One of the most reclusive writers in the world has been forced to step into the public eye because of what she claims was a carefully orchestrated swindle. Harper Lee, author of the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird, filed suit in a Manhattan court against a man she says stole rights to her book. Lee’s lawsuit details how Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of her longtime agent Eugene Winick, tricked Lee into transferring the copyright on her 1960 masterpiece. In 2002 Eugene Winick was ill and Pinkus began folding some of his father-in-law’s clients into his own literary agency. In 2007 Pinkus took advantage of Lee’s failing eyesight and hearing to transfer Lee’s rights to himself, assuming irrevocable interest in the income derived from To Kill A Mockingbird, and offering no payment to the author. Lee signed the crucial papers when she was recuperating from a stroke. In 2012 she took legal action and regained the copyright, but Pinkus still derives income from sales of the book though he is no longer Lee’s agent. The lawsuit says Lee has no memory of agreeing to anything, and frankly, any neutral observer would find it hard to disbelieve her.

Since this is a website, not a court, we’ll just say what other stories about this haven’t yet—Samuel Pinkus thought Harper Lee was going to die and stole her book. With Lee dead, and very little likelihood such a private individual would have discussed the matter with anyone, there would have been nobody to dispute his ownership of a revered, Pulitzer Prize-winning gold mine. When she recovered and realized what had happened, Pinkus scrambled to give the copyright back but had arranged to keep raking money off the top in perpetuity—his backup plan. Pinkus, naturally, has had no comment on the lawsuit, and presumably won’t until the Manhattan court has to decide whether his scam will stand. In this age of trillion dollar bank swindles, naked buy-offs of elected officials, and rampant court corruption, we don’t have high hopes for Ms. Lee. In fact, we suspect that in the aforementioned circles Samuel Pinkus is being hailed as a genius.

Uncensored returns to Pulp Intl. for the first time in over a year with an issue published this month in 1955. The story of Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra’s tumultuous relationship (and the Spanish bullfighter who helped ruin it) has been covered numerous times, so no need to get into it again just now, but the photos are certainly worth a look. Uncensored shares other nice images as well. There’s Eartha Kitt (described as not much to look at “unlike such Negro beauties as Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne”), Sarita Montiel (who in Mexico was allegedly on the receiving end of a horsewhipping by Miguel Aleman’s jealous wife), and Marlene Dietrich (seen both onstage performing and offstage fulfilling a G.I.’s request for a kiss). The latter photo, from 1945, appeared in Life and many other magazines and remains one of the most famous Dietrich images. So Hollywood starlets take note: if you want millions of dollars in free publicity, no need to get arrested or leak nude photos—just kiss a fan.

It’s amazing what you can find sitting freely available on the internet. This April 1949 issue of the girlie magazine Eyeful—for which there are links scattered all over, as well as numerous torrents—is an example. Eyeful was part of publisher extraordinaire Robert Harrison’s New York City empire. The first issue hit newsstands in 1942 billing itself as a magazine of “Gals, Gags, Giggles.” Later the slogan changed to “Glorifying the American Girl,” which Eyeful did with a particular focus on showgirls and burlesque dancers. Among the stars of this issue are Winnie Garrett, Myrna Dean, and cover model June Raymond. Below we have twenty-nine more scans. We have another issue we bought in the U.S. last year that we’ll scan and get up hopefully in the next week. Enjoy your Saturday.

When Michael Todd’s famed musical Mexican Hayride opened in New York City he decided to have the program art, which had been painted by Alberto Vargas, aka Varga, reproduced at giant scale on the billboard atop the Winter Garden Theater where the show was being staged. This photo shows Varga’s giant pin-up almost completed. In person the matador-like figure, which is modeled after but isn’t quite a portrait of star June Havoc, was probably garbed in bright red with gold brocade, matching the colors of the program art. The reverse of the photo says: A gargantuan Varga girl, 157 feet wide and 30 feet high, has been completed atop the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway in New York. Sketches for the illustration were made by artist Varga in Chicago. Of course, the horizontal image doesn’t look very impressive at a mere 433p in width, so through the magic of Photoshop and for no other reason than we wanted to see what it looked like, we’ve reoriented the image below. There’s some egregious pixel stretching happening on the lower half of the figure, but all things considered, it looks pretty good. You can drag it to your desktop and rotate it for a better look. The photo was shot today in 1944.

Above, cover art for My Enemy, the World, first published in 1947, with this paperback edition appearing in 1953. Guido D’Agostino was a fairly well regarded writer, and this book, rather than the lightweight fare suggested by our silly subhead, was a period piece set in the 1910s dealing with an Italian immigrant in New York City seeking revenge for his father’s death and trying to reconcile his own old-world beliefs with his new life in America. You can see the back cover and more books at this Flickr set. 

Above, two awesome covers for H.P. Lovecraft’s classic horror tales The Dunwich Horror and The Weird Shadow over Innsmouth (plus other stories), printed by Bart House, a New York City-based publisher that got its name from the structure that was its home—the Bartholomew Building on East 42nd Street. Lovecraft wrote Dunwich and Innsmouth in 1928 and 1931, but these editions appeared after his death—in 1945 and 1944 respectively. Lovecraft is an author most recognize, but surprisingly few have actually read. He’s sort of the horror version of The Godfather movies—everyone knows all about them, but it’s incredible how few have actually sat through them. If you don’t know his writing, his style can admittedly make for a difficult read. Plus there’s not much emotional payoff—his heroes generally face mind-bending horrors that simply can’t be beaten, which means you have to get used to them awaiting an inevitable death or going insane. But that’s one reason we like him more and more as time goes by—in this post-millennial era, what is more appropriate than a battle against forces too powerful to beat, too complex to comprehend, and too corrupt to look upon without losing every shred of your own goodness?

Above and below, the mix of fiction, fact, hysteria, photos, and art that is NYC-based Volitant Publishing’s Sir! This February 1954 issue has a great portrait of Gina Lollobrigida, along with articles on the danger of Peeping Toms, “Hungarian” dancer Yvonne Davis, and how to spot frigid women. The promised story on sex in the Caribbean, which the cover art is supposed to illustrate, does not appear in the magazine. We’ve never seen that happen with a tabloid. Maybe the writer had a Eureka! moment during his field research: Wait—I'm having sex in the Caribbean. Why would I ever go back to New York? In any case, the story is MIA.

In other news, we recently bought a stack of fifty mid-century tabloids from the U.S., and assuming the international mails work as they should, we will have those in hand soonish. We got the lot for fifty bucks, which was really exciting, since we’ve seen some individual issues from the stack being auctioned elsewhere for as much as $100.00. There’s no thrill quite like finding a great bargain. Wait—did we really just say that? God, we’re starting to sound like our girlfriends.

The National Police Gazette absolutely loved showing boxers getting their faces rearranged, as we’ve previously shown you here and here. On this cover from January 1954 the puncher is Rocky Marciano and the punchee is Roland La Starza, who despite appearances here was a quality fighter whose distinction is in being the man who came closest to defeating Marciano. That was back in 1950, when La Starza’s record stood at 37-0 and Marciano’s at 25-0. La Starza was the darling of boxing writers because of his scientific style, whereas Marciano was considered a brawler. The contrast could not have been more compelling, and the fight was a back and forth affair that thrilled the Madison Square Garden crowd. The two men ended the bout even on the scorecards, but La Starza lost the decision due to a controversial supplemental pointing system that tipped the tables for Marciano.

Above is a fun photo of General Electric’s Mechanical Hands, which were on display at the 1948 Golden Jubilee Exposition at Grand Central Palace in New York City. A press release describes how a technician used the hands to successfully light a model’s cigarette. To make the hands appear to be completely automated, the techie was sitting behind a wall watching what he was doing in a mirror. The mirror wasn’t visible to onlookers, so the spectacle must have drawn quite a few oohs and aahs. Nothing in the press release about how many earlier models were fishhooked before the techie got his shit together.

GE’s hands were actually designed to help scientists handle radioactive materials, not impress random observers, but the Golden Jubilee Exposition was all about showing off the wonders of modernization. For example an AAP news item claims that, to welcome the first night's visitors, the doors to Grand Central Palace were opened by an “atomic ray.” Another item describes the same moment, telling readers a miniature “atomic pile” was set off using the light of the star Alioth. The details:

 

Today we have a January 1961 issue of Confidential for you, with cover stars Sammy Davis, Jr. and May Britt. Since we’ve already discussed Sammy and May of late, and even made her a recent femme fatale, we’ll skip past them and focus on another interesting story—the tale of Diane Harris, who shot to notoriety as a witness in the infamous Minot Jelke pimping trial of 1952. We wrote about it back in 2009—Jelke was an oleomargarine heir who was cut off from his trust fund and decided to turn his girlfriend Patricia Ward into a prostitute in order to make ends meet. Ward became known as the “Golden Girl of Vice” and “The Golden Girl of Café Society,” which is why it’s interesting that Confidential calls Diane Harris “The Golden Prostitute.” Apparently Jelke had the Midas touch.

Confidential wastes no time in its article. It begins: She gave herself a title… Lady Diana Harrington. The New York D.A. gave her another… the Golden Girl of Café Society. Houston police gave her a third, less flamboyant title… prostitute. Uh oh—the New York District Attorney’s nickname for Harris is identical to Patricia Ward’s nickname. After a few more paragraphs of reading, it becomes clear that Confidentialbelieves the Golden Girl is Diane Harris—not Patricia Ward. While it’s true that Harris did use some aliases, including Lady Diana Harrington and Mary Lou Brew, nowhere is the name Ward mentioned as a pseudonym.

Our mistake came when we first researched the Jelke trial and found a New York Times movie review that identified Pat Ward as the Golden Girl. From that point we just ran with it and never thought to doublecheck. Until today. Now, based on available evidence, it seems that at some point over the intervening years the historical record got twisted and the label Golden Girl was applied to Patricia Ward, where it stayed even up to thepoint of a Hollywood motion picture misidentifying her. She was indeed Minot Jelke’s girlfriend, whereas Harris was just a fellow high dollar prostie (and corroborating witness), so perhaps some clever scribe, or even the writers of the 1995 movie, decided that such a catchy nickname would be better applied to the girlfriend. At least that’s the way it looks to us.

If we’re right, is any of this important? Does it matter that Harris was fleeced of her nickname, or possibly that a movie took liberties and those liberties were later assumed to be facts? Do we expect an award? No, not really, but it’s interesting. Confidential barely recounts the events of the trial. The story is actually about Diane Harris being found dead in a Houston apartment eight years afterward, in September 1960. She was still a prostitute at the time. Confidential tells us: The blonde’s nude body was in bed, a green sheet and a pink blanket covered her. Pictures of herin more glamorous days were on the walls. An autopsy disclosed a large amount of morphine in her body. Police theorize that a combination of drink and drugs killed her.