 RKO crime drama overcomes its humble budget to create a bit of magic. 
This poster for the RKO crime drama Bunco Squad drew our attention because of the creepy, white-eyed woman at its center. We assumed she represented a phony psychic, and indeed, after an introductory overview of the various types of con artists that prey on the gullible public, the plot settles around a Los Angeles detective’s efforts to take down a ring of fake spiritualists. These spiritualists plan to entice a rich widow to add their organization, the Rama Society, to her last will and testament, after which they’ll arrange her death. There’s a love story here as well, between the detective and his actress girlfriend, and that thread is woven neatly into the crime plot when the detective gets the idea to have her pose as a spiritualist competing for the trust of the rich widow. All of that leads to a pretty cool scene in which one of the villains drops by to threaten the girlfriend, but instead finds himself in a dark room brawling with the detective and his partner, who are dressed in black head-to-toe sheaths that render them effectively invisible. The villain tries the old windmill-with-outstretched-fists technique, but gets his ass tossed out the door anyway, to the great amusement of the onlooking girlfriend. With car chases, fights, gunplay, humor, an interesting set of villains, a cameo by Dante the Magician, and good looks at a lot of gigantic 1950s-vintage autos, we’ll go ahead and call Bunco Squad a winner. It’s cheesy, moralistic, and over-earnest, but if you like old movies in general, you’ll probably enjoy it. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1950.
            
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1921—Chanel No. 5 Debuts
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel, the pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired styles, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion, introduces the perfume Chanel No. 5, which to this day remains one of the world's most legendary and best selling fragrances. 1961—First American Reaches Space
Three weeks after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard completes a sub-orbit of fifteen minutes, returns to Earth, and is rescued from his Mercury 3 capsule in the Atlantic Ocean. Shepard made several more trips into space, even commanding a mission at age 47, and was eventually awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. 1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed. 2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments.
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