vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
The meaning is always in the emphasis. There’s a Super Bowl extravaganza, and a super bowl extravaganza. Exemplifying the latter is Lili St. Cyr, seated in a cold concave container and striking a nicely elegant pose, which is hard to do when a shift in your center of gravity could send you rolling out of the room. We appreciate her athleticism, as always.
This front page of National Informer published today in 1971 may look a little washed out, but its interior content is as colorful as always. Did Informer readers know enough about adultery? Certainly not. Do they know why breasts make men go wild? No, but they soon did. Did they know sex hungry females hunt married guys? Did they know which part of the U.S. had the most seduceable girls? National Informer existed to satirically broaden knowledge and brighten horizons. As long as you didn’t really believe any of it you were fine.
As always, we need to touch upon the predictions of Informer psychic Mark Travis. In this issue he seems to predict cellphones when he says, “People taking on the phone will be able to see each other’s faces on a small screen as they talk,” which is nice, but Star Trek also predicted cellphones years earlier with their planetary communicators, and Nikola Tesla beat everyone by half a century when he imagined them too. But we’ll give Travis a little credit anyway.
We love National Informer. Our aliases—BB and PSGP—come from there. That’s Black Bomber and PSG Pumpometer. We probably don’t have to explain what those are. We also probably don’t need to explain why we upload tabloids. With their focus on secrets, scandal, celebrity, sensationalism, and sex they express a clutch of core pulp literature vales. Informer is more focused on sex than, say, Confidential, but they’re all in the same family. We have a tabloid index here where you can access hundreds. As a time killer, you can’t beat it.
Above: scans from an issue of Gala magazine published this month in 1959, with various models, burlesque dancers, and a few actresses. Familiar faces include Zahra Norbo, who’s also visible here, Barbara Thomason, who was married to Mickey Rooney, and Rosa Dolmai, who acted under the name Eve Eden and generated twenty-seven screen and television credits. The lovely cover star is Virginia De Lee, who we’ve featured half a dozen times. Click her keywords below and scroll to see everything we have on her. Go ahead. She’s worth it.
Burlesque dancer Bonnie Boyia demonstrates proper ventilation for hot summer days in these two undated shots. Historically, she seems to have first achieved notice around 1950, but you get the feeling these shots came a bit later. Her most sustained success was with Al and Hattie Wagner’s Cavalcade of Amusements, and James E. Strates Shows, which was a travelling carnival that began touring the U.S. around 1923 and still operates today. That’s about all we know. If more information presents itself we’ll update. Maybe we can even find out where her pants went.
These vintage photos of burlesque dancer and actress Lili St. Cyr show her in one of her stage costumes, which offers a fun take on the idea of the chastity belt. The shots were made in Los Angeles at the Folies Theatre, though not during a performance. St. Cyr probably didn’t know this, because it’s a more recent consensus among historians, but chastity belts were myth, thought to have been a satirical invention by writers and artists. Though physical examples exist, they were later manufactured for sideshows, museum displays, curio hunters, and the like. On the whole we’ll buy that, but we bet at least a few men went, “Eureka!” and quietly had them made with serious intent. But what do we know? That’s between a blacksmith and his clients. These shots date from 1950.
Burlesque dancer, nudist, and tabloid personality Blaze Starr is captured in oils by painter Joseph Sheppard in a photo made in his studio this month in 1955. Starr was only twenty-three, but well known thanks to an appearance the previous year in Esquire. Sheppard was also well known, and would continue growing into an artist of international renown. In addition to his numerous paintings, he was also a highly regarded sculptor with many works to his credit, and would eventually create the Brooks Robinson statue that stands outside Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.
This portrait wasn’t the only one Starr and Sheppard made together, but it’s the only one that was photographed in progress. Or seemingly in progress, anyway. Considering that the painting actually looks finished, the shot may be staged. But it’s nice anyway. Sheppard also made either a study or a separate piece in pencils, with a reverse orientation, which you see below too. We probably won’t see Sheppard here again, but if you’re interested in his work there’s a website that shares his pieces and the details of his life. As for Starr, she’ll be back eventually. You can count on it. Meanwhile, see her again here and here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes. The island had been home to a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison over the years. In 1972, it would become a national recreation area open to tourists, and it would receive national landmark designations in 1976 and 1986.
