| Vintage Pulp | Jul 13 2017 |
There's no business like Monroe business.
Spanish illustrator Francisco Fernandez Zarza-Pérez painted this beautiful poster for the comedy Luces de candilejas, aka There's No Business Like Show Business, and signed the piece as his alter ego Jano. As you can see by comparing the poster to the set photo below, he covered Monroe's leg, which maybe isn't surprising, since he was working in Franco's fascist Spain. Even so this is by far the best poster we've seen from him. The movie's Spanish title Luces de candilejas translates as “candle lights,” which is appropriate, as Marilyn Monroe gets into the type of moth-to-flame difficulties in which she specialized, with her arrival as a new talent on the Vaudeville scene bringing strife to a show business family. No pulp material here—it's a pure musical, with a lot of performance numbers from Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, Johnnie Ray, Dan Dailey, and headliners Ethel Merman and Donald O'Connor. The Jano artwork makes the poster a must share, but the film is a pass—not because it's a Vaudeville musical, but because it's bland, due in part to Monroe's minimal screen time. Luces de candilejas premiered in Spain today in 1959, and you can see more Jano here.
SpainLuces de candilejasThere's No Business Like Show BusinessEthel MermanMitzi GaynorJohnnie RayDan DaileyDonald O'ConnorMarilyn MonroeFrancisco Fernandez Zarza-PérezJanoposter artcinemamovie review
| Sex Files | Jul 8 2017 |
In the Swede Swede summertime.
It's been a while since we've had a legit nudie magazine on the site, but we don't want to neglect them because they figure strongly in pulp fiction. How many novels, for example, feature actress wannabes who do a little nude modeling, or have illicit rolls of negatives floating around that need to be retrieved from shady cartels? The Big Sleep—both the written and filmed version—is probably one of the most famous examples. And who can forget the fact that magazine posing boosted the careers of actresses like Marilyn Monroe and Christina Lindberg?
So above and below you'll find some scans from Kavalkad, a Swedish publication that ran from 1949 to 1968, with today's example dating from 1965. It's quaint by modern standards, like something you'd tease your grandpa with after finding it in his garage, but it was quite racy for its time, with kvinnor (women) showing frontal nudity years before U.S. magazines dared to follow suit. Sweden's more permissive attitude about such matters made for an active underground for Swedish porn in the U.S. If you got caught selling it that was your ass—but if you could get away with it there was plenty of money to be made.
Inside this issue you'll also find some non-nude photos of Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale. Kavalkad, like many magazines of its ilk, began with more of a focus on celebrities, and in fact there were numerous issues with Marilyn Monroe on the cover, as well as other mainstream stars like Debra Paget, Peggie Castle, and Rossana Podesta. All the issues are collector's items these days, though not exorbitantly priced ones—at least not yet. We may revisit Kavalkad later. In the meantime we have twenty-plus scans below.
| Intl. Notebook | Jun 25 2017 |
Uncensored turns its unique journalistic eye toward Anita Ekberg.
There's nothing quite like tabloid writing, a fact once again amply demonstrated by Uncensored. This issue is from June 1963, and check out this short paragraph from its feature on Anita Ekberg: “This is the Uncensored story of how Prince Philip bagged a rare and exotic Scandinavian pouter pigeon. Though its native habitat is Sweden, this double-breasted dove prefers the warmer climate of Italy. It also migrates as far from home as London and Hollywood.”
Double-breasted dove? They don't write like that anymore, and a good thing too. It's sexist, of course, but the tabs were generally belittling of both females and males—though in different ways. Women were derided 
for dating around, such as when Uncensored refers to Ekberg as “Sexberg,” whereas men were usually disparaged for not being manly enough. That typically involved either being rebuffed by women, not scoring with enough women, or sexually preferring men. You see this in the story on Marcello Mastroianni, who's called “lazy” for passing on Brigitte Bardot. And you see it in the story on the United Nations, which is referred to as the “U.N. pansy patch.”
for dating around, such as when Uncensored refers to Ekberg as “Sexberg,” whereas men were usually disparaged for not being manly enough. That typically involved either being rebuffed by women, not scoring with enough women, or sexually preferring men. You see this in the story on Marcello Mastroianni, who's called “lazy” for passing on Brigitte Bardot. And you see it in the story on the United Nations, which is referred to as the “U.N. pansy patch.” From the perspective of 2017, the heteronormative insecurity is pretty obvious. Men are to be prowling wolves, and any failure to live up to the ideal prompts insults; women are to be readily available for action, but not to other men. The story on Ekberg treads the line of admiring her beauty, but being suspicious about the freeness of her affections. There's a photo of her dancing with a black G.I. in Rome, and while the caption is neutral, in the context of the story the meaning of the shot is clear: “Ekberg will even dance with a black man!”
We love the photo. Ekberg looks a bit baffled, as if the soldier is telling her, “We'd be in mortal danger for doing this in most of the United States, you know,” and Ekberg is saying, “What the hell are you talking about?” The photo also shows how tall Ekberg was, almost 5' 7”, probably 5' 10” in heels, which is towering for an actress who needed to star alongside all those mid-sized leading men. We think this is the first time this image has appeared online.
Other elements worth noting in this issue include French actress and Pulp Intl. femme fatale Dominque Boschero as a mermaid, Marlene Dietrich looking dapper in a tux, Jayne Mansfield and one of her famed toy poodles, and burlesque queen Blaze Starr sudsy in a bathtub. There are plenty of other great shots too, and you can see them all below in nearly forty scans. Uncensored will return.
ItalySwedenRomeUnited NationsTexasUncensoredAnita EkbergTony SteelPrince PhilipMarcello MastroianniBrigitte BardotStella StevensTony RandallKim NovakJorge QuinleJayne MansfieldMarlene DietrichSoraya EsfandiaryPolly AdlerDominique BoscheroBlaze StarrLee RemickMamie Van DorenMarilyn Monroetabloid
| Hollywoodland | Sportswire | Jun 19 2017 |
Tonight they're gonna party like it's 1955.
Questions abound on this cover of Inside Story, but for each one there's an answer. What did Prince Rainier not tell Grace Kelly? That the palace in Monaco was cold and drafty, and she couldn't sleep in the nude anymore because the premises were open to the public from 9 to 5. What was the amazing Frank Sinatra hoax? His studio Carlyle Productions started a whisper campaign that he was such a dedicated actor that he actually used heroin while filming the heroin drama The Man with the Golden Arm. What is the secret fear that haunts Perry Como? That his family might be kidnapped.
All of these pieces are fascinating, but since it's baseball season and people are high on the front-running New York Yankees right now, we'll point to the story, “The Real Reason the Yankees Lost!” What they lost was the 1955 World Series, and it happened—according to Inside Story—because they were partying too hard. They were ensconced at the Concourse Hotel for the Series, a hole-up made possible by the fact that their opponents were the Brooklyn Dodgers. So with both the home and away games taking place in New York City, and the players barred from sleeping in their own houses to avoid family distractions, the superstar Yanks did some major league carousing.
Inside Story scribe Manuel Shaw describes an allegedly typical scene: “Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto, and several other Yankees were sitting around the lobby of the hotel when three lovelies from a nearby night spot showed up. Since the cuties were entertainers familiar to one or two of the players, and were rabid Yankees boosters, it was not remarkable that they were soon in animated conversation with the group, which shortly adjourned from the lobby to an upstairs suite.” Then he moves into this bit: “A beauteous brunette [was in the hall] clad only in a negligee. The two players wanted to spend some time with her, and they agreed that they would rather do it separately, but she insisted it would be more fun if they both stayed, and after a while she persuaded both of them to come back with her to her room. Soon a real party was underway, joined by many other Yankees, and several doting females who lived at the hotel.”
Well, what good is being a member of the famed Yankees if you can't do some Yankee doodle diddling? Most guys we know can't resist a free beer, let alone a woman in lingerie. A little later in the story, after the question of whether professional gamblers employed the party girls to distract the Yanks, we get this: “If true, this parallels the persistent story in gambling and diamond circles that the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe was introduced to Yankee star Joe DiMaggio just in order to take his attention off the Yankee pennant drive of a few years back.”
Did Inside Story really just say Marilyn Monroe was a mafia Trojan horse? Yup. They did. No ambiguity there. The magazine does not go so far as to say Monroe was aware of the set-up, so perhaps it was a matter of maneuvering her into the same space as DiMaggio at the same time and letting nature take its course. There are worse ways for a man to fall from the sporting mountaintop. And talk about a soft landing. We doubt the story, but you never know. There are far crazier tales starring Monroe. We have about thirty-five scans below, and more tabloids coming soon.
Inside StoryNew York CityNew York YankeesBrooklyn DodgersCarlyle ProductionsConcourse HotelThe Man with the Golden ArmFrank SinatraGrace KellyPrince Rainier IIIPerry ComoMickey MantlePhil RizzutoMarilyn MonroeAnna MagnaniVan JohnsonIngrid BergmanKatherine HepburnMargaret TrumanMaryse FabreJayne Mansfieldbaseballtabloid
| Intl. Notebook | Jun 11 2017 |
Which direction does Monroe go? The beauty mark is how you know.
At top you see a 1956 cover of the French film and celeb magazine Ciné-Révélation featuring the eternal Marilyn Monroe. The magazine caught our eye because we recognized the cover image as a promotional photo made for Monroe's film There's No Business Like Show Business. We think it's one of the most striking shots of one of history's most photographed people, so we thought we'd show you what it looks like without the text and wear. It's reversed compared to the Ciné-Révélation version, but it's the French who printed it backward. How can we tell? Because Monroe's beauty mark was on the right. Our right. Her left. You know what we mean.
| Hollywoodland | May 17 2017 |
Monroe and Miller make the scene in Manhattan.
Playwright Arthur Miller buys Marilyn Monroe a hot dog during a warm day in New York City. The shot was made for Look magazine for a feature purporting to show how normal Miller and Monroe's married life was—even though there's nothing normal about living in a Sutton Place penthouse. But if photos are illusions, the spell woven by this one is effective. Other photos were made, in a session that took place along 5th Avenue from the Plaza Hotel to the Queensborough Bridge and to various NYC landmarks in between, and the truth of being celebrity superstars is only revealed when the photographer finally shoots the crowd Monroe and Miller drew, seen below in the next-to-last panel. These were made in 1957.
| Hollywoodland | Mar 19 2017 |
It's taken a few weeks, Tony, but I'm really starting to feel like a woman. I have like fifty useless receipts in my purse.
Above, a sound stage photo of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in costume for their roles in Some Like It Hot, in which they starred with Marilyn Monroe. The movie premiered today in 1959 in Memphis, Tennessee, for some reason, then hit Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York City later in the month.
| Hollywoodland | Feb 21 2017 |
New tabloid explodes onto the gossip scene.
When we describe Dynamite as a new tabloid, it's only partly true. It was a new imprint. But its publisher, the Modern Living Council of Connecticut, Inc., was headquartered at the Charlton Building in Derby, Connecticut, which is where Top Secret and Hush-Hush based operations. When you see that Dynamite carried the same cover font as Top Secret and Hush-Hush, and that those two magazines advertised in Dynamite, it seems clear that all three had the same provenance. But unlike Top Secret and Hush-Hush, it doesn't seem as if Dynamite lasted long. The issue above, which appeared this month in 1956, is the second. We are unable to confirm whether there was a third. But if Dynamite was short-lived it wasn't because of any deficiencies in the publication. It's identical in style to other tabloids, and its stories are equally interesting.
One of those deals with Henry von Thyssen, the Dutch born, German descended heir to an industrial fortune, and his wife, Nina Dyer, heiress to a tea plantation in Sri Lanka, back then called Ceylon. The von Thyssen family manufactured steel in Germany, including for Hitler's Third Reich, and came out of World War II unscathed, as big companies that profit from war always do. Dyer was a dilettante famed for making bikinis popular on the French Riveria. According to Dynamite, von Thyssen was so desperate to marry Dyer that he allowed her to keep her boyfriend, the French actor Christian Marquand. Society gossips whispered,
but both spouses were fine with the set-up until von Thyssen accidentally ran into Dyer and Marquand in Carrol's nightclub in Paris and was forced to save face by starting a fight. The couple soon divorced, but not because of infidelity, as many accounts claim. What finally broke the couple up was that Dyer dropped Marquand. Dynamite tells readers: “[von Thyssen] has ditched his sloe-eyed Baroness because now she's decided she loves him.”
but both spouses were fine with the set-up until von Thyssen accidentally ran into Dyer and Marquand in Carrol's nightclub in Paris and was forced to save face by starting a fight. The couple soon divorced, but not because of infidelity, as many accounts claim. What finally broke the couple up was that Dyer dropped Marquand. Dynamite tells readers: “[von Thyssen] has ditched his sloe-eyed Baroness because now she's decided she loves him.” Interesting, but there are many similar stories about open high society marriages. What interested us, really, was the portrayal of Dyer. Apparently she had at some point been strongly influenced by Asian women. Her husband described her as “soft and feminine and oriental looking.” Dynamite painted this word picture: “She walks as though she has a water pot balanced on her head, her dark, slanting eyes are inscrutable, and her movements are so languorous and cat-like that von Thyssen gave her a baby panther as a companion.” Dyer eventually had two panthers, and was often seen walking them on the Croisette in Cannes. After her marriage to von Thyssen ended she quickly married Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, but that marriage ended in divorce. Over the years she had been given many gifts. Besides the panthers there were cars, jewels, and a Caribbean island. But the one thing money never bought for her was happiness. She committed suicide at age thirty-five.
There's a lot more to learn about Nina Dyer—her modeling career, her adventures in the south of France, her free-spirited ways in the Caribbean, her 1962 E-Type Jaguar Roadster that was found in Jamaica in 2015 and restored for a November 2016 auction, and more. So we'll be getting back to her a little later. We still have about fifty tabloids from the mid-1950s and we're betting she appears in more than a few. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Dynamite is a story tracking Marilyn Monroe's movements around Fire Island during a summer 1955 vacation, a report about Frank Sinatra being barred from the Milroy Club in London, an exposé on prostitution in Rome, a breakdown of the breakdown of Gene Tierney's engagement to Aly Khan (Sadruddin Aga Khan's brother), and a couple of beautiful photos of Diana Dors. We have about thirty scans below for your enjoyment. Odds are we'll never find another issue of Dynamite, but we're happy to own even one. It's great reading.
GermanyFranceNetherlandsConnecticutFire IslandParisLondonCannesThe Milroy ClubCarrol's NightclubDynamiteNina DyerHenry von ThyssenDiana Dors. Primo CarneraFrank SinatraMartha RayeMarilyn MonroeSandy SaddlerGene TierneyAly KhanOleg CassiniLiberaceErrol FlynnAva GardnerPhil SilversRocky GrazianoLinda ChristianRobert Henry SchlesingerEd BegleyChristian MarquandAga Khanboxingtabloid
| Femmes Fatales | Jan 23 2017 |
Ha! Caught you looking at my ass. I knew you didn't really care about art history.
It's difficult to find a photo of Marilyn Monroe that stands apart. So many were made, and of course she looked good in all of them. But this unusual shot of her checking out a book on Spanish artist Francisco Goya shows the most photographed person of her era in an interesting and slightly different way. It's from 1953.
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 20 2017 |
It's nobody's Asphalt but their own.
The best poster for the movie The Asphalt Jungle was, beyond doubt, the one we showed you a while back painted by the Italian artist Angelo Cesselon. But that one came a bit later. The above poster was made for the film's initial release in 1950. We think it's very nice as well, if remarkably different from Cesselon's masterpiece. As for the movie, we could tell you it's a top effort, but you already know that. If you haven't seen it, definitely do. It's showing at the Noir City Film Festival tonight, but even at home it's worth a screening.
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