Intl. Notebook

June 22 2017

TIME IN THE SPOTLITE

National Spotlite gets right to the good parts.

This National Spotlite published today in 1970 knows its readers want to see boobs. It touts “the girl with the 50” bust,” and leaves a little space at bottom left for those boring witch cult sex orgies. Since Informer dealt with the boobs first, we’ll follow suit. The girl with the 50” bust is Suzanne Pritchard, who was a mid-level glamour model and sometime dancer, whose go-to move was squeezing said boobs together between her arms. You can see what we mean in the interior photos, and the first thing you’ll probably notice is that Suzanne Pritchard is not the woman pictured on the cover. No, that’s an unnamed beauty who probably had no idea she’d end up on the front of Spotlite. Cue sleazy agent: “Hey, I said I’d get you some exposure. What didja expect? Harper’s-fucking-Bazaar?”

Inside the issue there’s another familiar face besides Suzanne Pritchard’s. In a feature entitled “The Art of Taking a Bath” we see none other than German star Karin Schubert. Cue agent: “Hey, I said I’d get you some exposure. What didja expect? The cover? It was taken.” Actually, while the unnamed cover star doubtless knew of her turn in the Spotlite, in all likelihood Schubert had no clue. As we’ve mentioned before, we have a background in media, and her shot was undoubtedly what we used to call a handout photo—i.e. images given to magazines and newspapers for use in publicizing a celebrity. Agents back then kept tabs on how many photos were sent out and where, but didn’t monitor whether they were used months or years later. The process was a bit more structured by the time we worked at magazines, and today it may well be computerized.

Every tabloid has its focus. Some were oriented towards scandals, others sexual perversion, still others violence and gore. National Spotlite was eclectic, but this issue’s recurring theme is breasts. Schubert’s bath story has this line: “Women with large breasts should make sure the underside of their mammaries get a good scrubbing. The ideal method is to have someone else cup your breasts into the air while you scrub.” To us, that actually sounds like an incredibly inefficient way to wash one’s breasts, but that’s really beside the point, isn’t it? In sleazy tabloids, everything is foreplay and all roads lead to the bedroom. We have seventeen scans below, all of them designed to get you heated up and ready to perform.

National Spotlite, Nadine de Margitay, Suzanne Pritchard, Karin Schubert, Terry Trix, nudity, tabloid

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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.