 You're evil. I'm a little lazy. I think our relationship works because we accept each other's flaws. 
Looking at the promo poster for the Ray Milland/Ann Todd thriller So Evil My Love, we expected a standard 1940s crime drama, but we didn't look closely enough. The clothes reveal, if we'd used our eyes, that this is a period piece set in the late Victorian era. Milland plays a man sailing from Jamaica to England who picks up a case of malaria and is nursed back to health by recently widowed missionary Todd. Later, in Liverpool, he looks her up and moves into her boarding house. Milland is a painter, but he's more lucratively an art thief and forger. His real crime, and the reason he was leaving Jamaica, is a murder he committed. Trouble is soon to follow.
Once ensconced in Todd's rambling residence, Milland does the romantic full press, manipulating, flattering, and even dominating her until she falls in love with him. From that point it doesn't take much time or effort for Milland to draw poor, lonely Todd into his criminal schemes. Some viewers might become frustrated with her pliability and helplessness, but that's the 1890s for you. She eventually manages to act of her own volition, and her evolution into a woman who embraces power is what the movie is about. We thought it was good, for its type. It premiered in London today in 1948.
           
 It's my way or I'll pump you fulla holes. I know that doesn't rhyme, but you get the idea. 
Above, a promo photo of British actress Viviane Ventura, who appeared in such films as Docteur Caraïbes and A High Wind in Jamaica, and television shows such as I Spy and The Man from U.N.CL.E. This shot was made when she was co-starring in Battle Beneath the Earth in 1967.
 Femi Benussi has a swinging time in the jungle. 
The Italian lost world adventure Tarzana sesso selvaggio, known in English as Tarzana the Wild Girl, has one thing going for it—Femi Benussi as the titular vine swinger. As an infant she was lost in the jungle in a plane crash, but somehow survived thanks to the kindly local primates. About twenty-two years later (judging by her bodily development) an expedition is launched to find her, and of course she's now queen of deepest, darkest Africa, jiggling gloriously about in nothing but a g-string loincloth. In fact the whole production is designed to display Benussi nearly naked, and there's also a topless dance routine performed by Jamaican actress Beryl Cunningham, as well as shower time exposure from Franca Polesello. Interestingly, the movie was rated X when it played in the U.S. But don't let that fool you. Around the time Tarzana was made, the X meant “persons under 16 not admitted.” Nothing pornographic happens here, except perhaps in the minds of U.S. movie censors.
Nudity was not unusual in 1969, so what's with the rating? While Benussi never manages to be clothed, we suspect the X had more to do with Cunningham—a black woman—gyrating half naked in front of the expedition. Her dance even inspires one of the onlookers to punch another in the dick. Must be some Italian thing. She's duly eaten by a leopard for daring to tempt the white man. MPAA censors must have been torn. On one hand they probably ached for America's children to see that nature itself was segregationist, but after consideration they ditched the idea of a G rating, slapped an X on the film, then scuttled home for self-hating wank sessions. All things considered we wish the movie were better. No such luck, but it's unintentionally uproarious, especially the ending, and Benussi is a vision, exploited to the max by Romana Film Co. and director Guido Malatesta. Tarzana, sesso selvaggio premiered in Italy today in 1969.            
 Never let them see you sweat. 
Here’s a little something we scored a while back. It’s a promo photo from fifty-one years ago today of American stunner Linda Darnell at Wilcox Field in Miami. She had just arrived—in the middle of a 90 degree day, but wearing at least two layers of clothing—on a Pan Am flight from Ocho Rios, Jamaica (via Kingston), where she had been filming the World War II adventure-romance Saturday Island. The hurricane referred to in the press info below was Hurricane Charlie, which had struck in mid-August. And her flight left as Hurricane Dog was arriving. Apropos, actually—Saturday Island, aka Island of Desire, was a dog at the box office.
 If you go, you have to stay gone. 
 Above is a photo of American heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier between rounds of an early 1970s sparring session, and at right is a 1971 shot of Frazier having a training run along with his dog. Frazier won the heavyweight title by defeating WBA champ Jimmy Ellis in 1970. Little known fact about Frazier: in 1967 when then-champ Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces during the Vietnam War, the WBA held a tournament for Ali’s vacated belt. Frazier refused to take part in that tournament though he quite possibly could have won. Whether he refused to fight as a gesture of solidarity with Ali, or only with his anti-war stance, we don't know.
Anyway, Ellis had won that tournament, and in their 1970 bout Frazier pounded him mercilessly, knocking him down for the first two times in his career. Frazier held the belt through several title defenses until 1973, when he faced a colossal figure named George Foreman in Kingston, Jamaica. Foreman destroyed the tough, gritty Frazier, knocking him down six times in two rounds to win the title by TKO. It was a devastating beating, and the imagery of knockdowns number two and four are indelible. Still though, during an era that included several rare boxing talents, Frazier showed that he more than belonged. Another little known fact, at least to casual boxing fans: Frazier was a singer as well as a fighter, releasing several singles during the 1970s, including “If You Go, Stay Gone” and the very good “Try It Again.” Frazier died yesterday in Philadelphia, U.S.A.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Hitler Marries Braun
During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia's Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden. 1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon. 1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki
Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing. 1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident
After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe. 1945—Mussolini Is Arrested
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.
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