Sex Files

January 6 2011

CHANGING TIMES

Curious George goes to the clinic.

This January 1954 issue of Whisper tells readers about a stripper named Lola Dewitt Stewart who bit a cop, covers a gala Harlem dance, and exposes the voodoo rites of Haitian virgin priestesses. The issue also contains a profile of Christine Jorgensen, the most famous transsexual of her day. Jorgensen—whose name is misspelled “Jorgenson” by Whisper editors—had been born George Jorgensen and had lived unhappily as a male for twenty-five years. After a stint in the Army, he learned about the possibility of becoming more feminine, started by taking hormones, and later travelled to Copenhagen, Denmark to have his male sex organs removed. At the time, Denmark used castration on sexual criminals, which is why the procedure was legal there.

Jorgensen, now female in appearance, returned to the U.S. and New York’s Daily News broke her story with one of the most famous headlines in tabloid history: Ex-G.I. Becomes Blonde Beauty. Jorgensen parlayed the recognition into a show business career, establishing a blueprint for later transgenders like Coccinelle. Jorgensen finished the last of her reassignment surgeries in the mid-1950s and, now sexually female, continued in show business for many years. She danced in Las Vegas, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, was voted “Miss Neutral Zone” by American soldiers serving in Korea, and had high-profile romances. Later in her life she reflected that she was proud to have been part of the sexual revolution. “We may not have started it,” she said of herself and other transgenders, “but we gave it a good swift kick in the pants.”

Denmark, Copenhagen, New York City, Harlem, Las Vegas, The Dick Cavett Show, Whisper, Daily News, Christine Jorgensen, Coccinelle, Dick Cavett, tabloid, lgbt

Intl. Notebook

November 25 2010

WRITTEN IN THE BLOOD

No matter how far we run the strings of our history are still attached.

How times have changed. Could one of the most brutal killers in the world openly hobnob with the Hollywood set today? We doubt it. But back in the day, a few rumors of murder only bolstered a man’s adventurous reputation, as proved by this November 1958 Whisper showing Rafael “Ramfis” Trujillo, Jr. charming Zsa Zsa Gabor and Kim Novak. One or both women, you may notice, actually appear courtesy an X-acto knife and glue, but what self-respecting tabloid has time to locate a legit photo when paste-up will do the job almost as well? Trujillo did date and bed both Gabor and Novak in real life, which makes this cover technically accurate, and makes him the second most enviable Dominican jet-setter in history.

Ramfis Trujillo reportedly gave most women that frisson some find irresistible, but his life wasn’t all starlets and champagne. Though he wanted nothing more than to be a playboy, there was an obstacle in the form of family baggage. Specifically, his father was a sadistic military dictator who had been put in power in the Dominican Republic by the CIA. Trujillo, Sr. expected his son to continue in the family business. This had been abundantly clear to Ramfis since the day his father made him a full general—with full pay—at age nine. For this and other reasons, he grew up with a warped sense of power and by the time of this Whisper cover had already ordered several murders and indulged in the occasional gang rape. He might have been considered a classic chip off the old block, save for rumors that Ramfis’s father was actually a Cuban named Rafael Dominicis—hence the “illegitimate dastard” tag in the banner. But the story about Ramfis being illegitimate was strongly denied by everyone involved (except Dominicis, who “disappeared”).

In any case, through the late fifties Ramfis tomcatted his way from Hollywood to Paris, and only occasionally let his urbane manner slip to reveal someone considerably less charming beneath. He seemed to have settled into his chosen lifestyle permanently when he married an actress named Lita Milan, below, who had starred opposite Paul Newman inThe Left-Handed Gun. But back in the Dominican, the impulsive Rafael Trujillo, Sr. was behaving less and less like the good lap dog the CIA had put in charge three decades earlier. Eventually, his U.S. benefactors turned against him and he died in a fusillade of possibly CIA-arranged bullets.

Junior succumbed to the pull of familial duty, as well as the desire for revenge, and flew back to the Dominican to restore order. This involved personally killing some of the participants in his father’s assassination. While this must have given him great satisfaction, it did little to stabilize the country. Under pressure from both internal enemies and the U.S., Ramfis Trujillo fled to Spain less than a year later with a casket containing millions in cash, jewels, bonds, and his father. By 1969 he was dead too, due to complications stemming from an automobile accident. In the end he presents an interesting question of nature versus nurture, i.e. was he meant to be a ladykiller, a real killer, or both?

Dominican Republic, Spain, CIA, Whisper, The Left-Handed Gun, Rafael Trujillo Jr., Raphael Trujillo Sr., Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kim Novak, Lita Milan, Paul Newman, Rafael Dominicis, tabloid

Vintage Pulp

May 14 2010

WHISPER FROM THE PAST

Driben covers and clever interior design made the early Whisper a visual treat.

Whisper magazine from May 1951. This is the first time we’ve posted an issue of the early Whisper, with its classic cheesecake covers painted by Peter Driben. Inside, the designers do good work with a three-color format, using judicious swaths of red to spice up the visual interest. The women pictured—Joy Madison, Cindy Sullivan, Pat Swanson, and the curiously named Kevin Daley—left nary a ripple in the historical record. Too bad the internet didn’t exist then—they could have leaked a sex tape and had nice careers in reality television. We have more of these old Whisper mags we’ll be posting soon.

Whisper, Peter Driben, magazine art

Hollywoodland

May 14 2010

WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION

1958 Whisper cover cleverly promises readers intensified efforts digging up celebrity dirt.

That was quick, wasn’t it? Here’s another Whisper, this one from May 1958, which is an important date because it was the month that original publisher Robert Harrison sold out to a publishing group led by Sy Steirman. Peter Driben’s monthly cover art had disappeared years before, but this clever inversion of the maxim about three monkeys that hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil almost makes up for Driben’s absence. And what we like best about it is that the idea is conveyed with no words at all. With a glance, readers knew the new Whisper would be getting deep down in the Hollywood muck to entertain them. But the magazine did not exactly live up to that promise, because it had already been sued for obscenity. Steirman actually toned Whisper down, and newstand sales suffered. Whisper lasted for another fifteen years, but was never again the imprint that struck terror into the hearts of Hollywood celebs.

Whisper, Robert Harrison, Sy Steirman, Peter Driben, tabloid

Vintage Pulp

April 6 2010

YELLOW JOURNALISM

Shocking revelations and unpleasant surprises.

Cover and interior pages of Whisper magazine from April 1955. In addition to some nice shots of Bettie Page, Whisper has a set of Josiane Berenger cheesecake images, which they use to taunt her fiancée Marlon Brando. Berenger had also posed nude at age seventeen for Polish artist Moise Kisling. Brando was aware of that and had offered to buy all Kisling’s negatives, but instead a French department store bought them and displayed the shots in their front window. But Brando got over that and stuck with Berenger, only to have Whisper blindside him a year later. We don’t know if these images were the last straw that ruined Brando and Berenger’s relationship, but we do know that shortly after the images appeared, the couple split.

Whisper, Marlon Brando, Josiane Berenger, Josanne Mariani-Berenger, Bettie Page, Moise Kisling, tabloid

Intl. Notebook

January 14 2010

DOUBLE CHECK

Trying to avoid being stuck in a bad pattern.

Above is an issue of Robert Harrison’s Whisper magazine from January 1955. Curious lack of celebrity dish on this cover, which we can only attribute to a rare scandal-free month, but we do like the nudist camp photo. Only, what the hell was this woman wearing? Tablecloths from an Italian restaurant? A flannel shirt and a kilt? We often talk regretfully about events we missed, or stars that were before our time, but one thing we’re glad we never saw with our own tender eyes was a pair of granny panties. With those things blocking the way to the promised land, we suddenly realize storming the beach at Iwo Jima was only the second bravest thing our grandfathers did.

Whisper, Robert Harrison, tabloid

Hollywoodland

July 6 2009

JACKED UP

The Jack Paar-Ed Sullivan feud was sometimes polite and sometimes ugly—but it was always must-see television.

Above you see a Whisper magazine cover from July 1961. We mentioned in our previous post on this tabloid that it was published by Confidential owner Robert Harrison, and here you see a more typical visual motif, pretty much duplicating the Confidential style. The tabloid formula always calls for a little sex (which you get in the person of Julie Newmar), a little crime (which you see in the banner about vice), and a little absurdity (Richard Boone the television cowboy is afraid of horses). Those three stories are self-explanatory, so we won’t bother to elaborate, but the centerpiece item about a feud between Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan may require a bit of explanation.

Everyone knows who Ed Sullivan was, but Paar is less famous these days. However it was Paar who really established the modern blueprint of late night talk shows, taking over a Tonight Show that was floundering, and within a year turning it into such a hit that it was renamed The Jack Paar Tonight Show. But there was a flipside to his brilliance—he was an emotional man who shot from the hip and dealt with the consequences later. Once, when one of his jokes was cut, he waited until the next night, replaced his monologue with a verbal broadside at the network, and walked off the show, leaving his astonished announcer Hugh Downs to finish the taping. It wasn’t the first or last time Paar did something shocking—he often cried on air. When you consider that Ed Sullivan was an emotionally distant figure known as “old stone face,” it’s clear he and Paar were probably destined to hate each other—if for no other reason than their diametrically opposed personalities.

Part of the Paar-Sullivan feud revolved around the Beatles. In January 1964 on his show The Jack Paar Program, Paar featured the Fab Four in a series of film clips leased form the BBC. When Sullivan had the real-life Beatles on his program later that year people forgot that Paar had ever broadcast Beatles clips and Sullivan became the man who introduced the band to America. Paar believed this was blatant revisionism, but here his vanity kept him from understanding the obvious truth that film clips are nothing compared to a live performance. Besides, Paar didn’t like the Beatles’ music, and had used the film clips to joke about the band. It was only after they became a phenomenon that he publicly sought to usurp Sullivan’s credit.

There were other occasions when the feud spilled into the open. For instance, Sullivan’s guests received several thousand dollars for their appearances, but Paar’s got a measly $320. He fought his network to try and change that, word got to the tabloids, and the tabs spun it as yet more personal animus between the two hosts, when in this case it could be argued Paar was standing up for his guests and the reputation of his show. But there was no doubt Paar and Sullivan hated each other. They were even talked into having a public debate, but it fell apart. At first, word was Sullivan had backed out, but a bit later CBS exec Douglas Edwards said it was actually Paar who had gotten cold feet. The news set Paar off. He spent nearly fifty minutes of The Tonight Show trashing Ed Sullivan. He began by facetiously describing his rival as a man who was “as honest as he is talented,” and ended by flatly calling him a liar.

The Paar-Sullivan rivalry only lost its steam when Parr retired, and Sullivan’s show declined and was finally axed June 6, 1971. Parr made a brief comeback in 1973, but quit for good shorty thereafter. None of us at Pulp Intl. are old enough to have seen the Paar-Sullivan blood feud, but there’s plenty of text about it on the web to give a sense of what it was like. When we try to think of a comparable modern day dust-up between two relevant, powerful, and brilliant personalities we come up blank—and don’t even try to put O’Donnell-Limbaugh in the same class. The Paar-Sullivan feud was a clash of beloved titans who, even in the midst of their battles, tried to entertain, educate, and elevate their audiences. American television hasn’t been the same since.

The Tonight Show, The Jack Paar Program, The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS, Whisper, Jack Paar, Ed Sullivan, Hugh Downs, The Beatles, television, tabloid

Hollywoodland

June 11 2009

CARELESS WHISPER

There's a bad moon on the rise.

In our continuing chronicle of mid-20th century tabloid magazines we have a new player—Whisper magazine. Whisper was founded as a girlie magazine in 1946 by Confidential owner Robert Harrison. By the time he sold out in 1958 Whisper was already a clone of Confidential in style and content, although sometimes it sported a simpler cover motif with a celeb framed inside a circle. In this example from 1956, the circle becomes a blood red disc reminiscent of the old Short Stories covers, but which is probably supposed to suggest werewolves. The spotlight here is on George Sanders, one of the more interesting Hollywood characters of the time. Born in Russia, Sanders was British by lineage, and built a film career playing aristocrat types, often with an air of menace. This was most aptly displayed in 1950’s All About Eve, a role for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Sanders was known as a smooth operator, but his personal life was a wreck. He married four women over the years—including serial bride Zsa Zsa Gabor, and her older sister Magda. He would have been between marriages at the time of Whisper’s alleged strike out with an unnamed ingénue, but he’d be back in the saddle by 1960, marrying actress Benita Hume. Health problems eventually robbed Sanders of his acting talent and he finished his career in the low budget stinker Psychomania. Eventually, he also lost the ability to indulge in his beloved hobby of playing music, which prompted him to destroy his piano with an axe. Not long after, he took a fatal dose of Nembutal, leaving behind a suicide note addressed to the world that read in part: I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

Russia, Britain, Academy Award, All About Eve, Psychomania, Whisper, Short Stories, George Sanders, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Magda Gabor, Benita Hume, Willie Mays, Sally Rand, suicide, tabloid

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

March 23

2011—Elizabeth Taylor Dies

American actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career began at age 12 when she starred in National Velvet, and who would eventually be nominated for five Academy Awards as best actress and win for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dies of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles. During her life she had been hospitalized more than 70 times.

March 22

1963—Profumo Denies Affair

In England, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denies any impropriety with showgirl Christine Keeler and threatens to sue anyone repeating the allegations. The accusations involve not just infidelity, but the possibility acquaintances of Keeler might be trying to ply Profumo for nuclear secrets. In June, Profumo finally resigns from the government after confessing his sexual involvement with Keeler and admitting he lied to parliament.

March 22

1978—Karl Wallenda Falls to His Death

World famous German daredevil and high-wire walker Karl Wallenda, founder of the acrobatic troupe The Flying Wallendas, falls to his death attempting to walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Wallenda is seventy-three years old at the time, but it is a 30 mph wind, rather than age, that is generally blamed for sending him from the wire.

March 22

2006—Swedish Spy Stig Wennerstrom Dies

Swedish air force colonel Stig Wennerström, who had been convicted in the 1970s of passing Swedish, U.S. and NATO secrets to the Soviet Union over the course of fifteen years, dies in an old age home at the age of ninety-nine. The Wennerström affair, as some called it, was at the time one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War.

March 21

1963—Alcatraz Closes

The federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes. The island had been home to a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison over the years. In 1972, it would become a national recreation area open to tourists, and it would receive national landmark designations in 1976 and 1986.

March 20

1916—Einstein Publishes General Relativity

German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. Among the effects of the theory are phenomena such as the curvature of space-time, the bending of rays of light in gravitational fields, faster than light universe expansion, and the warping of space time around a rotating body.