THE DEVIL MADE HER DO IT

Excellent work! Now make them submit sexually while I get back to those mortgage bankers I'm slow roasting.


We’d been planning to read Satan Was a Lesbian for a while, but because we have plenty of experience with sleaze novels we didn’t have high expectations. The good news is those expectations were surpassed. The bad news is the book still isn’t good. The title alone makes it sound like a punchline in search of a publisher, but author Fred Haley—actually a pseudonym for Monica Roberts—tries to be serious as she tells the story of Charlene Duval: turned to lesbianism when barely a woman, initiated into rough practices by the violent Billie and her partner Karen, emotionally touched by her innocent young lover Cynthia, eventually case-hardened into a take-no-shit woman of the world. Is she really Satan? Come on, would Satan be named Charlene?

Think of Satan Was a Lesbian as the Thelma and Louise of vintage lesbian fiction, with the added tragedy that the book sometimes sells for as much as $350. Really? Yes. Just because of a catchy title and a piece of lurid Doug Weaver cover art? Yes, and not only that, but even refrigerator magnets and posters of this cover go for fifteen bucks, so to say everything associated with it is inflated in value is an understatement. But if you poke around and show some patience, you might not have to pay a fortune. The thing about these types of books is that eventually someone always sells them without knowing what the market is because they just want to get rid of grandpa’s dog-eared old smut. Alternatively, you could buy a refrigerator magnet, stare at it, and make up your own story. It would probably be nearly as good.

Satanic mentoring program expands from boardroom to bedroom.

Devil: Now that she’s out of her wedding gown, grab it and we’ll sell it on Ebay. Snag her ring too.

Man: Get out of my head, shoulder devil!

Devil: Tie her to the bed and use her body until it’s a dried out husk.

Man: Shhh… quiet!

Devil: What are you worried about? She can’t hear us.

Man: Just stop, devil. It’s my honeymoon. Take the night off.

Devil: No can do. Our pact is 24/7.

Man: But that was for you to make me a better businessman!

Devil: Trust me, what you wanna do to her is what big business wants to do to everybody. Now insult her and act like she deserved it. I taught that one to the president and he loved it.

Slow down, baby. How's about I love you ’til I finish, then roll over and fall into a death-like sleep? That work for ya?

Love Me to Death was written by Alex Blake, known in real life as veteran author Charles Neutzel, who also wrote as Alec Rivere, John Davidson, Jay Davis, Stu Rivers, Howard Johnson, et al, and in 2008 published the notable sleaze industry memoir Pocketbook Writer: Confessions of a Commercial Hack. The cool art here is by Doug Weaver, who was kind enough to legibly sign it, thus saving us the usual research efforts. More of that, please. 1961 from Epic Books.

Mid-century paperbacks and the many sides of erotic dance.

We’ve seen more paperback covers featuring dancers than we can count. No surprise—they are after all an essential element of crime fiction, and many of the covers depicting them are excellent. But as you might imagine, novels that feature strippers, showgirls, and burlesque dancers as characters also fall into the sleaze genre quite often, which in turn makes for a lot of low budget cover work. So we have the full range for you today in a collection depicting the kinetic art of stage dancing, with illustrations from Bernard Safran, Robert Maguire, Robert McGinnis, Gene Bilbrew, Doug Weaver, and others, as well as numerous unknowns. Enjoy.

Girls, stop! *gasp* I take it back! *choke* We're not gonna play hide the kielbasa!


Above, Judson Grey’s Twilight Girls, from Epic Originals, 1962. Grey was a pseudonym, of course, because who’d actually take credit for this? The authors were Jim Harmon and Ron Haydock, two guys who as Grey, Vin Saxon, and Don Sheppard cooked up such fare as Wanton Witch, Lust for Lace, and Ape Rape, the last title made all the more frightening because it isn’t in any way a euphemism. In Twilight Girls a man is pitted against a militant lesbian group called the League of Amazons and wins by using the only tool at his disposal—his cock. High art it isn’t, but the Doug Weaver cover made us smile, and we especially like the placement of the knife in the composition as both a penis substitute and castration threat. Silly and sublime.

What’s in a name? Everything, if it’s the title of a vintage paperback.

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.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1924—Dion O'Banion Gunned Down

Dion O’Banion, leader of Chicago’s North Side Gang is assassinated in his flower shop by members of rival Johnny Torrio’s gang, sparking the bloody five-year war between the North Side Gang and the Chicago Outfit that culminates in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

1940—Walt Disney Becomes Informer

Walt Disney begins serving as an informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI, with instructions to report on Hollywood subversives. He eventually testifies before HUAC, where he fingers several people as Communist agitators. He also accuses the Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front.

1921—Einstein Wins Nobel

German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from matter as a consequence of their absorption of energy from electromagnetic radiation. In practical terms, the phenomenon makes possible such devices as electroscopes, solar cells, and night vision goggles.

1938—Kristallnacht Begins

Nazi Germany’s first large scale act of anti-Jewish violence begins after the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, and in total the violent rampage destroys more than 250 synagogues, causes the deaths of nearly a hundred Jews, and results in 25,000 to 30,000 more being arrested and sent to concentration camps.

1923—Hitler Stages Revolt

In Munich, Germany, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in the Beer Hall Putsch, an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government. Also known as the Hitlerputsch or the Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch, the attempted coup was inspired by Benito Mussolini’s successful takeover of the Italian government.

1932—Roosevelt Unveils CWA

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create temporary winter jobs for more than 4 million of the unemployed.

A collection of red paperback covers from Dutch publisher De Vrije Pers.
Uncredited art for Hans Lugar's Line-Up! for Scion American publishing.
Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.

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