FLESH AND THE DEVIL

She has her flaws, but at least she's willing to let you enjoy them.

Bruno Fischer’s House of Flesh is a book we’ve been meaning to read for a while. The title has always intrigued us, and the creepy cover art on its 1951 Gold Medal edition by C.C. Beale has always caught our eyes. The story deals with a professional basketball player named Harry Wilde who goes for rest and peace in an upstate New York town, but instead walks into northeastern gothic when he falls for strange and exotic Lela Doane, whose veterinarian husband may have murdered his first wife and fed her to his vicious dogs. When Harry and Lela’s affair is found out, he comes to think her husband is planning a canine ending for Lela too, but those two have a relationship that Harry can only dimly grasp.

With this central plot, plus Harry’s lusty ex-wife Gale, the local girl Polly he spurns for his dangerous affair, a painter who creates non-consensual nudes of women who posed for him clothed, the subtext of mating animals, and a general aura of torpid sexuality, the title of this book works on multiple levels, as the veneers of a local town are peeled back to their base layers. It’s a time-honored theme: nothing is quite what it seems. House of Flesh is an imperfectly written but entertaining tale. You know one aspect we really liked? The whole crazy caper starts because Harry wants to board a dog in a kennel. As unusual set-ups go, that’s thinking outside the box.

Thank you, Captain. I have no idea what amidships are, but I'll take your observation that I'm very narrow there as a compliment.

Above: a nice 1949 mapback Dell Publications edition of Errol Flynn’s Showdown, a book we read a while ago and mostly enjoyed. The art here is uncredited. We thought it was Robert Stanley for a moment, but now we don’t know. You can read what we thought about the story here.

It's minimal but no place has ever refused her entry for wearing it.

These interesting shots show U.S. actress Doris McMahon in racy promos made for the 1934 pre-Hays Code musical Hips, Hips, Hooray! We’ll probably watch the film just to see if she wears this melted plastic tray. Anything is possible in films made before the censors took over Hollywood.

The real Dors and a facimile Peck enjoy the sands at Cannes.

This photo and zoom, made today in 1956, show British actress Diana Dors reclining with a cardboard version of U.S. actor Gregory Peck during the Cannes Film Festival, the 2025 version of which begins in a few days. The photo op occurred because Dors had commented to the press that Peck was her favorite actor. He was there to promote his film The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, while Dors was pushing Yield to the Night. Did the two ever meet in the flesh—assuming they hadn’t already? With all the parties, pressers, and mixers at film festivals, you’d have to think so. At which point Dors probably said, “I had you flat on your back and totally stiff. It was fun!”

Wow, I've never seen one do that before! Maybe the whites' uncontrolled carbon emissions are melting its pack ice!

Above: a Sidney Riesenberg cover for the pulp Top-Notch Magazine, January 1921. This publication, from Street & Smith in New York City, resided on newsstands from 1910 to 1937, managing more than six hundred issues. Jack London, Robert E. Howard, and L. Ron Hubbard had stories inside over the years.

I think it's that way. In any case, it's nice our wives aren't here to demand that we ask someone for directions.

This unusual May 1953 cover of Man To Man was painted by Mark Schneider, who we haven’t seen for a while. You may remember his extensive work for Sir magazine. Inside here you get plenty of value. Jonathan Craig offers a short story titled “Death of a Jazzman,” while John F. Hudgins offers “The Coward.” Both tales feature illustrations, once again, from Schneider. Onward, and readers get a deep look at Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus, and his supposed correct predictions. There are pieces about baseball, and the world’s strongest woman Kati Sandwina, aka Kati Brumbach, from Alsace-Lorraine. There’s also an interesting article on child marriage by journo Edgar Price, and he contorts himself into a generally favorable position, which many modern politicians would appreciate. After that there’s a feature on the deaths of Lupe Velez and Carole Landis via sleeping pills, or “goof balls,” framed as a big problem in America. And as usual with men’s adventure magazines, you get models, in this case Margie Tenney and Vicki Stevens. All below, in nearly forty scans.

For Mik the time is always ripe.

This is mighty pretty, isn’t it? This colorful cover was painted by the always fun Jacques Thibésart, aka Mik, for Jean Belfaisse’s 1953 novel Embrasse-moi Chéri! It came from Éditions le Fétiche, or Fetish Editions, which were romance-adjacent tales with occasional crime twists. The only crime here is that the vendor wants a little too much for the book, but this frameable Mik front makes the price almost—almost—worth it.

The key is to get the f-stop settings just right.

Eri Kanuma features in this image made to promote her 1979 Nikkatsu Studios drama Tenshi no harawata: Nami, known in English as Angel Guts: Nami. It was third in an Angel Guts series derived from an Ishii Takashi manga, and they’re as weird as the title makes them sound. Kanuma ended up accumulating more than thirty screen credits. We’ll circle back to Angel Guts: Nami in a bit.

Versus the party of the second, third, and every other part.

Though Ruth Fenisong’s Death of the Party is part of a series starring franchise NYC police detective Gridley Nelson, the book opens with budget student Matt Berthold being framed for murder, including plenty of detail about his life and relationship with Rennie Marshall, a poor shopgirl. She’s pregnant, and has other revelations for Berthold too. Jail keeps him on ice for those. Meanwhile, Nelson and Co. come increasingly to the fore, disbelieving Berthold’s tale of a set-up, then beginning to wonder whether inconsistencies actually hint that he’s being truthful. The criminals are slowly unveiled, and you get a tale that evolves in an interesting way in which the cops consider Berthold innocent by the halfway mark but still need to find the real killer or killers, as Berthold’s relationship issues grow ever more complex, shading into prospective in-law drama as the book heads toward its ending. It’s unusual, but all well done by Fenisong. The only flaw for us was that Berthold is a twerp. He’s deliberately written that way, but still. In any case, this Fenisong, our first, will surely lead to another. It’s from 1959 from Zenith Books with art by uncredited.

This is sweet! Hey, guys, you should get some masks too. We can use them all those times we violate our oaths to protect and serve.

Above: a Los Angeles Police Department detective models a mask that had been worn by mafia associate Barbara Graham, who had been involved with criminals Emmett Perkins and Jack Santo in the murder of a woman named Mabel Monahan, then snitched on by mafia underling Baxter Shorter, who knew about the crime. When Perkins and Santo found they’d been ratted out, they killed Shorter too—presumably. He disappeared and was never found. He appears below behind the question mark. In the course of investigating his disappearance, cops located and searched Graham’s El Monte home, and found the above mask. We recommend one like it be used in a new horror franchise. It’s even better than Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1957—Von Stroheim Dies

German film director and actor Erich von Stroheim, who as an actor was noted for his arrogant Teutonic character parts which led him to become a renowned cinematic villain with the nickname “The Man You Love to Hate”, dies in Maurepas, France at the age of 71.

1960—Adolf Eichmann Is Captured

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents abduct fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who had been living under the assumed name and working for Mercedes-Benz. Eichman is taken to Israel to face trial on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He is found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962, and is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court.

2010—Last Ziegfeld Follies Girl Dies

Doris Eaton Travis, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, dies at age 106. The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. Inspired by the Folies Bergères of Paris, they enjoyed a successful run on Broadway, became a radio program in 1932 and 1936, and were adapted into a musical motion picture in 1946 starring Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, and Lena Horne.

1924—Hoover Becomes FBI Director

In the U.S., J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a position he retains until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. But he also used the agency to grind a number of personal axes and far exceeded its legal mandate to amass secret files on political and civil rights leaders. Because of his abuses, FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.

1977—Joan Crawford Dies

American actress Joan Crawford, who began her show business career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, but soon became one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, dies of a heart attack at her New York City apartment while ill with pancreatic cancer.

1949—Rainier Becomes Prince of Monaco

In Monaco, upon the death of Prince Louis II, twenty-six year old Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi, aka Rainier III, is crowned Prince of Monaco. Rainier later becomes an international household name by marrying American cinema sweetheart Grace Kelly in 1956.

1950—Dianetics is Published

After having told a gathering of science fiction writers two years earlier that the best way to become a millionaire was to start a new religion, American author L. Ron Hubbard publishes Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The book is today one of the canonical texts of Scientology, referred to as “Book One”, and its publication date serves as the first day of the Scientology calendar, making today the beginning of year 52 AD (After Dianetics).

Art by Kirk Wilson for Harlan Ellison's juvenile delinquent collection The Deadly Streets.
Art by Sam Peffer, aka Peff, for Louis Charbonneau's 1963 novel The Trapped Ones.
Horwitz Books out of Australia used many celebrities on its covers. This one has Belgian actress Dominique Wilms.
Assorted James Bond hardback dust jackets from British publisher Jonathan Cape with art by Richard Chopping.

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