 And fired last. Which is ideally how you want these things to go. 
The above photo of U.S. actress Ellen Drew was made when she was filming her 1940 western Texas Rangers Ride Again, which is a surprise, because she's isn't dressed Old West style, with her leg-exposing skirt and open toed shoes. We guess even cowgirls get the blues—when it comes to wearing those hoop skirts and corsets. This is Drew's third femme fatale appearance. You can see the other two here and here.
 Gloria Grahame is a bad mamma scamma. 
We had to watch Mama's Dirty Girls, not because it's a 1970's grindhouse movie (though that helped), but because none other than 1950s femme fatale Gloria Grahame got snared in this low budget affair. Sometimes the bills simply need to be paid. Or maybe she thought the script was dynamite. Either way, she gets top billing in this drive-in quality drama that premiered today in 1974, which tells the story of a scam artist mother and her three daughters who are honeytrap serial killers dispatching men for their money.
When Grahame gets another rich man on the hook, she foolishly poses as a well-to-do widow without realizing that her target is likewise seeking to kill someone for their money. This twist is ironic, and the mutual murder attempts that follow can be read as black comedy if you peer deeply between the lines, but in our opinion Mama's Dirty Girls doesn't have enough brainpower to be satire. Grahame probably wished it were, though—then she'd have had an excuse for starring in it. Sadly, it's just an amusingly bad movie. Everyone is terrible in it—even Grahame. And there isn't near enough eroticism to save it.
But you may want to watch it anyway. The cast is beautiful, particularly Currie, and there's an interesting value-added co-star too. Fifteen minutes into the movie's running time you'll see an actress that'll make you go, “Who is that?” You'll be reacting to the radiant beauty of bit player Annika Di Lorenzo, née Marjorie Lee Thoreson, who was a Penthouse centerfold in 1973 and later carved out a career in b-cinema. Besides Mama's Dirty Girls she appeared in such films as 1974's Act of Vengeance and The Centerfold Girls, 1980's Dressed To Kill, and 1979's big budget porn epic Caligula.
She later sued Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, claiming that he forced her to have sex with business associates, and tricked her into the infamous Caligula orgy. She won a $4 million punitive judgement, but lost it in an appeal. Guccione took revenge by publishing a lesbian pictorial of Di Lorenzo. Afterward, she stepped away from the limelight, but in 2011 hit newspapers again when she washed up dead on Camp Pendleton Beach in San Diego under baffling circumstances. Police suggested suicide, but her family contended that it was foul play, possibly perpetrated by someone from the military base. In the end, her case was closed as unsolved, and today remains another Hollywood mystery.               
 If you jump without looking you might get swept away. 
The book you see above, a 1958 Popular Library edition of The Red Room by Belgian author Françoise Mallet-Joris, was picked up for us by a friend who thought he was buying a pulp novel. He was attracted by the cover, and it's indeed fine work, from the skilled brush (and possibly ink quill and charcoal pencil) of Mitchell Hooks. As for the novel, it was originally published in 1955 as La chambre rouge and was a sequel to 1951's Le rempart des Béguines.
When someone buys us a book we always read it out of appreciation and respect, even romance novels, and in reading The Red Room we were reminded once again of the skill gap between literary and crime fiction. There are obviously excellent, transcendent crime writers (and literary fiction that misses the mark), but Mallet-Joris—even translated—spins evocative phrases as deftly as a weaver with a loom. Like this one:
The presence of winter—vulgar winter, befurred and jangling her crystal adornments—was scarcely felt in the small white and gold drawing room.
Isn't that nice? It's not Hammett describing a gangster popping off shots in a crowded bar, but it's still fun to read. The tale is a coming of age breast-beater set in Gers, France in which the main character, eighteen-year-old Hélène Noris decides to steal the dashing young film director her hated stepmother Tamara has earmarked for extra-marital games. That actually sounds kind of pulp, doesn't it? Well, just wait.
At some point it becomes clear that Hélène had been Tamara's young lover (probably this is the central plot of the previous book). Tamara and Hélène had been carrying on, but in order to secure for herself a stable existence Tamara decided to marry Hélène's father. Thus, The Red Room charts Hélène as she impulsively steals her stepmother's crush, only to find herself getting in too deep with someone who's more experienced and decisive than any man she's known.
Needless to say, that plot sounds like some of the sleaze novels we highlight here, which would make you wonder, in terms of public perception, at which point the lowbrow becomes highbrow. And the easy answer to that is: when you can write like Mallet-Joris and critics adore you. Overall, The Red Room is probably a little too genteel and interiorized for most pulp readers, but we liked it. Consider that less a recommendation than an acknowledgment of talent.
 
 That's a tempting invitation, but the hospital has a very strict code of ethics. So we'll have to do it at your place. 
Above: a Harry Barton cover for Stuart Friedman's 1960 sleazer The Way We Love, an “unconventional novels of manners and morals in a modern hospital.” Uh huh. We bet we know what's unconventional about it. Something of note here: the cover for Friedman's 1962 effort The Surgeons is a near-duplicate of this, but painted by Harry Schaare. We wonder if that's chance, or if Monarch's art director influenced the final product. Curious. We have a lot more medical covers in the website. See a small portion of them here, here, here, here, here, and here.
 All you need is one part Reiko and you'll be completely intoxicated. 
Above is another look at Reiko Ike perched on a Kyoto bartop from a 1972 promo series that appeared in the Japanese magazine Heibon Punch. As we mentioned, the location was used in her action movie Sukeban gerira. We'll try to get around to posting more shots from the series at some point. In the meantime, you can see the previous photo here.
 Thank you very much. Next I'd like to massacre a song by Joan Baez. 
Since we took a look at Barbara Walton's cover work recently we thought we'd circle back to her with an effort for John D. MacDonald's I Could Go On Singing, originally published in 1963 with this Robert Hale Ltd. hardback coming in ’64. This is very different, very minimalist work from Walton compared to what we showed you last time, but it just demonstrates her broad range. It's different work for pop fiction icon MacDonald too, as it was a novelization for a 1963 movie of the same name. Hey, whatever pays the bills. We didn't read it, but we gather that he managed to put his unique stamp on it.
 In the land of the blind the one-eyed woman is queen.   
We've done a lot on Sandro Symeoni, which means that just for the sake of completeness we can't overlook these. They're his Italian posters for the Christina Lindberg grindhouse classic Thriller, which was originally made in Sweden as Thriller - en grym film, and in English speaking countries was known as Thriller: A Cruel Picture and They Call Her One Eye. We've already talked about it, and its star.
 The deeper into the Underworld you go the hotter it gets until everyone—and everything—is liable to get burned.  
The two tateken style posters you see above were made for the Japanese crime drama Ankokugai no bijo, the title of which means “beauty of the underworld,” and which was known in English as Underworld Beauty. The movie is about a bunch of gangsters chasing after some diamonds. Co-star Tôru Abe has them first, but when the yakuza catch up to him, he swallows them and jumps off a roof, ending up in a hospital. He soon dies and the treasure is cut out of his body, but that's merely the beginning of a struggle to retain their possession. Abe's sister, played by Mari Shiraki, is the underground beauty of the title, and gets tangled up with the mobsters. They say diamonds are forever, but we're told early in the film when it seems as if the coveted stones might go into a crematorium with Abe's body, that they can actually burn. That's clumsy foreshadowing, but Underworld Beauty still manages to be an interesting and mostly satisfying film. It premiered today in 1958.             
|
 |
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1923—Yankee Stadium Opens
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008. 1961—Bay of Pigs Invasion Is Launched
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection. 1943—First LSD Trip Takes Place
Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann, while working at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, accidentally absorbs lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, and thus discovers its psychedelic properties. He had first synthesized the substance five years earlier but hadn't been aware of its effects. He goes on to write scores of articles and books about his creation.
|
|
|
It's easy. We have an uploader that makes it a snap. Use it to submit your art, text, header, and subhead. Your post can be funny, serious, or anything in between, as long as it's vintage pulp. You'll get a byline and experience the fleeting pride of free authorship. We'll edit your post for typos, but the rest is up to you. Click here to give us your best shot.
|
|
