vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above: the cover and numerous interior pages from an issue of Australia’s Man magazine published this month in 1959. The art is incomparable. The scans only hint at its excellence. Most of the illustrations take up a full page, and are vibrant on high quality paper stock. In our holdings are numerous copies of this publication, which means it will return in all its glory before long.
We showed you the U.S. promo poster for I Married a Monster from Outer Space when we discussed the film a while back. Above is the really nice Australian daybill, with beautiful colors and lovely design. Someone deserved to be credited for this, but nobody knows who painted it. Or at least, we don’t. There’s no Australian premiere date, but it was probably sometime in 1959.
This image, which we’ve seen around online a bit lately, shows a group enjoying a spin on an amusement park attraction often referred to as a centrifugal ride (in Newtonian mechanics centrifugal force is fictitious, for those who want to dig deeper). We’ve also heard these machines referred to as rotors, and some people call them gravitrons, but those are actually slightly different rides that weren’t invented until the 1980s. The rotor was created by German engineer Ernst Hoffmeister in 1948, and first unveiled during Oktoberfest a year later
If you’ve never seen a rotor and don’t know how they operate, basically it’s a spinning drum that accelerates until its riders are stuck to the wall, then the floor drops. The contraptions typically accelerated to about thirty-three rpms, creating an outward force of close to three times that of gravity. You notice below a couple of the more advanced riders managed to turn themselves upside down, which is pretty slick. These are interesting shots of good clean fun, made at a place called Luna Park, in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, circa mid-1950s.
Today’s issue of Adam magazine was published this month in 1960, with cover art meant to illustrate an interesting short story titled, “Yellow Isn’t for Cowards,” by Damon Mills. He wrote often for Adam during the early 1960s. In fact, this is the fourth tale of his we’ve run across, and his best, we think. It’s about an experienced circus aerialist, his younger competition in both love and acrobatics, and the triple somersault the younger one can perform but the older one can’t—usually. Yellow is said to be bad luck in the aerialist community, so the scene above shows the love interest jinxing one of the flyers. The tales in Adam varied greatly in quality, but Mills had talent.
Back around 1960 Adam was using pretty poor paper stock, which accounts for the grainy scans below. There was also not as much beautiful art as later, which accounts for the smaller than usual number of pages uploaded. Furthermore, humidity got to the magazine in the eighty or so years it was in storage. The bottom line is today’s share will consist of only nineteen panels. But one of those has famed nudist model Diane Webber, so that’s something anyway. Plus, though there aren’t many art pieces, a few are nice, including one by the hard working Jack Waugh. A final note: this is the eighty-eighth issue we’ve shared. Hey, we’re impressed by that. Adam will return, as always.
Above: a cover for Shane Martin’s novel In het kielzog van de dood which translates as “the wake of death,” published by Uitgeverij Jan van Tuyl in 1962. Yes, in Dutch “dood” means death. Imagine Dutch visitors to California. They must be in constant fear. Is this author the same Shane Martin who published several thrillers in his native Australia during the late ’50’s to early ’60s? Probably. If so, this could be a translation of his novel A Wake for Mourning. Total guess, brah.
Neil Boyle is an illustrator whose work we hadn’t gotten aaround to yet until today. He’s responsible for several nice paperback covers that we’ve seen, but this album jacket for U.S. singer Jane Morgan’s 1957 LP Fascination is the effort we like the best so far. It was orginally made for Australia, but was used in a Stateside reissue in 1962. We’ll probably see more from Boyle later.
Morgan, like many mid-century pop stars, is a bit forgotten now, but she was a top performer of her day, generating six gold records over a long career of singing classics, songs from musicals, and romantic orchestral tunes. Though American, she first became famous in France and the UK before breaking through in her home country. You can find her music online, so feel free. And when you do, send her a good vibe or two—she’s still around today, aged 100.
This November 1957 issue of Man magazine from Australia features a very attractive cover painted by the still unidentified artist Humph. Consider it a continuation of our “Lost at C” collection from a few years back, which comprised various cartoonists riffing on the classic theme of people stranded on lonely islands. This Man also features Humph art in the interior, and efforts from Jack Waugh and Phil Belbin. In addition, there’s the short story “The Tin Alibi” from fiction heavyweight Harry Whittington, and a short profile and photo feature on Swedish icon Anita Ekberg. All shared here to waste your time in a pleasant way. If you want to waste even more time we have other issues of Man here and here, six issues of Man Junior starting here, and if you’re willing to go down the deepest possible rabbit hole, we have, from the same publishing company and featuring the same artists, more than eighty issues of the iconic magazine Adam starting at this link.
Searching for a woman who’s disappeared is a standard plot in vintage fiction. John Boswell’s 1959 novel Lost Girl, the sequel to the previous year’s entertaining The Blue Pheasant, takes a swipe at the theme with professional photographer Chris Kent starring again. He meets a beautiful woman with a haunted past in a London painting studio, but right when they begin to take an interest in each other she vanishes. He’s inclined to forget her. She appears to have moved away, though the circumstances are unusual. But maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Who is he to ruin that ambition for her?
But others want answers, including the owner of the art studio, and a random acquantaince of the missing woman. Still, Kent remains blasé about the entire affair until a wealthy man offers to hire him to find the woman because she supposedly owns stock he wants to buy from her. Photographic proof is required, and Kent already knows her, so the rich guy considers him perfect for the job. Plus, the pay is quite good, and every photographer needs extra money. Kent accepts, and ultimately—no spoiler—traces his target all the way to Australia and into a twisted and sinister caper.
This was a good book. It made us curious about Boswell, but information on him is scarce. Well, we shouldn’t say scarce, exactly. Maybe he’s just tricky to isolate online because of other famous John Boswells that have lived. We suspect he was Australian, but don’t quote us on that. It’s possible he wrote only two books, but again, don’t quote us. You’d think two reasonably adept novels would lead to more output, but it’s never a guarantee. We’ll keep looking for info, and in due course we’re sure we’ll solve the mystery.
Horwitz Publications, an Australian imprint that used celebrities on many of its book fronts during the 1960s, strikes again with this cover for Carter Brown’s 1962 detective caper The Dame. It features British actress Jacqueline Jones, who was in quite a few films, and also modeled nude as Lynn Shaw. We doubt Horwitz had any particular affinity for Jones—the photo was probably just available as a promotional handout and the company used it without permission. Why do we think that? We explain here. This is a nice result, though.
Above: the cover and selected interior scans from Australia’s Adam magazine published this month in 1962, with art by Jack Waugh, Hart Amos, and others. As always, we have more from this publication to come.
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps. Freikorps was a term applied to various paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. Members of these groups would later become prominent members of the SS.
The Human Be-In takes place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with between 20,000 to 30,000 people in attendance, their purpose being to promote their ideals of personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological preservation, and higher consciousness. The event is considered the beginning of the famed counterculture Summer of Love.
Johnny Cash performs live at Folsom State Prison in Folson, California, where he records a live album that includes a version of his 1955 hit “Folsom Prison Blues.” Cash had always been interested in performing at a prison, but was unable to until personnel changes at his record company brought in people who were amenable to the idea. The Folsom album was Cash’s biggest commercial success for years, reaching number 1 on the country music charts.
British serial killer Harold Shipman is found dead in his prison cell, after hanging himself with a bedsheet. Shipman, a former doctor who preyed on his patients, was one of the most prolific serial killers in history, with two-hundred and eighteen murders positively attributed to him, and another two-hundred of which he is suspected.
English novelist Nevil Shute, who wrote the books A Town Like Alice and The Pied Piper, dies in Melbourne, Australia at age sixty-one. Seven of his novels were adapted to film, but his most famous was the cautionary post-nuclear war classic On the Beach.
Dr. James Bedford, a University of California psychology professor, becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation. Bedford had kidney cancer that had metastasized to his lungs and was untreatable. His body was maintained for years by his family before being moved to Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona.
