—substantially more women began to have sex before marriage. By the time the first surveys took place in the 1940s about 50% of women admitted to having pre-marital sex. Anecdotally, during the 1920s probably at least one in four women had sex as singles. Claire Luce was a pioneer of the female right to choose. A mere eight-year span of her diary describes sixty lovers.

Below are ten covers for Wildcat Adventures, a men’s magazine that existed from 1959 to 1964. Its rarity makes it expensive, which is why we haven’t bought any yet, but we’ll keep our eyes open. Cover art is by John Duillo, Basil Gogos, and others. Thanks to menspulpmags.com for a few of these images, and you can see more there. 

 

Above and below, a July 1956 issue of Real Adventure magazine with uncredited art on the cover and throughout the issue. Inside you get model Peggy Ray, and a self-written feature by boxer Sandy Saddler in which he denies being a dirty fighter. The article includes a photo, which you see in panels three and four below, of Saddler mugging Willie Pep. That’s not the first appearance on Pulp Intl. for that image. Police Gazette featured it on one of its covers in February 1951 with a little photo-illustrative tweak. It’s worth glancing at and you can see it here.

We recently scored a stack of thirty vintage men’s magazines, and here’s the first of that group we’re posting—Rugged Men from this month in 1958. Inside is art from Walter Popp, Ed Franklin, Russ Huban, and Irv Doktor, and the cover of a man taking a tumble after his unfortunate mount gets shot is by Ted Lewin. Probably the most notable aspect of the issue is a story on how members of the Croatan tribe broke up a Ku Klux Klan rally and sent its hooded denizens scattering in terror. The incident is written of with admiration for the tribe’s efforts, and this during an era when Klan rallies were common and open racism was not only acceptable, but actually encoded in federal law. But then, deep admiration for a people that were virtually wiped out by violence is one of many quirks of the American psyche. We're sure a sociologist would have something illuminating to say about it. Seventeen scans below. 

 

Collier’s isn’t the most visually striking of magazines, but this issue that hit newsstands today in 1954 caught our eye because it contains several nice photos of Marilyn Monroe. There’s also a bit of interesting graphic art, specifically a colorful baseball illustration by Willard Mullin. The other item that attracted us was a story called “What Price Security?” about U.S. government overreach in its search for communists. No art to speak of, but the content gives a window onto the Red Scare period of American life. Author Charlotte Knight tells readers that government efforts against communism have been “so irresponsibly administered that it may have done more harm to the United States than to its enemies.” Sound familiar?

Knight slams witch hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, and characterizes the fervor around alleged subversives in Washington, D.C. as creating a ripe environment for paranoiacs and liars to ruin innocent people. But of course, as well written as Knight’s article is, she should not have been surprised by anything she discovered. Witch hunts always become vehicles for revenge, personal advancement, and profiteering, because society and politics become warped in such a way as to clear a path for these pursuits. History invariably judges such periods as human tragedies and political failures, though sadly, too late for the ruined and the dead. Scans below.

Cover and interior scans from NYC-based Man’s Illustrated magazine, an issue dominated by rah-rah war stories and love doll ads. The issue appeared this month in 1974, which was the tail end of the Vietnam War, and the front end of the love doll era. It’s in the history books—look it up. All the art is uncredited. 

This issue of True Detective from June 1952 has cover art from Ozni Brown, along with all the standard crime magazine elements inside, but today we’re interested in its unusual solve-it-yourself murder feature. This is the first of these we’ve seen. A fictitious crime scene photo is published along with a short written scenario, and readers are invited to determine how the killing was committed and by which suspect. This particular puzzle is a television tie-in written by Darren McGavin, who at the time was starring in a CBS series called Crime Photographer. The show revolved around a world-weary crime tabloid photog narrating his latest adventures to his local bartender. The series lasted only forty-seven episodes, but McGavin would go on to star in other shows, including the beloved but also short-lived Nightstalker. If you want to take a crack at solving True Detective’s murder we’ve enlarged the relevant bits at the bottom of this post.

In order to make the whodunnit photo detailed enough we had to split it in half. It appears below along with the enlarged text.

And below is the solution.