Pulp International - Barbara+Rush

Jun 24 2024

Sinatra and his band of merry men hit movie screens in streamlined form.

In 1960 the amusing self-promotional film known as Ocean's Eleven hit cinemas with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack in the starring roles. Four years later the Pack—minus Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford—assembled for another crime comedy with another numerical title—Robin and the 7 Hoods, which premiered today in 1964 (and came after the Sinatra/Dean Martin vehicle 4 for Texas). You see the movie's insert style poster above. It's a period piece set in Chicago during the gangster era, and deals with Sinatra and his cohort waging a crime war against wannabe kingpin Peter Falk, along the way becoming like the Robin Hood of legend by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Ocean's Eleven is a very famous movie, perhaps even a landmark, as we discussed a while back, but we didn't love it. We thought Robin and the 7 Hoods would be worse, but we have to confess we liked it better. After we forgave ourselves for such heretical thoughts, we decided it's just possible that without the entire Rat Pack to apportion screen time to the writing is actually a bit better. Have you ever seen rats fight over food? Scripts, being made of paper, are particularly fragile. Could be, too, that fewer Rat Packers meant a bit less extemporizing.

But the main improvement over Ocean's Eleven is in the ancillary casting. Barbara Rush doesn't rise, perhaps, to the level of Angie Dickinson, but casting Falk as the villain was a masterstroke. He already had that Falk thing down pat, which meant that his screen time was engaging from beginning to end. An Edward G. Robinson cameo never hurts, either. Having him open the film as an aging Chicago capo was also a nice choice. Even so, we're not going out on a limb and claiming that Robin and the 7 Hoods is exactly a good movie. But in the end, whatever its flaws, it has Sinatra. And that's always enough.

Chicago Robin and the 7 Hoods Ocean's Eleven Frank Sinatra Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr.Barbara Rush Peter Falk Bing Crosby Victor Buono poster art cinema movie review

Femmes Fatales

Feb 4 2022

Gotham bank robbed. Witnesses describe thieves as tall, blonde, and festive.

This amusing photo shows June Wilkinson and Inga Neilsen and was made when they appeared on the television series Batman. We've seen most episodes of the show, thanks to the miracle of streaming, and we think it's one of the better television products of its era. This episode, which aired during season three, had the fun title, “Nora Clavicle and the Ladies' Crime Club,” but neither Wilkinson nor Neilsen played Nora Clavicle. That was Barbara Rush. These two were her henchwomen Evelina and Angelina. Below you see them planning to where to spend their loot. The shots are from 1968.

Batman June Wilkinson Inga Neilsen Barbara Rush television

Vintage Pulp

Jun 5 2020

Desert town suffers invasion of body snatchers.

There's something about cheeseball ’50s sci-fi. The earnestness and analog efx are fun, but it's their speculative nature that makes them don't-miss cinema. How will we travel in the future? What would a trip to Mars be like? How will society have changed by the year 2000? What if aliens visited Earth? It Came from Outer Space falls into the latter category, and here's why aliens visit—by accident. The entire script can be summed up with: space ship crashes, space ship broken, space ship needs repair, aliens take over human bodies to do it. Talk about invading your personal space. Pretty soon two local menials are wandering around like zombies seeking spare parts to fix the grounded ship, while studly Richard Carlson tries to figure out what crashed in the desert.

It sounds silly, but this is a high budget flick, as such efforts go, with good direction, more than adequate acting, and lots of alien-cam shots. It's funny too, though unintentionally, for example when Kathleen Hughes, for reasons that are never clear, plays her bit part like a mink in heat, even though she's supposed to be worried to death about her kidnapped boyfriend. That boyfriend is Russell Johnson, the professor from Gilligan's Island. Can you believe this guy? First Hughes, then he's shipwrecked with Ginger and Mary Ann. Some guys have all the luck. But we're lucky too—we found numerous excellent promo images and uploaded them below. The movie's iconic poster was painted by Joseph Smith. It Came from Outer Space premiered in the U.S today in 1953.

It Came from Outer Space Richard Carlson Barbara Rush Russell Johnson Kathleen Hughes Joseph Smith poster art cinema movie review sci-fi

Hollywoodland

Nov 13 2012

What was it Shakespeare wrote about rough winds and May?

Above is a publicity photo of American singer/actor/comedian Sammy Davis, Jr. with his Swedish bride, actress May Britt. The shot dates from today in 1960, and as you might guess, that was a very bad time for mixed couples. Sammy had for years been making tabloid headlines for dating white women ranging from Tinseltown icon Kim Novak to Canadian singer Joan Stuart, but when he announced plans to marry Britt, a chunk of the general public lost its collective mind. He faced racist banners and chants in London, received rafts of hate mail, and was confronted in Los Angeles with the bizarre spectacle of three men marching outside the Huntington Hartford Theater in nazi regalia. Even two admirers, John and Robert Kennedy, allegedly asked Frank Sinatra to tell Davis to delay the wedding until after the 1960 presidential election.

Professionally, Britt had to choose between her career and Davis, because it was quite clear that she would never be hired in Hollywood if she married him. Some websites suggest that she lost little because she was a minor talent at best, but she had appeared in over a dozen films and had made the cover of Life magazine twice before even meeting Sammy, so her expectations of a strong run in Hollywood were in no way delusional. Obviously, she chose love over career, and wed Davis at his home in the Hollywood Hills. Some of the guests at the reception included Peter Lawford, Diana Dors, Barbara Rush, Janet Leigh, Leo Durocher, Shirley MacLaine, Milton Berle, and Edward G. Robinson, Jr. The marriage lasted eight years—not long in the real world perhaps, but an eternity by Hollywood standards.