vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Prostitution was an obsession with mid-century publishers and moviemakers. We keyword for it on Pulp Intl., and if you click that link you’ll be directed to interminable diversion. This low-rent cover for Jan Bennett’s sleazer Night Women adds to the always growing subject. It came from Magenta Books in 1965, with art by an unknown. A few of our favorite prostie paperback covers are (yes, we’re going to link yet again to both Avenue of Pimps and Street of Ho’s) here, here, and here.
American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history.
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity because of the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West’s considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased after the controversy.
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever executed.
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House That Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It eventually closes in September 2008 upon being replaced by a new Yankee Stadium.
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.
