Vintage Pulp

November 12 2025

BEHIND THE MASKA

It's pretty much all Greek to us.

We found this cool cover featuring a femme fatale pulling a pistol from her bag on the website Βικιπαίδεια, or Greek Wikipedia, and it’s from the very first issue of the Greek pulp magazine Maska, a publication that dates back to 1935. Notice the sneaky hand behind her? She’ll be needing the gun. Maska featured translated versions of detective stories from U.S. pulps, but over time also published fiction that was Greek in origin.

As far as this issue is concerned, here’s what we go through sometimes to operate this site. We wanted to know what the text at bottom was describing, so we plugged the image into a text-from-image program and came out with the Greek letters. We plugged those into a translator and they came out as “Dan Fohler – The Sign of Betrayal.” Then we searched high and low for Dan Fohler, and found típota. That means “nothing.” It’s a word we learned when we visited the Greek isles.

So we wrote a whole thing about needing a legit pulp expert to lend a hand here, then we had an idea. We used another translator. Opinions vary, yes? That translator came up with “Dan Foochler.” We were pretty sure there were no Foochlers out there but we looked anyway. Nada (we’re multi-lingual when it comes to that word). Well, fine. We did more searching on Fohler, got all Boolean with it, and still came up with a blank.

By this time we needed a glass of white wine. So we did that, maybe actually had a couple of glasses, and started fresh on this Foochler thing. How many translation interfaces are out there? Several, at least. So we tried again with a different one. This time we came up with Dan Fuchs. Bingo! Lotaría! This is the guy. He turned out pulp fiction and wrote a few novels during the ’30s, but also wrote or co-wrote screenplays for Criss Cross, Storm Warning, The Human Jungle, and Panic in the Streets.

So the first issue of Maska had a story by Dan Fuchs, and he’s pretty important within our areas of interest (and yours too, if you’ve read this far). So next—and pay attention to the intricate details of how our editorial process here works—we realized we had a bottle of white wine that needed to be finished fooching urgently. Since the hour we wrestled with this Maska matter is more time than we usually spend on posts (as if the regular typos aren’t a clue), for today we’re done as of this moment.

Greece, Maska, Criss Cross, Storm Warning, The Human Jungle, Panic in the Streets, Dan Fuchs, magazine art, literature

Vintage Pulp

June 22 2022

NATURAL BORN CHEATER

I'm sort of a paradox. I'm a terrible wife, but I'm incredible at everything that gets a woman a husband.

Above is a cover for Don Tracy’s novel The Cheat, originally published as Criss-Cross in 1934, with this Lion edition coming in 1956 with Charles Copeland cover art. This is a good book, but if you’re seeking artful prose you might as well keep looking. 1934 was early in the game for hard-boiled fiction. A few authors were doing visionary work but the form was still establishing its parameters. What attracted readers was that these were new types of stories—frank, violent, and centered around hard luck protagonists, ruthless villains, and women who were to varying degrees breathtakingly beautiful, sexually ravenous, and totally amoral.

The Cheat is about a boxer named Johnny Thompson. The Depression has drained the profit from boxing, so for the moment Johnny is an armored car guard, riding shotgun for payroll deliveries. He’s occasionally going out with Anna, who’s far too beautiful for the likes of him and mainly just likes to have money spent on her. Johnny doesn’t have much of that, which means he has no real shot with Anna. He coasts along in financial and romantic limbo until Anna breaks his heart by suddenly marrying a neighborhood slickster named Slim Dundee.

So many of these pulp novels hinge upon sex, but it couldn’t be explicitly stated. Tracy is fairly clear about it here, though. Johnny thinks he’s ugly yet refuses to consort with women he considers to be of inadequate quality, so he’s sexually inexperienced. He isn’t a virgin, but it’s been years since his first couple of sexual encounters. Anna is his unattainbale dream. He’s never even kissed her, but her willingness to associate with him provided his life with hope. He lost that when she married, but she later shocks him by finally offering herself to him, vows be damned. We get a clear sense of what it means to Johnny:

I bit my knuckles thinking about it and how sweet—oh my God—it would be, but I wouldn’t take it. [snip] Every hour was full of pictures of Anna. Anna as I’d seen her and Anna as I’d never seen her, but could if I went there the next night. Anna, naked. Anna, in my arms, looking up at me. I kept seeing her and feeling her body under me and her open mouth on my mouth.

So hot she makes him bite his knuckles. That’s hot. Johnny virtually flogs himself, telling himself not to give in, not to betray Slim, not to accept Anna’s baffling out-of-the-blue offer, but it’s useless of course. He goes, she meets him at the door in a kimono and nothing else, his fuses all blow, and nature takes its course:

I remember sobbing, although I wasn’t really crying, when the first deep contentment began to rub out the ache I’d had in me for so long.

Well, that gets to the point. And it’s a point we’ve been making for years. These guys don’t get into trouble because of mere sex. They get into trouble because of sex as they never imagined it could be—in this case sex that makes him “not really” cry. Yowsa. His reaction has largely to do with finally attaining what he thought he was not good enough to have, in effect validating his entire existence, but there’s no doubt the heights of sheer physical pleasure bring it on too. We picture him drying his wet eyes with a corner of the sheet and telling Anna, “I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.” Needless to say, he’s hooked, and who wouldn’t be?

During subsequent sessions Anna keeps her, ahem, guard up, and Johnny enjoys every moment, despite feelings of guilt for being a backstabber. Then comes the pivotal day when Slim approaches him with an idea to rob the armored car—with Johnny as the inside man. Anna is on board with the plan, so clearly if he refuses she might not let him be her inside man anymore. Where it goes from there we won’t reveal. We’ll only say that The Cheat overcomes its rudimentary feel and provides considerable entertainment, which is the next best thing to actually being well written. And for those who enjoy their crime thrillers with motion and sound, a pretty good movie was made of it in 1949. Chose either or both. You’ll win regardless.

Lion Books, Criss Cross, Don Tracy, Charles Copeland, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

December 20 2019

RAILWAY TO HEAVEN

Los Angeles and the invention of Flight.

The above photos show the historic funicular railway Angels Flight, which opened in downtown Los Angeles in 1901 in the Bunker Hill area, with tracks running from Hill Street up a steep incline to Olive Street. There are only a few vintage funicular railways left in the U.S. Angels Flight—along with the impressive Monongahela Incline and the Duquesne Incline, both located in Pittsburgh—is among the most famous.

But it didn’t operate without interruption. It closed in 1969 when Bunker Hill was redeveloped—in reality a destruction of an entire historic working class neighborhood—and reopened a block south in 1996. The railway’s historical significance is architectural, but also cinematic. It appears in quite a few vintage films, most notably in Hollow Triumph, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Act of Violence, Criss Cross, M, and Kiss Me Deadly.

The area near Angels Flight is set for a new redevelopment, as adjacent Angels Knoll, one of the last pieces of greenery in downtown Los Angeles, is to be bulldozed for another of the supposedly-mixed-use-but-really-millionaires-only skyscraper complexes that are popping up all over the world as a way for one percenters to park their money.

Angels Flight will survive this new construction, at least for now, though it will be dwarfed by a forty story glass highrise mere feet to its south. Well, L.A. has rarely let the environment or historical significance stand in the way of making money, and when you look at it that way, the fact that Angels Flight survives at all to this day may be proof of a higher power.

Los Angeles, Angels Flight, Hollow Triumph, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Act of Violence, Criss Cross, Kiss Me Deadly

Vintage Pulp

August 31 2017

WHAT A DOPPIO

Why did Lancaster cross the mob? To get to DeCarlo's side.

This is a beautiful poster for Doppio Gioco, better known as the U.S. film noir Criss Cross, with Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo. We were unable to determine who painted the piece, but it’s a bang-up job. As for the movie, Burt Lancaster comes up with one of the classic terrible ideas in film noir history, and that’s really saying something, because the genre practically hinges on cockamamie schemes. We talk about it in our brief write-up of the film here. Doppio Gioco opened In Italy today in 1949.

Italy, Doppio Gioco, Criss Cross, Burt Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo, poster art, cinema, film noir

Vintage Pulp

January 20 2017

CROSSED UP

Bank heist goes every which way except the right way.

This year’s Noir City Film Festival opens with the 1949 heist drama Criss Cross. Based on a bestselling novel of the same name by Don Tracy, it’s the story of man played by Burt Lancaster who returns to Los Angeles after some years away to find that his ex-wife Yvonne De Carlo has hooked up with a local gangster. The exes rekindle their flame, but when it looks as if the gangster has caught them in the act Lancaster spontaneously cooks up a story about how he was putting together a plan to rob the armored car service for which he works.

Lancaster’s robbery idea is not only designed to deflect the gangster’s suspicion away from the affair, but to also fund the future he envisions with De Carlo when she and him run away. This scheme, which strains credulity, is probably one of the most obviously terrible ideas in the long, celebrated history of doomed ideas in film noir, but with good direction by Robert Siodmak, who had worked with Lancaster on The Killers, and good acting by all involved, the film concludes on the positive side of the effectiveness ledger. Numerous excellent Los Angeles exteriors, including at Union Station and on now mostly leveled Bunker Hill, make this noir an important time capsule as well, an aspect that increases its appeal. And an excellent musical number by Esy Morales & His Rhumba Band gives the proceedings a further boost. All in all, Criss Cross is a winner.

Los Angeles, Criss Cross, Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Robert Siodmak, Dan Duryea, Don Tracy, Esy Morales, poster art, cinema, cover art, literature, film noir, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 12

1968—Tallulah Bankhead Dies

American actress, talk show host, and party girl Tallulah Bankhead, who was fond of turning cartwheels in a dress without underwear and once made an entrance to a party without a stitch of clothing on, dies in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia complicated by emphysema.

December 11

1962—Canada Has Last Execution

The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, â€œSome consolation.â€

December 11

1964—Guevara Speaks at U.N.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing the nation of Cuba, speaks at the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. His speech calls for wholesale changes in policies between rich nations and poor ones, as well as five demands of the United States, none of which are met.

December 11

2008—Legendary Pin-Up Bettie Page Dies

After suffering a heart attack several days before, erotic model Bettie Page, who in the 1950s became known as the Queen of Pin-ups, dies when she is removed from life support machinery. Thanks to the unique style she displayed in thousands of photos and film loops, Page is considered one of the most influential beauties who ever lived.

December 10

1935—Downtown Athletic Club Awards First Trophy

The Downtown Athletic Club in New York City awards its first trophy for athletic achievement to University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger. The prize is later renamed the Heisman Trophy, and becomes the most prestigious award in college athletics.

December 10

1968—Japan's Biggest Heist Occurs

300 million yen is stolen from four employees of the Nihon Shintaku Ginko bank in Tokyo when a man dressed as a police officer blocks traffic due to a bomb threat, makes them exit their bank car while he checks it for a bomb, then drives away in it. Under Japanese statute of limitations laws, the thief could come forward today with no repercussions, but nobody has ever taken credit for the crime.

December 9

1965—UFO Reported by Thousands of Witnesses

A large, brilliant fireball is seen by thousands in at least six U.S. states and Ontario, Canada as it streaks across the sky, reportedly dropping hot metal debris, starting grass fires, and causing sonic booms. It is generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor, however some witnesses claim to have approached the fallen object and seen an alien craft.

HELLO YELLOW

Italian artist Benedetto Caroselli illustrated this set of predominantly yellow covers for Editrice Romana Periodici's crime series I Narratori Americani del Brivido.

JUST TO BE FAIR