Dr. Randolph! I think someone should check your blood pressure!
We’re pulp hypochondriacs—always in the doctor’s office. Above is another medical sleaze cover. Our most recent examples are here and here. If you believe mid-century sleaze literature, general practitioners generally practiced molesting and groping. Of course, mid-century novels also taught readers that all defense lawyers were corrupt, women in the workplace were just looking for husbands, and whiskey every day was sophisticated. Lesson: don’t believe popular literature. Thomas Stone’s 1952 sleazer Doctor Randolph’s Women came from Intimate Novels and features a cover expressively posed by two models. It was originally published in 1943 as Baby Doctor. And you probably won’t be surprised to learn this by now, but Stone was in reality the prolific Florence Stonebraker, who we’ve enjoyed often. Click her keywords to see.
Why am I smiling? Well, maybe you had to be there to find it funny, but I pried this from someone's cold dead hand.
Above: a nice promo image of Ira von Fürstenberg, aka Ira Furstenberg, from the 1967 thriller Sin rival, known in English as Matchless. We discussed the movie here. Shorter version: it’s pretty bad.
Considering the options on Earth, she could do worse.
We’re back to I Married a Monster from Outer Space today, not because the movie is particularly notable, but because its Italian poster is pretty nice. It was titled in Italy Ho sposato un mostro venuto dallo spazio, which translates literally.
The art is signed, as you see in the inset, and if we’re reading it correctly the artist was one M. Cupizzi or M. Cupuzzi or M. Cupozzi. Problem is, we got no hits on any of those names even using all our search tricks, which are lights years ahead of their time. So this will reside in the unattributed bin for the moment, and let it be yet another reminder to you artists out there to not get too baroque with your signatures.
In this case, since there’s clearly a dot over the final “i” in the artist’s name, you’d think the undotted character in the middle of his name isn’t an “i”, but it looks like one. This lack of precision means that letter could really be any vowel written in a stylized way. And that doesn’t even bring into the proceedings the fact that the first initial doesn’t have to be an “m”. With fame your signature can look like anything, but with relative obscurity Mr. or Ms. Cupizzi/Cupozzi/et al has built an obstacle to proper credit.
But moving on, as a bonus, below we have another Italian poster, this one a photo-illustration, but also pretty nice as those go, and superior to the above poster in one respect—it doesn’t need to be credited. So we’re done, except to say that there’s no Italian release date for Ho sposato un mostro venuto dallo spazio, but it probably opened there sometime in late 1959. And in case you missed them, you can see the U.S. promo and read about the film here, and you can see the sweet Australian daybill here.
Hmph. Her thrashing around really frothed up the water. That must be some high quality bubble bath.
Above: Sydney Horler’s Murder is So Simple, published originally published in 1943, with this Corgi paperback coming in 1954.Horler was a prolific British novelist who produced more than 150 novel in various genres. He’s well known for creating the character of Tiger Standish, and possibly even better known for being a frothing racist. The art for Murder Is So Simple looks like it’s signed by someone named Thorpe, who we haven’t run into before. It’s a workmanlike effort that does the job with no frills. You can consider it an addition to our collection of death in bathtubs covers, which you can see at this link, and we have a couple of other bath related covers here and here.
Using the new backend interface that came with our recent website refurbishment, we’re able to do things like count our posts by keyword. We would never have guessed, but this is the ninety-fifth Technicolor lithograph we’ve shared. It’s titled “Amply Endowed,” and was published by Champion Line with model and actress Marilyn Wesley wearing nothing but a string of pearls. When we call her an actress, she appeared in exactly one film—1959’s The Immoral Mr. Teas, but it counts. She was much better known as a model for men’s magazines such as Rapture, and naturist publications like American Nudist. Almost all of her output was between 1959 and 1961, so figure this litho is from those years.
Below: more vintage covers of people getting carried away. The artists include Mitchell Hooks, Louis Carrière, Victor Kalin, George Chrichard, Giovanni Benvenuti, Albert Pujolar Soler, who signed as “Schöller,” James Avati, and Frank Frazetta. Our previous collection is here.
Since swinging is now our agreed upon lifestyle I branched out solo with Jamal from the grocer's. You boys need to step up your game.
Here’s another nice cover painted by the acclaimed Bill Edwards, this time for Drew Palmer’s Wife Traders, and it’s top tier. Edwards aimed the gazes of the four figures in a such a way that they tell a story. The men are eyeing the women in anticipation, and since they’re swappers we can assume they’re looking at each others’ wives. But the wives are looking at each other. The boys might end up spending some time on the bench before they get to play. This is from 1968.
Remember way back when we shared a shot of Japanese actress Maria Mari from a Weekly Playboy layout featuring women paired with sports gear and said we’d share more? Well, we forgot. Until today. So above you see Ayako Ôta, from such films as Sekkusu hantâ: Sei kariudo, aka Sex Hunter and Kairaku gakuen: Kinjirareta asobi, aka Pleasure Campus, Secret Games, perched on an Italjet off-road bike which we’re going to say is the MC5 model that runs about 50 cc’s. But don’t quote us on it. We aren’t bike experts. Quote us on this, though—we have another rare shot of Ôta that’ll make you blow an o-ring. We’ll share that soonish.
We mashed up rhetorical questions from sword and sandal epics there. “Are you not entertained?” is from Russell Crowe’s Gladiator, while, “Is there no one else?” is from Brad Pitt’s Troy. But the above poster is for a movie not as good as either of those. It was put together for the Egyptian run of the Dan Vadis headlined adventure Ercole l’invincibile, which was originally made in Italy and known in English as Hercules the Invicible, Hercules Against the Elephants’ Empire, and The Sons of Hercules in the Land of Darkness. Today it’s just unknown. In Egypt it was called in Arabic The Famous Hercules. They’ve probably forgotten it there too. You’ll notice the poster has a secondary English title: Hercole the Conqueror. Since the character of Hercules was not known as Hercole in English, we can’t even begin to explain that. But we love the art. It was produced by Universal Film Distribution in Cairo, and of course they did not credit its creator.
We actually watched this, and it’s about Hercules slaying a dragon to win the hand (and the rest of her) of a king’s daughter only for her to be kidnapped by marauders, who Herc then tracks to their subterranean city and goes nuclear on, but only after he’s captured and the evils try to sacrifice him to some elephants. Once he dispatches those, and is courted by the evil queen for a minute, he makes the bad folks pay dearly, barely ruffling his pleated mini-skirt in the process. It’s gaspingly awful, particularly the sequence where he wrassles a lion, and also every moment involving his bumbling sidekick Babar. But our special consulting critic Angela the sunbear felt the movie wasn’t bad. She has a fancy degree in this cinema stuff, so we defer to her. Plus when we don’t, she threatens to maul us. Artsy types, right? There’s no release date for Egypt, but Ercole l’invincibile opened in Italy today in 1964.
The only thing more awesome than being the strongest man in the world would be strength, plus not having to wear a wig to conceal my hair loss.
With the wind vectoring strongly from the north, my wig integrity is rapidly decreasing.
I have much power, young Hercules, but not the power to restore hair!
Hercules! Bear!
Bare? My tits are constantly out! You dare to demand more?
Hey, heh heh, listen guys, we all have fake hair here. Should we really be fighting?
Zeus! Apollo! Poseidon! Minoxodil! Aid me in my hour of need!
The wig is weird, I grant you. But the last guy I dated had a hunchback.
Oh no! I had no idea Tannymaxx body oil was flammable! Aiiiieeeeee!!!!!
Hello, humans. Gonna throw this out there—the bear was by far the best actor. Amiright?
Above you see a beautiful cover for Verne Chute’s 1951 novel Flight of an Angel, with high action art by Robert Stanley. The title of the book, like Lou Cameron’s 1960 masterpieceAngel’s Flight, is provided by the famous Los Angeles funicular line on Bunker Hill. The story is set in 1943 and is about a man with amnesia. He has it when the tale opens. Though at a loss, he cleverly takes his cues from others to find out his name is Jamey-Boy Raider. He subsequently discovers that his life is pretty good. He has a decent job, a good apartment, and a smoking hot wife who adores him. It also soon becomes clear that his amnesia is a recurrence of an earlier spell of memory loss. Somehow, he must have been struck on the head twice.
Raider is almost willing to leave well enough alone, what with his nice wife and comfy flat, but men pop up who seem to be from his forgotten past, and they aren’t nice. He learns that he may have been some kind of mob operative in San Francisco. He decides he has to know who he was—or is—so up to the Bay he goes, and discovers that it all has to do with the murder of a San Francisco industrialist’s son. Did he commit the crime? How did he get amnesia in the first place? Why was he found wandering in only a sheet? Is his wife really his wife? Who was the other woman who recognized him on Angel’s Flight only to say she’d made a mistake? That’s a lot of mystery for one guy to unravel.
We wanted to love Flight of an Angel. It had promise, but poor execution hurt it. The narrative gets bogged down with unimportant details, everything from cigarette smoking to shopping. Literary authors can make those moments resonate, but here they contribute to what feels like a lack of focus and poor pacing. Chute was an experienced writer who published in pulp magazines like Weird Tales, but even experienced practitioners take missteps occasionally. By the three-quarters mark the novelty of the book has worn off, and the answer to the amnesia puzzle—when it finally comes—feels long overdue. But in its favor, you’ll probably never read another book where a dead cat is successfully used to terrify a gangster into talking.
On the basis of alleged obscenity, United States Customs officials seize 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” that had been shipped from a London printer. The poem contained mention of illegal drugs and explicitly referred to sexual practices. A subsequent obscenity trial was brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore, the poem’s domestic publisher. Nine literary experts testified on the poem’s behalf, and Ferlinghetti won the case when a judge decided that the poem was of redeeming social importance.
1975—King Faisal Is Assassinated
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia dies after his nephew Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed shoots him during a royal audience. As King Faisal bent forward to kiss his nephew the Prince pulled out a pistol and shot him under the chin and through the ear. King Faisal died in the hospital after surgery. The prince is later beheaded in the public square in Riyadh.
1981—Ronnie Biggs Rescued After Kidnapping
Fugitive thief Ronnie Biggs, a British citizen who was a member of the gang that pulled off the Great Train Robbery, is rescued by police in Barbados after being kidnapped. Biggs had been abducted a week earlier from a bar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by members of a British security firm. Upon release he was returned to Brazil and continued to be a fugitive from British justice.
2011—Elizabeth Taylor Dies
American actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career began at age 12 when she starred in National Velvet, and who would eventually be nominated for five Academy Awards as best actress and win for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dies of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles. During her life she had been hospitalized more than 70 times.
1963—Profumo Denies Affair
In England, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denies any impropriety with showgirl Christine Keeler and threatens to sue anyone repeating the allegations. The accusations involve not just infidelity, but the possibility acquaintances of Keeler might be trying to ply Profumo for nuclear secrets. In June, Profumo finally resigns from the government after confessing his sexual involvement with Keeler and admitting he lied to parliament.
1978—Karl Wallenda Falls to His Death
World famous German daredevil and high-wire walker Karl Wallenda, founder of the acrobatic troupe The Flying Wallendas, falls to his death attempting to walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Wallenda is seventy-three years old at the time, but it is a 30 mph wind, rather than age, that is generally blamed for sending him from the wire.
2006—Swedish Spy Stig Wennerstrom Dies
Swedish air force colonel Stig Wennerström, who had been convicted in the 1970s of passing Swedish, U.S. and NATO secrets to the Soviet Union over the course of fifteen years, dies in an old age home at the age of ninety-nine. The Wennerström affair, as some called it, was at the time one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War.
