From the hair salon to the executive suite. This issue of The National Tattler hit newsstands today in 1974, and as you can see, it lacks a certain something compared to issues of the 1960s. The earlier Tattler featured fantastically exploitative stories conjured from the darkest reaches of the editors' imaginations, while the 1974 version has content that is—amazingly—mostly true. Mostly. We're not sure about Richard Burton turning to a faith healer to help with his drinking problem, and if he did, it didn't work. Alcohol problems plagued him until his death. The story that really caught our eye is the piece on Barbra Streisand moving in with her hairdresser. That hairdresser was Jon Peters, who, with a major boost from Streisand, became one of the biggest producers in Hollywood. Quite a climb from giving perms. Starting from scratch, knowing literally zero about moviemaking, he soon earned production credits on hits such as Caddyshack, Rainman, Batman, and The Color Purple. But he also made some ludicrous flops—The Bonfire of the Vanities and Who's That Girl come to mind. That's par for the course for producers. Win a few, lose a few. Along the way Peters became a legendary eccentric, and these days he's almost as well known for being the subject of a Kevin Smith diatribe about everything that is wrong with Hollywood than for his movie work. Smith's take on Peters is one of the funniest Tinseltown insider tales of all time, and we suggest you do yourself a favor and enjoy it in its entirety. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here. It may be the best eighteen minutes you've ever spent online, and as bonus it's got spiders in it.
The whole thing was purely sexual. Above, a typically text-heavy cover of The National Tattler from today in 1964. Inside, the editors report on the sexual deviations of American women, basically echoing the famous Kinsey Report that in 1953 completely upended what the public thought they knew about female sexual behavior. Check out our other Tattlers by clicking the keywords below.
Tales from the dark side. We’ve got quite a backlog of tabloids here, so we’re officially designating March tabloid month at Pulp Intl., and we’re starting with this issue of The National Tattler, published today in 1970. It features tales about Charles Manson’s revenge fantasies, Dean Martin’s partying lifestyle, and Jackie O’s problems with poltergeists. Stories about Kennedy ghosts were rampant during the early ’70s, and we actually have a few other tabs we’ll show you later that riff on the same chord. Also of note is a story about America reaching its pollution doomsday in 1980. Again with that year? We just don’t get it. Perhaps in the other tabloids we share this month we’ll find an answer. Expect appearances from The National Police Gazette, Hush-Hush, Confidential, Whisper and all the other heavy hitters of the era, as well as a few obscure finds we’ve made during the last year. See the Tattler in rare form here and here, and check the website badmags.com for even more.
I slink therefore I am. The National Tattler is truly one of our favorite tabloids. How could it not be, when its editors had so few qualms about leaving reality coughing in a cloud of dust by the roadside? Plus, we have a soft spot for it because it was the first tabloid we ever posted. The Tattler’s niche was shock, and when they couldn’t find images of decomposing bodies or mutilated accident victims for their covers, they resorted to old-fashioned paste-up, as in this image of a human caterpillar who has a wife and family. Some would see his condition as a handicap, but certainly there are advantages to being born a caterpillar. For one thing, by the time you get married you’ve already learned to crawl.
National Tattler cover, 1 November, 1964. We suspect they have a different kind of meal in mind than we do, but in any case it must have been an awfully slow news day.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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