Above are a couple of scans from an issue of The National Police Gazette published this month in 1963 with cover star Ava Gardner. Gardner had been living in Spain and hadn’t been in a movie in three years, but was about to appear in the historical war drama 55 Days at Peking with Charleton Heston and David Niven. The Gazette discusses how she’d gotten fed up with the U.S.—particularly the American press. She had been particularly annoyed by the rumor that she was involved with Sammy Davis, Jr., a story that took flight after several magazines published photos of the two holding hands. When asked why she was returning to Hollywood after being out of circulation for so long, Gardner, in typically blunt fashion, replied, “I need the money.”

All Castro needs at that point is a Lacoste sweater and a fraternity paddle and his transformation into pure evil would be complete. But as fanciful as the story seems, Lisa really did exist. Her real name was Marita Lorenz and she was Castro’s live-in mistress for several months in 1959. While Lorenz herself never suggested she was ever raped by Castro, the two did have a falling out around the issue of her unplanned pregnancy, which was terminated in its sixth month. Lorenz later said the abortion was forced on her while she was drugged; Castro’s associates claim that she wanted it. Lorenz went on to join anti-Castro activists in the U.S., and on a fundraising visit with the deposed Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, became involved with him. She was still traveling to and from Cuba, and was recruited by the CIA for a Castro assassination attempt. But instead of poisoning his food, like she’d been instructed, she abandoned the plot, supposedly because she still felt strongly for him. Lorenz later wrote about all this in two autobiographies.

In 1977, Lorenz told the New York Daily News that she met Lee Harvey Oswald in autumn 1963 at a CIA safe house in Miami. She claimed she met him again weeks later along with a group of anti-Castro Cubans and they had Dallas street maps. We all know what happened next. Lorenz eventually testified about this before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but her story was deemed unreliable. We suppose bouncing between two dictators and acting as a double agent will tend toraise a red flag with American congressmen, though these things have no bearing on whether she was telling the truth. It’s interesting though, isn’t it? You’d think that if a single man of his own accord assassinated another man the surrounding circumstances wouldn’t be so… labyrinthine. Yet lurking near the supposed black swan event of the Kennedy killing were double-agents like Lorenz, spooks like E. Howard Hunt, underworld figures like Eladio Ceferino del Valle and others. Just saying. In any case, we’ll have more from the Police Gazette and more on Fidel Castro soon.

So, quite by coincidence there’s another movie we watched recently that also premiered today, though thirty years later than The Shanghai Gesture (see below). The movie is Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh, which would translate as “The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh,” but was released in the U.S. as Blade of the Ripper. This flick is considered one of the best gialli ever made, and it’s tough to argue the point. It’s intricate, absorbing, unpredictable, colorful, and shot in an array of amazing external locations and inside one of the greatest mid-century modern apartments ever conceived. It also has Edwige Fenech, whose gifts are well known. Taking place mainly in Vienna and climaxing in Sitges, Spain (which happens to be one of our favorite towns in Europe) Signora Wardh is a taleof obssession and infidelity wrapped in a murder mystery. Mrs. Wardh does indeed have a strange vice, but that’s just window dressing. It’s her that’s being hunted throughout the movie—either by a serial killer, a demented ex-lover, or both. Or neither. They say that the only way to keep a secret is if no more than two people know it and one of them is dead. But the only way to commit murder is if the killer has an iron clad alibi, and for that he often needs help. Rule one conflicts with rule two, and that’s the fun of Signora Wardh. Above you see a rare and wonderful Italian promo poster painted by Giuliano Nistri, the younger brother of equally talented Enzo Nistri. We'll get back to both Nistri brothers a little later. Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh opened in Italy today in 1971.

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.

Since we were just talking about May Britt a few days ago, it seems like a good time to share this photo of her that appeared in the Spanish magazine Triunfo. Her name was spelled “Mai” in the magazine, and apparently it's pronounced “my,” not “may.” This shot dates from 1965.

Above are two Japanese door length posters for 1971’s Les pétroleuses, aka Frenchie King, which starred French sex symbol Brigitte Bardot and Italian counterpart Claudia Cardinale in what was considered a dream paring. Bardot had said that Cardinale was the one actress in the world that was destined to replace her. She even made a quip of it, saying, “After B.B. comes C.C., no?” Both were well established by the time they appeared in Les pétroleuses, both thirty something, both looking good. Many of the reviews we read said that Cardinale was not the same class of beauty as Bardot. Gotta say, we think those people are blind. Cardinale has an earthy, smoldering thing going on that works particularly well in this sweaty, shot-in-Spain production. She and Bardot play rivals in the old west, with B.B. as the leader of a gang of nomadic girl bandits, and C.C. as a townie with a quartet of virile brothers. Bardot ends up gaining ownership of a local ranch, but Cardinale learns that there’s a fortune in oil under the land. Scheming, slapstick and shootouts ensue, as they ride a lot, glare a lot, Cardinale sings a terrible song, Bardot bares her opposite-of-terrible backside, and the two have a bodice ripping fistfight. But dream pairing or no, the movie received tepid reviews, and deservedly so. It’s intermittently funny but mostly clumsy. On the other hand, we could look at Cardinale all day, so that’s something.

We’re showing you this August 1966 Continental Film Review for one reason—Raquel Welch. She appears in both the front and back of the magazine, and the latter photo was made while she was in the Canary Islands filming One Million Years B.C. That photo session featuring a blonde, windblown Welch was incredibly fruitful, at least if we’re to judge by the many different places we’ve seen frames from the shoot, including here, here, here and especially here. There had not been a sex symbol quite like Welch before, and in 1966 she had reached the apex of her allure, where she’d stay for quite a while.

On the cover of the magazine are Christina Schollin and Jarl Kulle, pictured during a tender moment from the Swedish romantic comedy Änglar, finns dom? aka Love Mates. Inside you get features on the Berlin and San Sebastian film festivals, Sophia Loren, Nieves Navarro, Anita Ekberg, and more. CFR had launched in 1952, and now, fourteen years later, was one of Britain’s leading publications on foreign film. It was also a leading publication in showing nude actresses, and in fact by the 1970s was probably more noteworthy for its nudity than its journalism. The move probably undermined its credibility, but most magazines—whether fashion, film, or erotic—began showing more in the 1970s. CFR was simply following the trend, and reached its raciest level around 1973, as in the issue here. Fifteen scans below. 

We were so inspired by our time in the Basque town of Pamplona (you may remember we went there before) that today we decided to share some vintage posters celebrating las ferias y fiestas de San Fermín. We watched the encierro, i.e. running, from a first floor balcony on Calle Estafeta, and that’s about as good as it gets, as our photo above shows. As far as the actual bullfights go, we didn't see any. Not that we're opposed. We've been to several over the years and came away with some intense feelings, mostly of sympathy for the animals. But since it isn't our culture, we don't take a stance on the practice's merits or evils. What we do take a stance on is the art of the festival, some of which we've uploaded below. The collection encompasses varying styles of graphic design, but through all the shifts the posters retained an extremely high level of quality for about fifty years. That golden period was followed by an all too typical abandonment of painterly skill, which was replaced in the 1960s by photography, and later by yawn-inducing InDesign and Photoshop technicianship. For that reason, the posters made during the 1970s and forward compare very unfavorably to the early pieces. While the artistic skill to produce great posters is undoubtedly still out there, such art might be more expensive than desktop design, which means that, as in nearly all areas of modern life, a focus on the bottom line tilts the landscape toward mediocrity. But let's not worry about that. The posters below are glorious, just like the long nights and crazy days of San Fermin. 

Something a bit different today. We saw this poster and loved its colors and vibrancy. It’s for the 1968 counterculture movie Joanna, which was about a young woman in swinging 1960s London. Think of it as a distaff version of Alfie, but with the added taboo of interracial romance. The star is Geneviève Waïte, and Donald Sutherland also puts in an appearance. Like a lot of movies that tried to capture the spirit of the ’60s, Joanna has not aged particularly well, but it’s beloved by many who were in high school or college when it came out. The movie is well before our time, but we liked it anyway. It isn’t perfect, but it has some really great moments, including an interlude in Morocco. As a bonus, we’ve posted the English, Spanish and Italian promos below. You’ll note that the Italian version was painted by Enzo Nistri. He did quite a bit of nice work in the ’60s and ’70s. We’ll get back to him. 

This evocative poster is for the 1975 thriller Perversione, which was originally made in Spain as La encadenada, and for its U.S. release was retitled Diary of a Murderess, or Diary of an Erotic Murderess. Spoiler alert: there’s a murderess in this film. Marisa Mell is nurse to a rich widower’s mentally disturbed son, but she turns out to be a grifter intent on liberating some of the family knick-knacks. She's especially covetous of an antique chalice that resides in a safe. At some point, she finds a diary left behind by the widower’s dead wife, and in its pages the departed plots the murder of her husband, writing her plan in helpful step-by-step detail. Mell decides follow the diary’s instructions, all the better to get hold of that chalice.

But nothing is as it seems here. The chalice is actually the Holy Grail, Mell has actually failed to ditch her terrible husband, and a few other surprises pop up to keep viewers guessing. Director Manuel Mur Oti has crafted an atmospheric piece here, but we recommend it for giallo fans only, because it’s a bit slow off the starting line. Also, we suggest watching the original version, because we’ve heard that the American cut is several minutes short on nudity. It may not matter though, because the movie may be impossible to find. We located our copy online, but the links have since died. Not that we’re recommending any illegal downloading. Us? Never. Perversione premiered in Italy today in 1975. Below, just because we can, we’ve posted an image of Mell at her lovely best, and you can see another one of great interest here.