Vintage Pulp

December 21 2022

PYX HER POISON

They say no sacrifice is too great. She might disagree.

There’s always the potential for spoilers when discussing books, but we don’t have to worry about that with The Pyx, because the honchos at Fawcett Publications teased its weirdness on the front and rear covers, which means you can’t help but know it isn’t a standard crime novel. And if you’re Catholic, you don’t even need the teasers. The title is enough to suggest where the story goes.

John Buell’s tale deals with a Montreal prostitute named Elizabeth Lucy who apparently commits suicide, but who we get to know via flashback chapters titled, “The Past.” As you’d guess, the other chapters are titled, “The Present,” and in those a police detective tries to determine whether Lucy leapt off a penthouse balcony, fell off by accident while high on heroin, or was pushed.

It’s a good book, well written, heavily atmospheric and at times abstract, with cool little moments like, “The rhythm of the wipers was like time running ahead.” It’s clear why it’s been reprinted more than once, and why the book spawned a 1973 movie. We recommend it, and we suggest staying away from any detailed reviews (or any descriptions of the film) before you read it. It’s from 1959 with Barye Phillips on the cover chores.

Montreal, Fawcett Publications, Crest Books, John Buell, Barye Phillips, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

October 21 2022

MIDNIGHT BLUE

Dark on the outside, darker on the inside.

This is the second Canadian tabloid we’ve shared in October, and we have several others upcoming in the next few months. This time we’re back to Minuit, the sister publication of Midnight, published today in 1968 with a cover featuring Susan Boyd. She’s looking a little radioactive, and in unusually dark waters. This could everyone’s fate the way things are going in 2022. We don’t know what Minuit editors were shooting for here. Maybe they had a problem during the printing phase. But in it an odd way it’s actually a nice cover, and Boyd pops up again in the centerfold, looking much healthier.

Elswewhere inside the issue Minuit wastes no time with its efforts to shock. We learn about Vietmanese youngster Bon Ngoc Tho, who editors claim is a demi-homme born with many characteristics of his father—a monkey. We can say a lot about this, but let’s skip most of it and simply note that the 1960s were the tail end, so to speak, of a long-running fascination with supposed human freaks.

Moving on, editors have a curious photo of a model with something unidentifiable in her mouth. We took several guesses what the thing was, and they were all wrong. Turns out it’s a pea shooter—a tire-pois. No, we’d never seen one, but a few of you probably recognized it. Minuit editors claim it can kill a kid, and that hospitals around the U.S. have been treating serious pea shooter injuries, along with wounds inflicted by “blow zappers and Zulu-guns.” The article explains that the injuries come not from shooting the projectiles, but from swallowing them while inhaling to fire the weapon, occasionally piercing arteries in the neck.

There are more stories along those lines, but it isn’t all dark at midnight. Elsewhere in the issue you get men’s fitness, nymphomania, and plenty of celebs, such as Claudia Cardinale, Nai Bonet, and Maureen Arthur, plus Robert Vaughn hawking a 100% legitimate Man from U.N.C.L.E. “plume espion.” That means “spy feather,” which doesn’t help at all in determining exactly what it is. But a careful scan of the text suggests that it’s an x-ray vision device that works on everything from walls to clothes. Right. We’ll take two, and see you at the beach. Twenty-one scans below.

Canada, Montreal, Minuit, Midnight, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Susan Boyd, Suzanne Pleshette, Maureen Arthur, Josiane Larazin, Claudia Cardinale, Kim Porter, Nai Bonet, Franl Lee Morris, Clint Eastwood, Robert Vaughn, tabloid

Intl. Notebook

September 2 2022

CANADA AFTER DARK

Minuit puts the country's hospitable reputation to the test.

Ever since we discovered a while back that the U.S. tabloid Midnight was actually a spin-off of Montreal based Minuit we’ve been looking around for issues. We finally had some luck. This example hit Canadian newsstands today in 1968, and on the cover is British actress Mollie Peters, or Molly Peters. Inside, various Hollywood stars are spotlighted in unflattering ways. Edy Williams was allegedly attacked by a lesbian; Paul Newman resorted to transcendental meditation to cut down on his drinking; Jason Robards, Jr. broke everything Humphrey Bogart related in Lauren Bacall’s house; Robert Vaughn paid off his extensive gambling debts and cancelled his credit cards; Janet Margolin allegedly ate a pound of ground beef every day for health reasons; and Ursula Andress attacked Anita Ekberg in a Paris restaurant for making eyes at Andress’s boyfriend Jean-Paul Belmondo.

There’s also a note on Babsi Zimmermann, who Minuit claims just refused a nude role in a French film. We noticed the blurb because of her name, which seems too good to be true, and familiar too. We looked her up and she did exist. It turns out she was better known as Barbara Zimmermann. She changed her stage name after the release of her first film, a counter-culture sexploitation romp called Heißer Sand auf Sylt, aka The New Life Style (Just to Be Love). Maybe she wanted a fresh start because the movie was such a stinker. We know it was bad because we wrote about it, which is why her name sounded familiar. She’s naked as a donskoy cat in it, so Minuit‘s claim that she refused the French movie makes sense if she wanted to rebrand herself. The change still has people confused. Currently IMDB has separate entries for Babsi and Barbara.

Minuit reserves special attention for U.S. actor George Hamilton, who had been generally targeted by tabloids for avoiding military service in Vietnam. Why him? We wrote about the reason a long while back, and if you’re curious you can check. Minuit wryly informs readers that, “George Hamilton somehow managed to break his toe the day after he received a notice to report to the U.S. Army recruiting center. This gives him an interesting three-month [deferral]. It’s clever, isn’t it?” Obviously, toes heal. Hamilton eventually received a full deferral for other reasons.

Also in this issue, Minuit editors treat readers to a story about a man cut in half by a train. We feel like it’s urban folklore, but there are photos—for any who might be convinced by those—and a long story explaining how a man named Regerio Estrada caught his wife Lucia in bed with another man, beat him unconscious, and tied him to a train track to await the next express. Do we buy it? Not really. The internet contains only a fraction of all knowledge and history, but we think this tawdry tale is so bizarre that it would have found its way online. There’s nothing. Or maybe we’re just the first to upload it. Anything is possible. We have additional colorful Canadian tabloids we’ll be sharing in the months ahead. You’ll find eighteen scans below.

Intl. Notebook

February 3 2022

OH, CANADA

C'est le tabloïd bon marché! Scandale et crime! Incroyable!

Above: scans from the Canadian French tabloid Le Rendez-Vous, which appeared today in 1969 from Montréal based Publications Neoscope. The cover star is German actress Margaret Rose Keil (whose first name they spell Margret), and the text says, “A girl with no arms or legs goofs off.” Right, well, we aren’t sure what that means, and since Keil gets no inside play it’s never explained. Another of those Frenchisms no doubt. Elsewhere inside, you get various quick hits: actress Christiane Rucker gathering no moss, beautiful obscurity Tiffany Roberts with her precious pearls, and Rina Berti in the centerfold. You also get feature length stories about love and suicide, misbehaving scoutmasters, and Mia Farrow, who says, “I love humanity, but I hate people.” As you can see, Canadian tabloids were like U.S. tabloids, but a bit more exotique. We have more issues of Le Rendez-Vous, so we’ll get back to this subject later in the year.

Update: when if comes to Frenchisms, Jo is the man. He writes about the cover image:

The “gaffe” is a grip to catch the boat’s rope. It can be also a goof. As the girl has no legs and no arms, it’s a joke (not very funny). Maybe she catches men using what remains in her sexy body?

You’re right, Jo, it isn’t a funny joke, but it’s good information. We always want to know. Thanks as always.

Canada, Montreal, Publications Neoscope, Le Rendez-Vous, Margaret Rose Keil, Margret Rose Keil, Rina Berti, Gila Golan, Mia Farrow, Daisy Mae Morse, Raquel Welch, Tiffany Roberts, June Wilkinson, Christiane Rucker, tabloid

Vintage Pulp

January 30 2021

MAN’S ON A MISSION

Headquarters, my gas mask has failed! I'm throwing a grenade! How the hell does this thing work? Over!

George Gross art fronts this January 1956 issue of Hanro Corp’s bi-monthy magazine Man’s Illustrated. It’s an interesting image, but here’s where we show our age, or lack of industrial background, or something, because we have no idea what the hell Mr. Flinty Eyes on the cover is holding. Hand grenade? Gas mask? Some kind of steampunk style microphone? Combo of all three? Well, not knowing is not a problem. We still like the image.

It’s been a while since we featured this magazine, but we’re glad to get back to it because inside this issue there’s art from Walter Popp and Rudolph Belarski, and a nice feature on Rear Window actress Georgine Darcy, who we’ve talked about once or twice before. As far as written content, you get plenty of war and hunting action, of course, but we were drawn to, “The Hottest Town North of the Border,” an investigative piece by journo B.W. Von Block. What town is he talking about? Montreal, which apparently back in ’56 was the one of the best places in the world to get your ashes hauled.

These type of stories, which were standard in old men’s magazines, always give us a laugh because with their breathless focus on subjects like legal prostitution, nude beaches, and dusk-to-dawn nightclubs they show how repressed the U.S. was compared to so much of the world. It still is, actually. Trust us, we’ve been around, lived abroad for a long time now, and greatly enjoyed the more permissive societies in which we’ve resided—including our current one.

The U.S. does have many good points, though, one of which is that no country’s inhabitants preserve its popular media so prodigiously—which is why we have so many vintage books and magazines to share on Pulp Intl. in the first place. We’ve pondered many times why Americans hoard more than other cultures and we’ve finally come up with an answer: garages. Two thirds of Americans have garages. So here’s to American garages. They give millions the joy of being their own museum curators.

Canada, Montreal, Man's Illustrated, Rear Window, George Gross, Walter Popp, Rudolph Belarski, Georgine Darcy, magazine art, literature, prostitution

Modern Pulp

September 19 2018

BACKSTAGE PASS

There's nothing behind the curtain but your worst nightmares.

You can consider this fan art. Extraordinary fan art. It’s a GGA style promo poster for David Lynch’s freaky neo-noir Blue Velvet, his tale of unspeakable evil behind the tranquil façade of smalltown America. This was painted by Lisa Wood, aka Tula Lotay, an English comic book artist best known for illustrating Supreme: Blue Rose. The film had its global premier in August 1986 at the Montreal World Film Festival, but it opened in the U.S. today the same year. This is a bang-up re-imagining of the promo art from Lotay, and you can see more of her work at her website.

Montreal, Montreal World Film Festival, Blue Velvet, Lisa Wood, Tula Lotay, Isabella Rossellini, David Lynch, poster art, cinema

Vintage Pulp

May 30 2018

CAN’T BUY ME DOVE

Actually, that's more than enough money, lover. You're under arrest.

The thing about GGA covers is they often mislead in terms of written content. The dove in The Frightened Dove is not the femme fatale on the cover but rather a Mussolini underling named Colombo—Italian for dove—who’s hunted by the hero Ricci Bartoli, a retired anti-fascist fighter dragged out of his peaceful life as a tailor in New York City. Colombo is after a trove of gold, and Bartoli is out to stop him, with the crucial action taking place in Montreal. You can always tell there’s something French about a book when the cover femme is wearing a beret. And her name is Marie, which seems to be the go-to for French women in genre fiction. The story here fits squarely into the post-war political adventure niche—i.e. cleaning up the loose ends of World War II. And on the subject of pseudonyms, Hardin was actually a Hungarian author named Louis Vaczek. The Frightened Dove was originally published in hardback in 1951, with the above Bantam paperback arriving in 1952 with uncredited cover art.

Bantam Books, New York City, Montreal, Peter Hardin, Louis Vaczek, cover art, literature, fascism

Hollywoodland

September 20 2017

THOROUGHLY MODERN MARIE

St. Cyr tells all for the cheapie tabloid Midnight.

This Midnight published today in 1964 has the usual clickbait on the front cover—I Ripped My Baby To Pieces. Why? Because she hated her husband. Very interesting, but today we’re drawn to the banner and Lili St. Cyr’s “Torrid Life Story,” in which, for the most part, she talks about her sexual attitudes. The interior header screams that she seduced a 14-year-old boy, and that’s again the equivalent of today’s internet clickbait. St. Cyr was sixteen herself, which is an age difference we’d hardly call scandalous. The clickbait worked, though. It made us quite eager to read the story. It’s written in first person and touted as a Midnight exclusive.

Ordinarily we’d be skeptical a cheapie tabloid could score an exclusive with a world famous celebrity, but in this case we think Midnight is telling the truth. We have a few reasons: Midnight was a Canadian rag, headquartered in Montreal; St. Cyr was from Minnesota, but spent her early years dancing in Montreal; and Midnight was too well known a publication to get away with lying about the source of the story. Thus we can be sure St. Cyr wrote the piece. She eventually authored an autobiography in French, which makes us suspect she wrote this article

for the Canadian Midnight—which was called Minuit—and it was translated and printed in the U.S. later. Just a guess. It was apparently part of a series, by the way, but we don’t have the other issues of Midnight. Now on to the juicy stuff.

On virginity: “When you have it you try like hell to keep it. You lose it with an unconscious sigh of relief, and once you’ve lost it you wonder why you tried so hard to keep it in the first place.”

On her first: “Right now, as I write these lines, [all I] can recall about him is that he was blonde and his first name began with an R. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember any of my first intimate boyfriends.”

On her others: “I’ve been called a child snatcher dozens of times because that is the way I like my men. I can’t help it.”

On Hollywood star Victor Mature: “One bad thing about Vic though. Liquor and sex just don’t mix for him. If he makes love, he’s got to be cold sober or he can’t perform.”

On Las Vegas: “There is something dead and decadent about the town. It builds to nowhere. It accomplishes nothing. And the people in it are infected with this live-for-today attitude.”

Those are the highlights. Except that readers also get three photos with the article. We already shared a much better version of one of those way back in 2009. The other two are in this post—the shot of St. Cyr as a child, when she was still Willis Marie Van Schaack, and the one below of her in goddess mode. Midnight was printed on cheap-ass paper, but the scans still look pretty good. Willis Marie’s tale is interesting too. She was ahead of her time. What she writes could have been written by a character on Girls. It’s impossible for us to not respect her boldness and determination to have exactly the life she wanted, particularly during the age in which she lived. We have plenty on St. Cyr in the website. Just click her keywords below.

Canada, Montreal, Las Vegas, Midnight, Minuit, Lili St. Cyr, Victor Mature, tabloid

Vintage Pulp

February 5 2017

LIKE MURDER THIS IS

Actually, the flap on my bikini does slim the hips. It also hides pistols. Now get your hands up, idiot.

William Ard’s Like Ice She Was stars his detective creation Lou Largo in a missing persons case. He’s looking for a former prostitute who robbed a Montreal casino owner and fled to Miami. He finds her, but the situation escalates to murder and an attempted frame-up. This character was supposed to tentpole a series, and it did, but this was the second and last Largo written by Ard, as he died after writing it. The books thereafter were ghost written by Lawrence Block, and later John Jakes. Like Ice She Was is copyright 1960, and the Monarch Books cover guide has the art as uncredited, which is a shame.

Montreal, Miami, Monarch Books, William Ard, Lawrence Block, John Jakes, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

March 7 2015

JUST A MINUIT

Midnight twice in the same day.

We mentioned a while back that the cheapie tabloid Midnight was printed in Montreal, which made it more of a Canadian than American publication. Above you see a rare cover of Minuit. This hit newsstands today in 1966 courtesy of the publishing company Lido Ltée., and it’s basically a duplicate of the Nobu McCarthy cover we shared on this day last year. Well, not an exact duplicate. As you can see by looking at the image on the right, the cover text on the U.S. version says: “I’m wild, wicked, and willing,” but on Minuit McCarthy says, “Je dis ‘oui’ aux hommes,” which means, “I say ‘yes’ to men.” The sentiment is the same, but we’re reasonably sure both lines were made up not by McCarthy, but by Midnight—and Minuit—editors.

Canada, Montreal, Lido Ltée., Minuit, Midnight, Nobu McCarthy, cinema, tabloid

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 4

1957—Sputnik Circles Earth

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.

October 4

1970—Janis Joplin Overdoses

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.

October 3

1908—Pravda Founded

The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.

October 3

1957—Ferlinghetti Wins Obscenity Case

An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.

October 3

1995—Simpson Acquitted

After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.

October 2

1919—Wilson Suffers Stroke

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed. He is confined to bed for weeks, but eventually resumes his duties, though his participation is little more than perfunctory. Wilson remains disabled throughout the remainder of his term in office, and the rest of his life.

October 2

1968—Massacre in Mexico

Ten days before the opening of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, a peaceful student demonstration ends in the Tlatelolco Massacre. 200 to 300 students are gunned down, and to this day there is no consensus about how or why the shooting began.