 Sometimes you run out of superlatives. 
Recently we mentioned, more or less in passing, that Vonetta McGee was very beautiful. We'd already featured her as a femme fatale years ago, but our recent name drop got us thinking about sharing another image or two. We expected photos to be hard to find. Interest acts as a filtering mechanism, and since there are not many people percentagewise who save African American actresses' old photos and slides, fewer who digitize them, and still fewer who place them on their websites, all these factors converge and the result is lowered representation. We see it every day. There are significant and talented black actresses with extensive filmographies, yet they have only a fraction the number of surviving promo photos of non-black actresses who made only a few movies. For that reason we were pretty happy when we not only found the above shot of McGee during her ingénue period, twenty-three years old, but a marvelous shot. A wonderful shot. It was made when she debuted in the 1968 Italian comedy Faustina, and this is what we meant when we said she was very beautiful. After a successful career appearing in films ranging from trendy blaxploitation such as Blacula to high budget features such as The Eiger Sanction, the magnificent McGee died today in 2010. 
 Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck wrote an unpublished werewolf novel.
 In what qualifies around here as blockbuster news, it turns out literary master John Steinbeck wrote a werewolf novel. Rejected by publishers in 1930, it's currently under lock and key at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. The Steinbeck estate has so far declined to authorize its release. Titled Murder at Full Moon, it's reportedly a 233-page typescript, and as a bonus contains a couple of illustrations drawn by Steinbeck. We'd love to read it. We'd enjoy comparing it to Guy Endore's werewolf novel The Werewolf of Paris, which was published in 1933. But if we had to guess, we'd say the public will have wait a long while for Steinbeck's moon tale to rise. What is there to gain when his reputation is pure platinum and his books—particularly The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, which are required reading for students the length and breadth of the U.S.—still sell? But you never know. The smell of money affects people like the smell of blood affects werewolves. Even when they're already full they want another bite.
 Wow! He's really mastered some hot licks! 
There's something special about how a great talent handles his instrument, right? It becomes an extension of him. A real virtuoso uses every technique in his repertoire—double and triple tonguing, lip trills, circular breathing, and of course quick valve water emptying—until it all comes together in one climactic crescendo. By the way, if you don't know what quick valve water emptying is, well child, you better ask somebody. In the past most players were men, but of late there are plenty of women who blow masterfully. The best often do dates in the legendary Trumpet City. That place is tops... Um, yeah. 1961 on this, with Robert Bonfils art.
 Previously unknown Dashiell Hammett works to appear in crime fiction magazine The Strand. 
In an announcement bound to excite and intrigue pulp and literature fans the world over, magazine editor Andrew Gulli has slated for publication fifteen previously unknown Dashiell Hammett short stories. Gulli found the writings in the archives of the Harry Ransom Centre, a literary memorabilia storehouse based at the University of Texas, in Austin. Gulli says he has no idea why the works ended up at the Ransom Centre, and he can offer no historical context for the works, since all are undated. He plans to publish the first of these new stories, entitled “So I Shot Him,” in his crime fiction magazine The Strand, with the others possibly to appear later as a book-length collection. Hammett’s many works include classics such as The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, and as a stylist he established many techniques that later became foundational in pulp writing. As far as the quality of the new works goes, Gulli has said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper that, “There are some very, very good pieces of fiction here. Some of them are classic Hammett and fit in with the style we know and others are very different and go off to places that were a different direction for him.”
 Everyone knows it’s a game of inches. 
It’s Super Bowl Sunday again over in the States, and we expect the key to today’s game to be penetration. Repeated penetration. If either side fails to apply significant pressure, look for the passers to go deep early and often, but also expect both to use their tight ends. Once in the red zone, it’s crucial to stick it in for seven, because we all know three just ain't gonna cut it. Whoever gets up first will have an advantage, since coming from behind can be a stiff test unless the other side mishandles some balls. We’re thinking that after the last couple of very tight ones, this year’s match up could be a bit of an anti-climax. Expect the thing to get blown wide open in the third fourth. Colts Saints by two touches.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1960—Adolf Eichmann Is Captured
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents abduct fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who had been living under the assumed name and working for Mercedes-Benz. Eichman is taken to Israel to face trial on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He is found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962, and is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court. 2010—Last Ziegfeld Follies Girl Dies
Doris Eaton Travis, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, dies at age 106. The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. Inspired by the Folies Bergères of Paris, they enjoyed a successful run on Broadway, became a radio program in 1932 and 1936, and were adapted into a musical motion picture in 1946 starring Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, and Lena Horne. 1924—Hoover Becomes FBI Director
In the U.S., J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a position he retains until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. But he also used the agency to grind a number of personal axes and far exceeded its legal mandate to amass secret files on political and civil rights leaders. Because of his abuses, FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms. 1977—Joan Crawford Dies
American actress Joan Crawford, who began her show business career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, but soon became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, dies of a heart attack at her New York City apartment while ill with pancreatic cancer. 1949—Rainier Becomes Prince of Monaco
In Monaco, upon upon the death of Prince Louis II, twenty-six year old Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi, aka Rainier III, is crowned Prince of Monaco. Rainier later becomes an international household name by marrying American cinema sweetheart Grace Kelly in 1956. 1950—Dianetics is Published
After having told a gathering of science fiction writers two years earlier that the best way to become a millionaire was to start a new religion, American author L. Ron Hubbard publishes Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The book is today one of the canonical texts of Scientology, referred to as "Book One", and its publication date serves as the first day of the Scientology calendar, making today the beginning of year 52 AD (After Dianetics).
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