| Intl. Notebook | Oct 21 2022 |
Dark on the outside, darker on the inside.
This is the second Canadian tabloid we've shared in October, and we have several others upcoming in the next few months. This time we're back to Minuit, the sister publication of Midnight, published today in 1968 with a cover featuring Susan Boyd. She's looking a little radioactive, and in unusually dark waters. This could everyone's fate the way things are going in 2022. We don't know what Minuit editors were shooting for here. Maybe they had a problem during the printing phase. But in it an odd way it's actually a nice cover, and Boyd pops up again in the centerfold, looking much healthier.
Elswewhere inside the issue Minuit wastes no time with its efforts to shock. We learn about Vietmanese youngster Bon Ngoc Tho, who editors claim is a demi-homme born with many characteristics of his father—a monkey. We can say a lot about this, but let's skip most of it and simply note that the 1960s were the tail end, so to speak, of a long-running fascination with supposed human freaks.
Moving on, editors have a curious photo of a model with something unidentifiable in her mouth. We took several guesses what the thing was, and they were all wrong. Turns out it's a pea shooter—a tire-pois. No, we'd never seen one, but a few of you probably recognized it. Minuit editors claim it can kill a kid, and that hospitals around the U.S. have been treating serious pea shooter injuries, along with wounds inflicted by “blow zappers and Zulu-guns.” The article explains that the injuries come not from shooting the projectiles, but from swallowing them while inhaling to fire the weapon, occasionally piercing arteries in the neck.
There are more stories along those lines, but it isn't all dark at midnight. Elsewhere in the issue you get men's fitness, nymphomania, and plenty of celebs, such as Claudia Cardinale, Nai Bonet, and Maureen Arthur, plus Robert Vaughn hawking a 100% legitimate Man from U.N.C.L.E. “plume espion.” That means “spy feather,” which doesn't help at all in determining exactly what it is. But a careful scan of the text suggests that it's an x-ray vision device that works on everything from walls to clothes. Right. We'll take two, and see you at the beach. Twenty-one scans below.
CanadaMontrealMinuitMidnightThe Man from U.N.C.L.E.Susan BoydSuzanne PleshetteMaureen ArthurJosiane LarazinClaudia CardinaleKim PorterNai BonetFranl Lee MorrisClint EastwoodRobert Vaughntabloid
| 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.
CanadaWest GermanyVietnamMontrealMinuitMidnightHeißer Sand auf SyltThe New Life Style (Just to Be Love)Mollie PetersMolly PetersEdy WilliamsGeorge HamiltonBabsi ZimmermannBarbara ZimmermannLaura VickersJill HaworthDunja RajterPenny TarotEve EdenJean-Pierre CoallierRobert VaughanJason Robards Jr.Lauren BacallHumphrey BogartPaul NewmanAnita EkbergUrsula AndressJean-Paul BelmondoJanet MargolinJanet DaneYvonne d'AngersMarlene Schroedertabloid
| Intl. Notebook | Jun 9 2019 |
Endless sights in the City of Light.
We're back from Paris and it was as expected. We found a lot of great items we'll be uploading in the next days and weeks. And months, probably. Paris has many great sights, in every part of the city, but this time we ended up staying in Montmartre, an area that reminds us a bit of Washington Square, in San Francisco, that same feel of a tourist zone in a big city that has somehow managed to hang onto a neighborhood identity. As we wandered around town we saw scores of bookstores, some of which you see photos of below, and many had the type of material we were searching for. The focus this time ended up being on cinema magazines and comic books. Keep your eyes peeled. We have amazing things to show you.
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FranceParisMontmartreThe Seven Year Itch7 ans de réflexionMidnight LacePiège à minuitMarilyn MonroeDoris Daycinema
| Hollywoodland | Sep 20 2017 |
St. Cyr tells all for the cheapie tabloid Midnight.
This Midnight published today in 1964 has the usual clickbait on the front cover—I Ripped My Baby To Pieces. Why? Because she hated her husband. Very interesting, but today we're drawn to the banner and Lili St. Cyr's “Torrid Life Story,” in which, for the most part, she talks about her sexual attitudes. The interior header screams that she seduced a 14-year-old boy, and that's again the equivalent of today's internet clickbait. St. Cyr was sixteen herself, which is an age difference we'd hardly call scandalous. The clickbait worked, though. It made us quite eager to read the story. It's written in first person and touted as a Midnight exclusive.
Ordinarily we'd be skeptical a cheapie tabloid could score an exclusive with a world famous celebrity, but in this case we think Midnight is telling the truth. We have a few reasons: Midnight was a Canadian rag, headquartered in Montreal; St. Cyr was from Minnesota, but spent her early years dancing in Montreal; and Midnight was too well known a publication to get away with lying about the source of the story. Thus we can be sure St. Cyr wrote the piece. She eventually authored an autobiography in French, which makes us suspect she wrote this article 
for the Canadian Midnight—which was called Minuit—and it was translated and printed in the U.S. later. Just a guess. It was apparently part of a series, by the way, but we don't have the other issues of Midnight. Now on to the juicy stuff.
for the Canadian Midnight—which was called Minuit—and it was translated and printed in the U.S. later. Just a guess. It was apparently part of a series, by the way, but we don't have the other issues of Midnight. Now on to the juicy stuff. On virginity: “When you have it you try like hell to keep it. You lose it with an unconscious sigh of relief, and once you've lost it you wonder why you tried so hard to keep it in the first place.”
On her first: “Right now, as I write these lines, [all I] can recall about him is that he was blonde and his first name began with an R. As a matter of fact, I don't remember any of my first intimate boyfriends.”
On her others: “I've been called a child snatcher dozens of times because that is the way I like my men. I can't help it.”
On Hollywood star Victor Mature: “One bad thing about Vic though. Liquor and sex just don't mix for him. If he makes love, he's got to be cold sober or he can't perform.”
On Las Vegas: “There is something dead and decadent about the town. It builds to nowhere. It accomplishes nothing. And the people in it are infected with this live-for-today attitude.”
Those are the highlights. Except that readers also get three photos with the article. We already shared a much better version of one of those way back in 2009. The other two are in this post—the shot of St. Cyr as a child, when she was still Willis Marie Van Schaack, and the one below of her in goddess mode. Midnight was printed on cheap-ass paper, but the scans still look pretty good. Willis Marie's tale is interesting too. She was ahead of her time. What she writes could have been written by a character on Girls. It's impossible for us to not respect her boldness and determination to have exactly the life she wanted, particularly during the age in which she lived. We have plenty on St. Cyr in the website. Just click her keywords below.
| Intl. Notebook | Mar 7 2015 |
Midnight twice in the same day.
We mentioned a while back that the cheapie tabloid Midnight was printed in Montreal, which made it more of a Canadian than American publication. Above you see a rare cover of Minuit. This hit newsstands today in 1966 courtesy of the publishing company Lido Ltée., and it’s basically a duplicate of the Nobu McCarthy cover we shared on this day last year. Well, not an exact duplicate. As you can see by looking at the image on the right, the cover text on the U.S. version says: “I’m wild, wicked, and willing,” but on Minuit McCarthy says, “Je dis ‘oui’ aux hommes,” which means, “I say ‘yes’ to men.” The sentiment is the same, but we're reasonably sure both lines were made up not by McCarthy, but by Midnight—and Minuit—editors.
