I'm begging you, baby. Plus, don't you realize virginity is an insult to mother nature? We didn't buy William Vaneer's, aka James W. Lampp's 1953 sleazer Sinful Island Vacation because some silly boy was trying to sell it for a hundred dollars, but we're always tempted by books with this premise because we've been on quite a few sinful island vacations. Our most sinful island: Roatán. And you thought we were going to say Santorini or Mallorca. Very sinful also. But we once got stuck on Roatán for a week when Honduras experienced one of its periodic convulsiónes. There's nothing like deadly political unrest to loosen people's inhibitions. We don't know on which island Vaneer's potboiler is set, but the rear cover refers to it as tropical, so it's a good bet it's in the Pacific somewhere. For our next sinful island vacation maybe we'll head out there.
Well, I don't care who told you the pond is safe. I'm telling you it's toxic and you better climb out right now.
Above: a nice cover by Bernard Safran for the Croydon Books sleazer Mountain Sinner, written by Delmar Kingsland and published in 1953. We borrowed this from Sleazy Digest Books, a fun blogspot that has fueled some of our favorite purchases. Kingsland was actually James W. Lampp, who was also Amos Hatter, Ben West, Frederic Spencer, Homer Hatten, Anne Farrington, and William Vaneer, so add another pseudonym to his ledger—possibly his best. Even Lampp was a fake name. His real name, according to his 1994 obituary, was Lumpp. No wonder he hoarded pen names. We've featured him a lot, and the best way see those entries is to click here and scroll. Also, women surprised while skinny dipping is yet another common motif in mid-century paperback art. See more examples here, here, and here.
Is this a subsidiary of the love cult I was in back in '53? If it is, then I've already had my whipping.
Above: a cover for Harry Whittington's Love Cult, published in 1962 by Lancer Books. This is an unusual case in mid-century fiction. The book is a reprint of the 1953 novel of the same name by William Vaneer, which was written under a pseudonym by James W. Lampp. Somehow the folks at Lancer got mixed up about that and attributed the book to Whittington. Embarrassing. We wonder if Lancer had to compensate Whittington in any way. You might assume the compensation would be to remove his name from this piece of low rent sleaze, but Whittington wrote plenty of books of this type this himself, so Love Cult definitely didn't hurt his reputation. Interested in what it's about? We tell you here.
Just ignore my daughter. She gets bitchy whenever she thinks I don't spend enough time with our son.
Bernard Safran is an artist we don't see nearly enough of, considering how much we like his work. He's responsible for the above cover of Love Cult, by William Vaneer for Croydon Books, 1953. The art tells all. A naive young woman rushes into marriage and finds herself trapped in a polygamous commune in the isolated Ozarks. In short order she loses her bodily autonomy, her virginity, and her dignity—but not her desire to escape. An unlikely alliance gives her a chance, but she still needs to outwit her husband somehow, and he's clever, mean, sneaky, and violent. Giving him the slip will take some work. We won't reveal more, except to mention that author William Vaneer is really James W. Lampp under a pseudonym.
Did we ever mention that there's a commune in our town? Actually, its residents live not in town, but on a hill a half mile to the east. They grow stuff up there and sell it in a local shop they own down in the main tourist area. They also run a restaurant. When you go in they try to interest you in their various communities in different countries, and are inordinately smiley and nice. Like in-your-personal-space nice. One time a waitress squeezed into a booth with us to take our lunch order, which was creepy enough that we never went back. But after reading Vaneer's potboiler maybe we'll visit again just to find out what they're smiling about. If you never hear from us again it's because we're having culty sex up on the hill.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Hitler Marries Braun
During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia's Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden. 1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon. 1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki
Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing. 1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident
After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe. 1945—Mussolini Is Arrested
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.
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