Pulp International
vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
- Femmes Fatales
She's a one woman market disruption.

This photo shows British actress Lilian Bond, sometimes Lillian Bond, made when she was filming the 1933 romance When Strangers Marry—and when strangers marry they sometimes want to shoot each other. Other films of hers include Scotland Yard, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Old Dark House. We have some nice art for the latterhere and here. Bond was not a big star, but she worked steadily from 1929 to 1958, which means we may run into her again.
Britain, When Strangers Marry, Scotland Yard, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Old Dark House, Lilian Bond, Lillian Bond
- Femmes Fatales
Disaster looms if she moves even a millimeter.

Not only is Monica Bannister precariously positioned on her pedestal, but her gown is precariously positioned on her body. One wobble and she’ll end up on the floor showing plenty more than planned, but it just so happens she’s too graceful for that because her show business career was based on coordination. As dancer and actress she appeared in more than thirty films, including 1933’s Mystery at the Wax Museum, 1941’s Moon over Miami, and 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. All her film appearances save two were uncredited, but she went on to open a dance school and teach others how to be graceful too. This photo came out of the studio of famed lensman Murray Korman, who photographed thousands of famous and would-be famous people from the 1920s into the 1950s. There’s no exact date on this, but it’s from the mid-1930s.
Canada, Mystery at the Wax Museum, Moon over Miami, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Monica Bannister, Murray Korman
- Vintage Pulp
Oscar Wilde was an okay writer and all, but you know what his fiction really needed? Women in catsuits.

Believe it or not, this book entitled Il vizio che brucia (translation: “The Vice that Burns”) is Oscar Wilde’s macabre classic The Picture of Dorian Gray, sexed up for the Italian reading market. Who is this supposed to be on the cover? Sybil Vane, the innocent young actress? The country girl Hetty Merton? Neither, we suppose, since they didn’t wear backless catsuits, as far as we remember. But even if this pulpification of Wilde’s classic has no relationship to the actual text, the Benedetto Caroselli art makes it collectible. The edition was published by Grandi Edizioni Internazionali as part of their I Romanzi Diabolici series and appeared in 1964. See more Caroselli here.
Italy, Grandi Edizioni Internazionali, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, Benedetto Caroselli, cover art, literature
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HISTORY REWIND
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1995—Mickey Mantle Dies
New York Yankees outfielder Mickey Mantle dies of complications from cancer, after receiving a liver transplant. He was one of the greatest baseball players ever, but he was also an alcoholic and played drunk, hungover, and unprepared. He once said about himself, “Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else’s brain, who knows how good a player I might have been.”
1943—Philadelphia Experiment Allegedly Takes Place
The U.S. government is believed by some to have attempted to create a cloak of invisibility around the Navy ship USS Eldridge. The top secret event is known as the Philadelphia Experiment and, according to believers, ultimately leads to the accidental teleportation of an entire vessel.
1953—Soviets Detonate Deliverable Nuke
The Soviet Union detonates a nuclear weapon codenamed Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina, aka Stalin’s Jet Engine. In the U.S. the bomb is codenamed Joe 4. It is a small yield fission bomb rather than a multi-stage fusion weapon, but it makes up for its relative weakness by being fully deployable, meaning it can be dropped from a bomber.
1945—Nagasaki Destroyed
The United States detonates a nuclear bomb codenamed Fat Man over the city of Nagasaki. It is the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. 40,000 to 75,000 people are killed immediately, with tens of thousands more sickening and dying later due to radiation poisoning. The U.S. had plans to drop as many as seven more bombs on Japan, but the nation surrendered 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.
THE KING OF SWING
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer poster for Johnny Weissmuller's 1934 lost world epic Tarzan the Ape Man.