Vintage Pulp | Jun 8 2014 |
![TAKE YOUR PIC](/images/headline/2464.png)
We’ve featured Pic magazine only once before, but not because it was an unimportant publication. Quite the opposite—we’ve seen issues as early as 1936 and as late as 1958, making it both a Depression and World War II survivor, presumably no easy feat and certainly a run indicative of sustained popularity. Early issues seemed focused on sports, but it soon broadened to include celebrities. It was launched by Wagner Publications of New York City, and this issue appeared in June 1952 with a cover featuring actress Suzan Ball placing a crown on the head of Akton Miller, a man Pic had chosen as its Hot Rod King. Inside you get a raft of Hollywood stars, including photos of Yvonne De Carlo in Uruguay, Marilyn Monroe, Janet Leigh, and Joan Vohs, shots of New York Giants manager Leo Durocher and his beautiful actress wife Laraine Day, and some nice boxing pictures. There’s also an interesting feature on the day’s top vocalists (with African-Americans notably excluded), and a profile of crooner Tony Bennett.
It was then that her train to stardom jumped the tracks. She injured her leg performing a dance number in East of Sumatra, and later in the year had a car accident and hurt the leg again. Treatment for those two injuries led to the discovery of a cancerous tumor. Soon afterward she fell and broke the limb, and when doctors decided they couldn’t remove the tumor they instead took the entire the leg. That was in January 1954. Ball soldiered on in her show business career with an artificial leg, starring in Chief Crazy Horse, though she lost fifteen pounds during the production, and later playing nightclub dates and appearing on television shows. In July 1955 she collapsed while rehearsing for the show Climax, whereupon doctors discovered the cancer had metastasized and spread to her lungs. A month later she died at age twenty-one. We have about fifty scans below.
Musiquarium | Nov 12 2008 |
![COLD WAR, KIDS](/images/headline/20.png)
The folks at atomicplatters.com explain on their website that every art form had to deal with the arrival of the atomic age. As pulp developed a quick preoccupation with mutants, the space race, and nukes, music did the same, and the collection Cold War Music shows just how much. Five packed discs contain enough rare tunes by Doris Day, Teresa Brewer, and the Commodores to keep you partying at ground zero for a long while—or at least until your eyeballs melt out of their sockets. Of special note: Tony Bennett’s public service announcement for civil defense entitled “Nuclear Attack”. Right then—duck and cover in three, two, one…