COUNT HER ROTATIONS

What would you say she's doing—90, 100 rpms? As a mechanical engineer I'm frankly amazed.

Today you see painterly goodness from Bernard Safran, with a cover for 1954’s Stag-Party Girl, written by Bart Frame and published by digest specialists Croydon Books. The story deals with a sex-loving twenty-year-old bombshell named Andrea Holland who, after some public indiscretions, flees her smalltown home and fetches up in New York City. She tries to turn over a newly chaste leaf, but instead is inspired to become a stripper after witnessing a performance by a peeler named Cynthia La Starr.

However, the book isn’t about that. The stripping bit comes in the final pages, which means the title is deceptive. Before that, the story is a standard sleaze drama driven by familial friction between Andrea and her big sister, a television star whose boyfriend Andrea steals and in so doing turns her sister into an enemy. It’s all reasonably well written, containing sharper-than-usual dialogue, but we can’t exactly recommend it, though you could do worse. What we can recommend is that you enjoy more art from both Safran and Croydon Books by clicking their keywords below.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Parker Brothers Buys Monopoly

The board game company Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie, who had designed the game (originally called The Landlord’s Game) to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for them. Parker Brothers quickly turns Monopoly into the biggest selling board game in America.

1991—Gene Tierney Passes Away

American actress Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties in Hollywood history and star of the seminal film noir Laura, dies in Houston, Texas of emphysema. Tierney had begun smoking while young as a way to help lower her high voice, and was hooked on cigarettes the rest of her life.

1937—Hitler Reveals His Plans for Lebensraum

Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting with Nazi officials and states his intention to acquire “lebensraum,” or living space for Germany. An old German concept that dated from 1901, Hitler had written of it in Mein Kampf, and now possessed the power to implement it. Basically the idea, as Hitler saw it, was for the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations to the east, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate those lands with a Germanic upper class.

1991—Fred MacMurray Dies

American actor Fred MacMurray dies of pneumonia related to leukemia. While most remember him as a television actor, earlier in his career he starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity, one of the greatest films noir ever made.

1955—Cy Young Dies

American baseball player Cy Young, who had amassed 511 wins pitching for five different teams from 1890 to 1911, dies at the age of 88. Today Major League Baseball’s yearly award given to the best pitcher of each season is named after Young.

1970—Feral Child Found in Los Angeles

A thirteen year-old child who had been kept locked in a room for her entire life is found in the Los Angeles house of her parents. The child, named Genie, could only speak twenty words and was not able even to walk normally because she had spent her life strapped to a potty chair during the day and bound in a sleeping bag at night. Genie ended up in a series of foster homes and was given language training but after years of effort by various benefactors never reached a point where she could interact normally in society.

We've come across cover art by Jean des Vignes exactly once over the years. It was on this Dell edition of Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Untitled cover art from Rotterdam based publisher De Vrije Pers for Spelen op het strand by Johnnie Roberts.
Italian artist Carlo Jacono worked in both comics and paperbacks. He painted this cover for Adam Knight's La ragazza che scappa.
James Bond spoofs were epidemic during the 1960s. Bob Tralins' three-book series featuring the Miss from S.I.S. was part of that tradition.

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