Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

AND THE DANCE GOES ON

At least that's the general idea.

We’ve featured Playboy model and aspiring but unfulfilled actress Marilyn Waltz, aka Margaret Scott, a few times, and here’s yet another striking photo, dating from 1959. Waltz has been good to us. We were the first to make the Waltz-Marilyn Walk connection a decade ago, and seven years ago we dug up a rare Technicolor lithograph of her published by C. Moss that was very good for website traffic. We have other shots of her, but there are many other obscure celebrities to upload, and only so much time. If we don’t see Waltz again, this was a good shot to go out on.

On the subject of traffic, the recent outages, 404 errors, and general lack of posting here the last two weeks has been because of a tricky refurbishment and rehosting. We first began having problems with our website back in 2011 and had been promising a revamp ever since. Hey, sometimes things don’t happen when you want them to. But it’s done now, save for formatting aspects of several hundred posts. We’ll have to deal with that bit by bit going forward. It will take some time. Probably several months to get everything in the same shape as Ms. Waltz.

We can’t complain, though. This has been one of our better years. Our many travels took us to Lisbon and Marrakech, we moved into a big old stone pile of a house on the warm Atlantic coast of Spain, our jobs have been smooth, we’ve maintained extremely active social lives, our best friends have visited, and thanks to a very good developer we got the new website we wanted. We’ve also purchased a lot of pulp matter and have many new items to scan and upload. V.2 of Pulp Intl. will hopefully function properly for some years, and, knock on wood, so will we. We’re happy to be back.

Playboy, Marilyn Waltz, Margaret Scott, nudity

CLAWS OUT

She's barely scratching the surface.

Above: burlesque dancer Lilly Christine in a promo shot made for an unknown magazine. She often wore prop claws, as befits anyone nicknamed The Cat Lady. This image has no date, but it’s from her heyday, call it 1955-ish. Click her keywords and you can see plenty more of her.

Lilly Christine, burlesque

LOY AND ORDER

I've always heard that power corrupts. But what nobody told me is that it also feels really good.

Legendary U.S. actress Myrna Loy strikes a stern pose in this beautiful photo. Because she made more than one hundred films, and some of them are lost, it’s impossible to pinpoint from where this shot comes. At least it is for us, and we spent quite a bit of time on it. At first we thought that because the 1934 comedy The Thin Man is the film that made her a big star, and this was surely shot earlier, we’d be able to narrow the possibilities down to a smallish number of pre-Code dramatic roles. Turns out she made many, many pre-Code dramas. In fact, she almost didn’t get The Thin Man because she was considered a strictly dramatic actress. So the provenance of the photo is a mystery to us, but someone will figure it out eventually. Meanwhile, see another image here. And incidentally, there’s a good Loy themed Tumblr out there with numerous photos, if you’re a big fan. Check here.

Hays Code, The Thin Man, Myrna Loy

MACHINE GUN JEAN

Seberg indulges in a bit of overkill.

The shot you see here shows U.S. actress Jean Seberg and was made as a promo for her appropriately named 1971 French thriller Kill!, which was retitled for its U.S. run as Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! We’re not joking. There’s a commentary there, but we’re sure you can figure it out without our help. We gather the film is set in Spain, Tunisia, and Afghanistan, and deals with vigilante killings of drug and porn traffickers, which are investigated by an Interpol agent. Well, we love the idea. We’ll see if we can track it down.

Spain, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Kill!, Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!, Jean Seberg

HER INTERIOR LIFE

Let's see how it looks out there this morning. Nope, still no compelling reason to seize the day.

Every day we live the same moment Japanese actress Reiko Ike is living in this photo. In or out? Stay or go? Cue the Pulp Intl. girlfriends: “You mean there’s actually a decision-making process behind not leaving the house?” Indeed there is, but it’s not as if we don’t have fun indoors. We don’t know the date on this shot, as it came to us a single page with no information attached, but we’d guess it’s from around 1972. As we mentioned last time Reiko appeared here, we’re not likely to run out of rare images of her. We’ve had this one sitting around for twelve years, but today we finally found a moment to get it uploaded, and that wouldn’t have happened if we’d gone outside.

Japan, Reiko Ike, pinku, pinky violence, nudity

FOXY LADY

I know. It's a lot of foxes. But if they were so damn clever they'd have never gotten caught.

This shot shows Ann Corio sitting on a pile of fox furs—black fox furs with their distinct white tips, to be exact—a popular animal in the mid-century fur industry. Corio was popular in a different industry. As a burlesque performer, she launched her career in 1925 at the age of sixteen (we know, we know), and later, at Minsky’s Burlesque in New York City she earned, at her height, as much as $1,000 a week, according to legend. Depending on the exact year (Minsky’s was shut down in 1939 by New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, so we’re thinking 1935) that would be the equivalent of $22,000 today.

Corio fled to Los Angeles and, like other top dancers, made the leap into cinema, appearing in seven movies, among them Swamp Woman, Call of the Jungle, and The Sultan’s Daughter. Later, she leveraged her popularity to release the record you see here, How To Strip for Your Husband, which she recorded with Sonny Lester and His Orchestra and which appeared in 1962, then again in the 1970s. She put out a couple of other albums, but we liked the art on this one best.

Also in 1962 she produced, directed, and danced in the Broadway show This Was Burlesque, which must have represented something of a triumphant return to the city she’d had to leave years earlier. As her long career continued, she eventually even appeared on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, and later earned her way into the Exotic World Burlesque Museum’s celebrated Hall of Fame. The foxtail shot dates from around 1938.

New York City, Swamp Woman, Call of the Jungle, The Sultan's Daughter, The Tonight Show, Minsky's Burlesque, Exotic World Burlesque Museum, Ann Corio, Sonny Lester, Fiorello La Guardia, Johnny Carson, burlesque

TOTALLY DREAMY

Excellent, Carole! Now let's do some profile shots. Carole? Um, are you still with us?

It’s been a long time since we visited with Hollywood legend Carole Lombard. Above you see her in a particularly lovely shot, emphasizing her arctic pale eyes, possibly focused on someplace far beyond the confines of the photographer’s studio. While she appeared in a few pulp-style movies, she made her name in screwball comedies such as Big News, Twentieth Century, and My Man Godfrey. Those choices certainly worked. At the time of her early death in 1941 she was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. 

Big News, Twentieth Century Fox, My Man Godfrey, Carole Lombard

THE GATHERING DARK

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Above: another promo image of June Havoc from 1947’s Intrigue. This one might be even nicer than the last one we shared. What we need to do now is watch the film. We’re working on that. 

Intrigue, June Havoc

CHOUREAU STORY

It took her quite a bit of time to get through the entire thing.

This promo image features French actress Etchika Choureau, née Jeaninne Verret, among whose films were 1957’s I colpevoli and 1958’s Darby’s Rangers. She eventually managed seventeen roles before retiring in 1966. At that point she had become tabloid fodder thanks to her affair with Morocco’s Prince Moulay Hassan, who later became King Hassan II. The two were unable to marry due to religious and cultural strictures, but remained lifelong friends. Choureau featured in a relatively small number of films, but she lived an unrelatively lengthy number of years, dying in 2022 at age ninety-two. We should all be so lucky. The above shot was first published in a 1957 issue of Esquire.

France, Morocco, Esquire Magazine, I colpevoli, Darby's Rangers, Etchika Choureau, Jeaninne Verret, Prince Moulay Hassan, King Hassan II
Femme Fatale Image

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Huey Long Assassinated

Governor of Louisiana Huey Long, one of the few truly leftist politicians in American history, is shot by Carl Austin Weiss in Baton Rouge. Long dies after two days in the hospital.

1956—Elvis Shakes Up Ed Sullivan

Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, performing his hit song “Don’t Be Cruel.” Ironically, a car accident prevented Sullivan from being present that night, and the show was guest-hosted by British actor Charles Laughton.

1966—Star Trek Airs for First Time

Star Trek, an American television series set in the twenty-third century and promoting socialist utopian ideals, premieres on NBC. The series is cancelled after three seasons without much fanfare, but in syndication becomes one of the most beloved television shows of all time.

1974—Ford Pardons Nixon

U.S. President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office, which coincidentally happen to include all those associated with the Watergate scandal.

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.

  • FEATUREd PULP

1,000 TO 1 SHOT

This awesome cover art is by Tommy Shoemaker, a new talent to us, but not to more experienced paperback illustration aficionados.

WRITTEN IN THE STARS

Ten covers from the popular French thriller series Les aventures de Zodiaque.

GRAPES OF WRATH

Sam Peffer cover art for Jonathan Latimer's Solomon's Vineyard, originally published in 1941.

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Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

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