Sportswire | Sep 16 2013 |
Intl. Notebook | Aug 29 2013 |
Vintage Pulp | Dec 11 2012 |
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?
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.
Intl. Notebook | Dec 6 2012 |
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 foundation. 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 Brooklyn 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.
Vintage Pulp | Aug 1 2012 |
Last year we posted the front and back covers of an issue of He magazine. As usual, it’s taken us longer than we intended, but today we’re back with more. The above cover appeared this month in 1953 and features a masked model shot at New York City’s annual Artists Equity Ball, which, according to He, pretty much turned into an orgy. We don’t know about that, but the photos do reveal a rather racy scene. You also get shots of (we think) Rocky Marciano knocking out someone or other and lightweight champ Jimmy Carter mashing some hapless opponent’s face, photos of Laurie Anders, Lili St. Cyr, Lilly Christine, Daniele Lamar, and other celebs of the day, an amazing still of Julie Newmar, aka Julie Newmeyer, dancing in Slaves of Babylon, plus a back cover featuring highly touted but ultimately underachieving actress Mara Corday. We don’t have to bother too much with a description today, because these digest-sized magazines have text that scans large enough to be read even on small computers. So read and enjoy.
Sportswire | Apr 4 2012 |
In honor of baseball season in the U.S., we have for your enjoyment today an extreme rarity—an official 75th anniversary baseball program from Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, circa 1951. Casual baseball fans are scratching their heads right now, because Wrigley Field is located in Chicago. Well sure, that one is. But the first Wrigley Field, which opened in 1926, was in L.A. Chewing gum millionaire William Wrigley used the park to house his Los Angeles Angels, a minor league team that played in the Pacific Coast League. Wrigley also owned the Chicago Cubs, but though the park in Chi-Town was built before the one in L.A., it wasn’t named Wrigley until 1927. The original Wrigley Field, with its unusual off-center clock tower, was a marvel of Spanish revival architecture, but L.A. being L.A., it was demolished without a thought in 1966. Check the images below. And... play ball!
Vintage Pulp | Jan 2 2012 |
This cover scan of Archie Joscelyn’s 1950 western Border Wolves was sent over from National Road Books, which is good timing, because the art is by George Gross and we featured one of his very best pieces back in October and said we’d get back to him. Gross (who should not be mixed up with German painter George Grosz) was a prolific artist who, as we mentioned in that previous post, was incredibly diverse, producing covers for Argosy, Baseball Stories, Bulls Eye Detective, Northwest Romances, Wings, Fight Stories, Saga, and many others. He was born in 1909 in Brooklyn, New York, began painting pulp covers in the 1930s and worked steadily through the 1980s, dying at the ripe age of ninety-four. You would suspect, looking at the shooting technique of the cowboy on the cover of Border Wolves, that Gross didn’t know much about guns. While that’s possible, we think the weird shooting position is a result of wanting to fit the cowboy’s entire arm on the cover. But he must have liked the result, because he used this awkward stance twice (see below). There are quite a few web archives of Gross art, so if you want to see more, let your fingers do the walking.
Intl. Notebook | Sportswire | Apr 5 2010 |
In the United States, Major League Baseball’s 2010 season opened last night with a couple of games, but today is the first full slate of baseball, and in commemoration we’ve tracked down a few images of baseballers from the past. We won’t identify every player, but we do want to make special mention of a few. In panel two below you see Ty Cobb spiking catcher Paul Kritchell in the nuts. Why? That's just how he rolled. Panel three shows Buck Leonard of the Homestead Grays running out a grounder against the Philadelphia Stars during the 1945 season, and below him is Oscar Charleston. Leonard, Charleston, and Josh Gibson, in panel eleven, are all Negro League players who were inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame way back in the early seventies. Allthree are considered by sports historians to be among the best who ever played their positions, though they never played in the Major Leagues. Lastly, in panel fourteen you see Lefty Grove, one of the great pitchers of his era, frozen in time just before a game, forever young.
We decided to post all these photos because we’re basically a history site, and baseball, more than any other American sport, is inextricably bound with the country’s history. When you think of Ted Williams, you don’t just think of baseball—you think of World War II. When you think of Joe DiMaggio, you think of Marilyn Monroe and her tragic ending. Hank Aaron, chasing a sacred record with grim determination, is part and parcel of the civil rights movement—not for anything he said, but just because that was his place in time. For every era of baseball, the facesconjure moments on the field, but also events far from the confines of the ballpark. This is what makes the boys of summer such a special group. Seasons change, winter inevitably comes, careers and lives end, but their niches in history are secure. Meanwhile these images are a reminder of just how long and wonderful the summer can be. Enjoy the season everyone.
Sportswire | Oct 28 2009 |
In the U.S., Major League Baseball’s World Series begins tonight when the Philadelphia Phillies play the New York Yankees in New York City. These are two of the oldest organizations in the majors—the Phillies date from 1883, and the Yankees were formed in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles, before moving to New York in 1913 and rechristening themselves with a new name. So in honor of these venerable teams, and baseball in general, we’ve cobbled together a collection of baseball-themed pulp magazines—seven, actually, for the number of games we want the series to go. But however long it lasts, let’s hope the games are entertaining and the fiery rioting in the winning town is non-lethal. Most of these images came from here.
Sportswire | Oct 8 2009 |
Just in time for Major League Baseball’s postseason, a former employee of the cryonics company Alcor Life Extension claims in a new book that Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams’ frozen head was mistreated at the facility. Former chief operating officer Larry Johnson writes in his book Frozen: My Journey into the World of Cryonics, Deception and Death, that an Alcor official used a wrench as a—well, let’s just say it—as a bat, to knock a tuna can loose from Williams’ head.
According to Johnson, the cans were used as head pedestals, but only after their contents had been fed to the Alcor cat. Instead of praising his coworkers for their spirit of improvisation, Johnson is critical of these practices. To bolster his claims, his book includes a photograph of an upside-down severed head with what indeed appears to be a tuna can stuck to it, though the head pictured is not Williams’. But Johnson did describe the former Red Sox outfielder’s earthly remains, writing: “The disembodied face set in that awful, frozen scream looked nothing like any picture of Ted Williams I’ve ever seen.”
Alcor has responded to the macabre allegations by threatening to sue everyone in this world and the next. In light of that announcement, we’ll just forego joking about company officials making bets about whether their tongues would stick to the heads. “Forego” means to go ahead and do it, right? We better look that up.