Femmes Fatales

May 4 2025

SPECIAL J

Small but with decent stopping power. The gun too.

Jane Powell, née Suzanne Lorraine Bruce, brandishes a .38 pistol in this promo image from around 1957. It doesn’t correspond to any film as far as we can tell. That sometimes happens. Photographer during promo session: “Let’s get a few of you in femme fatale mode, you know, with a gun or something.” Powell was making lots of musicals in 1957 and before, and though she made The Female Animal in 1958, she spent most of the film in a swimsuit. So we’ll see if this turns out to be a production photo. Someone out there probably knows. It’s nice, is all we can say.

Jane Powell, Suzanne Lorrriane Bruce

Femmes Fatales

April 24 2023

A BEAUTIFUL APPROACH

Jane Powell makes the cut on the screen and on the green.

Jane Powell shows her best form with a driver in this fun promo image made on a golf course the like of which we’ve never seen, in terms of the actual golfers. Maybe we don’t hit the links enough. An interesting aspect of the shot is that Powell is wearing a bathing suit with a shirt over it. We know because she wore it in her 1958 movie The Female Animal, which we talked about and shared images from here. This shot is generally credited as being from 1959, so maybe she hung onto the suit.

The Female Animal, Jane Powell

Vintage Pulp

January 22 2021

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

Competition for mates gets vicious in the Hollywood jungle.

This poster really catches the eye. It was made for The Female Animal, Hedy Lamarr’s last motion picture, filmed when she was forty-four. It’s the story of an aging star who finds herself a younger man, but watches him immediately become the target of her sexpot daughter.

The age issues strain credulity a bit. The younger man is played by George Nader, who’s only seven years Lamarr’s junior, while twenty-nine year old Jane Powell plays Lamarr’s adopted daughter. But okay, they were the ones cast, so we have to go with it. And really, who’s going to complain? Nader is a muscular uberhunk who’d fill out a Marvel superhero costume no problem, and Powell is dangerously cute straining the seams of a form fitting swimsuit.

And incidentally, speaking of casting weirdness, Powell—yeah, that’s her in the polka dots—had three children of her own by the time she played this troublesome stepdaughter role. Yes, three. There’s no substitute for lucky genes, an adage doubly proved by the fact that Powell is still kicking around today at age 90.

Moving on to the performances, Lamarr does fine in a sort of detached way, and Nader is solid enough, but it’s Powell who’s asked to spark the movie as the daughter determined to steal her mom’s man. She’s required at turns to be blind drunk, violently angry, coquettish, sexually predatory, and disconsolate. She mostly hauls that heavy load, but in the end the movie is still pretty lightweight. Probably part of the problem is the scripting by Robert Hill. Some of his other screenplays include Sex Kittens Go to College and The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, so his insights into the female animal are negligible. You may want to seek your own, though frankly, we personally have never figured them out and have abandoned any expectations that we ever will. To be fair, they probably feel the same way about us. The Female Animal premiered in New York City today in 1958.

The Female Animal, Sex Kittens Go to College, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell, Jan Sterling, George Nader, poster art, cinema, movie review

Femmes Fatales, Musiquarium

February 28 2020

SWEET JANE

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

Above is a shot of cinematic girl-next-door Jane Powell, who rose to fame in Hollywood musicals such as Holiday in Mexico, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Royal Wedding. While Powell is fondly remembered for those and similar roles, she found it ridiculous that she played teenagers into her mid-twenties even though she had children of her own by that point. Under the studio system she had little choice, but later she did manage to expand her repertoire, co-starring in the Hedy Lamarr melodrama The Female Animal.

Afterward she turned her attentions mainly to television, with guest slots on everything from Goodyear Theatre to Fantasy Island. She also had stage and singing careers, and scored a top 20 hit with 1956’s “True Love.” The photo you see here was made to promote her 1957 musical The Girl Most Likely, and a shot from the same session appeared on the cover of the soundtrack album, which you see below. We don’t generally do musicals here, but we will certainly check out her dramatic turn in The Female Animal. Meanwhile you may want to check out this rare photo we shared a couple of years ago.

Holiday in Mexico, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Royal Wedding, The Girl Most Likely, The Female Animal, Goodyear Theatre, Fantasy Island, Jane Powell, Hedy Lamarr, television, album art

Femmes Fatales

August 29 2018

FULL POWELL

Enough wattage to light all of Hollywood.

This promo image features U.S. actress Jane Powell, née Suzanne Burce, who started in show business as a child, as an adult appeared in films such as Holiday in Mexico, Rich Young and Pretty, and The Girl Most Likely, and eventually was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Powell played mostly wholesome good girls, which is why this striking shot of her in a skirt way too short for the period is such an interesting rarity. It was made in 1954.

Hollywood Walk of Fame, Holiday in Mexico, Rich Young and Pretty, The Girl Most Likely, Jane Powell

ABOUT

EMAIL

LEGAL

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 11

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”.

February 10

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.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.

February 8

1969—Allende Meteorite Falls in Mexico

The Allende Meteorite, the largest object of its type ever found, falls in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The original stone, traveling at more than ten miles per second and leaving a brilliant streak across the sky, is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile. But by the time it hit the Earth it had broken into hundreds of fragments.