Vintage Pulp

April 14 2022

LIVING DANGEROUSLY

From moment to moment everything can change.

Donald MacKenzie’s Moment of Danger, also known as Scent of Danger, appeared in 1959 as a Dell paperback with a front painted by the busy Robert McGinnis, always the man to employ for elevated cover art. In this case, his pistol packing, sarong clad femme fatale lounging behind a spider plant stands as a top effort. And by the way, we only know what a spider plant is because we have six large ones busily propagating around palatial Pulp Intl. HQ.

The tale follows a double-crossed jewel thief named Macbeth Bain (you gotta love that) who vows revenge on the partner who ditched him after a big heist and put the cops onto him. The double-cross is only half successful. The partner gets away with the loot, but through a stroke of luck, the evidence that was supposed to put Bain behind bars never materializes. Now he’s free, furious, and tracking his missing partner from London to Gibraltar, Tangier, and Malaga, seeking to even the score. Along for the adventure is the partner’s wife, also intent upon revenge after being ditched for another woman.

This is a densely written tale, heavy on narrative and light on dialogue, told from Bain’s point of view as he struggles with fear of his uber-competent partner, and attraction toward his beautiful sidekick. He’s a curious character, hard to like at first because his emotions range from anger at his betrayal to resentment that a woman is tugging at his heart, but you eventually root for him. The book ends almost anti-climactically, mid-scene at a crucial moment, but it remains a decent whirlwind thriller that passes through several exotic cities, and is worth the reading time, imperfections and all.

Hollywood agreed. The big brains out in Tinseltown liked Moment of Danger enough to option it and make it into a 1960 movie titled Malaga, starring Trevor Howard and Dorothy Dandridge. We’ll definitely watch it because it’s a noteworthy film, representing a rare leading role for an African American actress, and in fact was Dandridge’s last movie. Our film watching résumé is a bit thin on the Dandridge front anyway, so we now have a good reason to address that. We’ll of course report back.

Britain, Spain, Gibraltar, Málaga, Tangier, London, Dell Publications, Donald MacKenzie, Robert McGinnis, Trevor Howard, Dorothy Dandridge, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

March 3 2022

WAY SOUTH OF SPAIN

I know these regional airports lack the usual amenities, but a shuttle to the terminal sure would be nice.

We’ve mentioned before that we like to read books about places we’ve been, but we had no idea the 1960 thriller Seven Lies South was set in Spain and Morocco. We impulse-bought this 1962 Crest edition after seeing William P. McGivern’s name and taking in the striking Harry Bennett cover art featuring a woman, an aircraft, two bedouins, and their camels. McGivern wrote the excellent 1961 juvenile delinquent thriller Savage Streets, so that was all we needed to know. We found out in the first page that the setting, as the story opened, was Malaga, Spain, and went, “Oh, okay—even better.”

The book stars Mike Beecher, a former bomber pilot, now in his late thirties and doing a belated Lost Generation bit—idleness, parties, a rotating cast of acquaintances, and a lot of solitary reflection in a foreign land. His Sun Also Rises-style fatalism is a little tedious, in our view. After all, he was never wounded in the sex organs like Jake Barnes, and if one’s naughty bits function, there’s always reason to smile. In any case, one day he meets a beautiful young woman named Laura Meadows, who embodies his dissatisfaction:

She symbolized everything that was unobtainable, beyond his reach; the rosy and prosperous life of America, with the tides of success sweeping everyone on to fine, fat futures.

But not everyone, of course. Entire ethnicities were excluded from that sweeping tide of success. Things are unobtainable for Beecher, but only because he’s made a choice to reject them. What a luxury, to reject something, then bemoan what one “can’t” have, when many people really can’t have it. It’s not a flaw in the book, so much as a cultural blind spot—perhaps deliberately inserted by McGivern, who was generally insightful about such issues. You have to sort of smile at Beecher’s inability to appreciate being reasonably young, healthy, and knocking around the south of Spain drinking wine. Not everyone gets to do that. That’s exactly what we do, and we appreciate it every day.

Beecher is coerced into helping to steal a plane headed for Morocco, but the mission goes wildly sideways, which unexpectedly mutates the narrative into a desert survival adventure. In order to set up and progress through this section, McGivern has his characters sometimes undertake actions that don’t exactly resound with logic, but even so the book is good. McGivern can really write, even when it verges on the preposterous. He was more at home in the suburbs of Savage Streets, but he navigates the Spain and Morocco of Seven Lies South deftly enough. We have no hesitation about trying him again.

Spain, Morocco, Málaga, Tangier, Fawcett Publications, Crest Books, William P. McGivern, Harry Bennett, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

June 2 2020

SPANISH FIESTA

Raquel Welch is a one-woman party on the Costa del Sol.

This great photo shows U.S. actress Raquel Welch when she was filming the 1967 adventure Fathom in Spain, specifically in and around the Costa del Sol towns of Málaga, Mijas, Nerja, and Torremolinos. This moment, in which she shows her ability to turn men into drooling lemmings, is actually a scene from the movie in which she walks from her villa to the sea, along the way interrupting an afternoon dance party. We recognized the spot as soon as we saw it. We’ve been there. It’s a path below the tiny historic center of Nerja and an overlook known as Balcón de Europa, leading down to Playa Calahonda, a rocky beach. Below you see the path viewed from its top, and the bottom photo shows the general area, with the Balcón de Europa on the left. As far as we remember there’s no plaque or sign commemorating Welch traversing that path to the sea. Local authorities might consider rectifying that. We’d also suggest putting up a giant version of the above photo. It says Costa del Sol in a major way. As for the actual movie, we’ll talk about that later.

Spain, Málaga, Mijas, Nerja, Torremolinos, Fathom, Raquel Welch

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

January 18

1967—Boston Strangler Convicted

Albert DeSalvo, the serial killer who became known as the Boston Strangler, is convicted of murder and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison. He serves initially in Bridgewater State Hospital, but he escapes and is recaptured. Afterward he is transferred to federal prison where six years later he is killed by an inmate or inmates unknown.

January 17

1950—The Great Brinks Robbery Occurs

In the U.S., eleven thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car company’s offices in Boston, Massachusetts. The skillful execution of the crime, with only a bare minimum of clues left at the scene, results in the robbery being billed as “the crime of the century.” Despite this, all the members of the gang are later arrested.

January 17

1977—Gary Gilmore Is Executed

Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States. Gilmore’s story is later turned into a 1979 novel entitled The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, and the book wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

January 16

1942—Carole Lombard Dies in Plane Crash

American actress Carole Lombard, who was the highest paid star in Hollywood during the late 1930s, dies in the crash of TWA Flight 3, on which she was flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles after headlining a war bond rally in support of America’s military efforts. She was thirty-three years old.

January 15

1919—Luxemburg and Liebknecht Are Killed

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps. Freikorps was a term applied to various paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. Members of these groups would later become prominent members of the SS.