Intl. Notebook

March 17 2025

FATHER TIMELESS

Robert McGinnis dies at age ninety-nine.

We don’t know exactly when we became aware that Robert McGinnis had died, but it was sometime during our long trip to Mexico. Someone e-mailed us about it. We’ve mentioned numerous times that we don’t like Pulp Intl. to be a death roll, and we never interrupt our intermissions, but some deaths are more significant than others. Yet we couldn’t make time to write about McGinnis because we were away from our primary computers and art files, and because immediately after Mexico PSGP had two subdural hematomas drained from his brain. Wait! What? Did we hold back details about the trip? Perhaps, but it doesn’t matter because he’s fine now.

In any case, we’re backposting about McGinnis. We’ve placed a small collection here—though we actually did it around a month after the event—so that the many thousands of visitors who come here will find a tribute near the actual day he died. Most vintage cover art aficionados will say McGinnis was the very best. That’s a matter of taste. But there’s no dispute he was indispensable, and his work will always be a reminder of what is lost when art is sidelined in favor of capital. Modern paperback publishers cannot make the anonymous cover designs they produce ever have the impact of a McGinnis, or rationally view them as significant by comparison.

McGinnis is credited with more than twelve hundred book covers and forty or so movie posters. You’ve seen much of his best work on Pulp Intl: his posters for Live and Let Die and Cotton Comes to Harlem, a spectrum of art for Casino Royale, awesome paperback covers for The Girl Who Cried Wolf, If the Shoe Fits, and Death Deep Down, mock-up covers for modern movies, and rare sketches sold at auction. He was even the subject of a documentary. Today we’re looking at his original paintings, clean, with no graphics. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1926, dead in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, today. The man will be missed.

Ohio, Connecticut, Cincinnati, Old Greenwich, Live and Let Die, Casino Royale, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Robert McGinnis, Sean Connery, James Bond, deaths

Femmes Fatales

December 2 2018

YANCY FREE

From behind the microscope to in front of the camera.

You don’t know U.S. actress Emily Yancy but she’s been around for a long time. She started performing on television in 1963 and is still going strong as of 2018. Of her few cinematic efforts two were notable—the blaxploitation classics Cotton Comes to Harlem and Blacula. Her small screen appearances include Starsky & Hutch, The Mod Squad, and MacGyver.

The above photo is from 1961, and it was made when she was eighteen years old and competing in the Miss American Beauty Pageant, not be confused with the Miss America Pageant. Interesting story, she was a biology major and was working at NYU Medical Center operating an electron microscope when her coworkers persuaded her to give parading up and down a stage in a swimsuit a shot. She won Miss American Beauty, which gave her a chance to compete again in France.

She was sent to Cannes and finished second in the Miss Cannes Film Festival competition. After that Hollywood called and those boring old electrons were forgotten. Television, film, nightclub performing, modeling and a lot of travel followed. There’s a lesson in this story, and maybe not one that should be taught to little girls—Forget science! Give us a little leg!—but you don’t need a microscope to see that Yancy takes a great picture, and her career longevity suggests she made a good choice.

France, Cannes, Cannes Film Festival, New York City, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Blacula, Starsky & Hutch, The Mod Squad, MacGyver, Emily Yancy, television, blaxploitation

Vintage Pulp

October 22 2015

HARLEM IMPROV

Harry Bennett channels Himes and Harlem.

Chester Himes’ cycle of Harlem detective fiction spanned eight complete novels, and one unfinished effort, with five of the paperback editions illustrated by Harry Bennett, whose work you see above. Himes is world renowned, Bennett somewhat less so, but he was an award winning artist who illustrated hundreds of paperbacks during his career. We were reminded of him by a recent entry on Killer Covers, and remembered how much we like these pieces. In contrast to his lushly rendered romance covers, or more conventional crime novel art, these have an almost spontaneous quality. Publisher input usually has quite a bit to do with it, but we suspect Bennett was also influenced by Himes’ writing and the Harlem setting, and as a result produced this jazzy art for a jazzy novelist. Excellent stuff.

New York City, Harlem, Dell Publications, Berkley Books, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Chester Himes, Harry Bennett, cover art, cover collection, literature

Vintage Pulp

May 27 2015

EASY PICKINGS

Coffin and Gravedigger do the Harlem shake-up.

Numerous web scribes have written about Cotton Comes to Harlem, so another amateur review is not needed, but we decided to post a little something anyway because we found some nice promo images that perhaps haven’t been widely seen. Those appear below (and the poster above is the work of Robert McGinnis). If you haven’t watched Cotton Comes to Harlem and you appreciate blaxploitation movies check this one out. It was directed by Ossie Davis and hits all the requisite buttons—action, comedy, social commentary, and as a bonus it has two cops nicknamed Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, who come from Chester Himes’ source novel. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1970.

Cotton Comes to Harlem, Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart, Judy Pace, Ossie Davis, Robert McGinnis, Chester Himes, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation

Femmes Fatales

April 27 2014

PACE HERSELF

To dance, to sing, to laugh, or to just be.

Above: American actress Judy Pace, who appeared in such films as Cool Breeze and Cotton Comes to Harlem, and on television shows like Kung Fu, Mod Squad, and Shaft, seen here expressing herself circa 1968.

Cool Breeze, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Kung Fu, Mod Squad, Shaft, Judy Pace, blaxploitation, cinema, television

ABOUT

EMAIL

LEGAL

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

November 15

1920—League of Nations Holds First Session

The first assembly of the League of Nations, the multi-governmental organization formed as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, is held in Geneva, Switzerland. The League begins to fall apart less than fifteen years later when Germany withdraws. By the onset of World War II it is clear that the League has failed completely.

November 15

1959—Clutter Murders Take Place

Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family are murdered at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas by Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith. The events would be used by author Truman Capote for his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, which is considered a pioneering work of true crime writing. The book is later adapted into a film starring Robert Blake.

November 13

1940—Fantasia Premieres

Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia, which features eight animated segments set to classical music, is first seen by the public in New York City at the Broadway Theatre. Though appreciated by critics, the movie fails to make a profit due to World War II cutting off European revenues. However it remains popular and is re-released several times, including in 1963 when, with the approval of Walt Disney himself, certain racially insulting scenes were removed. Today Fantasia is considered one of Disney’s greatest achievements and an essential experience for movie lovers.

November 12

1912—Missing Explorer Robert Scott Found

British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his men are found frozen to death on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where they had been pinned down and immobilized by bad weather, hunger and fatigue. Scott’s expedition, known as the Terra Nova expedition, had attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole only to be devastated upon finding that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by five weeks. Scott wrote in his diary: “The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God! This is an awful place.”

November 12

1933—Nessie Spotted for First Time

Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster while walking back from church along the shore of the Loch near the town of Foyers. Only one photo came out, but of all the images of the monster, this one is considered by believers to be the most authentic.

November 12

1969—My Lai Massacre Revealed

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre, which had occurred in Vietnam more than a year-and-a-half earlier but been covered up by military officials. That day, U.S. soldiers killed between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians, including women, the elderly, and infants. The event devastated America’s image internationally and galvanized the U.S. anti-war movement. For Hersh’s efforts he received a Pulitzer Prize.