HIGHER YEARNING

Hey there orgy girl.


Did orgies really happen in colleges back in the 1960s? We weren’t alive then, but we like to think it’s true. One thing maintaining this website constantly reinforces is just how conservative people are today. Think about it. You have twenty-somethings right now who think they’re the wildest things to careen down the pike in all eternity—a normal assumption made by every generation—but in reality their world is so constrained and loaded with traps it doesn’t remotely compare to the past. They have more STDs to worry about, social media that immortalizes their errors forever, surveillance and electronic tracking everywhere, credit records and employment histories they have to protect at all costs, and corporate and police cultures that are infinitely more suffocating than they used to be.
 
Note that we’re only saying there’s less space for personal risk-taking now. In broad areas—acceptance of racial groups and sexual preference, for instance—today’s culture is less conservative than in the past, and thankfully so. But it’s a bit shocking to consider when you look at Inside News that the now septua- and octogenarian people inside were, on the whole, crazier in their youth than today’s twenty-somethings. It’s a point worth keeping in mind next time you visit that boring older relative of yours. He or she might just have been on the bottom of the pile at one of the college orgies Inside News is talking about. Lovely image, right? Want to see more tabloids? We have more than any site on the internet and you can find them by starting at our tabloid index at this link.

Twelve will get you twenty—years in prison.

On the cover of this Inside News published today in 1965, readers are told of Harriet Day, a twelve-year-old “mantrap” from Brackley, England who learned from watching her prostitute mother how to seduce men. The story is written not as journalism, but as sleaze fiction, with lines like, “swinging her ample hips and showing all the leg her clinging skirt would afford, she approached men with suggestive gestures and inviting glances.” There’s plenty of backseat and backalley action, and of course the men involved had no idea she was twelve. We say of course because even though the lure of the story is creepy underaged sex, Inside News could not actually afford to be perceived as promoting the practice—hence the 150 men were all unwittingly seduced. Harriet is eventually arrested and turned over to child welfare authorities tasked with “helping her grow up as a normal woman.” As for the men, we imagine they stayed abnormal. More from Inside News at our tabloid index

All the world's a tabloid—and all the men and women merely victims.

Above you see the front of an issue of the New York City based tabloid Inside News published today in 1967, with its usual banner “The Lowdown Coast to Coast.” Lowdown is right—within you get lethal sex, killer bears, women bartered and sold, and a sadist who carved his initials on a bellydancer’s torso. But fear not—there’s lighter fare as well. Burlesque dancer Rita Atlanta uses a column to criticize Italian actress Gia Sandri for performing a bad striptease in the film Signore & signori. Atlanta advises Sandri, “A woman has to know “when her hips should zig and when they should zag.” That sounds more like an evasive maneuver to us, and considering how bad Inside News is on the whole, it’s good advice. The paste-up alone is enough to scare you. Run fast and run far. Scans below. 

Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer shares his thoughts on dying in the electric chair.


Above is a typically lurid front of Inside News from today in 1964. Sugar Ray Robinson gets a mention in a topside banner, but stripper Candy Wells and killer Jack Ruby dominate the cover. Ruby had fatally shot alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald the previous year. Thanks to television cameras that recorded the event he had no chance at any real defense except to plead insanity, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

In the article a suicidal Ruby reflects on his pending appointment with Old Sparky. The money quote: “You know, I was the first to ever shoot somebody on TV, and I was the first to have a death sentence handed me with TV cameras on. But if they think I’m gonna be the first guy they see fry in the hot seat on TV, they’re nuts.” He also offeredthis: “They say it don’t hurt—it’s over faster than a wink, but I don’t think so. I saw a guy get it once. It don’t hurt? Hell when that jolt hit him he jumped so hard he would have hit the ceiling if he wasn’t strapped down.” And one more interesting quote: “Sometimes I feel like a caged freak, like a million people out there are waiting to see me fry.”

What is Candy Wells’ role in all this? She danced at the Carousel Club, the Dallas strip establishment owned by Ruby, and Inside News asks her for insights about her boss. She’s really just an excuse to slip some skin into the story, but she does offer this about Ruby’s suicide threats: “If he said it you can believe it. I don’t know what he’ll do, but I’ll bet my last pair of pasties he’ll do something.” Hah hah, her last pair of pasties. Do you believe she said that? We don’t either. But it’s an interesting article, and the Ruby quotes, if true, are revealing.
 
He was wrong about one thing, though. He said a million people were waiting to see him fry. Actually, because he ruined the opportunity for the public to get answers regarding the Kennedy assassination from the alleged assassin, probably more like one hundred million people were waiting for him to fry (for those unfamiliar with the history, a Gallup poll conducted just days after the assassination showed that a majority of Americans believed Oswald was not the only one involved, and that number has only gone up since). But the people never got to see Ruby ride Old Sparky, because he died of a pulmonary embolism related to lung cancer in January 1967.

Why say no when it’s so much more fun to say yes?

Above, another page from our $5 book of tabloid covers, featuring model Lisa Farrell working the bowl haircut and leopard print bikini, today in 1965. 

Have we got News for you.

Above is a cover of Inside News from today, 1965. The woman strangled with her own panties is not the showgirl at left, but the woman in the inset, who was allegedly a “Negro prostitute” who refused service to a “White John.” We found this inside a 24-page collection of tabloid covers that we bought online for five dollars. That’s a bargain on one level, but of course the publishers chose some of the most provocative and offensive covers they could find, and now we have all that stuck in our heads. Good news, though. Soon, you’ll have it stuck in your heads too, because we’re generous like that. 

Don't cry for me Argentina—the sex was worth it.

We located a worn-out copy of Inside News from April 1964, and on the cover it promises assorted criminal atrocities and indeed delivers. But the piece that really caught our eye (because of some similarities to the current situation of Italy’s buffoon-in-chief Silvio Berlusconi) is the story on Argentine ex-president Juan Perón and his fourteen-year-old mistress Nelida Rivas. The relationship was not something Perón was trying hard to keep secret—he had met her in late 1952 and she soon became a frequent companion. The public was generally forgiving because Rivas was too young to know better and Perón was a widower, his wife Evita having died in mid-1952. Still, he was sometimes grilled by the press and often criticized by opponents. In the end, it was opposition from the Catholic Church that triggered his undoing. His scorn for what he saw as their meddling in his personal business caused him to take a series of political steps that helped justify his excommunication by Pope Pius XII. When this Inside News hit the stands, Perón was living in exile in Spain. To say that his relationship with Nelly Rivas cost him the presidency of Argentina—as Inside News does—is a stretch. But it is fair to say that Perón’s enemies were able to turn Rivas into a mighty handy weapon. Berlusconi take heed. 

Have we got News for you.

Inside News was yet another low rent, late-’60s/early-’70s tabloid, like the National Examiner, Keyhole, Midnight and others, that basically printed fiction in the guise of investigative journalism. In a race to the bottom of the market, Inside News focused on sex, the outrage of homosexuality, the outrage of sex associated with drug use, the outrage of sex between whites and blacks, and rape—which they presented not as an outrage, but as titillation. The example above, published today in 1970, is typical. She was raped, but she was a stripper, therefore here she is in a bikini, and boy howdy, it’s pretty easy to see why she was raped, isn’t it? Of course, the report is 100% fabricated, and it’s possible some readers of Inside News even suspected as much. But since it was ideas being sold, rather than literal truth, we can see with the clarity of years that what we have here is a magazine catering to a readership fearful about the direction of the times—i.e. sexual liberation and racial equality. We have two or three more issues of Inside News, but we’re searching for more. We’ll share them as we find them.     

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1946—Cannes Launches Film Festival

The first Cannes Film Festival is held in 1946, in the old Casino of Cannes, financed by the French Foreign Affairs Ministry and the City of Cannes.

1934—Arrest Made in Lindbergh Baby Case

Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnap and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr., son of the famous American aviator. The infant child had been abducted from the Lindbergh home in March 1932, and found decomposed two months later in the woods nearby. He had suffered a fatal skull fracture. Hauptmann was tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and finally executed by electric chair in April 1936. He proclaimed his innocence to the end

1919—Pollard Breaks the Color Barrier

Fritz Pollard becomes the first African-American to play professional football for a major team, the Akron Pros. Though Pollard is forgotten today, famed sportswriter Walter Camp ranked him as “one of the greatest runners these eyes have ever seen.” In another barrier-breaking historical achievement, Pollard later became the co-head coach of the Pros, while still maintaining his roster position as running back.

1932—Entwistle Leaps from Hollywood Sign

Actress Peg Entwistle commits suicide by jumping from the letter “H” in the Hollywood sign. Her body lay in the ravine below for two days, until it was found by a detective and two radio car officers. She remained unidentified until her uncle connected the description and the initials “P.E.” on the suicide note in the newspapers with his niece’s two-day absence.

1908—First Airplane Fatality Occurs

The plane built by Wilbur and Orville Wright, The Wright Flyer, crashes with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge aboard as a passenger. The accident kills Selfridge, and he becomes the first airplane fatality in history.

1983—First Black Miss America Crowned

Vanessa Williams becomes the first African American Miss America. She later loses her crown when lesbian-themed nude photographs of her are published by Penthouse magazine.

Pulp style book covers made the literary-minded George Orwell look sexy and adventurous.
Ten covers from the popular French thriller series Les aventures de Zodiaque.

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