vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
British actress Veronica Carlson’s first screen role was an uncredited bit in Casino Royale, and her latest role is in 2018’s upcoming House of the Gorgon. In between she became well known as a regular player in various Hammer Studios horror films. The above promo image was made when she appeared on the British television series The Saint. She looks a bit sinful, though, don’t you think. Copyright 1969.
British actress Janine Gray must really be suffering in this cold. She was born in Bombay, India, and though she left at age five, may have been there just long enough to get used to the tropical weather. Her show business career was short, but she did appear in some of the better television series of the 1960s, including The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Saint, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The shot above was made to promote her role in the cinematic comedy Quick Before It Melts, which is set in Antarctica. Luckily for Gray it was filmed in California. But that’s a place that can feel pretty cold too, when you have no pants. See below. 1964 copyright on these images.
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale.
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule’s main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule’s descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission.
Austro-Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.
The newspaper Pravda, or “Truth”, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
