| Femmes Fatales | Nov 11 2020 |
She was a very intriguing star.
Swedish actress, director, and screenwriter Ingrid Thulin perches on a chair in this blonde on black promo image from 1956. She's best known for appearing in several Ingmar Bergman movies, including 1957's Smultronstället, also known as Wild Strawberries. Interestingly, Thulin guested on a U.S. spy series called Foreign Intrigue in 1954 and 1955, and the next year co-starred in the spy thriller Foreign Intrigue with Robert Mitchum, a movie that was unrelated to the television show despite its identical title. We guess the casting agent must have been like, “So, Ingrid, can you be intriguing? Just kidding. I see on your credits that you've been there, done that, so you're hired.”
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 3 2020 |
Never has a domestic employee done so little actual work.
It's Christina Lindberg again. Yes, eventually we're going to cover everything related to her. Thanks to the internet and some interest from modern filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, Lindberg rose from obscurity a while back and is now a staple on numerous blogs. She had become a journalist after her film career ended around 1982, and eventually ascended to the position of editor-in-chief of a Swedish aviation magazine called Flyrgevyn, but since 2000 she's been appearing in films again, and occasionally pops up at film festivals.
Her hit sexploitation flick Maid in Sweden premiered in the U.S. today in 1971, and you see the poster for that above. She plays a milkmaid, not a housemaid, by the way. Happy cows make tasty milk. There's nothing special about the promo poster, or the movie for that matter, but there's plenty special about Lindberg. We have proof below. We've had a lot of success locating promo shots of her that have never been seen online before, and this is another one. We have more, so you can bet we'll revisit her soon. Until then you can see a rare and pretty Japanese Maid in Sweden poster here, a sort of psychedelic Italian poster here, and plenty more Lindberg all around the site.
| Femmes Fatales | Aug 29 2020 |
Suddenly petroleum products don't seem so bad.
Above, a beautiful photo of model Inga Vasa, who was touted as a soon-to-be-star for a hot minute back during the late 1960s. This shot was made by photographer Rico May, and came from a 1968 issue of the Dutch magazine De Lach. Was Vasa Dutch? We can't say. More likely Swedish. But she's so obscure we can't be sure either way. Nice shot, though.
| Intl. Notebook | May 26 2020 |
Continental Film Review ties modern cinema up in a tidy little package.
Above and below, the cover and assorted interior pages from Continental Film Review, with all the rare imagery and erudite commentary from the European cinema scene readers had come to expect. The cover features German actress Brigitte Skay bound with rope, and those of note inside include Anna Gaël, Romy Schneider, Alain Delon, Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, and Edwige Fenech. Skay and Gaël are featured because of their roles in the 1969 sci-fi film Zeta One, aka The Love Factor, which it happens we discussed way back in 2010. Shorter version: Barbarella it ain't. Continental Film Review had a secondary focus on non-performance visual arts. This issue looks at animation from Sweden and talks about some hot illustrators of the time, including Jan Lenica and Per Ahlin, drawing comparisons between them and famed painters like René Magritte. All of that and more in thirty-plus scans.
SwedenBritainGermanyContinental Film ReviewBrigitte SkayAnna GaëlRomy SchneiderAlain DelonEdwige FenechMichèle MercierSerge GainsbourgJane BirkinJan LenicaPer Ahlinmagazine artcinema
| Intl. Notebook | Mar 29 2020 |
Digard and friend discover they're a wrestling match.
This curious photo shows Swedish softcore actress Uschi Digard and American porn actress Candy Samples posing for a photo with a wrestling theme, which was a strange little niche of the nudie market. In fact, it was a niche of the Super 8 home movie market too, which is why you can find loops of these staged clashes for sale even today. We don't particularly dig wresting pix or movies, but to each their own, right? Another niche Digard and Samples filled was the titanic boob market, as both were famous for their endowments. Digard became a star in sexploitation movies, working with directors such as Ed Wood and Russ Meyer. You don't have to pay auction prices for vintage loops of these two squirming and wrasslin' with each other. If you look you can find some online, uploaded to YouTube et al. We have seven more shots from this session below. These date from 1971.
Edit: we got an email from our friend Herman: "Sorry, but I've got to call an audible on this one. Uschi, yes, Candy, no! I don't know who she is but she is not Candy Samples. I've looked and don't find her with any of Russ Meyer's groupies. Uschi & Candy were among his favorites to hang with Kitten Natividad, his companion during the 80s and early 90s."
Thanks for writing in, H. As you probably already know, we call these mistakes, when they happen, internet replication errors, and you can't spell irritated without i-r-e. Basically, how IREs work is one website gets something wrong, so everyone else does too because nobody bothers to confirm the info. If enough sites repeat the mistake, error literally becomes fact. We've caught numerous IREs and thus avoided adding to the chain of incorrect info, but sometimes one slips through. Now we think this blonde wrestler could be Kyra Dyba Young, and she's about as obscure as it gets. But we can't say 100% it's her. For now, wrestler 2 goes in the unidentified bin.
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 21 2020 |
She's got nothing to apologize for.
Above is an Italian promo poster for Le avventure sessuali di Greta in 3D, which was made in England, was originally known as Four Dimensions of Greta, and starred Leena Skoog, here credited as Lena Skoog. You see her smiling face at the bottom of this post, preceded by a collection of additional promos. We also shared a Japanese poster for this film a while back, and did a little write-up on it, and shared a lot of very interesting production photos. You can see all that stuff here.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 10 2020 |
Lindberg gets full exposure in Japan.
This is a very interesting Japanese poster for the Swedish sexploitation flick Exponerad, which premiered in Japan today in 1972 as 露出 or Roshutsu, which both mean “exposure.” The film was known in English speaking countries as Exposed and (misleadingly) Diary of a Rape. There are some scans of this piece online, but not of this quality. We talked about the movie last year. Check here.
And as a bonus, because Exponerad is a movie that deals with daydreams, we have below all of our most dreamlike images of Lindberg. No surprise, right? If you visit our site often, you know she's a mainstay, so today we're just adding to what was already a substantial treasure trove. All of these ethereal shots are Exponerad promos, and all are striking. We have many more Lindberg rarities, and you can bank on us sharing those down the line.
| Hollywoodland | Dec 28 2019 |
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Above is a cover of the U.S. tabloid Inside Story published this month in 1955. There's a lot in this magazine, but since we keep our write-ups short we can't cover it all. One story of note concerns Betty Furness, an actress and pitchwoman whose squeaky clean image Inside Story claims is false. This is a typical angle by mid-century tabloids, the idea that a cinema or television sweetheart was really a hussy, lush, ballbreaker, or cold fish. Furness receives slander number four, with editors claiming she has “ice bound emotions,” “a cold, cold heart,” and is, “tough and tightfisted.” It's interesting that sixty years later resistance to a woman being anything other than a nurturer really hasn't diminished all that much, as many women with high public profiles would confirm.
Another story concerns the death of actress Virginia Rappe and the subsequent arrest of Fatty Arbuckle. In short, Rappe died after attending a party thrown by Arbuckle, with the cause of death attributed to either alcohol induced illness or rape and sodomy with a Coke bottle. Arbuckle went to trial three times before winning a final acquittal, though certain details of the death remained murky. The case was muddied by the influence of sensationalistic journalism, as publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst's nationwide chain of newspapers deemed sales more important than truth. The Coke bottle, for example, was entirely fabricated, but Hearst was unrepentant. He'd fit into the modern media landscape perfectly today, because for him money and influence justified everything.
And speaking of money, a final story that caught our eye was the exposé on the record business, namely the practice of buying spins on radio. The term for this—“payola”—was coined in 1916 but not widely known until the ’50s. Inside Story helps spread the terminology with a piece about pay-for-play on national radio stations. Like the previous two stories, this one feels familiar, particularly the idea that the best music rarely makes it onto the airwaves. Those who engaged in payola understood that people generally consumed whatever was put in front of them, therefore what was the point of worrying about quality or innovation? This remains a complaint about entertainment media today, but repetition still rules. To paraphrase the famed colloquialism: If you ain't going broke, don't fix it. We have thirty-plus scans below.
And speaking of money, a final story that caught our eye was the exposé on the record business, namely the practice of buying spins on radio. The term for this—“payola”—was coined in 1916 but not widely known until the ’50s. Inside Story helps spread the terminology with a piece about pay-for-play on national radio stations. Like the previous two stories, this one feels familiar, particularly the idea that the best music rarely makes it onto the airwaves. Those who engaged in payola understood that people generally consumed whatever was put in front of them, therefore what was the point of worrying about quality or innovation? This remains a complaint about entertainment media today, but repetition still rules. To paraphrase the famed colloquialism: If you ain't going broke, don't fix it. We have thirty-plus scans below.
SwedenInside StoryYale UniversityThe Kinsey ReportArthur GodfreyJanette DavisMarion MarloweHalelokeJulius de RosaMorey AmsterdamArlene FrancisDr. Alfred KinseyBetty FurnessThe Great DunningerCeleste HolmJohnnie RayFatty ArbuckleVirginia RappeMamie Van Dorentabloid
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 27 2019 |
What do the mice do if the cat's never away?
This was an unexpectedly awesome find. It's a Swedish poster for En fasansfull natt, better known as The Cat and the Canary. This promo gave us a laugh, because if you translate the Swedish title it's “a horrible night.” That's so Swedish, so no-nonsense, so to the point. You'd think a direct translation Katten och kanariefågan would have worked, but maybe not—we once chatted with someone from Sweden who said they didn't get bananas until the ’80s, so maybe the title was changed because nobody knew what a canary was. After premiering in the U.S. En fasansfull natt opened in Sweden today in 1939.
| Femmes Fatales | Oct 21 2019 |
I hereby decree that granny panties shall henceforth be considered sexy!
We wonder if granny panties will ever come back. They may. The fashion industry brought high-waisted jeans back and those were unflattering the first time around. Of course, some women look good in anything. This 1965 image of Swedish star Ann-Margret proves it. We have several entries on her in the website. Our favorites are here and here.
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