vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above: burlesque dancer Lilly Christine in a promo shot made for an unknown magazine. She often wore prop claws, as befits anyone nicknamed The Cat Lady. This image has no date, but it’s from her heyday, call it 1955-ish. Click her keywords and you can see plenty more of her.
This shot shows Ann Corio sitting on a pile of fox furs—black fox furs with their distinct white tips, to be exact—a popular animal in the mid-century fur industry. Corio was popular in a different industry. As a burlesque performer, she launched her career in 1925 at the age of sixteen (we know, we know), and later, at Minsky’s Burlesque in New York City she earned, at her height, as much as $1,000 a week, according to legend. Depending on the exact year (Minsky’s was shut down in 1939 by New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, so we’re thinking 1935) that would be the equivalent of $22,000 today.
Corio fled to Los Angeles and, like other top dancers, made the leap into cinema, appearing in seven movies, among them Swamp Woman, Call of the Jungle, and The Sultan’s Daughter. Later, she leveraged her popularity to release the record you see here, How To Strip for Your Husband, which she recorded with Sonny Lester and His Orchestra and which appeared in 1962, then again in the 1970s. She put out a couple of other albums, but we liked the art on this one best.
Also in 1962 she produced, directed, and danced in the Broadway show This Was Burlesque, which must have represented something of a triumphant return to the city she’d had to leave years earlier. As her long career continued, she eventually even appeared on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, and later earned her way into the Exotic World Burlesque Museum’s celebrated Hall of Fame. The foxtail shot dates from around 1938.
This photo from the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows stripper Juanita Hardy, whose real name was Christine Marlow, and she’s in the process or has just finished the process of being charged with mayhem by the Las Vegas police. She’d gotten into a fight with another dancer named Doreen Manos at the Embassy Club, where they worked. Marlow was missing twenty dollars and blamed Manos; Manos had a damaged costume and blamed Marlow. When interviewed by the Los Angeles Times days later, Marlow explained, “[Manos] said something. I said something. She hit me in the mouth and then someone parted us.” Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. And, Marlow added, “I bit her in the ear.” Oh. That doesn’t sound so good.
Some accounts say Marlow went well beyond a bite and actually Tysoned poor Manos, costing her a chunk of flesh. Others say she chewed Manos’s ear clean off—though we have no idea how they know that. We suspect it’s internet hyperbole. Does Marlow look like someone who’d chew another person’s ear entirely off? Hmm. Well… maybe. That smile, now that we look closer, is a bit worrisome, isn’t it? It’s potentially the smile of someone who would have rival strippers buried in the back yard.
Anyway, she was supposed to appear in court after her arrest but instead up and left Vegas. Said Marlow, “My act was over and my contract was at an end, so I changed into street clothes, put my things in the car and drove back home.” Well, the Vegas cops issued an extradition order and two fellas from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department showed up at Marlow’s house, arrested her again, and booked her on fugitive charges. We can’t find out what happened after that, as this is another of those historical anecdotes that requires more newspaper scans to be uploaded for its resolution to be known, but even without an ending it was a mandatory story for our website because there’s virtually nothing more pulp than two strippers fighting.
We have a tremendous amount of material on burlesque in Pulp Intl., yet it’s been eight years since we put together a full collection of mid-century burlesque dancers, go-go girls, and strippers. That day has arrived again. Above and below you see some of the better shots we’ve run across of late, featuring the famous and the obscure, the restrained and the explicit, the domestic and the foreign, and the blonde, red, brown, and brunette. Where possible we’ve identified the performer, such as above—that’s Carol Ryva, sometimes known as Carol Riva, Carole von Ryva, Cara Rive, et al, a French dancer who rose to fame during the early 1960s. Other familiar faces you’ll see are Lilly Christine, Maria Tuxedo, Gay Dawn, Yvonne Ménard, and Virginia Bell.
Occasionally, when we post something that contains nudity, we feel, in this age of new puritanism that we should comment about it. We saw a survey recently indicating that a large percentage of Gen Z’ers think nudity in movies is unnecessary in all circumstances, especially sex scenes. And we’re like, really? The wonderful thing that virtually every person does, or which practically everyone wants to do, and which is how nearly all of us came to be here on the planet, is somehow taboo, but the horrible thing that virtually none of us do—kill—must be part of nearly every film, book, and television show? Programming works. If you sell sexual shame unceasingly new generations will absorb it, and believe they’ve come to their views organically.
The reality is that sex and nudity are freeing. Burlesque and erotic dance are valuable because they take our DNA driven sexual desire and package it as an art form, fit for public consumption and contemplation. Moving one’s body rhythmically feels good, and watching those who work so very hard but make look so easy the pushing of their physical limits within the realm of such expression is pleasing to the eye and psyche. That’s why we love erotic dance. Our two previous burlesque collections, “Infinite Jest,” and “Dancers Gotta Dance,” are here and here, and we have some notable smaller burlesque forays here, here, and here. But if you want to kill some time for real, instead click the keyword “burlesque” at bottom, then scroll, scroll, scroll. Make sure you pack a lunch.
Virginia Bell
Noel Toy, and more here.
Lee Sharon.
Dixie Brandy.
A group shot from the legendary Crazy Horse, Paris.
Stacey “Stormy” Laurence at Louisiana State University in 1948.
Maria Tuxedo. More here.
The incomparable Lilly Christine. We also have a set of photos from one of her performances here, and more links from that point.
The Follies Theater at 337 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, 1946.
Tempest Storm.
Gay Dawn.
Yvonne Ménard, and more photos here.
Carol Jane, aka Spider Woman.
Jackie Miller.
Debra Paget, who performed one of the most provocative screen dances ever in 1959’s De indische grabmal.
Blaze Starr. We also saw her recently here.
Bellydancer Nejla Ates strikes the difficult backbend pose for this unusual promo image made in 1954. Ates was born in Romania but was Turkish, and rose to become an internationally famous performer nicknamed the Turkish Delight. She later appeared in films, including 1955’s Son of Sinbad with Lili St. Cyr, and modeled for album sleeves for Middle Eastern music, as we’ve shown you. In addition to all that she was popular in the tabloids. That means you’ll see her again at some point.
Here’s a fantastic poster we’ve had sitting around for a while made for the Japanese run of the French film Ah! les belles bacchantes!, which was changed here to Hadaka no megami, or “the naked goddess,” and in English was known as Ah! The Beautiful Priestesses of Bacchus, Peek-a-Boo!, and other titles. Basically it follows a provincial morals cop played by Louis de Funès who decides to take a close look at the local cabaret revue expecting to shut it down, but due to a series of wacky events during the rehearsals he ends up appearing in the show.
This will be the first time this poster has ever been online, but it isn’t the first time we’ve talked about the movie. We wrote about it eight years ago and shared a different, equally rare promo. You’ll notice that the Japanese title is different, but the French title in the upper right corner is the same. Ah! les belles bacchantes! is an extremely interesting historical curio, effervescent and sexy, evidencing how much more advanced the French were concering the human body than puritans in the U.S. It premiered in France the autumn of 1954 and reached Japan today in 1955. We also have two other posters in the same beautiful style that you can see here and here.
Above: a fun shot of strawberry eating burlesque dancer, nudist, actress, and all around public figure Blaze Starr, made by Bunny Yeager on the set of Blaze Starr Goes Nudist. It dates from 1962.
Here’s a nice photo of U.S. burlesque star Donna Mae Brown, aka Busty Brown. We had some fun with a 1960 photo of her in divorce court, but wanted to bring her back. Old photos of burlesque performers are often hard to date, but Brown was very popular for most of the 1950s, so if you split the difference this shot might have been made around 1955.
Today we have one of our favorite items from the mid-century era—a Technicolor lithograph with an acetate overlay. We’ve shared a number of these. The star here is Bonnie Logan, model and stage performer. She was of a more provocative variety than usual for her time, which you can get a sense of here and particularly here. This piece is probably from around 1960. As for our other examples, you wanna see them all? Okay, if you check this link, then this one, and follow the subsequent links from there, you’ll be able to—we think—look at every one we’ve posted.
Folies de Paris et de Hollywood is one of our favorite vintage magazines, and though we have a tall stack of them, we don’t share them nearly as often as we should. Today you’re seeing the front and rear cover plus assorted interior bits from issue #506, which appeared in 1972. You get the usual burlesque dancers, prancers, and vixens, along with a centerfold featuring Margaret Nolan not looking quite her normal self (but it’s her). See more from Folies de Paris et de Hollywood by clicking its keywords just below.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
