| Femmes Fatales | Oct 14 2020 |
I'd like a medium pizza, thin crust, with mice, birds, and extra cheese.
Julie Newmar has some catnip, comes down with a case of the munchies, and uses her special cat phone to get some food delivered to the crib in this trippy promo shot from the television series Batman. She played the iconic villainess known as the Catwoman, guest starring on the show in 1966 and ’67.
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 14 2020 |
Is it just me or is our fire, like, totally out?
We've mentioned before that when you see the name Charles Williams on a book buy it. Unless it's the wrong Charles WIlliams. Fires of Youth was published by a fly-by-night imprint known as Magnet Books in 1960 and credited to a Charles Williams, but who was actually James Lincoln Collier, who happened to choose for a pseudonym the name of an actual working, thriving thriller author, for reasons we cannot ascertain. Obviously that created confusion and still does, but this is definitely not the Charles Williams who wrote such great thrillers as Hell Hath No Fury and Dead Calm. Magnet Books didn't last long, and in just a year or two was out of business.
In true pulp style, at that point a man named Don Robson, who was languishing in Her Majesty's Prison Dartmoor in Devon, England, found Fires of Youth in the prison library, retyped the entire text, presented it as his own work, and in 1963, with the help of the prison's credulous governor, managed to get his plagiarism published in Britain as Young & Sensitive. The book won the Arthur Koestler Literary Prize, which had been established to recognize creative output by British convicts, but Robson's robbery soon came to light. It's a funny story, and you can read a good account of the tale at this link.
BritainHMP DartmoorMagnet BooksArthur Koestler Literary PrizeCharles WilliamsJames Lincoln CollierDon Robsoncover artliterature
| Hollywoodland | Vintage Pulp | May 7 2020 |
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can stay her from the swift completion of her appointed seduction.
Above is a trolley card for the classic Lana Turner/John Garfield film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice, which according to the text, opened at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles today in 1946. What's a trolley card? Pretty much self-explanatory, that. But you don't see many surviving examples, so this is a real treasure. The opening date represents new info. All the websites we checked said the movie opened in L.A. May 9. Maybe the managers of the Egyptian had connections at MGM. Awesome connections, we guess, to have helped them beat the rest of town by two full days. With that kind of juice, it's safe to assume they only had to ring once at the studio gates. We worked in the L.A. film industry. Relationships are everything. Or maybe the movie actually opened today, and the internet is wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Not that we're trying to sound superior. We've made errors more than once. Interestingly, we were able to locate a vintage photo of the Egyptian with its marquee advertising Postman. It's a great movie. Nobody needs us to tell them that, but we did anyway, at this link.
Los AngelesMetro-Goldwyn-MayerThe Postman Always Rings TwiceJohn GarfieldLana Turnerposter artcinemafilm noir
| Intl. Notebook | May 2 2020 |
Nothing says generosity like sharing your radioactive fallout.
Today in 1962 on Christmas Island, aka Kiritimati, in the South Pacific, the U.S. detonated a 1.09-megaton nuclear bomb codenamed Arkansas, which was part of the test series Operation Dominic. It was an airborne blast, set off at 5,030 feet, designed to measure electromagnetic pulse phenomena. Numerous local people inhabited the island during this and other explosions. They were typically moved to boats or other collection points at the time of detonation, before being sent back to to their homes, now coated in radioactive dust. Like many nuclear test photos, this one is colorful and surreal, ultimately disguising and beautifying what is simultaneously a symbol of humanity's technological prowess and violent primitiveness. We have numerous test photos and many are even more striking than this one. See those by clicking keyword nukes below.
| Femmes Fatales | Apr 23 2020 |
Bailiff, dispose of the deputy mayor's corpse. Anyone else got complaints about how much time I spend in the jacuzzi?
Above, a nice 1967 photo of award winning Turkish actress Fatma Girik, who appeared in almost two-hundred films. We featured her as a femme fatale long ago, back in 2009, and as we noted then she left acting to become a politician. Her political career spanned 1989 to 1994, when she was mayor of Şişli, which is one of thirty-nine districts of Istanbul, or so we're informed by the internet. We suspect she ruled with an iron rod.
| Intl. Notebook | Mar 15 2020 |
Star light, star bright, first star that really, really wants it tonight.
German actress and glamour model Christiane Schmidtmer claims on the cover of this Midnight published today in 1965 that she'll do anything to be a star. Back then, that was music to unscrupulous producers' ears. Today, producers that cross the professional line would run a serious risk of going to jail. Did Schmidtmer ever actually say this? There's no way to know for sure, but with Midnight you can reasonably suspect that its quotes are fabricated to thrill its preponderantly male readership. As we've mentioned numerous times before, this was its m.o.—the provocative cover quote paired with a slinky handout photo, and an interior article bought cheap off a freelance writer who had managed to carve out ten minutes with an actress during a film junket.
So how did Schmidtmer's career go? The quote requires we ask. Well, she appeared in about a dozen motion pictures and about the same number of parts on television, and she played, among other roles, a passenger in 1963's Stop Train 349, a flight attendant in 1965's Boeing, Boeing, a passenger (named Lizzi Spoekenkieker) in 1965's Ship of Fools, and another passenger in Airport ’75—which weirdly came out in 1974. Unlike in astronomy, in cinema you sometimes have to define the term star for yourself, and we judge that she didn't quite make it, though it's an accomplishment of sorts to play roles in or on all the major forms of commercial conveyance—trains, planes and boats. But even if she never attained real stardom, she dazzles below, and we'll probably see her again a little later because: Lizzi Spoekenkieker. How can we resist?
GermanyMidnightStop Train 349Boeing BoeingShip of FoolsAirport ’75Christiane Schmidtmertabloidnudity
| Femmes Fatales | Nov 14 2019 |
I'll be taking all your awards, thank you very much.
Though she looks more blonde than red in this particular photo, Sissy Spacek is one of Hollywood's best known redheads, and one of its most talented too, with six Academy Award nominations and one victory, for Coal Miner's Daughter. All told, she's been nominated for about one hundred awards, netting numerous wins—including taking home four New York Film Critics Circle Awards in five nominations. The above shot was made for Robert Altman's drama 3 Women, in which Spacek starred with Shelly Duvall and Janice Rule. It's from 1977.
3 WomenCoal Miner's DaughterAcademy AwardNew York Film Critics Circle AwardSissy SpacekShelley DuvallJanice RuleRobert Altman
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 20 2019 |
We're not on the fence about it—this magazine is a lot of fun.
As macho names for men's magazines go Matclif Publications' Savage Adventure is right at the top of the list. This issue from October 1960 was its debut. We gave it a read and it lived up to its name. Our favorite story was “Lizzie Russel and Her Riverboat Bordello,” by George Peterson, which deals with a floating brothel called The Virgin Queen plying the Yukon River during the 1890s gold rush. Basically, the tale is one of bad decisions and bad luck, and indeed gets pretty savage.
The brothel's owner is warned that her paddlewheeler is too big to make it upriver to White Horse, and sure enough, it runs onto a sandbar in a remote area. Left aground in deadly below freezing temperatures, the boat's two Chinese engine stokers decide to take advantage of the work stoppage with a little opium break, but overdose. Late that night everyone wakes up to a freezing ship. The captain discovers the bodies and simply chucks them overboard. When they thud instead of splash that's how he discovers the river has frozen solid. Pretty savage already, this story, but it gets crazier.
The captain gets the fire going again, but because he doesn't know what he's doing the engine boiler explodes. Fire ravages the boat so quickly that half the women going overboard don't even have clothes. One prostitute jumps but lands head first on the ice. Not good. Another catches on fire. A third runs from her flaming cabin directly into the sub-zero air and the shock stops her heart. Stranded ashore, miles from White Horse, the only heat source is the flaming boat, but once the conflagration dies they're all going to freeze to death, some of them naked.
We'll stop there—remember, no spoilers—but as savage tales go, “ Lizzie Russel and Her Riverboat Bordello” is pretty good. Other wild stories include Carl Williams' “The Grizzly Came for Breakfast,” and Jim Cooley's “I Listened To Them Scream.” We're glad we picked this magazine up. We imagine, since it was the debut issue, the editors really tried hard to get it just right. Mission accomplished, at least in our opinion, but Savage Adventure folded after only four issues. That makes this example exceedingly rare.
The cover is signed, illegibly, but thanks to the internet we were able to learn that the cropped scrawl at the bottom of the art says Norm Eastman. We've featured his work before—here. Aside from the fiction, Savage Adventure offers readers a couple of exposés, some glamour photography, and several rather interesting ads. We scanned our two favorites—one for burlesque dancer Honey Bee, and another telling readers that they can make a mint investigating auto accidents—sexy auto accidents. You'll see what we mean below.
CanadaWhite HorseSavage AdventureNorm EastmanBarry WaldmanLew BruceTed LewinSusan WoodBob CorreaCarl WilliamsJim CooleyHoney Beemagazine artliteratureburlesque
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 6 2019 |
Some guys just can't see the warning signs.
The cover art on this Planetmonk Books digital re-issue of Charles Willeford's 1956 novel Wild Wives enticed us with its faux-vintage look, plus the fact that this particular publisher has resurrected a few amazing old novels. This story was surprisingly one-note. You get a San Francisco gumshoe who crosses paths with an unhappily married femme fatale who's trouble with a capital T, and to that volatile mix is added a murder and 10,000 hidden bucks. The result is perfunctorily executed by Willeford. It's more frank than you'd expect, both in terms of violence and sex, and it's unusual for the hero's accepting attitude toward a gay character, but overall this isn't one of Willeford's, aka W. Franklin Sanders', top efforts. He's done well in the past, though, so we're confident about returning to him later.
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 8 2019 |
She gets her best work done during overtime.
Above, a beautiful poster for Danchizuma wasureenu yoru, known in English as Apartment Wife: Unforgettable Night. The wife in this third entry in the Apartment Wife series is Junko Miyashita. The plot is typically convoluted, but basically she's sexually unfulfilled by her hubby and finds pleasure in an anonymous office encounter. Her repeated trysts with this person leave her vulnerable to blackmail of sorts, and— Actually, it's really hard to describe this without giving everything away. Let's just call it a twisted sexual awakening tale with an ironic ending. Which is what most of the Apartment Wife movies are. This one premiered in Japan today in 1972.
JapanNikkatsuDanchizuma wasureenu yoruApartment Wife: Unforgettable NightJunko Miyashitaposter artcinemapinkuroman pornosexploitation
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