vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
More fun sleaze today, a cover for Myron Kosloff’s 1964 opus Dial “P” for Pleasure, from First Niter, a subsidiary of Connoisseur Publications, with Eric Stanton cover art. You get sexual hijinks at the Hotel Park-Ritz, with swapping, bondage, lesbianism, and all the other fun things in life. This was, if you can believe, made into a porn movie of the same name in 1978 starring Susan Wong and Sharon Mitchell.
This is one side of a chirashi, or two-sided mini-poster, for Gerard Damiano’s 1977 porno flick Water Power, with Sharon Mitchell and Jamie Gillis. Like most chirashi, it features art produced especially for the Japanese market, which makes it highly collectible (assuming you actually dare to collect porn posters). The image doesn’t really read as erotic to us, but then neither does the movie—enemas, yuck. But hey, if you’re into that sort of thing, we don’t judge. Whatever floats your butt. We’ve taken a photo of the reverse side of the poster, below, and we also had a more conventional Japanese Water Power poster, and we threw that in just for the fun of it. The film had its Japanese premiere in Tokyo today in 1980. Side note: we snagged a pile of these chirashi with no idea what movies they were for, and once we found out they were for pornos decided not to post them. But now we’ve changed our minds because the images are interesting, after all. So look for more of these down the line. 
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage while sitting for a portrait in the White House. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt’s body is transported by train to his hometown of Hyde Park, New York, and on April 15 he is buried in the rose garden of the Roosevelt family home.
American journalist, playwright, and author Richard Harding Davis dies of a heart attack at home in Philadelphia. Not widely known now, Davis was one of the most important and influential war correspondents ever, establishing his reputation by reporting on the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I, as well as his general travels to exotic lands.
In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by government forces in the state of Morelos, after a carefully planned ambush. Following the killing, Zapata’s revolutionary movement and his Liberation Army of the South slowly fall apart, but his political influence lasts in Mexico to the present day.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York City by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Though Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known book today, it was not a success upon publication, and at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was mostly forgotten as a writer and considered himself to be a failure.
American clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is buried five days after being shot dead on a Memphis, Tennessee motel balcony. April 7th had been declared a national day of mourning by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and King’s funeral on the 9th is attended by thousands of supporters, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
