Above, an issue of National Enquirer from the week April 9 through 15, 1961, with British actress Joan Collins and a story about how she's supposedly crazy when she's in love. And if you're going to write about her being crazy—even if metaphorically—you might as well use the craziest looking shot of her you can find. And you wonder why celebrities hate these magazines. This was one of Collins' early appearances on the cover of a tabloid, but by no means her last—over the course of her forty-nine year career, she has appeared on thousands. 

Above, another Movie Show cover, this one from April 1943 with Rita Hayworth shaking her maraca. We never heard of this magazine before last week, but it's aesthetically brilliant. Hopefully, we'll find more out there somewhere. If we do, we'll definitely share. Below are selected interior pages from this issue, featuring Ida Lupino, Anne Sheridan, Mona Maris, Mapy Cortés and others.

Above is a March 1943 cover of the American cinema/celeb magazine Movie Show featuring Deanna Durbin, an actress who is little known to people who don’t watch old musicals, but who was a well-regarded performer in her day. She even won an Academy Juvenile Award in 1936 for her role in Three Smart Girls. Although that particular category of Oscar has been discontinued, Durbin hasn’t—she’s still around at age eighty-nine. Though her film career only spanned twelve years, her success was great enough to merit a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Movie Show also features Hedy Lamarr, Maria Montez, Ann Miller, all of whom you see below along with a pretty tasty Chesterfield ad. We’ll have more from this publication later.

Confidential magazine, more so than other mid-century tabloids, could be counted on to report upon Hollywood’s interracial romances. Generally, the editors took no definitive stance on the divisive issue, but by placing such stories front and center were clearly pandering to their mostly conservative readership’s prejudices. In this issue from March 1956, it’s Billy Eckstine and Denise Darcel who are put under hot lights. Eckstine was a popular crooner sometimes referred to as the “black Sinatra”, the “sepia Sinatra” or even the “bronze balladeer”; Darcel was a French-born actress. When they met he was separated from a wife he would later divorce and was enjoying the NYC party circuit; she was an émigré from France circa 1947, newly divorced, and trying to establish a film career.

What broke them up? Even Confidential doesn’t know for sure, but career pressure is a likely culprit. Eckstine lost a movie contract when word got out that he was spending time with Darcel. It was a significant blow, because leading movie roles for African-Americans—rare today—were pretty much non-existent back then. Eckstine had already carved out a pan-racial popularity in music, but was denied a chance to do the same in cinema. He wouldn’t appear in a movie as an actor until 1975’s Let’s Do It Again. His music career survived, however, and he remained a hitmaker for another ten years.

As for Darcel, she made some Hollywood films, but never broke big. On a few French websites we learned that her career was possibly damaged by Howard Hughes after she refused his advances, but we can’t confirm that in a language we’re actually fluent in, so don’t quote us. We do know that at age forty she went on to a career in burlesque, which you see below. Asked why she had made the move into erotic dance, she replied, "Because that's where the money is." However, that period didn't last long—three years, more or less. In any case, Eckstine and Darcel certainly look happy on the cover of Confidential. The photo is from the party where they met. Asked that night about Eckstine by a reporter, Darcel said, “Billy is sooo wonderful!” 

During the summer of 1948 actor Robert Mitchum was busted for marijuana possession and sentenced to a brief stint in jail. He served part of his time doing hard labor making cinderblocks at Sheriff’s Honor Farm, north of Los Angeles in the town of Castaic, and in the above photo is being transferred to L.A. County Jail to finish his sentence in a cell. That was today in 1949.

Note: Wikipedia and other sources seemingly get Mitchum’s jail chronology backwards. They say Mitchum served his county time first, which means he would have been slaving under a hot sun in Castaic on this day. But he wasn’t—at least, not according to the photo’s label, which is contemporaneous with the shot. 

Below are three photos representing three of the many sides of American screen legend Jane Russell’s personality. She had a wild youth that included excessive drink and a low-rent abortion, and in later life she swung the opposite way and became an arch-conservative Christian. Russell died yesterday in Santa Monica, California, aged 89. 

Above is American actor Dick Powell, née Richard Ewing Powell, seen here in a publicity photo for his 1948 film noir Pitfall. Powell’s career was slow getting started, but when he hit his forties he became a noir stalwart, starring in Murder My Sweet, Cornered, Johnny O’Clock, and Cry Danger, as well a number of more conventional melodramas. We’ll have more on Powell later. 

Above is a great Whisper cover from February 1958 with Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. They had divorced a year earlier, so it’s safe to say they were not feeling quite as blissful toward each other anymore. However, the pair remained friends after the split, which is more than most of us can say about our exes. Inside the issue you get an array of articles on Porfirio Rubirosa, Linda Christian and others. As for the piece on how to spot an alcoholic, we already know how to do that—listen for a British accent.*

Just kidding—we can drink any Brit under the table. Is that a challenge? Hell yes! (as long as you’re buying) 

Above, a promo shot of Robert Montgomery from the underappreciated film noir Ride the Pink Horse, 1947. 

The always-wonderful Japanese celeb magazine Screen produced this issue promoting James Dean’s epic drama Giant in January 1956. The film opened the next October, which means the magazine was put together well beforehand. Advance press isn’t unusual, of course, but advance press of this detail in Japan—it didn’t premiere there until nearly a year later in December 1956—suggests just how huge a worldwide star James Dean had become. Sadly, some of that had to do with the fact that he was already dead, killed in a September 1955 automobile crash as Giant was about to wrap. But while nearly all dead celebrities are eulogized as geniuses cut down too soon, Dean is one of the few whose work has actually withstood the test of time. Screen makes room for other stars in this issue, including Audrey Hepburn, who we've posted in panel two. On another note, we’ve shared quite a bit from Screen over the last two years, but if you missed those entries you can see some great covers here, here and here, and see a bit of what's inside here.