Vintage Pulp

November 25 2025

THE EXPLOITATION OF LABOR

Hippocratic oath? If I took that seriously I'd never have inseminated all the women before you whose babies I sold.

Is Dr. Prescott’s secret that he’s a mad rapist or a serial inseminator? Actually, no. In this Peggy Gaddis novel first published in 1951 he’s an upstanding physician with a sterling reputation honeytrapped by a femme fatale into a scheme forcing him to provide medical care in an illegal maternity ward. The desperate women give birth in secret then part with the infants, which are sold to childless couples at a grand a pop. If it sounds farfetched, note that something similar was actually occurring in Spain at the time. And when PSGP was in El Salvador a while back someone offered to sell him a baby. Long story. Anyway, inflationarily speaking, Gaddis’s newborns are going for about twelve Gs in today’s money. That’s a decent profit on someone else’s labor.

Prescott soon gets caught red-handed in the ward by the cops, and thus begins the hunt for the person he claims is really responsible, femme fatale Laura Weston, who’s vanished. Meanwhile Prescott has to confess to his wife that he’d cheated. “But, darling! She honeytrapped me!” That’s not what he says, of course. It doesn’t matter, because like many a good woman in sleaze literature she stands by her man. As crime can rarely pay at this stage of popular fiction development, it’s only a question of how and why Weston will be caught—not if. Gaddis spins the tale with velocity and verve. In her niche, she’s good. Also good is this Uni Books edition with art by an unknown, modeled after a 1933 production still featuring Hollywood star Fay Wray.

Uni Books, Peggy Gaddis, Fay Wray, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

November 20 2022

24 HOURS NON-STOP

In show business the camera never sleeps.

Night and Day, for which you see the cover of an issue—its very first issue, actually—that was published this month in 1948, billed itself as America’s Picture Magazine of Entertainment. It was launched in New York City by Alho Publishing, and as you’ll see it came out of the gate swinging for the fences with its visual content, from its bisected cover featuring burlesque dancer Lili St. Cyr and actress Ramsey Ames, to its tongue-in-cheek feature on the twenty-seven types of kisses, to its approving look at George White’s Scandals revue at Hollywood’s Florentine Gardens. Interesting side note on Scandals—Wikipedia says it ended in 1939. Well, obviously not quite. Elsewhere Night and Day touches on college hazing, professional football, and the Greenwich Village art scene. In total, it’s a gold mine for vintage photos.

Our favorite offering in the magazine is its quiz on Hollywood stars and their stand-ins. You just have to take a good look at twenty performers, and try to determine which twenty random people are their stand-ins. To score well on such a quiz you’d have to be either the biggest Hollywood head in history or someone who has the opposite of face blindness, whatever that would be. Face unforgettability, maybe. Even though we don’t expect many people to try the quiz, we worked hard to put it into internet-usable form. In the magazine the photos were five-across on the page, which made them too small for the column width of our website. So we rearranged them to be two-across, and thus enlarged, they’re clear, though you have to do a lot of scrolling. Nevertheless, it’s there if you want, along with fifty other panels to eat your time with marvelous efficiency. Please enjoy.

The Hollywood movie star stand-in quiz begins below. First you get twenty famous actors and actresses:

And below are their twenty stand-ins. If you get more than half of these right you’re a human face recognition algorithm. Quit your day job immediately and report to the FBI.

Below are the answers.

Vintage Pulp

September 16 2022

PREY FOR HIS SINS

Tired of checkers, chess, and cards? Has he got a game for you.

Man hunted in the wild by a supposedly more intelligent and powerful foe is a concept used numerous times in Hollywood with great success, perhaps reaching its pinnacle with 1987’s sci-fi actioner Predator. The idea goes all the way back to The Most Dangerous Game, a pre-Code chiller starring Joel McCrae, Leslie Banks, and Fay Wray. When a luxury yacht of upper crust types runs aground off the Pacific coast of South America, only McCrae survives. He’s landed on a jungle island owned by a mad Russian named Count Zaroff, played with walleyed fervor by Banks, who hunts humans for kicks.

Zaroff’s creepy ole stone mansion doesn’t look like a place where one might hope to find aid, but McCrae has no choice but to go there. He isn’t the only stranded raw meat hanging around. Boats occasionally crash because the Count moved the channel markers that are supposed to warn boaters away from the rocks. With each shipwreck he has new game to hunt. Wray is already on the island, having run aground before McCrae. She has an inkling things are not kosher, and she turns out to be correct.

The movie is stagy and clunky in its expository sequences, like most pre-Code productions, and Wray’s acting is a sheer hoot, but there are positives. There’s striking outdoor footage shot around Rancho Palos Verdes, which adds excellent imagery to a film that is indisputably a high visual achievement, and that in turn helps the action sequences come across as both gripping and believable. And of course the basic idea always works. Hunter and hunted, a battle of wits, a match to the death. The Most Dangerous Game premiered today in 1932.

*sigh* I’m getting mighty fucking bored on this island. Even my best formal wear doesn’t lift my mood anymore.

My God. I suddenly have the most dastardly idea.

And now we shall play a very dangerous game! Staring like cats! We’ll be in danger of enjoying ourselves!

Stand against the wall and I’ll throw this knife at you. I mean—not at you. Close enough to be dangerous. I mean— Okay, I can see you’re not into it.

How about a little Russian roulette? That’s a fairly dangerous game.

Erm… Joel? I think we should flee before he gets to the most dangerous game.

We’re lost aren’t we? I said flee. I didn’t say flee with no goddamn idea which way you were going.

Are you sure we shouldn’t have turned left back there at the bog of doom?

Just admit you’re lost, Joel. And not to add to your worries, but I’m getting pretty hungry. If I’m snippy it’s your fault.

Okay, now we’re just going in circles.

See? He’s found us! You never listen!

Count! Can you hear me? I’ll make you a deal! Take her, and let me leave!

RKO Radio Pictures, Hays Code, The Most Dangerous Game, Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks, Robert Armstrong, poster art, cinema, movie review

Femmes Fatales

June 13 2020

DARK PAST

My last boyfriend? Actually, he was a bit of a beast.

Canadian actress Fay Wray was cinema’s first true scream queen thanks to her appearances in early 1930s horror movies and her star turn in 1933’s King Kong. Though she is known mainly for that movie, she appeared in many worthy productions, most notably the excellent thriller The Most Dangerous Game. She’s seen here circa 1936.

Canada, King Kong, The Most Dangerous Game, Fay Wray, cinema

Vintage Pulp

March 2 2010

THE NOBLE APE

You can't go wrong if your poster has Kong.

The original King Kong took cinema by storm with its tale of a fantastic lost world, and its revolutionary visual effects. It also had the most consistently wonderful promo posters of possibly any film in history. All were great, but the best, in our opinion, is the version made for the world premiere at Radio City Music Hall, above. The numerous other versions are below, and all are stunning. King Kong, one of the most enduring movies ever made, opened in New York City today in 1933.

New York City, Radio City Music Hall, King Kong, Bruce Cabot, Fay Wray, poster art, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 16

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanideâ€”not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juiceâ€”resulting in his death in late 1937.

February 15

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

February 14

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.