“Love in France isn’t what it used to be,” says French singer, dancer, and actress Leslie Caron. At least if National Enquirer is to be believed. This cover featuring an enchanting photo of Caron in a pixieish mode she made famous appeared today in 1960 when she was finishing work near Paris on the Napoleonic drama Austerlitz. At the time, she was having difficulties with her husband, actor Peter Hall. Caron wrote about the period in her autobiography Thank Heaven: “Temptations to have affairs were sometimes avoided, sometimes not.” In that context, this cover takes on added meaning. Would her husband have seen her words as reassuring or upsetting? In the end it didn’t matter. Filming 1961’s Fanny in Marseilles, Caron had an affair with cinematographer Jack Cardiff. So while love in France might not have been what it used to be, it was still good enough, seemingly. Caron’s subsequent whirlwind affair with Warren Beatty triggered a separation, and by 1965 she and Peter Hall divorced. 

Elizabeth Taylor nude! Those sneaks at Whisper raised the hopes of millions of readers who bought this March 1965 issue, but inside revealed that the whited-out silhouette on the cover with Richard Burton is in reality a wooden statue of Taylor made to promote her role in The Sandpiper. It was to be unveiled at a party aboard the Queen Mary, but producer Joseph E. Levine connived a way for the sculpture to be stowed below decks so his star Carroll Baker wouldn’t be upstaged. In the end, nobody at the party saw the Taylor statue and Carroll Baker—once again wearing that amazing dress, by the way—ruled the day.

The old tabloids really savaged politicians. Liberals and conservatives alike got their turn and in this issue of Confidential from March 1967, Ronald Reagan gets roasted. The story by Roger Baldwin brands Reagan an “ex-pinko,” whispers about his “hushed-up divorce,” notes that a portion of his following is a “nut fringe,” and mentions “race-hate rumors” that surround him. There’s a line in all caps: Ronald Reagan Elected President. It’s a neat little trick, because he’d just been sworn in as Governor of California two months earlier, but the writer is actually referencing Reagan’s 1946 election to the presidency of the Screen Actors Guild, and using that event to hint at his 1968 White House ambitions (which, by the way, are derided as “a passion for power”). We won’t comment on the veracity of Baldwin’s claims, but his portrayal of Reagan does make us think of something that isn’t mentioned about Hollywood actors very often, if ever. Consider—none of them would make even a fraction of the money they do without their strong trade union, which means they owe what they have to the liberal ideal of worker solidarity. And yet many actors (and for that matter many athletes, also made fantastically rich largely thanks to unionization) are conservatives. It’s a bit of a paradox, don’t you think? In any case, Reagan survived Confidential’s scathing attack and made that all-caps line—Ronald Reagan Elected President—come true, not in 1968, but twelve years later.

This cover of National Enquirer appeared today in 1968 and features cover star Donna Douglas, who at the time was in the midst of a nine-year run as Elly May Clampett on the smash American television series The Beverly Hillbillies. Despite the headline here, Douglas was never wild in either her portrayals or her personal life, although some sources seem to think that during the filming of 1966’s Frankie and Johnny she had an affair with co-star and noted freak Elvis Presley. That’s untrue, as far as we can tell, but since Frankie and Johnny turned out to be Douglas’ only starring role in cinema, maybe she should have hooked up with the Pelvis—he went on to star in many more smash movies opposite such forgettables as Dodie Marshall and Annette Day.

Well it worked again. We’re definitely feeling total confidence in the postal system now. Why that first issue of Adam disappeared a while back we’ll never know, but after that little mishap we successfully received one shipment, so this time we decided to go for broke. Above is the result of that experiment—forty-four American tabloids. Even with postage in the $40 range, these came out to about two dollars apiece. Very exciting, and since the collection is comprised of all the heavyweights—Whisper, Hush-Hush, On the QT, Confidential, Uncensored, The Lowdown, et. al.—we’re pretty much set for the foreseeable future. You want mid-century tabloids? This is where to find them. Accept no substitutes. On a side note, remember we said we were refinishing a 150-year-old desk? There it is above in final form. Note that the legs are topped by carved demon heads. We haven’t yet figured out who he’s supposed to be, but he emanates a palpable aura of evil that’s a bit… Hang on a sec. Did you hear that noise? Probably the wind, but we better go check anyway. Be right ba—

Above is a cover of the tabloid Midnight published today in 1968. The idea that someone stole JFK’s corpse was aired pretty much right after the murder, and to this day some people believe he was snatched off Air Force One sometime before the plane landed in Washington D.C. It’s a pretty farfetched theory, one not necessarily interesting on its own merits, but because it’s a good example of one of the most important factors that makes conspiracies work. And that is simply that in the absence of convincing facts people concoct multiple theories and those help obscure actual discrepancies about the event. Once you’ve heard enough crackpot theories you tend to forget the original, crucially pertinent questions. If one were conspiracy-minded one would almost suggest that the perpetrators of conspiracies count on this to happen. But that would be only if one were conspiracy-minded. We are not.

Above, a cover of the U.S. tabloid Midnight from today in 1967, with one of their standard sex headlines. This one is pure fiction. How do we know? Because despite all their “bros before hos”* machismo, men fall out over women almost as often as they do about money, which means the town would devolve into Fallujah style chaos in mere days. At least the bride-to-be wouldn’t have to break any hearts. Every man except one would be dead.

*For a serious grammatical discussion of whether “hos” is spelled properly see here

And as long as we’re at it, here’s a cover of the continually provocative National Star Chronicle, from today in 1967, with a story about an undertaker/rapist. Are you sensing a theme? Is this cover and the one in the post above not a case of two pigs feeding at the same trough? These stories represent the diametric extremes of ’60s sleaze tabloids—woman as ravaged sex victim/ravenous sex beast, which is a slight variation on Freud’s Madonna/whore complex, the twist here being that the Madonna loses her purity at the hands of a rapist. At least that’s how it seems to us. But what do we know? A psychologist or sociologist might have something useful to say, but in school we majored in vodka, so our insights are probably limited. Maybe we’ll get back to this after we consult our resident experts on the evils of men—our girlfriends. More tabloids coming soon.