Confidential magazine, more so than other mid-century tabloids, could be counted on to report upon Hollywood’s interracial romances. Generally, the editors took no definitive stance on the divisive issue, but by placing such stories front and center were clearly pandering to their mostly conservative readership’s prejudices. In this issue from March 1956, it’s Billy Eckstine and Denise Darcel who are put under hot lights. Eckstine was a popular crooner sometimes referred to as the “black Sinatra”, the “sepia Sinatra” or even the “bronze balladeer”; Darcel was a French-born actress. When they met he was separated from a wife he would later divorce and was enjoying the NYC party circuit; she was an émigré from France circa 1947, newly divorced, and trying to establish a film career.

What broke them up? Even Confidential doesn’t know for sure, but career pressure is a likely culprit. Eckstine lost a movie contract when word got out that he was spending time with Darcel. It was a significant blow, because leading movie roles for African-Americans—rare today—were pretty much non-existent back then. Eckstine had already carved out a pan-racial popularity in music, but was denied a chance to do the same in cinema. He wouldn’t appear in a movie as an actor until 1975’s Let’s Do It Again. His music career survived, however, and he remained a hitmaker for another ten years.

As for Darcel, she made some Hollywood films, but never broke big. On a few French websites we learned that her career was possibly damaged by Howard Hughes after she refused his advances, but we can’t confirm that in a language we’re actually fluent in, so don’t quote us. We do know that at age forty she went on to a career in burlesque, which you see below. Asked why she had made the move into erotic dance, she replied, "Because that's where the money is." However, that period didn't last long—three years, more or less. In any case, Eckstine and Darcel certainly look happy on the cover of Confidential. The photo is from the party where they met. Asked that night about Eckstine by a reporter, Darcel said, “Billy is sooo wonderful!” 

Dell’s All Western magazine ran for about twenty years starting in 1931. The above issue from December 1950/January 1951, may actually have been its next to last. It has a nice cover illustration by Bob Stanley, and a back cover piece by Phillip Vessels for Allan Vaughan Elston’s story “The Road to Sandoval.” See more here. 

This March 1955 issue of The National Police Gazette is beat all to hell, but then again so are the Gazette’s stories about Adolf Hitler. In a previous post we showed you nine Hitler covers from the 1950s and 1960s, and we know of at least a dozen more. As it happens, the story inside this particular issue isn’t only about Hitler, but about his naval commander Karl Dönitz. Dönitz was due to be released from prison in 1956 and Gazette writer George McGrath sounds the alarm that, once sprung, the admiral planned to revive the Nazi empire. Dönitz had indeed been specifically mentioned in Hitler’s last will and testament as a successor, but a lost war, a discredited movement, and ten years behind bars will tend to have a detrimental effect on even an admiral’s ambitions. After his release Dönitz settled in the village of Aumühle and lived out the rest of his life in tranquility. He wrote two books, Zehn Jahre, Zwanzig Tage (Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days), and Mein wechselvolles Leben (My Ever-Changing Life), and corresponded with memorabilia collectors, but basically stayed out of the limelight. He died in December 1980 aged eighty-nine and was buried without military honors, having made no attempt to conquer the world. So the Gazette got that one wrong. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. 

Above, a never-before-seen-online poster for Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury, made for the DVD release around 1999 or 2000. Fist of Fury should not be confused with Fists of Fury. The latter was released in 1971 and was better known in the U.S. as The Big Boss, whereas Fist of Fury was known as The Chinese Connection as well as The Iron Hand, and its Mandarin title was Jing mo mun and its Cantonese title was Jing wu men. Got all that? Great. Fist of Fury premiered in Hong Kong today in 1972. 

Here’s another new tabloid for our ever-expanding collection, the mid-tier Suppressed. So far, we’ve seen issues only from 1954 through 1956, so we can safely assume it didn’t last long. It isn’t for lack of effort, though. The layouts are interesting and designers even splash self-promoting logos throughout the mag, but all for naught, apparently. In this particular issue, published in March 1955, we learn about the Topping family, whose patriarch Dan Topping was part owner and president of the New York Yankees from 1945 to 1964. We get profiles of Mara English, Robert Taylor, and a story about John Wayne and his three marriages. And we learn that there were two sides to segregation. Silly us, we thought the two sides were the right one and the wrong one, but Suppressed schools us in all the sociological nuances of state-sponsored apartheid. What a treat! More Suppressed later. 

Sado-masochism has been a mainstay of Japanese art for a long time. During the 1980s, their filmmakers took explorations of S&M further than any cinema had before, and in so doing invented torture porn long before the term was coined to describe American movies like Saw and Hostel. The major difference in Japan is that the films were misogynistic as well. Below is a collection of ten one-sheets for Japanese sado-masochist films released in 1985 and 1986. We don’t recommend any of these for viewing, but the promo art, er… kills.

Today we have another copy of the tabloid Exposed, this one from March 1957 with a nice shot of actress and dancer Rita Moreno on the cover. The text beneath her claims she battles the cops, and inside she’s referred to as a “cop fighting wildcat.” Why? Because in June 1955 Moreno slapped an LAPD officer three times across the mouth and kicked him because he was arresting her boyfriend George Hormel II for marijuana possession. It’s lucky for Rita the taser hadn’t been invented yet. If it had, we suspect she would have learned the electric boogaloo the hard way. In any case, she got away with it and has gone on to sustain her screen and stage career over five more decades, winning multiple awards and earning a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. 

Above, a great cover depicting the Native American Ogala Lakota leader Crazy Horse in full headdress for Real West, July 1962, with art by the single-named Colrus. Inside are stories featuring the Dalton Brothers, Sitting Bull, and Oliver Winchester. It should be noted about this cover that the representation of Crazy Horse is necessarily fanciful because he managed to avoid ever being photographed. There is one shot purported to be of the great warrior, but it’s highly doubtful for many reasons, not least of which is that he would not have stood still for it. Get more info on this issue of Real West here. 

Above, German actress Nastassja Kinski, born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski, whose legendary beauty was 50% spawned by a man some consider to be one of the creepiest-looking actors in cinema history. Is nature weird or what?

Above, Marilyn Monroe on the cover of the Japanese cinema magazine Eiga No Tomo, aka Friend of Movies, which published between 1947 and 1957. This issue, with its candy-like striped motif, is from March 1954, promoting her film How To Marry a Millionaire, which would open in Tokyo on March 17.