 Usually they're pretty bold but these are impossible to find. 
It's rare for us to be unable to find a U.S. or European movie, but it happens. We didn't let it stop us from sharing this amazing poster, though, which was made for the French thriller La loups chassent la nuits, known in English as Wolves Hunt at Night. It's a spy flick set in Trieste and Venice, and stars Jean-Pierre Aumont and Italian actress Carla del Poggio. The poster was designed by Léo Houper using a photo of del Poggio as its central element. We'll keep looking for this film and maybe one day we'll get lucky. It premiered in France today in 1952.
 There’s nothing like the pitter patter of little jackboots.  
Check an English language bio on Gisela Fleischer and it’ll likely say she’s a West German woman who claimed to be Adolf Hitler’s daughter, and that the Swiss paper Tribune de Genève broke the story in 1966. Well, guess what? The above Midnight is from today in 1965, and inside, readers are told that Abigail Van Buren—aka Dear Abby—received a letter from West Germany that began: “I need some advice in a hurry. Should I marry a rabbi? I am the daughter of Adolf Hitler.” Fleischer’s mother Tilly Fleischer had competed in javelin at the 1936 Olympic games. According to Gisela, Hitler was impressed enough to invite her mother to the Berghof for dinner and that meeting in Obersalzberg was the beginning of an eight-month affair. Gisela claims to have been born in December 1937 at a special Nazi clinic, but never knew who her father was until later in life. Midnight journo Cyrus Bell claims to have spoken to Fleischer, and the gist is basically that learning she was Hitler’s daughter was a good thing, because it helped her finally know and accept herself. She says at the end, “Now I can say, like Antigone in the tragedy by Sophocles, that I was born for love and not for hate.” But by now you know that Midnight couldn’t land a scoop if you dropped the entire editorial staff into a Breyer’s factory. While the Dear Abby connection might well be true, it turns out Fleischer first made her Hitler claims in mid-1965 in the European magazines Oggi, Ici Paris, and Bunten, and Midnight merely reprinted them.  Fleischer was mostly ignored until she revealed all in a 1966 book called Mein Vater Adolf Hitler, published in France as Adolf Hitler mon père. Reactions to this event were skeptical, to say the least. A famous wit of the day wrote a satirical piece called, “I was Hitler’s toothbrush.” Fleischer kept her story alive with interviews in other magazines, but she had stiff competition—two people claiming to be the offspring of Hitler and Eva Braun had surfaced, a woman named Eleanor Bauer claimed to be Hitlerspawn, and the same assertion was made by a Frenchman named Jean Marie Loret. Even Martin Bormann’s son claimed to be in reality the result of an encounter between Hitler and a girl known only as Uschi. Proof will probably never turn up in any of these cases, but is it very hard to believe a man with Hitler’s power and obsession with Aryan womanhood was sowing his seed whenever the urge struck? As Goliath books and Hans von Bockhain have documented, 1930s Germany was an extraordinarily decadent time anyway. In addition, it’s rare that dictators do not have mistresses. From there it’s easy to imagine children being the result. Some historical researchers have portrayed Hitler as a sexual deviant—impotent shit freak seems to be the favored theory—but most historians believe he had a normal sex life, whatever that is. We’ll have more from Midnight later, and you can see other issues by visiting our tabloid index.
 If sex sells, pretending sex is bad sells even better. 
Here’s another Vice Squad magazine, published this month in 1964, with cover star Sophia Loren and several other interesting offerings. You’ll notice the banner about bare-bosom bikinis. Believe it or not, back in the mid-sixties bikini evolution reached a point where bras vanished entirely. The most famous of these suits were known as topless Maillots, and Vice Squad breathlessly claimed they were popular with liberated young women on the beaches of Saint Tropez. As far as their popularity Stateside, we weren’t around yet, so we can’t say with certainty whether they were widely worn. However, we did find a 1964 photo at bikiniscience of a brave Chicago woman named Toni Lee Shelley being hustled away by a local cop after wearing a topless Maillot on North  Beach. Interesting, isn’t it, that the same thing would probably happen today, half a century later? (At Pulp we tend to snicker about this, because on our beaches many sunbathers go entirely nude—and we wish most of them would cover up). Anyway, the leering tone of Vice Squad’s text (along with censored pix) was designed to inflame the magazine’s mainly conservative readers while giving them involuntary stirrings in the pants. Imagine thousands of Archie Bunkers getting heated up over the magazine’s scandalous contents, slamming it down in disgust, then sneaking a closer look after the missus had gone to bed. The same formula is at work in the stories about beauty queens, the “mink and champagne girl,” and Sophia Loren, who is pictured here in her film Leri, oggi, domani, aka, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Loren was always dogged by rumors that she turned to prostitution briefly during the dismal post-war years in Naples, when she was a teenager. The Vice Squad story, while not going that far, certainly suggests that Loren was a bit of a wild child. We can’t say if she was ever a member of the world’s oldest profession, but we can definitely say Vice Squad editors were experts at another ancient endeavor—spreading vicious rumors. That said, if any proof exists that the great Sophia Loren was a lady of the night, we’d pay to see it. How does fifty bucks sound?
 Any story with Loren is one worth watching. 
Italian actress Sophia Loren gets a leg up in this photo from the set of her 1963 anthology film Ieri, oggi, domani, aka Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. The shot appeared in an unknown Russian film magazine, which we can discern thanks to the Cyrillic text at lower left.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Holiday Records Strange Fruit
American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records "Strange Fruit", which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history. 1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West's considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy. 1971—Manson Sentenced to Death
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed. 1923—Yankee Stadium Opens
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008.
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