Vintage Pulp

April 3 2025

METRO DIVISION

In utopia all is not as it appears to be.

The 1927 German sci-fi film Metropolis was based on Thea von Harbou’s novel/treatment of the same name, which is about an advanced society divided between skyscraper dwelling haves and subterranean have-nots, the latter of whom do the difficult and dirty work of powering the city. The movie was brought to the screen by Fritz Lang a dozen films into his long and storied career. The above poster was made for a 1984 re-release, and prominently features the robotic character Machinemensch, who is played by German actress Brigitte Helm both as a robot and a human. We suspect the movie falls into the category of well-known-but-seldom-watched. We’ll get back to it a bit later.

Japan, Germany, Metropolis, Brigitte Helm, Thea von Harbou, Alfred Abel, Fritz Lang, poster art, cinema, sci-fi

Femmes Fatales

January 26 2025

JUST ABOUT TO LAND

When she flies it's always first class.

Marion Michael, who was born in Königsberg, Germany (later renamed Kalingrad and now part of Russia), debuted in the 1956 television movie Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald, aka Liane, Jungle Goddess, when she was just sixteen. The role is said to have generated controversy because Michael was topless in it, but a sequel was made, so we guess it wasn’t exactly a crippling controversy. We know what you’re thinking—topless in a television movie? Hey, it’s Germany. They have that whole freikörperkultur thing. This photo looks a bit West Coast, U.S., but it’s actually a promo distributed by Amsterdam based N.V. Standaardfilms, probably used when Liane played in the Netherlands in 1959. It’s a soaringly great shot.

Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Königsberg, Kalingrad, Amsterdam, N.V. Standaardfilms, Liane das Mädchen aus dem Urwald, Liane Jungle Goddess, Marion Michael

Vintage Pulp

December 27 2024

WIRD AROUND TOWN

Cold cases always get hot in vintage fiction.

This is a striking cover for Frank Gruber’s 1967 thriller Gesucht Wird… D.D., or “Wanted… D.D.” If you want attention on a newsstand this bright red collage style art is a way to do it. Unfortunately, we don’t know who put this together for West German publishers Martin Kelter and have no way of finding out. We do know about Gruber, though. He was a stalwart pulp author born in 1904 in Minnesota. He began publishing in his mid-twenties and was well received in magazines such as Argosy, Weird Tales, and Black Mask. This particular book is a translation of his 1961 novel Twenty Plus Two, in which an investigator searches for a woman—named Doris Delaney—who’s been missing for twenty-two years. It was made into a movie of the same name. You can be sure we’ll check that out.

Germany, West Germany, Martin Kelter Verlag, Argosy, Weird Tales, Black Mask, Twenty Plus Two, Frank Gruber, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

December 3 2024

GOING FOR A SPIN

So do you hang around here often?

This image, which we’ve seen around online a bit lately, shows a group enjoying a spin on an amusement park attraction often referred to as a centrifugal ride (in Newtonian mechanics centrifugal force is fictitious, for those who want to dig deeper). We’ve also heard these machines referred to as rotors, and some people call them gravitrons, but those are actually slightly different rides that weren’t invented until the 1980s. The rotor was created by German engineer Ernst Hoffmeister in 1948, and first unveiled during Oktoberfest a year later

If you’ve never seen a rotor and don’t know how they operate, basically it’s a spinning drum that accelerates until its riders are stuck to the wall, then the floor drops. The contraptions typically accelerated to about thirty-three rpms, creating an outward force of close to three times that of gravity. You notice below a couple of the more advanced riders managed to turn themselves upside down, which is pretty slick. These are interesting shots of good clean fun, made at a place called Luna Park, in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, circa mid-1950s.

Australia, Germany, Melbourne, Ernst Hoffmeister

Vintage Pulp

November 14 2024

PERMANENT VACATION

She achieved her ambition of spending the rest of her life at the beach.

Above: Gil Brewer’s Ein Mädchen Schrie, better known as And the Girl Screamed, originally published in 1956 in the U.S., with this Panther-Buch edition appearing in West Germany in 1957. The art is signed but illegible. Whenever we see covers like this our minds go to late nights and killer hangovers, but she’s dead, sadly, the synopsis indicates. We have a copy of this we’ll try to get around to reading.

West Germany, Germany, Panther-Buch, Gil Brewer, cover art, literature

Femmes Fatales

October 21 2024

KILLER SMILE

I've heard about angry, disaffected shooters, but personally I've always been the exact opposite.

Above: a colorized black and white photo of German actress Sabine Sinjen made when she was filming the 1963 western Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi, known in English Pirates of the Mississippi. Sinjen accumulated about seventy credits, mostly on television. We’ve seen Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi referred to as a spaghetti western, which raises the question of whether the label can be applied to a film that’s German made. For purists, the answer is no. Such films would have to be Italian or Italian-Spanish productions shot in Italy and/or Spain. But many films with a spaghetti western feel and look were shot in Greece, the south of Portugal, Turkey, or really any place that offered a dry landscape. Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi was shot in the former Yugoslavia. The aforementioned purists would call it a Eurowestern, which is fine with us.

West Germany, Germany, Yugoslavia, Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi, Pirates of the Mississippi, Sabine Sinjen, spaghetti western

Femmes Fatales

September 20 2024

THE RED END OF THE SPECTRUM

Ann-Margret demonstrates the principle of addition by subtraction.

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.

Sweden, Germany, West Germany, Austria, Party Magazine, Ann-Margret

Vintage Pulp

June 16 2024

A CRUEL RULER

I'm going to punish you with the metric side so you understand that this was no arbitrary decision.

Covers featuring corporal punishment aren’t rare in mid-century fiction. This one, though, for Helene Eliat’s 1951 novel Arena of Love, caught our eye because of the ruler, which hopefully it isn’t one of those with a metal strip. Eliat was a German writer who originally published this as Saba besucht Salomo, or “Sheba visits Solomon,” in 1930. It was soon translated into French and English, so it’s a significant book, possibly her only one. We aren’t curious enough to read it, but it’s apparently about a problematic love affair. The art on this Lion paperback edition is uncredited.

Germany, Lion Books, Helene Eliat, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

June 3 2024

CELIBATE GOOD TIMES

Honey—no more excuses! I wait for this day all year and I expect you out of those clothes this instant.

This is an amusing cover for Ludwig Lewisohn’s 1949 novel Anniversary, which is about a business anniversary and birthday, not a marital one. It’s a smalltown family drama built around a patriarch, several patience-taxing people in his life, and their scandals. The German born Lewisohn was a major author in his day, a bit forgotten now, but who published forty books of various sorts while also working as a drama critic, editor, and college professor. He didn’t write pulp style literature, but we couldn’t resist sharing this art. Unfortunately it’s uncredited.

Germany, Lion Books, Ludwig Lewisohn, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

May 8 2024

HARD TO BEIRA

I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. Have you considered looking for a woman out of your league who's closer to your age?

Above you see one of the items we picked up in Lisbon. It’s an issue of Colecção Cinema. Basically, these and others of its ilk in multiple countries were print versions of current release films. Starring on front are Curd Jürgens and Eva Bartok from their 1956 West German movie Ohne dich wird es Nacht, which was titled in Portuguese À Beira do Pecado, meaning “on the verge of sin.” It was known in English as Without You It Is Night, the literal German title. Sounds dark, and it is. It’s about drug addiction. Though there isn’t as much art inside Colecção Cinema as you’d think considering it’s a cine-novela, we picked it up anyway for the interesting cover and the low price—a mere €1. Fifteen scans below.

Portugal, West Germany, Germany, Colecção Cinema, Ohne dich wird es Nacht, Ð€ Beira do Pecado, Without You It Is Night, Curd Jürgens, Eva Bartok, Barry Coe, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 30

1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's

Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established.

April 29

1945—Hitler Marries Braun

During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia’s Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden.

April 29

1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title

After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon.

April 28

1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki

Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.

April 28

1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident

After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.

April 27

1945—Mussolini Is Arrested

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.