Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

A TOUGH L’OMBRE

She's about to endure a bureaucratic nightmare.

Alain Gourdon painted this sinister cover for Claude Orval’s, aka Gaston Émile Jean Farragut’s 1954 novel L’ombre du 2ème bureau, or “the shadow of the 2nd office.” It was published by Éditions de l’Arabesque/Éditions du Simplon for its Collection Espionnage. Gourdon, who signed his work as Aslan, painted many covers with empty or sparse backgrounds. He sort of specialized in them. Possibly his style was influenced by his extensive work as a pin-up artist. It’s always nice to see a full background from him. See another here.

Claude Orval was much more than an author. He was also a respected film director, screenwriter, playwright, and even acted in an episode of the French television series Les Cinq Dernières Minutes. The acting took him back to his roots—he had begun in show business on stage at the Grand Guignol. It was there that he began writing plays, producing about twenty before moving on to film direction. It’s amazing we haven’t run across him before, but we’ll almost certainly see him in the future.

We’d like to tell you what L’ombre du 2ème bureau is about, but we probably won’t read it. We have other French novels sitting around that we picked up for two to six euros during our many trips to France, but we must confess we don’t rush to crack them open. We’ve been slogging through Noel Devaulx’s Avec vue sue la Zone, but it’s been difficult. We thought it would improve our French, but when you need a dictionary at hand reading isn’t really fun. But we’ll probably still buy these French items on occasion for their art. This one is a nice example.

France, Éditions de l’Arabesque, Éditions du Simplon, Les Cinq Dernières Minutes, Claude Orval, Gaston Émile Jean Farragut, Aslan, Alain Gourdon, cover art, literature, television

COMMISSION A GOURDON

When you need a high quality cover who you gonna call?

Any French publisher that needed top tier art could look to the Gourdon brothers Michel and Alain for a solution. Above you see the work of the younger Gourdon—Alain, also known as Aslan—on a set of covers for Éditions de l’Arabesque and its series Les Nymphes. These are all from 1956 and 1957, and despite the assorted author attributions, Georges Roques—credited with five of these novels—also published as Luis Della Roca, and possibly others of these persons as well. 

France, Editions de l'Arabesque, Georges Roques, Cora del Rio, Luis Della Roca, François de la Mirandole, Yves Gaël, Olga Verine, Aslan, Alain Gourdon, cover art, cover collection, literature

ADVANCED PLEASURE

Once she learned to stop using her hands she graduated from masturbation to PhDbation.


Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, was very good at quasi-sexual cover illustrations, which is no surprise considering he was one of France’s top nude pin-up artists and made a point of flaunting a hedonistic lifestyle. The last front we shared from him featured a girl seeming to fondle her own breasts, and on this one for Henry Cerda’s Les tourments de la volupté we have a woman who—we don’t know what she’s doing, but it probably involves a lot of clenching and unclenching. This cover is a winner. The colors are nice, the pose is extremely suggestive, and the rapturous facial expression is perfect. In addition to all that the title translates to, “the tortures of pleasure,” so there’s zero doubt you’re dealing with an erotic novel here. Maybe if we read it carefully we too can achieve hands-free ecstasy. Oh, the multi-tasking we could do. 

France, Editions de l'Arabesque, Henry Cerda, Henri Dubois, Aslan, Alain Gourdon, cover art, literature

A WOMAN OF CONTRASTS

Venus shows her dark and light sides.

Above are two versions of a piece of Alain Gourdon art first used on Yann R. Patrick’s Vénus des neiges by Éditions de l’Arabesque in 1955, then repurposed by Antwerp based Uitgeverij Eros for Mickey Spencer’s Geen tijd voor Kusjes. Everyone’s an aka here. Gourdon painted under the moniker Aslan, Patrick was really Jacques-Henri Juillet, and Spencer is an obvious pseudonym, though we don’t for whom. Whether dark or light, this is lovely work.

France, Belgium, Antwerp, Editions de l'Arabesque, Uitgeverij Eros, Aslan, Alain Gourdon, Mickey Spencer, Yann R. Patrick, Jacques-Henri Juillet, cover art, literature

VIRGIN FOREST

Finally some privacy. Now I can really play with these things.


It’s time we circled back to Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, whose wonderful work you see here on an amazing cover for Folco Romano’s Quand la chair sÌŒ’éveillé, a title that translates as “when the flesh awoke.” This is a coming-of-age erotic novel from Éditions Le Styx for its Collection Les Fruits Verts, and even in a country as dedicated to l’art de l’amour as France there are limits. It was published in 1958, and banned in 1959, along with numerous other books from Le Styx. How many? At least eleven in two years. Quand la chair sÌŒ’éveillé is so rare we can’t find info on what specifically got it cancelled, but we’ll keep looking into it. Meanwhile, see more Aslan by clicking his keywords. 

France, Éditions Le Styx, Aslan, Alain Gourdon, Folco Romano, cover art, literature

THE PERFECT GIFTS

What do you get the pulp fan who has everything?


We were poking around online and came across these two nude figurines by the French artist Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan. He’s well known today as an advertising illustrator, paperback and magazine illustrator, and pin-up artist. He also modeled a hedonistic lifestyle, a sort of mini-Hefner existence (example here, and below)—which like Hugh Hefner’s may have been partially staged for publicity purposes. But what is less known about Aslan, outside France, anyway, is his sculpture. However he was a heavy hitter in this area too, and had been since before he became famous as a pin-up artist. Way back in 1952, when he was only twenty-two, he won a prize for his sculpture. Later he sculpted a famous bronze bust of Brigitte Bardot as Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, and he also sculpted a funerary statue for famed actress Dalida’s tomb, as well as a bronze bust of her that was erected on the Place Dalida in 1997. So these figurines come as no surprise to us. We’d let these live on our desks, keeping our stray papers under control, but the prices are too rich for our blood. On the other hand, since it’s Christmas, maybe we can receive them as gifts. Hmm… Okay, gotta run. We’re going to talk to our girlfriends about these.

France, Alain Gourdon, Aslan, Dalida, Brigitte Bardot, Hugh Hefner

MAIN COURSE

Say it! Say it louder, you swine! With onion soup you should drink only a basic vin blanc or possibly an aligoté!

It’s a cliché, but one we’ve noticed to be true, that the French tend to be polemical in their opinions about artistic matters. Movies, literature, painting, architecture, all of these things are either magnificent or total shit. Which leads to some interesting discussions. The big chasm between us and one of our French friends happens to do with food and drink—typically Champagne versus cava, or rillettes versus paté. So for us, this cover for Coup de main reminded us of those discussions. Just for the record, E.E., here on our website where you can’t argue—we think cava and paté are just dandy no matter what you say.

Coup de main is number fifty-five in Éditions du Grand Damier’s Espionnage series, published in 1958, and written by Jacques Dubessy under the pseudonym Slim Harrisson. That’s a name you see a lot in vintage French fiction because it was credited with nearly one hundred novels, and we assume few if any of them are total shit. In this particular book Harrisson’s franchise hero Sam Morgan’s adventures carry him from FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. to Tangier, Lisbon, and beyond. The cover art here is by Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, the towering figure of French paperback and pin-up illustration. 

France, Éditions du Grand Damier, Aslan, Alain Gourdon, Slim Harrisson, Jacques Dubessy, cover art, literature

A FAREWELL TO ARMPIT HAIR

Look! Smooth as two baby peaches. Anywhere else you want me to shave?

Here’s a nice cover for a Dutch language paperback titled Nachtkatje, which translates as “night kitten,” written by Mike Splane, and published by Antwerp based Uitgeverij A.B.C. for its Collection Vamp in 1957. This publisher is not the same as Uitgeversmij, based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and whose output we’ve shown you here and here. The cover on this is uncredited, but A.B.C.’s Vamp series often had Alain Gourdon art that had been modified from a previous form, and this piece has that look.

Everything we just wrote, we learned with minimal research. Now comes the part where our research falls short. You might guess that this is a translated Mickey Spillane novel, but we can’t confirm that. If it’s a translated Spillane it’s mighty short—just sixty-plus pages. Which presents a problem. Spillane’s short stories weren’t published in book form until after 1957, at least not in the U.S. So finding out if this is a Spillane short—which we doubt—will have to wait for more knowledgable people than us. See more covers in the same vein here.

Belgium, Antwerp, Uitgeverij A.B.C., Mike Splane, Mickey Spillane, Alain Gourdon, Aslan, cover art, literature

ART LOVERS

There's nothing like the Aslan touch.

Here’s something a bit different—a poster advertising an exhibition of work by the great French illustrator Aslan, also known as Alain Gourdon. It began today in 1977 in Paris at Art Concorde, a gallery of the era. There are probably still occasional exhibits of Aslan’s work in France, but it’s cheaper to see it on Pulp Intl. The better examples are here, here, here, and here, plus we wrote a little post when he died, which you can see here.

France, Paris, Aslan, Alain Gourdon
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1944—Velez Commits Suicide

Mexican actress Lupe Velez, who was considered one of the great beauties of her day, commits suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. In her note, Velez says she did it to avoid bringing shame on her unborn child by giving birth to him out of wedlock, but many Hollywood historians believe bipolar disorder was the actual cause. The event inspired a 1965 Andy Warhol film entitled Lupe.

1958—Gordo the Monkey Lost After Space Flight

After a fifteen minute flight into space on a Jupiter AM-13 rocket, a monkey named Gordo splashes down in the South Pacific but is lost after his capsule sinks. The incident sparks angry protests from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but NASA says animals are needed for such tests.

1968—Tallulah Bankhead Dies

American actress, talk show host, and party girl Tallulah Bankhead, who was fond of turning cartwheels in a dress without underwear and once made an entrance to a party without a stitch of clothing on, dies in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia complicated by emphysema.

1962—Canada Has Last Execution

The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, “Some consolation.”

1964—Guevara Speaks at U.N.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing the nation of Cuba, speaks at the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. His speech calls for wholesale changes in policies between rich nations and poor ones, as well as five demands of the United States, none of which are met.

2008—Legendary Pin-Up Bettie Page Dies

After suffering a heart attack several days before, erotic model Bettie Page, who in the 1950s became known as the Queen of Pin-ups, dies when she is removed from life support machinery. Thanks to the unique style she displayed in thousands of photos and film loops, Page is considered one of the most influential beauties who ever lived.

1935—Downtown Athletic Club Awards First Trophy

The Downtown Athletic Club in New York City awards its first trophy for athletic achievement to University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger. The prize is later renamed the Heisman Trophy, and becomes the most prestigious award in college athletics.

  • FEATUREd PULP

HELLO YELLOW

Italian artist Benedetto Caroselli illustrated this set of predominantly yellow covers for Editrice Romana Periodici's crime series I Narratori Americani del Brivido.

JUST TO BE FAIR

The cover of Paul Connolly's So Fair, So Evil features amusing art of a man who's baffled and will probably always be that way.

WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT

Cover art by the great Sandro Symeoni for Peter Cheyney's mystery He Walked in her Sleep, from Ace Books in 1949.

PARIS BLEUS

The mysterious artist who signed his or her work as F. Harf produced this beautiful cover in 1956 for the French publisher S.E.P.I.A.

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