As usual there’s plenty happening inside this issue of Hush-Hush, which was published in May 1963. We’re mainly interested in Porfirio Rubirosa, who we haven’t written about in a long while. A quick refresher: Rubirosa was a Dominican born jet-setter, playboy, race car driver, and polo player who married a succession of wealthy women, came away richer each time, and left behind a trail of unbelievable stories. Hush-Hush gleefully tells readers that the one percenters, ex-lovers, and betrayed husbands in Rubirosa’s extensive circle are all terrified because he’s rumored to be publishing a memoir. This bare-all would supposedly expose never-before-heard secrets of the rich, famous, and powerful.
Hush-Hush then goes through the list of Rubirosa’s wives and affairs, offering no new information but padding the article with typically circular tabloid language, before concluding: One of Rubi’s biggest assets is certainly discretion. So relax, ladies. In other words, the memoir would share the facts, but no names. That doesn’t sound fun at all. But the book, if it was ever planned, was never written, as far as we know, and Rubirosa took his secrets with him when he exited this existence two years later by crashing his Ferrari into a chestnut tree in Paris.
Elsewhere Hush-Hush rails against Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s anti-war novel Fail-Safe, calling it a propaganda victory for communists—a standard attack in the U.S. still used today when sensible people warn of the lunacy of choosing war over dialogue. The magazine also exploits the deceased Marilyn Monroe by writing an article about how others are exploiting the deceased Marilyn Monroe. And need we say it? Cynically pretending to defend others for various types of gain is also a trick that still works today.
Moving on, Anthony Perkins gets the treatment by being called effeminate, which is as close as a tabloid could get after the lawsuits of earlier years to saying an actor was gay. Also in the area of sexuality, Helen Gurley Brown’s bestselling book Sex and the Single Girl is called, “the final blow in the decline of the American virgin.” Others who get their turn on the rack include Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Arlene Dahl, about whom the magazine asks, “Why did Arlene Dahl pose in the nude?” We’d say she posed nudish, not nude, but in any case she was beautiful, so it was a gift to the world.
We have almost thirty scans below, and note: the moiré patterns on the images are due to the lower quality printing used by Hush-Hush. There may be a way to avoid them in scanning, but we don’t know how.
Broderick Crawford slaps Marlene Dietrich in the 1940’s Seven Sinners.
June Allyson lets Joan Collins have it across the kisser in a promo image for The Opposite Sex, 1956.
Speaking of Gilda, here’s one of Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth re-enacting the slap heard round the world. Hayworth gets to slap Ford too, and according to some accounts she loosened two of his teeth. We don’t know if that’s true, but if you watch the sequence it is indeed quite a blow. 100% real. We looked for a photo of it but had no luck.
Don’t mess with box office success. Ford and Hayworth did it again in 1952’s Affair in Trinidad.
All-time film diva Joan Crawford gets in a good shot on Lucy Marlow in 1955’s Queen Bee.
The answer to the forthcoming question is: She turned into a human monster, that’s what. Joan Crawford is now on the receiving end, with Bette Davis issuing the slap in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Later Davis kicks Crawford, so the slap is just a warm-up.
Mary Murphy awaits the inevitable from John Payne in 1955’s Hell’s Island.
Romy Schneider slaps Sonia Petrova in 1972’s Ludwig.
Lauren Bacall lays into Charles Boyer in 1945’s Confidential Agent and garnishes the slap with a brilliant snarl.
Iconic bombshell Marilyn Monroe drops a smart bomb on Cary Grant in the 1952 comedy Monkey Business.
This is the most brutal slap of the bunch, we think, from 1969’s Patton, as George C. Scott de-helmets an unfortunate soldier played by Tim Considine.
A legendary scene in filmdom is when James Cagney shoves a grapefruit in Mae Clark’s face in The Public Enemy. Is it a slap? He does it pretty damn hard, so we think it’s close enough. They re-enact that moment here in a promo photo made in 1931.
Sophia Loren gives Jorge Mistral a scenic seaside slap in 1957’s Boy on a Dolphin.
Victor Mature fails to live up to his last name as he slaps Lana Turner in 1954’s Betrayed.
Ronald Reagan teaches Angie Dickinson how supply side economics work in 1964’s The Killers.
Marie Windsor gets in one against Mary Castle from the guard position in an episode of television’s Stories of the Century in 1954. Windsor eventually won this bout with a rear naked choke.
It’s better to give than receive, but sadly it’s Bette Davis’s turn, as she takes one from Dennis Morgan in In This Our Life, 1942.
Anthony Perkins and Raf Vallone dance the dance in 1962’s Phaedra, with Vallone taking the lead.
And he thought being inside the ring was hard. Lilli Palmer nails John Garfield with a roundhouse right in the 1947 boxing classic Body and Soul.
1960’s Il vigile, aka The Mayor, sees Vittorio De Sica rebuked by a member of the electorate Lia Zoppelli. She’s more than a voter in this—she’s also his wife, so you can be sure he deserved it.
Brigitte Bardot delivers a not-so-private slap to Dirk Sanders in 1962’s Vie privée, aka A Very Private Affair.
In a classic case of animal abuse. Judy Garland gives cowardly lion Bert Lahr a slap on the nose in The Wizard of Oz. Is it his fault he’s a pussy? Accept him as he is, Judy.
Robert Culp backhands Raquel Welch in 1971’s Hannie Caulder.
Avedon and appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. Paolozzi was already considered “the first of the ’60s free spirits” by the tabloids, and by stripping for Avedon she became the first recognized fashion model to pose nude, a practice that is now common.
advantage of his more permissive surroundings by pursuing relationships with famous men such as Tab Hunter, Eric Bruhn, and Anthony Perkins, and by posing for a very famous set of nude photos 
