Pulp International

Jun 22 2018

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.

Nostalgia Illustrated Marvel Comics Stan Lee Marilyn Monroe John F. Kennedy John Lewis Roventini John Garfield Marilyn Monroe Raquel Welch Betty Grable Greta Garbo Marlene Dietrich Jane Russell Rita Hayworth Mae West

Femmes Fatales

Jun 10 2018

You've heard of a purity necklace? That's not what's she's wearing.

We kind of thought the most recent promo image we found of Marilyn Chambers would be last we shared. It was so rare and beautiful that we considered it closure on the subject of Miss C. But we've found another that captures her allure, so here she is one more time. Through it, she joins the ranks of others we've posted on Pulp Intl. wearing only pearls, such and here and here. This UPI promo is dated today 1973, but it was shot during the filming of her hit porno flick Behind the Green Door in 1972.

United Press International Behind the Green Door Marilyn Chambers nudity xxx

Vintage Pulp

Apr 18 2018

Documentary charts Marilyn Monroe's climb to the top of Tinseltown.

Completing the third of a triptych of poster for the documentary Marilyn, above we have a U.S. poster made for the movie's premiere there today in 1963. We already shared the Yugoslavian and Japanese posters. They're all similar—the dress and the backgrounds change color but they all have the same image of Monroe in the hands raised pose you see here. And we love the shot. The movie, as we mentioned before, was put together by Twentieth Century Fox to celebrate Monroe, and mission accomplished. It's a must for fans.

Twentieth Century Fox Marilyn Marilyn Monroe Rock Hudson poster art cinema

Musiquarium

Mar 17 2018

Monroe goes for a spin in Italy.

Marilyn Monroe fronts this RCA soundtrack album sold in Italy featuring songs from the film Follie dell'anno, which originally appeared in the U.S. as There's No Business Like Show Business. There are four numbers written by Irving Berlin here and Monroe handles the vocals. If you want this platter it'll cost you probably a hundred dollars or more, so good luck with that. We're content to enjoy the sleeve. The shot of Monroe turned backward in her director's chair is one we've never seen before.

Italy RCA Follie dell'anno There's No Business Like Show Business Marilyn Monroe Irving Berlin

Hollywoodland

Dec 13 2017

New tabloid serves up Russell, Monroe, and others.

Jane Russell, wedged into an outfit that turns her boobs into footballs, graces the cover of the debut issue of Exposed, a high budget tabloid launched by Fawcett Publications in 1955. It arrived on a crowded newsstand already occupied by Confidential—then arguably the most circulated magazine in the U.S.—as well as Whisper, Hush-Hush, Uncensored, and similar publications. The get-up Russell is wearing is a costume from her starring role in 1954's The French Line, and we sort of assumed the shot had been at least slightly doctored,

and we seem to be correct. Judge for yourself at right. At least her boob punishment was offset by the fact that her outfit was too flimsy to include one of the deadly corsets that sometimes made their way around stars' waists.

Russell is in Exposed to illustrate a story about sex in cinema, but she isn't the most exposed occupant of the magazine. That would be Marilyn Monroe, whose famous Playboy nude is reprinted for a story about hustlers reprinting her photos. We'll just assume Exposed licensed their Monroe shot. Apparently, though, those other miscreants were selling her likeness by the thousands without permission and without compensating Monroe. Exposed shows her in court testifying for prosecutors. The prosecution may have won its case in 1955, but in the here and now Monroe is sold from Tegucigalpa to Manila, unlicensed all of it. Which just goes to show the more things change the more they stay the same.

Probably the highlight of the issue is a long story about detectives who make their living catching cheating couples in action. Exposed offers up numerous photos of these pairs caught in the act in motel rooms and secluded homes. Are these photos real? Well, we have our doubts. Even the most cleverly posed action shots have those intangibles that mark them as fakes, but that's just our opinion. Judge for yourself. Elsewhere in Exposed you get “Sophie” Loren, Errol Flynn, Marguerite Chapman, Franchot Tone, and other big time celebs.

We're pretty proud of this acquisition. It wasn't terribly expensive, but we've seen it priced much higher than what we paid. Maybe down the line we'll flip ours for a tidy profit. But that's what we always say. Much to the Pulp Intl. girlfriends' chagrin, our office just piles higher and higher with mid-century ephemera and we haven't sold a single piece yet. Exposed goes to the top of the precariously tottering pyramid. We have about thirty-five scans below, and plenty more tabloids on the way.

Vintage Pulp

Nov 30 2017

This ought to really blow your skirt up.

Above is an epic Italian poster for the film The Seven Year Itch, which in Italy was called Quando la moglie è in vacanza, or “when the wife is on vacation.” They probably changed the title because Italians don't understand the concept of a seven year itch. They have a seven week itch—it happens about seven weeks before the wedding. The art here is by P. Franco, aka Franco Picchioni, whose work you can find more of by clicking his keywords below. There's also a very interesting West German poster for the film here.

Italy Quando la moglie è in vacanza The Seven Year Itch Marilyn Monroe Tow Ewell Franco Picchioni P. Franco poster art cinema

Intl. Notebook

Nov 30 2017

They all screwed people but only one of them wanted the public to watch.

We were fishing around online and found a couple of November covers of The National Police Gazette, both quite interesting, issued fifteen years apart. On top you have Gazette editors predicting a 1960 election victory for John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon “by a nose!” They were right about that, though Nixon would become president later and his nose would grow greatly. Meanwhile Kennedy had his own fun with a piece of anatomy that got bigger, if reports are to be believed. The second cover features a very nice image of Marilyn Chambers from 1975, whose specialty was making other people's body parts swell in x-rated films. The shot comes from the same session that produced this rare image we shared back in 2011. We still have a pile of Gazettes but we've been very lazy about scanning them because of the requirement to scan each page in two parts then join them in Photoshop. It's a pain, so we tend to focus on smaller magazines whose pages we can scan in one piece. But we'll get to those Gazettes eventually. Promise.

Police Gazette Richard Nixon Marilyn Chambers John F. Kennedy tabloid xxx

Mondo Bizarro

Nov 10 2017

They always said she was beautiful inside and out.

We bet you can correctly guess what this is within three tries. Obviously, it's a woman's chest x-ray. But whose x-ray would people be so obsessed with they'd buy it at auction? We're sure you came up with Marilyn Monroe pretty quickly. Yes, it was today in 1954 that she was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for surgery for endometriosis, a condition of the womb which caused her a lot of physical pain. She was admitted as Marilyn DiMaggio, interestingly.

This image of her chest was made by a radiology resident, and when that student later became a doctor and taught at the school he would show this to his students, which we guess was a good way to keep them interested during a lecture. Eventually the scan “migrated” into private hands (those of the doctor's daughter), and it went up for

auction and sold for $45,000 in 2010. That makes us about seven years late on this story, but the image so interested us we thought we'd post it anyway. If beauty were measured this way we have a funny feeling Monroe would still set the standard.

Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Marilyn Monroe

Femmes Fatales

Oct 6 2017

So that flimsy excuse I said I had for inviting you over? I'm wearing it.

We featured a very nice shot of U.S. actress Marilyn Joi last year, but she deserves a rerun, so here she is again, chilled out, sporting an afro, and looking like she has something naughty on her mind. The shot was made in 1973 as a promo for the blaxploitation flick Coffy. The fact that the photo exists is a bit is unusual due to the fact her role in the film was so brief she never got screen credit. She was one of the prosties in the pimp King George's stable, competition for an infiltrating Pam Grier, who was on a revenge mission. Joi probably got fifteen seconds of screen time, which may be why this photo is often misattributed. It's Joi, though. As proof there she is below in a screen grab from the movie.

Coffy Marilyn Joi blaxploitation

Sex Files

Sep 18 2017

Sex Stars System uncovers erotic cinema around the world.

Here's a little treat for Monday, because Mondays are universally acknowledged to suck. Above is the cover and below are a ton of scans from the cutting edge cinema magazine Sex Stars System, which billed itself as “Le Magazine du Cinema Erotique.” It was published out of 55 Passage Jouffroy, in Paris, France, and for a while it was the top magazine with reviews and features on the new, sexually liberated mainstream cinema of the early 1970s, and the new pornography of the same era. Because porn was taken seriously as an art form back then (hard to imagine, we know) certain magazines discussed and critiqued the films and regarded the performers as equal with those in mainstream cinema. We talked about this phenomenon with Cine-Revue a few years ago. Sex Stars System was similar, but much edgier, as you'll see.

On the cover and in the centerfold you see Croatian born star Sylva Koscina (a mainstream actress), and elsewhere you get Emmanuelle Parèze (porn), Dany Carrel (mainstream), Valérie Bosigel (mainstream), Karin Schubert (both), Catherine Spaak (mainstream), Ornella Muti (mainstream), Chesty Morgan (porn, obviously), Marilyn Monroe (mainstream, though some scam artists claim she was the other too), et al. They don't make magazines like this anymore, because they don't make cinema like this anymore. Sex in U.S. movies is strictly taboo, unless, generally speaking, the actors keep their clothes on. You do see it on cable television, however, though such shows generate reams of online criticism about how terribly wrong it is (we agree, however, that more sex and nude scenes need to be filmed from the vantage point of the female gaze). In Europe, as always, things are a bit more liberated.

We aren't sure how long Sex Stars System published. It debuted in 1975. Also in 1975, or possibly 1976, a magazine called simply Stars System appeared. Stars System had a softer editorial approach and featured solidly mainstream cover celebs such as Jane Fonda and Romy Schneider. At some point it changed its name slightly to Star System and, thus rebranded, published at least as late as 1982, which seems to be longer than Sex Stars System was on the scene. The information online about these magazines is, as you can probably guess, a jumble, but we'll keep looking into it and maybe have something more concrete to report later. There's also a Star System celeb magazine around today, but it's Canadian and presumably unrelated. Many scans below, and we have a few more issues we'll post later.