Femmes Fatales

December 7 2024

THE NAME OF THE GAM

How can you play unless you know the rules?

Once again we delve into Hollywood name changes, this time with née Rita MacKay, who had a pretty good name to work with, we’d say, but changed it to Rita Gam and achieved stardom. We may put together a list one day of the most interesting showbiz name changes—Diana Fluck to Diana Dors, Archibald Leach to Cary Grant, Willis Van Schaack to Lili St. Cyr, Ingeborg Klinkerfuss to Kaaren Verne, et al. We kind of just made a list there, didn’t we? Well, a longer list. Or maybe that notion will go into the giant bin of forgotten ideas for posts never brought to fruition.

The point is, in Hollywood it can help to have a catchy name. It isn’t an absolute rule, but without a cool handle some aspirants feel hobbled right from the jump. Gam jumped into television to start, managed to fit in some movies, but was more of a small screen star, appearing in shows like Mannix, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Rockford Files. Despite a pretty extensive résumé we can’t recall seeing her in anything except the classic detective drama Klute. We’ll watch that again, because it’s good, and we’ll see what else we can dig up. These shots were made to promote the 1954 drama Night People. Gam and her gams will return.

Night People, Klute, Mannix, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Rockford Files, Rita Gam, Rita MacKay

Vintage Pulp

August 16 2021

RETURN TO FRENCH ST.

Turns out Barye Phillips and Dom Lupo lived at the same address, but at different times.

We’ve talked often about vintage paperback art being copied. We have another example today involving Dom Lupo and Barye Phillips. Hearing those two names you’d think it was Phillips, who was a stalwart of mid-century paperback illustration, who’d been copied by Lupo, talented but lesser known. Nope—it’s the other way around. Above is Lupo’s cover for 13 French Street, which was used by Gold Medal Books in 1951. You also see here Phillips’ cover for Little Tramp (larger version here), which dates from 1957. Naughty Barry.

But Lupo copied too, sort of. He seems to have used as his inspiration a promo photo of U.S. actress Rita Gam, below. Using photos as the basis for illustrations was pretty normal, as we’ve documented before, so Lupo was just doing what artists did. You can see he changed the angle a bit, so it’s not a true copy so much as a template. There’s an internet replication error we should note: a few places say the Gam photo is from her 1952 thriller The Thief. Which means, obviously, she could not have inspired Lupo unless she had a time machine. Since the poses are so similar, we assume the attribution to The Thief is simply wrong—though ironic, because in art, everyone is a little bit of a thief. Great work by all involved.

Gil Brewer, Dom Lupo, Barye Phillips, Rita Gam, cover art, literature

Hollywoodland

November 8 2012

FULL COURT SUPPRESSED

Suppressed was in rare form in November 1955.

Above is the cover of the NYC based tabloid Suppressed from this month in 1955. This issue shows Suppressed in full bloom—bold, brash, fearless. Within the next two years a series of Hollywood lawsuits against scandal magazines would begin to make editors wary of being dragged into court for committing libel and slander, but 1955 was still the heyday for celeb bashing, and Supressed engaged in what might be best described as open warfare against film stars. Here’s a small sampling of some of the gut punches in this magazine:

Marlon Brando: silly.

Anita Ekberg: egocentric, a martyr.

Rita Gam: the all-time fizzle of 1955, a bad actress, with a figure that leaves something to be desired.

Judy Holliday: pudgy.

Marilyn Monroe: childishly immature, with an inferiority complex.

Debbie Reynolds: inane.

Gloria Vanderbilt: unable to think of anyone besides herself; has more neuroses than acting talents.

Robert Wagner: pompous, unintelligent.

We could go on, but you get the point. We’ve written many times on this website that nothing in media is truly new, and this is yet another example. Click over to any muckraking celebrity blog right now and you’d think journalism, as well as simple grammar, went down the toilet around the year 2000. But no, they were always in the toilet. Remember, Suppressed and its brethren Confidential, Whisper, On the QT, Hush-Hush, et.al., were not fringe. By itself Confidential was the

biggest newsstand seller in the U.S. These publications were powerful. Like modern American cable news, they assumed leading roles in making the public swallow false political memes—a commie under every bed, a black man in every bed, and the loose women who made it all possible.

But unlike today’s fawning cable news, Suppressed was generally scornful toward the rich. For instance, this issue discusses millionaires’ secret playgrounds while parking quotation marks around words like “classy,” and “the right people.” The actual playgrounds are described as “last stand” resorts, where the rich can feel safe from the rabble of middle class America. A few pages later the editors decry nepotism in Hollywood, naming a dozen famous actors and actresses who allegedly got their start because of mommy and daddy’s money. All in all, Suppressed is a head spinning mixture, and at the end of each issue a typical reader was probably convinced of one thing—the only good people in the world were those who were exactly like him.

New York City, Hollywood, Suppressed, Marlon Brando, Anita Ekberg, Rita Gam, Judy Holliday, Marilyn Monroe, Debbie Reynolds, Gloria Vanderbilt, Robert Wagner, Nejla Ates, tabloid

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.