INSIDER JOB

The National Insider takes the hatchet to Marlon Brando with the help of his ex-wife.

This issue of the tabloid The National Insider from today in 1965 gives us Lee Harvey Oswald’s military background, Jayne Mansfield’s thoughts on abortion, and Madelyn Murray’s views on religion. But all those pieces are trumped by the excoriating hatchet job on Marlon Brando written by his ex-wife Anna Kashfi. She reveals that Brando slapped her, tried to bully her into giving up her acting career, and never forgave her for being less than forthcoming about her eastern Indian ancestry. She also slams Harry Belafonte for lying to her to cover for the time Brando spent wooing the French actress France Nguyen. Kashfi had a lot to get off her chest, so much that Insider featured her revelations in four consecutive issues, basically turning her into a guest columnist complete with byline and inset photo. She must have really gotten an appetite for this kind of writing, because in 1979 she published the book Brando for Breakfast, which is still regarded as one of the most shocking tell-alls ever written. In that one she claimed Brando had sex with a chicken. For the love of God, cock-a-doodle-don’t. 

But with friends like these, who needs enemies?

The National Insider gets meta- physical in this fanciful story published today in 1963 about a cursed gemstone killing Marilyn Monroe. They’re talking about the Moon of Baroda, left, a 24-carat yellow diamond found in western India and owned for almost five-hundred years by a royal dynasty known as the Gaekwad Maharajas, and briefly by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who was the only female monarch of the Hapsburg Dynasty.

Sounds like something that absolutely needs to be stolen, right? But before you break out your ski mask and suction cups, you should know that the diamond supposedly brings grave misfortune to anyone who carries it across the sea. Maybe that explains why its eventual American owner, Meyer Rosenbaum of Detroit’s Meyer Jewellery Company, gave the stone to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe wore it while filming Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, during which she performed her immortal materialist ditty “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” That was in 1953. Monroe lived nine more years, and we’re pretty sure she had some laughs during that span, so it’s a stretch to say the diamond did her in, but it makes a great story.

In our research we actually discovered that most famous diamonds have curses associated with them, including the Hope Diamond (whose first owner was supposedly torn apart by wild dogs), the Kahinoor Diamond (which can only be safely worn by women), and the Black Orlov (three of whose owners committed suicide). Interestingly, all of these diamonds came from India, and two are said to have been pried loose from the eyes of Hindu gods. So basically, you mess with Brahma and you get the horns.

We love the idea of karma, the possibility that evildoing will get you killed and reincarnated as a louse in the ass of a water buffalo, but perhaps a more scientific way of looking at all this is simply that diamonds are forever and we are not. Thus misfortune of one sort or another is always waiting for us humans, while our diamonds always survive to be passed along to the next mere mortal. But just to be on the safe side, we’ve told our girlfriends that we will never give them diamonds, or for that matter jewelry of any sort. It’s for their own good, really.

Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Parker Brothers Buys Monopoly

The board game company Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie, who had designed the game (originally called The Landlord’s Game) to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for them. Parker Brothers quickly turns Monopoly into the biggest selling board game in America.

1991—Gene Tierney Passes Away

American actress Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties in Hollywood history and star of the seminal film noir Laura, dies in Houston, Texas of emphysema. Tierney had begun smoking while young as a way to help lower her high voice, and was hooked on cigarettes the rest of her life.

1937—Hitler Reveals His Plans for Lebensraum

Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting with Nazi officials and states his intention to acquire “lebensraum,” or living space for Germany. An old German concept that dated from 1901, Hitler had written of it in Mein Kampf, and now possessed the power to implement it. Basically the idea, as Hitler saw it, was for the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations to the east, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate those lands with a Germanic upper class.

1991—Fred MacMurray Dies

American actor Fred MacMurray dies of pneumonia related to leukemia. While most remember him as a television actor, earlier in his career he starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity, one of the greatest films noir ever made.

1955—Cy Young Dies

American baseball player Cy Young, who had amassed 511 wins pitching for five different teams from 1890 to 1911, dies at the age of 88. Today Major League Baseball’s yearly award given to the best pitcher of each season is named after Young.

1970—Feral Child Found in Los Angeles

A thirteen year-old child who had been kept locked in a room for her entire life is found in the Los Angeles house of her parents. The child, named Genie, could only speak twenty words and was not able even to walk normally because she had spent her life strapped to a potty chair during the day and bound in a sleeping bag at night. Genie ended up in a series of foster homes and was given language training but after years of effort by various benefactors never reached a point where she could interact normally in society.

1957—Soviets Launch Dog into Space

The Soviet Union launches the first ever living creature into the cosmos when it blasts a stray dog named Laika into orbit aboard the capsule Sputnik II. Laika is fitted with various monitoring devices that provide information about the effects of launch and weightlessness on a living creature. Urban myth has it that Laika starved to death after a few days in space, but she actually died of heat stress just a few hours into the journey.

Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.
T’as triché marquise by George Maxwell, published in 1953 with art by Jacques Thibésart, also known as Nik.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web