Vintage Pulp

August 29 2024

URBAN HEAT EFFECT

Anyone for barbecue? 1970s disaster epic charbroils entire city.

City on Fire is a good old fashioned ’70s disaster movie, and we have to tell you, it’s been ages since we’ve seen one. We’re talking rentals at Blockbuster ages. We never had a chance to see one in a cinema, but we have to wonder if a big room with a booming Sensurround system is what City on Fire needs to make it enjoyable, because on our television the movie didn’t get the job done.

Everything starts when three kids accidentally set a blaze while trying to smoke cigarettes, but the real firestorm ignites when a disgruntled oil refinery employee gets sacked, decides as revenge to sabotage the works. He twists some valves and whatnot, causing flammables to run through the city sewers. The stuff combusts and the rest, as they say, is hysteria.

The cast of this flick is outstanding. Leslie Nielsen is the mayor, Henry Fonda a fire chief, Ava Gardner an on-air news personality, Barry Newman an emergency room physician, and Shelley Winters a nurse. Their perspectives continually alternate as the city-eating fire runs rampant. To pull off the incendiary visuals the filmmakers use models of skyscrapers, rear projection, and practical fire stunts of types that died with the advent of computer graphics.

While we appreciated the work that went into the movie, and some of the cinematography was spectacular, we were largely unmoved. Maybe it needed Hindenburg correspondent Herbert Morrison to narrate: “Oh, the humanity!” However, we were very moved by the poster art, which is another top effort by John Solie. City on Fire was made in Canada and, after opening in Europe, premiered in the Great White North today in 1979.

Avco Embassy Pictures, City on Fire, Barry Newman, Leslie Nielsen, Ava Gardner, Susan Clark, James Franciscus, Shelley Winters, Henry Fonda, John Solie, poster art, cinema, movie review

Hollywoodland

July 17 2024

A STAR ON THE RISE

Every successful woman has a great support system.

Actually, a great woman often has nothing but her own sheer will, but a little support never hurts. This photo shows Ava Gardner getting a boost from Burt Lancaster somewhere on Malibu Beach in 1946. It was made while they were filming The Killers, and there are several more shots from the session out there if you’re inclined to look. We’ve shared a lot of art from The Killers, which you can see here, here, here, here, and here. And, of course, you should watch the movie.

Los Angeles, Malibu Beach, The Killers, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster

Vintage Pulp

May 26 2024

WHITE MISCHIEF

Directly off the boat and immediately into trouble.

We chose the header for this post because there’s a movie called White Mischief, which we watched recently, about Brits in Africa, and it has an amusing line where a character surveys the morning and says, “Oh God, not another fucking beautiful day.” The two pieces of Italian promo art above for the set-in-Africa movie Mogambo might make you say, “Oh God, not another fucking beautiful Italian poster.”

These were painted by Ercole Brini, who we’ve never featured before but who is another of the many virtuosic artists from Italy that toiled for the movie studios. Whenever we think about the sad loss of painted cinematic poster art, the Italians are who come to our minds. We just don’t think there’s any doubt at this point—they were the best. Not that it’s a competition. Amazing posters with interestingly local aesthetic attributes came from everywhere.

We’ll try to feature more from Brini later, and if you’re curious about Mogambo it’s—of course—another movie about Africa turning various white northerners into cynical, shambling husks of their supposedly better former selves. Those husks are Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly. It opened in the U.S. in 1953 and premiered in Italy this week in 1954. Have a look here if you want to know more, and maybe here.We chose the header for this post because there’s a movie called White Mischief, which we watched recently, about Brits in Africa, and it has an amusing line where a character surveys the morning and says, “Oh God, not another fucking beautiful day.” The two pieces of Italian promo art above for the set-in-Africa movie Mogambo might make you say, “Oh God, not another fucking beautiful Italian poster.”

Italy, Mogambo, Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Ercole Brini, poster art, cinema

Intl. Notebook

July 1 2023

SAUSAGE FEST

How many can you consume in one sitting?

Above are lovely photo-illustrated covers of Wiener Magazin published in Austria during the 1950s. Some of the celebrities pictured are unknown to us. We’ve placed those last. The others are, in order, Joan Collins, Jayne Mansfield, Mitzi Gaynor, Ava Gardner, Anita Ekberg, Lilanne Brousse, Mamie Van Doren, and May Britt. These are to whet your appetite. We have a couple of full issues we’ll show you later.

Austria, Wiener Magazin, Joan Collins, Jayne Mansfield, Mitzi Gaynor, Ava Gardner, Anita Ekberg, Lilanne Brousse, Mamie Van Doren, May Britt, magazine art

Femmes Fatales

May 7 2023

PERMISSION GRANTED

It's better to apologize later than to ask now. But she's not going to do either.

This photo shows French actress Nicole Calfan and was made for her 1975 thriller Permission To Kill, also known as The Executioner, a film we’ve taken notice of because it starred Ava Gardner in one of her later roles, and future Bond boy Timothy Dalton in one of his first. Calfan has made more than seventy movies and is still busy today, having appeared in four in 2022, plus a television series. We’ll try to track down Permission To Kill and report back.

France, Permission To Kill, The Executioner, Nicole Calfan, Ava Gardner, Timothy Dalton, James Bond

Musiquarium

December 4 2022

A REALLY GOOD JO

A jazz legend shows her stripes.

Above you see a live concert photo of musical pioneer Jo Thompson, who broke segregation barriers as a jazz performer, particularly in Miami, where she played often and where this image was made by famed photographer Bunny Yeager. Thompson also performed in Detroit, where she was based, New York City, Havana, London, Paris, and other European hotspots. She isn’t well known today but she’s considered by jazz lovers to have helped pave the way for black performers who came along slightly later, and critic Herb Boyd said about her that she was, “a consummate storyteller whether standing or at the keyboard.”

That being the case, we’ll highlight a story Thompson occasionally told about Frank Sinatra, the hipster gadabout of the mid-century, who came to see her one night at the Cork Club in Miami. He was with Ava Gardner, and after the show invited Thompson to join them at their table. The Cork, being in the deep south, didn’t allow black performers to sit at the tables, let alone with white companions. But Sinatra being Sinatra, the rule crumbled, at least for the night. Thompson greatly appreciated that. And the jazz world appreciated her. She was a trailblazer. She lived a very long time, long enough to receive many overdue tributes, before finally dying just two years ago of COVID-19.

Miami, Jo Thompson, Bunny Yeager, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner

Vintage Pulp

September 23 2022

MO WOMEN, MO PROBLEMS

Mogambo features the cruelest beast in all of Africa—and its name is Clark Gable.

As famous as Mogambo is, we’d never seen it, had never read a review of it, and had no idea going in what it was about except that it was a safari movie and a remake of the 1932 adventure Red Dust, which we’d also never seen. There are few hit movies—especially with stars the stature of Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly—that we don’t know at least a little something about. So we cleared the slate, cooked up some popcorn in our special Lindy’s hand-cranked popper, and settled in for a screening.

Shot in Kenya, Uganda, French Equatorial Africa (now Central African Republic), and the Tanganyika region of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo, the movie is about a hard-edged safari guide and hunter played by Gable (also the star of Red Dust, by the way) who tries to score with both Gardner and Kelly, and soon has them at each other’s throats. These old movies often work on the presumption that the male star is irresistible—period. As a result, screenwriters were sometimes lazy. They’d fail to write the male lead with any charm at all.

That holds true here, as Gable is gruff, rude, twenty years older than Gardner, and almost thirty years older than Kelly. We’re fine about the age difference, unlike the “age appropriate” crowd that thinks women are capable of making any decision except ones about whom they love, but because Grant is a complete sourdough some charm would have made Gardner’s and Kelly’s attraction to him more understandable. Handsome though he may be, here he’s nothing more than moustache, hair tonic, and bossiness. But okay, Gardner and Kelly are both in states of need, and Gable is more than happy to introduce them to his bush snake, so what you get is a love triangle folded inside a Technicolor safari adventure. Fine.

The production is spiced up with majestic scenery, nice costumes, realistic animal footage, an overwhelming feel of the exotic, the tantalizing implication of intimacy with two of the most beautiful women in cinema, and a deft, assured performance from Gardner. In fact, while Gable is top billed, Ava gets nearly all the good lines. “Listen, buster,” she scolds Clark, “you and your quick-change acts aren’t gonna hang orange blossoms all over me just because you feel the cold weather coming on!” That’s a scathing way to call someone old and desperate. But Gable has his moments too. We liked when he blustered, “You know how it is on safari. It’s in all the books. The woman always falls for the white hunter and we guys make the most of it.” That’s meta, so we hear.

Obviously, tribespeople figure prominently, and you can discern marginal improvement in their portrayal since the days of Weissmuller’s Tarzan. They’re still just ornamentation in their own lands, but at least none lay down their lives to save a white man who’s spent most of his screen time cracking a whip at them. Whew. Overall, we thought Mogambo was decent. Not great, mind you—because Gable deserved to play a more nuanced character and did not have that chance—but it was decent. It premiered today in 1953.

Kenya, Uganda, French Equatorial Africa, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanganyika, Mogambo, Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, John Ford, poster art, cinema, movie review

Modern Pulp

May 21 2022

PLAIDING HIS CASE

Something old, something new.

This is something a bit unusual. It’s a life-sized promotional cardboard cut-out for 1982’s film noir-sourced comedy Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, which starred Steve Martin and Rachel Ward. We thought of this film recently due to Martin’s new Agatha Christie-influenced television mystery series Only Murders in the Building, which we watched and enjoyed. We first saw Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid years ago, long before Pulp Intl. and all the knowledge we’ve gained about film noir. We liked it much better during our recent viewing.

If you haven’t seen it, Martin uses scores of film noir clips to weave a mystery in which he stars as private detective Rigby Reardon. Aside from Ward, and director Rob Reiner, his co-stars are Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Cary Grant, and many others, all arranged into a narrative that turns out to be about cheese, a Peruvian island, and a plot to bomb the United States.

The film’s flow only barely holds together, which you’d have to expect when relying upon clips from nineteen old noirs to cobble together a plot, but as a noir tribute—as well as a satirical swipe at a couple of sexist cinematic tropes from the mid-century period—it’s a masterpiece. If you love film noir, you pretty much have to watch it. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid had its premiere at the USA Film Festival in early May, but was released nationally today in 1982.

Vintage Pulp

May 9 2022

ANYTHING FOR AVA

In The Killers she's absolutely to die for.

We’ve shared Swedish, French, Australian, and U.S. promo art for The Killers over the years. But there was more than one U.S. poster, and you see an alternate version above, a nice crimson effort that has no artist credit. You already know the plot of this film, so we won’t rehash it, but we wanted to single out something we love about film noir—the spectacular entrance of the femme fatale. Remember Rita Hayworth’s first screen moment in Gilda? “Gilda, are you decent?” “Me?” That might be tops. Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, those white shorts and that weird headwrap. Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. “Got a light?” There are many others, and men sometimes get good entrances too, but Ava Gardner’s first moment in The Killers, sitting at a piano in a swank Manhattan apartment, with that light—you know the light we mean—glowing on her face, is another great example. Then she gets a song. You gotta love it.

The Killers, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Virginia Christine, Ernest Hemingway, poster art, cinema, film noir

Femmes Fatales

April 12 2022

THE OTHER AVA

When I'm a really big star there'll be a photo retoucher to make sure I have perfect armpits.

This scan made from a 35-millimeter slide shows Hungary born actress Ava Norring, who had exactly one credited role—that of Beatrice in 1952’s The Snows of Kilimajaro, in which she appeared with her more famous namesake Ava Gardner. She later was featured in an eight page Esquire photo essay published in July 1955, but stardom was not to be. We love this shot, underarm razor burn and all. We haven’t seen The Snows of Kilimajaro, but we’re curious about it. The 1936 Ernest Hemingway work upon which it’s loosely based is a short story (touching on standard Hemingway themes we discussed a while back), and it’s always interesting to see how filmmakers flesh out something so slight. We’ll get to the movie at some point, see both Avas in action, and probably report back.

Hungary, Esquire Magazine, The Snows of Kilimajaro, Ava Norring, Ava Gardner, Ernest Hemingway

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 10

1935—Huey Long Assassinated

Governor of Louisiana Huey Long, one of the few truly leftist politicians in American history, is shot by Carl Austin Weiss in Baton Rouge. Long dies after two days in the hospital.

September 9

1956—Elvis Shakes Up Ed Sullivan

Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, performing his hit song “Don’t Be Cruel.” Ironically, a car accident prevented Sullivan from being present that night, and the show was guest-hosted by British actor Charles Laughton.

September 8

1966—Star Trek Airs for First Time

Star Trek, an American television series set in the twenty-third century and promoting socialist utopian ideals, premieres on NBC. The series is cancelled after three seasons without much fanfare, but in syndication becomes one of the most beloved television shows of all time.

September 8

1974—Ford Pardons Nixon

U.S. President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office, which coincidentally happen to include all those associated with the Watergate scandal.

September 7

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.