Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist
brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from
area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do
this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Rave: The Magazine of Intimate Expose
Author: Gay-baiting, breast obsessed, utterly degenerate/hilarious pretend moralist "Peter Hamilton"
Date: October,
1955
Discovered at:
Brass Amradillo Antique Mall
The Cover
Promises: That Gretta Garbo "loathes" America, the country
that invented Russian Roulette.
Representative
Quotes:
"When Marlon
Brando taps on those Pearly gates and mumbles at St. Peter that he
wants in, the reception he'll get will be about as warm as the one
St. Pete recently gave the late Josef Vasily Stalin." (page 22).
"If
we are wrong, there's no doubt about it: we'll have pulled the
publishing goof of the decade. We
repeat: DEBBIE AND EDDIE WILL NOT MARRY."
(page 4)
Like
the Fox News hosts who denounce spring break lasciviousness while
filling the screen with looped images of wet T-shirt action, the scandal rag Rave enjoys nothing more
than taking a good, long, hand-in-pants stare into the very vices it
purports to oppose.
On one page, Rave is
shocked that Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher would dare "mock"
the institution of marriage. Not only does Rave suspect the romance was unconsummated and publicist-dictated, Rave suggests of Debbie, in bold, "maybe she was UNINTERESTED in boys."
But just a few pages later, Rave sneers
at buxom sexpot Jane Russell for insufficient sexiness,
comparing her to "a painted female impersonator who stuck one
too many pillows down the front."
"Acres
of flesh," Rave
sniffs, "but not one pebble of oomph."
Rave blasts
her "shoddy bumps and grinds" onscreen and claims "Her bossman, Howard Hughes, has spent
countless zillions of bucks publicizing her 38-inch bustline. Still
the guys who know Miss Russell best, off-screen, consider her a
38-carat nothing."
Nastier still:
"One
of the best estimates of Janie was made by a Hollywood wit the time
he was conned into watching a private screening of that all-time
celluloid turkey, The Outlaw. 'My
God!' he cried, as the camera dollied majestically in on her
billowing bosom. 'They forgot to milk her!'"
Then, much like US magazine suddenly lashing out at its cash-cow Angelina Jolie's parenting,
feel about her close relationship a "gal pal"
:"It is pleasant to imagine that Bob, like
Rave,simply thumbed through his well-worn Bible and philosophically
muttered that of such palship or something is paved the way to
heaven-- or somewhere."
Again and again, Rave condemns the sleaze in which it wallows in ... and then congratulates itself on being "unafraid." Still, compare "Marlon Brando: The World's Worst Lover" to the
beach-body roundups of today's mostly afraid scandal rags (helpfully tracked by Jezebel each week), and you'll see that Rave's claim stands. It's hard to imagine Hamilton softballing the celebrities
he loathes in exchange for baby pictures.
Taking
on Eartha Kitt, Rave dishes dirt TMZ and Perez Hilton wouldn't dare:
(Note that, in Rave's goofy photo, Kitt's head is proportioned like a Pez dispenser's.)
Other unafraid Rave claims:
Marlon
Brando desecrated a church.
On a flight
home from Europe, Groucho Marx listed his occupation on a customs
form as "smuggler." Later, when delayed for hours by officials,
he stage-whispered to his then wife, "What did you do with the
opium?"
"Why
Garbo Loathes America" offers this astonishing caption.
Ordinarily, we'd consider that fact the average, ordinary
American's good luck and leave Mr. Coward dancing solitary minuets
with the other sprites in the garden."
Clowns detest circus tyrant John Ringling North, "the fop of the
big top."
In
"Who is America's Hammiest Actor,"Rave
subscribers
-- most of whom write in the exact purple, biting prose of
Hamilton --
go on the attack. Arthur Lewis of Ohio on Tony Curtis: "He touches
peaks of hamminess that demonstrate that here, truly, is a ham to
the smokehouse born."
Here's R. J. Hill on Jimmy Stewart:
And here's why Russian Roulette is dangerous.
Showing 1-6 of 6
Just goes to show that the same thing was going on in the so-called good ole days, gossip, dirt, moralizing, more gosip, celebrity worship, building people up to tear them down, etc. Some of it was possibly true. Much of it probably wasn't. No different than the tabloids of today. It's just that we have more of it and it's in print, on the web, on TV and the radio and there seems to be no refuge like the wholesome sitcoms of that day to escape to so you can try to believe that somewhere in America people really do live like they are "supposed to".
There's so much going on here worth commenting on that I can't even pick just one thing. Result: ambulance for commenter.
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