 Life sure was nice before the prudes came along. 
This promo photo was made for the 1933 pre-Code musical Footlight Parade, which, as the image suggests, contained some fairly racy scenes. James Cagney is in the center here, with Ruby Keeler at left, two actresses we can't identify, and Lorraine Marshall at right. Movies made in 1933 and before are generally considered pre-Code, but the Hays Code censorship regime actually was created in increments beginning in 1927 before reaching something like final form in 1930. Few people had any interest in enforcing it right away, so it didn't become rigid until 1934, at which point it successfully shackled cinematic expression for thirty years, until Hollywood was driven to imitate the envelope pushing films coming out of Europe. The Code covered anything and everything: drugs, profanity, ridicule of the clergy, defeat of the law, and more, but of course it was primarily designed to block sexual material, which means that in practical terms, Cagney never got to be the center of a sandwich like this in a photo again.
 Which one liked to wallow in crap more? National Examiner or Adolf Hitler? 
National Examiner offers up a provocative cover on this issue that hit newsstands today in 1973, with an unidentified blonde model and the promise of expert lovemaking tips. Nothing new there. What's different is this issue takes Adolf Hitler's corpse for a gallop around a well-traveled track. The article “Hitler's Strange Desires” digs into der Führer's toilet training, his family background, his private writings and public statements, and comes to the conclusion: sexual pervert! The piece discusses Hitler's “sexual inadequacy and impotence, frail body and softness that was almost effeminate,” and reveals how he doted on his mother but eventually felt betrayed by her, stating, “This sudden indignation with his mother could have been caused if he saw his parents having intercourse.” The ultimate conclusion is no surprise: “[Because of] his extreme form of masochism [he derived] sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him.”
As psychological disturbances go, you can take your pick here. Like beer in a Berlin rathskeller, Hitler allegedly had multiple flavors on tap, and they culminated in turning him into a shit freak. That's amusing to consider, but was it anything other than pure bullshit itself? Labeling Hitler a disturbed child-turned sexual deviant was a mini-industry in the decades after his death, and the rumors started by these reports are still prevalent today. We get it—by making him into a non-human it's easy   to distance him from the rest of us, but as far as we know there's no evidence he was anything other than a heterosexual who had run-of-the-mill sex, or for that matter that he was anything other than a run-of-the-mill human. Many people would love for the stories to be true, but they're just too easy. We don't blame Examiner for beating that Hitler horse, though. Everybody did it—it sold piles of papers.
Examiner goes for lighter material elsewhere in the issue, with an update on the whereabouts of Canadian actress Ruby Keeler, a story about a wife who makes her husband take her to a swingers club so she can get some strange dick, and a pervy advertisement for instant peepholes we know would be illegal to use today, and which we suspect were illegal to use back then too. Other celebrities who make appearances include Maria LaTour and Monika Zinnenberg. In fact, on closer examination that unidentified cover model might be Zinnenberg. She made the usual slate of bad West German comedies and exploitation flicks during the ’60s and ’70s before leveraging her front-of-the-camera work into a directing career which she sustained all the way up until 2012. And finally there's a centerspread on the benefits of yoga, featuring stars like Cary Grant, Geraldine Chaplain, and Barbara Parkins touting its benefits. That's about it for this Examiner. Scans below, and more here and here.                   
 When you’re smiling the whole world smiles with you. 
The gent with the enormous smile here is Joe E. Brown, one of America’s most famous comedian-actors during the 1930s and 1940s, seen on the cover of Het Weekblad (The Weekly), which was a popular celeb-cinema magazine published in the Netherlands for many years. This issue, which is numbered 620, hit newsstands today in 1935. Inside are interesting photos of Shirley Temple, Winifred Shaw, Ruby Keeler, a very nice ink drawing of Joan Crawford by Arturo Sanchez, and more. Scans below.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1933—The Gestapo Is Formed
The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond. 1937—Guernica Is Bombed
In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced. 1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission.
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