Owning a whorehouse has been fun, ladies, but a man of my wickedness has a destiny. I'm running for Congress.
Above is a cover by Lu Kimmel, an artist we’ve featured onlyoncebefore, but who painted many paperback fronts, and delved as well into advertising, portraiture, andfine art. We’ll see him again later. Joseph Millard’s The Wickedest Man was originally published as The Gentleman from Hell and was based on real-life figure Ben Hogan—not the golfer. So what did the evil Hogan do? He was a con man, a murderer, a spy for both the Union and Confederate armies during the U.S. Civil War, a brawler, a jury tamperer, a whorehouse proprietor, and worst of all—as indicated by our subhead—a politician. There are several books about the guy, but Millard’s is probably the best known. This Gold Medal edition came in 1954.
This is very nice cover work for Everett and Olga Webber’s U.S. Civil War novel Bound Girl. The art is by Sam Cherry, one of the best. After a 1949 hardback debut the book came out as this Popular Library paperback in 1950. The bound girl of the novel is an indentured servant living on the Kansas-Missouri border who experiences both war and various romantic ups and downs. Possibly her love problems stem from bad manners. After all, who’d want to date someone who doesn’t even know that a three prong fork isn’t for meat courses?
Come on in boys. I've got hot lead sandwiches for everybody.
This November 1958 cover of Man’s Life magazine is uncredited in the masthead, but it was painted by Wil Hulsey and illustrates the story “The Girl Who Made War Hell for Gen. Sherman” by Gene Channing. The girl is Maryellen Stone, and she stalls Sherman’s advance scouts using bullets, brainpower, and her body. The story is written in a biographical style, but we found no record of such a person. Even if she existed, the tale still falls into a category of fantasy fiction about a mythical non-aggressive South and how its way of life was cruelly obliterated. This narrative is astounding, not only because it overlooks the aggression of forced bondage against millions and how that caused the South to go to war, but also because southern leaders had formulated plans to invade Latin America.
Destabilization operations were staged in Mexico and a mapping expedition was sent to Brazil. These were mere forays, but high ranking Southerners made their opinions crystal clear in hundreds of speeches and newspaper editorials. Calls to invade Cuba were constant. Influential Mississippi Senator Albert Gallatin Brown wrote in 1858: “I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, well— If not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason—for the planting and spreading of slavery.” The imperative to expand was even written into the Confederate Constitution, and Confederate president Jefferson Davis was careful to select only pro-expansionists for his cabinet. We wouldn’t call any of that peaceful.
Man’s Life throws peace aside as well by going heavy on murder with profiles of Theresa Maguire, Leona Vlught, Thelma Rabail, and other women who died at the hands jealous men—and one jealous woman. The story is titled “Kiss Me or Die” and it comes with some pretty explicit photos. There’s a lighter side to the magazine too. “Female Skippers Turn Waterways into New Lovers’ Lanes” regales readers with tales of boatborne sexploits on the lakes and coastlines of the U.S. It’s amusing stuff, as much of a fantasy as the Civil War story, but with happy endings for everyone involved. Elsewhere in the issue you get more adventure fiction, an extensive photo feature on model Ann Edmondson, and the usual ads and comics. We have several more entries on Man’s Life in the website, and you can see two of them here and here.
War is hell, but being a prisoner of war can be worse.
This January 1959 copy of Stag is an example of the joys of collecting old magazines. We bought it for three dollars, but it’s being auctioned on Ebay right now for $100. Mort Kunstler handles the cover chores, illustrating Edward Newman’s story “The P.O.W.s Who Broke Out of Rat Hell Stockade,” which deals with a group of Union soldiers during the U.S. Civil War who tunneled their way out of Richmond’s Libby Prison. The story is true. The escape was one of the most successful breakouts of the war. The escapees were highly motivated due to the fact that Libby Prison was a hellhole that generated high mortality rates due to abuse, starvation, exposure to severe weather, and terrible overcrowding.
A contemporary newspaper had this to say: “They are huddled up and jammed into every nook and corner; at the bathing troughs, around the cooking stoves, everywhere there is a wrangling, jostling crowd; at night the floor of every room they occupy in the building is covered, every square inch of it, by uneasy slumberers, lying side by side, and heel to head, as tightly packed as if the prison were a huge, improbable box of nocturnal sardines.” Inside Stag is art from James Bama, Kunstler again, Joe Little, Al Rossi, and Bruce Minney. You also get model/actress Irène Tunc, who was Miss France of 1954 and appeared in about thirty films during a three-decade film career. All this and more below, in twenty-three scans.
Update: we got the following e-mail from James N:
The cover of Stag, January 1959 was painted by James Bama. The credit to Mort Kunstler as printed in the magazine was an editorial error. Bama has confirmed this. For the sake of historical accuracy it would be nice if you changed your Jan. 9, 2017 post to reflect Jim Bama’s true credit.
We’ve talked a lot about how official credits can be wrong, so we’re inclined to believe the cover was mistakenly attributed by editors because we already know they were human and made these types of goofs. But the process of collecting and curating vintage art offers the chance to get things right. So we’re calling this cover a Bama, and thanks to James N. for taking the effort to write us.
Stan Borack painted the cover of this issue of Male from January 1958, and the interior art comes from Samson Pollen, Bob Schultz, John Leone, James Bama, Bob Stanley, John Kuller, and Tom Ryan. Not a slouch in the bunch. The magazine contains a preview of Shane author Jack Schaefer’s novel Company of Cowards, the Civil War tale of a group of Union officers who have all been busted down to the rank of private, but who are formed into a special unit and given a chance to earn back their honor. That chance takes them into Comanche country where they face an assortment of deadly challenges.
Also in this issue you get famed model Diane Webber/Marguerite Empey—who we’ve been seeing a lot of recently—doing a nice photo feature and complaining that since being elected Queen of the Nudists by a national sunbathing association all anyone wants to talk about is her naked lifestyle. But we think that’s just the editors trying to come up with an angle for the text. Webber was an official advocate of nudist lifestyle and even promoted her special brand of spiritual nudism in television interviews, so we doubt she was fed up with it at this point. The photos were shot by Russ Meyer, and we’re pretty sure they’ve never been on the internet before, which is always a fun moment for us. Please enjoy. Twenty scans below.
Mort Kunstler nicely captures the chaos of a storm hitting the beaches of northern France on this D-Day-themed cover of Stag from November 1964. Kunstler was a master at this sort of sprawling composition, and Stag in particular published many similar pieces of his. Today Kunstler bills himself as America’s Artist and paints U.S. Civil War scenes that sell as limited editions. To say that his reputation as an artist is assured is an understatement. He has had countless exhibitions, been added to the permanent collections of numerous museums, and been profiled in the New York Times.
Below are some interior scans from Stag, including more Kunstler, as well as a spread from Walter Popp. Kunstler’s illustration for George Raffey’s “House of the Pleasure Dolls” is a brilliant bit of adolescent sexual fantasy, with its naked girl holding off a group of armed men. That probably never happened in the entire history of the world (despite the “True Book Bonus” label on the story), but it’s just another day in the pages of a vintage men’s magazine. Also in this issue you get a few photos of 1961 Miss Universe semi-finalist, Scottish model Susan Jones. More Kunstler here.
Gone with the Wind may be a classic, but it’s not reality.
Above, a superb two-panel poster made in Japan for Gone with the Wind, with a great image of Vivien Leigh as the conniving Scarlett O’Hara. This film occupies a curious space in American culture, and a contentious one. Some people think it is an accurate portrayal of a genteel and elegant antebellum south in which slaves lived in more-or-less happy symbiosis with mostly kind masters; others think it’s a whitewash that glosses over the injustice, mass rape, and institutional savagery of a centuries-running crime against Africa.
Since the movie isn’t really about slavery, it probably shouldn’t be judged on its depiction of that terrible institution any more than Around the World in 80 Days should be judged on its depiction of ballooning. However, a swath of the American public does believe the film is broadly accurate, and it’s interesting how stubborn their notions are even after the appearance of more carefully researched depictions such as Stephen Spielberg’s Amistad and the ’70s miniseries Roots. While a tiny subset of house slaves might have led lives like those depicted in Gone with the Wind, hard evidence and serious scholarship have proven that the vast majority—inside and outside the house—endured horrific lives.
So that’s where we stand, and really, reasonable people who’ve bothered to read a book or three on the subject stand there too. The ridiculous belief that slavery wasn’t bad, or was even benevolent, will continue to hold sway over some people, and facts won’t change their minds. That’s just the way it goes these days. Speaking of factual depictions of slavery, you might trythisunderrated flick we talked about a few years ago. You can also check out some cool Gone with the Wind imageshere. The movie premiered in the U.S. in 1939 but did not play in Japan until years later—in fact, today, 1952.
That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang.
Dalton Stevens’ cover for this January 1931 issue of True Detective looks a bit like a horror illustration, but it’s actually supposed to represent Robert E. Burns, who in 1922 helped rob a Georgia grocery, earned himself 6 to 10 at hard labor, but escaped and made his way to Chicago, where he adopted a new identity and rose to success as a magazine editor. Years later, when he tried to divorce the woman he had married, she betrayed him to Georgia authorities, and what followed was a legal battle between Georgia courts and Chicago civic leaders, with the former wanting Burns extradited, and the latter citing his standing in the community and calling for his pardon. Burns eventually went back to Georgia voluntarily to serve what he had been assured would be a few months in jail, but which turned into more hard time on a chain gang.
Angered and disillusioned, Burns escaped again, and this time wrote a book from hiding, which True Detective excerpts in the above issue and several others. This was a real scoop for the magazine—it was the first to publish Burns’ harrowing tale. The story generated quite a bit of attention, and Vanguard Press picked it up and published it as I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang, which led directly to Warner Brothers adapting the tale into a hit 1932 motion picture starring Paul Muni. The movie differed somewhat from the book, of course, which differed somewhat from reality (Burns himself admitted this later), but his account cast a withering light on the chain gang system. The exposure helped chain gang opponents, who claimed—with some veracity—that the practice was immoral because it originated with the South’s need to replace its slave labor after defeat in the U.S. Civil War.
Burns continued to live life on the run, but was eventually arrested again, this time in New Jersey. However, the governor of the state refused to extradite him. The standoff meant Burns was, in practical terms, a free man. That practical freedom was made official in 1945 when he was finally pardoned in Georgia, and his literary indictment of the chain gang system helped bring about its demise. Well, sort of—it returned to the South in 1995, was quickly discontinued after legal challenges, but may yet be reintroduced as politicians push for more and more extreme punishments to bolster their tough-on-crime credentials.
We found this old issue of the Japanese film magazine Screen that is totally dedicated to the American movie epic Gone with the Wind. It dates from May 1969, thirty years after the film was made, and our first assumption was that the movie didn’t play in Japan until then. But no, it premiered in the Land of the Rising Sun in September 1952.
We were baffled for a while, and then we made a discovery—a musical version of Gone with the Wind entitled Scarlett opened in Japan in 1969. It was fully eight hours long, divided into two parts that were mounted as separate productions, and they were smash hits. We suspect this issue of Screen was produced because the musical generated great interest in the original film.
We’ve already talked a bit about Gone with the Wind. We never liked it because it depicts a culture that was completely depraved as some sort of glorious nirvana. And because of its enduring popularity, many Americans’ concept of the antebellum south derives from what is little more than a fairytale. But that aside, the movie is undeniably well made, and we thought it worthwhile to share at least a few of Screen‘s photos. We’ll have more fromthis magazine later.
Cover art for a French edition of Ben-Hur, circa 1930s. The book was written by Lew Wallace, who, among other things, was an army general on the Union side in the U.S. Civil War. His Biblical epic played a profound role in causing religious leaders of the time to finally reverse their longstanding condemnation of novels as tools of evil. Ben-Hur has since been adapted into a motion picture four times, most definitively in 1959 with Charlton Heston in the lead. The English version of Ben-Hur was first published today in 1880.
Mexican actress Lupe Velez, who was considered one of the great beauties of her day, commits suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. In her note, Velez says she did it to avoid bringing shame on her unborn child by giving birth to him out of wedlock, but many Hollywood historians believe bipolar disorder was the actual cause. The event inspired a 1965 Andy Warhol film entitled Lupe.
1958—Gordo the Monkey Lost After Space Flight
After a fifteen minute flight into space on a Jupiter AM-13 rocket, a monkey named Gordo splashes down in the South Pacific but is lost after his capsule sinks. The incident sparks angry protests from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but NASA says animals are needed for such tests.
1968—Tallulah Bankhead Dies
American actress, talk show host, and party girl Tallulah Bankhead, who was fond of turning cartwheels in a dress without underwear and once made an entrance to a party without a stitch of clothing on, dies in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia complicated by emphysema.
1962—Canada Has Last Execution
The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, “Some consolation.â€
1964—Guevara Speaks at U.N.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing the nation of Cuba, speaks at the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. His speech calls for wholesale changes in policies between rich nations and poor ones, as well as five demands of the United States, none of which are met.
2008—Legendary Pin-Up Bettie Page Dies
After suffering a heart attack several days before, erotic model Bettie Page, who in the 1950s became known as the Queen of Pin-ups, dies when she is removed from life support machinery. Thanks to the unique style she displayed in thousands of photos and film loops, Page is considered one of the most influential beauties who ever lived.
1935—Downtown Athletic Club Awards First Trophy
The Downtown Athletic Club in New York City awards its first trophy for athletic achievement to University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger. The prize is later renamed the Heisman Trophy, and becomes the most prestigious award in college athletics.
scoop for the magazine—it was
