 If anyone can get these people whipped into shape it's her. 
Above is a cool cover for Jak Delay's 1953 thriller Mission “microbienne”, a title that would translate as “microbial mission.” He wrote it for Éditions Le Trotteur and the art is by Mik, aka Jacques Thibésart, someone we've talked about extensively. We particularly like his femme fatale here. She's carrying a whip, the indispensable accessory for any modern woman, perfect for keeping male subordinates in line, and good for getting the attention of bartenders and waiters. The microbienne aspect of the story has to do with chemical warfare. The heroine Isabel Didier is tasked with retrieving French bacteriological weapons stolen by East German spies. As usual in these types of tales, Isabel is a real hotty and that's basically her main advantage dealing with various hapless commies. Or put another way, the Cold War warms up quickly thanks to Isabel. Mission “microbienne” could be the first in a series. We aren't sure. But maybe we'll check into that and report back. In the meantime, more Mik covers here and here.
 Elke escapes the East and probably wished she could have escaped the movie. 
Even after seeing hundreds of photos of German goddess Elke Sommer over the years, ocasionally you see come across some and have to hit pause. She appeared on the cover and inside the American magazine Escapade in January 1968, posing for a set of photos taken from her comedy The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz, which had premiered in New York City on January 3rd. Sommer plays an East German decathlete who wants to escape to the west, and does so by pole vaulting over the Berlin Wall, which is what the images below depict. Why is she in her underwear? We've seen the movie but we don't remember. We do know it featured Hogan's Heroes cast members Bob Crane, Werner Klemperer, John Banner, and Leon Askin, and that it uses the Hogan's formula, replacing improbably bumbling Nazis with improbably bumbling communists. But before you add this one to your queue, here's something else we recall—it was terrible.       
 Times may change but sex always sells. 
Above is the front of a copy of Uncensored magazine that appeared today in 1965 with cover stars Jackie O., Blaze Starr, and—in a sign of changing times—the Beatles. Inside the magazine you get sin and skin in the form of East German sex camps, nudity in international cinema, exotic dancer Marlene MacLane, transgender entertainer Christine Jorgensen, and call girl Christine Keeler, who, Uncensored reminds readers yet again, had lovers with skin darker than hers. And according to journalist Bill Jeffree, so did thousands of other British women. What had the world come to? These old tabloids often contain photos that haven’t made it online yet, and from this one we’re happy to upload a cool shot of Keeler, a snap of John F. Kennedy, Jr. as a toddler, and a rare vision of Elizabeth Taylor strolling a Mediterranean boardwalk in her bikini. We have about twenty scans below and more from Uncensored to come.                     
 East German anti-Nazi drama is considered a classic. 
Here’s a nice Romanian promo poster for the anti-Nazi drama Lissy, starring Sonia Sutter, and based on a novel by Franz Carl Weiskopf. The film was made in East Germany, and against all odds, earned an American release and brought Sutter a measure of critical acclaim. She eventually acted in more than twenty films, but is better remembered for her distinguished four-decade career at the famous Burgtheater in Vienna. Lissy premiered in East Berlin yesterday in 1957.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott
In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's African-American population were the bulk of the system's ridership. 1936—Crystal Palace Gutted by Fire
In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure. 1963—Warren Commission Formed
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However the long report that is finally issued does little to settle questions about the assassination, and today surveys show that only a small minority of Americans agree with the Commission's conclusions. |
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