CRIME DOESN’T PAY

But you can't refuse, or I'll release your shameful sex tape and you'll be ruined. How does becoming a reality star change that? And what the hell is it anyway?


We became interested in the thriller Blackmailer because it was by George Axelrod, who would later go on to become one of Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters, scripting such films as Bus Stop, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Manchurian Candidate, and How To Murder Your Wife. Some reviewers really like this novel, but we thought it was middle-of-the-pack. The bones of the story are good. It’s about a publishing executive offered one of the world’s most famous author’s final, posthumous manuscript—which we quickly learn may not be genuine. The reasons the ultimate villain wants it published are unexpected, but we think Axelrod should have ended up with a better final result. Even so, he supplies the usual thriller ingredients—some twists, a couple of beautiful women, a few beatdowns, and a lot of drinking—which means Blackmailer is worth a read. This edition came in 1952 from Fawcett Publications and Gold Medal Books, and the cover art of a woman lounging with the world’s largest pillow is uncredited. 

Oh, hi there. You're just in time. I was about to towel off.


We’re going to use a non-word to describe this photo. It’s sunshiny. It’s the most sunshiny shot we’ve seen in a while. It shows U.S. actress Joan Staley and was made somewhere in Southern California in 1958. Staley mostly acted on television in shows such as The Asphalt Jungle, Hawaiian Eye, 77 Sunset Strip, and Mission: Impossible, amassing more than one hundred smallscreen credits, by our quick count. Her bigscreen appearances were sporadic, but included Breakfast at Tiffany’s, All in a Night’s Work, Johnny Cool, and Cape Fear. Most of those roles were uncredited, but she piled up almost twenty. Altogether she had quite a résumé. Did she ever towel off, as our juvenile quip suggests? She did. She was a Playboy Playmate of the Month in November 1958, which means that, like Marilyn Monroe, she made the leap from nude model to Hollywood star. Actually, considering those one hundred-plus television roles you could even argue that, in a way, she was just as successful as Monroe. In a way.

Here's your bourbon. You can add your own water.

You can consider this cover for The High Cost of Loving, which is unattributed, an addendum to our April showers collection from last year. Written by Bonnie Golightly, it’s a novelization of the 1958 MGM film starring José Ferrer and Gena Rowlands, in the latter’s cinematic debut. The story deals with a devoted corporate drone whose company is sold. Clues indicate he’s going to be fired, and his name is even scraped off his office door, but the twist is he’s really going to be promoted but hasn’t been informed because of an oversight. He decides to confront the company president over his unfair treatment. Will his anger cost him the opportunity he’s been looking for? What do you think—it’s a Sidney Lumet movie or something? Everything ends up just fine.

Interesting side note on author Bonnie Golightly: that’s her real name and she even sued Truman Capote for $800,000 over Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which you’ll remember starred a Holly Golightly. She claimed the similarities between Holly and she were obvious—both lived in Upper East Side brownstones with bars around the corner, both were amateur singers, and both were crazy about cats. The suit eventually died, and Capote always claimed his character was actually based on a German immigrant he knew in NYC at the beginning of World War II who later conveniently disappeared in East Africa—a place from which lawsuits rarely spring. You can see that April showers collection here.

Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web