 Lamour lives up to her name by getting some hot island love. 
We said we'd get back to Tijuana bibles soon, and true to our word here you see a blatant offense against all that is right and decent called Purple Passion in the South Seas. It stars cinema superstar Dorothy Lamour and a fella named Jon Hall. You may not know him, but he was an actor also, and co-starred with Lamour in a 1937 south seas adventure called The Hurricane. The dirty-minded folks who made this booklet would have wanted it available while the film was still on people's minds, so we're thinking it came out that year or in early 1938. We're assuming you know the deal with these items. But if not you can visit our introductory post on the subject at this link. Because the column width on our website is somewhat narrow, the scans of this bible are small, which makes parts unreadable without practically putting your eyeball directly against the computer screen. Funny as that would look, it's not recommendable, so we've transcribed the text where needed. If you like this one, we have others. Just click the keywords “Tijuana bible” at the bottom of the post and start scrolling. More of these to come. Dorothy: Say Jon, aren't you afraid that your cock will look white against your suntan? Jon: Say! I never thought of that! Maybe I better take it out and get it to match the rest of me!* *Transcribing the text only reinforces the fact that these things are absolutely moronic, but we love them anyway.
 Even if the folklore is untrue, you have to give it credit for staying power. 
The rumor about John Dillinger’s enormous penis has been debunked often enough that we don’t need to bother, but the interesting question remaining is how the rumor got started in the first place. Nobody knows, but this Tijuana bible entitled A Hasty Exit may be the first depiction of Dillinger with an oversized member. Tijuana bibles often starred famous and infamous people, and all the men had enormous rods, because what’s the point of a dirty book otherwise? But still, this is a curious artifact, considering the folklore surrounding Big John’s dilly of a pickle. It doesn’t have a copyright, but it has for many years been grouped with other bibles dating from the 1930s. We’re putting it at 1934 or after because the Evelyn character here probably is supposed to be Dillinger’s girlfriend Evelyn Frechette, who was unknown to the wider public until her April 1934 arrest. The Captain Tracy character is, of course Dick Tracy. Dilly and Dick get freaky, below. See more Tijuana bibles by clicking here, here, or here.        
 Sleazy tabloid exposes the nationwide trade in even sleazier Tijuana bibles. 
It’s been a while since we’ve featured Hush-Hush, but it’s one of our favorite high-end mid-century tabloids, so today we have a newly scanned issue from this month 1957. We learn that Ingrid Bergman called Ed Sullivan a liar for falsely claiming she was booked on his show, and that Phil Silvers was terrified that he would lose his fame, and that Eartha Kitt was destined to forever be lonely because she was interested only in white men. But the fun story here is the one headed: “Movie Stars Victimized By Smut, Inc.” The article is about Tijuana bibles, and the many celebs who had been unknowingly featured in them. We’ve already posted a few bibles, thus you probably already know that they’re pornographic eight-page comic booklets sold clandestinely in drug stores and soda fountains. Their makers felt free to borrow the likenesses of public figures of the day, and Hush-Hush offers up examples starring Bob Hope, Marie Wilson, Robert Mitchum and others. The article describes them as “unbelievably filthy booklets showing the basest sexual acts and perversions.” Well, true enough. Their distribution was so worrisome that the FBI got involved, and while the feds did manage to make some arrests, the flow of booklets remained pretty much uninterrupted. We can only assume that Hush-Hush’s exposé made them even more popular, which is kind of how it works with porn, right? Someone gets on their soapbox about it and people walk away thinking, Hmm, I better see one of these with my own eyes. Of course, Hush-Hush didn’t dare reprint the interior pages, but we have no such inhibitions here at Pulp Intl. See the next post, and see here.                        
 Robert Mitchum is the butt of a very dirty joke. 
So, here’s the Robert Mitchum booklet cited in the July 1957 Hush-Hush in the above post. The article describes it as the lowest form of filth and its maker or makers as degenerate profiteers. Pretty hard to argue with that. Consider it a warning. It’s called Goof Butts, and it references Mitchum’s arrest for marijuana possession in 1948. Assuming the creators of the book wanted to strike while the iron was hot, so to speak, they probably published it around the same time. Enjoy.
 He’s just a hunk a hunk of burnin’ love. 
A while back we promised to dig up some more info on Tijuana bibles, and today, prompted by an e-mail we received, we’ve decided to share a bit of what we learned. By at least one estimate, more than two-thousand different bibles were published in the U.S. between 1930 and 1950. They were copied and sold, spreading from city to city, distributed from dealer to dealer and dealer to customer in exactly the same fashion as illicit drugs. According to author and critic R.C. Harvey, many young men actually learned about sex from these books, or at least learned there were more variations than they had imagined. And cultural critic Gershon Legman believes that mainstream comic books evolved from Tijuana bibles. In that e-mail we mentioned, we were asked about a bible cover we posted called Sex Slave. Would it be possible to post the entire book? Sure, no problem, we’ve posted it below. When was it made? No copyright, sorry, but since Elvis stars we can assume it was sometime after he achieved true fame, so let’s say post-1955. That’s also after the TJ bible heyday, which may be why Sex Slave deviates from the normal eight-page format. It’s also unorthodox in that it’s highly editorial, and doesn’t offer much in the way of clinical explicitness. In fact it’s almost chaste—well, as chaste as an x-rated tract about forced anal sex with the King can be. We will of course post another of these publications at a later date. In the meantime, click keyword “Tijuana bible” below to see our past offerings.                           
 Tijuana bibles pushed back against the conservative sexual mores of the times.      
Well, we’re glad to see somebody finally went and put together a website of Tijuana bibles. The site is called tijuanabibles.org. Above you see six covers from their collection, and below is the entirety of a raunchy and racially charged Esther Williams bible entitled Get a Li’l Like the Fishes Do. We had doubts about posting it, but whenever we self-censor we end up kicking ourselves later, so this time we decided screw it. We consider ourselves mainly a history site, and censoring history is always a bad idea. Consider that a content warning. Anyway, Esther Williams was of course a famous swimmer who used her skills in an acting career, so the underwater theme of her bible is a play on her many aquatic roles. It was probably printed in the late 1940s, a time during which its IR content would have gotten the hood and noose crowd pretty riled up. But they would have been clueless whom to blame, because, as we discussed before, these American-made books may have been called Tijuana bibles for the sole purpose of misdirecting crusading citizens and curious authorities. For more examples of these little treasures, pay tijuanabibles.org a visit.
        
 Mexicans got the blame, but only Americans could have done this. 
We stumbled across a collection of Tijuana bibles and just had to share these things. For the uninitiated, Tijuana bibles are dirty booklets produced starting in the 1920s, but which reached their zenith during the Great Depression. The booklets depicted sex between well-known figures of the time—everyone from movie stars to cartoon characters, all rendered in low rent art, but with the gynecological precision of kama sutra diagrams. Obviously, they were sold on the down-low, in drug stores, barber shops, speakeasies, or from the backs of cars. The time frame during which these were popular might seem to make their no-holes-barred explicitness amazing, but the Depression was an era of loosened morals, during which most Americans were actually hitting it before marriage. Nobody can say why they were called Tijuana bibles. Perhaps the name was chosen because the pages showed perversions that were presumably available only south of the border, or, equally likely, some smartass simply thought it was funny to blame Mexicans for something they hadn’t done. In any case, Mexicans clearly didn’t make these, because Americans are the undisputed kings of manufacturing smut, and always have been. Yeah baby. U.S.A! U.S.A! More bible covers below, followed by a small selection of the tamest interior art we could find.                
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Holiday Records Strange Fruit
American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records "Strange Fruit", which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history. 1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West's considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy. 1971—Manson Sentenced to Death
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed. 1923—Yankee Stadium Opens
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008.
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