A FINE BALANCE

Disaster looms if she moves even a millimeter.

Not only is Monica Bannister precariously positioned on her pedestal, but her gown is precariously positioned on her body. One wobble and she’ll end up on the floor showing plenty more than planned, but it just so happens she’s too graceful for that because her show business career was based on coordination. As dancer and actress she appeared in more than thirty films, including 1933’s Mystery at the Wax Museum, 1941’s Moon over Miami, and 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. All her film appearances save two were uncredited, but she went on to open a dance school and teach others how to be graceful too. This photo came out of the studio of famed lensman Murray Korman, who photographed thousands of famous and would-be famous people from the 1920s into the 1950s. There’s no exact date on this, but it’s from the mid-1930s.

Canada, Mystery at the Wax Museum, Moon over Miami, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Monica Bannister, Murray Korman

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 9

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

July 8

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.

July 7

1949—Dragnet Premiers

NBC radio broadcasts the cop drama Dragnet for the first time. It was created by, produced by, and starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. The show would later go on to become a successful television program, also starring Webb.

July 7

1973—Lake Dies Destitute

Veronica Lake, beautiful blonde icon of 1940s Hollywood and one of film noir’s most beloved fatales, dies in Burlington, Vermont of hepatitis and renal failure due to long term alcoholism. After Hollywood, she had drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post article briefly revived interest in her, but at the time of her death she was broke and forgotten.

July 6

1962—William Faulkner Dies

American author William Faulkner, who wrote acclaimed novels such as Intruder in the Dust and The Sound and the Fury, dies of a heart attack in Wright’s Sanitorium in Byhalia, Mississippi.

DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.

Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.

LOVES OF A BLONDE