This photo made today in 1959 shows a woman named Jessie Mae Noah, who Los Angeles police had arrested and were questioning in connection to a crime that had occurred seven weeks earlier. On that December night a Samuel Goldwyn Studios suit named Kenneth Savoy walked into the In Between Café on Melrose Avenue during the time two men—one holding a sawed-off shotgun—were in the process of robbing it. Having collected the money and valuables of eight patrons and the contents of the cash register, they demanded Savoy’s wallet, and perhaps having watched too many of his own movies, he replied that if they wanted it they’d have to shoot him. That hard-boiled response earned him a load of buckshot in the stomach. The robbers scampered to their getaway car—where Jessie Mae Noah was waiting in the rear seat—and fled the scene.

After police published composite sketches of the robbers in the newspapers, Noah contacted police, resulting in the photo op at top. The robbers—George Scott and Curtis Lichtenwalter—were arrested later (for those who wonder whether composite sketches are ever accurate, check the comparison between Scott and his likeness at bottom).

Scott had fled all the way to Texarkana, Arkansas, and gave up only after a shoot-out with police at a motel. Jessie Mae Noah claimed she’d had no idea her two acquaintances were planning a robbery, and that she had simply gone for a ride with them for kicks. She avoided a murder charge, but Scott and Lichenwalter were both found guilty of robbery and first degree homicide. Scott—the triggerman—was gassed to death by the state of California in September 1960. And as for the victim Kenneth Savoy, you have to wonder what he thought in that instant when the shotgun went off. We suspect he thought that maybe calling bluffs was something best left to the stars of action films.

Nothing says Christmas like a cheesy horror movie, and they don’t get much cheesier than Hammer Film Productions’ b-flick Satanic Rites of Dracula. This was the seventh and last movie to feature Christopher Lee playing Dracula, a role he inhabited with great gusto, and the third with Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. In other words, Hammer really knew how to beat a dead horse. Plenty of summaries of this online, so we won’t bother. We just wanted to show you the nice art. Satanic Rites of Dracula first played in Japan today in 1974. 

Ralph Meeker and Vera Miles joke around on the Hollywood set of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The episode they starred in was the series debut “Revenge,” and is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the show’s seven-year run. Meeker would appear in three more episodes of the series and many movies, while Miles would co-star memorably in Hitchcock’s Psycho. The photo dates from 1955.

The official poster for Hammer Film Productions’ smash hit One Million Years B.C., which was painted by famed British illustrator Tom Chantrell, is one of the most famous pieces of promotional art to come out of the 1960s. You  see that just below. The piece above is also Chantrell's work. Dated 1965 and signed at lower right with his familiar  block printing, it would have been made the year before One Million Years B.C. premiered, which perhaps explains why Raquel Welch isn’t yet the focus of the art. Good decision, eventually putting her on the poster, but we like this one too, especially that not-quite-big-enough tiger skin the character is wearing. Too bad we never saw Welch in that.

As for the movie, you’ve all seen it, right? Well, if not, just know that it’s the ultimate Anglo-Saxon, lost world fantasy, with light-skinned humans running around in a Neolithic wilderness living off the fat of the land. The fact that the women have shaved armpits and hot bodies is a bonus. There’s a plot involving early man’s inhumanity to early man, mixed in with threats from various giant amphibians and some pretty convincing stop-action miniatures from efx guru Ray Harryhausen.

But of course Welch is the focus of the movie, and it’s a bit of surprise she ever agreed to star, considering she was already pretty well established as an actress. Credit her for career savvy, though—One Million Years B.C., complete piece of cream cheese that it is, made her the top sex symbol in the world. We’ll leave you with a still from the film, but trust us—it’s nothing compared to Welch in motion. One Million Years B.C. opened in Europe in late 1966 and premiered in the U.S. today in 1967.

Here’s the basic idea of Der Kuss des Vampir: “Well, it’s too bad our newfangled horseless carriage broke down in the middle of this creepy moor, but at least we found an inn, though it’s oddly vacant—well, except for that one guest we never see—but in any case things are looking up, because the mysterious gentleman who lives in the hilltop manor has invited us for dinner tonight.”

If you were to accept this invitation and your host Dr. Ravna soon explained, “I like to be surrounded only by beautiful…”—very long pause as he looks at your new bride—“…things,” it would be an indication that he’s ravna for your wife’s neck. But you can’t pick up on these clues. You’re so rational you’re irrational. “Oh, don’t be silly, darling, Dr. Ravna is just a little odd is all. Well, I don’t know why we only see him at night—perhaps days he’s part of the crew trying to repair that washed out bridge that keeps us stuck in this Godforsaken hamlet.”

Okay, we made up the washed out bridge bit, but only to indicate that Der Kuss der Vampir is old-fashioned, late night, bats on strings style vamp horror, courtesy of Hammer Studios. We’ll stop there because amateur movie reviews are boring and we really only comment on the films so we can say something more than “isn’t this poster amazing?”

Incidentally, isn’t this poster amazing? It was designed by Klaus Dill, and it's a lot better than the movie. Not to say the movie is bad. It’s adequate, at the very least. But we like to spend our time on more entertaining…—very long pause as we think of better ways to use ninety minutes—…activities. Der Kuss des Vampir, aka Kiss of the Vampire premiered in West Germany today in 1963.

This Japanese poster for 1971’s Creatures the World Forgot is different than the style of Japanese art we usually share, but the bold yellow color really struck us. The movie was produced by Hammer Studios, the same company that made the popular Raquel Welch lost world epic One Million Years B.C., and the follow-up When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. But where the previous two movies chose to show early humans interacting with dinosaurs, Creatures—spoiler alert for Creationists—went the scientifically factual route and had no giant lizards. Hammer probably did it not out of truthfulness, but out of cheapness. But in any case science wins again.

As far as the actual movie goes, there’s nobody of Raquel Welch’s stature involved, but Norwegian actress Julie Ege does about as good a job as any actress could in a production with no actual dialogue. And yes, she wears one of those fur bikinis and looks pretty good in it. Can we recommend the movie? Not really. But if you’re bored try watching it with a few of your cleverest friends and see who invents the best dialogue. By the way, if you’re the observant type you’ve probably deduced, by virtue of the fact that somehow the number 100 has snuck its way onto the poster, that the Japanese did not call the movie Creatures the World Forgot. The text actually says “one million years primitive man.” Or something like that. Creatures the World Forgot premiered today in 1971

Above is a nice little artifact from the Jazz Age, a cover of Paris Plaisirs, numbered 88 and published in October 1929, the month disaster struck when a massive speculative bubble that had built up within the lightly regulated New York Stock Exchange burst and led to a collapse that dragged the world into a global depression. The background pattern here looks like superimposed bar charts, but since it comes about thirty days before the actual crash, we’ll just go ahead call the graphic coincidental. But how eerie. The cover star is a Folies Bergère dancer known only as Eva, and inside you get the usual assortment of flappers, showgirls, art, and photography from Studio Manassé.

Above, French vintage of the best kind—scans from Paris Magazine #27, November 1933, with platinum-coiffed cover star Mary Carlisle, who was born in 1912, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is still alive today. You also get photography from Schall, Zielke, Jean Moral, Studio Manassé, and art from Yves Brayer.