Vintage Pulp | Jun 17 2013 |
Several months ago we shared some covers of the Japanese cinema/celeb magazine Movie Information/Movie Pictorial. It was a publication that in aiming at both a Western and local audience uniquely offered simultaneous billing to Western and Japanese cover stars by putting one each on the front and back of every issue. But really, that’s a misnomer, because there was no back of the magazine. Because English and Japanese are read from opposite directions, both of the above covers could be considered the front. The magazine even seemed to have two names. In English it was Movie Pictorial, but the Japanese characters on the opposite face translate as “Movie Information.” These issues are from 1955 and 1956, and you can see scans of more colorful 1970s issues here.
Vintage Pulp | Dec 10 2010 |
We ran across another cool publication from Singapore, this one an English-language movie magazine called Movie News. This issue is from 1951 and features black-clad cover star Randolph Scott about to ventilate somebody with his sixguns. Inside the magazine are a couple of faces that are new to us— Zachary Scott and Miroslava. Zachary Scott, in panel nine, is unrelated to Randolph Scott, but had a moderately successful Hollywood career of his own, appearing in some westerns, as well as in the acclaimed noir classic Mildred Pierce. He died of cancer in 1965 at age fifty-one. Miroslava, née Miroslava Sternova, in panel four, was born in Prague in 1925 but fled that war-torn city for Mexico in 1939. A beauty contest opened doors in Hollywood for her, and she acted in about a dozen films and even once graced the cover of Life. At the age of thirty she committed suicide over a failed love affair. What we’ve read about her is quite interesting, so we’ll get back to her at a later date.