It never qualified as a visual feast but it gave readers plenty of the basics.
We picked up this November 1963 issue of the Portuguese pop culture magazine Plateia in Lisbon a while back because it had a rare shot of U.S. actress Carol Lynley on the cover. The art is never amazing inside this publication, but at three euros we feel we got a good deal, and there are photos we’ve never seen before, even if small and printed on cheap paper. Superstars Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, Jayne Mansfield, Gregory Peck, and Romy Schneider show up, as do more Eurocentric screen performers such as Sara Montiel, Maximillian Schell, and Rosa Schiaffino. Also making appearances are playwright Jean Cocteau and singer Amália Rodrigues. In the end Plateia covers a lot of entertainment territory, making for a good timekiller for readers back then, and a nice item in our stacks today. We have about twenty-five scans below, and you can see another issue at this link.
What ingredients do you need to sell a tabloid? On this cover of Top Secret from July 1962, you see two of the most effective in Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra. They were the equivalent of clickbait back then, because there was always something interesting happening in their lives. If we were to dig out all our old tabloids from the ’50s and ’60s, we bet we’d find Sinatra on the cover, in an interior feature, or in the Hollywood roundup section of 80% of them. That’s a cautious estimate—the percentage could be higher. This time he gets second billing on the cover—a mere inset photo.
Top Secret reserves the majority of its dishing for Taylor and her epic drama Cleopatra, which wouldn’t premiere until a year later, in July 1963. The reason there was such advance curiosity had partly to do with the film’s prolonged production time. Principal photography was to have begun in September 1960, but Taylor fell gravely ill, causing a delay. Soon after filming started, director Rouben Mamoulian resigned. That was in January 1961. When replacement Joseph L. Mankiewicz was hired he announced a totally new concept for the movie, which meant the footage already shot was binned. More delay.
We could go on forever—the shooting of Cleopatra certainly did—but the point is, the public had been hearing about the movie for a long time. It made for good tabloid fodder, as the production eventually became the most expensive ever. Adjusted for inflation it still might be. In 2025 money the movie would cost more than $450 million.
Top Secret refers to Taylor’s “daringly naked” scenes. All the tabloids were flogging that idea. We have a running joke around the Pulp Intl. metroplex that if there was no bush there was no nudity. Therefore, we wouldn’t say Taylor got naked in Cleopatra. She did show a lot of PG-level skin during a massage scene, but nothing more. The rumors, though, were newsstand catnip. We’ve seen dozens of tabloids from 1961 to 1963 that spread the nude Taylor rumor. It has ever been thus that when you’re a big star, people want to see as much of you as they can—in every sense.
Meanwhile, over in the inset, Frank Sinatra supposedly cancelled a wedding. The almost-bride in question was dancer-actress Juliet Prowse, and Top Secret labels the engagement a publicity stunt to boost her film career. Prowse and Sinatra had first met in 1959 while filming Can-Can, and the pair hit it off. In 1962 they announced their plans to wed, but six weeks after that called it quits. It happens. But tabloids are supposed to be skeptical, so Top Secret‘s take was that it was a planned manipulation of the public. We doubt Frankie noticed the magazine’s attacks—far worse had been written about him.
Elsewhere in Top Secret the editors offer up Brigitte Bardot, Ingrid Bergman, Jayne Mansfield, Ava Gardner, Jack Paar, Alicia Purdom, and many other notable figures. While the stories are generally negative, they could be worse. By 1962 the editors were being careful to stay on the right side of the libel line. The magazine had launched in 1953 before clarity on such matters had been established (the clarity: be careful or get your ass sued off). Even so, it’s interesting how vicious the tone of Top Secret remains even at this late stage. We’ll have more down the line.
Mansfield's image was always of pair-a-mount importance.
And people think movie stars are bold today. This is of course Jayne Mansfield hanging out next to Sophia Loren at a Paramount publicity event that took place today in 1957 at Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills. We shared a couple of shots of the moment several years back, but we ran across them again while poking around the website and they made us laugh so much we resolved to circle back to that momentous night. What amused us—well, a couple of aspects of the photo amused us—but what largely amused us was thinking about how Loren probably dressed that night thinking she was garbed rather smolderingly, then saw Jayne—mother of a six-year-old, by the way, and doing just fine—and felt reality recalibrate. Loren wasn’t comfortable with displays of skin, though she’d been topless in an early career film called Era lui… sì! sì! Being faced by the full Jayne must have sent Loren home pondering where smoldering ended and combustible blew it out the revolving doors. Some might think Jayne’s display a bit over-the-top, but what a Hollywood moment. We tried to resist posting a zoom of the photo. We really did. We really, really did. But it’s historically significant, and so below… Mansfield—you gotta love her.
David Dodge writes a 239 page love letter to the South of France.
A few years back we happened upon two of American author David Dodge’s travel books. The first was 1953’s A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, which shared anecdotes and tips for the adventurous, budget-minded continental traveler trying to cross borders and broaden horizons. He wrote the second after his novel To Catch a Thief became an Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. It’s called A Rich Man’s Guide to the Riviera and was published in 1962. You see its summery cover above, with Dodge’s schnozz making a dent in the righthand margin.
Dodge was a budget traveller, so we thought the title of the book was tongue-in-cheek, but it isn’t. His life had changed. To Catch a Thief had been a bestseller, had been lucratively optioned from him, hit the book lists again in conjunction with the film, and had provided a windfall of Hollywood residuals. Instead of focusing on how to advantageously work exchange rates and hustle for cheap room and board as in A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, he focuses on the jet-set lifestyle of the South of France, some of its unusual history, and many of its unforgettable characters.
He writes about the origins of the Cannes Film Festival, describing it as a counterweight to the Venice fest, which up until World War II had been dominated by fascists from Italy and Germany. He bewails the construction of the Palais des Festivals film exhibition space, a sharp-edged and oversized box that brought about the demolition of the elegant Cercle Nautique, a Belle Epoque structure built in 1859 as a sailing club. And he tells never-heard-before tales about many participants in the Festival, from the famed Sofia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida to the never-famed bikini girls that drove photographers crazy for ten days every year.
It’s all written with Dodge’s trademark panache, with plenty of deft wordplay. We were especially amused by his discourse on the difference between playboys and playgirls, and how women inevitably fall short in the area of pointless profligacy because they’re not egomanical enough to do ridiculous things like light a cigar with a thousand dollar bill—which any number of Côte d’Azur playboys did. We want to quote some of his stories, but they tend to be long, so instead we’ll transcribe some of their final sentences. You’ll have to fill in the anterior blanks yourself, but you’ll get the picture:
The bartender had to walk home and explain the situation to his girlfriend, who hit him on the head with a ravioli cutter she happened to be holding and scarred him for life.
For all that he was short, roly-poly, balding, a sloppy dresser, and a dull conversationlist, he could keep more beautiful movie stars in the air at one time than Pan Am.
All that stood between Jayne Mansfield and myself was a single partition, the mountain of muscle she was married to, and my wife.
He took forty two rooms at the Hotel Carlton for his entourage and demanded the poached ears of the maître d’hôtel for dinner.
Two years later, when the thieves had exhausted the cash and were picked up attemping to fence off her jewelry, her reproach when called to identify them was, “You might have left me half!”
Guinevere’s voice said confidently from the bar: “Don’t you worry about me and that slab of Tasmanian ham, Elvita, honey. I’d roll him up like a Venetian blind.”
That last one is about Errol Flynn. They’re all great tales, and the book is a joy. The only thing it lacks is the illustrations of A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, which had the artful ink/watercolor stylings of Irv Koons as accompaniment. Perhaps some of Dodge’s earlier travel books contain art. He wrote seven others, including two or three that visited some of our old haunts in Latin America, so we’re likely to try those too at some point. For anyone who enjoys a trip back in time, vintage novels are the best, but vintage travel books do it too, in a different and very satisfying way.
Above: a lovely Technicolor lithograph of Jayne Mansfield. Lithos were often derived from magazine sessions. The original photo appeared in Playboy in 1956, so this item could have been printed that year, the next, or even the next. But figuring a time lag to work out the rights, let’s call it 1957 until someone comes across with better info. See two more Jayne lithos here and here. You’ll notice the poses on those are basically the same as above.
Above: Jayne Mansfield poses in a bathtub with yet another of her unusual hairdos. We’re thinking it’s probably a wig, in whole or in part. She wore wigs often, but her real hair was almost a trademark. Even so, she was never afraid to cover it for the sake of a good shot. She even cut it occasionally, with excellent results, such as you see in the 1962 photo at right. We don’t have an exact date on the bubbly tub image, but most sources place it around 1960. Want to see one her wildest hair-dos? Click this link.
Above are lovely photo-illustrated covers of Wiener Magazin published in Austria during the 1950s. Some of the celebrities pictured are unknown to us. We’ve placed those last. The others are, in order, Joan Collins, Jayne Mansfield, Mitzi Gaynor, Ava Gardner, Anita Ekberg, Lilanne Brousse, Mamie Van Doren, and May Britt. These are to whet your appetite. We have a couple of full issues we’ll show you later.
Heavy is the head that wears the oversized platinum blowout.
This photo shows Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield sporting an astonishing candyfloss coiffure backstage at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas in 1964. The hair—let’s just say it—is fucking strange and must have taken at least an hour to sculpt, or maybe it’s a wig. Either way, it befits her larger-than-life stature. When you’re as big a celebrity as she was you have to set tongues wagging every time you appear in public, because once they stop it’s all over. The game remains unchanged today, but few have played it as well as Jayne.
I asked for a double room so we can use one bed for action, and the other for recovery.
Above is a 1960 Technicolor lithograph starring Jayne Mansfield. It’s called, “Good Morning,” which we suppose it might be if you woke up with her. The shot originated from 1956 and was first used on a cover of Cabaret Quarterly. It was later used on Modern Man in 1960, Beau magazine in 1966, and even—with the background changed to pink—Mark Gabor’s 1984’s Illustrated History of Girlie Magazines. It probably showed up elsewhere too, and why not? It’s one of Mansfield’s best shots.
It’s been a while since we shared one of these Technicolor lithos, so as a reminder we’ll mention that they were made as a potential market replacement for the painted pin-ups of earlier years, such as those produced by Gil Elvgren, Art Frahm, and Zoe Mozert. That’s why these have such painterly compositions. You can see for yourself, because we have a bunch of examples going back years, and some of them are amazing. Just click here and scroll.
Vintage glamour magazine produces treasure trove of rare celebrity photos.
Above you see the cover of Jem magazine, founded by famed bodybuilder Joe Weider as one of the first high budget competitors to Playboy. He also launched the similar imprint Monsieur. The scans above and below are from the very first issue of Jem, published this month in 1956. It came out during the heyday of the era when magazines of this type gave equal billing to Hollywood celebrities and erotic stars (something we try to emulate on Pulp Intl.), which means you’ll not only see rare photos of actresses like Anita Ekberg, Jayne Mansfield, and Kim Novak, but also burlesque dancer and model Candy Barr (on the cover and in the beautiful masthead page), model Betty Brosmer (who was Weider’s wife), and dancer Lili St. Cyr. Jem also poached July 1956 Playboy centerfold Alice Denham, which must have served as a shot across Hefner’s bow. In addition to all those attractions, you get illustrations by Dwight Howe, Ken Wyeth, John Martin, and Jack Lyons. The magazine is so vibrant we uploaded every page that had either photos or art, making for a whopping fifty panels to enjoy below. We found this on Archive.org, but we’re going to see if we can locate a few in real life.
American journalist, playwright, and author Richard Harding Davis dies of a heart attack at home in Philadelphia. Not widely known now, Davis was one of the most important and influential war correspondents ever, establishing his reputation by reporting on the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I, as well as his general travels to exotic lands.
1919—Zapata Is Killed
In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by government forces in the state of Morelos, after a carefully planned ambush. Following the killing, Zapata’s revolutionary movement and his Liberation Army of the South slowly fall apart, but his political influence lasts in Mexico to the present day.
1925—Great Gatsby Is Published
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York City by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Though Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known book today, it was not a success upon publication, and at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was mostly forgotten as a writer and considered himself to be a failure.
1968—Martin Luther King Buried
American clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is buried five days after being shot dead on a Memphis, Tennessee motel balcony. April 7th had been declared a national day of mourning by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and King’s funeral on the 9th is attended by thousands of supporters, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
1953—Jomo Kenyatta Convicted
In Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced to seven years in prison by the nation’s British rulers for being a member of the Mau Mau Society, an anti-colonial movement. Kenyatta would a decade later become independent Kenya’s first prime minister, and still later its first president.
1974—Hank Aaron Becomes Home Run King
Major League Baseball player Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run, surpassing Babe Ruth’s 39-year-old record. The record-breaking homer is hit off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and with that swing Aaron puts an exclamation mark on a twenty-four year journey that had begun with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League, and would end with his selection to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Edições de Ouro and Editora Tecnoprint published U.S. crime novels for the Brazilian market, with excellent reworked cover art to appeal to local sensibilities. We have a small collection worth seeing.
There have been some serious injuries on pulp covers. This one is probably the most severe—at least in our imagination. It was painted for Stanley Morton's 1952 novel Yankee Trader.
Above: Jayne Mansfield poses in a bathtub with yet another of her unusual hairdos. We’re thinking it’s probably a wig, in whole or in part. She wore wigs often, but her real hair was almost a 
