Intl. Notebook | Nov 6 2010 |
![ALMOST INFAMOUS](/images/headline/1061.png)
Here’s a new tabloid in our collection—Pic, which like Whisper and a few other publications evolved from a pin-up magazine into a scandal sheet during the 1950s. The cover star on this November 1958 issue is Marisa Allasio, and the photo is one that originally appeared in the Italian magazine Il Borghesi and landed the publishers in court on obscenity charges. As anyone who has ever been to a beach can attest, there is a big difference between almost falling out of a bikini and actually doing it, and that difference is where all the fun lies. But the shot was nonetheless deemed too sexual by Italy’s moral watchdogs, and all the newsstand copies of Il Borghese were confiscated. In the end, the magazine was able to prove that the image was a promo still from Allasio’s forgettable 1956 film Poveri ma belli, aka Poor but Beautiful. Since Il Borgese was not responsible for the image, charges against the magazine were dropped. If you’d like to read a scathing contemporary review of the film, we found one by Bosley Crowther at the New York Times, and just because it’s Saturday, we have the almost-obscene bikini photo below, in its original unreversed state. We’ll have more from Pic later.
Femmes Fatales | Nov 1 2010 |
![STATUESQUE INTIMATIONS](/images/headline/1053.png)
American actress and model Edy Williams, who featured in such amusingly titled films as I Sailed to Tahiti with an All Girl Crew, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Rented Lips and Dr. Minx, seen here circa 1972.
Intl. Notebook | Oct 21 2010 |
![JULIE'S ISLAND](/images/headline/1034.png)
Above are selected pages from an October 1972 issue of The National Police Gazette, with cover star Solvi Stubing, who appeared in many films, including Strip Nude for Your Killer, Pussycat Pussycat I Love You, and Yearning for Love. You also get Norwegian beauty Julie Ege in the centerspread. The Ege shots are handouts, part of a larger set that had appeared a year earlier in the Swedish magazine FIB Aktuellt leading up to her starring role in Creatures the World Forgot. To prepare for the movie she supposedly spent a weekend on a deserted island, alone save for a photographer documenting her experience—i.e., here’s Julie gathering wood while wearing only a loincloth, and here’s Julie gnawing on some hearts of palm she’s managed to forage, etc. All in all, we think it was one of the cleverest publicity stunts ever. Producers of Survivor take note—loincloths for everyone. But we digress. We’ve re-posted clearer versions of some of the Gazette’s borrowed images below, and perhaps down the line we’ll even post the entire FIB Aktuellt shoot. In the meantime, you can see one more Ege photo here.
Hollywoodland | Sep 4 2010 |
![ETERNAL SUNSHINE](/images/headline/982.png)
Summer is dwindling in the parts of the world that have actual seasons. As a reminder of everyone’s favorite time of year we’ve searched the internet and cobbled together a collection of thirty vintage images featuring some of yesteryear’s fittest femmes and hommes enjoying the sun, and sometimes each other. If you haven’t had a summertime moment like one of those below, there’s still time. Get to it.
Vintage Pulp | Aug 16 2010 |
![DEEP DISH](/images/headline/959.png)
We’re back folks, and what a lovely trip it was—at least, the parts we remember. Above you see three Japanese posters, each advertising Deep Throat and Deep Throat Part 2, which we gather ran as a double bill in Japan sometime in the mid-1970s. Deep Throat and its sequel starred Linda Lovelace as a woman whose clitoris was in her throat, and the first installment was the first truly mainstream porn film.
Vintage Pulp | Jul 14 2010 |
![PROPERLY ANDRESSED](/images/headline/924.png)
Above are the cover and several interior pages from Spain’s Triunfo, with Swiss actress Ursula Andress, who according to the magazine was the most beautiful woman in the world. Andress was starring opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in the French action adventure Les tribulations d’une Chinois in Chine, based on Jules Verne’s Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, and released in the U.S. as Up to His Ears. The article discusses among other things how Andress injured herself during the first week of the physically demanding shoot, and you can see a scab on her knee and calf, as well as a bandage on her thigh. While she perhaps didn’t have a gazelle’s grace, she did seem to possess a siren’s allure—her rumored affair with Belmondo supposedly ruined her marriage to John Derek, and this may not have been her first affair. However, it seems possible that the marriage failed for reasons other than fidelity, since John Derek did not seem to be a possessive husband (if his willingness to share his fourth wife Bo is any indication). Anyway, not be overlooked is Pamela Tiffin, who appears in the centerfold. We’ll have more on Tiffin later.
Vintage Pulp | Jul 2 2010 |
![GILDING THE LILLY](/images/headline/910.png)
Above you see burlesque queen Lilly Christine (here referred to as Lily), on the cover of Folies de Paris et de Hollywood issue 80, looking amazingly beautiful, yet positively radioactive, the latter thanks to some overzealous photo retouching, common at the time, 1956. More below.
Vintage Pulp | Jun 19 2010 |
![FENDER BENDER](/images/headline/895.png)
Yes, it’s Marilyn Monroe again. She turns up everywhere. We even saw her face in a satellite image of the British Petroleum oil spill. Today, here she is on the cover of a June 19, 1953 Motor World, comparing her chassis to that of a British-made Singer SM 1500C. Marilyn endorsed, directly or indirectly, everything from diamonds to lipstick, but in the case of the Singer, even her stamp of approval was not able save the car from cancellation. Six years after the Singer went away, Marilyn herself disappeared from the scene.
Hollywoodland | Apr 28 2010 |
![DIAMONDS ARE A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND](/images/headline/830.png)
![](/images/postimg/diamonds_are_a_02.jpg)
Sounds like something that absolutely needs to be stolen, right? But before you break out your ski mask and suction cups, you should know that the diamond supposedly brings grave misfortune to anyone who carries it across the sea. Maybe that explains why its eventual American owner, Meyer Rosenbaum of Detroit’s Meyer Jewellery Company, gave the stone to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe wore it while filming Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, during which she performed her immortal materialist ditty “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” That was in 1953. Monroe lived nine more years, and we’re pretty sure she had some laughs during that span, so it’s a stretch to say the diamond did her in, but it makes a great story.
We love the idea of karma, the possibility that evildoing will get you killed and reincarnated as a louse in the ass of a water buffalo, but perhaps a more scientific way of looking at all this is simply that diamonds are forever and we are not. Thus misfortune of one sort or another is always waiting for us humans, while our diamonds always survive to be passed along to the next mere mortal. But just to be on the safe side, we’ve told our girlfriends that we will never give them diamonds, or for that matter jewelry of any sort. It’s for their own good, really.
![](/images/postimg/diamonds_are_a_03.jpg)
Vintage Pulp | Apr 20 2010 |
![DAS KAPITAL](/images/headline/819.png)
We have no idea what’s going on in this 1950 issue of the West German magazine Das Ronke because German is not one of our languages. What are major stars doing paired with various automobile brands? Nein idea. Are they ads? Possibly. We’ve seen American stars used in foreign ads before. But ads imply legitimacy, so why are there naked women in the magazine? We ask because you would think, especially in 1950, no Hollywood actress would wish to be associated with a smut publication, especially one that has broken the magical pubic hair rule that at the time defined obscenity. It’s all destined to remain a mystery to us until we find ourselves a German somewhere. We’ll try the nearest pub and get back to you on this later.
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