| Femmes Fatales | May 9 2019 |
Is there such a thing as too many dots? French actress Leslie Caron tests the limits in the beachy 1965 promo photo at top. A polkadot bikini, we can all probably agree, is cute. But a polkadot bikini with a floppy polkadot hat? Is she possibly violating the dot density rule where the oh so fragile line into clown territory is crossed?Not that we're fashion gurus, but we think this hat is definitely too garish to look good on most women, at least outside of the Belmont Stakes. Admit it—if your wife, girlfriend or friend were to wear it on the beach you'd be hoping a gust of wind would rip it off her head and carry it into the ocean to be eaten by a moray eel. But on Caron? There's no dotted line to cross—she actually makes this look nice, which is what movie stars do.
| Vintage Pulp | May 20 2013 |
Oh, the poor National Police Gazette. By 1974 it was impossible for the editors to keep claiming Hitler was still alive and hiding out in Argentina. If he’d ever been there he was long dead. Castro was still around, of course, but it was pointless to keep pretending the U.S. was going to send an armada to take back Cuba. Mao was a useful foil for a few years, but somehow he just didn’t resonate the same way for readers. So the magazine turned its focus to pettier intrigues, dogging the Kennedy clan and hoping to move issues by featuring bikini models on its covers. How the mighty had fallen. Launched all the way back in 1845, the oldest magazine in America was now uninspired and out-of-touch with 1970s readers. In this entire issue only a few pages were even worth scanning. Teddy Kennedy, Susan Shaw, Felicity Devonshire, Sliwka… and killer catfish, all below.
| Hollywoodland | Apr 17 2013 |
“Love in France isn’t what it used to be,” says French singer, dancer, and actress Leslie Caron. At least if National Enquirer is to be believed. This cover featuring an enchanting photo of Caron in a pixieish mode she made famous appeared today in 1960 when she was finishing work near Paris on the Napoleonic drama Austerlitz. At the time, she was having difficulties with her husband, actor Peter Hall. Caron wrote about the period in her autobiography Thank Heaven: “Temptations to have affairs were sometimes avoided, sometimes not.” In that context, this cover takes on added meaning. Would her husband have seen her words as reassuring or upsetting? In the end it didn’t matter. Filming 1961’s Fanny in Marseilles, Caron had an affair with cinematographer Jack Cardiff. So while love in France might not have been what it used to be, it was still good enough, seemingly. Caron’s subsequent whirlwind affair with Warren Beatty triggered a separation, and by 1965 she and Peter Hall divorced.
