 Tabloid offers pills, thrills, and various painful aches.                    
Above: assorted pages from an issue of National Close-Up published today in 1968, with sex pills called vitogen, sexual perversion, sex parties, and sex swingers, then conversely, mass suicides, a monster baby, an acid burn victim, car crash deaths, and all that is terrible and painful in the world. Somewhere between those extremes are celebrities, including Julie Christie, Bing Crosby, Donna Marlowe again (seems she was a tabloid staple in ’68), Playboy centerfold Sue Williams (in the advertisement for strip poker cards), and, just above, the lovely June Palmer.
 We'll have ours with everything, hold the gun. 
Well, they say Bergers are bad for you and now we have proof. This photo of Austrian actress Senta Berger was made to promote the French 1967 thriller Diaboliquement vôtre, aka Diabolically Yours, in which she starred with Alain Delon. The movie was a bit of a flop when released, but Berger had numerous hits in her long career, and continues to act, appearing in the television series Under Suspicion through 2019. We last saw her as a Pulp Intl. femme fatale way back in 2013. You can see that shot here, and overindulge on Berger in general by clicking her keywords below.
 For British movie lovers Continental Film Review was their ticket across the English Channel. 
Continental Film Review was first published—as far as we can discern—in November 1952. We decided on that month because we saw a copy from February 1953 numbered Vol. 1 Issue 4, and the masthead said the magazine was published the first week of every month. CFR would go on to become one of Britain's most popular film magazines, exposing English language readers to the wide variety of foreign movies being made across continental Europe. The above issue appeared this month in 1966 with cover star Maria Pia Conte, and numerous film personalities inside, including Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Bates, Rossana Podesta, Evi Marandi, and more. We have other issues we'll get around to sharing at some point. In the meantime see more here, here, here, and here.                    
 She was so good Horwitz had a second helping. 
Senta Berger makes a second appearance on a Horwitz Publications paperback cover, this time for Carter Brown's Murder Is My Mistress. We showed you the Horwitz cover for Brown's Swan Song for a Siren a while back. That actually came second of the pair and was numbered 34 in the company's Reprint by Demand series. The above is number 19 and was published in 1960. We found it on the Nick Carter & Carter Brown blog, which is a stop you should make if you want to know everything about Brown. Anyway, we've been discussing these Horwitz paperbacks for a while because of their celebrity covers. In using Berger twice the publisher chose well.
 Wild time leaves man with splitting headache. 
The cover of this September 1970 issue of Australia's Adam magazine illustrates W. A. Harbinson's story “The Swinging Hep-Cat,” in which a man and woman spend most of their brief marriage fighting. He eventually strangles her. Or thinks he does. She actually survives and he only learns of this fact in jail from the cops who arrested him, as they laugh about it and reveal that she's fled for Paris—and the arms of another man. Much of the fiction in men's adventure magazines is disposable, for lack of a kinder term. We love it, of course. Men's magazine fiction would be nothing without hack writing. But Harbinson actually shows some skills in “The Swinging Hep-Cat,” as well as a muscular style. A sample:
We fought considerably during those early days of our marriage, bouts of most regal proportions, plates, knives, hair-brushes and antiques flying across the bedroom on fierce winds of abuse, she raging naked against the French windows in full view of the tourists below, me crouching back toward the door wondering how to tackle this bitch who had eaten my peace—a farce, a pantomime, a lunatic performance on both sides, always dissolving in the bed. Or this little description: Francisco Antonio D'Costa Pegado, a glorious dark beast of a man, rich as sin, tight as a drum, an incredible neurotic lover.
We checked after finishing the story, fully expecting Harbinson to have an extensive bibliography and we were right. He's written several dozen novels, mostly sci-fi, under his own name and that of Shaun Clarke. Not every good wordsmith manages to carve out a strong career—or any career, for that matter—so we were pleased Harbinson did well, because he actually knows how to use language in a way that brings it to three-dimensional life. At least he did in “The Swinging Hep-Cat.” He's still around and was last published in 2012, but we'll probably mine his earlier material, his stuff from the 1970s. We have high hopes. Elsewhere in Adam is fiction from Jack Ritchie, Austrian actress Senta Berger on the table-of-contents page, and plenty of cartoons. We have twenty-eight scans below, including a mega Berger in the final panel for your enjoyment.                           
 Raquel Welch's global hit One Million Years B.C. spawns another bad imitation.  There's little to say about When Women Had Tails. It's terrible Italian slapstick, complete with pratfalls and camel flatulence, punctuating a story dealing with a group of isolated cavemen who discover their first woman—Senta Berger. They want to roast and eat her, but she convinces one of them there are other satisfactions she can provide. We imagine this involves a little eating too, and the movie would be better if it showed something along those lines, but no such luck. Blame Raquel Welch for this fiasco, because once again this is an attempt to replicate the formula of her smash hit One Million Years B.C.—a bad attempt, far worse than When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, which we talked about recently. It takes a full twenty-one minutes of idiotic slapstickery before the cavemen finally come across Berger, and only after that point is the movie even watchable. It premiered in Italy as Quando le donne avevano la coda in October 1970, and had its U.S. unveiling today in 1973. Bad as it is, we can't resist these prehistoric fantasies, and we'll forge ahead bravely to the next.
 Horwitz uses another rising celebrity as a cover star. 
Last month we shared a reprint-by-demand Horwitz cover for Carter Brown’s Death of Doll that featured a young Elke Sommer. We got to wondering if other celebs had been used on Horwitz covers and decided to have a look. Above you see Brown’s Swan Song for a Siren, which Horwitz printed in 1958, and the face staring out at you is that of Austrian actress Senta Berger. That’s her, right? Full lips. Sensuous eyes. Hawk eyebrows. Gotta be. Like they had with Sommer, Australia-based Horwitz appropriated Berger’s image when she was barely famous, having appeared in only four films to that point, none in starring roles. We have a photo of Berger below for comparison, and we think you’ll agree it’s her. We’ll dig up a few more of these Horwitz celebrity covers later. 
 It probably should have been the Tail end of her career. 
Another Italian movie that premiered today is Pasquale Festa Campanile’s prehistoric comedy Quando le donne avevano la coda, aka When Women Had Tails. The above promo shot shows Austrian star Senta Berger in full costume for her role as Filli, the cavewoman captured by a clan of seven men who have never seen a woman. They quickly learn that she doesn’t, in fact, have a tail, and shortly thereafter uncover other anatomical curiosities. The movie’s so bad it’s miraculous Berger ever worked again, but you have to love this ’70s glam rock look. And if not, she appears as a normal human below. 
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1967—Dorothy Parker Dies
American poet and satirist Dorothy Parker, who was known for her wit and wisecracks, and was a charter member of famed Algonquin Round Table, dies of a heart attack at age seventy-three. In her will, she bequeaths her estate to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. foundation. Following King's death, her estate is passed on to the NAACP. 1944—D-Day Begins
The Battle of Normandy, aka D-Day, begins with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of northern France in an event codenamed Operation Overlord. The German army by this time is already seriously depleted after their long but unsuccessful struggle to conquer Russia in the East, thus Allied soldiers quickly break through the Nazi defensive positions and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history. 1963—John Profumo Resigns
British Secretary of State for War John Profumo resigns after the revelation that he had been sexually involved with a showgirl and sometime prostitute named Christine Keeler. Among Keeler's close acquaintances was a senior Soviet naval attaché, thus in addition to Profumo committing adultery then lying about it before the House of Commons, authorities pressed for his resignation because they also feared he had been plied for state secrets. |
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