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

THE NAME OF THE GAM

How can you play unless you know the rules?

Once again we delve into Hollywood name changes, this time with née Rita MacKay, who had a pretty good name to work with, we’d say, but changed it to Rita Gam and achieved stardom. We may put together a list one day of the most interesting showbiz name changes—Diana Fluck to Diana Dors, Archibald Leach to Cary Grant, Willis Van Schaack to Lili St. Cyr, Ingeborg Klinkerfuss to Kaaren Verne, et al. We kind of just made a list there, didn’t we? Well, a longer list. Or maybe that notion will go into the giant bin of forgotten ideas for posts never brought to fruition.

The point is, in Hollywood it can help to have a catchy name. It isn’t an absolute rule, but without a cool handle some aspirants feel hobbled right from the jump. Gam jumped into television to start, managed to fit in some movies, but was more of a small screen star, appearing in shows like Mannix, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Rockford Files. Despite a pretty extensive résumé we can’t recall seeing her in anything except the classic detective drama Klute. We’ll watch that again, because it’s good, and we’ll see what else we can dig up. These shots were made to promote the 1954 drama Night People. Gam and her gams will return.

Night People, Klute, Mannix, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Rockford Files, Rita Gam, Rita MacKay

WHOA NEILE

Let's not go off half-cocked.


This promo image with white markings shows Filipina actress Neile Adams, whose nickname was Nellie, entertaining dangerous thoughts with a machine pistol at her side. Adams is known, these days, for being the wife of screen legend Steve McQueen, but she appeared in about ten films and an equal number of television shows, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Police Woman, and The Rockford Files. There are versions of this photo with McQueen pasted into the background, so for the fun of it we added one below.
Philippines, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Police Woman, The Rockford Files, Neile Adams, Steve McQueen

THE MARLOWE MAN

Garner's portrayal of a classic detective feels a lot like a Rockford Files test run.
Raymond Chandler’s novels have been adapted to the screen several times. One of the lesser known efforts was 1969’s Marlowe, which was based on the 1949 novel The Little Sister and starred future Rockford Files centerpiece James Garner as Chandler’s famed Philip Marlowe. You see a cool Spanish popster for the movie above, painted by Fernandez Zarza-Pérez, also known as Jano. As usual when we show you a foreign promo for a U.S. movie, it’s because the domestic promo isn’t up to the same quality. In this case the U.S. promo is almost identical, but in black and white. The choice was clear.

Since you know what to expect from a Chandler adaptation, we don’t need to go into the plot much, except to say it deals with an icepick murderer and ties into show business and blackmail. What’s more important is whether the filmmakers made good use of the original material, either by remaining true to its basic ideas or by imagining something new and better. They weren’t going for new in this case. They were providing a vehicle for the charismatic Garner and ended up with a movie that features him in the same mode he would later perfect in Rockford.

Marlowe has a few elements of note. Rita Moreno plays a burlesque dancer, and it’s one of her sexier roles. Bruce Lee makes an appearance as a thug named Winslow Wong. Garner is the star, so it isn’t a spoiler to say that Lee doesn’t stand a chance. He’s dispatched in unlikely but amusing fashion. Overall, Marlowe feels like an ambitious television movie and plays like a test run for Rockford, but it’s fun stuff. We recommend it for fans of Chandler, Moreno, Lee, Carroll O’Connor (who co-stars as a police lieutenant), and especially Garner. It premiered in the U.S. in 1969, but didn’t reach Spain until today in 1976.
Spain, Marlowe, The Rockford Files, James Garner, Gayle Hunnicutt, Carroll O'Connor, Rita Moreno, Bruce Lee, Francisco Fernández-Zarza Pérez, Jano, Raymond Chandler, burlesque, poster art, cinema, movie review

CAMERA SHY

It’s when the second set of photos were made that she probably felt like hiding.

Is Suzanne Somers really a femme fatale? Good question. Well, before she became extremely famous playing Chrissy Snow on the 1970s/80s sitcom Three’s Company, she had bit parts in such films as Bullitt, Magnum Force, and the populist thriller Billy Jack Goes to Washington. She also guested on Starsky and Hutch and The Rockford Files. Some may consider all of that a thin résumé. In that case, check out her booking photos below—that’s instant fatale credibility. Those are from March 1970, when she was arrested in San Francisco for passing bad checks, and the bikini shot showing her having a much better time in Puerto Vallarta is from later the same year.

San Francisco, Bullitt, Magnum Force, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, Starsky and Hutch, The Rockford Files, Three’s Company, Suzanne Somers, mugshots
Femme Fatale Image

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.

1949—Dragnet Premiers

NBC radio broadcasts the cop drama Dragnet for the first time. It was created by, produced by, and starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. The show would later go on to become a successful television program, also starring Webb.

1973—Lake Dies Destitute

Veronica Lake, beautiful blonde icon of 1940s Hollywood and one of film noir’s most beloved fatales, dies in Burlington, Vermont of hepatitis and renal failure due to long term alcoholism. After Hollywood, she had drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post article briefly revived interest in her, but at the time of her death she was broke and forgotten.

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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

Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.

INSATIABLE APPETITE

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

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