Above is an Inside Detective published February 1963, containing a feature on Albert Nussbaum and Bobby Wilcoxson, a pair of armed robbers who were among the most sought after fugitives of their time. Nussbaum was the brains of the operation, and was adept at chess and photography, and was a locksmith, gunsmith, pilot, airplane mechanic, welder, and draftsman. With his spatial and mechanical aptitude, many careers would have been available to him, but he chose instead to become a bank robber. Predictably, he was good at that too.  

But brains are not the same as intuition. Nussbaum was clever enough to arrange a meeting with his estranged wife right under the authorities’ noses, but apparently had no clue his mother-in-law was capable of dropping a dime on him. What followed was a 100 mph chase through the streets of Buffalo that ended only after a civilian rammed Nussbaum’s car.Wilcoxson was arrested soon afterward in Maryland, and both robbers were convicted of murder. But where Wilcoxson got the chair (a sentence which was commuted to life upon appeal), Nussbaum got forty years, which made him eligible for parole.

Paris Life, of which you see a cover above, was a quarterly magazine published not in France, but in Derby, Connecticut, yet which nonetheless purported to give readers the scoop on Parisian nightlife. Connecticut is not exactly the nerve center of international reporting, but the magazine seems to have had someone working for them across the pond, because there are scores of photos—far too many to be simple handouts. Probably, the Connecticut base was only in name—for tax reasons—and the actual mag was headquartered in NYC. But that's only a guess. Anyway, the cover star here is French-Canadian actress/model/singer Simone Auger, the centerfold is German dancer Dorothea Schneider, aka Dodo, and besides those two you get all kinds of showgirl photos, printed poorly on cheap paper, which is why our scans are a bit rough. We're certain there's a way to avoid those Moiré patterns you'll see on the images, but whatever that method is, we aren't going to explore it on on a Friday, when a bottle of fine red wine is breathing in the other room. Maybe we'll re-scan this one down the line, though that may prove difficult, considering the magazine partially disintegrated as we handled it. Just for the sake of preserving as much of this pile of brittle paper as we could, we made twenty-five scans instead of the usual five or six. Also, if you're curious, we located the photo from which the cover was made, and you can see that here. 

Tanya’s Island may not be the best sexploitation flick of all time, but it’s surely one of the most earnest. Before she hooked up with Prince and became known as Vanity, Canadian actress D.D. Winters headlined this deeply Freudian beauty-and-the-beast psychodrama about a young actress who lucidly dreams of going to live with her painter boyfriend on a deserted island, only to discover that they are in fact not alone. The imaginary island’s other inhabitant is a sort of tropical sasquatch (but with soulful blue eyes), and within the reverie Tanya develops, her boyfriend becomes jealous and aggressive while the ape seems to take on increasingly more humanity. Since this all takes place in Tanya’s head, some pretty interesting questions are being raised about the nature of female desire, as well as both the savage and civilized sides of man. Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes now, and that’s fair enough, but a big reason why these seventies skin flicks are great to watch is because the filmmakers took themselves so seriously. Writer/producer Pierre Brousseau even plastered the 1982 Cannes Film Festival with posters in hopes of generating attention for his movie. His strategy probably didn’t boost box office receipts much, but it did increase interest in his lead actress, resulting in her appearance in Playboy, and thence into the arms of Prince. Since Tanya’s Island is indeed about a woman searching for her prince charming, there’s a certain symmetry in this. But probably the only symmetry you’re really interested in is Vanity’s, so you’ll be happy to know she’s completely naked before the opening credits have finished and remains half or wholly bare through much of the film. And for our female readers, her boyfriend’s member makes a brief appearance as well (though we suspect you won’t find the man attached to that appendage particularly alluring). Soon after this film Vanity would become famous as a singer and consort, and in one of her most memorable songs she cooed: “Ooh yeah, such a pretty mess.” That neatly sums up Tanya’s Island. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1980. 

Above, a rare cover for 1956’s Doctors Are Different, one of Dorothy Pierce Walker’s several medical romances, a collection that includes She Married a Doctor, Kate Fuller M.D., Woman Doctor and Five O’clock Surgeon. The art is by Canadian pulp illustrator Norm Eastman, who was famous for his Nazi-themed men’s magazine covers. We’ll have more on him later. 

Canadian actress Fay Wray was cinema's first true scream queen thanks to her appearances in early 1930s horror movies and her star turn in 1933’s King Kong. Though she is known mainly for that movie, she appeared in many worthy productions, most notably the excellent thriller The Most Dangerous Game. She’s seen here circa 1936. 

She was born Denise Matthews in Niagara Falls, Canada. She began her show business career as an actress, using the name D. D. Winters. Her first starring role was in Pierre Brousseau’s Tanya’s Island, one of our favorite bad sexploitation flicks ever, and as eye-catching a debut as you’re ever likely to see. After that she met up with the musician Prince and under his tutelage became simply Vanity. Under that moniker she released music of debatable quality and continued to act in less-than-stellar-movies, but along the way redefined the word sultry. She posed for this aggressive promo image around 1982.  

Canadian actress Barbara Parkins, who appeared in such films as Valley of the Dolls, The Kremlin Letter and The Mephisto Waltz, and starred on television in Peyton Place, seen here in 1970. 

Is it possible to get tired of Marilyn Monroe? We doubt it, especially when so many of the images featuring her are so arresting. Here’s a good example—it’s a Japanese promo poster for her 1954 western River of No Return, a Cinemascope production with Robert Mitchum at her side and Otto Preminger behind the lens. Unfortunately, Monroe and Preminger didn’t hit it off and the movie may have suffered a bit as a result, but it remains a solid effort and even if the story doesn’t rouse you, the Canadian scenery and Monroe’s saloon-singer costumes will. We should issue one warning though—the poster conveys a light-hearted mood, but the film is actually a straight adventure-drama. Still, anything with Monroe or Mitchum is worth a look. Incidentally, we saw this poster for sale at a couple of different websites, but be forewarned before you spend your hard-earned coin that the legit vintage version is double-sided. We’ve posted the reverse below.

 

Below, assorted covers of the Montreal-based pulp mag True Crime Cases, circa 1948 to 1953.