vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
This beautiful poster was made for the drama Kaben no shizuku, which was known in English as Beads from a Petal, as in beads of moisture. A lot of Japanese softcore movies have titles referencing beads of moisture, or dew, or the various parts of flowers, such as pistils and petals and whatnot. In this one Rie Nakagawa plays a married woman who is unfulfilled by sex. When her husband strays, the betrayal sends her seeking help, which she eventually gets from a psychiatrist (an ex of hers actually, which we’re sure is unethical, but whatever) and he is able to determine that her aversion to sex has to do with the repressed memory of having seen her parents making love when she was young. Nakagawa really chews the scenery in this one with a performance we can only call overwrought, complete with multiple bouts of hysterical screaming, but you’ll get used to it. Kaben no shizuku premiered in Japan today in 1972.
At the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, California, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presents the first Emmy Awards. The name Emmy was chosen as a feminization of “immy”, a nickname used for the image orthicon tubes that were common in early television cameras.
Charles Manson and three female members of his “family” are found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, which Manson orchestrated in hopes of bringing about Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war he believed would arise between blacks and whites.
A B-52 Stratofortress carrying two H-bombs experiences trouble during a refueling operation, and in the midst of an emergency descent breaks up in mid-air over Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five of the six arming devices on one of the bombs somehow activate before it lands via parachute in a wooded region where it is later recovered. The other bomb does not deploy its chute and crashes into muddy ground at 700 mph, disintegrating while driving its radioactive core fifty feet into the earth.
The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague, Netherlands, and is the first international drug control treaty. The agreement was signed by Germany, the U.S., China, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, and Siam.
U.S. president Harry S. Truman establishes the Central Intelligence Group or CIG, an interim authority that lasts until the Central Intelligence Agency is established in September of 1947.
The New York City “Mad Bomber,” a man named George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and charged with planting more than 30 bombs. Metesky was angry about events surrounding a workplace injury suffered years earlier. Of the thirty-three known bombs he planted, twenty-two exploded, injuring fifteen people. He was apprehended based on an early use of offender profiling and because of clues given in letters he wrote to a newspaper. At trial he was found legally insane and committed to a state mental hospital.
