SHIP WRECKERS

Everyone on the boat is cruising for a misusing.

The breezy Robert McGinnis (so say several online sources) cover art of a femme fatale sexily shedding a commander’s jacket belies the fact that Peter Baker’s 1967 novel Cruise is a deadly serious ensemble drama featuring seriously flawed characters that wear on the nerves from the moment they board. It’s only a rule of thumb that you must create a likeable character or two for your novel, but only the best writers can ignore it and succeed. Lolita, Gone Girl, and American Psycho might be examples. Baker is no Nabokov or Ellis, and when writers of lesser ability break rules of thumb they can break entire books. You won’t quite want the 33,500 ton cruise ship Queen Dee to sink, but you’ll wish a few people tumbled overboard.

Baker is actually a better writer than many. And his characters aren’t accidentally intolerable—there was a plan: Highsmithesque portraiture of upper class discontent and relational disfunction. His most palatable creations are Pamela Westcott and her son Richard, thirty-eight and eighteen respectively, widow and naïf, both seeking something they can’t quite define among more resolute and worldly passengers, on a Mediterranean pleasure voyage from Southampton to Beirut and back. Pamela hooks up with Chief Officer David Welch (who’s so terrible that for pleasure he brutally beats a hippie stowaway), while Richard has, first, a gay flirtation with an American theater student, then a crush on a French beauty named Simone, then a fling with a rich older lady.

Most of the action is aboard ship, but some of it happens in the ports of call—Southampton, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Athens, Izmir, Beirut, Rhodes, Naples—in that order. That would have been a scintillating real-life cruise at the time, but as a piece of fiction, the selfish, mean, and entitled passengers give the book the feel of a seagoing season of The White Lotus sans humor. Yet after a slow and taxing start, a funny thing happens on the way across the Med—the story starts to click, but only in pieces. By the end we were invested in learning how it all would turn out because the characters of Pamela, Richard, and his crush John grew on us.

We’d wager that Cruise is probably too ponderous for most readers. About one third of its omniscient interior musings could have been jettisoned. Patience is often rewarded in fiction. But time is precious. For those not impressed by its story the book may still have value—and that would be as travelogue. It’s enjoyably detailed on that score. If you’ve visited any of Queen Dee‘s stops you’ll be fascinated by Baker’s depiction of them from a lifetime ago. Maybe that isn’t the strongest endorsement for a novel, but it’s something. Baker is a good writer without an innate sense of conciseness, nor an editor cruel enough to do the job for him. But we’re glad to have gone on the trip.

It's a movie with the power to make a blind man see.


We may never run out of beautiful Japanese posters. Today we have one for the goofball spy thriller Hyappatsu hyakuchu: Ogon on me. The title on this one gets complicated. It was retitled in English Booted Babe, Busted Boss, and mostly referred to as such. Yeah, pretty bad title. In Japanese it was known as 100発100中 黄金の眼, which means “golden eyes 100 shots out of 100.” That title was shortened in English to just Golden Eyes. We like that better than Booted whatever.

The film was a sequel to Hyappatsu hyakuchu, known in English as Ironfinger. We had somewhat high expectations for this, considering Ironfinger was pretty entertaining in that stupidly funny sort of way. Akira Takarada stars again as Andy Hoshino. He goes to Beirut, is asked by a little girl to kill her father’s killer, and is paid for his services with the only currency the girl has—a silver dollar. Neither of them knows that this coin is in reality a priceless Spanish gold medallion covered in silver.

Soon numerous parties are chasing Andy around Beirut, and later Tokyo, trying to retrieve this priceless artifact. The main pursuer is the arch-villain Mr. Stonefeller, a blind Emilio Largo clone (think Thunderball) whose hearing is so precise he can pick foes off with a sniper rifle. So why isn’t the movie called Golden Ears? Just doesn’t have that snap to it, does it? We guess Toho Company called it Golden Eyes because the villain wants the gold so badly, therefore he has eyes for it, so to speak. Best guess.

The plot is less important than the gags here, and there are a couple of good ones, particularly during a gunfight in which Andy kills several foes by throwing a machine gun at them, then shooting the trigger of the machine gun in mid-air, thereby causing it to fire, plowing the bad guys under like weeds. But still, the sophomore jinx is a real thing, and Golden Eyes has diminished sequel syndrome. It’s watchable, though, if likely offensive to anyone of Lebanese descent. You’ll see what we mean. It premiered in Japan today in 1968.

Must dodge hook.

Must dodge hook. Must dodge hook.

Really must dodge hook!

Must dodge hook! Must dodge hook!

Oww! Motherfuck me!

Anyone got more shoe polish? Lebanese Brown if you have it. I ran out before I finished my ears.

The irony is he told me he’d learned he was being racist and came up here to wash it off in the bath. Ten more minutes and there’d have been no justification for this.

I can hit anything with this pistol.

Including d-flat. Here, listen. Isn’t that cool?

Wait until you hear Miss Tomoni sing, Mr. Stonefeller. This will blow your mind. She’s considered the Bob Dylan of Tokyo because of her incisive and politically relevant lyrics.

 
You’re right, she’s amazing. And though I’m blind, and technically shouldn’t be able to see her, I also find it incredible how she changes costumes multiple times mid-song like that.

Oh, that’s nothing. The midnight show she goes full frontal. Maybe your off-and-on vision will be on around then.

Room service, sir. You ordered two duck dinners?

Surprise! Duck à l’Agent Orange!

Gotta run! Hope you die! Go vegan! You can leave my tip on the nightstand!

Hi! Commercial Girl here. You haven’t seen me for a while, right? Hate to interrupt, but I’ve been called by the Pulp Intl. girlfriends to put a stop to this endless post. The Pulp guys are on virus lockdown and it’s making them a little loopy. But under threat of sexual boycott they’re done for today. See you soon!
There are 777 ways to make a bad 007 movie.

Above you see a Mario de Berardinis poster painted for the Italian spy thriller Agente segreto 777 – Operazione Mistero, known in English merely as Secret Agent 777. The plot of this revolves around a doctor’s cell regeneration process—i.e. he can bring people back to life, a miracle somehow made possible through nuclear physics. No, it didn’t make sense to us either. But all you need to know is that basically Agent 777 is a low rent James Bond rip-off with a touch of updated Frankenstein mixed in.

It’s as silly as it sounds, and has too many problems to enumerate, but we did enjoy the Beirut setting, and it rather amused us when a character spoke of going to the “Portuguese colonies to find his fortune.” Back then that meant going to Angola or Mozambique and extracting something of value that rightfully belonged to the local people—oil, antiquities, jewels, anything. The sequence struck us because at the time Agent 777 was extracting something of value from us—our patience. It premiered in Italy today in 1965.

Help! I’m trapped in this terrible film and I can’t get out!

Phantom actress puts men in their place.

We’re back to National Spotlite with a cover published today in 1968. The photo is of actress Carolyn Haynes, and a headline goes to actress Caroline Lee, who says she makes men crawl for her sexual favors. The money quote: “If women use their bodies the right way they can be the most powerful people on Earth.” A quote like that sounds suspiciously like it was fabricated by a man, and in fact while several Caroline Lees appear on IMDB, none fit the profile required to have done this interview—i.e. born sometime in the 1940s or possibly in 1950. National Spotlite is busted again. The editors simply could never have imagined a globally accessible actor database. We also did a search on Haynes and likewise learned she never existed

But some of the celebs are real. In Spotlite‘s “Dateline: The World” feature readers are treated to a photo of Chris Noel. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen her—eight years to be exact. Spotlite tells us she smashed a vase over the head of a nightclub employee when he tried to force his way into her dressing room in Sydney one night. “The man attempted to romance her but she spurned every overture he made. When he tried to use violence to get his way she spilt open his skull.” We found no mention of the incident in any other source, but we like the story for how it turns out. If her assailant had known anything at all about Chris Noel he’d have rememberd her publicity tours of Vietnam and realized she was one tough celeb.

“Dateline: The World” next regales readers with a tale out of Africa. “Cary Grant arrived in Nairobi to join a hunting safari and has been escorting two six-foot dark-skinned native girls to whatever cafes in town they can get into, and has caused quite a bit of controversy by doing so. Grant traded punches with a man in one spot when the gent took offense at Cary’s dates. Cary flattened the man, but the stranger rose to his feet flashing a knife and only the quick efforts of the bartender and cafe owner averted further trouble for the star. Cary and the girls fled while the others were subduing the knife wielder.”

Paris: “Juliette Prowse was detained the other night after she threw a make-up case through the window of a drug store. She had purchased some cosmetics at the American Drug on the Champs-Élysées, but brought the order back the same night. She claimed that she’d made a mistake and didn’t need the cosmetics. The salesman explained that he would exchange the merchandise or give Prowse credit, but no cash refund. Juliette roared out of the place. Outside she hurled her make-up case through the store’s front window. Two policemen saw her smash the window and nabbed her on the spot.


Beirut: “David Niven and wife Hjordis ran into an embarrassing situation in a night spot while making the cafe rounds in this Lebanese city. A belly dancer took such a fancy to David that she did her act for him alone. She even sat on his lap. The patrons objected to her performing for just one man and began to throw things at her and at Niven. David and Hjordis ran for the exits after he pushed the girl off his lap.”


Capri: “Noel Coward is nursing bruises on his face. He says he was attacked by two young men while he was out strolling one night. The muggers made off with a pair of cuff links given to him by Raquel Welch and a watch from Greta Garbo. Coward was found half-conscious and bleeding.”

You get the gist—celebs in trouble. Back during the heyday of tabloids Confidential had bellhops, bartenders, chauffeurs, maîtres d’hôtel, and cops by the hundreds phoning in hot tips, but Spotlite was never more than a second tier rag and could not have had the resources to uncover the above stories. Therefore the editors either made them up or lifted them from other tabloids. We suspect the latter—with the stories ginned up for entertainment value. Cary Grant in Nairobi with two Kenyan escorts? We’ll buy it. Grant risking his million dollar mug in a fistfight? Improbable. But the stories sure are fun. See more from National Spotlite by clicking here.

It could have been worse. They could have flown United.

This chaotic West German poster for Der söldner des syndikats caught our eye for a couple of reasons. One was its sheer garishness, and the other was because the unknown artist depicted diminutive Mickey Rooney all swoll up like a Marvel Comics superhero. It just screams cheeseball classic, so we had to check out the film, which is known in English as 24 Hours To Kill. When a plane makes an emergency landing in Beirut the flight crew learns that one of their number (Rooney, decidedly un-swoll and unheroic) is hunted by a criminal smuggling syndicate he’s double crossed. The repaired plane leaves in twenty-four hours, and the crew decide to protect Rooney until that time. Abandoning him is out, because he’s a pal, and going to the police is out, because they’d be stuck in Beirut for days or weeks, thus making the syndicate’s job easier.

So the plan is to protect Mickey Louse for a day and then jet—if they can manage it. What follows is a series of botched abductions worthy of Raiders of the Lost Ark, ornamented with location shooting in Byblos, Baalbeck, Casio Du Liban, and a Beirut long since reshaped by war and bulldozed for high rises and privatized resorts. Those locations possibly make the movie worthwhile all on their own, and other beautiful sights are provided by co-stars Helga Sommerfield and France Anglade. A minor ’60s thriller, this one feels like a television movie, which means the level of tension is not nearly high enough. Nor the level of action—there’s more on the poster than in the film. But even if the art misleads, the movie is entertaining enough. Made in English by the West German production company Grixflag Films Ltd., Der söldner des syndikats premiered in West Germany today in 1965.

Intimidating movie poster Mickey.

Not very intimidating movie Mickey.

Xenophobia: Don't leave home without it.

The above poster was made to promote the Japanese run of a West German sexploitation film that originally had the unwieldy title Die jungen Ausreißerinnen – Sex-Abenteuer deutscher Mädchen in aller Welt, which is sometimes shortened to just Die jungen Ausreißerinnen, or “the young runaways.” For distribution in English it was called Innocent Girls Abroad. It has nothing to do with Mark Twain’s similarly titled classic, but is of course a softcore romp done anthology style, with Doris Arden headlining as the main innocent. She doesn’t appear on the poster, though, save for in the lower lefthand corner. We suspect the Japanese distributors decided she wasn’t boobalicious enough, which just goes to show what they know, because Arden is spectacular by any measure.

Anyway, what we have here is a cautionary tale featuring beautiful young travelers and the pitfalls they encounter, slavery among them, with the various misadventures taking place in Hong Kong, London, Beirut, Paris and Rome. Arden gets the Beirut segment and it consists of her telling the local police her story: raped by her stepfather when she was fifteen, a runaway drifting from place to place, ending up in a harem where she becomes a sexual servant, enduring a year of bondage before her escape. Many sexploitation films are joyful or comical or contain messages of female empowerment—Die jungen Ausreißerinnen isn’t one of those. You’ve been warned. After opening in West Germany earlier in the year it played in Japan for the first time today in 1972.

Hollywood stars shine in the Paris of the Middle East.

Above are six beautiful covers for the magazine Thousand and One Nights, which was published out of Beirut, Lebanon, a city that was once known as the Paris of the Middle East. These issues are all circa mid-1930s, when the country was under French control. We don’t recognize all the actresses, but we can identify Jean Harlow in panel two and Mae West in panel four (no big trick there, since her name actually appears in English). You may remember we shared some covers from another magazine of the same name published in Japan. If you missed that, maybe click over there and have a look. It’s well worth it. As for the Lebanese Thousand and One Nights, we found about two dozen issues and they’re all quite interesting, especially the way the logo design changes each time. We’ll share more of these down the line. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.

1936—Crystal Palace Gutted by Fire

In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure.

1963—Warren Commission Formed

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However the long report that is finally issued does little to settle questions about the assassination, and today surveys show that only a small minority of Americans agree with the Commission’s conclusions.

1942—Nightclub Fire Kills Hundreds

In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the fashionable Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people. Patrons were unable to escape when the fire began because the exits immediately became blocked with panicked people, and other possible exits were welded shut or boarded up. The fire led to a reform of fire codes and safety standards across the country, and the club’s owner, Barney Welansky, who had boasted of his ties to the Mafia and to Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, was eventually found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Barye Phillips cover art for Street of No Return by David Goodis.
Assorted paperback covers featuring hot rods and race cars.
A collection of red paperback covers from Dutch publisher De Vrije Pers.

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