Tabloid offers pills, thrills, and various painful aches.
Above: assorted pages from an issue of National Close-Up published today in 1968, with sex pills called vitogen, sexual perversion, sex parties, and sex swingers, then conversely, mass suicides, a monster baby, an acid burn victim, car crash deaths, and all that is terrible and painful in the world. Somewhere between those extremes are celebrities, including Julie Christie, Bing Crosby, Donna Marlowe again (seems she was a tabloid staple in ’68), Playboy centerfold Sue Williams (in the advertisement for strip poker cards), and, just above, the lovely June Palmer.
Well, they say Bergers are bad for you and now we have proof. This photo of Austrian actress Senta Berger was made to promote the French 1967 thriller Diaboliquement vôtre, aka Diabolically Yours, in which she starred with Alain Delon. The movie was a bit of a flop when released, but Berger had numerous hits in her long career, and continues to act, appearing in the television series Under Suspicion through 2019. We last saw her as a Pulp Intl. femme fatale way back in 2013. You can see that shot here, and overindulge on Berger in general by clicking her keywords below.
For British movie lovers Continental Film Review was their ticket across the English Channel.
Continental Film Review was first published—as far as we can discern—in November 1952. We decided on that month because we saw a copy from February 1953 numbered Vol. 1 Issue 4, and the masthead said the magazine was published the first week of every month. CFR would go on to become one of Britain’s most popular film magazines, exposing English language readers to the wide variety of foreign movies being made across continental Europe. The above issue appeared this month in 1966 with cover star Maria Pia Conte, and numerous film personalities inside, including Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Bates, Rossana Podesta, Evi Marandi, and more. We have other issues we’ll get around to sharing at some point. In the meantime see more here, here, here, and here.
Senta Berger makes a second appearance on a Horwitz Publications paperback cover, this time for Carter Brown’s Murder Is My Mistress. We showed you the Horwitz cover for Brown’s Swan Song for a Siren a while back. That actually came second of the pair and was numbered 34 in the company’s Reprint by Demand series. The above is number 19 and was published in 1960. We found it on the Nick Carter & Carter Brown blog, which is a stop you should make if you want to know everything about Brown. Anyway, we’ve been discussing these Horwitz paperbacks for a while because of their celebrity covers. In using Berger twice the publisher chose well.
We’re back. The festival is ongoing and our friends are here for another week, but going forward we’ll be making time to share material. So above you see scans from Australia’s Adam magazine, published August 1971, with British model Susan Shaw inside and Austrian actress Senta Berger on the rear. The cover illustrates I. W. Coughlan’s story “Killer in Conflict,” in which an assassin is sent to kill an important scientist’s daughter, who’s a free love hippie. The killer finds his target easily enough, but the more she talks to him the less sure he is about his mission. Is it too late for him to turn over a new leaf? At the bottom, do you notice the cartoon concerning flights to Havana? Somebody help us. What’s the joke there? We keep looking at it and can’t understand what the cartoonist is trying for. While we wait for enlightenment on that, you can see many more issues of Adam by clicking its keywords below.
Update: the answer comes from J. Talley who explains: Hi. Longtime fan of your blog. In case no one else has answered your question about the Havana reference in the Aug. 1971 Adam magazine cartoon you put up a few days ago: aircraft hijackings to Cuba were relatively frequent in the late ’60s/early ’70s, so this would fall under the category of “topical humor.”
The cover of this September 1970 issue of Australia’s Adam magazine illustrates W. A. Harbinson’s story “The Swinging Hep-Cat,” in which a man and woman spend most of their brief marriage fighting. He eventually strangles her. Or thinks he does. She actually survives and he only learns of this fact in jail from the cops who arrested him, as they laugh about it and reveal that she’s fled for Paris—and the arms of another man. Much of the fiction in men’s adventure magazines is disposable, for lack of a kinder term. We love it, of course. Men’s magazine fiction would be nothing without hack writing. But Harbinson actually shows some skills in “The Swinging Hep-Cat,” as well as a muscular style. A sample:
We fought considerably during those early days of our marriage, bouts of most regal proportions, plates, knives, hair-brushes and antiques flying across the bedroom on fierce winds of abuse, she raging naked against the French windows in full view of the tourists below, me crouching back toward the door wondering how to tackle this bitch who had eaten my peace—a farce, a pantomime, a lunatic performance on both sides, always dissolving in the bed.
Or this little description:
Francisco Antonio D’Costa Pegado, a glorious dark beast of a man, rich as sin, tight as a drum, an incredible neurotic lover.
We checked after finishing the story, fully expecting Harbinson to have an extensive bibliography and we were right. He’s written several dozen novels, mostly sci-fi, under his own name and that of Shaun Clarke. Not every good wordsmith manages to carve out a strong career—or any career, for that matter—so we were pleased Harbinson did well, because he actually knows how to use language in a way that brings it to three-dimensional life. At least he did in “The Swinging Hep-Cat.” He’s still around and was last published in 2012, but we’ll probably mine his earlier material, his stuff from the 1970s. We have high hopes. Elsewhere in Adam is fiction from Jack Ritchie, Austrian actress Senta Berger on the table-of-contents page, and plenty of cartoons. We have twenty-eight scans below, including a mega Berger in the final panel for your enjoyment.
Raquel Welch's global hit One Million Years B.C. spawns another bad imitation.
There’s little to say about When Women Had Tails. It’s terrible Italian slapstick, complete with pratfalls and camel flatulence, punctuating a story dealing with a group of isolated cavemen who discover their first woman—Senta Berger. They want to roast and eat her, but she convinces one of them there are other satisfactions she can provide. We imagine this involves a little eating too, and the movie would be better if it showed something along those lines, but no such luck.
Blame Raquel Welch for this fiasco, because once again this is an attempt to replicate the formula of her smash hit One Million Years B.C.—a bad attempt, far worse than When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, which we talked about recently. It takes a full twenty-one minutes of idiotic slapstickery before the cavemen finally come across Berger, and only after that point is the movie even watchable. It premiered in Italy as Quando le donne avevano la coda in October 1970, and had its U.S. unveiling today in 1973. Bad as it is, we can’t resist these prehistoric fantasies, and we’ll forge ahead bravely to the next.
Above, the cover and interior scans from the mid-century burlesque magazine Cancans de Paris, with Sophia Loren, Martine Beswick, Laya Raki, and Senta Berger, who the magazine mistakenly calls Santa. Well, ho ho ho—if you want to be even more naughty this Sunday click the links for the other two Cancans de Paris we posted here and here.
Horwitz uses another rising celebrity as a cover star.
Last month we shared a reprint-by-demand Horwitz cover for Carter Brown’s Death of Doll that featured a young Elke Sommer. We got to wondering if other celebs had been used on Horwitz covers and decided to have a look. Above you see Brown’s Swan Song for a Siren, which Horwitz printed in 1958, and the face staring out at you is that of Austrian actress Senta Berger. That’s her, right? Full lips. Sensuous eyes. Hawk eyebrows. Gotta be. Like they had with Sommer, Australia-based Horwitz appropriated Berger’s image when she was barely famous, having appeared in only four films to that point, none in starring roles. We have a photo of Berger below for comparison, and we think you’ll agree it’s her. We’ll dig up a few more of these Horwitz celebrity covers later.
It probably should have been the Tail end of her career.
Another Italian movie that premiered today is Pasquale Festa Campanile’s prehistoric comedy Quando le donne avevano la coda, aka When Women Had Tails. The above promo shot shows Austrian star Senta Berger in full costume for her role as Filli, the cavewoman captured by a clan of seven men who have never seen a woman. They quickly learn that she doesn’t, in fact, have a tail, and shortly thereafter uncover other anatomical curiosities. The movie’s so bad it’s miraculous Berger ever worked again, but you have to love this ’70s glam rock look. And if not, she appears as a normal human below.
The new head of the Chinese Communist Party, Hua Goufeng, snuffs out a coup led by Chairman Mao’s widow Jiang Qing and three other party members. They become known as the Gang of Four, and are tried, found guilty of treason, and receive death sentences that are later commuted to lengthy prison terms.
1987—Loch Ness Expedition Ends
A sonar exploration of Scotland’s Loch Ness, called Operation Deepscan, ends after a week without finding evidence that the legendary Loch Ness Monster exists. While the flotilla of boats had picked up three sonar contacts indicating something large in the waters, these are considered to be detections of salmon schools or possibly seals.
1971—London Bridge Goes Up
After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in the resort town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
1975—Burton and Taylor Marry Again
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.
1918—Sgt. York Becomes a Hero
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.
1956—Larsen Pitches Perfect Game
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.
