Hy Steirman’s Whisper magazine is generally considered to be less racy than when it was owned by Robert Harrison, but this issue from January 1959 shows a little of the old spark. It slams Elizabeth Taylor for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, with staff scribe Orson C. Green spewing forth this venom: But then Liz made clear to the whole world that beneath that lovely exterior there beats a heart of purest gall. She repaid the infinite kindness of her two friends by breaking up their marriage. Green goes on to describe Taylor trying to soak down New York’s PlazaHotel for two weeks of room charges, and then, when asked to pay, phoning up Montgomery Clift and getting him to help her trash the room. The article concludes: In short, Miss Taylor and friend Clift repaid [the Plaza] for its hospitality by deliberately making a mess for some forlorn chambermaid to clean up. Ingrate!

Whisper also takes on ex-King Farouk I of Egypt—who was a favorite tabloid target of the time—describing him as “Fatso Farouk”, “the roly-poly playboy of the Nile”, “the balding balloon boy” and worse. Readers are told that he was at Maxim’s in Paris one night and saw Coccinelle do a song accompanied by a striptease that left her in only a beaded g-string. Farouk, who was famously amorous, was so smitten that he sent his card and a bouquet of flowers backstage. Coccinelle came to say thanks, and when asked by Farouk agreed to go to dinner. Moments after she left thetable one of the ex-king’s aide’s hastily scurried over and explained that Coccinelle had once been a man. Allegedly, Farouk flipped. Whisper describes overturned tables, broken bottles, the works. Readers are told: The whole Riviera rocked with laughter. The bulging butt of the joke fled to Rome.

Whisper goes on to discuss sperm banks, state prisons, Vladimir Lenin, Josip Tito, and “white” slavery, but probably our favorite story is the one headlined: Do Ex-Prostitutes Make the Best Wives? A pertinent question. And whom did they get to write the answer? The byline says: by an Ex-Prostitute. We just love that. As far as whether Whisper gets any of its facts straight, we can’t really offer a guess, but this issue proves that even ten months after the sale from Harrison to Steirman, it hadn’t quite lost its spark. Things apparently went downhill pretty fast in the next few years, but we’ll judge that for ourselves as we examine more issues. Visit our entire Whisper collection by clicking its keyword at bottom. 

This issue of the tabloid Exposed, with cover stars Anita Ekberg, Tony Steel, Edward G. Robinson, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor, has a rather pleasing color scheme, but the usual rumor-mongering and innuendo inside. The “true story” of Anita Ekberg’s sudden wedding to Tony Steel isn’t really all that scintillating. Steel had met Ekberg when they worked together on the British motion picture Storm Over the Nile, which was filmed in 1955 and released the last week of December. Steel was smitten from the moment he saw Ekberg. In fact, he was so in love with her that he decided to break his contract with the film production company The Rank Organisation and follow her to Hollywood. They married in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, on 22 May, 1956, in a civil ceremony that was open to the public (the couple had asked the city government to bar spectators from the event but the request had been denied).

The press, however were restricted to a roped area just outside, which happened to be near a famous statue of David. According to several of the reporters present, when Ekberg passed by the nude sculpture after the ceremony she glanced up at its endowment and quipped, “My! Almost as big as Frank Sinatra’s.” You just knew Sinatra was involved in this somewhere, right? It’s like there were six or seven of him wandering around during the 1950s, so often does he pop up in other people’s personal business. Anyway, that statue of David—which is a copy of Michelangelo’s original masterpiece that stands in the Galleria dell’Accademia—has an incredibly small penis proportionate to the eighteen-foot-high body. At least, it seems small to us. Ahem. But we can assume Ekberg’s comment meant just the opposite, and concerned the non-proportionate size of the organ—i.e., quite a handful, taken on its own merits.

Now, should a bride really start married life with a public comment about another man’s dick? We think not, but we’re old-fashioned that way. Ekberg and Steel jetted off to Hollywood, where both hoped to expand their film careers. For Ekberg, that’s exactly what happened. But Steel struggled, possibly because of vitriol emanating from The Rank Organisation. He did find some work, but never attained the stature hecraved. In short order, his marriage to Ekberg was in trouble, their domestic woes either exacerbated by or rooted in his career problems. Either that or he never forgave her for that Sinatra comment. We kid, of course. Steel and Ekberg had serious difficulties, but Frankie wasn't one of them. In any case, in 1959 the couple divorced, and Tony Steel was pretty much yesterday’s news. Life goes on, after all, in the tabloids and in the world. 

This cute shot seems like a nice adjunct to our post yesterday. It shows Sean Connery and Jill St. John enjoying a smooch on the set of Diamonds Are Forever. Their love scene in the film did not occur in this setting, and of course, neither actor would have worn glasses in the film, so this looks like extracurricular activity to us. They both get an A+. 

In this publicity photo, Russian-born actress Natalie Wood smiles after imprinting her hands, shoes and signature in fresh concrete in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Wood was the 118th personality to be thus honored, and probably the only one to do it with this particular hairstyle. That was today in 1961. 

Ava Gardner, who was nineteen years old when she married Hollywood star Mickey Rooney in January 1942, is shown here in a Los Angeles divorce court just fourteen months later seeking to dissolve the union. The grounds? According to Gardner, Rooney wouldn’t stay home nights and repeatedly told her he thought the marriage had been a mistake. That's the sanitized version. The truth was Rooney compulsively sought sex, and spent much of his free time chasing other women, as well as patronizing the T&M Studio, a West Hollywood brothel where the girls were movie star look-a-likes. We know what you’re thinking, but Gardner was not a well-known actress in 1942/43, so oods are there was no Gardner look-a-like at the T&M Studio for Rooney to enjoy. Still though, how incredibly twisted would that be? Anyway, this photo of Gardner looking her devastating best is from May 20, 1943. Her divorce became official twenty-four hours later, but she didn’t celebrate. Her mom died that day. 

Since we shared a magazine cover of Jayne Mansfield yesterday, it seems a good time to also show you this photo of her at the Cannes Film Festival. We aren’t sure on the date—Mansfield went to Cannes more than once, but we’re thinking 1964 on this. In most of her Cannes photos, she’s cavorting on the Croisette in a bikini or hamming it up for the French press by dancing the “monkeybird”, but this shot shows a womanly, glamorous Mansfield with Mickey Hargitay and another escort, against a backdrop of journos and fans. The photo says: movie star. 

In this photo, actress Hedy Lamarr and her husband John Loder get a good look at the two men who robbed their Los Angeles home in August 1946. The couple lost $19,000 worth of goods, consisting mainly of Lamarr’s $5,000 chinchilla coat and $12,000 diamond ring. No info on which pimp the thieves sold the items to. 

You may not recognize her because the old Yugoslav magazine Filmski Svet, aka Film World was a little heavy handed with the retouching, but the crimson clad figure below is Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko. You’re thinking, “Nata Zaka who?” Well, maybe you know her better as Natalie Wood, the great American actress of Russian descent who was born in California. Filmski Svet has made her into a mannequin, but we still find this a striking cover. It appeared in September 1964.

Actress and former Playboy model Victoria Vetri, aka Victoria Rathgeb, aka Angela Dorian pleaded no contest to attempted voluntary manslaughter earlier this week and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Last October Vetri was arrested after shooting her husband in the back, and since then has been in custody, unable to produce the million-plus dollars needed to make bail.

Vetri claims her husband, Bruce Rathgeb, precipitated the shooting by slapping her in the face. Rathgeb, of course, says no slap was involved and his wife is simply a verbally abusive lunatic who was constantly accusing him of cheating. Vetri could have gotten life in prison if convicted of attempted murder, the original charge, so being offered a chance to accept the lesser offense of attempted manslaughter represents a victory—though a Pyrrhic one, without doubt. We’ll close the door on Miss Vetri with a shot of her in 1967, when she was a young centerfold calling herself Angela Dorian and could never have imagined, we’re pretty sure, what life had in store for her.