vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
The amazing woman you see in this unabashed frontal nude photo is Camella Donner, also known as Camella Thomas, a popular glamour model of the late 1970s and early 1980s. She appeared in Mayfair and other magazines, and managed one movie role, a blink-and-you-miss-her moment in 1983’s Octopussy. It was an effort the producers didn’t even bother to credit. But we give her all the credit in the world—if her loosely curled afro isn’t history’s best hair it sure comes close.
Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, performing his hit song “Don’t Be Cruel.” Ironically, a car accident prevented Sullivan from being present that night, and the show was guest-hosted by British actor Charles Laughton.
Star Trek, an American television series set in the twenty-third century and promoting socialist utopian ideals, premieres on NBC. The series is cancelled after three seasons without much fanfare, but in syndication becomes one of the most beloved television shows of all time.
U.S. President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office, which coincidentally happen to include all those associated with the Watergate scandal.
Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.
Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.
