vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above: a really nice oversaturated 1965 shot, minus all colors except red and adjacent shades, of Swedish star Ann-Margret, scanned from the West German/Austrian magazine Party. In the true-color images from this session the background is more burgundy, the faux fur blanket is in the purple-gray range, and Ann-Margret’s skin is a normal hue. But she’s still red hot in every frame.
The thieving business runs hot and cold, and it reaches freezing depths when your girlfriend starts giving you a hard time about your earnings. Actually, let’s not restrict that to thieving. It’s true whatever your chosen field happens to be. John Trinian’s Scratch a Thief was published in 1961 as an Ace Double Novel with Chester Warwick’s My Pal, The Killer. Scratch a Thief later became a movie with Alain Delon and Ann-Margret in the leads, and at that time was retitled Once a Thief and credited to Trinian’s pseudonym Zekail Marko. In reality, he was neither Trinian nor Marko, but Marvin Schmoker. So, you can understand the name changes. High school must have been hell for the guy. We haven’t read him yet but we’ll get around to it. And maybe to Chester Warwick too. You never know. But we’ll for sure get around to the movie.
We don’t think of Swedish actress Ann-Margret as a poster girl for soul music, but a South Korean label called the Oscar Record Co. thought differently and decided to plop her on the cover of their 1971 compilation disc Soul. Oscar wasn’t the only label to do this. In fact, it wasn’t even the only label from South Korea to do it. Tae Do, Top Hit, Paramount, and Joong Ahng all borrowed Ann-Margret to front compilation discs too.
But this particular platter is probably the best of the lot. It has Tom Jones. Johnny Rivers, Wilson Pickett, The Animals doing “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” Mitch Ryder, The Rolling Stones doing “Satisfaction” and “Paint It Black,” Cliff Richard, James Brown, and The Mamas and Papas doing “California Dreamin’,” our personal favorite of the extensive offerings. You also get two songs from The Supremes, so all in all, it’s a top quality collection.
The cover was posted last month at the album art blog lpcoverlover.com, a worthwhile stop for vintage vinyl art. Their scan was a little crooked, so we squared it up, separated the two Ann-Margret images, and uploaded them below. We kept the full cover scan at large size, so if you want it you’ll find that it’s 2500 pixels wide, pretty much twice the size of an actual LP sleeve, suitable for framing. Help yourself, and thank lpcoverlover.
Once a Thief opens with a San Francisco nightclub drummer playing a cracking solo, cymbal crashes synched to quick edits, and we immediately think we’re in for some sort of revolutionary beat generation noir, with the edgy rhythms and nervous energy that idea entails. But the movie quickly subsides to conventional pacing, telling the story of a former thief gone straight suspected of a recent murder, and the cop determined to put him away—guilty or innocent. Alain Delon plays crook-turned-family man Eddie, and Ann-Margret is his wife Kristine. Even if the movie doesn’t live up to its jazzy opening, getting Sweden’s hottest actress and France’s hottest actor together should be a can’t-miss proposition.
Though Eddie is innocent of the murder, police harassment costs him his job. But when you’re broke you can always count on family—to make things worse, that is. Eddie’s criminal brother shows up and wants help with a bank robbery. After a few fraternal preliminaries, Eddie decides to partner up with his erratic bro, which is when his troubles really start, because his darker nature emerges and it isn’t a pretty sight. Ann-Margret, working from the hysteria-as-acting playbook, is not pleased with these developments and over-emotes her displeasure at every opportunity. Even if criminal conspiracy doesn’t do Eddie in, marital strife might.
Once a Thief oozes cool, but in the end it’s a middling heist drama that asks a bit too much of its principals. It didn’t do well in 1965, and we suspect it’ll be the least liked offering at Noir City. Audiences may respond to a few aspects, though: there are some nice San Fran exteriors, Lalo Schifrin’s soundtrack is top notch, and character actor John Davis Chandler knocks his role of the druggy hepcat villain Jimmy Sargatanas out of the park, over the promenade, and into McCovey Cove. His line, “I don’t dig women,” paired with a sneer and a fatal gunshot, will probably bring the house down. As for Delon and Ann-Margret, well, at least they look good.
Mexican-born serial killer Juan Vallejo Corona is convicted of the murders of 25 itinerant laborers. He had stabbed each of them, chopped a cross in the backs of their heads with a machete, and buried them in shallow graves in fruit orchards in Sutter County, California. At the time the crimes were the worst mass murders in U.S. history.
Harper Lee’s racially charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. The book is hailed as a classic, becomes an international bestseller, and spawns a movie starring Gregory Peck, but is the only novel Lee would ever publish.
As part of the nuclear tests codenamed Operation Dominic, the United States detonates a one megaton bomb on Australian controlled Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. The island was a location for a series of American and British nuclear tests, and years later lawsuits claiming radiation damage to military personnel were filed, but none were settled in favor in the soldiers.
The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.
Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.
