vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Dorothy Malone and cars go nicely together. We learned this by watching her 1955 b-thriller The Fast and the Furious, in which she’s the proud owner of a Jaguar Roadster. Above you see her in another amazing machine, a 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible. At least that’s what we think it is. It doesn’t mater, though. Any car with Malone inside is a luxury vehicle.
A great title cannot go unborrowed forever. The Fast and the Furious would be a good name for a film noir, a war movie, or even a romantic melodrama (young and restless, anyone?). So it was a good fit for the action franchise starring Vin Diesel. But it was first used for a little crime drama released today in 1955 starring John Ireland and Dorothy Malone. In the film, Ireland, who’s been framed for murder, breaks out of jail, takes Malone hostage in her convertible Jaguar XK 120 roadster, and enters a cross-border road race hoping to get into Mexico. That’s a killer concept for an action movie, but this is American International Pictures, which means it’s done low budget, with lots of projection efx and stock footage in the action scenes, and minimal work on the script. But while the movie isn’t great, it’s certainly suitable as a Saturday night popcorn muncher. Invite witty friends, enjoy the cars, laugh at the repartee, and marvel over Dorothy Malone.
Whenever a very old actor dies you inevitably read that he or she had been one of the last surviving remnants of Hollywood’s golden age. In reality, there are many actors and actresses still living from that period and above you see a good example in Dorothy Malone, who began her cinema career in 1943 and appeared in films such as Artists and Models, 1955’s The Fast and The Furious, and of course The Big Sleep, in which she played the world’s hottest bookstore clerk. Not sure of the year on the cowgirl shot, but we think 1947 is a very good guess.
Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.
In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.
Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.
A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.
