vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above, the cover of Orgy Man by Dean Hudson, a Greenleaf Classics house pseudonym used in this case by veteran sleaze author Evan Hunter, writing for Greenleaf’s Idle Hours imprint, with cover art by Robert Bonfils, copyright 1964. Hah. We did that all in one sentence.
Before we do anything else here are five book covers of women shooting men. And here’s a book cover of a woman whipping a man. And here’s one of a woman about to stick a gun in a man’s mouth. This is just paperback art, which is not to be taken too seriously, but we felt we needed to de-Weinstein things a bit anyway.
So what’s going on with this book? A sleazy casting agent named Stirling Steele catches wind of a beautiful singer and goes to Nashville to promise her anything she wants as long as she ends up naked on her back. Instead he gets arrested for trying to corrupt her morals and finds himself in jail with a friend of his, also a shady agent who’d heard about the singer and shown up in Nashville for the same reason. The jail is run by a hot matron, and there’s also a beautiful—
Wait. Let’s stop. This is silly. The plot doesn’t matter at all. Orgy Scouts is so stupid and badly written it isn’t even worth summarizing. Why do we torture ourselves with these books, you’re wondering? Because we buy them in lots, and others in the group promise to be better. We’ll see. This one is copyright 1967 with art by Tomas Cannizarro.
Above, a cover for Shame Star, copyright 1964, written by Evan Hunter using the pseudonym Dean Hudson for Idle Hours Books. Yep, we read it. It’s about a free spirit named Francie Jordan who gets low on money, gets into nude modeling, and ends up involved in the NYC skin flick racket. The cover doesn’t depict her, though. For some reason it shows a secondary character enjoying an assisted cleanse in a Japanese bathhouse in Harlem. Maybe someone could ask the artist why he chose that scene, but the cover is uncredited. Overall this is standard sleaze, maybe a hair better written than usual, but nothing we’d recommend.
Above you see ze cover of… COUGH COUGH! Had something in the throat there. Above you see the cover of Dean Hudson’s, aka Evan Hunter’s, Twisted Tulips, yet another winner from Greenleaf Classics, this time for its Leisure imprint. 1966 copyright with uncredited art.
What do you do when money is tight? In mid-century fiction, you work that body. You find an artist, present your bona fides as a figure model, then peel down for a fee. Or room and board. Or notice from those who guard the doorway to success. Just remember that however much you generate in cash, barter, or recognition, it all inevitably leads to a romp in the sack, often with several participants, and always with disastrous complications because in pulp there’s no such thing as consequence-free sex. Now that you know the rules make that booty work. Above and below you see an assortment of mid-century bookcovers featuring artists and their models. Thanks to all the original uploaders on these, and don’t forget this awesome example and this one.
Above, Passion Suburb by Evan Hunter writing as Dean Hudson, published 1962. The suburb in question is called Rustic Acres, and it’s filled with horny women who bed any man who happens along. Or as the local Chamber of Commerce put it on the brochures: If you lived there you’d be boning by now. The cover art is by Harold W. McCauley.
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.
There’s nothing quite like getting multi-million dollar bonuses for fleecing gullible investors. Yes, the 1% get yachts, island vacations, and hot oil massages from senators and judges, while the bottom half get evictions, stolen pensions, and the occasional trip to the government cheese line. Clearly Santa got his naughty and nice lists mixed up around 2000 and never discovered the error. 1965 publication date on this.
Above is the cover of Rufus King’s 1945 mystery The Deadly Dove, which isn’t a particularly notable book, except that it demonstrates one of the time-honored motifs in pulp cover art—the woman fighting for her life. We’ve cobbled together a small collection of such covers, with art by Robert Hilbert, Robert Stanley, and others.
We’re curious, but unfortunately have no way of knowing, how readers reacted to these depictions when they first hit newsstands. There are probably some examinations of that question out there somewhere, but not in a place where we can find them. To our contemporary eyes, though, some of these images seem brutal to the extent that if someone actually saw us holding one in a store, we’d be like, “Oh this? Not mine. No, no, no. Found this uh, on the floor and was just, er, putting it back on the shelf. No, I was actually buying this copy of Genital Warts and U.“
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement. You get the point, though. But violent or not, there’s no denying the artistry on display on these covers. Thanks to various Flickr groups for some of these, by the way. In other news, that long delayed internet installation is so close we can almost taste it. How much you wanna bet it all fails spectacularly?
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.
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.
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.
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.â€
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.
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.
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.
