TIME IN THE SPOTLITE

National Spotlite gets right to the good parts.

This National Spotlite published today in 1970 knows its readers want to see boobs. It touts “the girl with the 50” bust,” and leaves a little space at bottom left for those boring witch cult sex orgies. Since Informer dealt with the boobs first, we’ll follow suit. The girl with the 50” bust is Suzanne Pritchard, who was a mid-level glamour model and sometime dancer, whose go-to move was squeezing said boobs together between her arms. You can see what we mean in the interior photos, and the first thing you’ll probably notice is that Suzanne Pritchard is not the woman pictured on the cover. No, that’s an unnamed beauty who probably had no idea she’d end up on the front of Spotlite. Cue sleazy agent: “Hey, I said I’d get you some exposure. What didja expect? Harper’s-fucking-Bazaar?”

Inside the issue there’s another familiar face besides Suzanne Pritchard’s. In a feature entitled “The Art of Taking a Bath” we see none other than German star Karin Schubert. Cue agent: “Hey, I said I’d get you some exposure. What didja expect? The cover? It was taken.” Actually, while the unnamed cover star doubtless knew of her turn in the Spotlite, in all likelihood Schubert had no clue. As we’ve mentioned before, we have a background in media, and her shot was undoubtedly what we used to call a handout photo—i.e. images given to magazines and newspapers for use in publicizing a celebrity. Agents back then kept tabs on how many photos were sent out and where, but didn’t monitor whether they were used months or years later. The process was a bit more structured by the time we worked at magazines, and today it may well be computerized.

Every tabloid has its focus. Some were oriented towards scandals, others sexual perversion, still others violence and gore. National Spotlite was eclectic, but this issue’s recurring theme is breasts. Schubert’s bath story has this line: “Women with large breasts should make sure the underside of their mammaries get a good scrubbing. The ideal method is to have someone else cup your breasts into the air while you scrub.” To us, that actually sounds like an incredibly inefficient way to wash one’s breasts, but that’s really beside the point, isn’t it? In sleazy tabloids, everything is foreplay and all roads lead to the bedroom. We have seventeen scans below, all of them designed to get you heated up and ready to perform.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

This awesome cover art is by Tommy Shoemaker, a new talent to us, but not to more experienced paperback illustration aficionados.
Ten covers from the popular French thriller series Les aventures de Zodiaque.
Sam Peffer cover art for Jonathan Latimer's Solomon's Vineyard, originally published in 1941.

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