vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above: another shot from the Los Angeles Police Department Archives. There’s no info about what happened here, but if we had to speculate, because the knife has no blood on it, we bet the dead man tried to defend himself against an assailant and failed. We’re sharing the photo mainly because we think it has an interesting composition. It was made today in 1950.
Above: Three shots of actress Barbara Payton in Los Angeles County divorce court today in 1958 as she bade farewell to husband number four, furniture executive George Provas. In some accounts he’s described as twenty-three, but those accounts are wrong. The photos we found of him show a middle-aged man. The two had married only a year earlier. Payton’s name gets dropped often when the subject of fallen Hollywood stars comes up, but because the stories differ we finally tracked down and read her autobiography. It’s supposed to be the source of a lot of disinformation, but we figured we couldn’t get a complete picture without it. It was ghostwritten by schlockmeister supreme Leo Guild—or rather than ghostwritten, he allegedly plied Payton with booze while recording her on tape. The rambling final product ended up published by cheapie imprint Holloway House as a seventy-five cent paperback. These shots show Payton during what is considered to be her decline, but she doesn’t look it. We’ll get back to her soon.
This poster was made for the classic drama Sunset Boulevard, a true trailblazer of a film, the story of how a desperately broke writer becomes the kept man of a faded screen star—the immortal silent film queen Norma Desmond. The role of Desmond is played by Gloria Swanson, who at first seems eccentrically lost in her own glorious past, but eventually reveals herself as deranged and dangerous. It’s a difficult, bizarro role, highly stylized, requiring utter conviction and complete faith in script and direction. While the movie is considered a film noir, it’s also a mix of melodrama, black comedy, Hollywood satire, and suspense. With all these ingredients the entire production could have fallen in like a house of cards, and probably would have four times out of five, but director Billy Wilder, along with Swanson, William Holden, and Erich von Stroheim, give everything they have. Swanson’s acting is operatically over-the-top, deliberately so, even cringefully so, but she crafts an all-time screen role. No matter how bonkers she gets, you never stop pitying her, and that’s the key. Sunset Boulevard, a film that walks the highest wire of believability without losing its balance, is a mandatory watch. It premiered today in 1950.
Above is another photo borrowed from the archives of the Los Angeles Police Museum, and which appeared in James Ellroy’s 2004 photo book Destination: Morgue! It was made in Los Angeles on Crenshaw Boulevard and Santa Monica Avenue (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd) today in 1953, and shows a man who died while attempting a liquor store robbery. The robber was former marine who was armed, but based on the fact that he was wearing a white Panama hat, may have decided on the heist spontaneously. Unfortunately, the store had been robbed the night before and the proprietor was on alert. He fired a gun through the door, was on target with a head shot (as the blood indicates), and the thief was dropped in his tracks, with his slick Panama at his side.
The crowd here interests us. We know it happens whevener someone dies in public, but we’ve never understand this impulse at all. Once in San Salvador PSGP happened upon a guy who’d just been shot in the head. It was an almost identical scene, except there was no hat and no sheet. While he glanced in passing—just long enough to note the blood mixed with swirls of white ooze running down the warm asphalt—he felt no urge to stand around and gawk. Another time, in Guatemala, he happened upon a man freshly beaten to death and he continued on his sweet way then too. On the other hand, maybe sharing this image on a website constitutes a form of staring. That might be worth discussion, though he says that in this context the photo is used for historical education and cultural critique. Maybe so.
This photo from the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows stripper Juanita Hardy, whose real name was Christine Marlow, and she’s in the process or has just finished the process of being charged with mayhem by the Las Vegas police. She’d gotten into a fight with another dancer named Doreen Manos at the Embassy Club, where they worked. Marlow was missing twenty dollars and blamed Manos; Manos had a damaged costume and blamed Marlow. When interviewed by the Los Angeles Times days later, Marlow explained, “[Manos] said something. I said something. She hit me in the mouth and then someone parted us.” Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. And, Marlow added, “I bit her in the ear.” Oh. That doesn’t sound so good.
Some accounts say Marlow went well beyond a bite and actually Tysoned poor Manos, costing her a chunk of flesh. Others say she chewed Manos’s ear clean off—though we have no idea how they know that. We suspect it’s internet hyperbole. Does Marlow look like someone who’d chew another person’s ear entirely off? Hmm. Well… maybe. That smile, now that we look closer, is a bit worrisome, isn’t it? It’s potentially the smile of someone who would have rival strippers buried in the back yard.
Anyway, she was supposed to appear in court after her arrest but instead up and left Vegas. Said Marlow, “My act was over and my contract was at an end, so I changed into street clothes, put my things in the car and drove back home.” Well, the Vegas cops issued an extradition order and two fellas from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department showed up at Marlow’s house, arrested her again, and booked her on fugitive charges. We can’t find out what happened after that, as this is another of those historical anecdotes that requires more newspaper scans to be uploaded for its resolution to be known, but even without an ending it was a mandatory story for our website because there’s virtually nothing more pulp than two strippers fighting.
The Swinging Barmaids, which splashed across U.S. screens for the first time this month in 1975, is one of those movies with a deliberately misleading title. Rather than the breezy erotic romp you’d expect, it’s a thriller about an insane serial killer who stalks a group of waitresses working in a Los Angeles go-go bar. The problems commence when Dyanne Thorne (yes, she made movies aside from the Ilsa atrocities) is stabbed to death, setting off an inept police investigation, while the killer sets his crazy sights on more victims. He’s the classic maladjusted loner you find in ’70s grindhouse filcks. You know the type: “You’re the first girl I ever met that wasn’t dirty underneath.” What type of woman wouldn’t immediately leave town after hearing something like that? Answer: a woman in a bad movie.
Eventually, to facilitate his homicidal efforts, Mr. Maladjustment gets a job as a dishwasher at the bar. More killings eventually lead to the unveiling of this wolf in the fold, and his inevitable perforation with 12-gauge buckshot. That isn’t a spoiler. His death is the entire point of the film. Well, that and boobs. But the problem is that this is all mounted perfunctorily, is poorly written, visually lackluster, narratively sluggish, and devoid of actorly charisma. In fact, if not for the nudity, you’d think The Swinging Barmaids was a minor television movie. The best thing going for it is the above poster art by the incomparable John Solie. Check, please.
Actually, a great woman often has nothing but her own sheer will, but a little support never hurts. This photo shows Ava Gardner getting a boost from Burt Lancaster somewhere on Malibu Beach in 1946. It was made while they were filming The Killers, and there are several more shots from the session out there if you’re inclined to look. We’ve shared a lot of art from The Killers, which you can see here, here, here, here, and here. And, of course, you should watch the movie.
Once again you have to marvel that it was legal for press photographers to intrude on crime scenes, criminal trials, and—now it seems—traffic stops. You see the evidence above. An unidentified woman is put through the paces of a sobriety check by a Los Angeles patrolman, and it looks to us like the shots capture a spectacular failure. Either that or she’s busting into “The Night They Invented Champagne” from the musical Gigi. She was arrested either way—for drunkenness or flippancy—and presumably had hours of idle time in a drunk tank to ponder the error of her ways. That happened today in 1958.
as an elderly, insulated billionaire who constantly tells himself he’s brilliant, yet refuses to understand that the reason things it was “okay” to say in the past are problematic now is because in the past the people he mistreated couldn’t make their protests heard. They always hated it. Digital technology, the internet, and social media finally provided them a voice. Entire swaths of America are still refusing to adjust to this tipping of the scales toward a slightly more equal reality.
The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).
LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.
A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.
The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.
American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.
