| Vintage Pulp | Jan 16 2020 |
It was a different flavor of men's magazine.
Zest magazine, with its bold graphics and cover portraits, looks like a classic mid-century tabloid, but its banner tells you it's really a men's magazine. It lives up to its billing in this issue from January 1956—issue number one, actually—with short stories from Michael Avallone and H.P. Lovecraft, real life adventure tales, scare stories (“Is Your Daughter a Sex-Film Star?), glamour photography, and humor.
The Lovecraft tale, “Rats in the Walls,” is called “the greatest horror story ever written.” We wouldn't go that far, but it's freaktacular, like everything Lovecraft wrote. It had originally been published in Weird Tales in 1924, and we imagine that its bizarro mutant/cannibalism themes were pretty shocking back then. The Avallone story, “The Glass Eye,” is novella length. He had already published three novels and was building a reputation as a reliable author of thrillers, which makes his inclusion a nice coup for a new magazine.
The photography in Zest is just as impressive as the fiction. Readers get to see rare shots of major celebs such as Sophia Loren, Sabrina, and Delores del Rio. All in all Zest was a high budget effort, but it lasted only two issues. Why did it fold? No idea on that. Competition in the market was plenty stiff at the time. On the other hand, maybe two issues are all that were planned. We're thrilled to show you one of them, comprising thirty-plus scans below for your Thursday enjoyment.
Zest MagazineWeird TalesMichael AvalloneH.P. LovecraftRagnhild OllaussonSophia LorenSabrinaNorma Ann SykesDelores del RioJayne Mansfieldmagazine artliterature
| Intl. Notebook | Aug 31 2019 |
Sophia Loren applies personal experience to her ideas about marriage.
Above is a cover of Midnight with a nice photo of Italian superstar Sophia Loren, and a header suggesting trial marriages for couples over twenty-one. Did she say it? Quite possibly. Her marriage to film producer Carlo Ponti was an international scandal thanks to popes and others sticking their noses into her private business. But back then they thought it was their right—actually, their holy duty—because divorce wasn't legal in Italy and Ponti was still married. He and his wife had split and had nothing to do with each other, but the Catholic church assured Loren she'd go to hell if she married Ponti. Well, she did it anyway by proxy in 1957 and officially in 1966. So in August 1970, when this issue of Midnight appeared, we think it quite likely that she had some well formed ideas about marriage. In any case, nice cover.
| Intl. Notebook | Apr 28 2019 |
Loren is head and shoulders above the rest.
Our ongoing quest for unusual Japanese material continues today with this cool page featuring Sophia Loren in a photo feature about hats. It's from the magazine Heibon Punch and appeared in issue 10, published in 1964. You know what she needs under that hat? An iridescent wig.
| Hollywoodland | Dec 8 2018 |
And you think America is polarized today.
The iconic polar bear rug. What can you say about them? Well, it's not a good look nowadays, but back then people thought these sorts of decorations were quite chic. When did that end? Possibly shortly after the three-hundredth Playboy model posed on one, or when many people began to see trophy hunting as the obsession of vain and unsavory millionaires. One of those two. Personally, we blame Hefner. In the shot above Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay take polar bear style to its pinnacle. Just look at that room. Besides the bear they have a copper ceiling, satin curtains, and a white shag rug. It's a pimp's wet dream and all of it must have cost a fortune. We like to imagine what the look on Jayne's face would have been if anyone walked in with a brimming glass of red wine. We bet she'd have turned whiter than the bear.
We have more photos in the same vein below. If you need help identifying the stars, their names are in our keywords in order of appearance. Looking at the entire collection, we tend to wonder if there were three or four bears that ended up in all the photos. You know, like bears owned by certain photography studios or prop departments. Just saying, a couple of them look suspiciously similar. But on the other hand, how different from each other do bears really look? You'll notice that the poor creatures were generally posed to look fierce. But by contrast Inger Stevens' bear, just below, strikes us as a bit reflective and melancholy, which is understandable. Elizabeth Montgomery, meanwhile, gets extra points for wearing her bear. We have twenty-plus images below, including another shot of Mansfield, sans Hargitay.
We have more photos in the same vein below. If you need help identifying the stars, their names are in our keywords in order of appearance. Looking at the entire collection, we tend to wonder if there were three or four bears that ended up in all the photos. You know, like bears owned by certain photography studios or prop departments. Just saying, a couple of them look suspiciously similar. But on the other hand, how different from each other do bears really look? You'll notice that the poor creatures were generally posed to look fierce. But by contrast Inger Stevens' bear, just below, strikes us as a bit reflective and melancholy, which is understandable. Elizabeth Montgomery, meanwhile, gets extra points for wearing her bear. We have twenty-plus images below, including another shot of Mansfield, sans Hargitay.
Jayne MansfieldMickey HargitayInger StevensAnn MillerAnn SheridanNichelle NicholsCarol BakerClaudia DellPat KirkwoodLupe VelezElizabeth MontgomeryLizabeth ScottEvelyn NesbittDorothy SebastianJean HarlowMarilyn MonroeSophia LorenVeronica LakeRita HayworthDiana DorsOlga BaclanovaJoan Collins
| Sex Files | Dec 6 2018 |
Users of popular internet platform sent for a nasty Tumbl.
The news broke Monday, and you may already know, that the image aggregation platform Tumblr has decided to ban nudity beginning December 17. After child porn was discovered among the tens of thousands of Tumblr pages, all users must now adhere to restrictions banning photos, videos, and GIFs “that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples” along with any visual content “that depicts sex acts.” Exceptions include breastfeeding images, images related to childbirth, nudity in sculptures, and other fine art. But what is fine art? This is a question we ask here all the time. Are Japanese film posters fine art? Sleaze paperback covers? Screen grabs from popular motion pictures?
Unmoderated sites will always draw problematic users, so conflict around this issue was inevitable. Needless to say, the ban will decimate thousands of users' work, as well as Pulp Intl.'s sidebar. Tumblr says it wants to create an online space that is open and safe, which is a worthy goal. Child porn is a scourge. But any blanket ban on nudity is going to result in the loss of important material. Should this be eradicated? This? This? This? If Pulp Intl. were a Tumblr page it all would be toast, and all our original scans from tabloids and movie magazines would 
be collateral damage. Though our discussions of nudity and sex are rooted in artistic merit, and are designed to make visitors think about changes in artistic media over the decades, Tumblr would see no nuances.
be collateral damage. Though our discussions of nudity and sex are rooted in artistic merit, and are designed to make visitors think about changes in artistic media over the decades, Tumblr would see no nuances. It's really a shame. Great Tumblr pages like Humungus and Bulles de Japon are now endangered, if not targeted. Burleskateer, the best Tumblr page that had been collating photos of mid-century burlesque dancers, has already preemptively decamped from the digital field. Sites that feature a little nudity but a lot of valuable content will have only two weeks to clean up their feeds, which may do no good anyway because they've possibly already been slated for annihilation. Ultimately, we think Tumblr should have simply moderated the site, but failing that a 90 day period for users to process this issue and, if possible, make arrangements to save the material for possible future usage would have been nice.
The lesson here is never, if at all possible, store content you consider important in other people's computers. That includes the cloud—which is just a fancy name for other people's computers. Which, by the way, happen to be open to cyberattacks, insider theft, and legal liability that you don't have to worry about using an encrypted external hard drive sitting on your desk. Not to mention that the same way Tumblr made a sudden change and left thousands in the lurch, a government could decide to intrude on your activities due to a sudden change in law. While it's true that nearly all internet content is trafficked through third party servers, those are—at the moment anyway—not under threat, and it's easy to move from server to server, country to country. We do it all the time. Well, dark days for Tumblr users, but the internet is a funny place. Where there's a demand there's often soon an answer.
| Musiquarium | Aug 2 2018 |
I got your soft jazz right here.
Is Sophia Loren flipping off the camera? Sure looks like it, but we'll give her a pass—in Italy a raised middle finger doesn't mean what it does in the U.S. In fact, though Italians have dozens of hand gestures, we don't think a raised middle finger means anything. In any case we love this image of Loren on the cover of Jimmy Smith's LP Memories in Rhythm. We saw this at lpcoverlover.com recently and gave it a much needed clean-up. You can see the original image here. If you're thinking of the jazz Jimmy Smith who performed on the Hammond B-3 electric organ, it probably isn't him. There were many Jimmy Smiths in music and we have no way of knowing which this one is. We do know the record was pressed in South Africa, if that helps. Didn't help us. But there you go.
| Intl. Notebook | May 17 2018 |
Redhead risks serious sunburn to get a base tan.
Belgium's Ciné-Revue is one of the best film magazines of the mid-century era. It's also one of the hardest to scan. Not only do the pages need to be scanned in halves and joined via computer, but the tiny text makes lining the halves up a real challenge. We didn't think about that when we bought a stack of these in Paris several years back, and now the sheer effort involved causes us to doubt we'll ever get them all uploaded. But we managed to carve out a few hours, so today we have this issue from May 1975 with French actress Marlène Jobert doing a little topless boating on the cover, hopefully well slathered in sunscreen. Jobert also features in the beachy center spread wearing even less clothing (and theoretically more sunscreen), but the real star of this issue is Bette Davis, who receives a career retrospective with shots from seemingly every movie she ever made. You also get William Holden, Jane Birkin, Dominique Sanda, Sidney Poitier, Sophia Loren, Rita Hayworth, Agostina Belli, a feature on Steven Spielberg's Jaws, and much more, in forty-plus scans.
BelgiumCiné-RevueJawsWilliam HoldenJane BirkinMarlène JobertSidney PoitierAgostina BelliOrson WellesRichard DreyfussRoy ScheiderRobert ShawBette DavisDominique SandaLee MarvinRoger MooreMaud AdamsSerge GainsbourgMonica VittiKatherine RossSophia LorenVirginia BellEsther AndersonRita HayworthSteven Spielbergcinema
| Mondo Bizarro | Apr 27 2018 |
Everything you want in a woman—and more.
Above we have another cover from the always entertaining National Spotlite. This one appeared today in 1970 and showcases model Tany Kominski. Not to body shame Tany, especially since according to the cover text she's selling herself to the highest bidder, but she must have an enormous head under that mop. We'd go so far as to say impossibly huge, maybe even otherworldly. Hmm. Could it be the bouffant hairdo that was so trendy during the 1960s was invented by aliens trying to disguise their 
megacraniums?
We know, we know—there's no proof whatsoever of alien visitation to this planet, but a disguise is the most logical explanation for Tany's hairstyle. We've done a little retouching of the cover so you can see what her head probably looked like under that candyfloss, and just how wildly disproportionate it was. Convinced? Well, our mock-up isn't conclusive, we'll admit.
But it makes you think, doesn't it? And we're also convinced Tany wasn't the only one of her kind here on our unsuspecting planet. Below are other possible interstellar visitors, including a malevolent Hayley Mills, Jean Shrimpton, Dolly Parton, and Priscilla Presley, who ruins her disguise somewhat with her psycho alien eyes. You're asking yourself what these creatures want, right? Hey, they're females—they don't even know. 
National SpotliteTany KominskiHayley MillsJackie KennedyJean ShrimptonDolly PartonKitty Ting HaoPriscilla PresleyJoan CollinsSophia Lorentabloid
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 29 2017 |
She doesn't want to see, and you probably don't want her watching.
This poster of Sophia Loren was made to promote her drama Donna del fiume, aka The River Girl, and as we observed when we watched the movie a couple of years ago, only in cinema could backbreaking labor (harvesting rice by hand) make someone look like Loren. The poster is what we usually call panel length, which means it's about the right size to hang on a door, for instance in your bedroom. And Loren has exactly the facial expression you'd expect after seeing what you do in there. Columbia maybe should have manufactured a poster of her smiling and giving a thumbs up, but we love this promo anyway because even when Loren looks repulsed she looks great. Donna del fiume premiered today in 1954 and you can read what we wrote about it here.
| Femmes Fatales | Sep 23 2016 |
Cut, cut, cut! Wardrobe! Make-up! Somebody! Can't you come up with any way to make her look average?
Above, a rather awesome image of Sophia Loren printed from the negative from Vittorio De Sica's 1960 drama La Ciociara, aka Two Women. Even when she looks bad she looks good.
