Pulp International - Vintage cover of Whisper from January 1955

Jan 14 2010

Trying to avoid being stuck in a bad pattern.

Above is an issue of Robert Harrison’s Whisper magazine from January 1955. Curious lack of celebrity dish on this cover, which we can only attribute to a rare scandal-free month, but we do like the nudist camp photo. Only, what the hell was this woman wearing? Tablecloths from an Italian restaurant? A flannel shirt and a kilt? We often talk regretfully about events we missed, or stars that were before our time, but one thing we’re glad we never saw with our own tender eyes was a pair of granny panties. With those things blocking the way to the promised land, we suddenly realize storming the beach at Iwo Jima was only the second bravest thing our grandfathers did.

Whisper Robert Harrison tabloid

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1968—Andy Warhol Is Shot

Valerie Solanas, feminist author of an anti-male tract she called the S.C.U.M. Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men), attempts to assassinate artist Andy Warhol by shooting him with a handgun. Warhol survives but suffers health problems for the rest of his life. Solanas serves three years in prison and eventually dies of emphysema at San Francisco's Bristol Hotel in 1988.

1941—Lou Gehrig Dies

New York Yankees baseball player Henry Louis Gehrig, aka The Iron Horse, who set a record for playing in 2,130 consecutive games over the course of fourteen seasons, dies of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, two years after the onset of the illness ended his consecutive games streak.

1946—Antonescu Is Executed

Ion Antonescu, who was ruler of Romania during World War II, and whose policies were independently responsible for the deaths of as many as 400,000 Bessarabian, Ukrainian and Romanian Jews, as well as countless Romani Romanians, is executed by means of firing squad at Fort Jilava prison just outside Bucharest.

1959—Sax Rohmer Dies

Prolific British pulp writer Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, aka Sax Rohmer, who created the popular character Fu Manchu and became one of the most highly paid authors of his time writing fundamentally racist fiction about the "yellow peril" and what he blithely called "rampant criminality among the Chinese", dies of avian flu in White Plains, New York.

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