Above: Peggie Castle has a laugh in a promo image made for her 1956 western titled—unsurprisingly—Two-Gun Lady. She plays a woman who teaches herself how to be a marksman and trick-shot artist in order to avenge the murders of her parents. We don't share many western images (though we should, since westerns were a major part of the pulp market), but Castle's winning smile in this one caught our eye. 

This excellent promo poster is for a down and dirty little film noir called 99 River Street, the story of a boxer who was almost champion, but instead was knocked out at the moment of his seeming triumph. Now he’s a cab driver with big dreams but a wife that hates him for his low station in life and undermines him at every turn. She’s having an affair with a well-heeled criminal, and this situation leads to murder, which of course brings the cops knocking on our hero’s door. John Payne does an excellent job as a boxer with a bad eye and worse instincts, Peggie Castle is his two-timing conniver of a wife, and Evelyn Keyes is his bright-eyed and ambitious female friend—and probably his only hope for redemption. The plot takes a few twists and turns before speeding toward a nighttime dockside climax. Highly recommended. 99 River Street premiered in the U.S. today in 1953.

Ron Vogel, who has provided quite a few nice images for the Goodtime Weekly Calendar, makes yet another appearance this week with a nice shot of a woman offering a nightcap. We can’t identify the model, which isn’t unusual, but did we ever mention that Vogel himself is a bit of a mystery? The guy contributed an amazing amount to the field of photography, pin-ups, and erotica, but he doesn’t have a website or even a Wikipedia page. Seems a shame. Anyway, we get one more Vogel next week, and it’s a really nice one, so look forward to that. Quips below.

Feb 17: “A career girl is one who gets a man’s salary without marrying one.”—Peggie Castle

Feb 18: Mature women love the simpler things in life—men.

Feb 19: “She who thinks no man is good enough for her may be right but is more often left.”—He-who Who-he

Feb 20: “It takes two to make a marriage—a girl and her mother.”—Paul Gibson

Feb 21: “One thing that ruins a girl’s chance for a fur coat is to get married.”—Alex Dreier

Feb 22: A beatnik says, “A cannibal eats three squares a day.”

Feb 23: “Money doesn’t talk anymore. It goes without saying.”—Kai Winding 

Some call it cheesecake, glamour, or even smut, but we prefer to call it preserving the ephemera of history. For instance, this image by the renowned mid-century photographer Bruno Bernard, aka Bernard of Hollywood, did not exist on the internet a moment ago. And now it does. See how that works? So think of us as archivists, and yourselves as researchers. That probably won’t help if someone sees you looking at this image, but hey, it’s worth a try. 

This week’s image from the Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 features glamour model Joanne Arnold and was made by Peter Gowland, whose name is probably familiar to all the photographers out there, but perhaps not to everyone else. Gowland, the son of actor Gibson Gowland and actress Sylvia Andrew, was not only one of the most famous glamour photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, but he also built highly precise cameras that are still sought after today. These cameras ranged from handheld to studio-sized, and he also built special underwater cameras, one of which we can assume he used in making the image above. Gowland’s work appeared in too many magazines to name, and he shot everyone from Tallulah Bankhead to Muhammad Ali during a career that only ended with his death in 2010. There are several more Gowland images in the Goodtime Calendar—none of which have ever appeared online as far as we know—and they’ll be coming up in due time. Calendar text appears below.

May 12: Mother’s Day. Today a fella can tell his wife truthfully that he’s off to see his best girl.

May 13: “A lot of self-made men should deny it.”—Henry Morgan