Hollywoodland

September 9 2023

FACE TIME

Movie stars were always willing to give each other a hand.

Once again we’ve been struck, so to speak, by the sheer number of cinema promo images featuring actors and actresses pretending to slap each other. They just keep turning up. The above shot is more about the neck than the face, but it still counts, as Gloria Swanson slaps William Holden in 1950’s Sunset Boulevard. Below we have a bunch more, and you can see our previous collection at this link. Since we already discussed this phenomenon we won’t get into it again, except briefly as follows: pretend slaps, film is not reality, and everyone should try to remember the difference. Many slaps below for your interest and wonder.

Diana Dors smacks Patrick Allen blurry in 1957’s The Long Haul.

Mob boss George Raft menaces Anne Francis in a promo image made for 1954’s Rogue Cop.

Bud Abbott gets aggressive with Lou Costello in 1945’s Here Come the Co-Eds.

Jo Morrow takes one from black hat Jack Hogan in 1959’s The Legend of Tom Dooley.

Chris Robinson and Anita Sands get a couple of things straight about who’s on the yearbook committee in Diary of High School Bride.

Paul Newman and Ann Blyth agree to disagree in 1957’s The Helen Morgan Story.

Verna Lisi shows Umberto Orsini who gives the orders in the 1967 film La ragazza e il generale, aka The Girl and the General.

What the fuck did you just call me? Marki Bey slaps Betty Anne Rees loopy in the 1974 horror flick Sugar Hill.

Claudia Cardinale slaps (or maybe punches—we can’t remember) Brigitte Bardot in the 1971 western Les pétroleuses, known in English for some reason as The Legend of Frenchie King.

Audrey Totter reels under the attentions of Richard Basehart in 1949 Tension. We’re thinking it was probably even more tense after this moment.

Anne Baxter tries to no avail to avoid a slap from heel Steve Cochran in 1954’s Carnival Story.

Though Alan Ladd was a little guy who Gail Russell probably could have roughed up if she wanted, the script called for him to slap her, and he obeyed in the 1946 adventure Calcutta.

Peter Alexander guards his right cheek, therefore Hannelore Auer crosses him up and attacks his left in 1964’s Schwejk’s Flegeljahre, aka Schweik’s Years of Indiscretion.

Elizabeth Ashley gives Roddy McDowall a facial in in 1965’s The Third Day.

Tony Anthony slaps Lucretia Love in 1972’s Piazza pulita, aka Pete, Pearl and the Pole.

AndreÌ Oumansky goes backhand on Lola Albright in 1964’s Joy House.

Frank Ferguson catches one from Barbara Bel Geddes in the 1949 drama Caught.

This looks like a real slap, so you have to credit the actresses for their commitment. It’s from 1961’s Raisin in the Sun and shows Claudia McNeil rearranging the face of Diana Sands.

Gloria Grahame finds herself cornered by Broderick Crawford in 1954’s Human Desire.

Bette Davis, an experienced slapper and slappee, gets a little assistance from an unidentified third party as she goes Old West on Amanda Blake in a 1966 episode of Gunsmoke called “The Jailer.”

There are a few slaps in 1939’s Gone with the Wind, so we had our pick. We went with Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard.

Virginia Field takes one on the chin from Marshall Thompson in Dial 1119.

Clint Eastwood absorbs a right cross from nun Shirley MacLaine in 1970’s Two Mules for Sister Sara.

Sunset Boulevard, The Long Haul, Rogue Cop, Here Come the Co-Eds, The Legend of Tom Dooley, Diary of High School Bride, The Helen Morgan Story, La ragazza e il generale, The Girl and the General, Sugar Hill, Les pétroleuses, The Legend of Frenchie King, Tension, Carnival Story, Calcutta, Schwejk's Flegeljahre, Schweik's Years of Indiscretion, The Third Day, Joy House, Caught, Human Desire, Gunsmoke, Gone with the Wind, Dial 1119, Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Diana Dors, Patrick Allen, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Jo Morrow, Jack Hogan, Chris Robinson, Anita Sands, Virna Lisi, Umberto Orsini, Marki Bey, Betty Anne Rees, Claudia Cardinale, Brigitte Bardot, Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Anne Baxter, Steve Cochran, Alan Ladd, Gail Russell, Hannelore Auer, Peter Alexander, Elizabeth Ashley, Roddy McDowall, André Oumansky, Lola Albright, Frank Ferguson, Barbara Bel Geddes, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Broderick Crawford, Gloria Grahame, Bette Davis, Amanda Blake, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Virginia Field, Marshall Thompson, Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacLaine, cinema, television

Intl. Notebook

October 21 2022

MIDNIGHT BLUE

Dark on the outside, darker on the inside.

This is the second Canadian tabloid we’ve shared in October, and we have several others upcoming in the next few months. This time we’re back to Minuit, the sister publication of Midnight, published today in 1968 with a cover featuring Susan Boyd. She’s looking a little radioactive, and in unusually dark waters. This could everyone’s fate the way things are going in 2022. We don’t know what Minuit editors were shooting for here. Maybe they had a problem during the printing phase. But in it an odd way it’s actually a nice cover, and Boyd pops up again in the centerfold, looking much healthier.

Elswewhere inside the issue Minuit wastes no time with its efforts to shock. We learn about Vietmanese youngster Bon Ngoc Tho, who editors claim is a demi-homme born with many characteristics of his father—a monkey. We can say a lot about this, but let’s skip most of it and simply note that the 1960s were the tail end, so to speak, of a long-running fascination with supposed human freaks.

Moving on, editors have a curious photo of a model with something unidentifiable in her mouth. We took several guesses what the thing was, and they were all wrong. Turns out it’s a pea shooter—a tire-pois. No, we’d never seen one, but a few of you probably recognized it. Minuit editors claim it can kill a kid, and that hospitals around the U.S. have been treating serious pea shooter injuries, along with wounds inflicted by “blow zappers and Zulu-guns.” The article explains that the injuries come not from shooting the projectiles, but from swallowing them while inhaling to fire the weapon, occasionally piercing arteries in the neck.

There are more stories along those lines, but it isn’t all dark at midnight. Elsewhere in the issue you get men’s fitness, nymphomania, and plenty of celebs, such as Claudia Cardinale, Nai Bonet, and Maureen Arthur, plus Robert Vaughn hawking a 100% legitimate Man from U.N.C.L.E. “plume espion.” That means “spy feather,” which doesn’t help at all in determining exactly what it is. But a careful scan of the text suggests that it’s an x-ray vision device that works on everything from walls to clothes. Right. We’ll take two, and see you at the beach. Twenty-one scans below.

Canada, Montreal, Minuit, Midnight, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Susan Boyd, Suzanne Pleshette, Maureen Arthur, Josiane Larazin, Claudia Cardinale, Kim Porter, Nai Bonet, Franl Lee Morris, Clint Eastwood, Robert Vaughn, tabloid

Femmes Fatales

August 17 2022

CARDINALE BLUE

Whatever the background color she was always red hot.

Above are three images of Tunisian born Italian actress Claudia Cardinale made by Italian photographer Angelo Frontoni. It’s difficult to imagine European cinema without Frontoni. He photographed everyone, and he blurred the line between mainstream photography and erotica by collaborating with magazines like Excelsior and Playmen. Cardinale is pretty racy here by her standards. She worked with Frontoni many times over the course of her career, which began during the late 1950s and continues today, encompassing such films as 8½, The Pink Panther, Blindfold, Les pétroleuses, Fitzcarraldo, Once Upon a Time in the West, et al. These shots don’t have a copyright date that we could find, but based on appearance we’d say they’re from the late 1970s.

Italy, Tunisia, 8½, The Pink Panther, Blindfold, Les pétroleuses, Fitzcarraldo, Once Upon a Time in the West, Claudia Cardinale, Angelo Frontoni

Femmes Fatales

October 9 2020

CARDINALE RED

I don't mean to smile, but it's just really fun being so much hotter than everyone else.

They say it takes a confident woman to wear a red dress. Tunisian born Italian actress Claudia Cardinale, with her giant smile, may even be overconfident. This shot is from the Japanese cinema and pop culture magazine Roadshow. We don’t have a date on it, but figure around 1968, when Cardinale was at the height of her fame.

Italy, Tunisia, Japan, Roadshow, Claudia Cardinale

Vintage Pulp

May 25 2019

SECOND SIGHT

Hit novel Blindfold returns as a movie vehicle for Rock Hudson.

Rock Hudson was in the decline phase of his cinema career when he made Blindfold, and was just about to move into television, where he would score a huge hit with the cop show McMillan & Wife. But this film shows him in solid form. As in the novel, it all starts when his psychiatrist character is asked by a government agent to treat a mentally broken scientist in total secrecy, which Hudson reluctantly agrees to do, and is conducted to an isolated house while blindfolded.

Days later he’s run into—literally—by the sick man’s sister Claudia Cardinale, who believes her brother has been kidnapped. Was the man who asked Hudson for help really with the government? Or did he merely want to unlock a secret hidden in the scientist’s brain? When another agent appears and tells him this is precisely the case, Hudson and Cardinale have no idea who to believe. It begins to look like the scientist is being held against his will. If Hudson and Cardinale hope to rescue him, they need to pinpoint his location even though Hudson was blindfolded every time he was taken there.

As in the novel this is the central gimmick, and it seems an impossible task, but Cardinale convinces Hudson he can find this isolated house. Obviously, this section is handled in less detail than in the novel. Hudson estimates how long the flight was, eliminating impossible flight plans, learns where migrating geese fly south, and remembers what he heard during the car journeys—a body of water, a rickety bridge, a strange type of boat, and a church choir.

It was a fun idea in the book and it’s a fun idea on the screen too. In fact, it must have made an impression, because aspects of it were directly borrowed by Robert Redford for his 1992 comedic thriller Sneakers. Hudson and Cardinale, first as adversaries and later as budding romantic partners, try to unravel the where what why when and who, while shamelessly flirting with each other. As we said in the previous post, think of Charade or Arabesque. Blindfold isn’t executed as well as those films, but it’s certainly a nice little trifle, and it’s worth watching. Anything with Cardinale is. And Rock ain’t so bad either. The film premiered in the U.S. today in 1966.

Blindfold, Sneakers, McMillan & Wife, Rock Hudson, Claudia Cardinale, Robert Redford, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

May 25 2019

FIT TO BE TIED

And long story short, that's why my senior class voted me most likely to be kidnapped. So really, this comes as no surprise.

Above is an uncredited 1961 cover from Corgi Books for Lucille Fletcher’s Blindfold. If her name sounds familiar it may because she also wrote the classic Sorry, Wrong Number. Her main character here isn’t kidnapped. He’s a psychiatrist who’s flown top secret to treat a patient whose identity and location he’s not allowed to learn. It’s actually the patient who may be the kidnapping victim, though the doc is in danger too, from mere association. When events force him to try locating his mystery patient again, despite having been blindfolded each time he was taken to see him, the doc’s keen senses come into play—everything from his internal clock to the feel of the ground beneath his shoes to his sense of smell.

Is he able to locate a distant place he’s never seen with his own eyes? Well, it wouldn’t much of a thriller if he couldn’t. We don’t know if this is the first time this gimmick was used in a novel, but it’s a pretty cool plot contrivance. Interestingly, despite the Cold War seriousness of the novel and the intense menace of the paperback’s cover art, the story was transformed into one of those insouciant little thrillers peculiar to the 1960s, along the lines of Charade or Arabesque. It was also called Blindfold and it starred Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale. In fact, see below…

Corgi Books, Blindfold, Lucille Fletcher, Rock Hudson, Claudia Cardinale, cover art, literature, cinema

Vintage Pulp

January 22 2019

DEMONGEOT SUMMONING

If you invite one into your house it's your own fault what happens.

Here’s yet another wonderful Japanese poster for an English language film, this time for Mylène Demongeot’s lightweight comedy Upstairs and Downstairs, or “above and below,” as the poster calls it. We enjoyed this one. In London a newlywed couple run into problems when they decide to hire domestic help. After the likes of Claudia Cardinale, Joan Sims, and Joan Hickson bring chaos to the household (sharp-eyed viewers may also recognize nude model Marie Devereux), Demongeot is finally summoned to restore order. While she’s an efficient domestic, she’s a complication in other areas. Which ones? Those that provide blood flow to male loins.

This is Bardotesque/Monroesque screwball craziness fueled by double entendre and pratfalls, rather than the types of films we usually feature on Pulp Intl., but we couldn’t resist this brilliant Japanese promo. Nor Demongeot, for that matter, who’s one of our favorite French stars. She does good work here in a genre we’ve come to think of as oops-I-didn’t-mean-to-turn-you-on. Below are some promo photos from the film, including an interesting shot of James Robertson in the Messerschmitt KR200 he drives in one scene. Upstairs and Downstairs opened in the west in late 1959 and premiered in Japan today in 1960.

Japan, England, Upstairs and Downstairs, Michael Craig, Anne Heywood, Mylène Demongeot, Claudia Cardinale, Joan Hickson, Joan Sims, Marie Devereux, James Robertson, poster art, cinema, movie review

Sex Files

July 8 2017

KAVALKAD OF KVINNOR

In the Swede Swede summertime.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a legit nudie magazine on the site, but we don’t want to neglect them because they figure strongly in pulp fiction. How many novels, for example, feature actress wannabes who do a little nude modeling, or have illicit rolls of negatives floating around that need to be retrieved from shady cartels? The Big Sleep—both the written and filmed version—is probably one of the most famous examples. And who can forget the fact that magazine posing boosted the careers of actresses like Marilyn Monroe and Christina Lindberg?

So above and below you’ll find some scans from Kavalkad, a Swedish publication that ran from 1949 to 1968, with today’s example dating from 1965. It’s quaint by modern standards, like something you’d tease your grandpa with after finding it in his garage, but it was quite racy for its time, with kvinnor (women) showing frontal nudity years before U.S. magazines dared to follow suit. Sweden’s more permissive attitude about such matters made for an active underground for Swedish porn in the U.S. If you got caught selling it that was your ass—but if you could get away with it there was plenty of money to be made.

Inside this issue you’ll also find some non-nude photos of Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale. Kavalkad, like many magazines of its ilk, began with more of a focus on celebrities, and in fact there were numerous issues with Marilyn Monroe on the cover, as well as other mainstream stars like Debra Paget, Peggie Castle, and Rossana Podesta. All the issues are collector’s items these days, though not exorbitantly priced ones—at least not yet. We may revisit Kavalkad later. In the meantime we have twenty-plus scans below.

Sweden, Kavalkad, Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Marilyn Monroe, nudity, nudie mags

Vintage Pulp

February 15 2016

SPLITTING ADAMS

Getting down to the fine details.

Two issues of Adam to share—one from Australia and one from the U.S.—proved too much work for one day, so we posted Aussie Adam yesterday, and today we’re on to the American Adam. These magazines have no relationship to each other apart from coincidentally sharing a name. U.S. Adam relies on photo covers rather than painted art, shows a dedication to cheesecake photography that far outstrips its Australian cousin, and also has less fiction. However, what fiction it does offer extends beyond Aussie Adam’s adventure and crime focus, such as the short piece from counterculture icon Harlan Ellison called, “The Late Great Arnie Draper.” We’ve scanned and shared the entirety of that below if you’re in a reading mood.

The striking cover model here goes by the name Lorrie Lewis, and inside you get burlesque dancer Sophie Rieu, who performed for years at the nightclub Le Sexy in Paris, legendary jazzman Charles Mingus, and many celebs such as Jane Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, and the Rolling Stones. There’s also a feature on the Dean Martin movie Murderer’s Row, with Ann-Margret doing a little dancing, and blonde stunner Camilla Sparv demonstrating how to properly rock a striped crop-top. We managed to put up more than forty scans, which makes this an ideal timewaster for a Monday. Enjoy.

Intl. Notebook

June 21 2013

A SUMMER COLLECTION

The year’s longest day in a season that’s always too short.

In some places the weather is warm every day, pretty much, but in others, warmth is a fleeting gift. Regardless of where you are, we are officially at the beginning of summer, with the solstice arriving today or tomorrow, depending on your time zone. So we’ve decided to pull together some summery promo pix. These are from Japanese magazines and feature stars who were most famous during the 1950s and 1960s, including Raquel Welch, Ursula Andress, Yvette Mimieux, and others. You can similar summer collections from previous years here and here.

Japan, Jaqueline Bissset, Joanna Shimkus, Jane Birkin, Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, Marlène Jobert, Katia Christina, Yuko Asano, Claudia Cardinale, Sylva Koscina, Barbara Bouchet, Yvette Mimieux

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 11

1976—China Coup Thwarted

The new head of the Chinese Communist Party, Hua Goufeng, snuffs out a coup led by Chairman Mao’s widow Jiang Qing and three other party members. They become known as the Gang of Four, and are tried, found guilty of treason, and receive death sentences that are later commuted to lengthy prison terms.

October 11

1987—Loch Ness Expedition Ends

A sonar exploration of Scotland’s Loch Ness, called Operation Deepscan, ends after a week without finding evidence that the legendary Loch Ness Monster exists. While the flotilla of boats had picked up three sonar contacts indicating something large in the waters, these are considered to be detections of salmon schools or possibly seals.

October 10

1971—London Bridge Goes Up

After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in the resort town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

October 10

1975—Burton and Taylor Marry Again

British actor Richard Burton and American screen star Elizabeth Taylor secretly remarry sixteen months after their divorce, then jet away to a second honeymoon in Chobe Game Park in Botswana.

October 9

A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed in Bolivia. In an attempt to make it appear as though he had been killed resisting Bolivian troops, the executioner shoots Guevara with a machine gun, wounding him nine times in the legs, arm, shoulder, throat, and chest.

October 8

1918—Sgt. York Becomes a Hero

During World War I, in the Argonne Forest in France, America Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack on a German machine gun nest that kills 25 and captures 132. He is a corporal during the event, but is promoted to sergeant as a result. He also earns Medal of Honor from the U.S., the Croix de Guerre from the French Republic, and the Croce di Guerra from Italy and Montenegro. Stateside, he is celebrated as a hero, and Hollywood even makes a movie entitled Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

October 8

1956—Larsen Pitches Perfect Game

The New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches a perfect game in the World Series against hated rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is the only perfect game in World Series history, as well as the only no-hitter.