Italian illustrator Tino Avelli isn’t the only mid-century poster or paperback artist who produced a set of cards, but his deck of tarots might be the coolest. Above is the copertina or cover, and below are twenty-two more representing Avelli’s take on the entire major arcana, including the always popular cards depicting La morte (Death—symbolic of change in standard tarot), and L’appeso (the Hanged Man—symbolic of self-sacrifice). Since the lettering and numbering on these are just longhand scribbles, we can be sure they’re studies for versions that were never finalized or produced. But either way, they’re very interesting pieces.
Tarots first appeared in the 15th century and, after some refinement, eventually reached their common form of seventy-eight cards with twenty-two trumps and four suits (wands, cups, swords, and pentacles) of fourteen cards each. Originally they were used as playing cards, but thanks to the efforts of French occultists in the late 18th century acquired their current association with divination, as well as their usefulness as a tool to fleece the credulous, or at least the curious. We don’t know when Avelli produced his deck, but he was most active during the 1960s, so possibly they date from that period.
This is pretty nice work for Éditions R.R. and its 1969 paperback Qui êtes-vous, chérie? by René Roques. It doesn’t look painted by any of the usual French illustrators, but we’ll never know one way or the other because R.R. often didn’t attribute its covers. You can see the company’s best here, here, and here.
Why do I get the feeling that when you make me disappear every night you don't want me to come back?
Covers like these can be interpreted just about any way. We were going to go with something like, “Ooooo… the great Balsamo. After last night we know you aren’t so great at everything, don’t we?” There were other options too. The book is about a Brooklyn punk and petty thief who rises to become a world-renowned magician. Maurice Zolotow is more famous that you suspect. In addition to being an author he was a journalist for Billboard magazine and a writer of biographies, and when he died in 1991 he was eulogized in the New York Times. The Great Balsamo is from 1964 with cover work from an unknown artist.
There's no heaven. There's no hell. There's only the dark.
Too grim? Well, we go stream of consciousness with these. You know, consciousness, that thing that fades into oblivion when your time comes. Doh! Did it again, but this photo featuring Ann Sheridan is obviously meant to evoke dark thoughts. It was made to promote her drama Angels with Dirty Faces, which is how we got onto the heaven and hell thing in the first place. So blame Ann. The shot is from 1938.
He's just smart enough to start wondering if everyone is calling him "brain guy" facetiously.
As you probably guessed, Brain Guy is about someone who uses his smarts to climb the ranks of organized crime. That one-sentence synopsis is more than we managed when we wrote about the book several years ago. What can we say? We were more interested in discussing how stylishly written it is, even though it didn’t reach top levels as a complete piece of fiction. It’s remained in our memories, though, so maybe it’s better than we first thought. For what it’s worth you can read our inadequate musings at this link.
Above you see a poster for the exploitation flick La comtesse perverse, which we decided to watch because it was directed by Jesús Franco, and his films have only two outcomes, both entertaining—they’re either cult gems or total train wrecks. La comtesse perverse was originally French made, is known in English as Countess Perverse, and stars Robert Woods, Howard Vernon, and Alice Arno, the latter of whom we last saw in an issue of the tabloid Rampage. The poster gets the idea across effectively: it’s a human hunt movie, a type of exploitation that goes back to 1933’s The Most Dangerous Game, and which has been explored in films like the The Suckers, as well as various women-in-prison entries such as Frauen für Zellenblock 9—coincidentally one of Franco’s craziest efforts.
Here you get a group of people lured to the island house of a countess, played by Arno, who happens to be cannibal. We don’t mean a wild cannibal cooking hanks of dripping meat over an open fire. We mean a gourmet cannibal. A genteel wine-drinking cannibal. A Hannibal cannibal. The guests are first treated to a dinner at which they unknowingly eat human flesh, then the bad news drops that they’re the star attractions in an organized hunt. Arno is not the type of minor royalty who lets others do all her work. She’s the main hunter, dispatching prey with her trusty bow and arrows. And we sort of misspoke earlier. She’s genteel, yes, but she later goes on the hunt stripped to the skin. So she’s wild too.
Her house, by the way—and this will be a long digression—is actually a real place, an apartment building named Xanadu, located on Spain’s central Mediterranean coast, near the city of Calp. It was designed by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill, who created some interesting buildings, but architecture is about context as well as design, and in this case he defiled a beautiful rocky point with an Escheresque monstrosity. It’s an epidemic here in Spain, the ruining of pristine spots. Casa Xanadon’t has nice views of Calp, but seen from the opposite direction—which nobody has a choice about—is a monument to ugly excess and an insult to people who care about beauty, nature, sharing the environment, and forging a sustainable future. That it’s central to a horror movie makes perfect sense.
Franco can likewise be said to be a maverick of ugly excess, but in the unobtrusive medium of film. With Xanadu’s exteriors and a couple of other mindbending locales to help set the mood, he revels in his favorite indulgences—everything from transgressive violence to full frontal bushes. Lina Ronay, Tania Busselier, Arno, and the other performers give Franco the total commitment he needs to make his masturbationpiece, and once again present a final product that will leave viewers divided. Do you love cheap cinema in the grindhouse vein? Then you’ll love La comtesse perverse. Do you hate undeniably shoddy cinema that people seem to adore anyway? Then stay as far away from this one as you can. Which group do we fall into? Guess. La comtesse perverse premiered in France today in 1975.
Wow, check out that house. It gives off very inviting vibes, don’t you think?
Here come our dinner guests. Should we just pan sear them like usual or get ambitious and put them in a paella?
As you can see, I’ve done all the stairwells in slaughterhouse red. I consider it a very livable color.
Usually I’m too shy to frolic nude, but I felt more body confidence after the Countess said we had barely enough meat on us to make a meal.
Is this Kobe beef?
No, but it’s a very high quality protein.
Oh, there they are. Clever girls. I almost didn’t see them. They were hiding behind their own bushes.
Above: two U.S. insert size posters for the gangster drama Johnny Eager. The top one was made for the film’s original run, which began today in 1941, while the second bears a 1950 copyright date at lower left, which means it was made for the re-release of the film that year. We wrote about this classic already, but no need to go there (unless you really want to). Just watch it. Johnny Eager is a good night’s vintage entertainment.
Above you see the cover of an issue of Action for Men published this month in 1962. We love to imagine the production meetings for these magazines. For this issue we can picture editor Noah Sarlat discussing Edwin’s Johnson’s story, “Lt. Clevenger’s Survival Hideout with Norway’s Hottest Blonde,” which is highlighted on the cover with eye-catching yellow text. We figure the story was originally titled, “Lt. Clevenger’s Survival Hideout.”
Sarlat: “Lt. Clevenger’s Survival Hideout? Boring! Add a blonde! A Norwegian blonde! A hot Norwegian blonde! I’ve got it—with Norway’s Hottest Blonde!”
The story is pretty good, with the requisite action and skin, and it comes with excellent art by Robert Stanley, whose work is easily recognizable because nobody painted women’s faces quite like him. Elsewhere there’s art by Ray Johnson and Shannon Stirnweis, and the cover was painted by James Bama. We have many other vintage men’s magazines sitting around, and hopefully we’ll be able to scan some of those soon.
Above is a dark poster for a dark movie—the drama Peine capitale. That translates from French into English as “capital punishment,” which kind of gives away the plot, no? It’s better known as Yield to the Night, as well as Blonde Sinner, and starred Diana Dors as—we suppose this means it counts as a women-in-prison flick—a killer who has a date with the hangman. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1956, but we didn’t want to wait until May to post this great piece, so we’re sharing it today, when the movie went into general release in France. The art is by someone who signed as J. Mayo, but that’s all we have on this person for now, except a few other posters we’ve found. It’s nice work. We especially like the fact that, though Dors is a bit of an abstraction, her lips are exactly correct. Have a look at the bottom of this post.
Once again we delve into Hollywood name changes, this time with née Rita MacKay, who had a pretty good name to work with, we’d say, but changed it to Rita Gam and achieved stardom. We may put together a list one day of the most interesting showbiz name changes—Diana Fluck to Diana Dors, Archibald Leach to Cary Grant, Willis Van Schaack to Lili St. Cyr, Ingeborg Klinkerfuss to Kaaren Verne, et al. We kind of just made a list there, didn’t we? Well, a longer list. Or maybe that notion will go into the giant bin of forgotten ideas for posts never brought to fruition.
The point is, in Hollywood it can help to have a catchy name. It isn’t an absolute rule, but without a cool handle some aspirants feel hobbled right from the jump. Gam jumped into television to start, managed to fit in some movies, but was more of a small screen star, appearing in shows like Mannix, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Rockford Files. Despite a pretty extensive résumé we can’t recall seeing her in anything except the classic detective drama Klute. We’ll watch that again, because it’s good, and we’ll see what else we can dig up. These shots were made to promote the 1954 drama Night People. Gam and her gams will return.
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, along with his team Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first person to reach the South Pole. After a celebrated career, Amundsen eventually disappears in 1928 while returning from a search and rescue flight at the North Pole. His body is never found.
1944—Velez Commits Suicide
Mexican actress Lupe Velez, who was considered one of the great beauties of her day, commits suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. In her note, Velez says she did it to avoid bringing shame on her unborn child by giving birth to him out of wedlock, but many Hollywood historians believe bipolar disorder was the actual cause. The event inspired a 1965 Andy Warhol film entitled Lupe.
1958—Gordo the Monkey Lost After Space Flight
After a fifteen minute flight into space on a Jupiter AM-13 rocket, a monkey named Gordo splashes down in the South Pacific but is lost after his capsule sinks. The incident sparks angry protests from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but NASA says animals are needed for such tests.
1968—Tallulah Bankhead Dies
American actress, talk show host, and party girl Tallulah Bankhead, who was fond of turning cartwheels in a dress without underwear and once made an entrance to a party without a stitch of clothing on, dies in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia complicated by emphysema.
1962—Canada Has Last Execution
The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, “Some consolation.â€
1964—Guevara Speaks at U.N.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing the nation of Cuba, speaks at the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. His speech calls for wholesale changes in policies between rich nations and poor ones, as well as five demands of the United States, none of which are met.
2008—Legendary Pin-Up Bettie Page Dies
After suffering a heart attack several days before, erotic model Bettie Page, who in the 1950s became known as the Queen of Pin-ups, dies when she is removed from life support machinery. Thanks to the unique style she displayed in thousands of photos and film loops, Page is considered one of the most influential beauties who ever lived.
