LIVIN' THE LIFE

GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE:
A Year in the Life of a Pimp
Bob Adelman & Susan Hall
hardcover, 2006
35.00....sale 16.95

Meet Silky and his ladies - Lois, Linda, Kitty, Tracey, and Sandy - visit his tailor and friends and family in this new edition of photographs and interviews first published in 1972 when fascination with the pimp lifestyle was in its heydey and the subject of glorification in the rising genre of blaxploitation cinema (Superfly and The Mack, etc).

MISSING IN ACTION - DVDs - PART 2

BLACK LIKE ME

1964
James Whitmore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Will Geer, Al Freeman Jr.
dir. Carl Lerner

dvd import
b&w, import
$19.95

After 40 years, this films still hits home. The true story of a northern white journalist's journey through the Southern U.S. in the guise of a black man. Shot on a sparse budget by the film editor of such classics as Klute, Twelve Angry Men and The Swimmer -- his only feature as writer and director.

Not available in the U.S. on dvd or vhs.

MISSING IN ACTION - DVDs - PART 1

SANDS OF THE KALAHARI
1965
Stuart Whitman, Stanley Baker, Susannah York, Harry Andrews
dir. Cy Enfield
dvd import
colour, widescreen
$19.95

Not available on vhs, dvd or even TCM, this British survival story from the director of Zulu, has virtually vanished from the cinematic radar. Six men and one woman survive their plane crash in the South African desert and wind up battling against the elements, each other, and a tribe of man-eating baboons.

Tough, sweaty, suspensful and a great entertainment on par with such similar fare as The Flight of the Phoenix (the original, not the pointless Dennis Quaid remake) and The Naked Prey.

GIRLS ON TOP

EXQUISITE MAYHEM
The Spectacular & Erotic World of Wrestling
Theo Ehret
hardcover, 2001
$50.00

In the early 70's, photographer Theo Ehret began staging female wrestling scenarios in his studio for various erotic and fetish magazines. This mammoth (400+ pages) coffee table book documenting the golden age of wrestling and Ehret's "apartment wrestling" work , now out of print (although we've got a few copies hidden away), remains the best book on both subjects.

MYSTERY MEN

THE GLORIOUS DECEPTION
The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Ching Ling Soo
Jim Steinmeyer
hardcover, 2005
26.95 sale 10.95

Steinmeyer unveils the secrets behind the most enigmatic performer in the history of stage magic, Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer." Soo’s infamous and suspicious onstage death in 1918 mystified his fellow magicians: he was shot during a performance of "Defying the Bullets," in which he attempted to catch marked bullets on a porcelain plate. When Soo died, his deceptions began to unravel. It was discovered that he was not Chinese but a fifty-eight-year-old American named William Ellsworth Robinson, a former magicians’ assistant and the husband of Olive Robinson. But even William Robinson was not who he appeared to be, for he had kept a second family with a mistress in a fashionable home near London.

A great read. Fascinating as biography, mystery and chronicle of early vaudeville and the world of magic at the turn of the last century.

A LIFE IN PICTURES

LEADBELLY
A Life in Pictures

Tyhimba Jess, Tom Waits (introduction)
hardcover, 2008

$50.00

A visual biography of blues great Huddie Ledbetter (Midnight Special, Rock Island Line, Goodnight Irene), discovered by a music anthropologist from the Library of Congress in a Louisiana prison while serving time for assault and murder, consisting of unpublished photographs, news clippings, concert programs, personal correspondence (including letters from Woody Guthrie), record albums, awards and other memorabilia discovered only recently from a basement trunk in New York City.

BLOWS UP REAL GOOD

COCK
Indian Firework Art
Gavin Alpert
concertina-style binding, 2001
$50.00

Nearly impossible to find these days but this is a beautiful, one-of-a-kind book, presented as a continuous, fold-out board of nearly 24 feet (86 pages), adorned with reproductions of Indian firework labels, most from the Cock Firework Company from the . Comes in its own firework box.