G-Man Jerry Cotton (Bastei Verlag)

Being a fan of vintage pop culture and cult paraphernalia like books, magazines, comics, movies,... from the early 50's untill the end of the 70's gives you a broad scope of material that can fit into your cult addiction and collections. Very early on crossovers between these paraphernalia became a general rule rather than the exception. A very good example is the crossover between lobby cards of Marisa Mell movies like "Stuntman" from 1968 and "Una Sull'Altra" from 1969 for the covers of the German romanheften issued by publisher Bastei Verlag for their crime series "G-Men Jerry Cotton". G-Man Jerry Cotton from the FBI office in New York is the fictional character in a series of crime novels written by many different writers in Germany. In 1954 the first novel appeared as no. 68: "Ich suchte den Gangster-Chef" in the series "Bastei Kriminalroman".
The pseudonym "Jerry Cotton" was developed in 1956 and the first novella with this name on the front-page appeared with the title "Ich jagte den Diamanten-Hai". In 2005 the series reached the 2500th edition. Total circulation since 1954 is about 850.000.000 (!) issues. A group of over 100 authors have written during the past decades for the series which are today still sold in many kiosks and newsagents all over the country. Even though Jerry Cotton novels are considered trivial literature by some people, the FBI agent has a faithful fan community, just like his equally long-lived German science-fiction counterpart , "Perry Rhodan". Several Jerry Cotton novels were adapted as German movies with Hollywood actor George Nader as Jerry Cotton when he was banned from Hollywood in the 60's as a gay actor and boyfriend of Rock Hudson.
To end this entry we finish with the same cover of the Jerry Cotton Taschenbuch when we started this entry but this time the Dutch version of the cover.

A "Stuntman" in Japan!

In 1968, Marisa Mell starred as "Gloria Hall" in an Italian-French co-production "Stuntman" were she tried to lure a stuntman into stealing an Indian artifact. This is the Japanese poster for the movie! Japanese movie posters, like the Belgian ones, are specially made for their market. Most movie markets in the world are rather lazy in the promotion of American and/or non American movies. They just copy the template of the movie posters and put a font on it in the language of their country. Work done! Japan and Belgium on the other hand are very inventive and have a long tradition of making their own posters combining several eye catchers from the movie they are going to promote. In other words, most posters from Japan and Belgium are original creations. While the domestic movie poster for this film mainly focusses on the stunts with big crashing cars in front of the poster and the actors in the back ground, this poster has the main focus on the actors and the spy aspect of the film like the chrono watch, gas mask, the remote control, wrestling women and a nude Marisa Mell. Hence the poster has a very strong James Bond feel to it.

Body language

This photo is a behind the scenes shot of Marisa Mell as "Gloria Hall" with fellow cast member Jean-Claude Bercq as "Omero" on the set of the 1968 film "Le Cascadeur" or in English "Stuntman", where a women tries to lure a stuntman into stealing an Indian artifact. This is a great shot of Marisa Mell. There are not that many behind the scene photo's of her where she is totally relaxed and laughing, even showing her teeth. Although Marisa Mell had beautiful teeth she was not in the habit of showing them a lot on film or photo. So most of her photo's are staged without laughing. But that is not all. This photo is also great because it tells us a story simply by looking at the body language of the two actors. Both actors made only one film together so they probably didn't know each other before filming started. We are several weeks into production so they had time to get to know each other well because they are standing very close to each other in an intimate way. Marisa Mell's hair is even touching the nose of Jean Claude Bercq. He has told her something funny what made her laugh spontaneously. Although a funny story to make her laugh, her body language is telling us a complete different story. First she is not looking at her partner but is looking down. That is always a dead give away that the listener is not 100% sure of the honesty of her partner and the truth of the story being told. But that is not all to strengthen her suspicion Maria Mell is rubbing her nose. That is also a sign that she has her suspicions about the whole setting. I wonder what he could have told her???