Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

ELLIS’S ISLAND

Finally! Not another soul in sight. For some reason, the beach always gets crowded right where I am.

In this 1937 promo image U.S. actress Patricia Ellis has channeled our exact sentiment, as our local beaches begin to fill with vacationers. Luckily, we have lots of beaches, and like Ellis, we know some secret spots. She had a busy run in Hollywood, appearing in more than forty films from 1932 to 1939. Among them were The Lady in the Morgue, based on a Jonathan Latimer novel, The Case of the Lucky Legs, based on an Erle Stanley Gardner novel, While the Patient Slept, based on a Mignon G. Eberhart novel, and The Narrow Corner, based on a W. Somerset Maugham novel. That’s a lot of high quality source material. We’ll try to see one or more of those films.

The Lady in the Morgue, The Case of the Lucky Legs, While the Patient Slept, The Narrow Corner, Patricia Ellis, Erle Stanley Gardner, Mignon G. Eberhart, W. Somerset Maugham

MONSIEUR BLAMESHIFTER

Erm... before you shoot... I just want you to know it was all her fault.

Crime en deux temps, or “crime in two stages,” was originally released in 1939 as The Case of the Rolling Bones. For some reason the French publishers of this book, Presses de la Cité, call legendary mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner just Stanley Gardner, which sounds, well, non-legendary. Stanley Gardner is a guy at the office you don’t talk to because he’s a skin picker. Erle Stanley Gardner is a guy who, if he likes you, can get you into Nobu. So, the Erle is needed.

Plotwise, this revolves around greed, gold, and a group of people who want to prevent their relative from losing his fortune to his prospective wife. In order to stop this imagined horror, they commit the relative to a nuthouse before he can get married. Which backfires when he escapes. As always with Gardner there’s a murder, which brings Perry Mason onto the scene to sort everything out.

As you might guess, because Gardner was (and is) an immensely popular author there are several English language paperback covers for this, and they all feature dice in some form. Which makes sense, because the original title came about because there’s an actual die maker in the book. He makes crooked dice, and he gets murdered. This uncredited French cover from 1950 caught our eye because of its non-literal approach. No dice, but it’s a winner.

France, Presses de la Cité, Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason, cover art, literature

SHE’S GOT HIS BACK

Fine. Explain. But don't turn around. I hate your face so much right now I might shoot it on general principle.

Above, a cover for Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Haunted Husband, eighteenth in the acclaimed Perry Mason series, from Pocket Books. Generally considered one of the best Mason mysteries, this one tells the story of a female hitchhiker who accepts a ride from a guy who gets a little too handsy, leading to a multi-car crack-up. The woman awakens behind the wheel, with the driver nowhere to be seen, and a fatality in one of the other cars. The cops don’t believe she wasn’t the driver, so they arrest her and charge her with negligent homicide. Things get worse when the car turns out to be stolen, and suddenly she’s on the hook for that too. Enter Perry Mason. Nothing is haunted in this book, but the mystery is a winner. We also were reminded how effective short chapters can be in drawing a reader into a story. The hardback of The Case of the Haunted Husband appeared in 1941, and the above paperback with Bernard Safran art followed in 1949.

Pocket Books, Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason, Bernard Safran, cover art, literature

TROUBLE AT THE DOOR

If someone knocks, don't answer.

It’s a good thing the real world isn’t like the worlds of pulp and mid-century crime fiction. In those realms, when a woman receives an unexpected visitor the result is often disastrous. Bad cops, evil crooks, ruthless blackmailers, lecherous uncles, and all sorts of nasty characters usually await on the other side of the door. Above and below you see a collection of mid-century paperback fronts showing those fraught moments just after a woman opens her door to trouble, or trouble takes matters into its own hands and busts its way in. Our recommendation: in the event of an unexpected knock just go out the window.

James O. Causey, Thomas Sterling, Norbert Fagan, Lora Sela, Edwin Rolfe, Lester Fuller, Leslie Ford, Erle Stanley Gardner, Jack Karney, Ed McBain, Fan Nichols, Woody Craft, Alain Moury, Lindsay Hardy, Oscar Montgomery, Ed Lacy, Watkins E. Wright, Paul Gregory, Charles Higham, Dan Marlowe, Howard Rigsby, cover art, literature, cover collection

HOME ALONE

In the end I have to admit this minimalist look is kind of depressing. Maybe I should buy an ottoman.

Robert McGinnis does his usual flawless work on this cover for Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Bigamous Spouse. Many summaries of this online, but briefly, it’s about a door-to-door saleswoman who is implicated in the murder of her best friend’s new husband, who was married to two women. Rest assured, Perry Mason sorts it all out as perfectly as McGinnis sorted out this cover.  

Pocket Books, Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason, cover art, literature

APRIL SHOWERS

Cleanliness is next to bawdiness.
Below, a small selection of paperback covers featuring characters getting more from their daily rinse than just a squeaky clean feeling.

Browning Norton, Paul Curtis, Andrew Shaw, Alan Marshall, Dallas Mayo, Marcus Miller, Kevin North, Erle Stanley Gardner, Catharine Whitcomb, George Harmon Coxe, Steve Sarver, J.D. Twigg, Jeff Bogar, P.G. Wodehouse, Dean Hudson, Don Bellmore, Richard Allen, Drew Palmer, Aaron Thomas, cover art, literature, cover collection

RIPPLE EFFECT

McGinnis makes waves with his art.


It’s always a good idea to regularly revisit the work of Robert McGinnis. Above you see his cover for Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Demure Defendant, originally published in 1954 with this Pocket Books paperback appearing in 1964. We love the psychedelic direction McGinnis goes with the ripples in the pond, alternating rings of turquoise and violet. This is fantastic work. 

Pocket Books, Cardinal Editions, Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert McGinnis, cover art, literature

SHADOW AND FRIGHT

The shape of bad things to come.

Above and below are assorted covers featuring yet another fun mid-century paperback art motif—the looming or threatening shadow. The covers are by the usual suspects—Rader, Phillips, Gross, Caroselli, Nik, as well as by artists whose work you see less often, such as Tony Carter’s brilliant cover for And Turned to Clay. That’s actually a dust jacket, rather than a paperback front, but we couldn’t leave it out. You’ll also notice French publishers really liked this theme. We’ll doubtless come across more, and as we do we’ll add to the collection. This is true of all our cover collections. For instance, our post featuring the Eiffel Tower has grown from fifteen to twenty-two examples, and our group of fronts with syringes has swelled from thirteen to twenty-six images. We have twenty-four twenty-six—see what we mean?—more shadow covers below, and thanks to all original uploaders.

Jay Barbette, Richard Deming, James Eastwood, Geoffrey Homes, E. Howard Hunt, Gordon Davis, Ovid Demaris, Anne Chamberlain, Tony Carter, Paul Rader, Barye Phillips, Lenore Glen Offord, George Gross, Carl G. Hoges, Benedetto Caroselli, Louis de la Hattais, Roy Huggins, Erle Stanley Gardner, Francis Beeding, Jon Cleary, Jannet Mills, Lesley Egan, Leslie Charteris, Lionel White, John Eugene Hasty, Vivian Marcy, Samuel Rogers, Joan Ellis, A.A. Fair, Thomas B. Dewey, Claude Ferny, Richard Craig, Richard Craig, Salva, Jean Salvetti, Mik, Jacques Thibésart, Gerald Brown, Milton K. Ozaki, Duke Linton, cover art, cover collection, literature

PAIN IN THE NECK

Yup, there's something here. Based on your personality I'm inclined to say it's a “666” but no—they're just bruises.

A.A. Fair’s Doublé de dupes, which is a translation of The Bigger They Come, was first published in hardback in 1939, appeared as a U.S. paperback from Pocket Books in 1952, and above in 1958. It’s the first in a series starring sixty-something private investigator Bertha Cool and her pint-sized sidekick Donald Lam.

Fair, aka Erle Stanley Gardner, had already made his Perry Mason series a success and the Cool/Lam shift got him out of the courtroom. In this one the protagonists attempt to serve divorce papers, but of course the seemingly simple task falls apart spectacularly, leaving a man dead and Lam under suspicion of having committed a serious crime. The British version’s title—Lam to the Slaughter—gives that aspect of the story away immediately.

The curious cover art you see here by Maurice Thomas was used on both the U.S. and French versions (a bit of a surprise considering the six year gap) and shows Lam checking out injuries on the femme fatale, who has been attacked by another character. General consensus online is that this series improved greatly after the first couple of entries.

France, Presses de la Cité, Doublé de dupes, The Bigger They Come, Lam to the Slaughter, A.A. Fair, Erle Stanley Gardner, cover art, literature

ULTIMATE FIGHTING

Vintage paperback violence gets up close and personal.

We have another collection today as we prepare to jet away on vacation with the girls. Since the place we’re going is known for rowdy British tourists (what place isn’t known for that?), we thought we’d feature some of the numerous paperback covers featuring fights. You’ll notice, as with our last collection, the preponderance of French books. Parisian publishers loved this theme. The difference, as opposed to American publishers, is that you almost never saw women actually being hit on French covers (we’d almost go so far as to say it never happened, but we’ve obviously not seen every French paperback ever printed). The French preferred man-on-man violence, and when women were involved, they were either acquitting themselves nicely, or often winning via the use of sharp or blunt instruments.

Violence against women is and has always been a serious problem in the real world, but we’re just looking at products of the imagination here, which themselves represent products of the imagination known as fiction. Content-wise, mid-century authors generally frowned upon violence toward women even if they wrote it into their novels. Conversely, the cover art, stripped of literary context, seemed to glorify it. Since cover art is designed to entice readers, there’s a valid discussion here about why anti-woman violence was deemed attractive on mid-century paperback fronts, and whether its disappearance indicates an understanding of its wrongness, or merely a cynical realization that it can no longer be shown without consequences. We have another fighting cover here, and you may also want to check out our western brawls here.

France, Gérard Dixe, Peter Debry, Jean Baudin, Dan Cushman, John Dexter, Jerome Belleau, Peter Debry, Hugh Clevely, Ric Arana, Harry Whittington, O.M. Hall, Steve Ferney, Maurice Limat, John Dexter, Vic Peterson, Ross Camra, W.T. Ballard, Willis T. Ballard, Albert E. Ullman, Griff, Roy Chanslor, John Hunter, Jack Dolph, Don Elliot, Adam Knight, Erle Stanley Gardner, Martin Ryerson, Mark Banon, Carter Dickson, Leslie Charteris, Bob Nelson, P.A. Logan, A.A. Fair, Robert Bonfils, Aslan, Alain Gourdon, Paul Anna Soik, Sam Peffer, Rafael DeSoto, Edward Vebell, cover art, cover collection, literature
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1941—DiMaggio Hit Streak Reaches 56

New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.

1939—Adams Completes Around-the-World Air Journey

American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.

1955—Nobel Prize Winners Unite Against Nukes

Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.

1921—Sacco & Vanzetti Convicted

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted in Dedham, Massachusetts of killing their shoe company’s paymaster. Even at the time there are serious questions about their guilt, and whether they are being railroaded because of their Italian ethnicity and anarchist political beliefs.

1933—Eugenics Becomes Official German Policy

Adolf Hitler signs the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, and Germany begins sterilizing those they believe carry hereditary illnesses, and those they consider impure. By the end of WWII more than 400,000 are sterilized, including criminals, alcoholics, the mentally ill, Jews, and people of mixed German-African heritage.

1955—Ruth Ellis Executed

Former model Ruth Ellis is hanged at Holloway Prison in London for the murder of her lover, British race car driver David Blakely. She is the last woman executed in the United Kingdom.

1966—Richard Speck Rampage

Richard Speck breaks into a Chicago townhouse where he systematically rapes and kills eight student nurses. The only survivor hides under a bed the entire night.

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DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

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.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.
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.

LOVES OF A BLONDE

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.

INSATIABLE APPETITE

George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

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