One thing about writing Pulp Intl. is it gives us an excuse to fill in blanks in our movie résumé. The Public Enemy, starring James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, and Joan Blondell, was one such blank—until last night. A rags-to-riches-to-ruin story, it was one of the earliest gangster flicks, one that was a big hit but which had suffered the scissors of Hays Code censors. It’s always interesting to note the scenes cut from a post-Code movie, because those say the most about attitudes of the times. For example, the scene in which Cagney is measured for a suit by a gay tailor differs in no discernable way from such scenes in today’s movies. There’s macho discomfort by the lead and effeminate fussing by the tailor that leads to the inevitable inseam measuring, all played for cheap humor. We don’t condemn or endorse this sort of thing—it’s just fascinating to see how little has changed in eighty some years. Two other scenes were cut due to sexual suggestiveness, and those are also quite interesting to watch.

We were researching our recent post on fascist-era femme fatale Isa Miranda when we stumbled across fourteen sets of eyes from some of the most famous starlets of the 1930s. They were on a Brazilian fashion blog (seemingly defunct, since it hasn’t been updated for more than a year), and we gather they came from a book—Fashion at the Time of Fascism—which we’d love to read if we could find a copy. Anyway, just a little eye candy for Friday.

Above, the cover and a few interior pages of It, a mid-century celeb publication that billed itself as “that personality magazine.” This issue, with Joan Blondell, Dana Dale, Joan Leslie, Helene Leslie, Myrna Loy and many others was published this month in 1941. 

Above are the cover and seven interior pages from a National Police Gazette published in March 1974, two years before the century-old magazine folded. In retrospect it’s easy to see one of the problems the Gazette was having: while the graphics, printing, photo quality and paper stock had all improved over the years, the magazine had lost its visual impact. At the time, editors must have thought they had made the magazine more attractive, but can the above cover really compare to this one, or this one, or this one? Successful competitors like National Enquirer featured little or no color, but the immediacy of their covers was hard to resist.

Part of the rationale behind the Gazette’s change may have had to do with its decades-long circulation decline, prompting them to do away with photo-illustrated covers in favor of cheaper promo shots. Or perhaps their longtime cover artisans simply aged and retired, taking their singular talents with them. Or perhaps new editors came aboard and decided to modernize—the default move of managers who have no aesthetic clue. Who knows? We just know that the results speak for themselves. But we’ll keep collecting even these late-period Gazettes because they’re useful in presenting a complete record of the publication. We’re going to go out a limb and say that we now have the largest compendium of Gazette pages on the internet. See them by clicking keywords “Police Gazette” below.