RADIO DAYS

Cinema killed the Radio star.

We found this unusual magazine in Bayonne, France last year and picked it up because of its striking cover star, who happens to be French actress Simone Renant. She had a fifty-year career in cinema but we were not aware she also worked in radio. But it says right on the cover she could be heard in Les sept mensonges de l’impératrice, aka The Seven Lies of the Empress.

Radio is filled with broadcast schedules, pages of them for the entirety of France, from metro Paris to Nice to Bretagne. But Renant’s presence hints at cinema overlap and, indeed, film star Rita Hayworth makes an appearance too. And because readers cannot live on celebrity alone, there’s a bit of politics, opera, dance and, of course, boobs.

This issue appeared today in 1947, which is why 47 appears in the name. The next year’s issues had a 48, and so forth, from 1943 until the publication faded away in the early 1950s, when dramatic radio was also on the way out. We have a few scans below.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.

1969—Allende Meteorite Falls in Mexico

The Allende Meteorite, the largest object of its type ever found, falls in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The original stone, traveling at more than ten miles per second and leaving a brilliant streak across the sky, is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile. But by the time it hit the Earth it had broken into hundreds of fragments.

Another uncredited artist produces another beautiful digest cover. This time it's for Norman Bligh's Waterfront Hotel, from Quarter Books.
Above is more artwork from the prolific Alain Gourdon, better known as Aslan, for the 1955 Paul S. Nouvel novel Macadam Sérénade.
Uncredited art for Merle Miller's 1949 political drama The Sure Thing.

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