vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above are a pair of covers by French illustrator Jacques Leclerq, aka Jihel, who by coincidence went in a similar direction on both, though it looks to us like the top book, 1957’s 3 filles en folie, features his trio of filles in a somewhat paradisiacal setting, while the the bottom one, 1953’s Le temps des filles, features them in a place that looks a lot like hell. We bet the trio in hell are more fun. See more from Jihel by clicking his keywords just below.
More from France today. Above you see Envoûtement sensuel, by Pierre Sénard for Éditions C.P.E., published in 1958. The title translates to “sensual enchantment,” and enchanting is a perfect word to describe this cover, which has a very romantic feel. The art wraps around onto the book’s spine too, which makes it even nicer. We assume the cover figure is contemplating something other than her right shoe, but maybe not—we know a couple of women that get this way about footwear. The artist here is Jacques Leclerc, who signed his work as Jihel, and we think it’s among his best.
Souris à croquer means “chewable mouse.” Nothing more to add there, really, except to speculate that maybe it’s a slang phrase. French friends help us out. Moving on, you may already know the master illustrator Jean David, who signed his work J. David. Did he write this book? We have no idea, and neither did anyone else we asked. Considering J. David painted from the 1940s onward, and this book by Jean David appeared in 1958, it’s certainly possible they’re the same person. Note to selves: more research. Souris à croquer, by the way, means “chewable mouse.” Did we mention that already? Well, it bears repeating. The cover art here is not by J. David, but by Jihel, aka Jacques Leclerc.
Update: Jo B. from Marseille has the answer, writing: “Souris à croquer” means “a mouse to eat.” “Mouse” is a little slang term (not vulgar) to designate a pretty girl. “Croquer” is the way you eat an apple, a bar of chocolate or something like that. I don’t know the real word in English (munch, crunch?). Maybe we have two mice to crunch on the cover as “souris” can be one mouse or many mice.
Thanks so much Jo.
Below: La Vie Parisienne #79, published July 1957, with Roger Brard cover art along with beautiful interior pieces from Jihel, Donnés, Jac, Denis, van Homme, and others.
We hope you didn’t think we were being rough on Michel Gourdon yesterday. We certainly don’t qualify as art experts. We were just saying maybe he missed the mark on that particular book cover. He did fine on hundreds of others. Today, we have an example of his work at its best. Inside this May 1959 issue of La Vie Parisienne Gourdon not only offers up a top-notch illustration, but accompanies it with a poem he authored entitled “Jalousie,” or Jealousy. It’s an interesting theme for a painter of pin-ups to tackle, but since we are no more poetry experts than we are art experts, we won’t pretend to critique the merits of the verse. You want to know how it goes? E-mail us and we’ll send it to you. Also in this issue you get art from fellow illustrators Jacques Leclerc, R. Caron, and E. Klein. In addition, this is another chopped up magazine with loose clippings from another issue, we believe from June 1959. We’ve included a few of those pages as well.
Above: the cover and assorted interior pages from La Vie Parisienne, October 1956, with art from Jihel, aka Jacques Leclerc, in panel two. You can see five prime examples of Jihel at his best here.
Five brilliant La Compagnie d’Edition Parisienne erotic pulp covers, circa 1950 to 1954, featuring the work of French illustrator Jacques Leclerc, who painted under the name Jihel (there was another French illustrator who used Jihel as a nickname—caricaturist Jacques Camille Lardie, not the same person). Leclerc/Jihel also painted illustrations for the classic French erotic magazine La Vie Parisienne, and we have a few copies we picked up in Paris that we’ll show you in the near future.
Above: two editions of Ellen Edisson’s Aller simple pour Moscou, aka One Way to Moscow. The first was published in 1956 by Thill in its Stop-Espionnage alter-ego as part of its Serie Le Loup, and the second appeared in 1959 from Champ de Mars, and was the first in its popular series Le Moulin Noir.
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is “Kaputt.” The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes.
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history.
