Vintage Pulp Aug 5 2019
He'll make you love him even if it kills you.





Vintage Pulp Jun 10 2019



Vintage Pulp May 23 2019
Last stop—the city morgue.



Femmes Fatales Mar 27 2019
She's been doing as the Romans do pretty much from day one.

Italian actress Leticia Román walks across the tarmac at Fiumicino Airport in Rome today in 1962, where she had arrived to begin work on the film The Nightmare. That's what the back of the photo says, anyway. But Román never appeared in a film with that title. Since titles change mid-production occasionally, we're going to guess the film was actually the 1963 giallo La ragazza che sapeva troppo, aka Evil Eye. Furthermore, we checked the production data, and the movie has scenes at the airport, so it's possible but not certain that this isn't really a press photo but rather a production promo. In any case, nice shot.


Vintage Pulp Jan 16 2019
After dark the risks are many and the rewards are few.

Based on the brilliant poster art, you'd think Girls in the Night was something other than an average b-drama, but some of the most brilliant posters of the mid-century period are tied to mediocre films, and this is another case. Girls in the Night is from Universal International Pictures, and deals with a family stuck in a slum on New York City's east side, and the restless daughter who desperately wants out. Patricia Hardy stars in her debut effort as the ambitious beauty. She and best buddy Joyce Holden suffer all the usual pitfalls—leering dopes, groping hoods, sniveling bros, jealous dames, nagging moms, and the dangers of crime. They more or less handle the first five problems fine, but when Hardy's brother is implicated in a murder the fallout engulfs family and friends. It's an uninspired juvie drama, but what a poster—and it wasn't the only one. We have two more below. Girls in the Night premiered in the U.S. yesterday in 1953. 


Vintage Pulp Nov 8 2018
You know why I'm great at my job? Because I'm sweating like a racehorse in this get-up and you can't tell.

French artist Alex Pinon knocks this cover for the spy thriller Mission spéciale à Rio out of the park with his black clad femme fatale and backdrop of Guanabara Bay and its famed Sugarloaf Mountain. Since Rio's average daily temperature never drops below 80 Fahrenheit, no Brazilian would actually dress like this, at least not during daytime, but the art is great. The book was published by Société des Éditions Nouvelles Valmont and its author called himself Commandant René. You're probably assuming that's a pseudonym, and you're right. It was used by Jacques Dubessy, Guy de Wargny, Henri Certigny, and other authors. Between them they wrote more than thirty books as this Commandant person, with the above coming in 1959. We have a lot of French art in the website, so poke around if it interests you. We'll have more soon.


Vintage Pulp Jul 12 2018
Never cross a woman who's spent her life on the wrong side of the tracks.

This beautiful poster was made to promote the film Vagabunda, aka Tramp, a made-in-Mexico melodrama that premiered there today in 1950. It stars Leticia Palma, who befriends and falls in loves with a priest played by Luis Beristáin who's lost his memory as a result of an assault and robbery. Palma, who works as a fichera in a place called El Tropical, takes in the priest and dubs him Carlos. A fichera, by the way, is a term to describe a female nightclub employee who does things ranging from dancing with clients to having sex with them. Palma is already in a precarious situation working a dead-end job while sheltering the priest, but things get worse when she ends up being coerced into street prostitution by a gangster named Gato. Shortly afterward, a series of events lead to the killing of Palma's pregnant sister, and she vows vengeance upon those responsible.

The poster, which is one of the better ones we've seen of late, was signed by someone named Mendoza. So off to the intertubes we went to try and ferret out his or her identity and we found that this was the work of Leopoldo Mendoza Andrade, an acclaimed illustrator who worked throughout the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. His striking promo art uses tracks as a motif because those and trains figure prominently in the movie. For example, the priest is assaulted while riding in a boxcar, and a climactic scene takes place on a railway bridge. Mendoza may have painted more than 300 hundred posters, but this surely must be one of his best. His work can be difficult to find because attributions are scanty, but his signature is easily identifiable and his Art Deco-influenced style is unique, so we'll keep an eye out for more of his creations.

The Naked City May 27 2018
L.A. woman comes to a dead end.



Femmes Fatales Feb 10 2018
Knight shoots pawn—check and mate.

Patricia Knight made only five motion pictures, but one of them was 1949's Shockproof, which falls into the category of under appreciated film noir. She plays an ex-convict who moves in with her parole officer. Yeah—bad idea, but no need to say more because we already talked about the film in detail. Check here. Knight married her Shockproof co-star Cornel Wilde and, except for a few more roles, that was pretty much the end of her career. But her contribution to film noir is remembered as one of the better ones. This is a promo photo from the movie, 1949.


Vintage Pulp Feb 1 2018
The world of professional ballet is absolute murder.




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History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
August 19
1953—Mohammed Mossadegh Overthrown in Iran
August 18
1920—U.S. Women Gain Right To Vote
1958—Lolita is Published in the U.S.
August 17
1953—NA Launches Recovery Program
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