vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Below, a July 1939 issue of the American cinema magazine Film Fun, with cover art by Enoch Bolles and interior images of Sylvia Sidney, Lya Lys, Paulette Goddard, and many others. Click keywords “Film Fun” at the bottom of the post to see more. 
We took a dip in the pop culture cesspool (see previous post) and just couldn’t seem to get clean again, but we finally found a way to get back that fresh feeling. A while back we posted a Film Fun cover with the lovely Lupe Velez on the cover, and then we followed up with another post with interior pages. Below are ten more Film Fun covers, with trademark smiling beauties and playful blurbs, circa 1940 to 1942. Ah, we feel so much better now.
Assorted images from the American celeb magazine Film Fun, April 1940, with stars Myrna Loy, Bebe Daniels, Robert Preston, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Hayward et al.
February 1934 issue of the humorous movie monthly Film Fun, with a cover by the legendary Enoch Bolles. Shown on the interior pages are Toby Wing, Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Harriette Mendel, Ginger Rogers and others. You can see all the issues of Film Fun you ever wanted at the web archive filmfun.info.
We wrote about actress Lupe Velez just a few days ago, and now we’ve come across this great Film Fun cover she posed for, so the magazine claims. Film Fun ran from 1915 to 1942, and was a lighthearted ’zine that always had pin-up style art, either painted with utmost skill by the likes of Enoch Bolles and John Held, Jr., or photographed in a style that made the subject look like a painting. It was Bolle who produced the fantastic pirate-themed cover above, and it looks like he had a ball doing it.
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.
