Harry Belafonte gets a spotlight as well, but for political reasons. By 1956 he was a leading figure in the American civil rights movement and was highly critical of U.S. domestic and inter-national policy, and so Hush-Hush does what any respectable red-baiting scandal rag would do—suggest he was brainwashed by communists. While the story is pure baloney, it did turn out to be prescient in one sense—Belafonte did begin explicitly endorsing communist ideals, and remains a supporter of Fidel Castro and other leftist leaders today.

As always, there’s plenty more dirt and dish we could discuss, but we’ll stop for now because we already have more tabloids than we’ll probably ever be able to post. In fact we just bought fifteen rare copies of the National Informer from an auction site and they only cost us two dollars apiece. And of course we also have a giant folder of tabloids we’ve downloaded. Probably the only way to use them all would be to launch a tabloids-only site, but who has the time? Not us, sadly. More on Hush-Hush later.     

Either the stud on the cover of William Moore’s 1976 erotic opus The Hustitute has a wolverine in his g-string or he’s taking the white man’s afro to a whole new level—a lower level, filled with dander and pheromones. The artist is uncredited, so we don’t know from whose fevered imagination this creation came, but we can still use it to illustrate why there are so many sexually provocative women on Pulp Intl., and very few provocative men. The reason, amply illustrated here, is because with rare exceptions, the relatively low sales figures on erotic male pulp necessitated the employment of, shall we say, less-than-stellar artists. And we generally don’t like less-than-stellar art, even when the artist has an outstanding sense of humor like this guy. There are exceptions to what we just said. Guys like George Quaintance did top notch erotic male art, but he did his work under the guise of illustrating bodybuilder magazines. We bring all this up not for you, but for our girlfriends, who were somewhat nonplussed by yesterday’s post. But whenever they start beating the drum for beefcake, we remind them that they thought this guy was only so-so. Pretty much kills their credibility, don’t you think? 

We just saw this movie for the first time a few months ago and it falls squarely into the category: could-not-be-made-today. That doesn’t automatically make it good, but it just so happens this is a pretty good flick. You’ve got a young, intense Al Pacino, noirish direction from William Friedkin of Exorcist fame, and a story focused on sex, drugs, and violence. Basically, Pacino plays a cop who goes undercover in New York City’s gay BDSM subculture. He’s looking for a killer, which requires him to play the role of an available, leather-clad party boy. But there’s deep cover, and then there’s deep cover. When you cross the line trouble always results. The art above comes from a promotional pamphlet, and it conveys the mood of the film quite nicely. We recommend it, with a reservation—if you’re progressive-minded, you’ll probably hate it. But you know that going in. Whenever Hollywood portrays a so-called subculture for a genre flick, it’s an affront to those being portrayed, whether gay, Chinese, black, female, religious, Texan, environmentalist, Iraqi, or what have you. Could Hollywood make films that portrayed all these segments of society in only positive terms? Sure, but who’d go see them? So bring on the action, and we’ll deal with the caricatures by agreeing that they’re just living cartoons, designed to offer some thrills and chills. Cruising premiered in the U.S. today in 1980. 

Assorted Tomorrow’s Man pocket-sized magazines, circa 1950s and 1960s. TM is part of a group of mid-century physique or bodybuilding magazines often described as beefcake publications, which is to say it was either expressly produced for, or happened to appeal to a mainly gay clientele. During the late 1960s, when fully nude male bodies became legal to publish, TM declined, along with similarly-themed magazines like Vim, Adonis, and Body Beautiful. On a side note, one of the pulp era’s greatest illustrators George Quaintance was able to gain an audience for his work by painting covers for beefcake magazines. You can see some of those pieces here. 

Here’s a colorful October 1961 issue of Top Secret, featuring cover star Sophia Loren, with text hinting that Anthony Perkins had a little thing for her. Perhaps, but Perkins was famously nervous around women, and was usually involved with men, including Rock Hudson and Rudolph Nureyev. He rebuffed advances from both Jane Fonda and Brigitte Bardot, before finally losing his heterosexual virginity to Victoria Principal and going on to marry photographer Berry Berenson. You also see a blurb on Yuri Gagarin, who we mentioned a few days ago. Top Secret claims the Soviets didn’t have the technical know-how to send Gagarin on a revolution of the Earth. Yet somehow, they believed the Soviets did have the know-how to send missiles raining down on American cities. You ever get the feeling they just made this stuff up?     

Here’s a little piece of modern pulp we found in a bar in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain. We had just finished a round of tasty apple-flavored shots, and there it was on the bartop at a place called Akerbeltz. The magazine is called Gehitu, and it’s published by a GLBT rights organization based in Northern Spain. The magazine is nicely put together, promotes a cause we respect, and is filled with events information, but what interests us most is their usage of an iconic photo of Ursula Andress, who they’ve given winglike appendages and depicted as wounded but unbowed. If we assume this is a visual reference to Hamlet’s famous “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy, then it’s a poignant and clever rebranding. Since we started this website we’ve discovered that small magazines, flyers and pamphlets are goldmines of pulp styled art. In those media we tend to find creators who truly get what pulp is about. We’ve been picking up these bits and pieces, and with today’s post have shared one of our many finds. We’ll have more for you down the line.     

On the cover of this August 1955 issue of the tabloid Lowdown the editors get confrontational with the then-governor of Michigan, G. Mennen Williams. The story involves chart-topping singer Johnnie Ray, who in June 1951 was convicted of propositioning a man in the restroom of a Detroit burlesque house called the Stone Theatre. Lowdown’s insistence upon a pardon for the singer is simply a backdoor way of airing out the scandal while pretending to crusade on his behalf. How do we know that was Lowdown's intent? Simple—because any tabloid worthy of labeling itself such would have known Ray was bisexual. He pled guilty on that solicitation charge without even bothering to bring a lawyer to court, and his sexual involvement with both halves of the husband-wife comedy team of Bob Mitchell and Jay Grayton was not exactly a state secret. On stage Ray was an emotional singer whose antics earned him the nicknames the Prince of Wails (for his unrestrained style) and the Nabob of Sob (for his tendency to burst into tears), so even if his fans didn’t realize he was bi, they certainly understood that macho was not his stock-in-trade. Which meant, in the end, he had a nice career even with the tabs dogging his heels. He scored numerous big hits, including “Cry” in 1951, and “You Don’t Owe Me a Thing” in 1957. But even if Ray was impervious to slander, some of Lowdown’s other victims were less fortunate. We'll discuss some of them in the future.

Some of the old pulps were suggestive—others figured why merely suggest when it’s so much more fun to grab the reader by the crotch. The cover of J.X. Williams’ Extra-Duty Wife is groin-level Freudian clownery that approaches sleazy perfection. And author J.X. Williams is a personage—or perhaps we should say creation—of some interest. About a hundred schlock and gay pulp novels appeared under his name, and he also seemingly directed such underground films as Psych-Burn, Peep Show, Satan Claus, and Virgin Sacrifice. The question of whether he actually exists is one we’ll tackle at another juncture. More J.X. Williams items below.