Sportswire | May 8 2014 |
Sportswire | Jul 26 2011 |
The National Police Gazette focuses on sports with this July 1956 cover of welterweight and middleweight boxing champion Carmen Basilio. According to the Gazette, Basilio lost his welterwight title to challenger Johnny Saxton due to the fact that the judges had been bought off by local mob figures. This may have been true. Saxton was tight with—or perhaps controlled by—a Philadelphia wiseguy named Blinky Palermo. Saxton was no hack—he went 39-0-1 to start his career—but in some of those fights his opponents gave less than their all, conspicuously so.
Saxton won his first title in 1954 against Kid Gavilán, and that fight was openly discussed as a fixed affair. When Saxton topped Basilio in March 1956 in a fifteen round decision, Basilio said bluntly of the judging, “It was like being robbed in a dark alley.” The Gazette took up his case four months later. Other magazines weighed in on Basilio’s behalf as well, and in September 1956 he got his revenge when he knocked out Saxton in a rematch.
Basilio finished his career with a respectable record of 56-27-7, having taken quite a few beatings, but also having dished quite a few out. In the end his face was a topographical map of all those battles, with ridges and hillocks everywhere, but on this Gazette cover showing him after winning the welterweight title, he positively glows. There’s nothing quite like winning.
Vintage Pulp | Jun 6 2011 |
Above, a cover of the rare American celeb magazine It, with a few interior scans, including two pages of dancer Carmen D’Antonio. This issue was published in June 1949. You can see another issue here.
Hollywoodland | Apr 6 2011 |
Above, another Movie Show cover, this one from April 1943 with Rita Hayworth shaking her maraca. We never heard of this magazine before last week, but it's aesthetically brilliant. Hopefully, we'll find more out there somewhere. If we do, we'll definitely share. Below are selected interior pages from this issue, featuring Ida Lupino, Anne Sheridan, Mona Maris, Mapy Cortés and others.
Femmes Fatales | Dec 31 2010 |
Below are eighteen timeless Hollywood leading ladies, some well-known, some less so, but all gleamingly beautiful. They are, top to bottom, Mari Blanchard, Carmen Phillips, Grace Kelly, Jane Adams, Joan Vohs, Martha Hyer, Laurette Luez, Tippi Hedren, Marguerite Chapman, Janet Leigh, Venetia Stevenson, Annabella, Muriel Barr, Lana Turner, Kim Novak, Paula Drew, Ann-Margret, and Vera Miles. Happy New Year.
Femmes Fatales | Apr 10 2010 |
Above, a promo shot of American actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge, circa 1954. Dandridge is a screen legend who behind the scenes suffered a lot of heartbreak and tragedy, including a mentally disabled daughter, and romantic relationships that ended badly. On the other side of the ledger she had talent to burn and was the first African American woman nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, for her perfornamce in Carmen Jones. Her legacy is secure.
Vintage Pulp | Apr 1 2010 |
Japanese promo poster for Carmen Jones, Otto Preminger’s all black version of Bizet’s opera Carmen, starring Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey, and Diahann Carroll. Carmen Jones opened in Tokyo in April 1960.
Sportswire | Dec 8 2009 |
After their careers were over, Johansson and Patterson became good friends and even flew to visit each other in their native countries every year. Top Secret could well have done a story on that, but of course harmony doesn’t sell magazines. So while in the U.S. civil rights strife raged through the rest of the sixties and into the seventies, two guys who once made a living beating the living shit out of each other quietly proved that, given a chance to see each other’s similarities rather than differences, people tend to get along just fine.
Femmes Fatales | Sep 14 2009 |
Above is a fun promo photo of American actress Jeanne Carmen, circa late ’50s, that makes us hungry and probably is working the same magic on you. Carmen was an interesting personality who earned the moniker “The Queen of the B Movies” by appearing in such fare as Untamed Youth, Monster of the Piedras Blancas, and The Devil’s Hand, and was famous as a golf trick shot artist. We kid you not.