Hollywoodland

March 21 2024

ON BENDED KNEES

Strange ideas from the minds and lenses of mid-century promo photographers.

A while back we shared a promo photo of Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame from 1953’s The Big Heat that was meant to imply oral sex (it absolutely was, and you can see for yourself here). We commented on its weirdness, and noted that an actress would probably not be asked or made to pose that way today. The shot got us thinking about whether there were other kneeling promo shots from the mid-century era, and above you see two others from The Big Heat.

Below we have more such shots, and while none are as jarring as that previous promo, they’re all interesting. We assumed there would be few if any featuring kneeling males, but we found a couple. Even so, there are probably scores more kneeling actresses that we missed. While many of shots took the form they did to highlight the criminal/victim themes in their parent films, you still have to wonder what else—consciously or not—was in the various photograhers’ minds. Anyway, just some food for thought this lovely Thursday. Ready, set discuss!

Rod Taylor and Luciana Pauluzzi swap subordinate positions for 1967’s Chuka.

Edmund O’Brien goes for the time honored hair grab on Marla English for 1954’s Shield for Murder.

Marilyn Monroe swoons as Richard Widmark snarls for Don’t Bother To Knock, 1952.

Inger Stevens and Terry Ann Ross for Cry Terror, an adaptation of a novel we talked about a few years ago.

Kim Hunter soothes an overheated Marlon Brando in a promo for 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire.

George Raft menaces Marlene Dietrich in the 1941 comedy Manpower.

As promos go, these actually make sense. They show three unidentified models mesmerized by vampire Christopher Lee for 1970’s Taste the Blood of Dracula.

Glenn Ford is at it again, this time looming over Rita Hayworth for the 1946 classic Gilda.

Aldo Ray and Barbara Nichols for 1958’s The Naked and the Dead.

This one shows less domination and more protectiveness, as Humphrey Bogart prepares to defend Ida Lupino for High Sierra, 1941.

Humphrey once more. Here he’s with Lizabeth Scott for Dead Reckoning, 1947.

This shot shows Brazilian actress Fiorella Mari with an actor we can’t identify in a movie we also can’t identify.

Shelly Winters and Jack Palance climb the highest mountain together for I Died a Thousand Times, 1955.

As we said, we didn’t find as many examples of kneeling men, but we found this gem—Cappucine makes a seat of director Blake Edwards on the set of The Pink Panther in 1963. Does this count, though? While Edwards is subordinate, he isn’t kneeling and it really isn’t a legit promo.

And lastly, in a curious example, Hugo Haas seems to tell Cleo Moore to stay in a shot made for 1953’s One Girl’s Confession.

Vintage Pulp

November 2 2021

MOORE ALL THE TIME

American femme fatale turns up down Rio way.

Okay, let’s try this again. Last week we posted this book and thought it had Peggy Cummins on the cover, but after having a short nap we awoke and saw that this was clearly not Cummins. Thanks for the e-mails, by the way, but we beat you to it. Hah! Anyway, you know by now one of our favorite ways to highlight Hollywood actresses is to note their usage on foreign paperback covers.

This cool example from Brazil’s Edições de Ouro was made for Irving Le Roy’s Berlim: Os Pecados de Bárbara, and that’s none other than Cleo Moore—not Peggy Cummins—having a smoke and a look around. The image comes from her classic 1953 film noir One Girl’s Confession, a movie we talked about a while ago.

This book was first published in France as Aventure Est-Ouest by Éditions Fleuve Noir in 1956, so it represents a cross-pollination of a different type—we’ve seen material move from the U.S. to many countries, but from France to Brazil is a new one for us. Le Roy, by the way, was aka Robert Georges Debeurre, and we’ve shown you one of his books before, here. The above image came from the Brazilian Facebook page we pointed out not long ago.

Brazil, France, One Girl's Confession, Edições de Ouro e Editora Tecnoprint, Éditions Fleuve Noir, Irving Le Roy, Robert Georges Debeurre, Cleo Moore, cover art, literature, cinema

Vintage Pulp

April 6 2021

THE PRICE OF ADMISSION

They say the truth will set you free, but it'll send her to prison.

Written, directed, produced by, and co-starring Hugo Haas, One Girl’s Confession is a morality play that ponders the role of fate in people’s lives. Imagine a man leaving his house and stopping for a few moments to help a boy retrieve a ball. Ten minutes later a flower pot falls from a highrise balcony and crushes his skull. If he hadn’t stopped to help the boy the pot would have missed him by ten feet. Terrible luck. But at his work that day there’s a natural gas explosion, which would have killed him anyway.

That’s the type of idea Haas plays with. He has Cleo Moore in the lead role as a woman who steals $25,000, wants to use the money to get ahead, but various metaphorical flower pots keep landing on her head. Maybe wealth just isn’t in the cards. On the other hand, it’s possible the fault, as they say, is not in her stars, but in her self. Helene Stanton plays a crucial support role, tipping the balance of fate at just the right moment, and Glenn Langan plays Moore’s love interest.

One Girl’s Confession is just a b-movie, but it manages to elevate itself above its ilk thanks to a charismatic lead performer. A seventy-four minute running time doesn’t hurt either, as the curtain falls just before as central idea begins to wear thin. You probably have worse movies in your queue, so adding this one can’t hurt. Maybe it’ll help you avoid a flower pot. One Girl’s Confession premiered in the U.S. today in 1953.

One Girl's Confession, Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Helene Stanton, poster art, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 25

1939—Batman Debuts

In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale.

April 25

1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results

British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.

April 24

1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule’s main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule’s descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission.

April 23

1986—Otto Preminger Dies

Austro-Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

April 23

1998—James Earl Ray Dies

The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.

April 22

1912—Pravda Is Founded

The newspaper Pravda, or “Truth”, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.

April 22

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.