Pulp International

Jan 2 2023

America's worst tabloid pops the bubbly and starts the year strong.

Above is a cover of the tabloid National Informer that hit newsstands today in 1972 featuring an unidentified Champagne toasting model. We love how the editors emphasize the word “truthful” in the second banner, beneath the name of the paper. That's a bold claim from one of the ultimate bottom shelf tabloids of the era, one that traffics in faux news and sensationalism more than actual journalism. But we won't argue the point. Whenever one's reputation is less than stellar don't leave it to chance: tell people what opinion to have of you. National Informer says it's truthful, fine.

There are a couple of stories of note in this issue. According to Informer, German high wire artist Karl Traber died when he lost his balance during a walk between the towers of two Munich churches and fell two-hundred feet onto a spiked fence. We couldn't find a single reference to anyone named Karl Traber online, though we did to a Traber family who remain famous today as aerialists. We did a Boolean search within German websites and still found no Karl Traber who suffered this grisly death. It's no surprise. Cheap tabloids often leave you with more questions than answers. We'll blame it on sloppy journalism (maybe they got a name wrong?) rather than false reporting. But since we don't want to spend our Monday searching the internet, we'll just move on.

Later in the issue Informer's resident seer Mark Travis produces a slate of predictions, and one of them qualifies as his wildest ever: I predict the invention of a serum which is injected into the bloodstream to create more pigmentation of the skin and turn a white person black. It will be very popular among the young college students. This serum [snip] will enable white youngsters from affluent homes to really see what life in the ghetto is like. Since the results will wear off in a few weeks if the injections are discontinued, it will be quite an adventure to “go black” for a short period of time. Only a wig will be necessary to complete the disguise. And since another drug which works in reverse—lightens the skin—will enable any Negro who desires to do so to pass for white, it will soon be impossible to tell who is white, who is black, and who is one in the disguise of the other.

We think we know how that would turn out: the caste-destroying serum would be banned in all fifty states, plus overseas U.S. territories, and bring penalties for usage ranging up to execution. We're only half kidding. Imagining the possible fallout from such a form of recreation makes us want to pitch the idea to some of our Hollywood friends. Can you imagine the television show that could be produced? Travis has made some blah predictions over the years, but we bet this one hit a nerve among Informer's readership. Unfortunately, we don't have the next few issues to check the infuriated responses in reader mail. Maybe it's better that way. As a side note, this is the thirtieth issue of Informer we've shared.

West Germany Munich National Informer Brigitte Bardot Karl Traber Laila Leeds Wendy Sity Mark Travis Janet Baker Barbara Fenney tabloid burlesque

Femmes Fatales

Nov 9 2022

100 pounds of trigger pull weight.

Above is reedy Iso Yban, here pictured with a toy machine gun and not much else. Her various bios say she was born in Essen, Germany, but moved to Paris, where she became a dancer at Le Crazy Horse, and as a model posed under the aforementioned name, as well as Yso Iban, Isi Yban, Marlène Funch, Christina Madison, Belinda, et al. This bold shot was made by French lensman Serge Jacques and it dates from the late 1960s.

Germany France Essen Paris Le Crazy Horse Iso Yban Yso Iban Marlène Funch Serge Jacques burlesque nudity

Femmes Fatales

Sep 17 2022

Go in the water? That's the freaking North Sea you're talking about.

It's been a few years, so we're returning to subject of German actress Karin Schubert today with this brilliant shot that first appeared as a centerfold in the West German magazine Sexy, a publication that did this sort of thing often. Schubert is a unique figure. She was born in Hamburg during wartime in 1944, debuted in cinema during the late ’60s, then, after establishing herself as a mainstream actress, went into porn. We talked about that in detail here, and we also mused on the relationship between mainstream erotic films and xxx movies, with her as an example, at this post. The latter link contains some of our ponderings concerning nudity on our website, so you may be interested in that, and if so, we go into more detail on that subject here, and talk about the entire purpose behind the site here. The above shot dates from 1971. And by the way, Germany does have some nice beaches—when they aren't covered by snow.

Germany West Germany Hamburg Sexy Magazine Karin Schubert nudity nudie mags xxx

Intl. Notebook

Sep 2 2022

Minuit puts the country's hospitable reputation to the test.

Ever since we discovered a while back that the U.S. tabloid Midnight was actually a spin-off of Montreal based Minuit we've been looking around for issues. We finally had some luck. This example hit Canadian newsstands today in 1968, and on the cover is British actress Mollie Peters, or Molly Peters. Inside, various Hollywood stars are spotlighted in unflattering ways. Edy Williams was allegedly attacked by a lesbian; Paul Newman resorted to transcendental meditation to cut down on his drinking; Jason Robards, Jr. broke everything Humphrey Bogart related in Lauren Bacall's house; Robert Vaughn paid off his extensive gambling debts and cancelled his credit cards; Janet Margolin allegedly ate a pound of ground beef every day for health reasons; and Ursula Andress attacked Anita Ekberg in a Paris restaurant for making eyes at Andress's boyfriend Jean-Paul Belmondo.

There's also a note on Babsi Zimmermann, who Minuit claims just refused a nude role in a French film. We noticed the blurb because of her name, which seems too good to be true, and familiar too. We looked her up and she did exist. It turns out she was better known as Barbara Zimmermann. She changed her stage name after the release of her first film, a counter-culture sexploitation romp called Heißer Sand auf Sylt, aka The New Life Style (Just to Be Love). Maybe she wanted a fresh start because the movie was such a stinker. We know it was bad because we wrote about it, which is why her name sounded familiar. She's naked as a donskoy cat in it, so Minuit's claim that she refused the French movie makes sense if she wanted to rebrand herself. The change still has people confused. Currently IMDB has separate entries for Babsi and Barbara.

Minuit reserves special attention for U.S. actor George Hamilton, who had been generally targeted by tabloids for avoiding military service in Vietnam. Why him? We wrote about the reason a long while back, and if you're curious you can check. Minuit wryly informs readers that, “George Hamilton somehow managed to break his toe the day after he received a notice to report to the U.S. Army recruiting center. This gives him an interesting three-month [deferral]. It's clever, isn't it?” Obviously, toes heal. Hamilton eventually received a full deferral for other reasons.

Also in this issue, Minuit editors treat readers to a story about a man cut in half by a train. We feel like it's urban folklore, but there are photos—for any who might be convinced by those—and a long story explaining how a man named Regerio Estrada caught his wife Lucia in bed with another man, beat him unconscious, and tied him to a train track to await the next express. Do we buy it? Not really. The internet contains only a fraction of all knowledge and history, but we think this tawdry tale is so bizarre that it would have found its way online. There's nothing. Or maybe we're just the first to upload it. Anything is possible. We have additional colorful Canadian tabloids we'll be sharing in the months ahead. You'll find eighteen scans below.

Vintage Pulp

Aug 31 2022

Evelyn Berckman's treasure hunting mystery is a real gem dandy.

The cover art on this paperback edition of Evelyn Berckman's 1956 novel The Strange Bedfellow was painted by James Hill, and we'll go ahead and call it a masterpiece. We saw brilliant work from him recently on the cover of Thomas Sterling's Murder in Venice, and here his evocative effort gets right to the heart of a story about a museum researcher named Martha Haven beseeched by two older scholars to go on a quest for a priceless ruby called Kali's Eye. The jewel vanished more than two centuries ago in Germany, lost in the aftermath of a crime of passion. While Berckman doesn't necesarily bring anything new to the sub-genre of historical puzzlers, she's an excellent writer:

Incredible that from this passing association—a few words, a kiss or two—she could have become so obsessed with him. At first she had waited, with entire confidence, for the sick longing to lessen, fade away of itself. Far from lessening, it became worse. He was lodged in her like an incurable malady, like a lethal arrow. However she twisted and struggled she could not work it free. So they did happen, those instant, violent attractions of which one read with half-amused skepticism. By a damnable fluke, it had happened to her. She began leading two separate lives. Outwardly she continued doing what she had always done; inwardly she kept walking round and round without ceasing inside a circle of pain.

Love and heartbreak are the key ingredients of romance novels, and as the above passage indicates, there are plenty of love yearnings in Berckman's story, but in addition you get the ingredients of a pulp style treasure hunt: dusty bookstores, old churches, forgotten crypts, desiccated corpses, and the rest. The tale also delves into Jewish history in Europe, which is a harrowing story far beyond the parts most people know casually. Berckman handles all that well, slipping in a few historical lessons, writing from the point of view of a protagonist whose knowledge of what happened back then is spotty. And as a bonus she gets her plot rolling right away with murder on page four.

The book is good, but in our opinion there are two flaws. First, the treasure hunt is too linear—Martha speeds directly to the crumbling medieval hamlet where she thinks Kali's Eye rests, and turns out to be correct. A wrong turn or two would have been nice. And second, Berckman cheats at the climax a bit, relying upon a mechanism rather than Martha's wits to settle matters. An experienced thriller or mystery writer would have dropped Martha in even deeper soup, and invented a cleverer method for her to extricate herself. But neither problem is a dealbreaker. We'd read Berckman again because, simply, good literary skills make up for an awful lot.

Germany Dell Publications Evelyn Berckman James Hill cover art literature

Intl. Notebook

Aug 26 2022

Back by popular demand.

Earlier this year we shared an issue of one of the prettiest mid-century celebrity magazines—West Germany's Bravo. We have pages from another issue, published today in 1956. We'll return to this publication a bit later.

West Germany Bravo Magazine Marilyn Monroe Karl-Heinz Böhm Peter Carsten Silvana Pampanini Richard Widmark Donna Reed Barbara Ruick Helga Frank Marianne Koch Susanne Cramer Mitzi Gaynor tabloid

Vintage Pulp

Jun 6 2022

Murder most premeditated.

Above is a poster painted by German artist Heinz Bonne for the U.S. film noir classic Double Indemnity, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray as lovers who try to pull off a murder and daring insurance fraud but may not be quite as smart or lucky as needed. We'll hopefully get back to Bonne a little later. Double Indemnity premiered in the U.S. in 1944, but made it to Germany—West Germany actually—as Frau ohne Gewissen, or “woman without a conscience,” six years later, today in 1950.

West Germany Frau ohne Gewissen Double Indemnity Barbara Stanwyck Fred MacMurray Edward G. Robinson Heinz Bonne poster art cinema film noir

Vintage Pulp

May 26 2022

Forget Mercury and Venus. Zsa Zsa is the hottest celestial body between Earth and the sun.

This beautiful West German promo poster was made for Zsa Zsa Gabor's 1958 cheeseball sci-fi flick Queen of Outer Space, titled in German In den Krallen der Venus—“in the the claws of Venus.” This is our third entry on the film, though not because it's good. It's because the promo art is excellent, as you can see by looking at the U.S. promos here, and the Italian ones here.

How is the film? As we know, space is a vacuum, which means no one can hear you scream to get back the eighty minutes

you lost watching this. Is it so bad it's actually good? Well, maybe. It was meant to be silly, but in the end you'll probably have to supply your own humor.

The poster, by the way, is signed, but we can't unravel the artist's illegible scrawl. We've included it here in case you can. Feel free to let us know who this is, because their work is great. After three years floating around somewhere between Hollywood and the inner planets, Queen of Outer Space premiered in West Germany today in 1961.

I hope your entry vehicle is sufficiently heat and pressure resistant, Captain.

Edit: It takes a village. Our friend Kevin has identified the artist as Ernst Litter, and now that we know who he is we'll return to him a bit later. Thanks, Kevin.

West Germany In den Krallen der Venus Queen of Outer Space Zsa Zsa Gabor Ernst Litter poster art cinema sci-fi

Femmes Fatales

Apr 30 2022

Ocean temperatures rose sharply on a random day in 1974. Scientific explanation finally found.

Andrea Rau joins the Pulp Intl. swim team with this nice photo that appeared in the British magazine Cinema X in 1974. Rau, whose hotness we've already documented and who probably sent up a cloud of steam whenever she jumped into water, is also a member of the Pulp Intl. soap foam team, which means she's doing double duty. But she's German, so her work ethic is off the charts. You'll be seeing more of her later.

Germany West Germany Britain Cinema X Andrea Rau nudity

Femmes Fatales

Apr 22 2022

Where Elke is concerned a cigar is never just a cigar.

You know the famous quote attributed to Sigmund Freud, right? He's sometimes criticized for having seen phallic symbols and sexual subtext where they didn't exist, but apparently he once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” But not in this case. In 1967's Deadlier Than the Male, Elke Sommer's cigar is an explosive she uses to assassinate someone, blowing his airplane out of the sky as she parachutes safely to the ground. It's a cheeseball movie, but her turn as the ultimate femme fatale makes it worth watching. You can read more about it here, and see plenty more Elke here, there, and eve ryw here.

Germany Deadlier Than the Male Elke Sommer