Pulp International

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

URBAN DECAY

Hey, buddy! You can't be dead here. We have a zero-tolerance policy toward lifelessness in this city.

This image shows the body of New York City gangster David Beadle, aka the Beetle, outside the Spot tavern in Manhattan, where he was gunned down by men who emerged from a passing taxi. Beadle took at least a few bullets in the head and died instantly. As gangsters go he wasn’t very high in the rackets, but his fame surpassed his stature posthumously because Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, photographed his corpse. Another shot appears below, and you can see how back then the integrity of crime scenes was a malleable concept. Changes between the shots include the sheet, the position of Beadle’s hands, and the arrangement of debris in the gutter.

And in fact, the top shot shows Weegee himself, seeming to make an adjustment to the corpse, possibly to make for a more pleasingly composed shot. The first photo, therefore, was made by an unknown, though it’s often credited to Weegee. He made the second shot himself. Most of his archive, including these, reside at NYC’s International Center of Photography, to which Weegee’s longtime companion and caretaker Wilma Wilcox donated 16,000 photos and 7,000 negatives, as well as transferring all copyrights, in 1993. You can see many of them at the Center’s website here.

New York City, International Center of Photography, David Beadle, Weegee, Arthur Fellig, Wilma Wilcox, murder

LAST CALL FOR ALCOHOL

Everyone always said booze would be the death of him.

Above is another photo borrowed from the archives of the Los Angeles Police Museum, and which appeared in James Ellroy’s 2004 photo book Destination: Morgue! It was made in Los Angeles on Crenshaw Boulevard and Santa Monica Avenue (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd) today in 1953, and shows a man who died while attempting a liquor store robbery. The robber was former marine who was armed, but based on the fact that he was wearing a white Panama hat, may have decided on the heist spontaneously. Unfortunately, the store had been robbed the night before and the proprietor was on alert. He fired a gun through the door, was on target with a head shot (as the blood indicates), and the thief was dropped in his tracks, with his slick Panama at his side.

The crowd here interests us. We know it happens whevener someone dies in public, but we’ve never understand this impulse at all. Once in San Salvador PSGP happened upon a guy who’d just been shot in the head. It was an almost identical scene, except there was no hat and no sheet. While he glanced in passing—just long enough to note the blood mixed with swirls of white ooze running down the warm asphalt—he felt no urge to stand around and gawk. Another time, in Guatemala, he happened upon a man freshly beaten to death and he continued on his sweet way then too. On the other hand, maybe sharing this image on a website constitutes a form of staring. That might be worth discussion, though he says that in this context the photo is used for historical education and cultural critique. Maybe so.

Los Angeles, Destination: Morgue!, James Ellroy

PRE-TRIAL EARING

Heh heh. Yeah, maybe I got a little out of hand.

This photo from the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows stripper Juanita Hardy, whose real name was Christine Marlow, and she’s in the process or has just finished the process of being charged with mayhem by the Las Vegas police. She’d gotten into a fight with another dancer named Doreen Manos at the Embassy Club, where they worked. Marlow was missing twenty dollars and blamed Manos; Manos had a damaged costume and blamed Marlow. When interviewed by the Los Angeles Times days later, Marlow explained, “[Manos] said something. I said something. She hit me in the mouth and then someone parted us.” Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. And, Marlow added, “I bit her in the ear.” Oh. That doesn’t sound so good.

Some accounts say Marlow went well beyond a bite and actually Tysoned poor Manos, costing her a chunk of flesh. Others say she chewed Manos’s ear clean off—though we have no idea how they know that. We suspect it’s internet hyperbole. Does Marlow look like someone who’d chew another person’s ear entirely off? Hmm. Well… maybe. That smile, now that we look closer, is a bit worrisome, isn’t it? It’s potentially the smile of someone who would have rival strippers buried in the back yard.

Anyway, she was supposed to appear in court after her arrest but instead up and left Vegas. Said Marlow, “My act was over and my contract was at an end, so I changed into street clothes, put my things in the car and drove back home.” Well, the Vegas cops issued an extradition order and two fellas from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department showed up at Marlow’s house, arrested her again, and booked her on fugitive charges. We can’t find out what happened after that, as this is another of those historical anecdotes that requires more newspaper scans to be uploaded for its resolution to be known, but even without an ending it was a mandatory story for our website because there’s virtually nothing more pulp than two strippers fighting.

Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Los Angeles Times, Juanita Hardy, Christine Marlowe, Doreen Manos, burlesque

A DELICATE BALANCE

Oh, you said a straight line? I misheard you. Let me start over.

Once again you have to  marvel that it was legal for press photographers to intrude on crime scenes, criminal trials, and—now it seems—traffic stops. You see the evidence above. An unidentified woman is put through the paces of a sobriety check by a Los Angeles patrolman, and it looks to us like the shots capture a spectacular failure. Either that or she’s busting into “The Night They Invented Champagne” from the musical Gigi. She was arrested either way—for drunkenness or flippancy—and presumably had hours of idle time in a drunk tank to ponder the error of her ways. That happened today in 1958. 

Los Angeles

ROADSIDE KILL

The L.A. dead get a voiceover.


This photo which was made by an LAPD crime scene photographer today in 1953 seems to show a murder victim, but the subject actually committed suicide. We guess that’s self-murder, but whatever, it’s an amazingly chaotic result. While it’s from the LAPD archvies, it was included in James Ellroy’s 2015 photo retrospective LAPD ’53. We have a copy and it’s worth a look for fans of the macabre. There isn’t much information on the photos—mostly they say merely “dead body” or “crime scene.” Ellroy instead discusses his own literary output, opines about film noir, shares anecdotes and musings about various Hollywood figures, recounts episodes from his youth, and occasionally lets himself be pulled down dark time warps he describes as “magical memory.” A typical example is his imaginary story of being at L.A.’s Club Alabam.

Charlie “Yardbird” Parker is bleating, blatting, honking and hiccuping “A Night in Tunisia.” Reefer smoke hangs humid. The music is decadently discordant. It’s the sock-it-to-me sonics of interminable chord changes off a recognizable main theme. It’s music for cultured cognoscenti that Bill Parker [LAPD Chief at the time] cannot acknowledge.

It takes brains and patience to groove the gist of this shit. It’s the musical equivalent of the chaos Bill Parker deplores. Five-year-old Ellroy is there, watching the Bird take flight. Everybody’s chain-smoking unfiltered Camels. The place is one big corroded iron lung. I’ve got a spike in my arm, I’m orbiting on Big “H,” I knew I’d write the text for this book one day, so I’ve got my voyeur’s cap on.


Interesting, no? Ellroy’s writing these days resides permanently on a razor’s edge, as he ties together crime, politics, and alpha male ultraviolence. He seem to us the perfect transgressive guide for LAPD ’53‘s tour through disaster and death for two reasons. First, he isn’t just an observer—he was a one-man terror show in his own right, engaging in petty crime through his youth, joining the American Nazi Party in high school, and generally leaving chaos in his wake. He waves this period away as a cry for attention. His fame and teflon persona have facilitated this dismissal, and that’s the second reason he’s a good choice for the book: other people pay dearly for indiscretions far less severe, like the universe has played a terrible joke on them. Ellroy’s fiction has always explored such cosmic inexplicability. He makes LAPD ’53 an experience.
Los Angeles, LAPD, LAPD '53, James Ellroy, suicide

THE CAMERA EYE

Take a picture, perv. It'll last longer.


Above is another striking image from the 2019 Lucie Foundation exhibit of Los Angeles crime photos, most of which have been widely disseminated across the internet since then. That means we can always grab one when we want to dip into the mid-century crime underworld. The subject here, with her unfliching gaze and lit cigarette, has been arrested but there’s no info revealing why. We’re thinking public check and pinstripe clashing? No, probably not that. Imitating Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct? No, that was before her time. Felony cruelty to fur-bearing mammals? No. Okay, here’s a shot in the dark—probably she was arrested for prostitution. That’s our final guess. The photo was made today in 1949.

Los Angeles, LAPD, prostitution

FINAL SHOT

Life and death in the cinema.


Police Lt. Hugh Crowley lies dead in the Fox Westwood Village Theater in Los Angeles after being shot today in 1932. Crowley had gone to the theater after closing time to retrieve box office receipts, but instead surprised two thieves. Crowley reached for his sidearm and fired, and one of the crooks gunned him down. Both men were captured and tried, and Joseph Francis Regan, who had fired the fatal shot and actually been hit in the abdomen by a bullet fired by Crowley, was sentenced to death. Jack Green, who had no prior criminal record, had not fired a shot, and had cooperated in the police investigation, nevertheless also was sentenced to death, probably because he had planned the crime. Regan was hanged at San Quentin State Prison in August 1933. Green came close to the gallows, but received numerous reprieves after public pleas for leniency from his parents, and rulings from higher courts. Eventually his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Although Green was probably never aware of it, legal authorities often cited his case during the long battle over the constitutionality of the death penalty in California. The idea put forth by the pro-death penalty side around 1960 was that even though Green’s commuted sentence specified “without possibility of parole,” there was no actual reason in California jurisprudence or the state constitution that he could not be released. All that was required was for an appropriate state authority to decide to do it. They felt therefore that anti-death penalty campaigners’ assurances that criminals could be imprisoned for life if such punishment was deemed necessary meant nothing. No matter the language of the original life sentence, any criminal could later be released. Green doubtless would have found all this fascinating, but none of it ever came to affect him. As far as we can tell, he did in fact spend the rest of his life in San Quentin.

California, San Quentin State Prison, Hugh Crowley, Joseph Francis Regan, Jack Green, murder

CHALK UP ANOTHER ONE

Life to draws to a close in the City of Angels.


This photo, which is another one from the Los Angeles Police Department photo archive, shows an unidentified man after police crime scene detectives have outlined his body in chalk. Note the knife. He defended himself against an attacker, but unsuccessfully. Or perhaps he attacked someone and they defended themself successfully. The photos from the archive carry only the information written on them, and in this case that’s nothing. But it’s a compelling shot, made today in 1950. 

Los Angeles, LAPD, murder

A RAINY NIGHT IN THE BOWERY

Even in the height of summer New York City can be a cold, cold place.


In this photo made today in 1930, a policeman stands over the body of Louis Riggiona, who had been shot twice in the heart by two gunmen as he and his brother Joe exited a restaurant in New York City’s Bowery district. Joe fled and avoided injury, while the gunmen dropped their weapons (one pistol is visible in the foreground) and escaped. Louis Riggiona had become the latest casualty in what was known as the Castellammarese War, a Mafia power struggle whose opposing figureheads were Salvatore Maranzano and Joe Masseria. Maranzano was from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, thus the name of the conflict. He won the war, but got to be capo di tutti i capi for only five months before he too was murdered. 

Sicily, Castellammare del Golfo, New York City, Louis Riggiona, Joe Riggiona, Joe Masseria, Salvatore Maranzano, murder, mafia

DOMINICK DONE

Gangster life has great benefits but the retirement plan leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like the same lesson is imparted by nearly every vintage Mafia photo we run across—ambition is a double-edged sword. Dominick Didato, aka Terry Burns, who you see above in a photo made by Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, lies dead on a New York City street where he was gunned down today in 1936. He was killed for interfering with rackets run by Lucky Luciano. It was a low percentage play. Luciano was literally the most powerful mobster in the U.S. at the time, and as the saying goes, you come at the king, you best not miss.

New York City, Dominick Didato, Terry Burns, Arthur Fellig, Lucky Luciano, Weegee, mafia, murder
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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.

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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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