 Who's up for hanging out in the hot tub? 
Above is U.S. actress Ingrid Greer, who appeared in a few television shows and starred in one low rent exploitation movie—Ciro Santiago's hilariously bad 1978 women-in-prison flick Hell Hole. Though Greer's career was minor, this photo is major, which is to say she looks great in it. However we'd be remiss in our pulply duties if we failed to inform that Greer has a place in bizarro Hollywood lore—earned by drowning in a hot tub in 1981. Oh well. There are far sillier ways to go.
 Man, I've really got the munchies. Kinda wanna murder a bunch of people too. 
Measured by pennies per word William Irish's, aka Cornell Woolrich's 1941 drug scare classic Marihuana is one of the most expensive paperbacks you'll ever come across. The Dell edition you see here with iconic cover art by Bill Fleming could cost you over $100 for its sixty-four pages. It's the story of King Turner, who goes slumming in Hell's Kitchen and smokes a joint that sets him off on a murderous rampage. Best passage:
“You don't reason with a hooded cobra or a hydrophobic dog or a time bomb. You can't.”
That is frickin' hilarious. In case you're wondering, hydrophobia is rabies. Well, one thing is correct—you can't reason with people who are stoned. But instead of trying to stop them from hurting someone, you try to tell them strawberry jelly on Saltines is a bad solution for the munchies. Marihuana makes its point of view abundantly clear: weed bad, and don't be shocked when your life goes down the commode. You've been warned.
 Comic book icon Stan Lee goes Hollywood. 
Nostalgia Illustrated was a New York City based magazine published by none other than comic book kingpin Stan Lee. It debuted in November 1974, with the issue you see here coming this month in 1975. It's exactly as its title suggests—a collection of vintage photos of American icons. We imagine Lee wanted to get into the burgeoning tabloid market, but one that didn't go full Hollywood gossip. Instead the stories are more along the lines of respectful bios, which makes it less tabloid than fanboy publication.
Except for the cover, its design is nothing special, but it contains a wealth of old Hollywood photos we haven't seen before, which makes it worth a share. You get John Garfield, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe (because what's a nostalgia magazine without her?), a youthful John F. Kennedy, and many other celebs. There's also a story on John Lewis Roventini, the “world's smallest bellhop” at four feet in height, who was famous in New York City for a time. All in thirty scans below.                             
 Of course I had sex with him, daddy. Didn't you teach me to do unto others as I would have them do unto me? 
We like the fiction of Charles Williams quite a bit, so after reading six of his novels we thought we'd go all the way back to his debut, 1951's Hill Girl. The hill girl of the title is eighteen year-old Angelina, who has the temerity to actually enjoy sex, and compounds this sin by hooking up with handsome but married Lee Crane. This is horrifying to Lee's brother Bob, who not only wants what's best for his sibling, but also counts Lee's wife as one of his best friends. Thus this affair simply cannot stand. But Lee can't let Angelina go for reasons that can be best summarized this way: she's insanely hot and amazing in the sack. When Angelina's fundamentalist father literally comes after Lee with a shotgun Angelina ends up under Bob's protection, and shortly afterward under Bob. Hey, girls just wanna have fun, right? So what develops here is a battle between two brothers over ownership of a woman's body. To his credit, Bob comes to the realization that whatever Angelina did before she was involved with him is none of his fuckin' business, even if the fuckin' was with his brother; but Lee never quite sees the light, even though he's married to a beautiful and wonderful woman. His obsession with Angelina will cost someone dearly. Hill Girl is miles away from Williams' nautical adventures, an interesting window onto sexual attitudes of the 1950s, and solidly put together as well. That's probably why it sold a million copies and launched his career. The cover art for this Gold Medal edition is by Barye Phillips.
 Are you ready to see my unbelievably sexy new panties? These will blow your mind. 
There was a time when her panties probably were considered unbelievably sexy. We're glad that time passed, though with the waistlines in women's fashion creeping back up—harkening to the era when it was illegal to show a navel on television or in movies—will it be long before panties turn into parachutes again? We're on record as hating high waistlines on undergarments. Let's pray to the Roman goddess Clotho that sense prevails before that happens. She isn't technically responsible for clothing, but she does spin the threads that determine the course of people's lives. Presumably that includes fashion designers. 1964's Suzy and Vera comes from author Peggy Swenson, aka Richard Geis, last seen around these parts writing the sleaze classic Lesbian Gym. The same artist painted the covers for both books, looks to us. Some say it's Fred Fixler, but we think it's someone charged by Brandon House with producing work in a similar style. And a nice style it is. But Fixler? We think not. We'll keep researching this.
 The statue was for the public. The photos were strictly private. 
Hungarian artist Sepy Dobronyi puts the finsihing touches on what was for a while possibly the most famous statue in the world—his stylized sculpture of Swedish sex bomb Anita Ekberg. Dobronyi made it by using nude reference photos he'd shot of his subject, and it was those photos, more than the statue, that interested the public. Ekberg was one of the world's biggest stars at the time and the idea that nude shots existed was flogged by the tabloids and helped burnish Dobronyi's reputation as a sort of jetsetting artist. His depiction of her became known as the Ekberg Bronze. He went on to sculpt Brigitte Bardot, Ava Gardner, Beverly Aadland, and Jayne Mansfield, though as far as we know no nude photographs were involved in those efforts.
Dobronyi sold and collected many works and used his fame and fortune to become a traveller and adventurer, visiting nearly ninety countries and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Actually, he's probably worthy of a book or movie at some point, but then so are dozens of nearly forgotten Hollywood figures. He died in 2010 and as far as we know his Ekberg reference nudes never turned up, though we imagine they'd be worth plenty. But Dobronyi was a gentleman—other Ekberg nudes appeared over the years but he never revealed his and may have destroyed them at some point. We talked a bit about the Ekberg Bronze previously, which means you can learn a few more details of the story by clicking this link.
 
 Did I make it in time for happy hour? 
The above image, which is from the collection of Los Angeles Examiner photos archived by the University of Southern California, shows an accident at a bar located at 5th and Figueroa in Los Angeles. It happened when two autos collided in the intersection outside, and one of the drivers lost control and careened into the Ole King Cole Room of the Monarch Hotel (we have a photo of the exterior from some years earlier below). Luckily for patrons the bar had closed. Unluckily for the driver, he missed half priced drinks. But maybe he'd already reached his limit. The photo is from today in 1957. 
 *sigh* Sense of safety. Last shred of dignity. Trust in people's basic goodness. I think I lost all those tonight. 
Sleazemeister general Orrie Hitt's Ex-Virgin is the story of a gaggle of youthful characters with zero life prospects stuck on the worst street in a jerkwater town. Abysmally dumb boys and girls have sex, cheat on each other, and roll the dice on pregnancy. In the midst of all this an innocent beauty hopes to make a good life for herself. But she lets a boy sample her wares, and once that becomes known her reputation goes down the tubes, with detrimental effects. Put this in the scare-kids-out-of-having-sex category. It's all very monotonous thanks to Hitt's colorless writing style. The cover art on this 1959 Beacon edition, which does not depict a scene that occurs anywhere in the story, is by Fred Rodewald, and was adapted from a piece that originally appeared on a September 1949 cover of True Crime Cases.
 Introducing the official Pulp Intl. Cheapie Tabloid Drinking Game™. 
Cheapie tabloids are such a joy to read. The vocabulary alone. Some choice words from this issue of Rampage published today in 1973: buttsters, hiney, clitty, throasts [sic], goosey, and more. The photos are nice too. Contemporary glamour models or erotic actresses tend to appear, and this one has Lillian Parker, who was both. Rampage uses her image for a story called “Sisters Admit They Have Perfect Sex Lives.” By perfect the editors mean they like to swap, which is another word you see basically only in old tabloids. It gave us an inspiration. We have a large stack of these bad mags, and we decided to create a drinking game. Here's how it works. You simply read stories aloud and take a drink every time these words occur (singularly or in the plural).
ball (verb form only) broad (noun form only) chick exclusive nookie JFK nympho (or nymphomaniac) orgasm (as verb or noun) prostie (prostitute doesn't count) repairman babysitter Sinatra (Ole Blue Eyes is also acceptable) swollen
And down an entire shot if any of these phrases come up:
after school/after class/after church lonely divorcée high and firm firm and proud knocked up swallowed eagerly throbbing member my wife's sister
Modify the rules as you see fit. Playing the game using two or three typical thirty-two page cheapie tabs like Rampage should get you fucked beyond repair—and ironically “repairman” might be what does you in, because in two tabloids we checked it came up seven times. But the real fun with this should be reading the insane stories. The drinks are merely a bonus.                 
 National Informer Reader delves into the intricacies of male birth control. 
By today in 1974, which is when this issue of National Informer Reader appeared, the magazine was nearing its end. It's easy to tell. There's less content than in pervious years, and there's a proliferation of penny-ante ads in the front half of the layout. In the magazine world it's understood that ads in the front are the ones most often seen by readers. The back page and inside back page are prime sports too, but otherwise it's the front half of the book that makes publishers money because advertisers pay more for it. But readers will skip past ads if they aren't adjacent to editorial content, so there needs to be a careful balance between the two. In this Reader that balance is gone. The entirety of pages two through seven are given over to ads and personals. You wanna know what angry is? Try the angry of an advertiser that opens your magazine and sees that his or her ad is surrounded not by readable content that keeps the reader on the page, but by other ads.
But there are still some treats even in a late stage Reader. “Older Women Are Flocking To Massage Parlors Run By Young Virile Studs” is pure gold, just for that descriptive header alone. But sometimes a header is so bizarre there's no way to tell what the story is about. “New Vasectomy Ties Tell Women Who To Date.” Huh? What the hell kind of ties do they mean? Like the ones they use to tie your tubes? Turns out they mean it literally. A vasectomy clinic in London allegedly gave patients neckties with Vs running down the front, indicating the wearer had been snipped. And supposedly women flocked to these guys. We've been unable to corroborate the story, but it feels different from the second rate bull tabloid editors usually concoct—heh, we said coct—so we suspect it's truthful. And fittingly, there's cock in this issue, and not on slobs either—on nice looking guys, though none are swinging low, if you know what we mean. But still, something for our female readers. And male readers too. You're welcome. Cock and bull below.                
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Five-Year Old Girl Gives Birth
In Peru, five-year old Lina Medina becomes the world's youngest confirmed mother at the age of five when she gives birth to a boy via a caesarean section necessitated by her small pelvis. Six weeks earlier, Medina had been brought to the hospital because her parents were concerned about her increasing abdominal size. Doctors originally thought she had a tumor, but soon determined she was in her seventh month of pregnancy. Her son is born underweight but healthy, however the identity of the father and the circumstances of Medina's impregnation never become public. 1987—Rita Hayworth Dies
American film actress and dancer Margarita Carmen Cansino, aka Rita Hayworth, who became her era's greatest sex symbol and appeared in sixty-one films, including the iconic Gilda, dies of Alzheimer's disease in her Manhattan apartment. Naturally shy, Hayworth was the antithesis of the characters she played. She married five times, but none lasted. In the end, she lived alone, cared for by her daughter who lived next door. 1960—Gary Cooper Dies
American film actor Gary Cooper, who harnessed an understated, often stoic style in numerous adventure films and westerns, including Sergeant York, For Whom the Bell Tolls, High Noon, and Alias Jesse James, dies of prostate, intestinal, lung and bone cancer. For his contributions to American cinema Cooper received a plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is considered one of top movie stars of all time. 1981—The Pope Is Shot
In Rome, Italy, in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II is shot four times by would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca. The Pope is rushed to the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic to undergo emergency surgery and survives. Agca serves nineteen years in an Italian prison, after which he is deported to his homeland of Turkey, and serves another sentence for the 1979 murder of journalist Abdi Ipekçi. Agca is eventually paroled on January 18, 2010. 1957—Von Stroheim Dies
German film director and actor Erich von Stroheim, who as an actor was noted for his arrogant Teutonic character parts which led him to become a renowned cinematic villain with the nickname "The Man You Love to Hate", dies in Maurepas, France at the age of 71.
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