vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
French author Émile Zola gets a posthumous pulp makeover for his novel Fatal Intimacy, which appeared as above in 1960 but was originally published in 1868 as Madeleine Férat. Though Zola was a literary icon (and an interesting public figure), this is an early novel and it’s not as far away from cheap paperback fiction as you might suspect. The art is by Donald E. Green.
Two wealthy University of Chicago students named Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks, motivated by no other reason than to prove their intellectual superiority by committing a perfect crime. But the duo are caught and sentenced to life in prison. Their crime becomes known as a “thrill killing”, and their story later inspires various works of art, including the 1929 play Rope by Patrick Hamilton, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film of the same name.
The Saturday Evening Post publishes Norman Rockwell’s painting “Boy with Baby Carriage”, marking the first time his work appears on the cover of that magazine. Rockwell would go to paint many covers for the Post, becoming indelibly linked with the publication. During his long career Rockwell would eventually paint more than four thousand pieces, the vast majority of which are not on public display due to private ownership and destruction by fire.
A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe’s breathy rendition of “Happy Birthday,” which does more to fuel speculation that the two were sexually involved than any actual evidence.
In the U.S., Canadian born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach, California in the middle of the afternoon. She is initially thought to have drowned, but on June 23, McPherson stumbles out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people named Steve and Mexicali Rose. However, it soon becomes clear that McPherson’s tale is fabricated, though to this day the reasons behind it remain unknown.
In Britain, scores of youths are jailed following a weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers in Brighton and other south coast resorts. Mods listened to ska music and The Who, wore suits and rode Italian scooters, while Rockers listened to Elvis and Gene Vincent, and rode motorcycles. These differences triggered the violence.
