 I'm off to see my hair stylist, then I'm headed to the pet groomer. Conveniently, they're the same person. 
Bet you didn't notice the dog at first, but there he is, such a happy boy, clutched to the bosom of French actress France Anglade. The beautiful mademoiselle Anglade was born in 1942 in Constantine, France, and if you can't quite place that town, that's because today it's Algeria. See, the French thought of Algeria as just a southerly department of France, which must have made the locals who'd had their land taken over feel a little better about it. Anglade briefly took over French cinema, appearing in an amazing seventeen films from 1962 to 1964. She continued acting until 1994, and when all was said and done had starred in efforts such as Le plus vieux métier du monde, aka The Oldest Profession, 24 Hours To Kill, and Les bricoleurs, aka Who Stole the Body? This amazing photo first appeared in Cinémonde magazine in 1967.
 Sure, I'll put the cigarette out. But I'll still be smoking. 
There are a few shots of U.S. actress Gene Tierney posing with the column you see behind her, but we like this one the best. It's usually attributed to her 1944 film noir Laura, but other people say it's from 1942's The Shanghai Gesture. Sharp-eyed film noir fans will remember that there's a column like this in Laura Hunt's apartment in Laura, but that isn't why the promo is from Laura. It's the hair. Tierney basically wore a pompadour in The Shanghai Gesture, and remember, these promos were almost always made with the subject in character. So this is from Laura, for sure. But the confusion is understandable, because Tierney was also photographed on this set for The Shanghai Gesture too. Check the photo below, note the hair, and note the dress—she wore that in The Shanghai Gesture, which you can prove by going here and seeing it worn in front of a Chinese themed backdrop. So the set above was used for Tierney twice, once in ’42, and once in ’44. She was hot both times.
 I keep this gun under my pillow in case of home invasion by my namesakes. 
There are several Reikos in the realm of pinku but we've talked about only two—Pulp Intl. favorite Reiko Ike, who we featured a few days ago, and action star Reiko Oshida. Time for some new blood. Above you see a beautiful image of Reiko Ohara, who was also a big star in Japanese filmdom, appearing in dozens of action and comedy flicks beginning in 1965, including Furyo bancho te haccho kuchi haccho, aka Wolves of the City: Blue Soldiers, and Yagyû ichizoku no inbô aka Shogun's Samurai. She has an unusually large gun here, or perhaps is an unusually small person. We don't know which. But we know the photo originally appeared in a large art book called 大原麗子メモリーずっと好きでいて, which translates as something like, “Reiko Ohara Memory I've Always Liked.” The book was published in 2010, but Ohara was born in 1946, so we'd say the image was originally shot way back around 1970. She died in 2009, so it's possible the book was published as a tribute, but we aren't sure about that. We have other images of her and she's posing with a massive gun in many of those too. Like below, for example. We figure she thought she needed it around at all times for protection from the other Reikos. 
 Reiko starts the day out behind again. 
We're beginning to get the impression that Japanese filmgoers liked pinku actress Reiko Ike's rear end. We say that because it seems to be featured more than is usual in promo images of pinku stars. Well, here it is again, attached to the rest of her lovely form, and unlike the last time we discussed her posterior anatomy, there's no confusion today, because instead of referring to it as her buns or bun, we're going with cheeks. And there's no doubt people have two cheeks—a left one and the other one. It's good to finally have cleared that up.
 When someone says they're playing the role of their life they usually mean it figuratively. 
This nice photo shows actress and singer Li Xianglan, aka Li Hsiang-lan, and based on her name you'd guess she's Chinese, but she was actually Japanese and her real name was Yoshiko Yamaguchi. Early in her career the Manchukuo Film Association noted that she had grown up in Manchuria and was fluent in Mandarin, so they decided to hide her Japanese origin, which made it possible for her to star in Japanese films posing as Chinese. The purpose was to make films promoting certain Japanese ideologies, disseminated onscreen by someone the Chinese public saw as one of their own. In other words, at a time when Japan had invaded and occupied part of China, she starred in propaganda films. The ruse wasn't perfect. People Xianglan worked with figured out she was Japanese, but the Chinese public didn't know until 1946, when she was arrested after the Second Sino-Japanese War as a collaborator. She avoided execution only by revealing her Japanese identity to the Chinese court. It's a long and interesting story, but we won't get into it here. We'll note, though, that her tale didn't end there. She became a journalist in the 1950s using the name Yoshiko Otaka, and was elected to the Japanese parliament in 1974, where she served eighteen years. Quite an autobiography. The photo above was made to promote her 1957 film Shénmì měirén, aka Lady of Mystery. Indeed.
 Oh, you want Moore? Well I've got plenty.  
You often hear about how the 1950s was an era of “real” women. People who say this usually mean women had more normal body shapes—i.e. larger than today. As we've noted before, that was only partly true. Some of the biggest stars were Monroesque or Lorenesque (including Monroe and Loren, of course), but the trend also ran toward thinness. Think Hepburn and Linda Darnell. American actress and b-movie icon Cleo Moore, who you see in two nice shots above, was once rudely referred to as “well fed” by one publication. We can only imagine it annoyed the hell out of her. Something else that might have annoyed her is her real first name. Cleo was a shortened version of it. You're thinking Cleo something like patra, right? Well, she wasn't that lucky. It was Cleouna. Gee, thanks, mom and dad. See more Moore here and here.
 The forecast calls for a slight overcast with a possible hail of bullets. 
U.S. actress Virginia Grey may not be well known today, but she appeared in a large number of movies, more than ninety by our count, including Another Thin Man, Grand Central Murder, Highway 301, and Mr. and Mrs. North. As she got older she then slid neatly into television roles and racked up probably a hundred credits in that medium as well. The shot above is from 1940 and was made when she was filming The Golden Fleecing with Lew Ayres and Rita Johnson.
 Oh, hi there. You're just in time. I was about to towel off. 
We're going to use a non-word to describe this photo. It's sunshiny. It's the most sunshiny shot we've seen in a while. It shows U.S. actress Joan Staley and was made somewhere in Southern California in 1958. Staley mostly acted on television in shows such as The Asphalt Jungle, Hawaiian Eye, 77 Sunset Strip, and Mission: Impossible, amassing more than one hundred smallscreen credits, by our quick count. Her bigscreen appearances were sporadic, but included Breakfast at Tiffany's, All in a Night's Work, Johnny Cool, and Cape Fear. Most of those roles were uncredited, but she piled up almost twenty. Altogether she had quite a résumé. Did she ever towel off, as our juvenile quip suggests? She did. She was a Playboy Playmate of the Month in November 1958, which means that, like Marilyn Monroe, she made the leap from nude model to Hollywood star. Actually, considering those one hundred-plus television roles you could even argue that, in a way, she was just as successful as Monroe. In a way. 
 Look on the bright side. Yes, you'll be dead. But I may be proof God exists, so maybe you won't be dead forever. 
Above, one of about a thousand stunning photos of Swiss actress Ursula Andress, one of cinema's all-time beauties. As we noted way back the first time we posted her, she obviously was delivered from the sea on a large clamshell. There's no other explanation. A higher power had to be involved. This shot was made as a promo for her 1975 made-in-Italy comedic thriller Colpo en canna, aka Loaded Guns. We'll get back to that later.
 Freda do what she wants any old time. 
We were so impressed by Freda Payne, who we posted last month along with a couple of friends, that we had to bring her back. And we did something special. We took a cover of Ebony magazine from January 1973 and wiped off the text to get the clean image above. Payne isn't flexing her killer abs in this shot, but she still looks mighty good with her leonine hair and gleaming bod. She did some acting and hosted a television show, but she's more famous for singing, as you probably know. Her biggest hit was 1970's “Band of Gold,” a tune that always gets feet moving. We're going to check out one or two of her movies, so you'll see Payne here again.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
2003—Hope Dies
Film legend Bob Hope dies of pneumonia two months after celebrating his 100th birthday. 1945—Churchill Given the Sack
In spite of admiring Winston Churchill as a great wartime leader, Britons elect
Clement Attlee the nation's new prime minister in a sweeping victory for the Labour Party over the Conservatives. 1952—Evita Peron Dies
Eva Duarte de Peron, aka Evita, wife of the president of the Argentine Republic, dies from cancer at age 33. Evita had brought the working classes into a position of political power never witnessed before, but was hated by the nation's powerful military class. She is lain to rest in Milan, Italy in a secret grave under a nun's name, but is eventually returned to Argentina for reburial beside her husband in 1974. 1943—Mussolini Calls It Quits
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini steps down as head of the armed forces and the government. It soon becomes clear that Il Duce did not relinquish power voluntarily, but was forced to resign after former Fascist colleagues turned against him. He is later installed by Germany as leader of the Italian Social Republic in the north of the country, but is killed by partisans in 1945.
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