Femmes Fatales

October 5 2022

RULES AND REGULATIONS

I heard this was a no Parkins zone. I'd like to have a word with you about that.

Canadian actress Barbara Parkins strikes a couple of fun poses in the above two promo images made when she was co-starring in The Kremlin Letter in 1970. She was mostly a television actress and is best remembered today for the soapy series Peyton Place, but she also appeared in the mostly forgotten but very interesting horror movie The Mephisto Waltz, and the Hollywood takedown Valley of the Dolls, which has become a cult fave. In total, she acted for almost forty years before retiring in 1998. We’ve seen quite a few shots of her, but we think these are the best.

Canada, The Kremlin Letter, Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, The Mephisto Waltz, Barbara Parkins, television

Intl. Notebook

January 15 2019

CLOSER EXAMINATION

Which one liked to wallow in crap more? National Examiner or Adolf Hitler?

National Examiner offers up a provocative cover on this issue that hit newsstands today in 1973, with an unidentified blonde model and the promise of expert lovemaking tips. Nothing new there. What’s different is this issue takes Adolf Hitler’s corpse for a gallop around a well-traveled track. The article “Hitler’s Strange Desires” digs into der Führer’s toilet training, his family background, his private writings and public statements, and comes to the conclusion: sexual pervert! The piece discusses Hitler’s “sexual inadequacy and impotence, frail body and softness that was almost effeminate,” and reveals how he doted on his mother but eventually felt betrayed by her, stating, “This sudden indignation with his mother could have been caused if he saw his parents having intercourse.” The ultimate conclusion is no surprise: “[Because of] his extreme form of masochism [he derived] sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him.”

As psychological disturbances go, you can take your pick here. Like beer in a Berlin rathskeller, Hitler allegedly had multiple flavors on tap, and they culminated in turning him into a shit freak. That’s amusing to consider, but was it anything other than pure bullshit itself? Labeling Hitler a disturbed child-turned sexual deviant was a mini-industry in the decades after his death, and the rumors started by these reports are still prevalent today. We get it—by making him into a non-human it’s easy

to distance him from the rest of us, but as far as we know there’s no evidence he was anything other than a heterosexual who had run-of-the-mill sex, or for that matter that he was anything other than a run-of-the-mill human. Many people would love for the stories to be true, but they’re just too easy. We don’t blame Examiner for beating that Hitler horse, though. Everybody did it—it sold piles of papers.

Examiner goes for lighter material elsewhere in the issue, with an update on the whereabouts of Canadian actress Ruby Keeler, a story about a wife who makes her husband take her to a swingers club so she can get some strange dick, and a pervy advertisement for instant peepholes we know would be illegal to use today, and which we suspect were illegal to use back then too. Other celebrities who make appearances include Maria LaTour and Monika Zinnenberg. In fact, on closer examination that unidentified cover model might be Zinnenberg. She made the usual slate of bad West German comedies and exploitation flicks during the ’60s and ’70s before leveraging her front-of-the-camera work into a directing career which she sustained all the way up until 2012. And finally there’s a centerspread on the benefits of yoga, featuring stars like Cary Grant, Geraldine Chaplain, and Barbara Parkins touting its benefits. That’s about it for this Examiner. Scans below, and more here and here.

West Germany, Canada, National Examiner, Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, Cary Grant, Geraldine Chaplain, Barbara Parkins, Maria LaTour, Monika Zinnenberg, Ruby Keeler, Raquel Welch, tabloid, nazis

Femmes Fatales

December 26 2010

PARKINS ZONE

Get out of my space right now or else.

Above: Canadian actress Barbara Parkins, who appeared in such films as Valley of the Dolls, The Kremlin Letter and The Mephisto Waltz, and starred on television in Peyton Place, seen here in 1970.

Canada, Valley of the Dolls, The Kremlin Letter, The Mephisto Waltz, Peyton Place, Barbara Parkins, cinema, television

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

March 25

1957—Ginsberg Poem Seized by Customs

On the basis of alleged obscenity, United States Customs officials seize 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” that had been shipped from a London printer. The poem contained mention of illegal drugs and explicitly referred to sexual practices. A subsequent obscenity trial was brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore, the poem’s domestic publisher. Nine literary experts testified on the poem’s behalf, and Ferlinghetti won the case when a judge decided that the poem was of redeeming social importance.

March 25

1975—King Faisal Is Assassinated

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia dies after his nephew Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed shoots him during a royal audience. As King Faisal bent forward to kiss his nephew the Prince pulled out a pistol and shot him under the chin and through the ear. King Faisal died in the hospital after surgery. The prince is later beheaded in the public square in Riyadh.

March 24

1981—Ronnie Biggs Rescued After Kidnapping

Fugitive thief Ronnie Biggs, a British citizen who was a member of the gang that pulled off the Great Train Robbery, is rescued by police in Barbados after being kidnapped. Biggs had been abducted a week earlier from a bar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by members of a British security firm. Upon release he was returned to Brazil and continued to be a fugitive from British justice.

March 23

2011—Elizabeth Taylor Dies

American actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career began at age 12 when she starred in National Velvet, and who would eventually be nominated for five Academy Awards as best actress and win for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dies of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles. During her life she had been hospitalized more than 70 times.

March 22

1963—Profumo Denies Affair

In England, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denies any impropriety with showgirl Christine Keeler and threatens to sue anyone repeating the allegations. The accusations involve not just infidelity, but the possibility acquaintances of Keeler might be trying to ply Profumo for nuclear secrets. In June, Profumo finally resigns from the government after confessing his sexual involvement with Keeler and admitting he lied to parliament.

March 22

1978—Karl Wallenda Falls to His Death

World famous German daredevil and high-wire walker Karl Wallenda, founder of the acrobatic troupe The Flying Wallendas, falls to his death attempting to walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Wallenda is seventy-three years old at the time, but it is a 30 mph wind, rather than age, that is generally blamed for sending him from the wire.

March 22

2006—Swedish Spy Stig Wennerstrom Dies

Swedish air force colonel Stig Wennerström, who had been convicted in the 1970s of passing Swedish, U.S. and NATO secrets to the Soviet Union over the course of fifteen years, dies in an old age home at the age of ninety-nine. The Wennerström affair, as some called it, was at the time one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War.