Sometimes we get a little lazy with our scanning. You already know that. A couple of years ago we shared the cover and two pages from an issue of The Lowdown and discussed the murder trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard. In that issue were some other interesting pages, particularly of German actress Elke Sommer. We had made her our very first femme fatale way back, so we always thought she was amazing, but we gained a new appreciation for her after watching her in Deadlier than the Male. Really, scientists should double-check that global warming didn’t start in 1967, because that’s how hot she is in that movie. Anyway, we realized The Lowdown’s photos of Sommer might not have appeared online before, so we decided to take care of that today. What are those naughty secrets about her, you ask? The Lowdown says she was a swinger before she got married.

And speaking of global warming, we also wanted to share a couple of pages in which The Lowdown tries to cast doubt on the cancer causing properties of cigarettes. Reading the article, we’d venture to say that the debate was at about the same place as that over global warming today. Here’s a choice line from the piece: “Air pollution by gasoline vehicles and industrial gasses are a more likely cause of lung cancer." Here'sanother one: “Blaming lung cancer on cigarettes may actually be retarding research into the real causes of the disease.” And what the heck, here’s one more: “Smoking shows no statistical link to the rates of still birth, abortion and birth complications.” So there you have it—conclusive proof. The alarmists were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.

Above is a photo of Manhattan, New York City, in the year 1947, looking from Battery Park toward midtown. Here you see everything—the Staten Island Ferry Building at bottom, Wall Street to the right, the 59th Street Bridge crossing Welfare Island at upper right, and in the hazy distance, the Empire State Building—at that time arguably America’s most recognized symbol. In the aftermath of a war that had destroyed Europe’s and Japan’s industrial capacity, the U.S. was the unquestioned power on the planet, with massive economic might, a military that had taken up permanent residence in dozens of countries, and a growing stock of nuclear weapons. Two years later the Soviets would detonate their first nuclear bomb, shaking the American edifice to its core. Meanwhile, all around the world, the seeds of change were taking root. Below is a look at the world as it was in 1947.

Firemen try to extinguish a blaze in Ballantyne’s Department Store in Christchurch, New Zealand.

American singer Lena Horne performs in Paris.

The hustle and bustle of Hong Kong, and the aftermath of the execution of Hisakazu Tanaka, who was the Japanese governor of occupied Hong Kong during World War II.

Sunbathers enjoy Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, and a military procession rumbles along Rua Catumbi.

Assorted Los Angeles Dodgers and manager Leo Durocher (shirtless in the foreground) relax at Havana, Cuba’s Estadio La Tropical, where they were holding spring training that year. Second photo, Cuban players for the Habana Leones celebrate the first home run hit at Havana’s newly built Estadio Latinoamericano.

Thousands of Muslims kneel toward Mecca during prayer time in Karachi, Pakistan.

A snarl of traffic near St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

The city hall of Cape Town, South Africa is lit up to celebrate the visit of the British Royal Family. Second photo, during the same South African trip, the royals are welcomed to Grahamstown.

A wrecked fighter plane rusts in front of Berlin’s burned and abandoned parliament building, the Reichstag. Second photo, a shot of ruins in Berlin’s Tiergarten quarter, near Rousseau Island.

A crowd in Tel Aviv celebrates a United Nations vote in favor of partitioning Palestine.

Men and bulls run through the streets of Pamplona, Spain during the yearly Festival of San Fermin.

Fog rolls across the Embarcadero in San Francisco; a worker descends from a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Detectives study the body of a woman found murdered in Long Beach, California. Two P-51 Mustang fighters fly above Los Angeles.

Danish women from Snoghøj Gymnastics School practice in Odense.

Tens of thousands of protesters in Cairo demonstrate against the United Nations vote in favor of partitioning Palestine.

A beauty queen draped with a sash that reads “Modern 1947” is lifted high above the boardwalk in Coney Island, New York.

A woman in Barbados holds atop her head a basket filled with fibers meant for burning as fuel.

Mahatma Gandhi, his bald head barely visible at upper center, arrives through a large crowd for a prayer meeting on the Calcutta Maidan, India.

Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson is hounded for autographs in the dugout during a Brooklyn Dodgers game.

This January 1954 issue of Whisper tells readers about a stripper named Lola Dewitt Stewart who bit a cop, covers a gala Harlem dance, and exposes the voodoo rites of Haitian virgin priestesses. The issue also contains a profile of Christine Jorgensen, the most famous transsexual of her day. Jorgensen—whose name is misspelled "Jorgenson" by Whisper editors—had been born George Jorgensen and had lived unhappily as a male for twenty-five years. After a stint in the Army, he learned about the possibility of becoming more feminine and started by taking hormones, and later travelled to Copenhagen, Denmark to have his male sex organs removed. At the time, Denmark used castration on sexual criminals, which is why the procedure was legal there. Jorgensen, now female in appearance, returned to the U.S. and New York’s Daily News broke her story with one of the most famous headlines in publishing history: Ex-G.I. Becomes Blonde Beauty. Jorgensen parlayed the recognition into a show business career, establishing a blueprint for later transgenders like Coccinelle. Jorgensen finished the last of her reassignment surgeries in the mid-1950s and, now sexually female, continued in show business for many years. She danced in Las Vegas, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, was voted “Miss Neutral Zone” by American soldiers serving in Korea, and had high-profile romances. Later in her life she reflected that she was proud to have been part of the sexual revolution. “We may not have started it,” she said of herself and other transgenders, “but we gave it a good swift kick in the pants.” 

We just finished watching L’ultimo giorno di lavoro di una prositituta, and it’s pretty much exactly what the title says—the last day in the job of a prostitute. Lovely Dagmar, played by Diana Kjær, is a hooker in Copenhagen and has decided to quit the rackets and escape to Stockholm. We follow her during her last day as she sees various clients, co-workers, friends and relatives, and also gets slapped around by her pimp. This movie is really bad—it’s poorly acted, poorly produced, and poorly written. In parts, it’s unintentionally funny, but the deliberate attempts at comedy fall flat. Stereotypes abound: you get a couple of Japanese guys with bowl cuts who say “Ah so,” and know karate, a Russian diplomat who’s always drunk on vodka, a mustachioed Italian guy who air-conducts classical music, and a hippie who’s trying to be a rock star and needs money to get his girlfriend an abortion. While we didn’t enjoy the movie, it’s worth noting that the radiant Anne Grete Nissen appears in a minor role, and we absolutely love the rare Italian poster you see above. L’ultimo giorno di lavoro di una prositituta, aka Dagmars Heta Trosor, aka Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc., premiered in Italy today in 1971. 

It’s come to our attention that, in advance of the big Copenhagen summit on CO2, city officials placed tens of thousands of flyers in hotels, bars, and other establishments urging visitors to avoid a different type of emissions altogether—namely the sticky kind associated with patronizing the city’s many sex workers. We can just picture the bureaucrats patting each other on the backs after coming up with this idea. But the prostitutes are cunningly offering discounted rates to any customer who presents a flyer to them. Not only does this make the suits look like amateurs for being so easily outmaneuvered—in effect, it turns the flyers into coupons. We aren’t scientists, but that sounds like true sustainability at work. Now the question is: Can we somehow put the sex workers in charge of the summit? They’d put together an emissions deal that leaves everyone satisfied.     

There’s almost nothing not to love about this Thai poster, with its rich colors, baroque text, and gory overload of evil. It’s for an Italian horror flick called E tu viviaine terrore—L’aldilà. If your Italian is rusty, that translates to something like And You Will Live in Terror—The Beyond, which was changed for the German release to Die Geisterstadt der Zombies, which means Spirit City of the Zombies. It hit the Netherlands next and the title was changed again, this time to Hotel der Verdoemden. When the film reached American shores, it was edited down a bit and called Seven Doors of Death. So an evil which once encompassed the entire beyond saw its grip reduced to one measly spirit city, then to just a lowly hotel, and finally to a suite of rooms, where it watched a lot of pay-per-view porn and rarely showered. But, like economies, evil always bounces back—it earned a release in Thailand, where it was re-titled The Beyond, and it rejoiced mightily at regaining its former stature. There's a clear lesson about perseverance in this saga, and as our global economic crisis continues, we suggest you follow evil's example. On a factual note, we have no idea exactly what date the film premiered in Thailand, but even without that info we were going to post something Thai today, mainly because someone mentioned lemongrass soup earlier. So there you go—a little glimpse inside the editorial process here.

Start a pulp website and Marilyn is inevitable. If Pulp Intl. were nothing but Marilyn Monroe every day we wouldn’t exhaust our material for ten years. She was a 24/7 365 obsession for the global press—and a prediction of the pervasiveness of celebrity coverage in the internet age. But in a sky full of lights, she still shines brightest. Below we feature Marilyn, aka Norma Jean Baker, beaming from four covers of the Danish culture mag Billed Bladet, circa 1952 to 1957. You'll be seeing Marilyn here—wait for it—at least a thousand more times.