LANDSCAPING WITH LILIAN

Hmm... it's not quite right. Maybe one more leaf right about... there. Aha! Masterpiece!

Since watching The Old Dark House we’d been casting about for Lilian Bond promo images and came across these beauties of her in a two-piece satin outfit, posed as painter. They probably date from around 1930. You can see another promo of her at this link.

She might as well make herself at home, because she'll never be leaving.

A few years ago we shared a collection of movie posters painted by the great Hungarian artist Karoly Grosz. Among them was a promo for The Old Dark House. We’ve brought the poster back today because we just watched the film. Based on a J.B Priestly novel, the movie opens during a stormy night somewhere in Wales as five people, among them Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, and Lilian Bond, are stranded in the rain and entreat the occupants of a creepy old manse for shelter. The occupants are the Femm family and their facially scarred butler, played by Boris Karloff. Any sane person would do a one-eighty after getting a gander at him, but this is a horror movie, so they waltz happily through the front door.

As the night wears on and the house is buffeted by wind and rain, the guests begin to realize the Femms are not just a little strange, but seriously disturbed, and that there are more people in the house than at first appearance. It’s Karloff the horror specialist—of course—who eventually looses chaos upon the stranded travelers. He’s quite a creation, scowling and grumbling his way craggily through the film, and his performance is one of several reasons it’s interesting to watch an old chiller like this. When we say chiller, be forewarned that the movie isn’t really scary, but it’s atmospheric and worth a watch for fans of horror to see the building blocks of the genre. The Old Dark House premiered today in 1932.

She's a one woman market disruption.


This photo shows British actress Lilian Bond, sometimes Lillian Bond, made when she was filming the 1933 romance When Strangers Marry—and when strangers marry they sometimes want to shoot each other. Other films of hers include Scotland Yard, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Old Dark House. We have some nice art for the latter here and here. Bond was not a big star, but she worked steadily from 1929 to 1958, which means we may run into her again. 

Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

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”.

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.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web