The Rode Vampen Serie, or Red Femmes Fatales Series, was launched in 1963 by the Dutch publishing company De Vrije Pers, with a new entry unveiled every two weeks. Above are ten nice examples. We would love to read Strip Tease Bar, but Dutch is not one of our tongues. See more from De Vrije Pers here and here. 

Above is a lovely image of American actress Jean Seberg, who streaked across the cinematic firmament at the end of the 1950s in movies like Lilith and Breathless, but once famous quickly learned that freedom of association was a right that was guaranteed only if one didn’t actually exercise it. When her political support for civil rights groups became known to federal authorities, they made her a target of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO, which was a covert, illegal spying program aimed at American citizens whose political activities were deemed a threat to the status quo. The FBI harassed and discredited Seberg, and surveilled her both in the U.S. and abroad, all while hiding its involvement, and that of high ranking government officials, including U.S. President Richard M. Nixon. Seberg ended her turbulent life by committing suicide in Paris in August 1979, and her family as well as numerous fans blamed the FBI and U.S. government for pushing her over the edge. The above image was made many years before, in 1963. 

Here are five book covers for eighteenth and nineteenth century authors George Decoin, Gottfried Keller, Henry Fielding, Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, and Horace Walpole, part of a series published in Italy during the 1950s called I grandi romanzi del mondo, or The Great Novels of the World. These novels run the gamut from drama to satire, but they were all given uniform cover treatments by two artists—Angelo Cesselon and Benedetto Caroselli—in hopes that modern readers would be drawn to them. We don't know if it worked on them, but it definitely worked on us. 

Actor Sterling Hayden was a major pulp figure. Before starring in Crime Wave, acting in other noir films, working as a model, and writing novels, he was a genuine war hero. More specifically, he was an undercover agent with the COI, the American intelligence agency that predated the OSS, and during WWII he ran guns to Yugoslavia and parachuted into fascist Croatia. Despite being decorated for these and other death-defying missions, he later found himself in the crosshairs of the House Un-American Activities Committee for daring to associate with communists. Though he was innocent of any crime, HUAC threatened his career and reputation, and so under pressure Hayden eventually named names. It was a capitulation that haunted him to the end of his life. We’ll have more on Hayden in the future. Crime Wave premiered today in 1954.