vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above: two efforts from Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, the first for 1960’s Le soliel et le lion, credited to an author who went by Commandant René, and the second for 1954’s Folie sous le chapiteau by Geo Marc. Aslan was into starfish, we guess. And now we are too.
French artist Alex Pinon knocks this cover for the spy thriller Mission spéciale à Rio out of the park with his black clad femme fatale and backdrop of Guanabara Bay and its famed Sugarloaf Mountain. Since Rio’s average daily temperature never drops below 80 Fahrenheit, no Brazilian would actually dress like this, at least not during daytime, but the art is great. The book was published by Société des Éditions Nouvelles Valmont and its author called himself Commandant René. You’re probably assuming that’s a pseudonym, and you’re right. It was used by Jacques Dubessy, Guy de Wargny, Henri Certigny, and other authors. Between them they wrote more than thirty books as this Commandant person, with the above coming in 1959. We have a lot of French art in the website, so poke around if it interests you. We’ll have more soon.
LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.
A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.
The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.
American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.
The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.
An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.
After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.
