vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
The first step is a doozy, as they say, but in vintage fiction so is the last one and all those in between. Above and below are assorted paperback covers featuring characters who’ve had a bad time navigating stairs, a few due to accidents but most via ill intent from third parties. We also have one hardback dust sleeve we added at the bottom because it was so interesting. Just scroll down, but do it carefully.
Artist William Rose produced this great cover for Doris Miles Disney’s reverse mystery Dead Stop, aka Dark Road, in 1946. Doris Disney was a major writer who produced dozens of novels, many of which were made into movies, including the above (retitled Fugitive Lady), Family Skeleton, (retitled Stella), and Straw Man. This particular novel is about a woman named Hazel Clement who has a comfortable marriage to a boring man and decides that if she had a hammer, she’d hammer in the morning, hammer in the evening, all over his head. No spoiler there—the cover gives it away. The success of the book prompted Disney to write five more starring Jeff DiMarco, the insurance investigator tasked with unraveling Dead Stop’s mystery. We’ve read a couple of Disney books, and we can tell you she penned some pleasingly dark novels that are well worth the time. And in case you’re wondering, she’s unrelated to you-know-who.
American sci-fi/horror author Howard Phillips Lovecraft dies of intestinal cancer in Providence, Rhode Island at age 46. Lovecraft died nearly destitute, but would become the most influential horror writer of all time. His imaginary universe of malign gods and degenerate cults was influenced by his explicitly racist views, but his detailed and procedural style of writing, which usually pitted men of science or academia against indescribable monsters, remains as effective today as ever.
French pulp artist Michel Gourdon, who was the less famous brother of Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, dies in Coudray, France aged eighty-five. He is known mainly for the covers he painted for the imprint Flueve Noir, but worked for many companies and produced nearly 3,500 book fronts during his career.
In the U.S. a Dallas jury finds nightclub owner and organized crime fringe-dweller Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby had shot Oswald with a handgun at Dallas Police Headquarters in full view of multiple witnesses and photographers. Allegations that he committed the crime to prevent Oswald from exposing a conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have never been proven.
In Tennessee, the case of Scopes vs. the State of Tennessee, involving the prosecution of a school teacher for instructing his students in evolution, ends with a conviction of the teacher and establishment of a new law definitively prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The opposing lawyers in the case, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, both earn lasting fame for their participation in what was a contentious and sensational trial.
Franklin D. Roosevelt uses the medium of radio to address the people of the United States for the first time as President, in a tradition that would become known as his “fireside chats”. These chats were enormously successful from a participation standpoint, with multi-millions tuning in to listen. In total Roosevelt would make thirty broadcasts over the course of eleven years.
