Intl. Notebook

November 21 2024

GALA OCCASION

The dress code is decidedly informal.

Above: scans from an issue of Gala magazine published this month in 1959, with various models, burlesque dancers, and a few actresses. Familiar faces include Zahra Norbo, who’s also visible here, Barbara Thomason, who was married to Mickey Rooney, and Rosa Dolmai, who acted under the name Eve Eden and generated twenty-seven screen and television credits. The lovely cover star is Virginia De Lee, who we’ve featured half a dozen times. Click her keywords below and scroll to see everything we have on her. Go ahead. She’s worth it.

Gala Magazine, Virginia De Lee, Zahra Norbo, Rosa Dolmai, Eve Eden, Barbara Thomason, Mickey Rooney, burlesque

Vintage Pulp

March 20 2023

PAPER TIGER

Obscure men's magazine roars but has no bite

Tiger was a Chicago based men’s magazine launched in 1956 by George Fox, Jr. that had as its premise the dubious idea that great men are tigers. It had features on “tigers of the past,” and “modern tigers,” and we suppose this was Fox’s attempt at clever branding. Sounds a bit forced, right? It didn’t seem to work for the public, because though Wikipedia claims that the publication lasted into the mid-sixties, we found no evidence anywhere that it lived past 1957. But we’ll keep an eye out and see if we’re wrong about that.

In the meantime, above you see the front of an issue that hit newsstands this month in 1957, and the cover star is famed nudist and model Diane Webber, aka Marguerite Empey, who we’ve seen a whole lot of around here. She’s also featured in four pages at the back of the issue, and along with her are photos of Zahra Norbo, Gunnar Gustafson, obscure actress Melinda Markey, an unknown model lensed by Russ Meyer, and shots of Nona Van Tosh by Earl Leaf.

In the writing department, Fox swapped out his editor/publisher hat for a journalist’s fedora and contributed a profile on George S. Patton, one of those so-called tigers of the past. If Tiger was anything like the magazine we once ran, Fox probably wrote the story in a panic to fill space after one of his writers torched a deadline. His writing is fine, but overall the magazine doesn’t have any spark, literarily, artistically, or pictorially. We hate to say it, but it’s a pretty tame tiger. But it’s worth a look just because of Webber’s presence. You’ll find thirty-some scans below.

Chicago, Tiger Magazine, Diane Webber, Marguerite Empey, Zahra Norbo, Gunnar Gustafson, Melinda Markey, Nona Van Tosh, George Fox Jr., James Axelrod, Earl Leaf, Russ Meyer, magazine art, literature

Femmes Fatales

November 17 2013

TITLE SEQUENCE

They probably should have called off the contest and given her the crown in perpetuity.

Zahra Norbo was a 1955 Miss Sweden, 1958 Playboy centerfold, and all-around popular magazine model who appeared in publications like Spick, Stag, Tempo and Tiger. She also scored a few television appearances, notably on The Groucho Marx Show. There’s a bit of confusion online about which year she was Miss Sweden. Some sources, Wikipedia among them, say it was 1956, but we’ve seen a 1956 press photo that refers to her as the previous year’s winner, and here’s what Playboy said in her March 1958 layout: After copping the Miss Sweden title three years ago, Miss Norbo came to the U.S. of A. So that pretty much settles it—she won her title in 1955 using her real name Ragnhild Olausson. This provocative shot was made in 1957 by acclaimed lensman Peter Basch.

Sweden, Playboy, The Groucho Marx Show, Zahra Norbo, Ragnhild Olausson, Peter Basch, Grouch Marx, television

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.