Marée stakes a claim as one of the best vintage cover artists.
Dutch artist Piet Marée has to be considered a true contender. His covers showcase a unique style that consistently dazzles the eye. These were made for novels by Dutch authors Aleid Ages-van Weel and Luc Willink, and French author Alexandre Dumas, and were editions from 1949 and 1950 of works from decades earlier. The Dumas book is obviously The Three Musketeers, which goes all the way back to 1844 and is one of the most successful early books by a black author (his father was a freed slave). Marée winkingly painted the cover’s duellists in a city setting that architecturally is Dutch, not French. It’s a fun touch. The previous two covers we shared from him are as amazing as those here. Click his keywords below to see.
How do I know I'll be killed? Because I've come to understand that people think I'm an enormous douche.
Above: alternate Signet Books cover art for Manly Wellman’s crime thriller Find My Killer. We read the 1957 Signet edition last year. This is the rarer 1949 edition, with uncredited cover art. Check here for more info.
The only person who needed to stay in a closet was the author.
First of all, Eve Linkletter’s 1958 novel The Gay Ones goes for over a hundred dollars on some sales sites. Our version, which was published by Fabian Books with purple cover art illegibly signed, was only fifteen. Some sites say the artist’s signature reads, “Chuck,” but we demur. It’s “something-huck,” but the obscure letter doesn’t look like a “C” to us. It looks like part of the signature was cropped. Whoever the artist is, they go in the mystery bin.
The edition is also unusual because it comes with Linkletter’s portrait on the rear. Though she probably had nothing to do with that decision, it suggests Fabian trying to present her as a writer of some importance. Well, alright, let’s see about that.
The Gay Ones deals with Jerry Kenmore, effeminate from his earliest days and resentful toward his mother for apparently making him that way. He grows up in Philadelphia and has only a single friend—neighbor girl Norma, who’s moved away by her parents when she’s maybe ten or twelve. Jerry keeps in contact with her via letters as he grows up, and though they declare their love for each other he doesn’t want to get her hopes up if he’s in fact gay, so when he’s eighteen he runs away to New Orleans to discover himself.
It’s there that he lucks into a lucrative job. The hitch? It’s as a female impersonator at a place called the Powder Box Club. Thus begins his odyssey of discovery, funelled through trying experiences and unusual characters, all leading to a chance meeting, a screen test at Starlight Motion Pictures, and a move to Hollywood—which by coincidence is where Norma happens to live. All the while he’s resistant to the idea that he might prefer men over women. Will he and Norma connect sexually, or will Jerry embrace his other identity?
Considering the book’s fame it wasn’t anything like we expected. It’s poorly written throughout. There are random full-word capitalizations everywhere, for example: He knew this was the quickest way to get directly on the subject of SEX. Also capitalized are terms like DRAG QUEEN, NIGHT CLUB, SCREEN TEST, and PARTY CRASHERS. It’s bizarre. Yet for all its debilitating flaws, the book does bear a sense of experience. It’s episodic and anecdotal in sections, which, because some of the details are so precise and weird, we took as Linkletter trying to fit into the narrative the stories of real people she’d known.
As disastrous as her writing is, we suppose she actually is important because she makes clear how terrible existence can be for those unable to go forth in the world as the people they really are. That all her efforts lead to a groan inducing ending in which godly condemnation is brandished at the gay community is a major letdown, but we suppose it’s unavoidable for the time period. Ultimately, we don’t recommend the book for pleasure purposes, but we agree there’s probably some minor historical significance to it. You decide.
This 1935 photo shows Hollywood legend Lucille Ball in femme fatale mode wearing a gondolier style hat inspired by the movie Top Hat, which was set on the Venetian Lido and featured gondolas and gondoliers. Thanks not only to her shows, but also her general business smarts, Ball was one of the most successful personalities in the history of Hollywood. When she and her husband Desi Arnaz, Jr. created the television hit I Love Lucy they made sure they owned the syndication rights, though old episodes of a show (known today as reruns) were thought to be of dubious value. Ball’s gamble paid off, and she was eventually worth about $60 million. See a couple of photos of her in sexy mode at the beginning of her brilliant career here.
This poster for the Italian giallo flick Sei donne per l’assassino waspainted by Marcello Colizzi (sometimes referred to as Mario Colizzi or Mauro Colizzi), and we’ll tell you right away it’s a very predictive poster. Bodies are piled up like cordwood because that’s exactly what happens in the film. We’ll get to that. We saw Colizzi recently in this collection of circus posters. His is the second one, the one with the giraffe. He was famed for his circus posters, but as you can see he was no slouch at movie promos. He also created memorable illustrations for 1955’s Bad Day at Black Rock and 1960’s The Unforgiven, as well as more obscure efforts such as Nebo zovyot, aka Battle Beyond the Sun, and Arrivano i titani, aka My Son, the Hero. We may see more from him later.
As we said, Sei donne per l’assassino, which is known in English as Blood and Black Lace, is a giallo. When a fashion model is killed by a masked figure it’s soon revealed that the dead woman kept a diary, seemingly filled with sensitive information about her friends, boyfriend, and co-workers. At first it looks like this little book is going to be the MacGuffin sought for the entire film, but it gets incinerated in a fireplace early on. That doesn’t seem to soothe the killer, though. Is crucial information from the diary now known? There’s only way to be sure—keep murdering. It’s serial killer logic. This maniac is pretty scary, swaddled in an Ace bandage headwrap, a black trenchcoat, and topped by a fedora. What’s the deal? Why all the killing? We won’t tell you.
Sei donne per l’assassino is a technical masterclass. Director Mario Bava and cinematographer Ubaldo Terzano flaunt their prowess at every turn. Each shot is painstakingly thought out, with framing, blocking, color, lighting and shadow, movement, and set dressing all making for a spectacular mise-en-scène that dazzles the eye. Even if you’re not a cinephile, you’ll know something special is happening, the same way you do when you first see Blade Runner, Days of Heaven, or The French Dispatch. Too bad all of this couldn’t have been expended on a slightly better film, but that’s okay, because Sei donne per l’assassino is a giallo, after all, and those are not known for being fully coherent. It’s incredibly watchable, and that’s what matters here.
The visuals will do a number on your brain. You’ll get the sneaking suspicion that symbology lurks everywhere on the screen. “Wait—is that symbolic?” Probably not—you’re probably overthinking it. “No wait—is that symbolic?” Don’t worry, though, you’ll understand it all by the end. Gialli sometimes have a character sum the whole twisty mystery up for you. Sei donne per l’assassino follows tradition, so it doesn’t leave you hanging even if it leaves its entire cast broken and bleeding. Within its genre, we’d call this a mandatory watch. And because of its luscious look it may even be mandatory for all movie lovers. It premiered in Italy today in 1964.
Why were cannibal horror movies like Lebendig gefressen ever made? We can’t answer that. We just work here. This poster came from West Germany. The movie premiered there today in 1980, but was actually Italian made as Mangiati vivi!, and known in English as Eaten Alive. In the story Swedish willow Janet Agren goes searching for her sister, who disappeared six months earlier and seems to have joined a cult in New Guinea that’s located in cannibal territory. She hires the raffish Robert Kerman as a guide and the two are helicoptered into the deep dark jungle. They find the cult and its Jim Jones style leader Ivan Rassimov, alright, but as the Eagles once informed us, they can check in anytime they like but they can never leave.
Mondo flicks such as this one use actual gross-out footage, and there’s plenty of that, as we see men suspended by hooks in their backs, an alligator slaughtered in a ritual, a mongoose and cobra fight to the death, a large lizard regurgitate something it ate, a monkey eaten by a python, and more. In theory this gave such movies an atmosphere of grim realism, and maybe that’s true, but film is also supposed to be escapist, no? In any case, viewers are well prepared when the cannibals start chowing down on human flesh. As an example of mondo horror, we suppose Mangiati vivi! is one worth viewing, but judged on its own merits it’s awful. And we were unable to forgive the filmmakers for letting the smoldering Paola Senatore be mutilated and eaten. Even we have our limits.
If you’re interested in the other cannibal flicks we’ve discussed (and why wouldn’t you be?), you can check those out here:
Like that famous cat from physics, until she's found she's both or neither.
Hillary Waugh’s È scomparsa una ragazza, for which you see a beautiful cover above of a woman who is implied to be in weathery distress of some sort, is a 1954 translation by the Italian publisher Garganti of the excellent 1952 missing persons crime novel Last Seen Wearing. The art here looks like it’s by Giovanni Benvenuti, due to the treatment of the hands and the large eyes (though closed). The bisection of the figure hints at the uncertainty in the narrative about the missing woman’s state. Has she been kidnapped? Or simply murdered and disposed of? Benvenuti worked with Garzanti a lot, so we feel safe saying this is him again. It’s a striking piece. Click his keywords to see more.
More than one hundred thousand people die daily. The ones who make the decision to do so by their own hands are a source of fascination and fear to some, despite how common it is. This photo, another from the archives of the Los Angeles Police Department held by the University of Southern California, and part of an archive of close to six thousand images keyworded on the USC website for “suicide,” shows a man who shot himself in the head in the back seat of his car. You can see that fluid drained from his left ear, but that’s not where he shot himself. A wound can be seen higher up, on the left side of his skull. That’s an exit wound, it’s clear, because the trio of photos also show where the bullet travelled onward to lodge in the car’s roof. There’s no information what this man’s impetus might have been for suicide, whether sickness, despair, money woes, or whatever. So you can just fill in the blank. It’s from today in 1950.
A rising tide is good for more than lifting just boats.
Even from this angle you probably recognize Christina Lindberg, one of Sweden’s most popular 1970s exports, a movie star during the middle part of that decade, and well documented on our website in her films, posters, calendars, and promo images. The date on this amazing shot is difficult to pinpoint, but we think it’s from around 1972.
Modern posters date back to the 1870s, when color lithography and mass printing were first developed to a high level. Artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Chéret thrived during that period, as the mechanization of art production allowed them to disperse their work to the masses. Above is a beautiful advertising lithograph by the French artist who billed himself as Pierre O’Kley but was in reality Pierre Gilardeau, painted for the famed Moulin Rouge. The club had been a hot spot in the city of Paris since 1898 partly due to the popularity of the high-kicking can-can dance, which is what this poster celebrates. It has various copyright dates if you look online, ranging from 1956 to 1959, though the original canvas was probably lost long ago. O’Kley is someone we’ll revisit later.
In the U.S., CIA director Allen Dulles launches a program codenamed MK-ULTRA, which involves the surreptitious use of drugs such as LSD to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function. The specific goals of the program are multifold, but focus on drugging world leaders in order to discredit them, developing a truth serum, and making people highly susceptible to suggestion. All of this is top secret, and files relating to MK-ULTRA’s existence are destroyed in 1973, but the truth about the program still emerges in the mid-seventies after a congressional investigation.
1945—Franklin Roosevelt Dies
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage while sitting for a portrait in the White House. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt’s body is transported by train to his hometown of Hyde Park, New York, and on April 15 he is buried in the rose garden of the Roosevelt family home.
1916—Richard Harding Davis Dies
American journalist, playwright, and author Richard Harding Davis dies of a heart attack at home in Philadelphia. Not widely known now, Davis was one of the most important and influential war correspondents ever, establishing his reputation by reporting on the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I, as well as his general travels to exotic lands.
1919—Zapata Is Killed
In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by government forces in the state of Morelos, after a carefully planned ambush. Following the killing, Zapata’s revolutionary movement and his Liberation Army of the South slowly fall apart, but his political influence lasts in Mexico to the present day.
1925—Great Gatsby Is Published
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York City by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Though Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known book today, it was not a success upon publication, and at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was mostly forgotten as a writer and considered himself to be a failure.
Edições de Ouro and Editora Tecnoprint published U.S. crime novels for the Brazilian market, with excellent reworked cover art to appeal to local sensibilities. We have a small collection worth seeing.
There have been some serious injuries on pulp covers. This one is probably the most severe—at least in our imagination. It was painted for Stanley Morton's 1952 novel Yankee Trader.
