The 1949 film noir The Third Man is a best-case-scenario of what can happen when great talents collaborate. Carol Reed directs, Orson Welles, Alida Valli and Joseph Cotten act from a screenplay penned by master storyteller Graham Greene, and the cinematographer is Robert Krasker. Krasker won an Academy Award for his work here, and when you see the velvety blacks and knifing shadows of his nighttime set-ups, as well as the famed scenes shot in the cavernous Vienna sewers and bombed out quadrants of the city center, you’ll understand why. The story involves a pulp writer named Holly Martins who arrives in a partitioned post-war Vienna to only find that his friend Harry Lime is dead, run down by a truck. When Martins learns that the police are disinterested in the circumstances of Lime’s demise, he decides to do what one of his pulp characters would do—take matters into his own hands. But nothing adds up. He learns that Lime died instantly, or survived long enough to utter a few last words. He finds that Lime was a racketeer, or possibly not. And he discovers that three men were present when Lime died—or possibly three. That third man seems to be the key to the mystery, but he proves to be damnably elusive. We can’t recommend this film highly enough. Above you see a pair of rare Japanese posters from Third Man’s premier in Tokyo today in 1952. 

Above is an August 1962 Master Detective with great cover art of a lady in red being taken into custody, and clearly this isn’t a Wall Street bank she works at, because at those taxpayers’ money is free for the taking. Since it’s getting toward the best part of baseball season over in the U.S., the blurb that intrigued us the most on this cover was the final one, telling us that Tito Francona—father of current Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona—was somehow involved in solving a murder. We’re told that he “belted a homer that led Tucson police to a killer”, and we were expecting the story to be some kind of convoluted mystery. But no—the blurb is meant literally. Francona hit a home run during a Cleveland Indians spring training game in Tucson and the ball actually landed next to a body that was hidden in brush beyond the right field wall. The body belonged to a fugitive who was wanted for the murder of his unfaithful wife’s lover. He had chosen that unlikely spot to commit suicide by shooting himself. Case solved. So Francona didn’t exactly enter stage right and help unravel a Da Vinci Code style puzzle, but the story is still an interesting historical footnote. Baseball is the type of sport where players and fans tend to believe in curses, so maybe a purification ceremony where the body was found would help the Indians finally win a World Series. It’s been sixty-two years and counting. 

You’d never put blue, orange and yellow together in an outfit, but those colors coordinate nicely on this Uncensored from August 1971. The magazine had launched in 1953 and become a heavy hitter in the tabloid market by the end of the decade, but by now was running on fumes. However, that didn’t stop it from taking swipes at big targets—in this case England’s royal family in the person of Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. Born Margaret Rose, the princess had a rebellious spirit and had married late—at age twenty-nine—to a commoner named Anthony Armstrong-Jones. Jones was a photographer, and if you’re going to slander a photographer, of course you call him a pornographer. There’s no evidence Jones—who became Lord Snowdon—was head of a smut ring, as Uncensored claims, but he did shoot his share of nudes, like the image of Gloria Higdon below, dating from 1959. His marriage to Princess Margaret was known to be shaky, and by the time the above cover appeared, the couple were leading separate lives. Margaret had a series of indiscreet affairs, and had unconfirmed liaisons with the likes of Mick Jagger, David Niven, and Peter Sellers. Snowdon, on the other hand, became a royal favorite, shooting official portraits for the Queen and other family members. Lord Snowdon and his wife finally divorced in 1978, and Princess Margaret died at the relatively early age of seventy-two after many years of drinking and consuming prescription drugs. Maybe we’ll revisit her at some point—her life reads like a melodrama. 

We found some film stills from the 1970 caveman epic When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and thought they’d be a good share for today. The movie starred Magda Konopka, Victoria Vetri, and a cast of loinclothed others, and even though it has worse science than what you’d find in a Kentucky creationism museum, we’ll buy the idea of prehistoric women in fur bikinis any day when they look like this group. More stills below. They all beg for captions, but we're short of time, so you'll have to write your own. 

Below, nine first edition hardback dust jackets for Ian Fleming's James Bond series. You can see one more, for Dr. No, at the top of a previous post here.

We took a dip in the pop culture cesspool (see previous post) and just couldn't seem to get clean again, but we finally found a way to get back that fresh feeling. A while back we posted a Film Fun cover with the lovely Lupe Velez on the cover, and then we followed up with another post with interior pages. Below are ten more Film Fun covers, with trademark smiling beauties and playful blurbs, circa 1940 to 1942. Ah, we feel so much better now. 

How much cash do they claim was made on this scam? Two million dollars. That’s a 2 with six zeros after it. If true, this is sad on two levels: first, that a former NBA player who probably had a thousand other opportunities went this route; and second, that jobseekers who were being crushed by a recession had no choice but to feed on the corpses of people who had already been crushed before them. Vincent has had no comment thus far, but his attorney has described the former basketballer as a “legitimate businessman engaged in legal activities”, which we think is like claiming to be a “legitimate cigarette marketing executive”, or a “legitimate geologist for a mining company that blows the tops off pristine Appalachian hills and dumps them in valleys, destroying wildlife and contaminating groundwater”. In other words, “legal” isn’t a synonym for moral—at least not in our book. But unfortunately, we didn’t write the book everyone else is playing by—Wall Street did. And it seems as if Vincent may have memorized it chapter and verse.     

We said we’d get back to Louis de la Hattais and today we’re keeping our word. Above you see four book covers from French author Jerry Lewray, who was a pseudonym invented by de la Hattais, and used by him and possibly other authors who churned out thrillers for Société d’Editions Générales' Interpol and Allo Police series during the 1960s, as well as stand-alone novels of his/their own. But it turns out Louis de la Hattais wasn’t real either—he was a pseudonym of author and editor Louis Fournel, who, starting in the 1940s, wrote under the names Louis Delaht, Anne-Marie Delfour, Jean Delhat, Lew Dolegan, Anne-Marie Fervel, Louis Hellais and several others. Confused? You’re not alone. But as the mystery deepens, we keep digging. It’s not just educational—it’s fun! 

Above, the cover of Spencer Hooke’s 1976 sex romp Swinging Wives. This is a good example of the type of dubiously skillful art used on the sleaze paperbacks of the sixties and seventies. In fact, the images often got much lower rent than this little cartoon. We’ll be doing an aggregate post on this genre soon. 

Roman Polanski’s first English-language film was Repulsion, starring Catherine Deneuve as a disturbed woman whose neuroses slowly escalate into a full-scale psychotic break when the departure of her sister leaves her in isolation in an apartment they share. We won’t pretend to have any new insights into such a rapturously praised film save to say that it’s certainly one of Polanski’s most interesting, a visual masterwork in deeply shadowed black and white that manages to be beautiful even as it descends into paranoia and violence. Highly recommended. And as a side note, we wouldn’t mind terribly if Deneuve’s hairstyle came back into vogue. Batshit insane never looked so glamorous. Repulsion opened in Japan today in 1965.