Above are a couple of scans from an issue of The National Police Gazette published this month in 1963 with cover star Ava Gardner. Gardner had been living in Spain and hadn’t been in a movie in three years, but was about to appear in the historical war drama 55 Days at Peking with Charleton Heston and David Niven. The Gazette discusses how she’d gotten fed up with the U.S.—particularly the American press. She had been particularly annoyed by the rumor that she was involved with Sammy Davis, Jr., a story that took flight after several magazines published photos of the two holding hands. When asked why she was returning to Hollywood after being out of circulation for so long, Gardner, in typically blunt fashion, replied, “I need the money.”

All Castro needs at that point is a Lacoste sweater and a fraternity paddle and his transformation into pure evil would be complete. But as fanciful as the story seems, Lisa really did exist. Her real name was Marita Lorenz and she was Castro’s live-in mistress for several months in 1959. While Lorenz herself never suggested she was ever raped by Castro, the two did have a falling out around the issue of her unplanned pregnancy, which was terminated in its sixth month. Lorenz later said the abortion was forced on her while she was drugged; Castro’s associates claim that she wanted it. Lorenz went on to join anti-Castro activists in the U.S., and on a fundraising visit with the deposed Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, became involved with him. She was still traveling to and from Cuba, and was recruited by the CIA for a Castro assassination attempt. But instead of poisoning his food, like she’d been instructed, she abandoned the plot, supposedly because she still felt strongly for him. Lorenz later wrote about all this in two autobiographies.

In 1977, Lorenz told the New York Daily News that she met Lee Harvey Oswald in autumn 1963 at a CIA safe house in Miami. She claimed she met him again weeks later along with a group of anti-Castro Cubans and they had Dallas street maps. We all know what happened next. Lorenz eventually testified about this before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but her story was deemed unreliable. We suppose bouncing between two dictators and acting as a double agent will tend toraise a red flag with American congressmen, though these things have no bearing on whether she was telling the truth. It’s interesting though, isn’t it? You’d think that if a single man of his own accord assassinated another man the surrounding circumstances wouldn’t be so… labyrinthine. Yet lurking near the supposed black swan event of the Kennedy killing were double-agents like Lorenz, spooks like E. Howard Hunt, underworld figures like Eladio Ceferino del Valle and others. Just saying. In any case, we’ll have more from the Police Gazette and more on Fidel Castro soon.

We came across two more postcards celebrating Las Vegas’s distinction as a city from which it was possible to see nuclear test shots. You may remember we posted a couple of similar items in December. These two promote not just Vegas’s dubious proximity to planet-killing nuclear ordnance, but also the venerable Horseshoe Club, a casino owned by Vegas legend Benny Binion. This is the 1950’s we’re talking about, so of course Binion was mobbed up. He started as a thief and killer in Dallas, and ended up with a commemorative statue on Freemont Street (later moved to the Strip). That simple fact probably says more about old Las Vegas than entire books. We’ll get back to him a bit later. No pulp site could be complete without him. 

There’s an interesting story emerging today involving former CIA officer Brian Latell, right, who claims that Fidel Castro ordered subordinates to listen carefully for news from Texas on November 22, 1963. That was, of course, the morning U.S. president John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and Latell, who was the CIA’s national intelligence officer for Latin America, says Castro gave the order to put ears to the ground hours before the shooting. Possible? Well, probably quite a few people had advance knowledge of the assassination, so why not Castro? One wonders, though, why Latell, who’s made a nice living of writing about Fidel, appears with this revelation now. Had it slipped his mind for forty-nine years? Surely these claims have nothing to do with goosing sales of his new book Castro’s Secrets? That would be so very… capitalist of him.

Kidding aside, there’s little logic in Castro trying to kill Kennedy. Latell doesn’t make this claim, exactly, though he comes mighty close: “I don’t say Fidel Castro ordered the assassination. I don’t say Oswald was under his control. He might have been, but I don’t argue that, because I was unable to find any evidence for that.” Hmm. We tend to think a presidential killing conceived and orchestrated in the U.S. could be effectively covered up because some of the participants might be government officials able to classify documents, manage the press, pressure investigators, falsify evidence, and so on. But a Cuba-based conspiracy would have none of those advantages, thus the evidence would be there. Glaringlyso, we think. Indeed, we can imagine teams of CIA analysts in the days after the murder searching—if not praying—for even the most tenuous Cuba connection in hopes of uncovering a pretext for dispatching a division of marines to Havana. The fact that those marines never embarked says volumes. So we’re going to vote no on the implication that Castro had Kennedy killed. Advance knowledge? Possible. Did he pull the strings? No way. But like millions of Americans, we’d love to know who did.  

This National Enquirer from today in 1964 tells readers the story of Marie Tippit, the widow of J.D. Tippit, the Dallas police officer shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald the morning of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In the year since, Mrs. Tippit had received a lot of money. The cover text might make you think she's referring to life insurance benefits, but actually she’s talking about cash donated to her by sympathetic Americans. The total was $647,579, which would be about $5 million in today’s money. $25,000 of that came from Abraham Zapruder, the man who filmed JFK’s assassination. The amount he gave was almost 15% of what he received for selling the film. If you find it hard to imagine this non-cynical outpouring of generosity today, join the club. But thanks to National Enquirer, we’re reminded of an earlier America, and given an interesting historical footnote to the events of that day in Dallas. 

Polls conducted in the last ten years indicate that 70% to 75% of Americans do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald, seen above in a photo taken while he was in the U.S. Marine Corps, acted alone when U.S. president John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963. A March 2010 Gallup poll tells us the number might be as high as 81%. These are astounding percentages when you consider that reaching a higher level of agreement in a poll is nearly impossible. For perspective, consider that according to a 2005 article by New York Times journalist Cornelia Dean, only about 80% of Americans believe the Earth revolves around the sun. Such overwhelming belief in a Kennedy conspiracy is easy to understand when reading the many contradictory accounts of the event. But filter out all the white noise and what attracts attention are the statements of two people who were highly respected—if not revered—in their fields. First, Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who was laying atop Kennedy to shield him as the limousine drove away from the scene of the shooting, testified that the President had a five inch diameter wound behind his right ear, indicating the exit of a bullet that had struck from the front. Other witnessess observed this too, but Hill was closest—literally inches away. Second, Marine gunnery sergeant Carlos Hathcock testified that, utilizing the same rifle as Oswald, and shooting from the same range and angle and with the same weather conditions, he was unable to duplicate Oswald’s feat, even after multiple tries. Why is that significant? Because Hathcock was one of the best riflemen in the world, the winner of multiple shooting championships and a guy who in Vietnam documentably notched a kill from a distance of 1.42 miles. Oswald was a “marksman”—the lowest Marine designation for rifle qualification. So what happened that day in Dallas when America lost a president? Was it Oswald who fired the fatal shot or someone else? We don’t know. But we certainly understand those poll results. 

How much cash do they claim was made on this scam? Two million dollars. That’s a 2 with six zeros after it. If true, this is sad on two levels: first, that a former NBA player who probably had a thousand other opportunities went this route; and second, that jobseekers who were being crushed by a recession had no choice but to feed on the corpses of people who had already been crushed before them. Vincent has had no comment thus far, but his attorney has described the former basketballer as a “legitimate businessman engaged in legal activities”, which we think is like claiming to be a “legitimate cigarette marketing executive”, or a “legitimate geologist for a mining company that blows the tops off pristine Appalachian hills and dumps them in valleys, destroying wildlife and contaminating groundwater”. In other words, “legal” isn’t a synonym for moral—at least not in our book. But unfortunately, we didn’t write the book everyone else is playing by—Wall Street did. And it seems as if Vincent may have memorized it chapter and verse.     

Every once in a while, we like to feature Paul Rader as a reminder what a virtuosic illustrator he was. So here’s another aggregate post, this one of assorted steamy Midwood pulp covers by Rader, circa 1960s. As a side note, you may have noticed our pulp uploader is malfunctioning at the moment, but we’ll get that fixed as soon as we can. Anyone with contributions, please hold, thanks.