Sometimes a great notion becomes a perfect photo op.
Above is an image of Paul Newman made while filming the 1970 drama Sometimes a Great Notion. The shot was placed atop a grid background and distributed as a gatefold poster in a 1976 issue of the Japanese pop culture magazine Roadshow. We love this thing. The magazine editors flipped the negative and colored in the dirt bike’s number plate, which is why it looks like “EI” instead of 13, but whichever way you look at the shot, Newman seems to be staring off into the distance and thinking, “I wonder if there’s anyone on this planet remotely as cool as I am?” Then he goes, “Naaah!” and sends up a rooster tail of loose dirt as he rockets away. He rode the bike for a scene in Great Notion, but if you plan to watch the movie be forewarned it’s adapted from a Ken Kesey novel about loggers, and has little to do with racing. That said, it’s a pretty good flick and the novel is killer. As is this promo. Japanese promos in magazines like Screen and Roadshow are often amazing and this one follows in the tradition. Wanna see what we mean? Look here and here.
Mary Jo Tarola was born in Portland, Oregon in 1928 and by 1952 had established herself in Hollywood, first under the milquetoast moniker Linda Douglas, then under her own far more interesting name. Just two years into her career she married producer Pasquale “Pat” DiCicco. Not well known now, DiCicco was a bootlegger and pimp who became mafia boss Lucky Luciano’s lieutenant in Tinseltown. He was infamously abusive toward women—one dust-up with his first wife Thelma Todd led to her having an emergency appendectomy, and another with his second wife Gloria Vanderbilt involved him slamming her head into a wall. Tarola’s promising film career ended with her marriage to DiCicco, but at least she left behind a few choice artifacts like the above photo by photographer Ernest Bachrach. It dates from 1952 or 1953.
You can see this poster for the 1966 comedy Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number! around the internet, but we thought we’d share our scan anyway because we like the art and the graphics. Concerning the latter, that isn’t a big 70 in the middle of the poster—those are Japanese characters meaning “flow.” Combined with the rest of the text, the entire title reads “Queen of the Bath.” Maybe Lana Turner would have something to say about that, but in any case the title isn’t as random as you’d think. The movie is about an actress who is famous for her bath scenes but wants to be taken seriously. In a fit of pique she goes AWOL from her latest production and ends up hiding out in Oregon in the cabin of a married real estate agent, who spends the movie trying to keep his wife from finding out. It’s classic, 1960s style romantic slapstick, and the best thing about it is Elke Sommer in the starring role, though Bob Hope is always watchable. We uploaded many production stills below. Why all the imagery? Because Sommer is good for you. Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number! premiered in the U.S. this month in 1966.
William Edward Hickman was one of the smoothest criminals of his time—at least until the end.
This May 1973 issue of the true crime magazine Master Detective delves back more than four decades to examine one of the most infamous murders committed in early twentieth century America. The victim was a 12-year old Los Angeles girl named Marion Parker, and on December 15, 1927, she was abducted from her school by a man who used to work for her father. The man—nineteen-year-old William Edward Hickman—came to the school and told the registrar that the girl’s father had been in an accident that morning and wished to see his daughter. It was not policy to release children to anyone other than their parents, but swayed by Hickman’s measured urgency and apparent sincerity, the registrar released Marion Parker into his custody.
Hickman was after money. Marion Parker’s father, a banker named Perry Parker, had it in abundance. For the next few days Hickman sweated Perry Parker, sending pleading notes written by Marion, as well as other notes demanding a ransom. Hickman signed the latter with various pseudonyms, but one in particular stuck with the press—“The Fox.” Eventually, Parker and Hickman agreed on a ransom of $1,500, to be paid in $20 gold certificates. The first attempt at an exchange failed when Hickman noticed a cop near the meeting place. It’s unclear whether the policeman was part of a trap, but Hickman was taking no chances. He bailed, and set up a second meeting for a few nights later.
When Parker reached the rendezvous point he saw Hickman sitting in a parked car. Parker approached the driver side window and saw that the kidnapper was aiming a gun, and he also saw his daughter in the passenger seat, bundled up to her neck in a blanket. She couldn’t move—that was clear. She didn’t speak. Hickman took the ransom and drove quickly away, stopping just long enough to push Marion Parker out of the car at the end of the block. When Parker reached his daughter and lifted her into his arms he screamed in anguish. Marion was dead, and had been for twelve hours. Hickman had cut off her arms and legs, flayed the skin from her back, disemboweled her, and stuffed her with rags. She had been bundled up to conceal the fact that she had no limbs. Her eyes had been wired open so that she would, upon cursory inspection, appear to be alive.
Hickman had escaped, but he had left behind a clue that would lead to his capture. Among the rags he had stuffed into Marion Parker’s empty abdomen was a shirt with a laundry mark that police were able to trace to an address in Los Angeles. Twenty cops descended on a residence that turned out to be occupied by a man named Donald Evans, who wascooperative but said he knew nothing about Hickman. In truth Evans was Hickman, but by the time police figured that out he had fled to the Pacific Northwest. But he hadn’t run far enough. Wanted posters reached every corner of the west coast within days, and just one week after Hickman’s disappearance two police officers in the town of Echo, Oregon recognized him and arrested him.
At trial, Hickman claimed to be guided by voices—one of the first times, if not the first, that this type of insanity defense was attempted in an American courtroom. But the jury wasn’t buying any of it and they convicted Hickman of murder and kidnapping. The judge sentenced him to be executed at San Quentin State Prison, and he climbed the stairs to the gallows on October 19, 1928. Hickman had once been smooth enough to talk a school official into sending Marion Parker to her doom, and had calmly lied about his identity to twenty cops who had burst into his house. In prison he had corresponded with and impressed author Ayn Rand so much that she decided to base a character on him because he embodied her mythical “Nietzschean Superman” ideal. But at the end, all of Hickman’s considerable aplomb deserted him. Just before the hangman sprang the trapdoor that would cast him into oblivion, he collapsed babbling in fear. His last words were, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Frank Eugene Corder tries to crash a stolen Cessna 150 into the White House, but strikes the lawn before skidding into the building. The incident causes minor damage to the White House, but the plane is totaled and Corder is killed.
1973—Allende Ousted in Chile
With the help of the CIA, General Augusto Pinochet topples democratically elected President Salvador Allende in Chile. Pinochet’s regime serves as a testing ground for Chicago School of Economics radical pro-business policies that later are applied to other countries, including the United States.
2001—New York and Washington D.C. Attacked
The attacks that would become known as 9-11 take place in the United States. Airplane hijackings lead to catastrophic crashes resulting in the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York City, the destruction of a portion of The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a passenger airliner crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Approximately 36% of Americans doubt the official 9-11 story.
1935—Huey Long Assassinated
Governor of Louisiana Huey Long, one of the few truly leftist politicians in American history, is shot by Carl Austin Weiss in Baton Rouge. Long dies after two days in the hospital.
1956—Elvis Shakes Up Ed Sullivan
Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, performing his hit song “Don’t Be Cruel.” Ironically, a car accident prevented Sullivan from being present that night, and the show was guest-hosted by British actor Charles Laughton.
in $20 gold certificates. The first attempt at an exchange failed when Hickman noticed a cop near the meeting place. It’s unclear whether the policeman was part of a trap, but Hickman was taking no chances. He bailed, and set up a second meeting for a few nights later.
cooperative but said he knew nothing about Hickman. In truth Evans 
