Vintage Pulp

July 4 2021

SWEET AND SOUR

Money is always greener from a distance.

Sweet Smell of Success was a mandatory watch for us. It’s considered by many to be a top film noir but we’d never seen it. Well, that’s been rectified now, and what a good expenditure of time it was. Tony Curtis plays a New York City publicity agent whose business is falling apart because he’s been blacklisted by the most important newspaper columnist in the country, played by Burt Lancaster. Why the rough treatment? Lancaster’s sister is dating a jazz musician and he wants the relationship ended. He’s trying to force Curtis to do the dirty work—smear the guy, frame him, whatever, just get him out of the picture. Curtis’s desperation to climb to the top ranks of agents leads him to try breaking up the pair, but in film noir sleazy decisions have a way of pushing goals farther away rather than drawing them nearer.

Sweet Smell of Success, which had a special premiere in New York City in June 1957, and went into national release a week later, which was today, has a feel similar to another Big Apple drama—the excellent 2019 movie Uncut Gems. Both movies are very fast paced, even borderline chaotic, as desperate bottom-dwellers try to climb to the top of a dog-eat-dog industry while keeping one step ahead of karmic fate. Sweet Smell of Success is the better film largely thanks to Lancaster in one of the all-time heel roles. You’ll want to punch his character J.J. Hunsecker—nice, right?—directly in the middle of his face. And you’ll want to give Curtis a shaking fit to rattle his teeth. Anything to wake him up to the fact that in a cutthroat game, the most important thing isn’t having a razor but lacking a conscience. Noir fans should push this one to the head of the queue.

New York City, Sweet Smell of Success, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Jeff Donnell, Barbara Nichols, Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman, poster art, cinema, film noir, movie review

Vintage Pulp

March 31 2020

WATCH PARTY

Everyone knows it's impolite to stare. Well, almost everyone.

When you look out your window there may be nobody on the street, but The Girl Watcher has come to the rescue with some time killing imagery to brighten your lockdown. Only two issues of this magazine were ever published, as far as we know, with this one coming this month in 1959. Inside you get plenty of photos by lensman Earl Leaf, including rare shots of Mamie Van Doren, Susan Harrison, June Wilkinson, Danish model Elsa Sorenson (aka Dane Arden), and some unidentifieds. While meant to be humorous, this magazine is textbook mid-century sexism, something scholars could use to fuel semesters of women’s studies classes. It speaks of women as prey to be stalked, ambushed, and captured, and while it’s not meant to be taken anything close to literal, it still carries a powerful suggestion that male desire trumps female self-determination.

In general this attitude has changed for the better since then, with the result that the American mating game has greatly improved. While in general men still look at women almost anywhere, most understand there are unaccepable and acceptable times and places to do so—bars and parties being good examples of the latter. Men look, and always will. Women look too, and always have, more subtly. And increasingly, both look at digital apps—which is not nearly as much fun as in the flesh, but it certainly confers women more power and safety, even if it’s inherently restricting in terms of choice. The Pulp Intl. girlfriends would never have chosen us if we’d had to entice them with online profiles designed to sell us as perfect matches, but when randomly thrust into the same social gathering, the concept of perfect did not apply—it was game over folks! Um, forty-plus scans below.

The Girl Watcher, Mamie Van Doren, Elsa Sorenson, Elsa Sørensen, Dane Arden, Susan Harrison, June Wilkinson, Earl Leaf, Roger Reed, magazine art

Femmes Fatales

November 11 2011

S-CURVE

Susan comes down with a case of the bends.

Above, an interesting promo image of U.S. actress Susan Harrison, known for her role as Susie Hunsecker in the iconic film noir Sweet Smell of Success, seen here putting her sacroiliac through its paces with a serpentine “S” posture we suspect is harder to strike than it looks. But that’s what talent is for—making hard stuff look easy. The photo was made when Harrison was filming 1960’s Key Witness. We haven’t seen Sweet Smell of Success, but we have a copy, and its premiere date is this month, so we’ll see if we can fit it into the queue and report back. Meanwhile Harrison proves below that she can make other symbols with her body—“Я” for example, which looks like a meaningless backwards “R” but which in actuality is, “I am” in Cyrillic. We have it on good authority that she finished the thought with the Cyrillic for “flexible”—Гибкий. We’ll try to track down that shot for you.

Sweet Smell of Success, Key Witness, Susan Harrison, film noir

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 22

1912—Pravda Is Founded

The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.

April 22

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.

April 21

1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down

German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is “Kaputt.” The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes.

April 21

1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity

An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.

April 20

1939—Holiday Records Strange Fruit

American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history.

April 19

1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail

American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West’s considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy.

April 19

1971—Manson Sentenced to Death

In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed.