vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above, a January 1935 cover of the French art/cinema magazine Pour Lire a Deux with cover stars James Cagney and Ruby Keeler from the 1933 Warner Brothers musical Footlight Parade, which opened in France in 1934. Inside you get lots and lots of artsy photos, most of them nude, and most of them great. See ten scans below.
We managed to locate another issue of Paris Magazine today, this one from May 1935 with a bright-eyed photo-illustration of American movie star Jean Parker, née Lois Greene, on the cover. Inside, you get art by Julien Tavernier, and photographs of yesteryear’s showgirls, models and society women by Braig, Albin, and others. In the last two panels you get possibly the last photographs ever taken of the German actress and singer Edith Mera, who had died a few months earlier at age thirty of septicemia (a blood infection) caused by poor treatment of an abscess in her mouth.
It’s a bittersweet footnote, but then when you’re looking at magazines this old it’s always bittersweet because everyone you’re seeing at the height of beauty and youth is now dead. Or as Shakespeare so eloquently wrote: Golden lads and all girls must, as chimney sweepers come to dust. Now there’s a cheery thought for Friday! But hopefully it inspires you to really enjoy this spring weekend—you only get so many. Anyway, bittersweet or not, we love Paris Magazine and recently acquired about a dozen, so you’ll be seeing more soon. Check out our other issue, with its excellent Man Ray art here.
The first assembly of the League of Nations, the multi-governmental organization formed as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, is held in Geneva, Switzerland. The League begins to fall apart less than fifteen years later when Germany withdraws. By the onset of World War II it is clear that the League has failed completely.
Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family are murdered at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas by Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith. The events would be used by author Truman Capote for his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, which is considered a pioneering work of true crime writing. The book is later adapted into a film starring Robert Blake.
Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia, which features eight animated segments set to classical music, is first seen by the public in New York City at the Broadway Theatre. Though appreciated by critics, the movie fails to make a profit due to World War II cutting off European revenues. However it remains popular and is re-released several times, including in 1963 when, with the approval of Walt Disney himself, certain racially insulting scenes were removed. Today Fantasia is considered one of Disney’s greatest achievements and an essential experience for movie lovers.
British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his men are found frozen to death on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where they had been pinned down and immobilized by bad weather, hunger and fatigue. Scott’s expedition, known as the Terra Nova expedition, had attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole only to be devastated upon finding that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by five weeks. Scott wrote in his diary: “The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God! This is an awful place.”
Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster while walking back from church along the shore of the Loch near the town of Foyers. Only one photo came out, but of all the images of the monster, this one is considered by believers to be the most authentic.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre, which had occurred in Vietnam more than a year-and-a-half earlier but been covered up by military officials. That day, U.S. soldiers killed between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians, including women, the elderly, and infants. The event devastated America’s image internationally and galvanized the U.S. anti-war movement. For Hersh’s efforts he received a Pulitzer Prize.
