The Mystery of Baudelaire’s Maddening Mistress

There’s love. There’s lust. Then there’s Jeanne DuVal, who embodied something between the two in her tumultuous relationship with Charles Baudelaire, France’s original “bad boy” poet. As a muse to the rebellious Parisian dandy, she inspired some of the most haunting, revolutionary verses in history – odes to the woman he loved to love, and…

Hollywood’s Doom Book and other Tales of Blacklisting in American Cinema

Before we even knew it as “Hollywood”, the American film industry was a very different place, producing a surreal amount of extraordinarily liberal and raw movies that would give today’s rated-R movies a run for their money; featuring nudity, strong female characters, sex, drugs, violence, abortion and even homosexuality. But everything changed in the year…

6 Startling Things I Didn’t Know about Bettie Page

Last night, I watched Bettie Page Reveals All, a 2012 documentary about her life history, with much of it narrated by Ms. Page herself and that wonderfully thick Southern accent of hers. Now here is the part where I admit that I ‘ve never really paid much attention to Bettie Page as a cultural icon before; always just putting her in that category…

Meet Lilli, the High-end German Call Girl Who Became Barbie

So it turns out Barbie’s original design was based on a German adult gag-gift escort doll named Lilli. That’s right, she wasn’t a dentist or a surgeon, an Olympian gymnast, a pet stylist or an ambassador for world peace. And she certainly wasn’t a toy for little girls… Lilli on display at the Barbie Museum in Prague Unbeknownst…

Vintage Muse du Jour: Rediscovering Chelo Alonso, Cuba’s Answer to Marilyn

She was billed as the human,”Cuban H-Bomb” by American media in the 1950s, ’cause Chelo Alonso was Cuba’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. Simply a force to be reckoned with, she exploded onto the international movie scene in the 1950s as both a dancer, instantly drawing comparisons to Josephine Baker, and as a starlet who carved…

Muse du Jour: David Bowie’s Real ‘Lady Grinning Soul’

No one could shake it like Claudia Lennear. Or sing, for that matter. The 1960s-70s vocalist backed some of the music industry’s greatest talents, from Ike and Tina Turner to Joe Cocker; George Harrison to Stephen Still, but emerged as a powerhouse performer in her own right. “A tour de force from start to finish,”…

So a Glamazon, a Snake Charmer, and a Calypso Queen Walk into a Bar

It took more than a pretty face to make it big in burlesque – it took fearlessness and a strong dose of je ne sais quoi to make America take notice during the golden age of showgirl entertainment. Five women in particular have caught our attention more than a century later, so put up your…

Inside the Mansfield Mansion

It just doesn’t get much more kitsch (or pink) than screen siren Jayne Mansfield’s Sunset Boulevard home circa 1960. Floor to ceiling shag carpets, heart-shaped swimming pool, fireplaces and bathtubs, gold-plated fixtures a plenty, and of course, pink f**king everything. Photographed by LIFE photographer Allan Grant in 1960, the mid 20th century sex symbol shows…

Rolling with Raquel

Once upon a time, Raquel Welch made a movie about roller derby. Was it an excuse to get in her in a pair of hot pants and tube socks? Let’s just say it didn’t win any oscars, but Raquel insisted the 1972 movie she co-produced was less about her looking like a sex symbol and…

Who was the Kissing Bandit, Baseball’s Forgotten Sex Symbol?

For thirty years, she was the buxom babe of baseball who famously rushed the field at major league baseball games to steal kisses from up to 50 athletes in front of thousands of spectators. The media branded her Morganna, “The Kissing Bandit,” and she quickly became a celebrity in her own right, winning endorsement deals, film, television and magazine…