EVERYDAY PEEPHOLE

Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors—unless of course they happen to look.


You can consider Coulisses d’hôtels an addition to our collection of keyhole themed art from nine years back. We can’t determine who painted this, but it’s pretty nice, and it wraps around to an eye-catching rear. The book, which originally came in 1962 with this paperback from Éditions Paul Rohart arriving in 1964, purports to be anoymously written by a valet—hence the obvious pseudonym Monsieur Pierre—who worked in various Paris hotels. As the art suggests, he saw many curious and stimulating sights, and we gather the book fits into the category of érotisme.

Which brings us to another PSGP story. He worked at a hotel, an early job, during his college years, as a room service waiter. His story is exactly the one you’d most expect a room service waiter to have. A guest answered his knock completely naked. PSGP delivered the meal, got the signature—which took some time, as the guest had no pen handy—and eventually left. That might sound like a missed opportunity, but to PSGP it felt too much like a hidden camera gag. Plus, how would he have explained his long absence from the hotel kitchen? Clearly, he thinks too much. You can see that keyhole collection here.
Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remains at large for nearly forty years.

1949—Dragnet Premiers

NBC radio broadcasts the cop drama Dragnet for the first time. It was created by, produced by, and starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. The show would later go on to become a successful television program, also starring Webb.

1973—Lake Dies Destitute

Veronica Lake, beautiful blonde icon of 1940s Hollywood and one of film noir’s most beloved fatales, dies in Burlington, Vermont of hepatitis and renal failure due to long term alcoholism. After Hollywood, she had drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post article briefly revived interest in her, but at the time of her death she was broke and forgotten.

1962—William Faulkner Dies

American author William Faulkner, who wrote acclaimed novels such as Intruder in the Dust and The Sound and the Fury, dies of a heart attack in Wright’s Sanitorium in Byhalia, Mississippi.

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.
Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.
Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.
George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web