Covers and interior images of Bruce Lee from assorted Hong Kong martial arts and cinema magazines, circa early 1970s. Click keyword "Bruce Lee" below to see more magazine covers.

Above are selections from a March 1952 Adam magazine, with interesting cover art of a blonde being narrowly missed by several rounds of machine-gun fire. By the 1970s Australia’s Adam was publishing pages of fully nude women, as you can see for yourself here and here, but in this early issue there’s exactly one photograph—American actress Sally Forrest, who you see in panel two. Forrest is pretty much unknown now, but she appeared in notable films such Fritz Lang’s noir While the City Sleeps, Joseph Pevney’s horror flick The Strange Door, and Hard, Fast and Beautiful, which was directed by Ida Lupino, who as a woman director during the forties and fifties kicked open some of the doors that led to Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win last night. More Adam magazines soon. 

Above we have a National Police Gazette with a boxing cover, from sixty years ago this month, with the editors’ warning to the retired Joe Louis to stay out of the ring. But what the Gazette didn’t know was that the 36 year-old Louis was under investigation by the IRS, and he suspected the outcome wouldn’t be good. In May 1950 Louis was jolted when the authorities declared that he owed half a million dollars in back taxes. With only one way to earn the cash, he cut a deal to box for prize money to put toward his debt. He fought and lost to Ezzard Charles in September, and the next year was knocked clean out of the ring by Rocky Marciano. But for all his efforts he was still in debt. The purses had been low because no one wanted to pay to see Louis—who was the first African-American considered a national hero by both blacks and whites—beaten to a pulp. After the Marciano debacle, the fight offers dried up. Louis retired again, and this one stuck. We’re going to get back to Joe Louis at a later date, because his is one of the more interesting and inspiring stories you’ll run across. His financial troubles were not so much a failure of character as a failure to comprehend the corrupting force of money, and the need to hire not just a lawyer, a manager, and an accountant, but a lawyer to watch your lawyer, a manager to watch your manager, and especially an accountant to watch your accountant. We have some Gazette interior pages below, and you can see the other Gazette boxing covers here and here. 

Vintage poster for Jitsuroku onna kanbetsusho: sei-jigoku, aka True Story of a Woman Condemned: Sex Hell, directed by Koyu Ohara and starring Hitomi Kozue. It premiered in Japan today in 1975. 

“… swing your partner round and round, till the room is a blur and her skull hits the ground, doe-si-doe and don’t you know, shake her round till she bleeds out her nose, swing her round just a little bit more, till she loses her bra and her hair sweeps the floor, promenade and go round the hall, crazy zebra skin on the wall…” 

We could hardly claim to be the go-to site for vintage tabloids if we didn’t include the National Enquirer. This actually isn’t a stretch, because the Enquirer first began publishing during the heyday of vintage tabs in the early fifties, and had published under another name for decades before that. The Enquirer’s paper stock was cheap, its printing low rent, and its use of color rare to non-existent, but the formula worked. Where the expensive tabs dazzled with their kaleidoscopes of color, the Enquirer offered single ideas paired with large, bold images. The formula set the paper apart, and it is the only vintage tabloid that survives today. This issue, with Belgian-born superstar Audrey Hepburn, was published March 3, 1963. 

The original King Kong took cinema by storm with its tale of a fantastic lost world, and its revolutionary visual effects. It also had the most consistently wonderful promo posters of possibly any film in history. All were great, but the best, in our opinion, is the version made for the world premiere at Radio City Music Hall, above. The numerous other versions are below, and all are stunning. King Kong, one of the most enduring movies ever made, opened in New York City today in 1933. 

Above is a Hush-Hush from March 1960 with a spotlight on Errol Flynn’s “perverse fling with his Lolita.” They’re talking about fifteen-year old Beverly Aadland, left, who we’ve mentioned before. The article is the beginning of a long tradition of journalists writing the truth—or at least their version of it—about Flynn. Since his death he’s been tagged as a bisexual, a fascist, and a Nazi spy. As recently as 1988 Aadland offered her truth about Flynn in a People interview, and a 1990 book by biographer Tony Thomas rejected the fascist claims, pointing out instead that Flynn had left-leaning politics, though he had made racist comments in letters and conversation. But Thomas claimed Flynn’s true feelings were evidenced by his support for the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, and his friendship with Fidel Castro. Flynn has also been depicted with assorted personality quirks in films such as 1996’s The Australian, with guy Pearce, and 2004’s The Aviator, with Leonardo DiCaprio. So, suffice it to say that he’s never gone out of style. But as far as whose story to believe concerning who Flynn was, we can’t say. We doubt the conflicting accounts will ever truly be settled—with the passing of Beverly Aadland just last month, all the people who knew Flynn personally are dead.

February 1934 issue of the humorous movie monthly Film Fun, with a cover by the legendary Enoch Bolles. Shown on the interior pages are Toby Wing, Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Harriette Mendel, Ginger Rogers and others. You can see all the issues of Film Fun you ever wanted at the web archive filmfun.info. 

Assorted automotive magazines from the U.S. circa 1950s, with some mighty pretty cars on the covers.