PIER REVIEW

Experts reach consensus—she was exquisite.

Above is a little artifact from our last swing through Spain, discovered at the Mercat del Vell de l’Estació de Sants in Barcelona. It’s an issue of Colleción Idolos del Cine, a magazine that devoted itself each month entirely to one celebrity, with rare photos and personal anecdotes. This one is from 1958 and features Ana Maria Pierangeli, who adopted the lyrical stage name Pier Angeli after debuting on the international cinema scene in Vittoria De Sica’s Domani è troppo tardi and winning a Nastro d’Argento, or Silver Ribbon, from the Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani. 

Angeli was a dewy eighteen in that role and looked so young as to be almost half-formed, which was perfect for her portrayal of a teen in the throes of first love. She maintained a youthful and innocent appearance for twenty more years, and is another actress who died young, in her case aged thirty-nine, via drug overdose, though accidental, officially. The printing quality of Colleción Idolos del Cine isn’t the best, but the photos are very interesting. Mucho más Angeli below, and we managed to buy five other examples of this magazine, with stars such as Ava Gardner, Analia Gadé, and Belinda Lee, so look for those later.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the panting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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