April - 2022

The Vintage Erotic Photography ofJacques Biederer

Czech photographer Jacques Biederer began his Parisian career in 1913 with G-rated portraiture but soon moved on to more prurient subject matter—though this was still fairly “conventional” sexy materials for the day—ladies in their underwear, really. Then Biederer went through a period of full-on classical nudes, sometimes with couples, sometimes shot “on location,” outdoors or on a carefully arranged set. Then he got into fetish photography—whips, domination, corseting, pony

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Spike Milligan Would Be Celebrating Today.

Legendary British sketch comic and writer Spike Milligan celebrates his birthday today. Or, he would, if he weren’t dead. Death was a recurring theme in the work of the man who sagely observed: “All men are cremated equal.” He was famously buried in St Thomas’s Church, Winchelsea, in 2002, under a tombstone bearing the Gaelic inscription: “Duirt me leat go raibh me breoite” (“I told you I was ill”). “I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens,” he

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Papa Doc and Baby Doc

Papa Doc is a name that stills the people of Haiti with dread. Between 1957 and 1986, the nation of Haiti was ruled by one family, the Duvalier family. After an emergence as leader in democratic elections in 1957, François Duvalier, later to be known as Papa Doc, increasingly became known for totalitarianism and barbarism. After dying in 1971, he was replaced by his son, Jeane-Claude Duvalier, known colloquially as Baby Doc. At last in 1986, a popular uprising ousted Jeane-Cl

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Nick Cave Has A Shop!

“It’s the obsessive and dangerous end of granny-core. Fetishistic and deranged.” —Nick Cave describing his newly launched Cave Things online store in 2020. Nick Cave’s online store Cave Things has been offering up material possessions designed by Cave since 2020. This is good news if you, like us here at Dangerous Minds, are all about all things Nick Cave. Why use boring old No. 2 pencils when you can use Nick Cave’s Sex pencils? While I’m not sure when I might actually need

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'Major Bob' - Idi Amin's Trusted Advisor And The 'White Rat' of Uganda

Few survivors of Idi Amin’s hideous regime in Uganda in the 1970s can recount its horrors so vividly as can Bob Astles, Amin’s British-born aide who for several years sat close to the seat of terror. As top aide to President Idi Amin, Astles was a trusted man of all trades, spy, diplomat, smuggler, he was also at one point probably the most hated White man in Black Africa. "If we had managed to get Idi Amin, Bob Astles would be second on the list," said a Ugandan exile. "If t

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John Steinbeck Asking Marilyn Monroe for Her Autograph (1955)

When asking a celebrity for a special favour, it helps to be a bit of a celebrity yourself. As Keith Ferrell details in his biography, John Steinbeck: The Voice of the Land, the Nobel laureate had little patience for autograph seekers, pushy young writers seeking help getting published, and “people who never read books but enjoyed meeting authors.” The shoe went on the other foot when Mrs. Steinbeck let slip to her nephew that Uncle John had met the boy’s movie star crush, Ma

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Take The Utterly Ridiculous Literacy Test Louisiana Used to Suppress the Black Vote (1964)

In William Faulkner’s 1938 novel The Unvanquished, the implacable Colonel Sartoris takes drastic action to stop the election of a black Republican candidate to office after the Civil War, destroying the ballots of black voters and shooting two Northern carpetbaggers. While such dramatic means of voter suppression occurred often enough in the Reconstruction South, tactics of electoral exclusion refined over time, such that by the mid-twentieth century the Jim Crow South relied

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That Time Marilyn Monroe Gave Ella Fitzgerald’s Career A Boost

Jazz icon Ella Fitzgerald’s voice is recognized by millions around the world. But few know about her career-defining friendship with Marilyn Monroe, to whom Fitzgerald said she “owe a real debt.” While touring in the ’50s under the management of Norman Granz, Fitzgerald, like many African-American musicians at the time, faced significant adversity as a result of her race, especially in the Jim Crow states. Granz was a huge proponent of civil rights, and insisted that all of h

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The 3,200-Year-Old Egyptian Tablet That Recorded Workers Absences

Calling in sick to work is apparently an ancient tradition. Whether it's the sniffles or a scorpion bite, somedays you just can't make it. As it turns out, Ancient Egyptian employers kept track of employee days off in registers written on tablets. A tablet held by The British Museum and dating to 1250 BCE is an incredible window into ancient work-life balance. The 40 employees listed are marked for each day they missed, with reasons ranging from illness to family obligations.

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Why John Lennon Didn't Kill Stuart Sutcliffe

On April the 10th 1962, Stu Sutcliffe died aged 21 of a cerebral haemorrhage. He'd already left The Beatles at this point after deciding to stay in Germany to continue his art studies. In the decades since his death, John Lennon has been accused of being responsible for Sutcliffe's death (mainly by Sutcliffe's sister) - a fight had apparently taken place between the two months previously in Liverpool. The facts are shakey, there apparently was a fight but Lennon came to Sutcl

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Portmeirion Village and Clough Williams-Ellis

Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion’s creator, was born in 1883 and built Portmeirion Village in two phases: between 1925 and 1939, and from 1954 to 1976. The following is a very brief history of the Italianate village which is beloved by local people and visitors from all over the world. Portmeirion Village was Clough’s dream for more than thirty years. As a small boy of five or six, he had already made his mind up to be an architect and a town planner. He decided that o

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The Day Brigitte Bardot and Pablo Picasso Spent Together

When Brigitte Bardot met Pablo Picasso in 1956, she was 21 and he was 74. Picasso had a long and successful career as an artist behind him, and Bardot had already made 17 films. Picasso was best known as one of the pioneers of Cubist painting, but in his career he experimented with a variety of techniques and media. In 1948, he moved into a villa in the town of Vallauris on the French Riviera, where he explored the use of clay and ceramics, producing practical items and decor

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Brian Blessed Threw Away A Picasso Sketch

The booming actor Brian Blessed has a flair for a story. Asked by a newspaper if he ever made a financial mistake, he revealed that when he was 12 he met Pablo Picasso. The artist was in Sheffield for a peace congress and the boy Blessed cheekily asked if he really was Picasso – then challenged him to prove it by drawing something. Picasso drew a dove, and the future film star said “That’s not a dove”, and threw it to the ground. It was picked up and preserved by someone else

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Tour Riders, The Stuff Of Legends

There was a time when being a star meant getting away with whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. Tales of trashing hotel rooms just for fun, drinking, smoking, and snorting everything in sight. But as times have changed and attitudes toward abuse of substances and cleaning crews alike have shifted, there simply aren’t too many extreme indulgences that your typical rock star or pop diva can get away with anymore. Throw a TV out a window? Someone on the maintenance crew twe

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‘Marlon Brando broke my jaw’: Ron Galella

Marlon Brando broke his jaw, and Jackie Onassis filed a restraining order against him: photographer Ron Galella got up close and far too personal with celebrities for half a century, becoming one of the world’s most controversial snappers. These are the unguarded moments he captured on the pavements and in the nightclubs of New York and Los Angeles. Often uninvited, sometimes welcomed, Galella’s snapshots helped to shape the idea of modern celebrity. Piercing the sheen of the

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The Time Women Dominated the Silent Film Industry

In 2010, Katheryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the OSCAR for Best Director with her 2009 film, The Hurt Locker. The significant achievement occurred nearly 120 years after the advent of motion picture cameras and 114 years after Alice Guy-Blaché made the first fictional, narrative film. The industry that has long been accused of misogyny is one that was built on the backs of women - women of wit and verve and ambition - who dominated film during the silent era. “Ther

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