NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

These prove once again that my beauty can't be captured by any known method or mechanism.

Elyse Knox, who was the mother of actor Mark Harmon, is seen here pondering a strip of negatives on the set of the Bud Abbott/Lou Costello comedy Hit the Ice, in which she had a major role. Abbott and Costello don’t fall within our pulp remit, so we won’t be watching that—at least not to write about—but we love this shot of Knox. Several of her movies are promisingly titled. Free, Blonde and 21 sounds like a possibility for watching, as does Girl in 313. And of course there’s The Mummy’s Tomb, which we actually saw a while back. We’ll check out one of her others down the line. This shot is from 1943.

Movie stars were always willing to give each other a hand.


Once again we’ve been struck, so to speak, by the sheer number of cinema promo images featuring actors and actresses pretending to slap each other. They just keep turning up. The above shot is more about the neck than the face, but it still counts, as Gloria Swanson slaps William Holden in 1950’s Sunset Boulevard. Below we have a bunch more, and you can see our previous collection at this link. Since we already discussed this phenomenon we won’t get into it again, except briefly as follows: pretend slaps, film is not reality, and everyone should try to remember the difference. Many slaps below for your interest and wonder.
Diana Dors smacks Patrick Allen blurry in 1957’s The Long Haul.

Mob boss George Raft menaces Anne Francis in a promo image made for 1954’s Rogue Cop.

Bud Abbott gets aggressive with Lou Costello in 1945’s Here Come the Co-Eds.

Jo Morrow takes one from black hat Jack Hogan in 1959’s The Legend of Tom Dooley.

Chris Robinson and Anita Sands get a couple of things straight about who’s on the yearbook committee in Diary of High School Bride.

Paul Newman and Ann Blyth agree to disagree in 1957’s The Helen Morgan Story.

Verna Lisi shows Umberto Orsini who gives the orders in the 1967 film La ragazza e il generale, aka The Girl and the General.

What the fuck did you just call me? Marki Bey slaps Betty Anne Rees loopy in the 1974 horror flick Sugar Hill.

Claudia Cardinale slaps (or maybe punches—we can’t remember) Brigitte Bardot in the 1971 western Les pétroleuses, known in English for some reason as The Legend of Frenchie King.

Audrey Totter reels under the attentions of Richard Basehart in 1949 Tension. We’re thinking it was probably even more tense after this moment.

Anne Baxter tries to no avail to avoid a slap from heel Steve Cochran in 1954’s Carnival Story.

Though Alan Ladd was a little guy who Gail Russell probably could have roughed up if she wanted, the script called for him to slap her, and he obeyed in the 1946 adventure Calcutta.

Peter Alexander guards his right cheek, therefore Hannelore Auer crosses him up and attacks his left in 1964’s Schwejk’s Flegeljahre, aka Schweik’s Years of Indiscretion.

Elizabeth Ashley gives Roddy McDowall a facial in in 1965’s The Third Day.

Tony Anthony slaps Lucretia Love in 1972’s Piazza pulita, aka Pete, Pearl and the Pole.
 
André Oumansky goes backhand on Lola Albright in 1964’s Joy House.

Frank Ferguson catches one from Barbara Bel Geddes in the 1949 drama Caught.

This looks like a real slap, so you have to credit the actresses for their commitment. It’s from 1961’s Raisin in the Sun and shows Claudia McNeil rearranging the face of Diana Sands.

Gloria Grahame finds herself cornered by Broderick Crawford in 1954’s Human Desire.

Bette Davis, an experienced slapper and slappee, gets a little assistance from an unidentified third party as she goes Old West on Amanda Blake in a 1966 episode of Gunsmoke called “The Jailer.”

There are a few slaps in 1939’s Gone with the Wind, so we had our pick. We went with Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard.

Virginia Field takes one on the chin from Marshall Thompson in Dial 1119.

Clint Eastwood absorbs a right cross from nun Shirley MacLaine in 1970’s Two Mules for Sister Sara.

Hardly a laughing matter.

Above is the cover and below are twenty-plus interior scans from the showbiz magazine Laff, published this month in 1945. The laffs aren’t often funny—there’s a shelf life on humor of the kind that considers itself edgy. Particularly bad is the cartoon of two men calling a woman a “m-o-r-o-n.” We always get a kick out of how men back then—who were already well on the way to making an absolute shambles of the planet—called women dumb. But we share such cartoons and jokes anyway because we consider it useful to chart mid-century attitudes toward women, ethnic minorities, and gays. Hint: the “greatest generation” wasn’t so great on that stuff. Elsewhere in the magazine you get photos of Wynn Stanley, Dorothy Friday, Jennie Lewis, the lovely Jinx Falkenberg in Mexico
and others. See more from Laff here and here.

Vaudeville goes to outer space.

Occasionally we deviate from pure pulp to share something amazing and this Japanese poster for Abbott and Costello Go to Mars falls into that category. Not that the movie is light years from pulp—it’s sci-fi, sort of. The twist is that Abbott and Costello don’t actually reach another planet—at least not at first. Instead they accidentally land in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and merely think they’re on an alien world. Cute in parts, but stupid as hell in most, the movie is strongly Vaudeville influenced, with everything that term implies. Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, with the lovely Mari Blanchard co-starring in film and on poster, opened in Japan today in 1953.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1953—The Rosenbergs Are Executed

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted for conspiracy to commit espionage related to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet spies, are executed at Sing Sing prison, in New York.

1928—Earhart Crosses Atlantic Ocean

American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, riding as a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stutz and maintained by Lou Gordon. Earhart would four years later go on to complete a trans-Atlantic flight as a pilot, leaving from Newfoundland and landing in Ireland, accomplishing the feat solo without a co-pilot or mechanic.

1939—Eugen Weidmann Is Guillotined

In France, Eugen Weidmann is guillotined in the city of Versailles outside Saint-Pierre Prison for the crime of murder. He is the last person to be publicly beheaded in France, however executions by guillotine continue away from the public until September 10, 1977, when Hamida Djandoubi becomes the last person to receive the grisly punishment.

1972—Watergate Burglars Caught

In Washington, D.C., five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel. The botched burglary was an attempt by members of the Republican Party to illegally wiretap the opposition. The resulting scandal ultimately leads to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and also results in the indictment and conviction of several administration officials.

1961—Rudolph Nureyev Defects from Soviet Union

Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects at Le Bourget airport in Paris. The western press reported that it was his love for Chilean heiress Clara Saint that triggered the event, but in reality Nuryev had been touring Europe with the Kirov Ballet and defected in order to avoid punishment for his continual refusal to abide by rules imposed upon the tour by Moscow.

George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.
Swapping literature was a major subset of midcentury publishing. Ten years ago we shared a good-sized collection of swapping paperbacks from assorted authors.
Cover art by Italian illustrator Giovanni Benvenuti for the James Bond novel Vivi e lascia morire, better known as Live and Let Die.
Uncredited cover art in comic book style for Harry Whittington's You'll Die Next!

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