We have to bring Pam Grier back every once in a while. This breezy shot currently making its way around the internet certainly ranks among the best promo images ever made of a classic figure. Whoever took this photo captured Grier in a seaside mode we've never seen before, and whoever originally uploaded it deserves thanks, but only partially—Grier deserves most of the credit just for being her. 

Pan American World Airways knew how to imbue travel with an aura of romance. It launched in the late 1920s with mail service from Key West to Havana, and quickly expanded to become a passenger airline. Business boomed—well heeled Americans took flights to Havana in droves in what became known as the Cocktail Circuit, escaping U.S. prohibition to enjoy a weekend of decadent nightclubs and gambling before returning in time for Monday's real world obligations. Soon Pan Am expanded service throughout Latin America and the world. It bought seaplanes to get around the problem of many cities not having proper airports. With the ability to use docking facilities, virtually no destination was inaccessible.

The company dubbed its seaplane fleet “clippers,” evoking the masted sailing ships of the oceangoing era, and their draw was not just their mobility but their luxury. Some say it was a different era of corporate governance, a time when the mandate in the commercial travel industry was to earn loyalty with good service rather than to blackmail customers into avoiding misery. This is partly true, but it's also important to remember that air travel was initially considered a luxury indulgence. It was with the advent of travel for the masses that airlines began to exchange services for profitably packing people in like sardines. In that sense, their priorities have not changed much in fifty years.

Pan Am soon began promoting its services with colorful posters, many of which were created by a talented artist named Mark von Arenburg. These prints, which promised to take passengers around the world by clipper, hung mainly in airports and travel agencies and gave passersby fantastic glimpses of faraway destinations—indeed, it's difficult to look at any of them without feeling the pull of the exotic wider world. The company produced hundreds of these promos in various styles and multiple languages, but for our purposes we're interested today only in the posters advertising travel on that elegant Pan Am clipper.

Over the years the fleet evolved from seaplanes to jets, and while all were called clippers, it's the lovely skyboats that are most fondly remembered—and which provided so many entertaining settings in old movies and pulp fiction. The posters you see below are scans of both originals and reproductions, and there are quite a few. Even so, it isn't a complete collection. Some of the most famous posters are so rare they simply can't be found online at the moment. While it's true that air travelers are mainly treated like cattle rather than customers today, and commercial flying is a form of voluntary torture, the destinations are still there to make those difficult hours in the air worthwhile. Let these posters inspire you.

Yes, it's Diane Webber on the cover of this Horwitz second edition of Carter Brown's No Future Fair Lady, and amazingly, she's fully clothed, a phenomenon we've never seen from the most famous nudist model of her generation. Looking closer, though, the dress could be painted on. Wouldn't surprise us. You don't become a nudist icon in the buttoned down 1950s by letting the Man tell you what to do. At any rate, this is yet another example of Horwitz using unlicensed (we suspect) celeb photos on their Carter Brown paperbacks. Since we feature a lot of tabloids on Pulp Intl., we have to point out that the protagonist in this story works for a tab called Smear. We love that. The copyright here is 1960, and we have several other examples of Horwitz celeb covers you can see by clicking this link.

This issue of Midnight published today in 1967 has a cover that's the opposite of the last one we shared, which was about the world's youngest mother. This one has the world's oldest mother, and goes for the double tabloid whammy by adding an underaged father to the mix. According to the sources we checked, the oldest pregnancy confirmed by birth records occurred at age 70, a feat shared by three women, all of them, weirdly, from India. So this cover is not only untrue, but because it's fiction it casts doubt upon the previous claim from Midnight about the world youngest mom. We already knew that, though. Still, we do hope to be getting it on at eighty-six. Chances are slim, but it's a worthy goal. 

We don't share many photo covers, but this novelization caught our eye because it's one of the better images we've seen of Cleopatra Jones star Tamara Dobson. As we've mentioned before, promo images for blaxploitation performers, with a few exceptions, tend to be rare. Dobson was one of the first we ever featured, way back in 2009, and we're sharing this image because Cleopatra Jones opened in the U.S. today in 1973. The screenplay for the film, by the way, was co-written by Max Julien, who was the star of the blaxploitation classic The Mack. The guy was multi-talented. So was Dobson—the 6' 2” former model could look both lethal and deadly. 

Italian actress and television personality Gabriella Farinon relaxes with a cool refreshment in this beautiful shot taken in 1975 on a beach in Mo'orea, Îles de la Société, French Polynesia. Her movies include the vampire flick Et mourir de plaisir, aka Blood & Roses (discussed here), and 1960's Space Men, aka Assignment: Outer Space. We love this shot, not least because it reminds us of our local beach, luckily just a few blocks away. By the time you read this that's where we'll be. 

Mike Power, aka the Atomic Man, originated with the Hasbro toy company in the mid-1970s as part of its G.I. Joe Adventure Team. Power was born disabled. He spent his life developing atomic parts for his body, including a leg that helped him run 200 miles per hour, an arm that lifted 10,000 pounds, an eye that could see through six feet of solid steel, and an atomic heart to help him handle all the exertion. As you have probably guessed, Hasbro created him as competition for Kenner's Six Million Dollar Man action figure, but this one was going for around sixty dollars. We've seen cheaper ones that come without a box.

Power was also low rent in the sense that he never had a television show like the Six Million Dollar Man, but Hasbro put out a comic, and those are collector's items today. There were actually two versions of Power. Here you see the British version, which was manufactured by Palitoy, and the main difference was Power's plastic hair was replaced by a flocked hairdo that looked like a white guy ’fro. Below you see what Power is packing under his jumpsuit (“Daddy, why doesn't he have a wiener?” “Well son, that's because Atomic Man had it cut off when he became what's called a eunuch. Bled like a pig, he did.”). You can see a couple more entries on vintage dolls here and here. And if you're into futuristic toy ray guns, check here.

There's nothing quite like carny pulp, and this one has one of the better tag lines in sleaze history. The basic idea here is innocent Curtis Bryan joins a carnival only to find it a hotbed of sex, sin, and spouse swapping peopled by lesbian trapeze artists, a sex freak equestrienne, and more. Pretty soon he's in danger of being corrupted by all the crazy goings-on. The tagline: Enter normal... exit abnormal... That is inspired. The artwork is inspired too. It's by the uniquely great Eric Stanton, and the copyright is 1965.