 First time we’ve seen it, but hopefully not the last. 
Above is the cover of an issue of Final, a publication we had never heard of before, but which is certainly big budget and hit the streets this month in 1950 courtesy of Gambit Publishing out of New York City. The cover star is model Joy Niven, who we also had never heard of, but who was photographed by famed Marilyn Monroe lensman Earl Leaf. This Final has taken a bit of wear over the last six decades, but kudos to the Denver Book Fair for acquiring it, sealing it so its deterioration stopped, and selling it to us cheap. Now we’ve carried it across an ocean, opened it, and exposed it to the elements, but all in an effort to scan it for posterity. For as we discussed before, if it isn’t digital and accessible to the masses, does it really exist at all? Final is basically a tabloid, with a bit of crime, a bit of politics, a bit of sports, and a lot of celebrity dish. There are quite a few interesting items inside. In the Picture of the Month you see Canadian actor Rod Cameron with Portuguese model Angela Alves-Lico. They had just met earlier on the beach and, according to Final, she was driving home, and Cameron    was following in his car, when she had an auto accident. Our first thought, because they’d just met and “following her home” sounds a bit stalkerish to us, is that maybe she crashed because she was trying to get away from him. But perhaps not—Cameron and Alves-Lico soon married each other. Later on you get an investigative report from inside Major League Baseball. What’s being investigated? Whether baseball is still prejudiced against Negroes. Short answer—yes. The reason Final was asking was because Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby and others had been playing in the Majors for a few years, prompting certain elements of the punditry to pronounce prejudice in baseball beaten. Of course that was ludicrous to even suggest, and Final’s report singles out the Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago Cubs as clubs that would not under any circumstances employ a black baseballer. Of those, the Phillies held out longest, employing their first African American baseball player a full ten years after Jackie Robinson had arrived with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Probably the highlight of the issue, for us at least, is an article asking nineteen prominent ministers if they think the use of a nuclear bomb by the U.S. in Korea could be justified. Of the nineteen, only three unambiguously say it would be wrong. Most of the others echo the    opinion of the compassionate Rev. B. W. Hancock: “If our military feels that it would establish peace, then I would favor it.” Truly, Hancock must have spent a lot of time with his cock in his han to come up with that one. It makes us think of the famous Tacitus quote: “Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.” Or, “And where they make a desert, they call it peace.” Yes! Three years of high school Latin and we finally worked that shit into a post. Nice! Anyway, for various reasons, the U.S. never nuked Korea, so we hope the ministers weren’t too disappointed. Elsewhere in Final you get Australian nudists, Parisian white slavers, professional seers, forced sterilization, Ava Gardner in the Mediterranean, Patrice Wymore and more. We don’t know if we’ll ever run across another issue of Final, but we will certainly be looking. And in the meantime this one will go back in its plastic and—who knows?—with a little luck, it might survive another sixty years. More scans below.
        
Update: Pamela writes in and says, "The best part about that Rod Cameron/Angela Alves-Lico story is that after ten years of marriage, Cameron divorced her. And married her mother. Yep...the woman on the right in that photo. Korea, Gambit Publishing, Final Magazine, New York City, Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs, Earl Leaf, Joy Niven, Marilyn Monroe, Patrice Wymore, Ava Gardner, Rod Cameron, Angela Alves-Lico, Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Gussie Moran, baseball, tabloid
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1930—Amy Johnson Flies from England to Australia
English aviatrix Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly from England to Australia. She had departed from Croydon on May 5 and flown 11,000 miles to complete the feat. Her storied career ends in January 1941 when, while flying a secret mission for Britain, she either bails out into the Thames estuary and drowns, or is mistakenly shot down by British fighter planes. The facts of her death remain clouded today.
1934—Bonnie and Clyde Are Shot To Death
Outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who traveled the central United States during the Great Depression robbing banks, stores and gas stations, are ambushed and shot to death in Louisiana by a posse of six law officers. Officially, the autopsy report lists seventeen separate entrance wounds on Barrow and twenty-six on Parker, including several head shots on each. So numerous are the bullet holes that an undertaker claims to have difficulty embalming the bodies because they won't hold the embalming fluid. 1942—Ted Williams Enlists
Baseball player Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox enlists in the United States Marine Corps, where he undergoes flight training and eventually serves as a flight instructor in Pensacola, Florida. The years he lost to World War II (and later another year to the Korean War) considerably diminished his career baseball statistics, but even so, he is indisputably one of greatest players in the history of the sport.
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