 Once she learned to stop using her hands she graduated from masturbation to PhDbation. 
Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, was very good at quasi-sexual cover illustrations, which is no surprise considering he was one of France's top nude pin-up artists and made a point of flaunting a hedonistic lifestyle. The last front we shared from him featured a girl seeming to fondle her own breasts, and on this one for Henry Cerda's Les tourments de la volupté we have a woman who—we don't know what she's doing, but it probably involves a lot of clenching and unclenching. This cover is a winner. The colors are nice, the pose is extremely suggestive, and the rapturous facial expression is perfect. In addition to all that the title translates to, “the tortures of pleasure,” so there's zero doubt you're dealing with an erotic novel here. Maybe if we read it carefully we too can achieve hands-free ecstasy. Oh, the multi-tasking we could do.
 They're as real as ink printed on paper can be. 
Above is the cover of a fun vintage nudie magazine called Mirage, made in London by an outfit known as Swanedge Publications. We like the name of the magazine. Glamour photography implies the ephemeral. You know what else is ephemeral here? Pubic hair. The muff-munching airbrush monster has struck again, removing the fuzzy bits and vaginal convolutions of a couple of models. Pubic regions as obscenity is something we talk about often here because we share a lot of Japanese nudes in which those areas are banned. The difference is that in Japan the models covered those parts in various clever ways so they still looked human. In the West underpaid guys in pre-press removed nether regions entirely and made the models sexless like Barbie dolls. We'll talk about this more later.
Mirage's cover star, who's typing in the nude very much the same way we write this website, is identified only as Anna. Inside the issue is a tri-panel centerfold of a model the editors call Alicia, and she's bracketed by other models named Wendy, Kismet, Jan, Ella, Sylvia, etc. All of those are professional names, we assume. Meanwhile the photographers work under probable pseudonyms too, we suspect, such as Don Pleasance and Len Humber. There's no copyright on the magazine, therefore only someone who was around at the time could say for sure when it appeared, and that leaves us out. However, the look of it says mid-1960s to us. It's a nice publication. There are more pages, but only so much scanning time in the world. Maybe we'll return here later and do a more thorough job.
           
 The cover art for Murder in the Wind changes like the weather.  
The copy we read of John D. MacDonald's natural disaster thriller Murder in the Wind a while back had a front painted by George Gross. The two covers you see above were painted by Bob Abbett and Robert McGinnis. Their art goes in different directions. Abbett's shows nothing related to bad weather but uses a dilapidated background to imply that his cover figure is stranded, while McGinnis went for an outdoor setting cut by slanting rain, also using a dilapidated house motif. Both efforts are excellent, and the book is good too, as we mentioned here.
 Shaft hit America and changed the game. 
We've discussed quite a few blaxploitation movies, but have neglected the 1971 thriller Shaft. What can you say about the granddaddy of them all, the movie that helped change Hollywood thinking about what viewpoints would sell? Many of the black oriented movies that came afterward were cash grabs, and for that reason most of them weren't good. No such problems exist with Shaft. It's fast, furious, and fun. Our viewing was a reminder that in addition to being a detective movie and a movie that centers black experiences, it's also a neo film noir in both execution and mood. Directed by acclaimed photographer and photo-journalist Gordon Parks, Shaft is gorgeous work, made mostly in actual locations around New York City, and sprinkled with symbology and visual metaphor right from the opening credits.
The character of Shaft is important in film history. Because the theme song is so widely heard most people know Shaft is a bad mother shut-your-mouth, but as the song also says, he's complicated. He lives in Greenwich Village in a bachelor pad decorated with modern art and filled with books. He's kind to children and helps people in need. He has feelings for his girlfriend but will not be tied down and is obliging toward other women who desire him. And he's a friend to any people who treat him with respect. This extends to his local bartender, who's gay and dispenses a familiar pat to Shaft's ass that we can assume isn't the first or last. A bad mother shut-your-mouth? For sure, but he's so much more. And likewise, Shaft is more than a detective movie. It's a cinematic achievement that entertains visually, intellectually, and viscerally. It's a must watch. It was first seen by the public at a special premiere in Detroit, Michigan today in 1971.              
 In pulp you're always on the wrong side of the tracks. 
We're train travelers. We love going places by that method. It's one of the perks of living in Europe. Therefore we have another cover collection for you today, one we've had in mind for a while. Many pulp and genre novels prominently feature trains. Normal people see them as romantic, but authors see their sinister flipside. Secrets, seclusion, and an inability to escape can be what trains are about. Above and below we've put together a small sampling of covers along those lines. If we desired, we could create a similar collection of magazine train covers that easily would total more than a hundred scans. There were such publications as Railroad Stories, Railroad Man's Magazine, Railroad, and all were published for years. But we're interested, as usual, in book covers. Apart from those here, we've already posted other train covers at this link, this one, this one, and this one. Safe travels.                          
 Venus shows her dark and light sides.  
Above are two versions of a piece of Alain Gourdon art first used on Yann R. Patrick’s Vénus des neiges by Éditions de l’Arabesque in 1955, then repurposed by Antwerp based Uitgeverij Eros for Mickey Spencer's Geen tijd voor Kusjes. Everyone's an aka here. Gourdon painted under the moniker Aslan, Patrick was really Jacques-Henri Juillet, and Spencer is an obvious pseudonym, though we don't for whom. Whether dark or light, this is lovely work.
 The most inhospitable season just got worse. 
Shelley Winters, née Shirley Schrift, was one of the top actresses in Hollywood for five decades. Her notable films are many, and include A Place in the Sun, Night of the Hunter, Lolita, Alfie, The Poseidon Adventure, and even Cleopatra Jones. The above photo sees her in moll mode and was made for her 1948 crime drama Larceny. It's yet another film we haven't seen, but we'll get to it.
 I'm begging you, baby. Plus, don't you realize virginity is an insult to mother nature? 
We didn't buy William Vaneer's, aka James W. Lampp's 1953 sleazer Sinful Island Vacation because some silly boy was trying to sell it for a hundred dollars, but we're always tempted by books with this premise because we've been on quite a few sinful island vacations. Our most sinful island: Roatán. And you thought we were going to say Santorini or Mallorca. Very sinful also. But we once got stuck on Roatán for a week when Honduras experienced one of its periodic convulsiónes. There's nothing like deadly political unrest to loosen people's inhibitions. We don't know on which island Vaneer's potboiler is set, but the rear cover refers to it as tropical, so it's a good bet it's in the Pacific somewhere. For our next sinful island vacation maybe we'll head out there.
 Meet the new fascists, same as the old fascists. 
Above is a blazingly colorful poster for Violence, starring Nancy Coleman and Sheldon Leonard, a curious little b-flick about Coleman's reporter character inflitrating a Los Angeles based fascist organization that calls itself United Defenders. The group is a fraud, run by man named True Dawson who uses incendiary populist rhetoric to sign up military veterans, while the organization exploits those same veterans by using their membership dues for secret aims. Coleman has gathered some damning evidence, but when she's tailed by fascist thugs her cab crashes, all her evidence burns up, and she comes out of the fiery accident with amnesia.
To compound the major complication that Coleman has now forgotten she's an undercover operative, United Defender member Michael O'Shea shows up in the hospital the next day and convinces her that he's her fiancée. Yipes. We should mention here that part of Coleman's clandestine work has involved romancing United Defenders' oily number two man Sheldon Leonard, but because the movie was made during the 1940s the directions that sticky subplot could go—esentially she's been passed from one man to another—never really materialize. Maybe it's better that way.
Once out of the hospital Coleman is turned into a spokesperson for United Defenders, but her bruised psyche doesn't take to it smoothly. She faints during a speech and is generally out of sorts. Meanwhile the wheels keep turning. The fascists cultivate dark money—literally dark, as a character promising a boatload of new capital appears only in shadows. It's clear by this point that the purpose of the group is to amass wealth and power. The vets are just window dressing, occasionally to be used as shock troops. Asked how he plans to control these dupes, True Dawson encapsulates his amoral aims with this: “We get 'em young and tough, the kind that's already wearing a chip on its shoulder. And then we'll prime them for the payoff. We'll prime 'em with hate. Hate for labor. Hate for management. Hate for the party that's in. Hate for the party that's out. We'll keep 'em so busy they won't have any time to [uncover the truth].”
Objectively, Violence is cheesy. Hell, even the poster is sort of cheesy, with Coleman, O'Shea, and Leonard looking more like an alternate Three Stooges than intrepid political operatives. But certain aspects of the movie are uncomfortably close to reality: the patriotic rhetoric relied upon by Dawson and his fascist lackeys, the exhortations to manhood designed to inflame the membership, the vocal support for workers while the group's actual aims are pro-corporate, and the harangues about what real America is supposed to be. Overall the movie is too b-level to compare to predictive masterpieces like 1976's Network, but it has its disconcerting flashes of insight just the same.
Obviously, Coleman has to get her memory back at some point, and to make that happen the movie relies upon the old screenwriting chestnut that a second blow on the head can fix amnesia brought on by a first. That second blow comes when Leonard accuses her of being a spy and slaps her around. The first slap is accompanied by the sound of a cymbal crash. Better than a glockenspiel, we guess. Another symphonic slap or two and Coleman goes down hard. When she awakens, her memory is restored and United Defenders again have a spy in their midst. Even so, you figure these badass fascists should be able to handle one nosy reporter.
We'll stop there to avoid more spoilers, but there's one additional minor plot twist we will divulge. Coleman never finds out who the dark money guy is. It seems like a nod to the fact that the string pullers, those corporate quasi-humans with evil aims, are rarely exposed, and certainly never punished. It's a point we liked, but in the end we can't call Violence a good movie—it's too cheap, too shallow, and ultimately minimizes its subject matter. But those few moments when its dialogue sounds like it came directly from 2023 politicians or cable news mouthpieces are highly, highly interesting. Maybe they even make the movie worth watching. Violence premiered today in 1947.    
 Oh, look who it is—the neglectful husband I've been hearing so much about. 
Above: a cover for Every Bed Her Own, by Don Elliott for Greenleaf Classics' imprint Leisure Books, 1966. Elliott, in this case, is actually sci-fi author Robert Silverberg, and the art is by Robert Bonfils, the titan of mid-century sleaze illustrators. This is another cover that fits with our collection of cheaters caught red-handed.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1926—Aimee Semple McPherson Disappears
In the U.S., Canadian born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach, California in the middle of the afternoon. She is initially thought to have drowned, but on June 23, McPherson stumbles out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people named Steve and Mexicali Rose. However, it soon becomes clear that McPherson's tale is fabricated, though to this day the reasons behind it remain unknown. 1964—Mods and Rockers Jailed After Riots
In Britain, scores of youths are jailed following a weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers in Brighton and other south coast resorts. Mods listened to ska music and The Who, wore suits and rode Italian scooters, while Rockers listened to Elvis and Gene Vincent, and rode motorcycles. These differences triggered the violence. 1974—Police Raid SLA Headquarters
In the U.S., Los Angeles police raid the headquarters of the revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army, resulting in the deaths of six members. The SLA had gained international notoriety by kidnapping nineteen-year old media heiress Patty Hearst from her Berkeley, California apartment, an act which precipitated her participation in an armed bank robbery. 1978—Charlie Chaplin's Missing Body Is Found
Eleven weeks after it was disinterred and stolen from a grave in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland, Charlie Chaplin's corpse is found by police. Two men—Roman Wardas, a 24-year-old Pole, and Gantscho Ganev, a 38-year-old Bulgarian—are convicted in December of stealing the coffin and trying to extort £400,000 from the Chaplin family. 1918—U.S. Congress Passes the Sedition Act
In the U.S., Congress passes a set of amendments to the Espionage Act called the Sedition Act, which makes "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces, as well as language that causes foreigners to view the American government or its institutions with contempt, an imprisonable offense. The Act specifically applies only during times of war, but later is pushed by politicians as a possible peacetime law, specifically to prevent political uprisings in African-American communities. But the Act is never extended and is repealed entirely in 1920.
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