RAIN OR SHINE

She's always prepared no matter the weather.

These demure cheesecake images scanned from slides star Idaho born actress Arline Hunter ready for any type of atmospheric conditions, clad in a raincoat that keeps the water off but lets the sunshine—and your eyeballs—in. Hunter first came to public notice in the nudie loop The Apple-Knockers and the Coke, but went mainstream and ultimately generated around thirty acting credits, including in 1958’s Revolt in the Big House, 1959’s The Angry Red Planet, and 1960’s Sex Kittens Go to College. You can learn a little more about her and see a fun Technicolor pin-up of her at this link.

Some people shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel. Others shouldn't be allowed behind the typewriter.


We always try to highlight nice art, but Duane Rimel’s 1961 novel Carnal Psycho, with its cheap cover work, was an add-on to a group of other books we acquired. It went unread for a while, until a few days ago when we decided to take a shot in the dark. Set in a place called Layton, Idaho, the main character Mark Jason accidentally runs over a woman on a misty highway, killing her. A month later Jason is himself hit and injured by a car, and the driver escapes. That’s all backstory.

As the book opens Jason is receiving threatening calls, with the voice on the other end promising to kill him, or failing that, kill his friends. And indeed, people around him are slain. One is run down by an automobile, and sabotage to Jason’s car causes another death. All that makes the “carnal” of the title a pun, we suppose, since sex is not the focus of the book. Anyway, Jason puts on his amateur sleuth pants to try and solve the mystery of who wants to kill him.

The main issue with Carnal Psycho is that it isn’t well written. There are a few interesting moments, and a few notable turns of phrase, such as when the killer is described as, “this sly loosener of bolts, this driver of cars, this deadly amanita,” but overall the book is inconsequential and unrecommendable. We haven’t read Rimel’s previous effort Carnal Orgy, but we can’t help wondering if it’s about cars too. We’ll never find out, because we’re never going to ride with him again. That’s a guarantee.

Knievel’s grandest stunt nearly results in fatal Snake bite.

Photo of American motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, from today 1974, just before his ill-fated attempt to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon while strapped inside a steam-powered rocket. Knievel was the most famous daredevil in history at this point, and had conceived the Snake River feat as a way to further burnish his already considerable legend. But the jump failed when a chute accidentally deployed, causing the cycle to float into the canyon, where it crash-landed mere feet from the river. Had it landed in the water, Knievel would have drowned due to a jammed restraint harness, but instead he lived to jump another day.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

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.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the panting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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