Modern Pulp | Jan 20 2014 |
Femmes Fatales | Jul 11 2013 |
We have just one more item related to Greece, a promo photo of Candice Bergen taken in the ruins of ancient Delphi. She’s in costume for her 1966 film The Day the Fish Came Out, and the photo was made during the same promo session as one we shared two years ago from Galaxidi. You can see that image of Bergen and her ass here.
Vintage Pulp | Jul 9 2013 |
Even though we found no Greek pulp, we do have a related item we want to share with you. The above poster is for the Italian movie Lesbo, which is partially set in Greece. We shared two versions of this promo way back in 2009 and had no idea about the artist. Now we know that the person behind this is Mario De Berardinis. As it happens, we’ve collected other pieces of his and a few appear below. You can see the other two Lesbo posters here, and if you haven’t seen the top notch Italian poster art we’ve already shared, have look at Mafe, Symeoni, Nistri, and Aller.
Intl. Notebook | Jul 8 2013 |
We have returned from our sojourn in the Greek Isles. We wondered whether it might look anything like the movie G-String Festival, which we reviewed last week, and we have to say, yes, it did at times. But as far as finding pulp—no such luck. We don't know about mainland Greece, but on the islands, at least, it seems people are too busy being hedonists to write about crime and scandal. We did find a nice basement bookstore in Oia, on the island of Santorini, that had some used items (above), but the crime books there were not Greek, not vintage, and not collectible. Anyway, we're back home and by tomorrow should be publishing according to our usual schedule. And our final assessment on Greece? Well, we've always said of Paris that if cities were a competition, the French have beaten everybody by a mile. Similarly, if lifestyle were a competition, Greek islanders have won. In a rout.
Femmes Fatales | Jul 5 2013 |
Above are two nice images of Greek actress Rika Dialina, who in 1954 was chosen to represent her country in the Miss Universe beauty pageant but was denied entry into the U.S. for communist affiliations. What affiliations? She illustrated a book that had supposed communist themes. But U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used his influence to get Dialina a visa and she went on to appear in the pageant, as well as about thirty movies. These two shots are from 1968.
Intl. Notebook | Jun 27 2013 |
We never liked that song “Grease” until now. We suppose thanks to Barry Gibb are in order. As far as the “Greek Week” header goes, we’ll actually be away more than a week, but “ten days” doesn’t rhyme with anything. In any case, we’re outtie. As we said yesterday, we’ve got some posts set to show up automatically beginning on Monday, and if we find anything pulp worthy out there we’ll be sure to share it. But as always when we travel, we’d like to point you toward a few very interesting entries to tide you over, here, here, here, here, here, here, definitely here, and who can forget here? Back soon.
Vintage Pulp | Jun 27 2013 |
Vintage Pulp | Jan 28 2013 |
A few of the contributors to the Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 have been anonymous. This week we have another mystery photog (or perhaps the same single person who shot all the anonymous photos), and an image of an unknown model paired with a winged statuette. The anonymity of the photo dovetails with the provenance of the sculpture, which is a miniature of the Greek statue Winged Victory of Samothrace, a representation of the goddess Nike carved by an unknown artisan sometime in the second century B.C. But deities inevitably lose their power, and at some point someone looked at the goddess of victory, sneered, “Loser,” and pushed her over, rendering her armless and headless. But you’re just looking at the boobs behind the statue, aren’t you? Fair enough. So are we. Like the Greeks, we’re sensual that way.
Sex Files | Jan 4 2013 |
There’s an interesting item making the rounds today, not strictly pulp, but worth a mention. Apparently a 1684 sex manual entitled Aristotle’s Compleat Master Piece will be offered for sale by Lyon and Turnbull auctioneers in Edinburgh, Scotland. The book, which was written in English and published there but banned until the 1960s, is part reference guide, part medical manual, and part anti-sex screed. For example, while the text offers suggestions for sexual enjoyment, and contains medical style drawings, it also warns couples what can happen if children are conceived in sin—namely that it would be born covered with hair or that Siamese twins would result. The author of the Compleat Master Piece is not known, but it's clear nothing Aristotle wrote made it into the text. Which could be considered a good thing. Great thinker and all, certainly smarter than we’ll ever be, but nobody’s perfect, and he whiffed badly a few times when it came to sex. Like for instance, he believed testicles were merely weights, and semen was produced from blood via body heat, with the best stuff coming from the area around the eyes. Given the choice, maybe we’ll take our sex advice from the anonymous hack. Auctioneers expect the book to fetch up to $650.
Hollywoodland | Sep 7 2012 |
This issue of The Lowdown from September 1957 has three stories of particular note, we think. First, readers learn about Diana Barrymore’s fast, out-of-control life, which she had shared with the world earlier that year in an autobiography entitled Too Much, Too Soon. She had just gotten out of a long stint in rehab, and the book was a sort of catharsis, as well as an attempt to let the show business world know that she was cleaned up and ready to work again. But the revelations in the book were of a sort that had never before been encountered by the American public in an autobiography, and the controversy never really faded. Even Mike Wallace asked Barrymore in a televised interview if, like the title of her book, it all wasn’t a bit much. Three years later, at age 38, Barrymore died from an oh-so-familiar lethal Hollywood combo of booze and sleeping pills.
And finally Lowdown takes Life magazine to task for not having the guts to publish racy photos of Sophia Loren from her 1957 romance Boy on a Dolphin, about a woman in the Greek Isles who while diving for sponges discovers a potentially valuable, ancient gold statue of a boy on a dolphin. We’re talking Sophia Loren in wet clothes. And really, that brings us to the entire reason we’re featuring Lowdown today—so we have an excuse to publish one of the photos in question. There it is below, and now your Friday has gotten that much brighter, right? More from Lowdown soon.
Update: a great color photo from the film just showed up online. We've added that at bottom.