LIGHT YEARS AHEAD

Can humanity make it to the 41st century? Maybe, if it looks like this.

Two thoughts here. First, we really wish we could go back in time and have the job of making 1960s prop sci-fi guns. They’re so fun. No need to look practical at all. A beam of light added by the efx department and you’re good. We’d love to have this example on a shelf. Second, a good thing about this site is that it makes us seek out films beyond the obvious ones. Jane Fonda is best known for Barbarella, Klute, On Golden Pond, and maybe 9 to 5, but she was a staple in cinemas, and we’ve gotten to appreciate her choices and range over the years. Everything from Les félins to Coming Home to They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? to Youth were interesting at a minimum, and great often. Oh, and a third thing: Fonda was one of the hottest phenomena on Earth or in space around the time she made this photo in 1968. See more Barbarella shots here, here, here, and here. Why so many? Because the movie is like a costume design orgy, which makes every promo image worth seeing.

Hepburn brings a special kind of style to Hollywood.

We don’t smoke, but Katherine Hepburn sure makes smoking look good in this RKO promo photo shot by Ernest Bachrach in 1935. Though she had a long and storied career, this early shot is pretty much her iconic image. Prints of it are even sold on Wal-Mart’s website. Hepburn is incomparable. Her must-watch films include Bringing Up BabyAdam’s RibThe Philadelphia StoryThe African QueenLong Day’s Journey into NightThe Lion in Winter, the groundbreaking Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (which inspired an excellent reggae song by Black Uhuru), and On Golden Pond.

You can sum up Hepburn’s output by saying she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar twelve times and won a quartet, the most ever. The Oscar has failed to stay as relevant as it could have over recent decades, and the Academy has made some embarrassing Best Picture choices (Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction—really?), but it’s always been a reliable measure of acting quality, so Hepburn’s four wins are meaningful. The one thing she didn’t do was make a lot of pulp style movies. One that looks as if it qualifies is the 1946 drama Undercurrent. We’ll circle back to that and the divine Miss H. in a bit.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1941—DiMaggio Hit Streak Reaches 56

New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.

1939—Adams Completes Around-the-World Air Journey

American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.

1955—Nobel Prize Winners Unite Against Nukes

Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.

1921—Sacco & Vanzetti Convicted

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted in Dedham, Massachusetts of killing their shoe company’s paymaster. Even at the time there are serious questions about their guilt, and whether they are being railroaded because of their Italian ethnicity and anarchist political beliefs.

1933—Eugenics Becomes Official German Policy

Adolf Hitler signs the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, and Germany begins sterilizing those they believe carry hereditary illnesses, and those they consider impure. By the end of WWII more than 400,000 are sterilized, including criminals, alcoholics, the mentally ill, Jews, and people of mixed German-African heritage.

1955—Ruth Ellis Executed

Former model Ruth Ellis is hanged at Holloway Prison in London for the murder of her lover, British race car driver David Blakely. She is the last woman executed in the United Kingdom.

1966—Richard Speck Rampage

Richard Speck breaks into a Chicago townhouse where he systematically rapes and kills eight student nurses. The only survivor hides under a bed the entire night.

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.
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.
Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.
George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

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