Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

TANGIER VIA CASABLANCA

Something important was lost along the way.

Tangier and Casablanca are very different cities, but both are fun locales. They’re about two-hundred miles apart by road. We’ve driven the route. What we’ll say next we’ve said before many times—Casablanca was the most influential movie of its era. It wasn’t the first love story-adventure Hollywood set in a foreign land, but it changed the game. It took already established elements—music, cynical men, tropical suits, military intrigue, and political turmoil—and elevated them to new heights with better budgeting, writing, casting, acting, and—crucially—sharp and cynical humor. Tangier, for which you see a promo poster above, is yet another Casablanca influenced movie, and like the physical cities, we expected them to be somewhat different, but both fun.

We were wrong about the somewhat different part. Robert Paige plays a discredited news journalist drawn into a dangerous effort by Maria Montez to thwart an infamous Nazi named Balizaar who wishes to escape Morocco. Within the plot you get a Casablanca style hotel and bar as a centerpiece, musical performances by a loyal sidekick, and an array of shady characters and bemedaled military officers shooting significant looks at each other. There are also wistful reminiscences of a beautiful city before war—Barcelona instead of Paris—and bitter recollections of fascist invasion. There are not one but two love triangles, involving five people. There’s even a looming night flight to Lisbon. Oh yes, the Casablanca is strong with this one.

But what isn’t strong are all the underpinnings. The story lacks momentum, the dialogue is portentous, the quips mostly fall flat, and the musical performances are weak. There are some plusses, though not quite enough to make for a good movie. There’s a large and extravagant exterior sequence shot at Universal Studios but meant to evoke Tangier, and there’s an excellently imagined and staged climax involving an elevator. But in the end the distance between Casablanca and Tangier is more than just two-hundred miles of Moroccan roadway—it’s light years of artistic ability. Yet as with so many vintage movies with exotic settings, Tangier is worth a look just to see the filmmakers’ vision of a foreign land. It premiered today in 1946.

Morocco, Tangier, Maria Montez, Robert Paige, Sabu, Sabu Dastagir, Preston Foster, Louise Allbritton, Kent Taylor, poster art, cinema, movie review

NYLON RUN

The Woman from Tangier started unravelling about the time the studio signed off on the budget.

Above is a poster in six-sheet format for the adventure The Woman from Tangier, along with a nice, mystery-laden promo from Italian artist Anselmo Ballester. We talked briefly about this movie a while back, but didn’t have a copy to watch. Now we do, and we checked it out last night. It stars Stephen Dunne as an insurance investigator looking into the death of a ship’s purser gunned down trying to abscond with the boat’s earnings—fifty-thousand pounds. As viewers we see in the first minutes of the film that this tale is false, and is actually a frame-up and murder staged by the ship’s captain.

Adele Jergens co-stars as a dancer named—we’re not making this up—Nylon, who had been trying to flee Tangier for Gibraltar but is now stuck in port while Dunne’s investigation plays out. When the captain’s criminal partner, who is a murderer too, uses the unwitting Nylon to hide from the cops, she’s soon caught between the two killers and deemed a loose end. She holds the key to Dunne’s investigation, but will she go to him for help? Or run to the police? Or maybe the U.S. embassy?

To us it didn’t matter because The Woman from Tangier is a throwaway thriller too b-level to offer much fun. We’re always drawn to movies and books sets outside the U.S., particularly in exotic lands. And having been to Tangier, we hoped for at least a little authentic Moroccan flavor, but it was too much to ask from a cheapie potboiler shot by Columbia Pictures entirely in Los Angeles featuring the lightweight Dunne and his mustache in the lead role. In its favor, The Woman from Tangier is short. Sixty-six minutes. So it certainly won’t cost much of your life should you decide to queue it up. It premiered today in 1948.

Italy, Morocco, Tangier, Gibraltar, Columbia Pictures, The Woman from Tangier, Adele Jergens, Stephen Dunne, Ian MacDonald, Donna Martell, Anselmo Ballester, cinema, poster art, movie review

SNAKE BIDDEN

Fangs for your service.

This promo image of Dominican actress Maria Montez in costume for her starring role in 1944’s Cobra Woman sells the movie for us. We’ll definitely watch it—and hope it’s better than the similarly named 1972 b-horror flick Night of the Cobra Woman. For that matter, we hope it’s better than 1955’s Cult of the Cobra. Our fingers are crossed. Montez was one of the top actresses in exotic escapist films, appearing in such fare as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, South of Tahiti, Moonlight in Hawaii, Sudan, Tangier, White Savage, Pirates of Monterrey, The Thief of Venice… you get the idea. She was still at the top of her globetrotting game when she was found dead in her bathtub in 1951 at age thirty-nine, but her legacy as a film star is assured—even if her movies were shot on Hollywood sound stages, she helped audiences travel the world. 

Dominican Republic, Cobra Woman, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, South of Tahiti, Moonlight in Hawaii, Sudan, Tangier, White Savage, Pirates of Monterrey, The Thief of Venice, Maria Montez

GET YOUR AFRIQUE ON

Any port in a storm—except maybe this one.


This French poster for the British made film Port Afrique was painted in a style that made us certain it was the work of Constantin Belinsky. But nope—it’s signed by André Bertrand, and it’s a very nice piece. As the art indicates, the movie is a North African adventure, a vehicle for Italian rising star Pier Angeli, and it can be described with one word—exotic. The filmmakers turned the E dial up to 11, location shooting in Tangier to create a fictional city of Port Afrique that’s part Berber, part French, and part Spanish. Casablanca comparisons are inevitable, but solely in terms of exteriors Port Afrique is greatly superior. There’s simply nothing like the real thing. The movie is also shot in color, which adds to its appeal, even if it detracts a bit from its noirish ambitions.

As in Casablanca, much of the action in Port Afrique revolves around a bar, in this case Le Badinage, which seemingly can afford to have more performers than customers. The bar’s beautiful chanteuse—there’s always a beautiful chanteuse—is played by the elfish Angeli, who’s stuck in town without a passport and suffering under the attentions of the proprietor Nino. The threat in his overtures is unspoken but clear—no punani, no passport. Into this situation arrives a wounded American pilot with the unlikely name Rip Reardon, played by future b-movie stalwart Phil Carey. After his onscreen run he would find himself in soap opera purgatory as Asa Buchanan on One Life To Live, but here he gets his chance to help anchor a big drama. Shortly after Rip arrives his wife turns up dead. The cops call it a suicide, but Rip decides to take the investigation into his own hands, with all the usual twists and turns.

Port Afrique has a lot of problems. The script is clunky and improbable, the motivations of its characters murky, and the chemistry between its stars lukewarm. Carey ended up on soap operas for a reason, clearly on display here. He has little range, and none of the heft needed for his role. As for Angeli, she never became the superstar her advocates intended, and again, you can see why. She’s better than Carey for sure, yet she still lacks the fire her role needs. But here’s the thing—we think, for serious film buffs, the movie is worth watching anyway. It looks amazing, from the cinematography to the production design, and its goal of being a Technicolor noir is worth examination and discussion. But casual film fans may want to steer clear. After premiering in the U.S. in 1956 Port Afrique reached France today in 1957.
France, Britain, Morocco, Tangier, Port Afrique, One Life To Live, Pier Angeli, Phil Carey, Dennis Price, Christopher Lee, André Bertrand, poster art, cinema, movie review

LIVING DANGEROUSLY

From moment to moment everything can change.


Donald MacKenzie’s Moment of Danger, also known as Scent of Danger, appeared in 1959 as a Dell paperback with a front painted by the busy Robert McGinnis, always the man to employ for elevated cover art. In this case, his pistol packing, sarong clad femme fatale lounging behind a spider plant stands as a top effort. And by the way, we only know what a spider plant is because we have six large ones busily propagating around palatial Pulp Intl. HQ.

The tale follows a double-crossed jewel thief named Macbeth Bain (you gotta love that) who vows revenge on the partner who ditched him after a big heist and put the cops onto him. The double-cross is only half successful. The partner gets away with the loot, but through a stroke of luck, the evidence that was supposed to put Bain behind bars never materializes. Now he’s free, furious, and tracking his missing partner from London to Gibraltar, Tangier, and Malaga, seeking to even the score. Along for the adventure is the partner’s wife, also intent upon revenge after being ditched for another woman.

This is a densely written tale, heavy on narrative and light on dialogue, told from Bain’s point of view as he struggles with fear of his uber-competent partner, and attraction toward his beautiful sidekick. He’s a curious character, hard to like at first because his emotions range from anger at his betrayal to resentment that a woman is tugging at his heart, but you eventually root for him. The book ends almost anti-climactically, mid-scene at a crucial moment, but it remains a decent whirlwind thriller that passes through several exotic cities, and is worth the reading time, imperfections and all.

Hollywood agreed. The big brains out in Tinseltown liked Moment of Danger enough to option it and make it into a 1960 movie titled Malaga, starring Trevor Howard and Dorothy Dandridge. We’ll definitely watch it because it’s a noteworthy film, representing a rare leading role for an African American actress, and in fact was Dandridge’s last movie. Our film watching résumé is a bit thin on the Dandridge front anyway, so we now have a good reason to address that. We’ll of course report back.
Britain, Spain, Gibraltar, Málaga, Tangier, London, Dell Publications, Donald MacKenzie, Robert McGinnis, Trevor Howard, Dorothy Dandridge, cover art, literature

WAY SOUTH OF SPAIN

I know these regional airports lack the usual amenities, but a shuttle to the terminal sure would be nice.

We’ve mentioned before that we like to read books about places we’ve been, but we had no idea the 1960 thriller Seven Lies South was set in Spain and Morocco. We impulse-bought this 1962 Crest edition after seeing William P. McGivern’s name and taking in the striking Harry Bennett cover art featuring a woman, an aircraft, two bedouins, and their camels. McGivern wrote the excellent 1961 juvenile delinquent thriller Savage Streets, so that was all we needed to know. We found out in the first page that the setting, as the story opened, was Malaga, Spain, and went, “Oh, okay—even better.”

The book stars Mike Beecher, a former bomber pilot, now in his late thirties and doing a belated Lost Generation bit—idleness, parties, a rotating cast of acquaintances, and a lot of solitary reflection in a foreign land. His Sun Also Rises-style fatalism is a little tedious, in our view. After all, he was never wounded in the sex organs like Jake Barnes, and if one’s naughty bits function, there’s always reason to smile. In any case, one day he meets a beautiful young woman named Laura Meadows, who embodies his dissatisfaction:

She symbolized everything that was unobtainable, beyond his reach; the rosy and prosperous life of America, with the tides of success sweeping everyone on to fine, fat futures.

But not everyone, of course. Entire ethnicities were excluded from that sweeping tide of success. Things are unobtainable for Beecher, but only because he’s made a choice to reject them. What a luxury, to reject something, then bemoan what one “can’t” have, when many people really can’t have it. It’s not a flaw in the book, so much as a cultural blind spot—perhaps deliberately inserted by McGivern, who was generally insightful about such issues. You have to sort of smile at Beecher’s inability to appreciate being reasonably young, healthy, and knocking around the south of Spain drinking wine. Not everyone gets to do that. That’s exactly what we do, and we appreciate it every day.

Beecher is coerced into helping to steal a plane headed for Morocco, but the mission goes wildly sideways, which unexpectedly mutates the narrative into a desert survival adventure. In order to set up and progress through this section, McGivern has his characters sometimes undertake actions that don’t exactly resound with logic, but even so the book is good. McGivern can really write, even when it verges on the preposterous. He was more at home in the suburbs of Savage Streets, but he navigates the Spain and Morocco of Seven Lies South deftly enough. We have no hesitation about trying him again.

Spain, Morocco, Málaga, Tangier, Fawcett Publications, Crest Books, William P. McGivern, Harry Bennett, cover art, literature

DODGY SITUATIONS

Huh? What do you mean you tipped him enough earlier to cover our whole stay?

David Dodge was a very deft writer. When he died in 1974 The Last Match hadn’t been published, but Hard Case Crime put it out in 2006, and it falls into the same category as his To Catch a Thief, as well as jet-set grifter novels by other authors.

For us this book was tremendously entertaining. Dodge takes his protagonist to Spain, southern France, Tangier, Central America, Brazil, and other exotic locales, weaving in foreign vocabulary and mixing it all up to reflect his character’s life as an international rolling stone. Like when he explains offhand that the Brazilian soft drink guaraná is fizzy like a Portuguese vinho verde, but sweet, and perfect for mixing with cachaça.

Little things like that give the tale great flavor. And the story of an inveterate con man knocking about from country to country while stalked by a smitten aristocratic beauty (who he refers to as Nemesis) has plenty of amusements. Some say it’s not Dodge at his best because it has no plot, but stories only need to entertain. Dodge, like his main character, is remembering the highlights of his life and mixing in a portion of male-oriented fantasy.

We’ll admit to having a weakness for the tale because we’ve been to most of the places mentioned, had high times drinking guaraná mixed with cachaça, and met more than one charming hustler or beauty who arrived from parts unknown to send the town reeling. But as objectively as we can manage to assess, we think The Last Match is good, lighthearted fun. Highly recommended.

France, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Morocco, Cannes, Tangier, Marrakech, Hard Case Crime, To Catch a Thief, David Dodge, cover art, literature

THE SPY WHO LOVED HIM

MI5 files reveal another compromising John Profumo affair.

An interesting report came out of Great Britain earlier today about John Profumo, the disgraced Secretary of State for War who resigned in 1963 after it emerged that he was having an affair with Christine Keeler, who also had sexual ties to a Russian intelligence officer. When authorities learned of the potential security threat, Profumo was interrogated, at which point he denied involvement with Keeler. When his denial was found to be false, he resigned amid the spiraling scandal.

Now MI5 files have revealed that Profumo had a previous affair with a Nazi spy who may have tried to blackmail him. The woman was named Gisela Klein, and she and Profumo met at Oxford University in 1936 when he was an undergrad. During World War II she began working for Nazi intelligence, and after the war was imprisoned as a spy. However the American in charge of her jail got her released and married her. As Gisela Winegard she maintained contact with Profumo after he entered politics, and he allegedly wrote letters to her on House of Commons stationery.

There’s no evidence Profumo knew about his old flame’s Nazi connections, but he may have learned of her blackmail schemes by becoming a target. In 1951 Winegard was living in Tangier with her husband when she applied for a visa to visit Britain and listed “Jack Profumo MP” as a reference.

Observers are speculating whether Profumo may have been under pressure to help push her application through. But the visa was eventually refused because of Winegard’s Nazi past, with the head of British intelligence in Tangier also noting: “We have good reason to believe Mr. and Mrs. Winegard have recently engaged in blackmailing activities and now think it is possible their intended visit to the UK may be connected with this affair.”

Since we’ve mentioned the Profumo Affair several times, we found this to be an interesting footnote, especially in light of the ongoing U.S. Justice Department investigation into White House connections to Russian operatives. It’s curious that Profumo’s affairs would twice send him orbiting so close to spies of adversarial countries, but it doesn’t seem as if the Klein/Winegard connection will produce any real smoking gun in terms of improper favors. As for Trump and Russia, time will tell whether there’s anything there. You can read some previous posts on the infamous Profumo Affair here, here, and here.

Britain, Russia, Morocco, Tangier, Oxford, Oxford University, John Profumo, Christine Keeler, Gisela Klein, Gisela Winegard, nazis

MOROCCAN INTRIGUE

North Africa provides the setting for another Hollywood overseas adventure.

We have a strong affinity for Morocco after our adventures there a few years ago, so any movie that references that strange and wonderful country is one we must seek out. The Woman from Tangier, starring Adele Jergens, is basically another attempt to catch Casablanca lightning in a bottle. The story deals with a dancer in trouble with the law trying to flee from Morocco to Gibraltar, but being sidetracked when the ship she’s sailing on has its safe robbed and its purser murdered. Detective work follows, conducted by insurance investigator and love interest Stephen Dunne. Together he and Jergens tackle the mystery. We were unable to locate a copy of this, but as always we’ll keep at it.

As a side note, we’re fascinated by how outward looking Hollywood was during the 1940s. Though most of the productions never left Southern California, the action was set in dozens of countries. In the thriller/film noir category alone we’ve seen Gilda and Cornered (Argentina), The Shanghai Gesture, Bermuda Mystery, To Have and Have Not (Martinique), Temptation (Egypt), Sundown (Sénégal), Appointment in Honduras, and The Mask of Dimitrios (Turkey), not to mentions dozens of others set wholly or partly in France, England, Spain, and Mexico. The Woman from Tangier, then, was part of a well established trend. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1948. 

Morocco, Gibraltar, Tangier, The Woman from Tangier, Adele Jergens, Stephen Dunne, poster art, cinema

COLD SPOT

The first cut is the deepest.

You see this cover for 1958’s Jack Spot—The Man of a Thousand Cuts around the internet quite a bit, especially on auction sites, because Hank Janson, aka Stephen D. Frances, is a very popular vintage author. But you don’t often see the back cover. Since we were talking about a spread-legged/phallic symbol motif yesterday, we thought we’d show you another example. The excellent art, which we found at a very interesting website here, is uncredited, so it seems. As far as content, the book is a biography of a notorious London gangster named Jack Comer, née Jacob Camacho, who as a youth became known as Jack Spot due to a mole on his cheek. Spot was quite a troublemaker, and used his knife-fighting skills and aptitude for vice to build and maintain a criminal empire that stretched from London to Tangier. Probably he deserves a heavier treatment on this website at some point, but we’ll see about that later. However, we can pretty much guarantee we’ll get back to Hank Janson, because he wrote numerous novels, and also created a character named Hank Janson who starred in some of the books, and, just for good measure, later stepped aside and let the pseudonym Hank Janson be inhabited by several other authors. Pretty convoluted, but it’s just the type of thing we love here. 

London, Tangier, Jack SpotThe Man of a Thousand Cuts, Jack Comer, Jacob Camacho, Hank Janson, Stephen Daniel Frances, cover art, literature
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1953—The Rosenbergs Are Executed

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted for conspiracy to commit espionage related to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet spies, are executed at Sing Sing prison, in New York.

1928—Earhart Crosses Atlantic Ocean

American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, riding as a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stutz and maintained by Lou Gordon. Earhart would four years later go on to complete a trans-Atlantic flight as a pilot, leaving from Newfoundland and landing in Ireland, accomplishing the feat solo without a co-pilot or mechanic.

1939—Eugen Weidmann Is Guillotined

In France, Eugen Weidmann is guillotined in the city of Versailles outside Saint-Pierre Prison for the crime of murder. He is the last person to be publicly beheaded in France, however executions by guillotine continue away from the public until September 10, 1977, when Hamida Djandoubi becomes the last person to receive the grisly punishment.

1972—Watergate Burglars Caught

In Washington, D.C., five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel. The botched burglary was an attempt by members of the Republican Party to illegally wiretap the opposition. The resulting scandal ultimately leads to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and also results in the indictment and conviction of several administration officials.

1961—Rudolph Nureyev Defects from Soviet Union

Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects at Le Bourget airport in Paris. The western press reported that it was his love for Chilean heiress Clara Saint that triggered the event, but in reality Nuryev had been touring Europe with the Kirov Ballet and defected in order to avoid punishment for his continual refusal to abide by rules imposed upon the tour by Moscow.

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INSATIABLE APPETITE

George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

TIT FOR TAT

Swapping literature was a major subset of midcentury publishing. Ten years ago we shared a good-sized collection of swapping paperbacks from assorted authors.

TO DIE FOR

Cover art by Italian illustrator Giovanni Benvenuti for the James Bond novel Vivi e lascia morire, better known as Live and Let Die.

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Uncredited cover art in comic book style for Harry Whittington's You'll Die Next!

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