 In show business the camera never sleeps. 
Night and Day, for which you see the cover of an issue—its very first issue, actually—that was published this month in 1948, billed itself as America's Picture Magazine of Entertainment. It was launched in New York City by Alho Publishing, and as you'll see it came out of the gate swinging for the fences with its visual content, from its bisected cover featuring burlesque dancer Lili St. Cyr and actress Ramsey Ames, to its tongue-in-cheek feature on the twenty-seven types of kisses, to its approving look at George White's Scandals revue at Hollywood's Florentine Gardens. Interesting side note on Scandals—Wikipedia says it ended in 1939. Well, obviously not quite. Elsewhere Night and Day touches on college hazing, professional football, and the Greenwich Village art scene. In total, it's a gold mine for vintage photos.
Our favorite offering in the magazine is its quiz on Hollywood stars and their stand-ins. You just have to take a good look at twenty performers, and try to determine which twenty random people are their stand-ins. To score well on such a quiz you'd have to be either the biggest Hollywood head in history or someone who has the opposite of face blindness, whatever that would be. Face unforgettability, maybe. Even though we don't expect many people to try the quiz, we worked hard to put it into internet-usable form. In the magazine the photos were five-across on the page, which made them too small for the column width of our website. So we rearranged them to be two-across, and thus enlarged, they're clear, though you have to do a lot of scrolling. Nevertheless, it's there if you want, along with fifty other panels to eat your time with marvelous efficiency. Please enjoy.                                                   The Hollywood movie star stand-in quiz begins below. First you get twenty famous actors and actresses: And below are their twenty stand-ins. If you get more than half of these right you're a human face recognition algorithm. Quit your day job immediately and report to the FBI. Below are the answers.
 It's not even 4 a.m. Damn. I really need to work on that whole waiting thing. 
Rafael DeSoto painted this cover for the 1951 Dell paperback edition of Martha Albrand's 1950 novel Wait for the Dawn. This is one of the author's many romance thrillers, and what you get is a woman living in France who meets the perfect man, only to find out that he's a murderous goon. Pretty much every woman will have experienced that at some point. But this guy isn't all bad—he's rich, and as we know that buys a lot of second chances. Albrand was born in Germany as Heidi Loewengard, and wrote as Albrand, Katrin Holland, and Christine Lambert. In all she churned out around forty novels and was respected enough that an award was named after her, the Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, which was active from 1989 to 2006, then discontinued. You can see a couple more cool DeSoto covers here and here.
 Where it stops looking good nobody knows. Below, a selection of beautiful Benedetto Caroselli covers for ERP’s giallo series I Narratori Americani del Brivido, with various Italian authors such as Aldo Crudo and Mario Pinzauti writing under Anglicized pseudonyms. We have much more from Caroselli. Just click and scroll.
 The magazine that whispered rape. 
Inside Story of August 1957 offers up stories on Elsa Martinelli, Ann Sothern, Clark Gable and others, but the subhead reading “The Night Audrey Hepburn Can’t Forget” is irresistible. So what happened on the night in question? Nothing fun, unfortunately. Fully expecting to read about some wild party or drunken escapade, journo Gwen Ferguson instead tells us that in 1942, when Hepburn was a Dutch teen named Audrey Kathleen Ruston, she was “brutally kidnapped and subjected to terrible indignities” by a Nazi soldier. As is typical for mid-century tabloids, this claim comes not from direct interviews, but rather from a fly-on-the-wall third person account. In this case, the magazine claims she confessed what happened to prospective husband Mel Ferrer, pictured next to her below, because she wanted him to have a chance to rescind his marriage proposal. The implication is clear—“indignities” is a euphemism for rape. Or else why would Ferguson suggest Ferrer might turn tail and run? In light of all the discussion about rape lately, it’s instructive to go back in time and read such an incendiary insinuation presented so casually in a national magazine, probably by some pseudonymous male editor, if tradition holds true. Looking for corroboration, we found only stories about Hepburn living in constant fear of being kidnapped, but that’s all. In no place we looked did we find any reference to her actually being taken, let alone violated. So we don’t know where Inside Story got its information. That being the case, we have to call bullshit. Inside Story goes on to wrap its dubious claim in the truth by telling readers how Hepburn’s uncle was executed by Nazis—true; how she gave secret ballet performances to generate funds for the Dutch resistance—true; and how she used tulip bulbs to make the flour needed for cakes and biscuits, but went through the war malnourished and underweight—true and true. As for the other claim—if untrue, it’s pretty low, and if true, it’s both low and irresponsible. Even by the standards of mid-century scandal sheets.  
 She always put her best foot forward. 
Above is a great shot of American actress and dancer Ann Miller, who was born Johnnie Collier (a much better name, in our opinion) and who appeared in many films, beginning with 1934’s Anne of Green Gables and ending with 2001’s Mulholland Dr. This shot is from her 1944 Columbia musical Hey, Rookie!, in which she had the lead role. Miller died in 2004.
 Oops—blurp—I think I missed the bucket. 
Yep, it’s rush week once again in America’s hallowed enclaves of higher learning. Millions of teen girls are beginning the long, arduous process of accumulating the crucial skills needed to serve them the rest of their lives. And the most important of those is, beyond a doubt, denying any recollection of events from the previous night. Just repeat: “Yes, I understand I vomited in your mouth then said I was a mama penguin and you were my baby—I’m just telling you if it happened after the third vodka Red Bull I don’t remember it.”
  
Dutch covers for two of Michael Avallone’s Ed Noon thrillers. These are The February Doll Murders, from 1966, and The Bedroom Bolero, from 1963. Avallone died this month in 1999.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1933—Hitler Becomes Chancellor
Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany in President Paul Von Hindenburg's office, in what observers describe as a brief and simple ceremony. Hitler's first speech as Chancellor takes place on 10 February. The Nazis' seizure of power subsequently becomes known as the Machtergreifung. 1916—Paris Is Bombed by German Zeppelins
During World War I, German zeppelins conduct a bombing raid on Paris. Such raids were rare, because the ships had to fly hundreds of miles over French territory to reach their target, making them vulnerable to attack. Reaching London, conversely, was much easier, because the approach was over German territory and water. The results of these raids were generally not good, but the use of zeppelins as bombers would continue until the end of the war. 1964—Soviets Shoot Down U.S. Plane
A U.S. Air Force training jet is shot down by Soviet fighters after straying into East German airspace. All 3 crew men are killed. U.S forces then clandestinely enter East Germany in an attempt to reach the crash but are thwarted by Soviet forces. In the end, the U.S. approaches the Soviets through diplomatic channels and on January 31 the wreckage of the aircraft is loaded onto trucks with the assistance of Soviet troops, and returned to West Germany.
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