Femmes Fatales

January 31 2025

LANA TURNER OVERDRIVE

Here's your drink. I broke all the glasses during my last uncontrollable rage, but you can use this paper cup I gargle with.

Above: a stunner of an image of U.S. actress Lana Turner made when she was filming The Bad and the Beautiful. It’s from 1952, but the movie went into wide release in January 1953, so you’ll sometimes see that date on the photo too. Turner might be on the list of twenty-five or so vintage stars with whom we’d most like to have had a drink. Set aside whether she’d have considered having a drink with us—highly doubtful, but that’s why it’s a hypothetical. In any case, we’d start with two actual glasses.

The Bad and the Beautiful, Lana Turner

Femmes Fatales

July 7 2019

ONCE THE SMOKE CLEARS

Gloria Grahame's three-step plan for dealing with a problem—aim, fire, assess.

These photos of U.S. actress Gloria Grahame come from one of our favorite old movies, the film noir The Big Heat, in which she starred with Glenn Ford. How many good films was Grahame in? Plenty, including The Bad and the Beautiful, Crossfire, the amazing In a Lonely Place, Human Desire, The Glass Wall, and Odds Against Tomorrow. Outside the drama/noir genres, she was also in It’s a Wonderful Life, which is one of the most watched U.S. films of all time, and Oklahoma!. In The Big Heat she plays the prototypical film noir bad girl who wants to be good but has a hard time getting there. We won’t say more. Just check it out. The photo is from 1953.

The Big Heat, The Bad and the Beautiful, Crossfire, In a Lonely Place, Human Desire, The Glass Wall, Odds Against Tomorrow, It's a Wonderful Life, Oklahoma!, Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, film noir

Femmes Fatales

January 28 2015

GOLDEN GRAHAME

It was a wonderful Life.

An ethereal Gloria Grahame poses for a promo photo during a session that would produce a famous cover for Life. Grahame was a true great of acting who starred in the classics It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bad and the Beautiful, Human Bondage, and Oklahoma!, but who we prefer to remember for her film noir roles—among them: In a Lonely Place, The Big Heat, Crossfire, Sudden Fear, and Naked Alibi. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she took the town by storm and made an indelible mark in film. The above photo and cover below are from 1946.

Life Magazine, Oklahoma!, In a Lonely Place, The Big Heat, Crossfire, Sudden Fear, Naked Alibi, The Bad and the Beautiful, Human Bondage, Gloria Grahame, film noir, cinema

Vintage Pulp

June 10 2013

ILLUSTRIERTE CLASSICS

Bad luck and trouble in post-war Germany.

We’re back to the West German publication Illustrierte Film-Bühne today, supplementing our post from two months ago. These examples are all from American dramas or films noir produced during the 1940s and early 1950s, but which premiered in West Germany later, typically 1954 or after. You can see the earlier IFB collection here.

Vintage Pulp

April 8 2013

BAD COMPANY

He who goes up must one day come down.

This beautiful poster for Vicente Minelli’s 1952 drama The Bad and the Beautiful was made for the film’s French release as Les ensorceles. A behind-the-scenes look at the rise of a legendary Hollywood producer, the story is told in triptych, with each section focused on someone the producer betrayed during his rise to the top. The three sections are wrapped in a framing device wherein the betrayed have been called together to hear the producer’s pitch for working together again. Of course, all of them are too angry to consider such a collaboration—at least at first.

The real attraction here is seeing 1950s Hollywood turn its camera inward for a look at the machinations behind the magic of movies. The cast—Kirk Douglas, Dick Powell, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, and Gloria Grahame—range from excellent to adequate, and the story of ruthlessness being rewarded in Tinseltown has a contemporary feel. The saying goes that it’s best to be nice to everyone you meet on the way up because you run into the same people on the way down. Doubtless that’s true, but even better advice would be to never come down at all.

Turning our attention to the poster, you may notice that the design was inspired by the promo shot just below. Except—hold on a sec. Is that Douglas and Turner? No, it isn’t. It’s Gilbert Roland and super hottie Elaine Stewart. The producers must have liked their dance bit so much they decided to use it as inspiration for the promo art, basically putting Douglas’s and Turner’s heads atop Roland’s and Stewart’s bodies. That’s like being left on the cutting room floor, but somehow even worse. In Stewart’s case at least, we will be sure to get back to both her head and body. Les ensorceles premiered in France today in 1953.

France, Les ensorceles, The Bad and the Beautiful, Kirk Douglas, Dick Powell, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Gloria Grahame, Elaine Stewart, Vicente Minelli, poster art, cinema, movie review

Femmes Fatales

November 14 2012

HORSING AROUND

Having a merry go ’round in Hollywood.

American actress and model Elaine Stewart first caught Hollywood’s attention as See magazine’s Miss See for the month of January 1952. She immediately launched a film career, winning small roles in seven movies that year, and eventually appearing in The Tattered Dress, Night Passage, High Hell, The Bad and the Beautiful and other productions, as well as in several television shows. This shot was made in 1954 when she was filming MGM’s musical classic Brigadoon.

Brigadoon, Night Passage, High Hell, Brigadoon, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Tattered Dress, See Magazine, Elaine Stewart, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 17

1955—Disneyland Begins Operations

The amusement park Disneyland opens in Orange County, California for 6,000 invitation-only guests, before opening to the general public the following day.

July 17

1959—Holiday Dies Broke

Legendary singer Billie Holiday, who possessed one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, dies in the hospital of cirrhosis of the liver. She had lost her earnings to swindlers over the years, and upon her death her bank account contains seventy cents.

July 16

1941—DiMaggio Hit Streak Reaches 56

New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.

July 15

1939—Adams Completes Around-the-World Air Journey

American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.

July 15

1955—Nobel Prize Winners Unite Against Nukes

Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: “We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.”

July 14

1921—Sacco & Vanzetti Convicted

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted in Dedham, Massachusetts of killing their shoe company’s paymaster. Even at the time there are serious questions about their guilt, and whether they are being railroaded because of their Italian ethnicity and anarchist political beliefs.

TRICK SHOT ARTIST

Uncredited art for Poker de blondes by Oscar Montgomery, aka José del Valle, from the French publisher Éditions le Trotteur in 1953.

DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.

Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.

LOVES OF A BLONDE