Intl. Notebook

June 27 2016

THAT’S THE TICKET

When worlds collide you want front row seats.

So, everything we write today, pretend we wrote it yesterday. Ready? We talked briefly about Muhammad Ali’s proto-MMA experience a few weeks ago. We’ve been saving this item to share. It’s an actual unused ticket stub for the Muhammad Ali-Antonio Inoki exhibition match at the Nippon Budokan arena ~~today~~ yesterday in 1976, exactly ~~forty years~~ forty years and one day ago. Oh yes. This is rare. At least we think it is, because we’ve never seen another one. We’ve also uploaded it vertically so you can get a good look at it by dragging it to your desktop and rotating it.

Japan, Tokyo, Muhammad Ali, Antonio Inoki, boxing

Intl. Notebook

June 7 2016

WHEN HE WAS KING

Ali invades Japan and helps invent MMA.

When Muhammad Ali died last week we remembered we had some rarities laying around, but it took a few days to find them. These are the items we were searching for—posters from Ali’s June 1976 match at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan arena with Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki. In what would now be called a mixed martial arts bout, Ali and Inoki fought to a draw, however this was not a freeform battle, but rather a tightly regulated exhibition match. Nevertheless, Ali’s leg was so damaged from Inoki’s repeated kicks that an infection set in and for a brief time the medical discussion turned to amputation. Today the Budokan match is considered by Ali fans an embarrassment in the boxer’s storied career, but it was also an important precursor to MMA, a case study in how boxing and MMA are incompatible sports, and yet another example of Ali’s trailblazing nature. He was the king and he will be missed.

Japan, Tokyo, Muhammad Ali, Antonio Inoki, boxing, deaths

Intl. Notebook

May 4 2016

DANCERS GOTTA DANCE

It's a hard job but they make it look easy.

What better way to complement the collection of paperback covers above than with photos of actual dancers doing what they do best—making their strenuous and often unglamorous work look easy and fun? We present assorted burlesque dancers, showgirls, and strippers from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, both onstage and off, photographed in such hot spots as London, Paris, Tokyo, Rome, New Orleans, and of course New York City. Among the performers: La Savona, Lilly Christine, Lynne O’Neill, the gorgeous Misty Ayres, Patti Cross, Tina Marshall, Carol Doda, Nejla Ates, Barbara Köckritz (we know, we know) fully nude, Lili St. Cyr, Wildcat Frenchie, and more. If you like these, check out our previous set of dancers here.

Vintage Pulp

February 18 2016

LIGHTS OUT

When the sun goes down in the city.

Hotels, museums, and restaurants are all important aspects of travel, but what you really need to know is where to score hookers and cocaine, right? Or is that just us? Above, assorted covers from MacFadden-Bartell’s famed sleaze series After Dark, published late 1960s and early 1970s, and which purports to tell readers where and how vice can be found in different cities, as well as the unique variations that exist in each place. Don’t leave home without one. And a pack of condoms.

Vintage Pulp

February 6 2016

OFFICE HOURS

Junko can't come to the phone right now—she's taking dictation.

OL nikki: Nureta satsutaba premiered in Japan today in 1974 and starred Aoi Nakajima as a woman named Junko who’s seduced by a banker involved in a scheme to embezzle 900 million yen. That’s like $350 in U.S. money. Just kidding—it’s actually a shade over a million dollars in 1974, we think. We gather that the inspiration for this film was an actual embezzlement scheme at Tokyo’s Shiga Bank. The “OL” of the title stands for “office lady,” and the entire title would translate roughly as “office lady diary: wet wad of money.” Hah hah. Wad. Um, this was the fourth entry in what was a very popular series, with seven made all together, though not all starring Nakajima. We have posters for other OL movies and we’ll get those up down the line, hopefully.

Japan, Tokyo, OL nikki: Nureta satsutaba, Aoi Nakajima, roman porno, poster art, cinema

Intl. Notebook

July 5 2015

SEEING RED

Sugimoto heats up summer in Tokyo.

We like to keep an eye out for these cinema flyers advertising vintage pinku flicks because they usually feature imaginative reworkings of iconic imagery. In this case, Miki Sugimoto appears front and center on a flyer produced for a film festival at the Jinbōchō Theater, an arts complex comprising a theatre, cinema, and performance space opened in 2007 by Shogakukan publishers in the Jinbōchō neighborhood of Chiyoda, Tokyo. The shot of Sugimoto comes from her 1974 pinku actioner Zeroka no onna: Akai wappa, aka Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, which plays from today through the end of July on a slate with fifteen other films of the non-pinku variety.

The nicely designed text in the bubbles at the center of the poster says something like, “Films born from summer vacation special project cartoons,” or put another way, it’s a summer festival of films whose source material were all mangas—i.e. Japanese comic books. Zeroka no onna: Akai wappa was

based on a manga by Tōru Shinohara, who also wrote the manga that inspired the hit Meiko Kaji series Female Prisoner Scorpion.

As a side note, the Jinbōchō Theater is an amazing structure designed by acclaimed architects Nikken Sekkei, and we uploaded a shot of it so you could have a look. It’s an intimate space—99 seats, which means it was made specifically for film revivals. Generally we’re all about vintage stuff and preserving history, particularly fantastic old cinemas, but nothing significant was torn down to build the Jinbōchō Theater, and in a city as modern as Tokyo a structure like this fits right in. If you’re a film buff and you happen to be in that region of the globe you now have something to do in July.

Japan, Tokyo, Jinbōchō Theater, Shogakukan Inc., Zeroka no onna: Akai wappa, Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, Miki Sugimoto, Toru Shinohara, pinku, pinky violence, cinema

Hollywoodland

March 7 2014

MIDNIGHT SUGGESTION

She may well have been wild, wicked and willing but we doubt she ever said it to Midnight.

Above, a Midnight from today 1966 with cover star Nobu McCarthy, wild, wicked and willing. Or so Midnight claims. Born Nobu Atsumi in Canada of Japanese extraction, McCarthy won the 1955 Miss Tokyo pageant, and later parlayed a chance Los Angeles encounter with a talent agent into a television and theater career dotted with film roles. As far as Midnight’s suggestion of availability goes, McCarthy was already married with children by 1966, and probably already too well-known to have to stoop to cheap publicity techniques on the covers of second rate tabloids. Which means we’re putting this quote entirely on the editors. After many years on screen and stage, McCarthy died of an aortal aneurysm while filming Gaijin—Ama-me Como Sou in 2002. Below is a still of her from her first credited film role in the 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy The Geisha Boy.

Japan, Canada, Tokyo, Midnight, GaijinAma-me Como Sou, The Geisha Boy, Nobu McCarthy, Nobu Atsumi, Jerry Lewis, cinema, television, tabloid

Intl. Notebook

October 8 2012

MARRIAGE OF INCONVENIENCE

She wasn't really a blind woman—she only played one in the movies.

Last week we watched Meiko Kaji’s Kaidan nobori ryu, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, and were too busy being cute with our summary of the film to mention that the blind woman was played by Hiroko (Hoki) Tokuda, who is better known to many people as author Henry Miller’s last wife. When they met she was working as a lounge pianist in L.A. and Miller, who had established himself as one of the most important American writers ever, was living in Pacific Palisades.

Tokuda told the New York Times in 2011: “Henry started asking every week to meet me. I realized he just wanted a Japanese woman to add to his collection, and I would always ask myself, ‘Why me?’ Soon after we met, he started telling people he was going to marry me.” And marry her he did in September 1967. She was twenty-nine and Miller, who had been born in 1891, was on the verge of turning seventy-six.

By early 1970 Tokuda had left Miller and was back in Japan, where that year she filmed Blind Woman’s Curse. Miller died in 1980, and Tokuda is in Japan today, running a piano bar called Tropic of Cancer, after her ex-husband’s most famous book. She says her marriage with Miller was never consummated, which may or may not be true—Miller isn’t around to contradict her. She also says she only married him for a green card,

and has even joked about him being a bad kisser. “Terrible,” she describes it. “Wet.”

It strikes us as a bit cynical for her to pretend the marriage was an inconvenient mistake when she’s borrowing the name of his most famous book in order to brand her bar, but that’s just our opinion. In any case, being a pulp site, we just thought we should offer a little background info, since Tokuda was married to a guy who changed English language literature forever. The above photos both date from September 1967, when their love—if it ever existed—was new.

Japan, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York Times, Tropic of Cancer, Blind Woman’s Curse, Kaidan nobori ryu, Henry Miller, Hoki Tokuda, Meiko Kaji, cinema

Intl. Notebook

March 7 2012

VOICE LESSONS

The name of the Rose.

Above, two mugshots from today 1946 of Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who was one of many women who broadcast English-language radio from Tokyo during World War II. These broadcasts were aimed at Allied personnel in the Pacific, and the soldiers referred to all the women collectively as Tokyo Rose, despite whatever they actually called themselves on air. D’Aquino called herself Orphan Ann, and her radio stints were limited to twenty-minute segments on Radio Tokyo. It wasn’t much time, but her low, raspy voice made an impression on listeners. What did she say? History.net answers that question by providing an example of a typical D’Aquino intro:

Hello there, Enemies! How’s tricks? This is Ann of Radio Tokyo, and we’re just going to begin our regular program of music, news and the Zero Hour for our friends—I mean, our enemies!—in Australia and the South Pacific. So be on your guard, and mind the children don’t hear! All set? OK. Here’s the first blow at your morale—the Boston Pops playing ‘Strike Up the Band!’

When the war ended D’Aquino, who was an American citizen, was taken into custody and shipped back to the U.S., where she was tried and convicted of treason. There was no actual proof that she had done anything traitorous—in fact her humor-tinged broadcasts had often undermined her Japanese employers’ intentions—but she neverthelesslanguished in prison for six years. D’Aquino’s legal troubles only ended in 1977, when U.S. president Gerald R. Ford pardoned her after evidence emerged that witnesses had lied at her trial. Cleared of wrongdoing, and the constant threat of deportation lifted, D’Aquino lived the rest of her days quietly and died in 2006 at age 90.

Japan, Tokyo, World War II, Tokyo Rose, Iva Toguri D’Aquino, trial, mugshots

Vintage Pulp

March 7 2011

BEST FRIEND

Star and stripes forever.

Above, Marilyn Monroe on the cover of the Japanese cinema magazine Eiga No Tomo, aka Friend of Movies, which published between 1947 and 1957. This issue, with its candy-like striped motif, is from March 1954, promoting her film How To Marry a Millionaire, which would open in Tokyo on March 17.

Japan, Tokyo, How To Marry a Millionaire, Eiga no tomo, Marilyn Monroe

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

March 23

2011—Elizabeth Taylor Dies

American actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career began at age 12 when she starred in National Velvet, and who would eventually be nominated for five Academy Awards as best actress and win for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dies of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles. During her life she had been hospitalized more than 70 times.

March 22

1963—Profumo Denies Affair

In England, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denies any impropriety with showgirl Christine Keeler and threatens to sue anyone repeating the allegations. The accusations involve not just infidelity, but the possibility acquaintances of Keeler might be trying to ply Profumo for nuclear secrets. In June, Profumo finally resigns from the government after confessing his sexual involvement with Keeler and admitting he lied to parliament.

March 22

1978—Karl Wallenda Falls to His Death

World famous German daredevil and high-wire walker Karl Wallenda, founder of the acrobatic troupe The Flying Wallendas, falls to his death attempting to walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Wallenda is seventy-three years old at the time, but it is a 30 mph wind, rather than age, that is generally blamed for sending him from the wire.

March 22

2006—Swedish Spy Stig Wennerstrom Dies

Swedish air force colonel Stig Wennerström, who had been convicted in the 1970s of passing Swedish, U.S. and NATO secrets to the Soviet Union over the course of fifteen years, dies in an old age home at the age of ninety-nine. The Wennerström affair, as some called it, was at the time one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War.

March 21

1963—Alcatraz Closes

The federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes. The island had been home to a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison over the years. In 1972, it would become a national recreation area open to tourists, and it would receive national landmark designations in 1976 and 1986.

March 20

1916—Einstein Publishes General Relativity

German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. Among the effects of the theory are phenomena such as the curvature of space-time, the bending of rays of light in gravitational fields, faster than light universe expansion, and the warping of space time around a rotating body.