vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above are three promo posters for the Japanese actioner Onna koroshiya: Mesu inu, which in English was called The Art of Assassination and, interestingly, Hitwoman Bitch. It’s about a woman who works as a restaurant hostess but moonlights as an assassin, and draws an assignment killing a rich businessman but gets entangled in all kinds of complications. The lead is Kyôko Enami, whose amazingly long career lasted from 1960 until 2018, when she died aged seventy-six. These beautiful posters are fitting tributes. The two tateken sized promos look identical at a glance, but upon closer inspection you’ll see that they’re different in several respects. We’ll circle back to Enami a bit later. Onna koroshiya: Mesu inu premiered in Japan today in 1969.
LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.
A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.
The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.
American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.
The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.
An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.
After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.
