vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above is the U.S. promo poster for Port Afrique, which we’ve shared today to follow up the French poster we shared last year when we talked about the movie in detail. Shorter version: plenty of style, not enough substance, and nowhere near enough character. You can blame the latter problem on the casting of the male lead. But that French poster is nice, so you should have look. It’s here. Port Afrique premiered today in 1956.
These Italian promo posters were made for the drama Lassù qualcuno mi ama, better known as Somebody Up There Likes Me, the rags to riches biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano, who survived a violent father, street gangs and prison to become a world middleweight champion who finished his career with a 67-10 record. If somebody up there liked him, we’d love to hear why he got his ass whipped ten times, but whatever. Paul Newman played the lead in this after intended star James Dean was killed in an auto accident, and the film went on to earn acclaim and win a couple of Oscars for cinematography and art direction. The posters were painted by Renato Casaro, one of the most important mid-century film artists, a man who produced hundreds of masterpieces and was behind this gem and this racy little number. Casaro is still around at age eighty-one and maintains a website detailing his work and career. Lassù qualcuno mi ama was originally released in the U.S. in 1956 and had its premiere in Italy today in 1957
Tempo was a pocket-sized celeb and pop culture magazine published bi-weekly out of Atlanta and New York City by Sports Report, Inc. We don’t know how long it lasted—this one is vol. 7, issue 9—but we know we’ve never seen one dated before 1953 or after 1958. When Dane Arden appeared on the cover of this one from today in 1956, she was already famous thanks to her appearance as Playboy’s centerfold just the previous month. But she had posed under her real name Elsa Sørensen, and back then that may have kept most Playboy readers from realizing Sørensen and Arden were the same person. It’s curious. We have no idea if that was her intention, or why she’d have wanted to do it.
If we had to guess, we’d say that Playboy wanted an exclusive association with her Sørensen identity, and pressed her to choose a new name for future modeling. Or perhaps she thought of magazines like Tempo as lower class, and didn’t want to diminish her Playboy image. Or maybe she thought Elsa Sørensen was a little too Danish sounding for Hollywood. But there’s no evidence she ever had an interest in movies, and if she did wouldn’t she have been sacrificing much of the useful recognition she’d gained as a Playboy centerfold? All we can say is it’s one of history’s little mysteries. Hmm… that has a nice ring. Think we’ll claim that one—History’s Little Mysteries™. More Dane/Elsa below, plus Brigitte Bardot, Shirley Falls, Erroll Garner, Sabrina, the Cleveland Browns, Anita Ekberg, et al.
May 1956 cover of Behind the Scene, with the scoop on Hitler’s sexuality, boxer Archie Moore’s love of children, Vic Damone’s supposed cheating on wife Pier Angeli, and Joan Collins’ turbocharged sex drive. We can never be sure, because all this happened before we were born, but we think they got three of these four stories wrong. But at least they reassure us by telling us they’re “the magazine you can believe in.” It’s like they think they can get as many facts wrong as they want as long as they have a slogan that tells people they actually got it right. These people are crazy like a Fox.
Above is a photo of Italian actress Pier Angeli on the cover on France’s Ciné-Révélation. She was originally Anna Pierangeli, but she split her surname, thus giving herself the last name “angels.” A truer pseudonym has yet to be invented. But for as much excitement as attended her arrival onto the Italian movie scene, her career never quite reached the expected heights once she made the leap to Hollywood. She worked steadily in a series of unimpressive films, and had a few love affairs, including one with James Dean that was reportedly nixed by her mother. After twenty years in movies, and two divorces, she died at age 39 of a barbiturate overdose. Though she was depressed during her final years, it is impossible to know for sure whether her death was an accident or suicide. You see her here at the apex of her fame and beauty, January 1958.
After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in the resort town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
British actor Richard Burton and American screen star Elizabeth Taylor secretly remarry sixteen months after their divorce, then jet away to a second honeymoon in Chobe Game Park in Botswana.
A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed in Bolivia. In an attempt to make it appear as though he had been killed resisting Bolivian troops, the executioner shoots Guevara with a machine gun, wounding him nine times in the legs, arm, shoulder, throat, and chest.
During World War I, in the Argonne Forest in France, America Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack on a German machine gun nest that kills 25 and captures 132. He is a corporal during the event, but is promoted to sergeant as a result. He also earns Medal of Honor from the U.S., the Croix de Guerre from the French Republic, and the Croce di Guerra from Italy and Montenegro. Stateside, he is celebrated as a hero, and Hollywood even makes a movie entitled Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.
The New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches a perfect game in the World Series against hated rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is the only perfect game in World Series history, as well as the only no-hitter.
The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).
