A long while ago we shared the cover of a 1956 Whisper featuring George Sanders. The same issue had an article on Liberace, and we’re returning to that today as part of our look at mid-century tabloid attitudes toward gay culture. In general of course, the tabloids were brutally insulting, using overt as well as coded language to get intimations of homosexuality across. Theoretically, when dealing with public figures they had to be somewhat cautious, but both Rave and Inside had in 1954 written stories insinuating that Liberace was gay, and in 1955 Suppressed and Private Lives did the same. In Whisper, a journalist writing under the name Sylvia Tremaine refers to Liberace as a “creature,” labels his speech as “simpering,” and describes his move to television this way: “From there it was just a brief flutter to a local TV program.”

You’ll notice there’s deniability in all those words—Whisper could claim there was nothing defamatory in the language. Ridiculous, of course. Clearly the magazine was calling Liberace gay, and only a fool would claim otherwise, but defamation had not occurred to an extent that would stand up in court. Thus we see the joy of coded language. The same occurs in the U.S. today in certain media outlets with language directed at African Americans. The disparagement is clear, but deniable. Or for a cinematic example of coding, consider the Maltese Falcon and how the character of Joel Cairo is announced by flute trills on the soundtrack. Clear, and yet deniable. But in its Liberace article Whisper then throws deniability out the window with this: “Hollywood snickerers are wondering, in fact, if all the male hormones earmarked for the Liberace boys weren’t hogged by George, leaving Lee with only his nimble fingers.” That goes a bit beyond code, wouldn’t you say?

Liberace’s lawyer John Jacobs filed lawsuits against both Daily Mirror and Confidential, demanding a whopping twenty million dollars from the latter. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $174 million in today's terms. You can almost imagine Robert Harrison spitting up his coffee when he heard the settlement demand. Equally you can imagine Liberace’s reluctance to dignify the article, but Confidential at the time had readership in the millions. Something had to be done. It had become open season on his private life. Even the press photo below toyed with him. Thedescriptive text, written for newspaper staff, is meant to simply get across the basic facts of the photos and is typically pretty dry stuff. But this describes Liberace as "the curly-haired pianist"  and says his walk is "jaunty." Clear, but deniable.

Rave, for which you see a cover above, was a low budget U.S.-based magazine that launched in 1953 as a celeb publication, quickly moved into scandal and gossip, but didn’t survive beyond 1956, as far as we can tell. The graphic design was revamped twice, and so we suspect it just never found its niche in a crowded tabloid market. But it wasn’t for lack of providing celebrity rumormongers what they craved. This August 1955 issue discusses Serge Rubinstein’s murder, Anita Ekberg’s bombshell status, Jackie Gleason and more, but of special note are two stories: one about Sonja Henie, and another about Sheree North.

Sheree North, not well known today, was a dancer-turned-actress who in the mid-1950s was groomed (like so many other women) as the next Marilyn Monroe. She even made the cover of Life with the caption: “Sheree North Takes Over from Marilyn Monroe.” But it didn’t happen. Though North had a couple of hit films, her on-deck status was quickly usurped by another bottled blonde named Jayne Mansfield. North had done some burlesque early in her career, and Rave claims she had a few stag reels floating around. We don’t know about that, but there was a 1951 clip called the “Tiger Dance” that certainly pushed the bounds of contemporary sexiness. We found an upload of it, and you can see it here.

The story on Sonja Henie is a bit more interesting. A Norwegian-born world and Olympic champion figure skater, Henie shot to international fame at age fourteen and turned that recognition into a Hollywood career. She became extremely popular as a screen star, and the same drive that sparked that success fueled her personal life. She married three times and had numerous affairs, including with Tyrone Power and allegedlywith champion boxer Joe Louis. But the mystery man Rave hints at on its cover is none other than piano player Liberace, just above. If you know anything about Liberace then you know his dates with Henie were just for show. But as a gay or bi celebrity—and both were designations he denied until his dying day—dating women would have been a completely understandable strategy to avoid being outed by the time's vicious tabloids and losing his musical career.

Henie, on the other hand, rarely let controversy get in the way of her decisions if she thought the result would ultimately be a net gain. This is possibly why she publicly greeted Adolf Hitler with a Nazi salute at a Berlin exposition in 1936, and why she sought Joseph Goebbels’ help in distributing one of her films in Germany. Yet you have to assume that anyone who would hang out with and possibly sleep with Joe Louis didn’t have rock solid racist views. But as millions died, her behavior can only be seen as shameful. However she returned to Norway with Holiday on Ice in 1953 and again the year Rave published the above cover and was warmly greeted, if not quite totally forgiven. Henie died of cancer in 1969, but as another fascinating product of a complex time, we suspect her name will come up on this website again.

One of the elements we like about pinku films—aside from the action, the visuals, and the glimpse into a culture not our own—is that the women who have suffered all sorts of degradations at the hands of men inevitably massacre their tormentors in the last reel. When that doesn’t happen, we’re cheated of the final catharsis, which makes us party to the abuse rather than cheerleaders for the abused’s emancipation. We don’t need to be shown that the world is cruel—we just want to see something done about it, if only in the realm of violent fantasy.

Thus Sadao Nakajima’s Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, aka The Kyoto Connection doesn’t quite deliver for us. It’s a rather simple film, and it has nothing to do with traveling around. Quite the opposite, actually. The porn star in question is held captive in a room most of the movie and repeatedly abused by a rather disturbed taxi driver for whom she eventually develops feelings. Psychologists, so we hear, call this sort of emotional inversion Stockholm Syndrome. We call it a letdown, even though we understand there’s an attempt to make a serious point here.

At least the movie has Christina Lindberg in the title role, so that’s a substantial silver lining. The poster above is one you can find on many websites, but we suspect only we have the rare two-panel version below. Too bad the printers produced such a shitty image. We can only assume that upon seeing a nude Christina Lindberg, they printed the posters one-handed while abusing themselves. Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan opened in Japan today in 1973.

Assorted images from Adam, March 1973, with nice shots of Claudia Cardinale and Vanessa Redgrave in panel nine. It also features something we’ve never seen before—a cover that reverses the traditionally assigned roles. For an idea what we mean, check here. 

Because America’s food conglomerates have a rock solid foundation in planetary physics, in 1958 Swift’s Premium—which was a company that sold pre-packaged dried beef among other products—issued this handy Space Travel Guide to educate kids about the solar system. You just turned the wheel and it gave information on each planet, such as its astronomical sign, and its period of revolution around the sun, while of course touting Swift's supersonically quick dried beef recipes. Yum! It’s an udderly wonderful little gadget. We just wish it explained that whole cow jumping over the moon thing.     

If you like Hammer Studios' gothic horror films, Straight on till Morning might not quite be your bucket of blood, but you have to give the studio behind The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Visitor from the Grave credit for getting out of their comfort zone. It’s out with the old, in with the new, as they leave castles and moors behind for the penthouses and pavement of modern day London. The result, which premiered in the U.K. today in 1972, is decidedly mixed. Not that this film isn’t creepy—just the opposite, watching miss lonely heart Rita Tushingham fall unknowingly into the arms of a sadistic killer is like having a front row seat for a downward spiral. She’s sad and innocent; he’s compelled to kill beautiful women—somehow we know this isn’t going to end with her tossing a bouquet to her bridesmaids. Bleak though it may be, we think this one is worth a viewing. Or, to quote Hammer Studios’ namesake, the redoubtable MC Hammer: “When you talkin’ about the Hammer, you talkin’ about a show.”

Yeah, even the BDSM crowd is feeling the pain of our global crisis. The difference is, they’re breathily moaning, “Oh, please more, master. I’ve been very, very naughty.” You know how those office paper cutters make a mess of things if you put more than five sheets of paper in them? Not a problem here—the messier the better.

In case you had any doubts that pulp literature was often used by authors as a catharsis for their racial fears, here’s a representative sampling of vintage magazines featuring assorted cultural stereotypes. Pulp—where men are men and natives can’t get women without kidnapping white ones.