We featured a Charles Rodewald cover last year and loved it, so we're bringing him back today, this time on the front of Ecstasy Novel Magazine, which is showcasing Paula Has a Price!, written by Perry Lindsay, aka prolific pulp author Peggy Gaddis. There's confusion online about the copyright on this, but it was published in January 1949. Top effort from Rodewald, and you can see another here. 

If you swallow a key does it become a pass key? Just wondering. Whatever you call it, you won't be seeing it again for up to three days, according to what we read about human digestion. But we digress. Above is a beautiful cover for Call Girl by Gail Jordan, aka Peggy Gaddis, for Quarter Books, copyright 1949 with uncredited art. If you've never visited the blog Sleazy Digest Books, we suggest heading over there for a look at this cover and many others in the same style. 

Above and below you will find a large collection of pulp, post-pulp, and sleaze paperback fronts that have as their titles a character’s first name. There are hundreds of examples of these but we stopped at thirty-two. The collection really highlights, more than others we’ve put together, how rarely vintage paperback art focuses on male characters. The prose is virtually all male-centered and male-driven, of course, but because the mid-century paperback market was male-driven too, that meant putting women on the covers to attract the male eye. We tell our girlfriends this all the time, but they still think we just don’t bother looking for male-oriented vintage art. But we do. For this collection we found two novels that have male characters’ names as their titles, and we looked pretty hard. If we had to guess, we’d say less than 5% of all pulp art is male-oriented. In any case, the illustrations come from the usual suspects—Barye Phillips, Robert McGinnis, Jef de Wulf, Paul Rader, et al., plus less recognized artists like Doug Weaver. Thanks to all the original uploaders for these.

A couple of months ago we mentioned the popularity of keyhole themed pulp art and said we’d gather some examples. Well, today’s the day. Below are fifteen pieces of keyhole cover art for your enjoyment.

Erolie Pearl Gaddis Dern wrote as Joan Sherman, Joan Tucker, Pearl Gaddis, Peggy Dern, and for this 1951 romance Painted Lips decided to use her best known moniker—Peggy Gaddis. Gaddis was prolific, publishing dozens of romances and nurse novels between 1929 and 1966. This particular book follows the various dramas of a habitual homewrecker. We love the cover femme fatale, with her zebra skirt and wacky bodice. This would have been an absolutely insane outfit for 1951, so we wonder if the artist simply dreamed it up. We can’t answer that, though, because the art is uncredited. We think that was the modus operandi at Venus Books, because we’ve seen quite a few of their releases—including a couple with covers obviously by this same talented painter—with no attribution. Shame. But we’ll try to dig up more info on a possible artist anyway. There’s always someone out there who knows.