 If she wants the money she has to want the money shot. 
We've shown you a lot of Japanese promo posters for U.S. x-rated movies, and the reason for that is the Japanese promos are artful and interesting. The stateside promos, not so much. This one is an exception. It was made for 1978's Soft Places, which starred Annette Haven in the story of a young widow whose husband's will specifies that she can't come into her inheritance unless she allows a bunch of men to come into her. Well, not really. This is porn. Instead they come in other places, including a glass of Champagne. Anyway, since Haven was not a particularly good sex partner, her hubby's dying wishes dictate that she experience every known sexual kink in order to free her from her numerous inhibitions. Haven, apart form being nice looking, can actually act a little, but this is still porn, which means ultimately it's pretty stupid plotwise. But we can look at Haven all day. That is, as long as the Pulp Intl. girlfriends don't catch us. If you're interested, you can see Soft Places on numerous websites online. It premiered in the U.S.—yes, a real premiere in a real cinema—today in 1978. 
 It's the cloche that makes the woman. 
Bette Davis is wearing a cloche in this elegant promo shot, knitted in such a way that it looks a bit like a brain. At least to us. This is actually appropriate, because Davis was considered one of Hollywood's brainy set. It couldn't have been easy for her. She said intelligence was a hinderance for women in Hollywood—and the world in general—in the sense that it generated resistance from entrenched male authority. She commented in a 1965 interview that there was “deep resentment from the male side of the business.” She didn't let it stop her though, and became one of the industry's biggest stars on her own terms. We don't have a date on this image, but it's an early one, probably from around 1933.
 Currents and caves are bad enough, but lies can drag you into really dangerous waters.  
Last week we talked about the 1959 drama Zoku-zoku-Kindan no suna: Akai pantsu, third film in the Shochiku Co. franchise sometimes referred to as the Underwater Series. You know we're sticklers for talking about movies on their premiere dates, which is why today we're looking at Zoku kindan no suna, which opened in Japan today in 1958. In the west the movie was known as Forbidden Sands or The Prohibited Man's Sand, and like the others in the series deals with the loves and troubles of an ama—a female skin diver. Two bank robbers steal seven million yen, which we think is like forty or fifty bucks, and hide out on an island peopled by amas and their families. The crooks pretend to be a marine biology professor and his assistant, and they don scuba gear and hide the cash in some underwater caves known as the Dragon's Caves—a name which just screams trouble. They're convinced the treasure is inaccessible, but these amas are really good, and one in particular has no trouble at all making especially long dives. One of the crooks takes a shine to her, and warns her to stay out of the caves because they're dangerous, but the shine is mutual, so surprise surprise, as a gift she decides to swim down there to find rare specimens for his phony marine research. Yes, theft is one thing, but lies are a whole other bucket of starfish. Zoku kindan no suna is a recommendable flick, but be forewarned that if you're in the States it might be even harder to find than that loot in the Dragon's Caves. But at least you can enjoy the posters. We aren't done with this series, so keep an eye out for another installment in a bit.
    
 This Umbrella doesn't offer much in the way of protection. 
This photo shows the detonation of a U.S. nuclear device codenamed Umbrella, set off on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands as part of the Hardtack test series, and specifically designed to test radiation contamination on ships exposed to underwater nuclear blasts. The eight kiloton explosion threw a column of water 5,000 feet high, along with whatever unlucky fish, dolphins, and whales happened to be in the vicinity. Just more collateral damage in the ongoing arms race, and certainly not the last. The bomb went off today in 1958.
 A future so bright it still casts a shadow today. 
Berlin to New York in one hour! 190 mph with ball-wheel train! Big things to come! These covers of Science and Mechanics magazine, all published during the 1930s and 1940s, tout a future of endless invention, with stability and prosperity, high productivity and infinite possibility for all. And they're even more more amazing when you consider that this was the assumption these magazines made even through the Great Depression and a global war. Does anyone really still believe in a bright shiny future for all the world? We seriously doubt it.
Take Elon Musk's Hyperloop as an example. Musk claims his tube transport system might move people coast to coast at airliner speeds for the price of a bus ticket. That's big thinking Science and Mechanics style. But his critics say it's insane to think three thousand miles of track will go unsabotaged in today's world. They say the security cost alone of protecting that much infrastructure would completely negate any possibility of journeys costing the price of a bus ticket. They point out that big plans rely not only on scientific know how, but political, economic, and social stability, a trifecta of items lacking in today's America.
And the thing is all those critics are right. It really is hard to imagine 600 mph ground transport being safe. And the pocket sized price sounds—frankly—too altruistic to be true. Musk isn't going to charge people through their noses for his miracle train? Really? Such gut reactions say everything about the age in which we live. But in Science and Mechanics every place was stable, people everywhere would be prosperous enough to partake in the fruits of progress, and cynicism was nowhere in sight. We have thirteen covers for you today, and you can see our other uploads along these lines here and here.            
 Let's trade. You give me what's in your hand and I'll give you what's in my pants.  
The cover for this Lion Books edition of Jim Thompson's The Golden Gizmo is as quirky as Thompson's prose. The title of the book has a double meaning. A gizmo is a special ability, a gift. If you had a sense for knowing when someone was bluffing at poker, you'd say, “My gizmo told me he had nothing.” Or if you had a knack for meeting beautiful women, you'd say, “My gizmo kicked in as soon as I walked into the party.” The main character's gizmo is the ability to sniff out scenarios that lead to profit, which comes in handy in his work as a freelance gold buyer. But there's a literal gizmo here as well—a priceless gold watch that he steals by accident. In the end both gizmos cause him no end of trouble, and the question is whether he can get out with his hide intact. The story is enlivened by the main character's fiery alcoholic femme fatale wife Elaine. Strange, but pretty good. The strikingly pretty cover art is uncredited, sadly.
 When you can move like Astaire, nobody is out of your league. 
Only in the movies could a 150 pound broomstick like Fred Astaire score a babe like Rita Hayworth. Or maybe we're not giving him enough credit. He was an amazing dancer, and we know that counts for a lot. Also, Hayworth made it with Sinatra and he was tiny too. So forget what we said. She liked them small. Anyway, the image above is from the rear of a copy of the Portuguese newspaper O Século Ilustrado, and it's a promo for the musical romance You Were Never Lovelier. We've watched it a couple of times, and it's a nice flick set in Buenos Aires telling the story of a very picky Hayworth refusing to marry any of the many handsome and rich men around her. When she meets Astaire she thinks he's a pest—until she sees him glide around the room. We recommend the movie. It's as fun as this photo makes it look. To add to the fun even more, we have a promo image from the film below, and by the way, let's never forget that Hayworth was a professional level dancer too. Check here for proof. 
 Poke around inside National Informer and there's no telling what you'll find. 
Today we have another National Informer from a water damaged batch we rescued last year. This issue delivers the usual goods—or bads, depending on your point of view—including breast fondling techniques for men, sex fantasies women are ashamed to talk about, and why married couples should consider the “pro's and con's” of swapping. With all the sex stories here, the few attempts to be a real newspaper come across as jokes, such as when editors pose the question of whether hot dogs cause cancer. Hot dogs? What next? An exposé on the annual Chicopee Kielbasa Festival? Stick to what you're good at, we say. And Informer is good at smut.
Of the smut in this issue, we're partial to the centerspread article on sex resorts. Informer reports that this is a growing trend in the liberal European countries, then claims even Africa is getting in on the act: “There is a little country called Gambia, in West Africa, that has only 300,000 people, three hotels, and a growing tourist boom. The big attraction about Gambia is that the government officially closes its eyes to all goings-on. That's why Gambia has become the IN place for Swedes who come to frolic nude along its sparking white beaches.”
Gambia as a Swede swinger's paradise circa 1972 is news to us, but checking online, it certainly looks worth a visit. White beaches? Plenty of those. White people? Thin on the ground. Perfect, because we prefer friendly locals any day of the week over hoards of backpack lugging foreigners. Elsewhere in Informer, one of the issue's models looks familiar. Didn't the woman in the ad directly below appear—frontally nude with a Mona Lisa smile—in Informer's October 1972 issue? Decide for yourself. We have eighteen scans below and many more tabloids to share going forward. If you like this sort of thing check our tabloid index at this link.                 
 Never try to copy the uncopyable. 
U.S. born actress Barbara Lang was one of many actresses promoted as a Marilyn Monroe type, but it was wishful thinking. She only looked like Monroe in shots like this upnose angle from a 1957 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promo. However, Lang was beautiful and talented in her own right and went on to star mainly on television, including on series such as 77 Sunset Strip and The Thin Man. After a short career and a turbulent personal life she died in Los Angeles in 1982 aged fifty-four.
 Hmm. Should I be mostly impossible me today, or should I go with completely intolerable me? 
In real life everyone has secrets, and they're almost always pointless and tawdry. Not true in mid-century literature, where the secrets are always deadly. In 1950's False Face, a biographer decides to write about a society woman who died in a car crash, and discovers her past to be a labyrinthine trail leading from her oversexed teenage years, to her time as a Chicago gang moll, to her stripping career, and eventually to her to final, respectable incarnation. All her past iterations were under different identities to hide the truth, and now as the writer puts the final pieces together, he comes to have questions about her death—questions it seems some mysterious person is out to prevent him asking. The book was written by Leslie Edgley, who had a small bibliography along with some television credits before fading from the literary scene. He also wrote as Robert Bloomfield and Brook Hastings, the latter in partnership with his wife Mary Edgley. This edition of False Face is from Handi Books and the cover art is by unknown.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1908—Tunguska Explosion Occurs
Near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia, a large meteoroid or comet explodes at five to ten kilometers above the Earth's surface with a force of about twenty megatons of TNT. The explosion is a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic blast, knocks over an estimated 80 million trees and generates a shock wave estimated to have been 5.0 on the Richter scale. 1971—Soviet Cosmonauts Perish
Soviet cosmonauts Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski and Viktor Patsayev, who served as the first crew of the world's first space station Salyut 1, die when their spacecraft Soyuz 11 depressurizes during preparations for re-entry. They are the only humans to die in space (as opposed to the upper atmosphere). 1914—Rasputin Survives Assassination Attempt
Former prostitute Jina Guseva attempts to assassinate Grigori Rasputin in his home town of Pokrovskoye, Siberia by stabbing him in the abdomen. According to reports, Guseva screamed "I have killed the Antichrist!" But Rasputin survived until being famously poisoned, shot, bludgeoned, and drowned in an icy river two years later. 1967—Jayne Mansfield Dies in Car Accident
American actress and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield dies in an automobile accident in Biloxi, Mississippi, when the car in which she is riding slams underneath the rear of a semi. Rumors that Mansfield were decapitated are technically untrue. In reality, her death certificate states that she suffered an avulsion of the cranium and brain, meaning she lost only the top of her head. 1958—Workers Assemble First Corvette
Workers at a Chevrolet plant in Flint, Michigan, assemble the first Corvette, a two-seater sports car that would become an American icon. The first completed production car rolls off the assembly line two days later, one of just 300 Corvettes made that year.
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