Vintage Pulp

December 30 2025

SPIES AND LIES

If you can't trust Obi-Wan who can you trust?

We watch certain movies to fill in blanks in our cinematic résumé. Nobody has seen every important film. We hadn’t seen the British made classic Our Man in Havana, and that needed to be remedied, as it’s a title that pops up often in discussions of mid-century film. The movie is based on a famed 1958 Graham Greene novel set during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba that would be unseated by Fidel Castro and his rebels. The novel was immediately optioned, produced with Carol Reed in the director’s chair and Alec Guinness in the lead role, and premiered in London today in 1959.

What you get is a droll spy spoof that starts out as a low key comedy before evolving toward serious consequences, as Guinness plays a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana who’s picked out by bureaucrat spy Noël Coward to be the British government’s eyes and ears on the island. Spurred by his daughter’s expensive wishes for a horse, Guinness lies about his activities, ginning up a conspiracy that is—to his chagrin—deemed by the British government to be a global threat. It’s generative AG gone wrong. Only Coward realizes the secret plans Guinness has forwarded to London are in fact drawings of an advanced model of vacuum cleaner.

Anything described as droll is rarely laugh out loud funny, but you’ll crack a few smiles as Guinness, looking a bit stunned throughout, gets in deeper and deeper with both his own government and the Cuban secret police. The moral of the story, that governments see all unexpected developments as threats the same way hammers see all problems as nails, is pretty much baked in from the beginning and is no surprise. But what’s interesting to watch is Guinness, his detached calm being channelled into a somewhat airheaded character, foolish where the iconic Obi-Wan Kenobi he’d later play is so wise.

Another important aspect of the film is that it was made in Havana just after the Cuban Revolution, and its numerous exteriors shot in the center of Habana Vieja, in locations such as the famed Sloppy Joe’s Bar, as well as inside Guinness’s street-view apartment, make it possibly the best pre-embargo document of the City of Columns ever made. Due to that, the Cold War context, and the stupefied Guinness, we very much enjoyed the film. Some may find “droll” to be synonymous with “slow,” and we can understand that. But spy movie aficionados, Guinness fans, and history buffs should confidently proceed.

Cuba, Havana, Our Man in Havana, Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ralph Richardson, Ernie Kovacs, Noel Coward, Jo Morrow, Graham Greene, Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro, poster art, cinema, movie review, communism

Vintage Pulp

November 5 2025

DIRE STRAIT

O'Hara tries to cool off a Mediterranean hot spot rife with criminals in Fire Over Africa.

We were in Málaga once again in mid-summer, and we ferried across the Strait of Gibraltar to Tangier in late August for a third visit, so the movie Fire Over Africa, set mainly in Málaga and Tangier, raises a question: Can we be objective about a movie set in our stomping grounds? The answer would seem to be no, because though Fire over Africa, alternatively known as Málaga, is a movie we liked, if we ask ourselves objectively whether you will, we have to conclude: probably not.

First shown to the public either today in 1954 or in June 1954, depending on whether you consult IMDB or American Film Institute, it’s a disjointed and unlikely excursion, but because of its locations looks nice and carries with it a marvelous sense of place. Maureen O’Hara, whose red hair could be the main reason the film was made in Technicolor, stars as an ex-OSS agent sent to Tangier to infiltrate and destroy an international smuggling ring responsible for the murder of a police agent. She pretends she’s down on her luck and in need of a job, and from her new position at a place called Frisco’s Bar looks for contacts and clues.

Any movie set in Morocco with a bar at its center invites comparisons to Casablanca. It doesn’t compare favorably. But there are positives. O’Hara is a badass in this flick. She knows judo, makes shit happen with a sword cane, and will kill to fulfill her mission. She does everything she can with her role, and co-star Macdonald Carey is fine too, if obnoxious, but critical problems exist with both plot and direction. We didn’t love that O’Hara’s hotness saves her bacon when a villain is reluctant to shoot her. That isn’t ideal conceptually, though we have to admit, considering how men think, it may be realistic.

In terms of line-to-line writing there are some clever moments. Someone describes Frisco’s Bar as a place, “where the elite meet the cheap.” There are other clever turns of dialogue too, but sadly, too few to win the day. However, even if we twist our own arms and reluctantly admit that Fire over Africa isn’t nearly as good as it might have been, we’ll probably watch it again down the line just for the atmosphere and O’Hara’s cold blooded ex-OSS op. We all have a few mediocre movies on our love lists.

Spain, Morocco, French Morocco, Tangier, Columbia Pictures, British Lion Film Corporation, Málaga, Fire over Africa, Maureen O'Hara, Macdonald Carey, Binnie Barnes, poster art, cinema

Intl. Notebook

May 11 2024

ASKED BUT NOT ANSWERED

Enquiring minds want to know, but people can't always get what they want.

Tabloids are our thing. We’ve talked quite a bit about how influential they were during the 1950s. Apparently, considering the revelation that a recent presidential candidate depended upon one to catch and kill stories that could harm his campaign, they still are. This National Enquirer hit newsstands today in 1958. The cover has a rare shot of Ireland born actress Maureen O’Hara, who says she doesn’t have a lot offer but wants a man around the house. She had plenty to offer, but she’d been divorced for around five years, so the headline makes sense. We’d have bought this but some joker wanted eighty bucks for it, which made milk come out our noses, we laughed so hard. We generally get our tabloids for fifteen, and the ones we choose are usually far more colorful than this early-period Enquirer.

We wonder if the ask was so high due to the paper’s current newsworthiness. The whole situation is interesting, because unlike old top-tier tabloids like Confidential and Whisper that often uncovered inconvenient truths, the newer interations generally just make everything up, which places them closer to satire than news. Even so, tabloids remain the traditional last stop for people wanting to sell sensational stories, but who’ve been turned away by more ethical publications, which means facts occasionally land on tabloid editors’ desks. Former Enquirer head David Pecker understood that, has testified during the ongoing Donald Trump hush money/finance disclosure trial that he expected it to happen, and, as it turns out, he was correct in spades.

Politics is a dirty business, but politicians are generally pretty square. Enquirer wouldn’t have found itself in a position to help 95% of them, but for a serial cheat and swindler like Donald Trump (fact, not opinion), whose flaws have been famously described as “fractal” (i.e. inside his flaws are more flaws, ad infinitum into bottomless, kaleidoscopic eternity), Enquirer was uniquely able to weight the electoral scales. Pecker must have felt a tremendous sense of power. We would have. The politics-journalism nexus hinges upon access, and having access in D.C—basically being an insider—is like being an insider in Hollywood, but with the added heady sensation of being in the center of world-shaping events. It must really be something to have the president’s ear.

We’d give a lot to have been in some of those Enquirer interview sessions, especially the Karen McDougal ones. A year after McDougal was made Playmate of the Year, PSGP (one of your two Pulp boys) started as a temporary hire at Playboy Entertainment Group and rose to have an office and a staff, before chucking it and running away to Guatemala. So there’s a six degrees of separation aspect to it for him. It’s a shame Enquirer killed McDougal’s and Stormy Daniels’ stories. Tabloids are part of the dark underbelly of U.S. culture. They’ve always catered to prurient interests. And reveled in it. But hiding prurience? That’s low. In a rational world that would cost Enquirer the actual designation “tabloid.” We’ll talk to the National Association for Tabloid Oversight (the other NATO) about that. Oh right—it doesn’t exist. Well, it should.

Ireland, National Enquirer, Playboy, Maureen O'Hara, David Pecker, Donald Trump, Karen McDougal, Stormy Daniels, tabloid

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 11

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”.

February 10

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.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.

February 8

1969—Allende Meteorite Falls in Mexico

The Allende Meteorite, the largest object of its type ever found, falls in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The original stone, traveling at more than ten miles per second and leaving a brilliant streak across the sky, is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile. But by the time it hit the Earth it had broken into hundreds of fragments.