vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Below: twelve scans from the German magazine Neue Wiener Melange, issue 13, whose slogan “das magazin der schönen frauen” means “the magazine of beautiful women”. Inside you get Jean Simmons, Angelika Hauff, Jean Kent, plus some tasty art and more, circa 1950. See another issue and an explanation of the magazine’s name here.
Here you see the cover and a few interior pages from an October 1950 issue of Neue Wiener Melange, which is a German celeb and erotic magazine that takes its name from the phrase “Viennese blend”, a type of coffee with milk. We have to admit, the contents are a bit stimulating. You get some deft art, some demure studio nudes, and Austrian actress Vera Molnar, who starred in 1951’s A Tale of Five Cities and 1954’s Ulysses, the latter with Kirk Douglas. We have another of these and if we don’t have a lazy day we’ll scan the whole thing and post it.
American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history.
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West’s considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy.
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed.
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008.
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.
