Bad fast food. A random shooting. And now an aquatic theme park. On my trip to the U.S. I'm experiencing all the most American things. Mario Ferrari returns with this nice cover for 1965's Grossi guai per Tony Hunter, written by Perry Landers for Edizioni Wamp's series Narratori Americani del Brivido (Thrilling American Storytellers). And of course Landers wasn't American, but Italian, working under a pseudonym. Most likely he was Mario Pinzauti, and we say most likely because we can't be 100% sure other authors didn't borrow the same pen name, as often happened. But we don't read Italian anyway, so we're focused on Ferrari's art. It's excellent as always. Click his keywords if you want to see what we mean.
This outfit is itchy, hard to get on, and makes it ridiculously impractical to pee. It better turn you on or you're dead.
In Italy the concept of gialli was literary as well as cinematic, and here you see a typical giallo novel—Traccia profumato, or “scented trail,” by Larry Madison. This appeared in 1966 from Edizioni Aldo Crudo for the series I Super Gialli della Sterlina. Madison is a pseudonym of course. Generally, the credited translator is actually the author, which would make Giovanni Simonelli the brain behind this one. The cover is by Mario Ferrari. It's been a while since we featured him, but he was one of Italy's top paperback illustrators. See supporting evidence here.
Dylan—Rab Dylan, that is—plays in Hong Kong. Above, a nice cover for Azzurro è l'inferno, aka Hell Is Blue, 1968, by Rab Dylan for the Italian publishers Silpe as part of its Giallo 70 line. This was Silpe's first publication of many. The story is espionage set in Hong Kong, with all the James Bond style trappings. The author Dylan was pseudonymous, in this case for Italian writer Gualberto Titta, who we assume was worried people would laugh at his last name. What's notable about this book, at least for us, is that the company was founded by genius illustrator Mario Ferrari, who we've featured several times. And once we knew that, it was suddenly obvious this was also Ferrari's work on the cover. He's top tier, and you can see plenty more from him here, here, and here.
Ferrari shows he’s a finely tuned machine.
Above, a superb cover by Mario Ferrari for Nella morsa del terrore, aka In the Grip of Terror, written by Fred Gable for the series Narratori Americani del Brivido (Thrilling American Storytellers), 1961. Gable was a pseudonym for Italian author Franco Prattico, who also wrote as Rick Donovan, Danny Revak, and possibly others. We think Ferrari’s talent borders on genius. You can see more from him here and here.
They’re on the case faster than you can say passer les beignets. Above are some great covers for Editions ERP’s Super Policier series, which were published in France beginning around 1955. The authors here were all pseudonyms for guys like Mario Pinzauti, Pino Belli, Aldo Crudo, Franco Prattico, and a host of others. You may have noticed the distinctly Italian sounds of those names. Well, they were Italian, because ERP was based in Rome, but published in France. You may also notice, if you’re looking very closely, that the last cover is from ERP’s Super Détective series. We threw that in just because we liked it. The art on at least one of these covers is by Mario Carìa, and a few others are by Mario Ferrari, who we talked about here and here.
He really knows how to take a girl’s breath away. Above, a cover for the thriller Où est le cavadre, which as you might guess means, Where Is the Corpse?, a question the man involved here seems to be asking with some urgency. Well, if you can’t find a corpse you might as well make one yourself. This book, which appeared in France in 1962, actually originated in Italy with Editions ERP, where in 1961 it was published as part of their I Gialle dello Schedario series. The writer, Joe Vivard, was really Pino Belli, and wrote under several names, including Ricky Lambert, Steve Cockrane, and others. The excellent is art by Mario Ferrari, whose work we showed you a while back when we did a post of eleven I Gialle dello Schedario covers. See those here, and see more from Ferrari later.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived. 1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight
During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service. 1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe
Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane. 1965—Leonov Walks in Space
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod's airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk. 1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
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