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You’ve seen previous examples from Éditions le Condor’s series La Môme Double-Shot. This entry was written by George Maxwell, aka Georges Esposito, and is called Rien ne va plus, which means “nothing is going well.” But this cover went pretty well. Its creator Jean Salvetti, who signed as “Salva,” painted a visual pun in which “double-shot” becomes a choice between a shot of liquor and a shot of lead. We’ll take the booze. Every time. More from Salvetti at his keywords below.
Très chic is a good way to describe not only pin-striped suits on femmes fatales, but covers painted by Jean Salvetti for Éditions le Condor’s and George Maxwell’s Môme Double-Shot crime novel collection. We’ve shared five or six, and they’re magnifique, including this one for 1952’s San bauvures. Maxwell’s star character in these was Hope Travers, and hope is exactly what she denies her enemies. She even once put out a cigarette on a guy’s face. You can see that cover and others by clicking the keywords Éditions le Condor below.
Above, five more paperback covers painted by Jean Salvetti—aka Salva—who we’ve featured several times before. French paperback illustrators, except for Aslan, Michel Gourdon, and a few others, tended toward more freeform styles, but their command of color was excellent and we’ve always liked their approach. Click Salvetti’s keywords below to see more.
It’s been a couple of years since we had a cover by French illustrator Jean Salvetti, so here’s one for Dorothy ouvre le bal, or “Dorothy opens the ball,” published in 1952 by Paris based Éditions le Trotteur and written by Oscar Montgomery, aka José del Valle. There were three books in the Dorothy series, with this one coming first. Short synopsis: Dorothy goes to Egypt, hurts a bunch of bad men. As you can see, Salvetti signed his work Salva. More Salva here, here and here.
Above is another entry from Éditions le Condor’s collection Môme Double-Shot, Pas de salade, j’en vends!, appearing in 1953, with badass heroine Hope Travers showing how useful a lit cigarette can be. The cover art is by Jean Salvetti, and you can see other covers of his from this series here, here, and here.
We’ve shared several examples from Éditions le Condor’s collection Môme Double-Shot, which as we’ve discussed was written by George Maxwell, aka Georges Esposito, and deals with the adventures of gun-toting heroine Hope Travers. Today we thought we’d share two more. Above you see covers for La belle se joue à deux and J’peux pas l’encadrer, both with art by Jean Salvetti, aka Salva. We love these. Besides the art being so striking, there’s a lot of charm added by the haphazard freehand lettering. If you want to see more from this series, just dig around our site. They’re in here somewhere.
Du Sang dans le Champagne translates in English to Blood in the Champagne, and that’s always something to avoid. This paperback dates from 1953 and is part of Éditions le Condor’s collection La Môme “Double Shot,” a series you shoud be getting to know pretty well, since we’ve recently shown you two other examples. George Maxwell wrote twenty-two books in this franchise in two years, which is simply amazing output, quality notwithstanding. In this one murder and mystery takes the hero Hope Travers to L.A.’s Chinatown, where she goes up against a shadowy organized crime sect. The cover art is by Salva, aka Jean Salvetti, as usual. See the other Double Shot covers by clicking the keywords Éditions le Condor just below.
Above and below are assorted covers featuring yet another fun mid-century paperback art motif—the looming or threatening shadow. The covers are by the usual suspects—Rader, Phillips, Gross, Caroselli, Nik, as well as by artists whose work you see less often, such as Tony Carter’s brilliant cover for And Turned to Clay. That’s actually a dust jacket, rather than a paperback front, but we couldn’t leave it out. You’ll also notice French publishers really liked this theme. We’ll doubtless come across more, and as we do we’ll add to the collection. This is true of all our cover collections. For instance, our post featuring the Eiffel Tower has grown from fifteen to twenty-two examples, and our group of fronts with syringes has swelled from thirteen to twenty-six images. We have twenty-four twenty-six—see what we mean?—more shadow covers below, and thanks to all original uploaders.
Above, the cover of Calibre 45… et culottes de soie, by George Maxwell for Éditions le Condor’s collection La Môme Double Shot. The English title of this would be something like “Calibre .45 and silk panties,” and if you’re thinking only a Frenchman could come up with something like that you’d be right, because Maxwell was, of course, a pseudonym. It was inhabited by numerous writers, but in this case was used by Georges Esposito to pen a story set in Hollywood and starring the character Hope Travers, whose skill with a sidearm makes her someone not to be trifled with—hence “Kid Double Shot.” There were twenty-two books in the series. The cover art on this one and most of the others is by Salva, aka Jean Salvetti, who we’ll have more from later. The book appeared in 1953
In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.
In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure.
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However the long report that is finally issued does little to settle questions about the assassination, and today surveys show that only a small minority of Americans agree with the Commission’s conclusions.
In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the fashionable Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people. Patrons were unable to escape when the fire began because the exits immediately became blocked with panicked people, and other possible exits were welded shut or boarded up. The fire led to a reform of fire codes and safety standards across the country, and the club’s owner, Barney Welansky, who had boasted of his ties to the Mafia and to Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, was eventually found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
