Fun Finds: Movie Stars Parade Magazine, June 1956

Back again right away with another Fun Find, purchased on the same day as the last one. And, wouldn't you know, the Butcher of Burlington was up to her old tricks again in this mag! While it's not quite the shambles of the previous publication, there were still several pages missing or messed with... I will be more attentive when searching for old periodicals in the future! I guess that beguiling cover of Miss Kim Novak distracted me. Fans of cheesecake photography might like this one especially. As usual, I'll be providing commentary along the way as I deem appropriate. Now let's get to it! 

The inside front cover featured this device, the likes of which could be found in magazines up through the 1970s at least! I don't know if anyone ever lost weight from it, but at least the vibrations could put a smile on your face if you aimed it right. LOL

I don't know why, but it struck me as odd that a mouthwash ad would be set at the counter of an ice cream parlor! She gets a luscious float and he gets Listerine?

I didn't cut these models' heads off. The ad was presented that way (to focus on the garments.) Interesting assortment of clothing (and bigger gals will pay an extra $1!) Number 542 is "on-or-off shoulder" which reminded me of Blanche from The Golden Girls: "Why everything I wear is off the shoulda'... sooner or later...!"

Grrr... the first page of this gossip section is MIA. We do love us some Guy Madison. And I had utterly forgotten that Cara Williams was once wed to John Drew Barrymore! They were split by 1959, but she did have his son, sometimes-actor John Blyth Barrymore. No need for any nursery over at Rock & Phyllis' house!

Russ Tamblyn's wife here, Venetia Stevenson, is the daughter of Anna Lee, though she and her mother were not close until Venetia was an adult because she lived with her father, actor Robert Stevenson in England. Her marriage to Tamblyn was finished after a year. Dale Robertson and Mary Murphy needn't have bothered with their upcoming nuptials. The union was annulled six months later! Serenade (1956) was a moderate hit, but Mario Lanza only made one more movie before passing away at 38 from the effects of stringent (and controversial) weight loss procedures. 

Milton Greene, shown on this page with Marilyn Monroe, was a famous photographer who, for a time, helped Monroe change career directions with movies like Bus Stop (1956) and The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), though there was a falling out after the second film. He is the man who took the iconic photo of her in a tulle ballet tutu, among many other shots.

His story has gone missing at the hands of the scissor-happy original owner, but this is Ben Cooper, a busy 1950s & '60s actor who is not particularly well-known now. He tended to play supporting roles in films which featured bigger stars like Joan Crawford or Burt Lancaster.

A small amount of his article remains intact in the back of the mag. Cooper did marry in 1960 to actress Pamela Raymond and they remained wed until 2008 when she passed away. Cooper acted up through the mid-1990s and passed away in 2020 at age 86. I recall the shock of seeing him in 1st & Ten as Delta Burke's husband who has a special fondness for one of the players!

Not sure what "The Wedding Clock" was, but Shirley Jones didn't make it. Her next movie, in fact, was Carousel (1956), whose soundtrack album she is holding.

She really must have been tight-lipped about spilling too much personal information, including about Jack Cassidy. The two were wed that August!

Now the cover story and the parade of cheesecake-y photos of the popular actresses of the day. At first glance I thought this was Elizabeth Taylor, but it's one Marla English. This is really a pretty revealing photo for a 1956 "family" publication! She was currently filming "White Nightmare" which became A Strange Adventure (1956) with the aforementioned Ben Cooper in the cast. She wed a businessman in 1957 and retired from the biz at only age 21!

Arlene Dahl famously advised ladies to never sleep on their faces, only on the back of their head, to avoid facial creases, etc... (She also infamously would rise before hubby Fernando Lamas and apply makeup, then slip back into bed, so that he would awaken to a vision instead of a slattern next to him! LOL) I had no clue on earth that that was (a brunette!) Martha Hyer at lower-right...

This is kind of a fun article with intriguing text and info along the way. I can barely envision cowboy Rory Calhoun amid all they endless frillery! Mamie Van Doren's towel has seen better days. I had one not quite that bad that I used to like to use at the YMCA to attract attention. Ha ha!

Heavens... those side-lamps of Debra Paget's! I think Marilyn Monroe once replied, when asked what she had on in bed, "the radio..." Or was it Chanel #5?

I'm not having a brunette Mitzi Gaynor! LOL And though I love her, this hard-looking period is one of my least favorite of Joan Crawford's. As for the text in the story, is it "moo-moo" or "muu-muu?"

Here is cover girl Kim Novak at last. Jan Sterling was one of the lightest blondes ever, next to Jean Harlow and latter-day Monroe.

There's our other Joan (Collins), all ready for bed in full makeup and large earrings! Ha! The caption is on the opposing page, but that's Julie Adams and humpy hubby Ray Danton above-right.

Lastly, we find curvaceous Anita Ekberg and former child-star Margaret O'Brien. (I can't with the dolls...)

The accompanying story (about her dreams of marriage) was rendered from the magazine, but this pinup of Natalie Wood remains. In 1957, Wood married Robert Wagner for the first time, which was hardly the dream she had in mind. But they later re-wed ten years after their 1962 divorce.

Audie Murphy had a family-oriented spread in the other recent Fun Find and now here he is again, out and about at Universal-International Studios for the day with his two little boys.

I don't know a thing about these two sweet boys, but I hope they had happy lives. Things got rough for their father near the end of his life.

Y'all pay attention to this so you can look more presentable when you visit Poseidon's Underworld...! Ha ha!

Funny how things change... now everyone WANTS a pouty lip! The owner of the mag snipped out the photo of Grace Kelly and her perfect nose. And it was the unkindest cut of all...

...because in the process, she hacked away a large portion of John Derek's cranium!

At least the rest of the spread was left alone, though these training photos sadly have him all covered up in a sweatsuit.

Jacques Sernas got what ought to have been a considerable break with Helen of Troy (1956), but it wound up only making back half its money at the box office. Before too long, he was back making multiple European costume epics in what was a long career there. (Among his films were also La dolce vita, 1960, and 55 Days at Peking, 1963.)

Sernas managed to survive Buchenwald concentration camp and, like many others who made it through such an ordeal, lived a long life. He retired in 2007 and passed away in 2015 at age 89. 

Despite being an alleged cinema aficionado, I'm ashamed to admit that I have never seen any of these films! By the way... read about Zonitors at your own risk! Ha ha!

Some remaining tidbits from the opening gossip section. Gary Cooper did perform in at least two more westerns, The Hanging Tree (1959) and the excellent Man of the West (1958), which is a favorite of mine. Janet Leigh was able to deliver her baby, Kelly, and proceeded to have Jamie Lee about two years later. Jerry Lewis, by the way, was biological father to six children (that we know of!) Rita Hayworth did not end up marrying Raymond Hakim.

Keep learning, kids...

Lord, Janet, is there anything else you'd like to know about Natalie?!? There were stories in this magazine about both Sal and Tab, but they were missing! Aaarrgh! But in any case, I think Tab liked his girls real quiet, like asleep. But I suspect he liked blonds versus blondes...

If you're not familiar with Kay Starr, she sang the Christmas hit "(Everybody's Waitin' For ) The Man with the Bag" along with many other songs. She lived to be 94. "Rock Island Line," a smash in the UK, reached number 8 in the US. Many of the vocalists mentioned here would soon enough find themselves washed away by the influx of rock 'n roll artists.

There are a number of people in this section with fan clubs who I have never heard of! For what it's worth, Gordon MacRae has my favorite singing voice ever. I just loved the way he sounded in his prime. He and Sheila were married from 1941-1967 and had four children together before divorcing. He immediately re-wed and they were together until his death in 1986 from pneumonia at age 64.

Here is the back cover of the magazine. For whatever reason it took me FOREVER to recognize the artwork shown...! I thought it was a red toothbrush at first! I guess I'm just not one to appreciate art. Ha ha!

::::BONUS PICS::::

I felt the least I could do under the circumstances of this magazine's vandalism was to try to show Mr. Derek's pinup unmolested by scissors. However, I could NOT find that exact shot. This is very, very close. 

I have yet to see The Leather Saint, but now I really want to. I ask you to examine the unbelievably hairy legs of John Derek in this photo...!

"There, there... let mama make it all better for you."

All the long, wavy locks that Derek had sported for The Ten Commandments (1956) were shorn off for this movie. It's likely the shortest hair the actor-turned-director ever had.

The beatific lighting is because he plays a priest who secretly and temporarily takes to the ring in order to raise funds for both an iron lung and a community swimming pool.

The End.

Fun Finds: Uncensored Magazine, January 1956

We're going "old school" today with our latest Fun Find. Usually our celebrity rags tend to be from the 1960s and '70s, but this one jumped out at me during a combination flea market-antique show in Dayton, Ohio, so I picked it up for $4.00. Unsensored magazine was one of many to dive into the wake of Confidential magazine, one of the most notorious and controversial tabloid publications of the 1950s. (Other imitators included Exposed, Hush-Hush, Revealed, The Lowdown and several more.) Most of the time, I turn magazine pages to pure black & white for aesthetic reasons, but because this one frequently employs the use of red throughout, I've left it in its somewhat yellowed glory.

I don't typically include the Table of Contents page, but because of the letter to the Editors in the left column, I opted to this time. Apparently, the makers of this periodical considered themselves a kinder, more benevolent gossip mag than some of their competitors.  Riiiigghht... I wonder if the Editor-in-Chief's name was Mr. O.E.M.! Ha!

You can see a resemblance between Geraldine Chaplin and her mother Oona O'Neill in the picture at bottom-left. Most of these blurbs lack teeth (except the blind ones, but they're impossible to identify. At first I thought the one in the middle column was about Judy Lewis - Clark Gable's child - but she didn't act on screen until 1958 and that was on TV.)

Take note of the cartoon characters in this two-page spread. I like to pretend that they are Joan Crawford...

...and Bette Davis rehashing gossip on the phone, though I know it isn't possible. Ha ha! Rex Harrison did in fact, with Lilli Palmer's cooperation, obtain a divorce and then marry Kay Kendall in 1957. She then died in 1959 without ever being told the advanced severity of her leukemia.

Broadway dancer and actress Gwen Verdon is the subject of this next article, highlighting her early start in nightclubs, wherein she danced in little more than shiny paint and a G-string. According to this article, she worried a bit that scantily-clad cheesecake photos from those days might resurface the way Marilyn Monroe's nude calendar did.

Choreographer Jack Cole was a forerunner and major influence to Bob Fosse. Verdon (whose mother was a ballerina) suffered tremendously as a child from rickets and almost had her legs broken and re-set by a doctor until her mother placed her in special boots and braces. A 1942 marriage (and baby) drew a halt to her career for five years, but she returned to the stage and to movies.

This is just a composite I made from the next two-page spread, whose headline was separated between the panels. (So you'd know in advance what the story is about... celebs dumping their spouses for a new model version!)

I feel certain that even this "Uncensored" article leaves out many pertinent details of the breakups and marriages described.

Holy mackerel, is that the best pick of Dorothy Towne (Webb) that they could get their hands on for this?! And this article has the nerve to point out the longevity of Spencer Tracy's (!) marriage to his (estranged) wife Louise.

The seemingly never-ending whirlpool of Elizabeth Taylor's love (and marriage) life...

Methinks that Liz and William Pawley, Jr. would have produced some gorgeous kiddos with black hair and blue eyes. Not sure what broke that up. Of course, we now know why "relationships" with Monty Clift and Mr. Hudson didn't pan out.

E.T.'s date to the Oscars, above left, was a three-time All-American and Heisman Trophy-winning halfback whose Army service delayed his pro football career. He eventually worked as an event coordinator for the L.A. Times. At the time of this article, she was but twenty-three!

Whew! A little bit of beefcake, courtesy of silent film legend Rudolph Valentino.

The bulk of this article focuses on the love life of Ms. Glyn, who carried on a variety of affairs, some very longstanding, (before and) after the 1915 death of her husband.

Well, first I had to go and find out WHO Mary Sinclair even was...! The second of three wives for famed Broadway producer-director George Abbott, she divorced him in 1951 (after two years of separation), the same year she became the first ever TV actress signed to a long-term contract (seven years for CBS.) It led to an avalanche of work on the tube over the course of her somewhat brief career.

Eventually she drifted out of TV and lived in Europe where she painted, eventually returning to California where she directed local theatre. She died in 2000 at age seventy-seven, (Remarkably, Abbott lived to be one-hundred-seven!) Sinclair did make a couple of minor TV appearances in the mid-1980s.

Here, operatic movie star Mario Lanza gets no small amount of dressing-down!

The article goes on to berate him for home-wrecking (literally... he was sued for - and forced to pay - $40,000 in damages to one house and $17,000 on another!) and getting too drunk in Las Vegas to keep an appearance, among other things. Lanza died in 1959 at age thirty-eight while attempting to lose weight for an upcoming project.

This article gets testy with Maureen O'Hara, alluding to her relationship with a Mexican attorney and how her (recent) ex-husband was affected by it. Her ex was allegedly a rather abusive alcoholic and, in fact, died of a heart attack at age forty-eight in 1962. O'Hara's relationship with the attorney went on until 1967, though it helped contribute to a rift between her and mentor-ly director John Ford.

O' Hara famously sued Confidential magazine not long after this period and won an out-of-court settlement (as did Errol Flynn and Liberace.) In 1968, she wed for a third and last time to a man from the U.S. Air Force and airline industry, but he perished in a crash in 1978.

I should think this photo of two Greenwich Village men in a romantic clinch would be rather heady stuff for a reader to see in 1956 (though hardly representative of "Cafe Society," which is what the article is geared towards)

Somehow whenever I read an article like this one, filled with innuendo, yet straining not to be too specific, it all just becomes word salad and I can't make head nor tale of its contents! LOL  I'm moving on...

Hmmm... Now this one is more my language. Here we find a pretty brazen article on Henry Willson, Tab Hunter and a few of the other handsome studs that Willson turned into screen stars (creatively renaming each one along the way.) The caption references "Greek" and of course there was the double entendre term of "making" someone.

In the top photo Tab is interacting with a beaver (?) while in the lower one he's on an arranged date with Debbie Reynolds...

This text goes into pretty vivid detail concerning Hunter's youthful arrest for "disorderly conduct." But he survived and continued to perform in movies and on TV (and is still with us today at age eighty-six.) BTW, it wasn't too long before "Touch" Connors lost that nickname and began a lengthy career as Mike Connors (chiefly of Mannix fame.)

Then-current musings on Marilyn Monroe's quest to break out of her bubbleheaded starlet image and become a serious actress.

This was the year that Bus Stop and The Prince and the Showgirl were released.

This article isn't celeb-focused, but I had to include it chiefly because of the second page.

The fascinating new device called "safety belts!" (Good Lord, we're still trying to get people to buckle-up, this time with shoulder straps, too. Sometimes it's the law: "Click It or Ticket!") A rubber protector to keep one from going through the windshield? Or my favorite... a built-in sand dispenser to shoot sand in front of tires on icy roads!!

The Croatian starlet shown here, Lila Andres, only had a brief career in her homeland, but lived to be ninety-four, passing away last June.

Pictured at the top-left is Gina Lollobrigida and at top-right Jovanka Broz, who was (the controversial) Tito's wife from the early-1950s until his 1980 death, though they had been estranged for a few years prior to that. From 1980 - 2013, she basically lived under house arrest by the new regime.

The murder of shady businessman and playboy Serge Rubenstein (whose body was found bound with his mouth taped by a butler) was never solved.

This article goes on to state that George R. Hearst (son of William Randolph) was married four times, but Wikipedia only lists one spouse, Collette Lyons. (They did have to wed twice because it wasn't clear if his marriage to this gal - Sandra Rambeau - was properly annulled yet.

Well... I can probably guess at least ONE "thing" that made Noel Coward tremble just a little bit anyway.... LOL!

The text contains this reference, now hopelessly un-PC: "he was as flat busted as a woman athlete." !! The article goes on to tell a rather staggering tale of how Coward, living alone after his two female roomies left town, was so hot in the sweltering New York City apartment kitchen that he cooked in the nude that a policeman saw him through a window and came to his door over it! Coward gave the officer three glasses of red wine (!) and the officer gave him a pistol to keep for protection in the dicey neighborhood. Oh, and the thing that REALLY got Coward trembling? His bed in the flat had bed bugs!

Due to interest in it, I've scanned the remainder of the Noel Coward story and added it to this post!

Uncensored magazine claims not to go in for sensationalism, but here's an article on how aspiring writers and publishers can increase circulation with it.

By "reporting" on it, they get to provide some of it...!

Interesting to see a feature article on Ari Onassis long before anyone ever heard of President Kennedy or Jacqueline.

Onassis and Prince Rainier III were involved in volatile partnership-turned-rivalry over Monaco and its future plans. Monaco was the subject of intrigue, too, when Rainier's sister Antoinette tried to wrest control of the place, an act that was thwarted when he we Grace Kelly (in 1956) and produced heirs thereafter.

Finally, we have a story on famed restaurateur and raconteur Toots Shor (who used the term "Crum Bums" affectionately towards his celebrity clientele.)

Shor's Manhattan eatery (of which there were ultimately three locations at one time or another) was famous as a hangout for notable names, many of who ate free. Successful as he was, the always generous Shor died penniless in 1977 after his fortunes shifted for the worse.

Not too many incredible ads in this mag, but I thought there was a certain element of campy glamour in the one found above.

Last item: This hooty ad for a Davy Crockett Playhouse Tent. In the mid-'50s, Davy Crockett was all the rage thanks to a Walt Disney TV presentation in 1954 starring Fess Parker. Even though this is "Only $1.00 Complete" you'd better also have a folding card table, one that Mom & Dad aren't using for Canasta anytime soon! This thing intended for "frontier and pioneer" enjoyment was just a piece of plastic that slipped over a standard card table! No wonder the kid is on his knees...