Vintage Pulp | Feb 23 2021 |
Horwitz Publications puts a Hollywood starlet to bed.
Above is a cover from Australian imprint Horwitz Publications for Marc Brody's thriller Lay Out My Lady, published in 1956. We've long featured Horwitz covers because they used photo-illustrations of famous or soon-to-be-famous actresses. This time the company chose U.S. actress and beneficiary of lucky genes Joi Lansing, clad in the sort of extravagant bedtime wear that was popular during the era, and whose time-defying beauty we've marveled over here and here. And here too. The face in the background is also an altered photo, though not of Lansing. We can't identify her. If you have any ideas feel free to inform us.
Moving on to Marc Brody, he was both the author and star of these yarns, and claimed to be an intrepid crime reporter. That would be fascinating if it were true, but it wasn't. He was actually author William H. Williams, aka Bill Williams, and he wrote novels while sitting in a shed in his garden, which is about as far from the mean streets as anyone can get. But you have to give him credit—he churned out something like eighty of these books. We'll be revisiting him later. In the meantime you can see a bit more from him—including photo-illustrations of another beautiful actress—at this link.
Vintage Pulp | Jan 27 2020 |
American star adds pizzazz to a pair of Aussie thrillers.
Today we have two more paperbacks from Australia's Horwitz Publications, a company that, as we've documented often, opportunistically used numerous Hollywood celebs on its covers. This time it's Jan Sterling, who appears on 1955's Blueprints for Murder and 1956's The Bride Wore Black, both written by the prolific Marc Brody. Sterling was never a top tier actress but she was in a lot of good movies and earned an Oscar nomination for The High and the Mighty. She also posed for some stunning photos, including the two at this link. These book scans float around online, which means we don't know where they originate, but if we had to guess we'd say Flickr, so thanks to the first uploader.