Intl. Notebook

May 10 2022

NUDEST COLONY

It was a place filled with natural wonders.

We found this advertising flyer for Abe Weinstein’s famed Dallas burlesque venue the Colony Club floating around online, and we think its lovely model and deliberately skewed text make it interesting enough to share. An image search doesn’t reveal where online it originated, but its size (1,600 pixels wide) causes us to suspect it first appeared on someone’s blog. Abe Weinstein, along with his brother Barney, was a big player in the Dallas nightclub scene, and dancers that passed through his clubs included Lili St. Cyr and Candy Barr.

As the line-up from May 10th to 23rd 1954 indicates, musical entertainment was part of the draw too, helping to attract not just men, but couples. The lingerie-clad woman, presumably a dancer, gracing the front of this flyer is not known to us. We figure she could be the Joan King mentioned, but there were no images of Joan King online when we searched. We’ll keep an eye out. In the meantime, if any of you can identify this person, feel free to get in contact.

The infamous Jack Ruby owned a club called the Carousel on the same street as the Colony. While the Colony worked to cultivate an aura of reputability, Ruby’s club was a dive that he opened above a delicatessen two doors away in hopes of capturing Colony’s overflow. His musical entertainment was a bump and grind band, he sometimes showed porno reels before the dancers went onstage, and some of the girls were said to moonlight as prostitutes.

Ruby and Weinstein didn’t get along. Weinstein even barred Ruby from the Colony for trying to hire away the staff, and, according to Weinstein, Ruby threatened to kill him a week before he shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Just another tidbit from the dark annals of American history. But back to the original subject of burlesque, we have dozens of entries about it. We can’t find all of them right now because time is short today and there are more than 6,400 posts in the site, but we located some good ones here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Abe Weinstein surrounded by some of his dancers.

Dallas, Lili St. Cyr, Abe Weinstein, Paul Dana, Joan King, Tony Craig, Marcia Edgington, Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, burlesque

The Naked City

April 21 2017

TRUE VERSUS FICTION

Nothing impresses a girl like nice hard rod.

Jack Ruby was a nightclub owner, which of course meant he knew many women. After he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald several formerly obscure or mildly famous women became widely known for their associations with Ruby, including Gail Raven, Candy Wells, and Candy Barr. This cover of National Star Chronicle from yesterday in 1964 shines the spotlight on another Ruby acquaintance—Tammi True. Born Nancy Myers, True danced at Ruby’s Dallas nightspot the Carousel Club. She kept her career under wraps, but when Ruby shot Oswald she was identified as a Ruby associate and her anonymity evaporated. National Star Chronicle is one of many tabloids that delved into True’s life.

Is its headline about her touching the gun that killed Oswald factual? Well, Ruby was arrested at the scene of the shooting. The only time True could have touched the gun was before the murder. Ruby always carried a weapon because he always had club receipts on him, so it’s very possible he let True handle it at some point, but True has never confirmed the story. The main reason we tend to doubt it is because she has always been vocal about how angry she was to be outed as a stripper. Before the shooting only her friends and family knew she danced. We can’t imagine her sitting down and giving Chronicle an interview. But you never know. See more from National Star Chronicle by clicking here or here.

Dallas, National Star Chronicle, The Carousel Club, Nancy Myers, Tammi True, Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy, tabloid

Femmes Fatales

February 26 2015

SHORT AND SWEET

Everybody wanted a piece of Candy.

She was born Juanita Dale Slusher, but danced under the much more palatable name Candy Barr. This shot dates from the mid-1950s, when she was beginning to enjoy success on the nationwide dance circuit after a dubious beginning as a teen hooker and star of a porno film at age sixteen. Along with recognition on the dance circuit came trouble, and she would have numerous legal run-ins, including drug charges, an arrest for shooting her abusive husband, and time as a fugitive in Mexico. She was involved with West Coast mobster Mickey Cohen, and became friends with Texas gangster wannabe Jack Ruby. Barr really deserves a more detailed treatment, considering how quintessentially pulp her life was, so we’ll try to get back to her very interesting story a bit later.

Candy Barr, Juanita Dale Slusher, Mickey Cohen, Jack Ruby, burlesque

Vintage Pulp

March 5 2014

ADVICE AND DISSENT

Police Gazette trots out its resident experts to give readers advice sure to get them in deep trouble.

This April 1972 issue of The National Police Gazette offers up Australian bellydancer Rozetta Ahalyea as its cover star, touts a method about picking winning horses, instructs how to outsmart used car racketeers, and suggests what to do when your wife goes on a sex strike. Concerning the latter, is the answer to apologize for whatever fucked up thing you did? No—Gazette suggests withholding her allowance, or possibly disappearing one or two nights a week until she realizes she could lose you. Yeah, that’ll totally make things better.

Inside the issue are stories on Jackie Kennedy and Jack Ruby, Natalie Wood and her lovers, wiretappers, naked witchcraft, cosmetic surgery, and Cassius Clay, who the editors refuse to call Muhammad Ali despite his name change of eight years earlier. Gazette also offers to tell you what you don’t know about lesbians. And what would that be? According to hypnotherapist Dr. Frank Caprio, they’re all mentally damaged. Come on, surely you didn’t expect a different answer from the Police Gazette? Caprio states: “There is some degree of homosexuality, latent or overt, in all women. [During] sexual development the homosexual component becomes sublimated in the form of friendships and non-sexual activities. However, in some instances this repression of the homosexual component is not successful and the individual finds herself the victim of bisexual conflicts.”

What kind of conflicts? Well, he cites the case of a woman who vomited uncontrollably for weeks due to unknown causes. After exhausting her options with physicians, she came to him for help and he determined that her guilt about a lesbian experience in her past was the cause of her non-stop cookie tossing. Caprio considers it an extreme but understandable reaction to a distasteful experience. So there you have it—everything you need to know about lesbians, provided for you by a heterosexual, middle-aged chauvinist who believes that “female homosexuality represents a flight from the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood.” Scans below.

Australia, Police Gazette, Rozetta Ahalyea, Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, Jacqueline Kennedy, Jack Ruby, Natalie Wood, lgbt, tabloid

Vintage Pulp

June 21 2013

RUBY SPARKS

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.

Dallas, Carousel Club, Inside News, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jack Ruby, Candy Wells, tabloid, burlesque

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 25

1939—Batman Debuts

In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale.

April 25

1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results

British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.

April 24

1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule’s main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule’s descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission.

April 23

1986—Otto Preminger Dies

Austro-Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

April 23

1998—James Earl Ray Dies

The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.

April 22

1912—Pravda Is Founded

The newspaper Pravda, or “Truth”, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.

April 22

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.