Vintage Pulp

December 28 2020

ADAM AND EVENING

U.S. Adam goes in search of adult entertainment after dark.

We’re taking a break from the Australian Adam magazine to remind everyone that the unrelated U.S. men’s magazine Adam was also filled with colorful art, fun fiction, weird facts, and beautiful models—in this case Danish pin-up and centerfold Elsa Sorensen, aka Dane Arden, who you see on the cover. We still think the down under Adam is the best, but northern Adam is always worth a look, and this issue published in 1960 is a representative example. Actually, there were two northern Adams. There was a French magazine of that name too, unrelated to the others. We’ve been meaning to locate one to buy online, but the price hasn’t been right yet.

Anyway, this issue of Adam contains the usual fiction and humor, plus features on strip clubs in Paris, Tokyo, and Long Beach, a profile on New Orleans torture mistress Madame Delphine Lelaurie, and other pleasures of the evening. It also highlights the “dirtiest book ever written”—supposedly Il Commandante di Pompeii, which we suppose can keep you company on lonely nights if you don’t get to Paris, Tokyo, or Long Beach. We have many scans below, and other issues of U.S. Adam you can find here, here, here, and here. And if you’re interested in the Aussie Adam we have scans from almost seventy issues in the website, and you can see them by starting here.

Denmark, Paris, Tokyo, New Orleans, Long Beach, Adam USA, Elsa Sørensen, Elsa Sørensen, Dane Arden, Delphine Lelaurie, Wendy March, Darlene Carr, Liane Morelli, Gloria Gilbert, magazine art, burlesque, nudity

Femmes Fatales

July 25 2017

A DRINK AND A SHOT

You can't have one without the other.

We’ve shown you this photo of slender Swedish actress Camilla Sparv from the film Murderer’s Row before, but it was a low quality version that appeared in Adam—the U.S. Adam as opposed to the Australian one. We don’t usually duplicate photos, but a cool image like this needs to be seen at top quality.

Sweden, Murderer's Row, Adam USA, Camilla Sparv, cinema

Vintage Pulp

February 15 2016

SPLITTING ADAMS

Getting down to the fine details.

Two issues of Adam to share—one from Australia and one from the U.S.—proved too much work for one day, so we posted Aussie Adam yesterday, and today we’re on to the American Adam. These magazines have no relationship to each other apart from coincidentally sharing a name. U.S. Adam relies on photo covers rather than painted art, shows a dedication to cheesecake photography that far outstrips its Australian cousin, and also has less fiction. However, what fiction it does offer extends beyond Aussie Adam’s adventure and crime focus, such as the short piece from counterculture icon Harlan Ellison called, “The Late Great Arnie Draper.” We’ve scanned and shared the entirety of that below if you’re in a reading mood.

The striking cover model here goes by the name Lorrie Lewis, and inside you get burlesque dancer Sophie Rieu, who performed for years at the nightclub Le Sexy in Paris, legendary jazzman Charles Mingus, and many celebs such as Jane Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, and the Rolling Stones. There’s also a feature on the Dean Martin movie Murderer’s Row, with Ann-Margret doing a little dancing, and blonde stunner Camilla Sparv demonstrating how to properly rock a striped crop-top. We managed to put up more than forty scans, which makes this an ideal timewaster for a Monday. Enjoy.

Femmes Fatales

November 5 2014

DANISH POETRY

Thinking of someone Elsa.

Though this fact doesn’t seem to be widely known—which is strange for a former Playboy model—Elsa Sørensen died last year aged seventy-nine due to complications from a bicycle accident. She was a former Miss Denmark whose September 1956 bunny mag centerfold brought her to wide notice, however the above image appeared not in Playboy, but in Adam—the U.S. version—in 1960. She graced that publication several times under the pseudonym Dane Arden, and used that for all her non-Playboy modeling assignments. In the 1960 Adam layout her photo was paired with a Robert Browning line about nothing being better than simple, unadorned beauty, and seeing her posed with neither clothes nor props, it’s clear why the editors chose that quote.

Denmark, Playboy, Adam USA, Elsa Sørensen, Elsa Sørensen, Dane Arden, nudity, deaths

Vintage Pulp

July 31 2014

ANNUAL EVENT

Adam's yearly special gives readers everything it’s got.

This Adam from 1960 is one of parent company Knight Publishing Corp.’s special annuals and features Lynn Hayward on the cover, plus the similar-looking Sheika Moser on the overleaf, both beautifully photographed by Keith Bernard. Hayward never appeared anywhere again, as far as we can tell, but Moser starred in numerous magazine layouts, including several for Spree, Gala and Eyeful. Inside the magazine you get fact, fiction, humor, and all the other elements that characterize mid-century men’s magazines, including many more women. Among them are Cuban dancer-turned-actress Chelo Alonso, burlesque queen Candy Barr, model-actress Ann Atmar, and others.

On a side note, we haven’t talked about our recent trip to the U.S. yet because we’ve just been too busy, but we did manage to collect quite a few more pulp items you’ll be seeing in the coming weeks. This particular Adam is an internet find, and you can locate it yourself with minimal effort. However, we did buy a dozen actual, physical issues of unrelated-to-the-above, hard-to-find, and never-before-uploaded Australian Adam. The new discovery pushed our issue total for that imprint well above fifty. But those are for later. Today, it’s good old American Adam. We have more than forty scans below for your enjoyment.

Cuba, Knight Publishing Corp., Adam USA, Sheika Moser, Lynn Hayward, Chelo Alonso, Ann Atmar, Keith Bernard, Candy Barr, nudity, magazine art

Vintage Pulp

August 28 2011

AMERICAN COUSIN

Our favorite magazine Adam had a relative on the other side of the world.

We’ve now posted eighteen issues of the great Australian men’s magazine Adam. But there was an American Adam too, unaffiliated with the Aussie mag (as far as we know) that published identical content during the same period. There were three major differences, though—the American Adam did not have painted pulp-style covers like Aussie Adam, it had access to more widely known actors and authors, and it showcased nude photography years earlier. For example, the above American Adam, from August 1966, has rising star Raquel Welch, famous glamour babe June Wilkinson, fiction from John Steinbeck and Harlan Ellison, and an extensive and revealing feature on burlesque. It also has a centerfold of Vicky Kennedy, aka Margaret Nolan, who appeared in Goldfinger, among numerous other films, and was one of the more popular nude models of the 1960s. We have thirty scans of all this below.

Adam USA, Goldfinger, Raquel Welch, Harlan Ellison, John Steinbeck, June Wilkinson, Vicky Kennedy, Margaret Nolan, burlesque, nudie mags, nudity, magazine art

Femmes Fatales

June 16 2009

TENDER LOVING CARA

You'll soon feel better. Just leave it to her.

Above: actress Cara Peters, seen here in a shot published in this issue of Adam magazine from May 1968. Peters appeared in such 60s b-movies as Whip’s Women, Erotic Space Thing, and The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet.

Adam USA, Whip’s Women, Erotic Space Thing, The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet, Cara Peters, cinema

Vintage Pulp

May 30 2009

A CERTAIN SMILE

In the 1960s pulp illustrators found nudie magazines receptive to their work.

We’ve talked before about how erotic magazines exploded in popularity during the pulp age. Many of those publications, by printing fiction and art, took up the slack when the pulp market declined. While some of the authors and artists were already known, or became so, most passed unheralded into history. This was especially true of the illustrators. Today we have pages from the nudie magazine Adam, and to give you an idea how committed the publishers were to quality original art, consider the fact that all the illustrations below are from a single issue published forty-one years ago this month. We’ve rotated a few spreads because they would have been too small to appreciate horizontally. For a better look drag them to your desktop, open them, rotate them using your picture viewer, and witness the legitness. We’ve also included some of the photographic content because, well, just because. The cover is Barbie Dahl shot by Ron Vogel, and the centerfold is Chris Starr. Enjoy.

Adam USA, Jon Dahlstrom, Tom Duncan, Max Plaisted, Barbie Dahl, Chris Starr, Cara Peters, Ron Vogel, Jayne Mansfield, nudie mags, magazine art

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 11

1960—To Kill a Mockingbird Appears

Harper Lee’s racially charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. The book is hailed as a classic, becomes an international bestseller, and spawns a movie starring Gregory Peck, but is the only novel Lee would ever publish.

July 11

1962—Nuke Test on Xmas Island

As part of the nuclear tests codenamed Operation Dominic, the United States detonates a one megaton bomb on Australian controlled Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. The island was a location for a series of American and British nuclear tests, and years later lawsuits claiming radiation damage to military personnel were filed, but none were settled in favor in the soldiers.

July 10

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

July 9

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

July 8

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.

DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.

Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.

LOVES OF A BLONDE