Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel was without a doubt one of the most divine women to ever appear on a movie screen. She gained fame with her starring role in 1974’s erotic classic Emmanuelle, which ran in one French cinema for thirteen uninterrupted years. Kristel has had health problems, including a bout with throat cancer. Today she’s fighting for her life in an Amsterdam hospital after a stroke in late June and the revelation that she had developed liver cancer. Only time will tell if she’ll recover, but the above photo, which came from the same session as these, shows her timeless beauty. 

Today we’re back to the mid-century tabloid Exposed, with a cover from this month 1957 featuring Harry Belafonte, Joan Fontaine, Yul Brenner, Sid Caesar and Rita Hayworth. In the middle of the cover, you see a shot of a bruised and worried Marie McDonald. The photo was taken just after she was found on January 4 wandering in the desert near Indio, California. The tale soon spread across Hollywood like wildfire—that she had been abducted at gunpoint from her home the night of January 3 by two swarthy men who demanded her rings, her money, and her body. The last demand had a certain resonance. McDonald had gotten famous using the nickname “The Body.” The possibility that two swarthy men—one black and one Mexican—had defiled it was, in 1957, simply incendiary.

McDonald’s story began to fall apart immediately. She claimed rape, but doctors found no evidence. The note left by kidnappers at her house was made up of words clipped from newspapers found in the fireplace. To the cops, it seemed unlikely that kidnappers would, under the circumstances,take the time to make a note from paper and glue. They also learned that McDonald had made three phone calls during the time she was missing—none to police.

But McDonald was in a battered state, with scrapes, bruises, and two broken crowns. And she stuck to her story—nighttime, bedtime, a noise in her yard, a lean out the window, and a man lurking right there with a sawed-off. The noise had been made by a second man to draw her to the window. McDonald said the men took half an hour to make a note and discuss their plans, then bundled her into a car. About the phone calls, she said she barely managed to sneak to the phone and was disoriented and had no idea who to call. When the kidnappers heard the mounting news coverage about the crime, they decided she was “too hot” to keep and dumped her in the desert, sending her tumbling down a 25-foot embankment. And then there was the matter of the unidentified males who had called people close to McDonald with threats.

By January 5, McDonald’s ex-husband Harry Karl was offering up some juicy quotes to the press. Among them: “Marie is a very sick woman. I believe she left of her own accord.” He had received one of the calls from the kidnappers, but wasn’t buying it for a minute. He said, “She has done some very strange things in the past.” Police soon learned that the kidnap tale resembled the plot of Sylvia Tate's comedic novel The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, which happened to be among the books McDonald had in her home. There was little doubt now in the minds of authorities that the whole situation was an elaborate hoax, but McDonald was a celebrity and so the police dutifully arrested suspects, continued investigating, and by January 17 sent the whole messy affair to a grand jury.

The day McDonald arrived to give her testimony she said, “I’m not looking forward to this. I don’t see how I can convince 19 men if I can’t convince the police.” She was right. The grand jury decided there wasn’t enough evidence of a crime and the matter was dropped. In retrospect, McDonald was probably lucky not to have been prosecuted herself. Perhaps the fact that she had retained Hollywood super lawyer Jerry Giesler helped her there. In any case, the Marie McDonald kidnapping went into the history books as yet another Hollywood conundrum.

McDonald’s career as a popular performer had been more or less finished for ten years, but she had remained on the fringes of the news thanks to her marriages—seven of them—and her many famous friends.The events of 1957 had put her front and center again, but it was the last time, until she died of an accidental Seconal overdose—or was it suicide?—in 1965. Two months later, her husband Donald F. Taylor, overdosed in the same room, using the same bottle of pills.

These two images are of French adult actress Sylvie Dessartre, aka Sylvia Lamo, Susan Deloir, and Milena Serdat. Note that the bus stop shot features her in front of a fashion advertisement that features her. Deloir appeared in such x-rated films as L’imorale, Parties fines, and Hot Action. These photos are circa 1979. 

Below, a July 1939 issue of the American cinema magazine Film Fun, with cover art by Enoch Bolles and interior images of Sylvia Sidney, Lya Lys, Paulette Goddard, and many others. Click keywords “Film Fun” at the bottom of the post to see more. 

We were excited, to say the least, when we found this Imai model of Thunderbird 3 complete with a miniature Alan Tracy, because we remember first seeing this show in syndication during the nineties and it was one of the coolest, if craziest, ideas in television history. If any concept ever pushed willing suspension of disbelief to its limits, it was this one, and we… Sorry, what’s that? You don’t know what we’re talking about? Surely you jest. Thunderbirds was this great British sci-fi television show conceived by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, and the entire cast consisted of marionettes that, well… Actually we can’t possibly do it justice with words. Let’s just say if you’ve seen Team America: World Police, you’ve seen Thunderbirds. But if that still doesn’t get the concept across, you can check out the opening credit sequence in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and GO!

The other day we realized that nearly all of our femmes fatales released records at some point, so we have a megapost of sleeves today representing a fraction of these multi-talented women’s musical output. We’ve heard most of the music, believe it or not, and while its quality varies, we do suggest you check out both Marilyn Chambers and Reiko Ike—their simulated orgasms are quite pleasing to the, er, ears.

Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, shown here in two shots from the same photo session, with a wardrobe change in between, 1975. For reasons probably having to do with poor manual dexterity, she never got either outfit completely fastened. How embarassing. More Kristel wardrobe malfunctions here and here. By the way, don't you just love the drapes? 

April 1975 issue of Screen from Japan, with cover star Sylvia Kristel. If this shot looks familiar, it’s because we already showed you the version used for the Japanese Emmanuelle promo poster, but the bright colors of Screen’s graphics makes this slightly different version well worth a viewing.