| Vintage Pulp | Dec 30 2017 |
Nothing is more human than being inhuman to others.
This issue of Adam magazine hit newsstands this month in 1967, and as always it has vivid cover art by either Phil Belbin or Jack Waugh, in this case illustrating Bill Starr's science fiction story “Almost Human.” Starr's story deals with human-like androids created by the U.S. to win the Cold War. Problem is the Soviets have their own androids. The main character is a U.S. spy trained to infiltrate a Soviet android base, but there he finds that the machines are more human than he thought. These types of android tales were not unique in sci-fi, but still you have give Starr credit for coming up with his take a full year before Phillip K. Dick changed the game with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? You may know that book better as the source material for Blade Runner. Starr is no Phillip K. Dick, but the story is interesting, with sex serving as the key to the question of the androids' potential humanity. Which is more fun than using that Voight-Kampff test Dick dreamed up. We have about thirty scans from Adam below, and many more issues in the website.
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 23 2017 |
I know it's high. It used to be lower, but I spent a summer in D.C., and lemme tell ya, those guys taught me a lot about whoring.
We featured a Charles Rodewald cover last year and loved it, so we're bringing him back today, this time on the front of Ecstasy Novel Magazine, which is showcasing Paula Has a Price!, written by Perry Lindsay, aka prolific pulp author Peggy Gaddis. There's confusion online about the copyright on this, but it was published in January 1949. Top effort from Rodewald, and you can see another here.
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 14 2017 |
Come on in boys. I've got hot lead sandwiches for everybody.
This November 1958 cover of Man's Life magazine is uncredited in the masthead, but it was painted by Wil Hulsey and illustrates the story “The Girl Who Made War Hell for Gen. Sherman” by Gene Channing. The girl is Maryellen Stone, and she stalls Sherman's advance scouts using bullets, brainpower, and her body. The story is written in a biographical style, but we found no record of such a person. Even if she existed, the tale still falls into a category of fantasy fiction about a mythical non-aggressive South and how its way of life was cruelly obliterated. This narrative is astounding, not only because it overlooks the aggression of forced bondage against millions and how that caused the South to go to war, but also because southern leaders had formulated plans to invade Latin America.
Destabilization operations were staged in Mexico and a war mapping expedition was sent to Brazil. These were mere forays, but high ranking Southerners made their opinions crystal clear in hundreds of speeches and newspaper editorials. Calls to invade Cuba were constant. Influential Mississippi Senator Albert Gallatin Brown wrote in 1858: “I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, well— If not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason—for the planting and spreading of slavery.” The imperative to expand was even written into the Confederate Constitution, and Confederate president Jefferson Davis was careful to select only pro-expansionists for his cabinet. We wouldn't call any of that peaceful.
Man's Life throws peace aside as well by going heavy on murder with profiles of Theresa Maguire, Leona Vlught, Thelma Rabail, and other women who died at the hands jealous men—and one jealous woman. The story is titled “Kiss Me or Die” and it comes with some pretty explicit photos. There's a lighter side to the magazine too. “Female Skippers Turn Waterways into New Lovers' Lanes” regales readers with tales of boatborne sexploits on the lakes and coastlines of the U.S. It's amusing stuff, as much of a fantasy as the Civil War story, but with happy endings for everyone involved. Elsewhere in the issue you get more adventure fiction, an extensive photo feature on model Ann Edmondson, and the usual ads and comics. We have several more entries on Man's Life in the website, and you can see two of them here and here.
Man's Life throws peace aside as well by going heavy on murder with profiles of Theresa Maguire, Leona Vlught, Thelma Rabail, and other women who died at the hands jealous men—and one jealous woman. The story is titled “Kiss Me or Die” and it comes with some pretty explicit photos. There's a lighter side to the magazine too. “Female Skippers Turn Waterways into New Lovers' Lanes” regales readers with tales of boatborne sexploits on the lakes and coastlines of the U.S. It's amusing stuff, as much of a fantasy as the Civil War story, but with happy endings for everyone involved. Elsewhere in the issue you get more adventure fiction, an extensive photo feature on model Ann Edmondson, and the usual ads and comics. We have several more entries on Man's Life in the website, and you can see two of them here and here.
| Hollywoodland | Oct 9 2017 |
Hardly a laughing matter.
Above is the cover and below are twenty-plus interior scans from the showbiz magazine Laff, published this month in 1945. The laffs aren't often funny—there's a shelf life on humor of the kind that considers itself edgy. Particularly bad is the cartoon of two men calling a woman a “m-o-r-o-n.” We always get a kick out of how men back then—who were already well on the way to making an absolute shambles of the planet—called women dumb. But we share such cartoons and jokes anyway because we consider it useful to chart mid-century attitudes toward women, ethnic minorities, and gays. Hint: the “greatest generation” wasn't so great on that stuff. Elsewhere in the magazine you get photos of Wynn Stanley, Dorothy Friday, Jennie Lewis, the lovely Jinx Falkenberg in Mexico, and others. See more from Laff here and here.
MexicoMexico CityLaffDorothy FridayWynn StanleyDardy MoffettSally O'NeillJennie LewisEvelyn LewisKay EvansAnne CrawfordJinx FalkenbergBud AbbottLou CostelloConnie HainesTaricuri Triomagazine art
| Hollywoodland | Sep 5 2017 |
You know how movie stars sometimes say they wish they could be anonymous? Welcome to the cover of V.
This issue of V was published today in 1948 and features art by Jean David, which accompanies, as always, celeb content and bit and pieces of French culture. As we've noted before, writers like Hilary Conquest and others often don't bother to identify the movie stars in these issues because they're ancillary to the text. For example, the story “Pour l'amour de Tex Julia,” talks about actual women of the Old West, with photos of Jane Russell and others serving merely to illustrate. However the magazine does at least identify Barbara Bates, Juliette Greco, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Olga San Juan. You can probably guess where we're heading with all this—the person on the cover is unidentified. The editors always did this, and it's a bit maddening. Yes, we know—we should recognize this person, us being a nostalgia website and all, but there are a lot of vintage actresses. It's difficult to know all their faces definitively. Have an idea on this one? Drop us a line at editor@pulpinternational.com. The photo is a Warner Bros. promo, and you already have the year.
FranceWarner Bros.V MagazineJean DavidJane RussellBarbara BatesJuliette GrecoYvonne DeCarloOlga San Juanmagazine art
| Intl. Notebook | Aug 17 2017 |
May Britt is spotted in Triunfo magazine.
The Spanish magazine Triunfo wasn't the most graphically beautiful of magazines, but it did publish rare celeb photos, such as the colorful cover at top of an amazingly freckled May Britt, and the centerspread of Italian star Anna Karina. Elsewhere in the issue are shots from Marilyn Monroe's funeral, Paola de Bélgica's shopping spree, Ava Gardner's bullfight, and Catherine Deneuve's wedding, plus Betsy Drake, Cary Grant, James Dean, and current fashions. We've shared several of those rare Triunfo centerfolds in the past, and they're all worth a look. You can see them here, here, here, and here.
SpainBelgiumTriunfoMay BrittCatherine DeneuveMarilyn MonroeJoe DiMaggioPaola de BélgicaBetsy DrakeCary GrantJames DeanAnna Karinamagazine art
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 15 2017 |
All she's saying is give peace a chance.
We're back. The festival is ongoing and our friends are here for another week, but going forward we'll be making time to share material. So above you see scans from Australia's Adam magazine, published August 1971, with British model Susan Shaw inside and Austrian actress Senta Berger on the rear. The cover illustrates I. W. Coughlan's story “Killer in Conflict,” in which an assassin is sent to kill an important scientist's daughter, who's a free love hippie. The killer finds his target easily enough, but the more she talks to him the less sure he is about his mission. Is it too late for him to turn over a new leaf? At the bottom, do you notice the cartoon concerning flights to Havana? Somebody help us. What's the joke there? We keep looking at it and can't understand what the cartoonist is trying for. While we wait for enlightenment on that, you can see many more issues of Adam by clicking its keywords below.
Update: the answer comes from J. Talley who explains: Hi. Longtime fan of your blog. In case no one else has answered your question about the Havana reference in the Aug. 1971 Adam magazine cartoon you put up a few days ago: aircraft hijackings to Cuba were relatively frequent in the late '60s/early '70s, so this would fall under the category of "topical humor."
| Intl. Notebook | Jul 31 2017 |
If she's really anything like a rabbit she's going to need a hole in the bottom of that costume.
We like this strange, rabbit themed cover from the U.S. pop culture magazine Jest, which was published bi-monthly out of New York City and Chicago by Jest Publications, later Timely Features, Inc. Jest was a staple on newsstands from approximately 1941 to 1963. While the rabbit suit on the cover model is funny, we also find it a little creepy—residue from watching Stanley Kubrick's The Shining no doubt. We know—that was a bear suit. But it ruined all animal costumes for us, plus she does look a little evil, doesn't she? Well, the models inside the magazine are less sinister. Some of those include Joan Corey, Kay Morgan, Lucille Lambert, and Loretta Hannings. The editors refer to them as "chorines," which is an interesting word we've seen a few times before. It's a feminization derived from "chorus," but when we see it we mainly think of how white our clothes would be if we threw one in our wash. These images all came from the website Darwin Scans, now sadly idle these last three years and running. But you still may find it worth a look.
New York CityChicagoTimely Features Inc.Jest MagazineJoan CoreyLucille LambertKay MorganLoretta Hanningsmagazine art
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 27 2017 |
Aussie mag proves humor has a shelf life.
Gals and Gags was an Australian publication put together by the same people that brought you Adam. Its focus was on humor rather than art and fiction, which would be fine if the gags were funny. But no such luck. We've run into this problem before—quippy humor just doesn't have much staying power. Which is why everyone will eventually stop reading our website. But Gals and Gags' humor has gone particularly stale because it's almost exclusively devoted to disparaging female intellect. We guess the writers didn't realize women are smarter than men. Why do we say that? Well, the planet is just about ready to self-destruct and men have been running it the entire time. What would you call that? Scintillating genius? Gals and Gags published at least twenty-two volumes of issues, so at some point millions of readers thought it was funny, even if we don't. But we consider it a sociological window to the past—to July 1964 specifically. We recommend you file the gags away for next time you chat with your granddad.
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 1 2017 |
Living the good life in France.
A few years ago we shared some art from the French magazine Nous Deux and promised we'd get back to the publication later. Well, it sometimes takes a little while, but we're newly dedicated to keeping our promises. Above are assorted covers from this cheery publication, all painted by the genius Aslan, aka Alain Gourdon, and the Italian artist Giulio Bertoletti, late 1960s. See two more examples here and here.
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