EAGER TO POLICE

Sommer time and the living is easy.

The above issue of the venerable National Police Gazette from July 1969 stars German bombshell Elke Sommer, who is described as “Hollywood’s No.1 Nudie.” In the interview, Sommer reveals that when she paints on a hilltop outside her Beverly Hills house she does so naked. The reason? “It’s the best way to get a tan all over.” She also states that she thinks film nudity is fine as long as it isn’t done for purely erotic purposes.

Very interesting, considering she had already posed—purely erotically in our opinion—for Playboy magazine, and would appear nude in men’s magazines several more times. The photos in panel two (at top) are from Sommer’s 1963 war drama The Victors, and as happened often in those days, even though she did not appear completely nude in the finished film, she performed the scenes that way. Which of course means the excised frames ended up in various people’s pockets, and soon became public. Whether this was an accident or a publicity technique is impossible to say, but we suspect the latter.

In any case, it’s clear Gazette editors had an uncensored shot. Back then they had to cover Sommer’s naughty bits, but we don’t, and you can see the uncovered version, along with another image from the same scene, just below. Elsewhere in this issue you get Aristotle Onassis, Jake LaMotta, Denny McLain, the hidden sex problems of American husbands, and more.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1971—Mariner Orbits Mars

The NASA space probe Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully when it begins circling Mars. Among the images it transmits back to Earth are photos of Olympus Mons, a volcano three times taller than Mount Everest and so wide at its base that, due to curvature of the planet, its peak would be below the horizon to a person standing on its outer slope.

1912—Missing Explorer Robert Scott Found

British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his men are found frozen to death on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where they had been pinned down and immobilized by bad weather, hunger and fatigue. Scott’s expedition, known as the Terra Nova expedition, had attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole only to be devastated upon finding that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by five weeks. Scott wrote in his diary: “The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God! This is an awful place.”

1933—Nessie Spotted for First Time

Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster while walking back from church along the shore of the Loch near the town of Foyers. Only one photo came out, but of all the images of the monster, this one is considered the most authentic.

1969—My Lai Massacre Revealed

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre, which had occurred in Vietnam more than a year-and-a-half earlier but been covered up by military officials. That day, U.S. soldiers killed between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians, including women, the elderly, and infants. The event devastated America’s image internationally and galvanized the U.S. anti-war effort. For Hersh’s efforts he received a Pulitzer Prize.

1918—The Great War Ends

Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside of Compiègne in France, ending The Great War, later to be called World War I. About ten million people died, and many millions more were wounded. The conflict officially stops at 11:00 a.m., and today the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is annually honored in some European nations with two minutes of silence.

1924—Dion O'Banion Gunned Down

Dion O’Banion, leader of Chicago’s North Side Gang is assassinated in his flower shop by members of rival Johnny Torrio’s gang, sparking the bloody five-year war between the North Side Gang and the Chicago Outfit that culminates in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

1940—Walt Disney Becomes Informer

Walt Disney begins serving as an informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI, with instructions to report on Hollywood subversives. He eventually testifies before HUAC, where he fingers several people as Communist agitators. He also accuses the Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front.

A collection of red paperback covers from Dutch publisher De Vrije Pers.
Uncredited art for Hans Lugar's Line-Up! for Scion American publishing.
Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.

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