Intl. Notebook

August 29 2019

JANE DO’

Have typewriter, will travel.

This shot shows Jane Dolinger, who began public life as a model but later became an acclaimed travel writer during an era when people who made a living that way were exceedingly rare. Her career began when she took a job as secretary to adventurer Ken Krippene, who nurtured her ambition and helped her get a start in the publishing business. She married Krippene, and between 1955 and 1995 traveled the world and wrote about her exploits, from the Amazon to the Sahara, publishing eight books and hundreds of articles. She wrote mainly for men’s magazines, so her stories dwelled on nightlife, sex, and prostitutes. But she also managed to risk life and limb gathering facts on Jivaro headshrinkers and Inca gold.

The nude photos of her below were published in the 1960s but were probably shot in the late 1950s. This was common practice with her. A 1971 article she wrote for Bachelor about Ibiza was accompanied by topless photos of her from 1959. It was shameless pandering, of course, but it would be a mistake to assume this was the practice of some benighted, long passed era. Today female pop stars such as Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, and Azealia Banks routinely publish or leak nudes in order to boost sales. New decade, same game.

As pulp people we don’t judge. Fame can be a long, hard climb and there are various ways to reach the mountaintop. Dolinger was fine with her nudes, as have been ambitious trailblazers stretching in a line from Hedy Lamarr to Marilyn Monroe to Madonna. The liberated ’70s even saw a few brave males posing nude for publicity, for example Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson. Dolinger’s shots were stepping stones to a dream career, literary respect, and a lasting place in the pantheon of daring travelers. She published Gypsies of the Pampa, Behind Harem Walls, The Forbidden World of the Jaguar Princess, and other books, and became the subject of a book herself in 2010 when Larry Abbott published the biography Jane Dolinger: The Adventurous Life of an American Travel Writer. Dolinger died in 1995 at the age of sixty-two, but her legend lives on

Jane Dolinger, Ken Krippene, Larry Abbott, nudity

Vintage Pulp

June 25 2019

A MAN’S OF MANY INTERESTS

Aussie magazine delves into love, sex, war, crime, and more.

We’re back to Man’s Epic today, a difficult to find Aussie adventure magazine published by K.G. Murray Co., the same group responsible for the amazing Adam magazine. K.G. Murray Co.’s provenance goes all the way back to 1936, when an Aussie advertising worker named Kenneth Gordon Murray launched Man magazine from offices in Sydney, and its mix of adventure, cartoons, and women caught on with readers. Murray expanded and would eventually publish Man Junior, Cavalcade, Gals and Gags, Adam, and numerous other titles. By 1954 the company was churning out eighteen monthly publications.

Man’s Epic, which is not related to the U.S. men’s magazine of the same name, came in October 1967, and switched to bimonthly in 1971, with the above issue published to span May through June 1973. Unfortunately, Man’s Epic died in late 1977 or possibly early 1978, at the same time numerous men’s magazines were withering with the changing times. Murray’s umbrella company Publishers Holding Ltd. had become targeted in a takeover bid that resulted in K.G. Murray Co. being sold to Australian Consolidated Press, or ACP. After that point Murray’s magazines were shuttered one by one by their new owners.

We’re fans of Man’s Epic, though this is only the second issue we’ve managed to buy. Inside you get articles about practitioners of warcraft, a story on motorcycle accidents that doesn’t spare the carnage, and various models whose identities are new to us. There’s also a lengthy feature on shocking sex rites, including a bit on San Simón, aka Maximón, the Mayan trickster deity native to our former beloved home of Guatemala. We once took a long drive from Guatemala across Honduras with an effigy of Maximón in the vehicle, and we learned about his trickster nature firsthand.

That story, by the way, was penned by Jane Dolinger, a trailblazing travel writer who ventured everywhere from the Sahara to the Amazon and wrote eight books, but is perhaps a bit forgotten today. The editors make sure readers know Dolinger is hot by publishing a glamour photo of her, which is a pretty sexist move, though she posed for provocative shots often. Meanwhile her framing of other cultures’ sexual practices as abnormal is textbook racism. Abandon all hope ye who enter this magazine!

Australia, Guatemala, Sydney, K.G. Murray Publishing Co., Kenneth G. Murray, Man's Epic, Man Magazine, Jane Dolinger, magazine art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 15

1945—Laval Executed

Pierre Laval, who was the premier of Vichy, France, which had collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, is shot by a firing squad for treason. In subsequent years it emerges that Laval may have considered himself a patriot whose goal was to publicly submit to the Germans while doing everything possible behind the scenes to thwart them. In at least one respect he may have succeeded: fifty percent of French Jews survived the war, whereas in other territories about ninety percent perished.

October 15

1966—Black Panthers Form

In the U.S., in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther political party. The Panthers are active in American politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but eventually legal troubles combined with a schism over the direction of the party lead to its dissolution.

October 14

1962—Cuban Missile Crisis Begins

A U-2 spy plane flight over the island of Cuba produces photographs of Soviet nuclear missiles being installed. Though American missiles have been installed near Russia, the U.S. decides that no such weapons will be tolerated in Cuba. The resultant standoff brings the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. The crisis finally ends with a secret deal in which the U.S. removes its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing the Cuban weapons.

October 13

1970—Angela Davis Arrested

After two months of evading police and federal authorities, Angela Davis is arrested in New York City by the FBI. She had been sought in connection with a kidnapping and murder because one of the guns used in the crime had been bought under her name. But after a trial a jury agreed that owning the weapon did not automatically make her complicit in the crimes.

October 12

1978—Sid Vicious Arrested for Murder

Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen is found in their room at New York City’s Chelsea Hotel. Vicious and Spungen had a famously stormy relationship, but Vicious proclaims he is innocent. He is released on bail and dies of a heroin overdose before a trial takes place.

October 12

1979—Adams Publishes First Hitchhiker's Book

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in a series, is published by Douglas Adams. The novels follow on the heels of the tremendously successful British television series of the same name.