HOT TURNOVER

Two flavors of femme fatale, identical health risk.

Above is a rare double-sided Robert Bonfils cover, Lash of Desire with a flipside of Pillow Tramp, from the Dollar Double Book Company of Chicago, with both covers featuring a signature—a rarity from Bonfils. G.H Smith was aka M.J. Deer, Jan Hudson, Jerry Jason, Dusty North, et al., and Hastings was aka March Hastings, Laura Duchamp and Sally Singer. The art for Lash of Desire features a confident, challenging female figure, while Pillow Tramp presents a less edgy woman seeming to offer easy pleasures. But of course, all femmes fatales lead to the same result in mid-century sleaze fiction—disaster. A lot of Bonfils’ cover output was for various Greenleaf Classics imprints during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but these efforts from 1962 show him in more conventional form. Compare them to this front, this one, and this one.

Chicago, Dollar Double Book Company, G.H. Smith, March Hastings, Robert Bonfils, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

March 28

1910—First Seaplane Takes Flight

Frenchman Henri Fabre, who had studied airplane and propeller designs and had also patented a system of flotation devices, accomplishes the first take-off from water at Martinque, France, in a plane he called Le Canard, or “the duck.”

March 28

1953—Jim Thorpe Dies

American athlete Jim Thorpe, who was one of the most prolific sportsmen ever and won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball, dies of a heart attack.

March 27

1958—Khrushchev Becomes Premier

Nikita Khrushchev becomes premier of the Soviet Union. During his time in power he is responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, and presides over the rise of the early Soviet space program, but his many policy failures lead to him being deposed in October 1964. After his removal he is pensioned off and lives quietly the rest of his life, eventually dying of heart disease in 1971.

March 26

1997—Heaven's Gate Cult Members Found Dead

In San Diego, thirty-nine members of a cult called Heaven’s Gate are found dead after committing suicide in the belief that a UFO hidden in tail of the Hale-Bopp comet was a signal that it was time to leave Earth for a higher plane of existence. The cult members killed themselves by ingesting pudding and applesauce laced with poison.

March 25

1957—Ginsberg Poem Seized by Customs

On the basis of alleged obscenity, United States Customs officials seize 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” that had been shipped from a London printer. The poem contained mention of illegal drugs and explicitly referred to sexual practices. A subsequent obscenity trial was brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore, the poem’s domestic publisher. Nine literary experts testified on the poem’s behalf, and Ferlinghetti won the case when a judge decided that the poem was of redeeming social importance.

March 25

1975—King Faisal Is Assassinated

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia dies after his nephew Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed shoots him during a royal audience. As King Faisal bent forward to kiss his nephew the Prince pulled out a pistol and shot him under the chin and through the ear. King Faisal died in the hospital after surgery. The prince is later beheaded in the public square in Riyadh.