Vintage Pulp

February 12 2025

NYLON RUN

The Woman from Tangier started unravelling about the time the studio signed off on the budget.

Above is a poster in six-sheet format for the adventure The Woman from Tangier, along with a nice, mystery-laden promo from Italian artist Anselmo Ballester. We talked briefly about this movie a while back, but didn’t have a copy to watch. Now we do, and we checked it out last night. It stars Stephen Dunne as an insurance investigator looking into the death of a ship’s purser gunned down trying to abscond with the boat’s earnings—fifty-thousand pounds. As viewers we see in the first minutes of the film that this tale is false, and is actually a frame-up and murder staged by the ship’s captain.

Adele Jergens co-stars as a dancer named—we’re not making this up—Nylon, who had been trying to flee Tangier for Gibraltar but is now stuck in port while Dunne’s investigation plays out. When the captain’s criminal partner, who is a murderer too, uses the unwitting Nylon to hide from the cops, she’s soon caught between the two killers and deemed a loose end. She holds the key to Dunne’s investigation, but will she go to him for help? Or run to the police? Or maybe the U.S. embassy?

To us it didn’t matter because The Woman from Tangier is a throwaway thriller too b-level to offer much fun. We’re always drawn to movies and books sets outside the U.S., particularly in exotic lands. And having been to Tangier, we hoped for at least a little authentic Moroccan flavor, but it was too much to ask from a cheapie potboiler shot by Columbia Pictures entirely in Los Angeles featuring the lightweight Dunne and his mustache in the lead role. In its favor, The Woman from Tangier is short. Sixty-six minutes. So it certainly won’t cost much of your life should you decide to queue it up. It premiered today in 1948.

Italy, Morocco, Tangier, Gibraltar, Columbia Pictures, The Woman from Tangier, Adele Jergens, Stephen Dunne, Ian MacDonald, Donna Martell, Anselmo Ballester, cinema, poster art, movie review

Vintage Pulp

February 12 2017

MOROCCAN INTRIGUE

North Africa provides the setting for another Hollywood overseas adventure.

We have a strong affinity for Morocco after our adventures there a few years ago, so any movie that references that strange and wonderful country is one we must seek out. The Woman from Tangier, starring Adele Jergens, is basically another attempt to catch Casablanca lightning in a bottle. The story deals with a dancer in trouble with the law trying to flee from Morocco to Gibraltar, but being sidetracked when the ship she’s sailing on has its safe robbed and its purser murdered. Detective work follows, conducted by insurance investigator and love interest Stephen Dunne. Together he and Jergens tackle the mystery. We were unable to locate a copy of this, but as always we’ll keep at it.

As a side note, we’re fascinated by how outward looking Hollywood was during the 1940s. Though most of the productions never left Southern California, the action was set in dozens of countries. In the thriller/film noir category alone we’ve seen Gilda and Cornered (Argentina), The Shanghai Gesture, Bermuda Mystery, To Have and Have Not (Martinique), Temptation (Egypt), Sundown (Sénégal), Appointment in Honduras, and The Mask of Dimitrios (Turkey), not to mentions dozens of others set wholly or partly in France, England, Spain, and Mexico. The Woman from Tangier, then, was part of a well established trend. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1948.

Morocco, Gibraltar, Tangier, The Woman from Tangier, Adele Jergens, Stephen Dunne, poster art, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

November 6

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.

November 6

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.

November 5

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.

November 5

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.

November 4

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.

November 4

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.