 I'm an excellent deal. Plus there aren't even 10,000 men on my odometer yet.  
Above: the uncredited front cover, plus the rear cover, of the very first issue of Ecstasy Novel Magazine, November 1949, with Trudy Hamilton's A Body To Own inside. We added the rear just to show how digest novels self-promoted their output. Readers typically bought their first in a bus station or drugstore, but thereafter were prodded to buy by mail, discreetly, to get their rocks off. Not that these novels were in any way pornographic. But they did get racy at times, depicting women who definitely weren't waiting for marriage before hitting the sheets. Often, the heroines even bedded two or three men. There was hardcore literary porn around, but it was harder to find and as a rule terribly written. Digest publishers employed competent authors, though they would never be mistaken for masters of the craft. Some, though, such as Jed Anthony, N.R. De Mexico, and Val Munroe, wrote good books. We have plenty of digests sitting around, so you'll continue encountering them on our site. You can see a couple more examples from Ecstasy Novel Magazine here, here, and here.
 Why stop at a little pleasure when more is so much better? 
This poster is just a quick u-turn back to the landmark Czech movie Extase, which gave the world eternal star and electronics genius Hedy Kiesler, better known as Hedy Lamar, and treated moviegoers to the first orgasm ever put on the big screen. The poster is from Sweden, where the film was called Extas and opened today in 1933, about nine months after the Czech premiere.
 Free and easy is the basic package. I'm the VIP package and I cost a bundle. 
Above is another great paperback digest cover by Howell Dodd, this time for 1951's Free and Easy by Luther Gordon—no relation to June Wetherell's Free and Easy. Thinking about seeing a book rack with this kind of material for sale can only make you regretful to have missed out on the era. Though to be honest, you couldn't pay us to live in 1951—no offense to those who did. We love the promo art, the fiction, and the movies, but everything that has to do with real life... we wouldn't have done so well with that. So we're happy here in 2021. We'd like to own more of these old digests, but they aren't free or easy either. Our collection grows monthly, though. We have no idea to what end, but it does. But this one did not add to the clutter, because we borrowed it from online. More digests to come.
 When you little scamps get together you're worse than a sewing circle. 
Sex was her weapon! The line isn't about Uma Thurman. It comes from the cover of Harlot in Her Heart, the Norman Bligh novel she's holding in this promo shot made for her 1994 blockbuster hit Pulp Fiction. An interesting factoid about the movie is that it lost the Academy Award for best picture to a slice of saccharine nothingness called Forrest Gump thanks to a pathologically risk averse voter pool. It's an embarrasing miss for the Academy, because Pulp Fiction ranks as one of the most influential American movies ever. It took the disordered narrative structure that had been established in earlier films and elevated it to a new level. It borrowed the box-of-mystery gimmick that had already been turned on its head in movies like Kiss Me, Deadly and Belle du jour, and turned it on its head again. It incorporated a hip, ethnically mixed cast. It was funny as hell. And it placed Thurman at the center of its hyper-masculine narrative as the femme fatale Mia Wallace—who dug criminals, was tough-minded, graceful, impulsive, and smart. Her line about men being gossipy scamps was one of the best in the film. We can't imagine anyone else playing the role. As for Harlot in Her Heart, we may just buy it despite its exorbitant price. If so we reserve the right to use the cover again in a later post. 
 If she tries to pressure you into getting a haircut there's an ulterior motive. 
In 1933 Austro-Hungarian born actress Hedy Lamarr, née Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler starred in the Czech-Austrian silent film Ecstase, aka Ecstasy, a landmark production notable for its nude scenes. Lamarr was unhappy with the result, but it made her enormously famous and helped pave her way to Hollywood, where she made numerous films, including the cheesy but highly enjoyable swords and sandals epic Samson & Delilah, from which the above image comes. In the Biblical legend, Delilah cuts off Samson's magic hair to weaken him. In real life Lamarr weakened plenty of male fans and didn't have to do anything but appear on a movie screen. This photo shows her circa 1949.
 I know it's high. It used to be lower, but I spent a summer in D.C., and lemme tell ya, those guys taught me a lot about whoring. 
We featured a Charles Rodewald cover last year and loved it, so we're bringing him back today, this time on the front of Ecstasy Novel Magazine, which is showcasing Paula Has a Price!, written by Perry Lindsay, aka prolific pulp author Peggy Gaddis. There's confusion online about the copyright on this, but it was published in January 1949. Top effort from Rodewald, and you can see another here.
 I’ll go through it one more time for you. Mine are b’s, but there are also a’s, c’s, d’s, double-d’s...  
Above, an excellent George Gross cover, plus the original art, for Bed-Time Angel written by Norman Bligh, aka William Arthur Neubauer, for Ecstasy Novel Magazine, March 1951.
 No helmet, no jacket, no problem. 
The above poster is the original promo Kôyû Ohara’s motorcycle gang roman porno Shiroi mesuneko: mahiru no ecstasy, aka White Female Cat: Ecstasy at High Noon, and as you can see star Hitomi Kozue is completely flouting the mandatory helmet ordinance. Well, the point of riding a motorcycle is to feel the wind blow through your… er, hair. We haven’t screened this one, but we love the poster so we thought we’d show it to you anyway on its premiere date, which was today in 1975.
 Get rich or dive trying. 
So, it’s becoming clear now that Nikkatsu made a lot of ama movies, right? If you missed our previous shares on the subject, look here, here, and here, and you’ll learn that an ama is a female diver who forages the sea bottom for pearls, abalone, or other expensive treasures. This particular poster, which has never appeared online before at this level of quality, was made for Maruhi ama Report: Monzetsu aka Female Diver's Secret Report: Ecstasy. The movie was directed by Yukihiko Kondö and starred Rie Tachibana, who you see on the art. Usually we’re able to locate promo images of these actresses, but no such luck today—Tachibana appears to have had a very short career in cinema. Maruhi ama Report: Monzetsu premiered in Japan today in 1975.

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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1984—Marvin Gaye Dies from Gunshot Wound
American singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye, who was famous for a three-octave vocal range which he used on hits such as "Sexual Healing" and "What's Going On," is fatally shot in the chest by his father after an argument over misplaced business documents. Gaye scored forty-one top 40 hit singles on Billboard's pop singles chart between 1963 and 2001, sixty top 40 R&B hits from 1962 to 2001, and thirty-eight top 10 singles on the R&B chart, making him not only one of the most critically acclaimed artists of his day, but one of the most successful. 1930—Movie Censorship Enacted
In the U.S., the Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict censorship guidelines on the depiction of sex, crime, religion, violence and racial mixing in film. The censorship holds sway over Hollywood for the next thirty-eight years, and becomes known as the Hays Code, after its creator, Will H. Hays. 1970—Japan Airlines Flight 351 Hijacked
In Japan, nine samurai sword wielding members of the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction hijack Japan Airlines flight 351, which had been en route from Tokyo to Fukuoka. After releasing the passengers, the hijackers proceed to Pyongyang, North Koreas's Mirim Airport, where they surrender to North Korean authorities and are given asylum. 1986—Jimmy Cagney Dies
American movie actor James Francis Cagney, Jr., who played a variety of roles in everything from romances to musicals but was best known as a quintessential tough guy, dies of a heart attack at his farm in Stanfordville, New York at the age of eighty-six.
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