MIXED MARITAL ARTS

Honey, just go watch tv or something. I really need to get through these quarterly financial reconciliations.

Marriage has its ups and downs, and those downs can range in pulp literature from deadly to downright bizarre. Above and below is a collection of vintage covers reflecting the sometimes unpredictable give and take between fictional spouses. If we wanted to we could make this set two-hundred covers long, if not longer, but today we’ll settle for a mere thirty examples. In addition, we’ve shared a lot of husband/wife covers in the past, so many that we can’t point to them all. But a few of our favorites are here, here, here, and here.

All you have to do is peel and enjoy.


Above: another brilliant hardcover dust jacket from illustrator Barbara Walton, this time for John D. MacDonald’s The Beach Girls, for British publisher Robert Hale, Ltd. The book was originally published in the U.S. in 1959, but the above edition came in 1968. To see more from Walton just click her keywords below, and to learn about the book click here

Thank you very much. Next I'd like to massacre a song by Joan Baez.

Since we took a look at Barbara Walton’s cover work recently we thought we’d circle back to her with an effort for John D. MacDonald’s I Could Go On Singing, originally published in 1963 with this Robert Hale Ltd. hardback coming in ’64. This is very different, very minimalist work from Walton compared to what we showed you last time, but it just demonstrates her broad range. It’s different work for pop fiction icon MacDonald too, as it was a novelization for a 1963 movie of the same name. Hey, whatever pays the bills. We didn’t read it, but we gather that he managed to put his unique stamp on it. 

How does an angel get its wings? Via cleverly repurposed cover art.


European and Australian publishers made a habit of reusing U.S. paperback art, and you see another example above. The top piece for John D. MacDonald’s 1963 novel On the Run received a remix on the front of 1968’s Een “kick” voor Erica, which is a translation by Dutch publishers Combinatie of Stephen Marlowe’s 1967 novel Drumbeat — Erica. It’s hard to improve on a McGinnis, but we think the fantasy-like transformation and giant wings—dare we say?—elevate cover number one to something even nicer. We found both on Flickr, so thanks to those two uploaders. 

I take it from the way you're sprawled across the front seat that dinner and a movie is no longer the plan.


April Evil is a book that showcases John D. MacDonald on literary cruise control, as he confidently weaves together the tale of an elderly, widowed ex-doctor whose has a safe in his study filled with cash, the greedy relatives that hope he leaves his loot and property to them, and how, because rumors of the money have spread, three criminals decide to rob his house. Matters are even more complicated because the doctor has taken in a young married couple, and while the wife is not scheming to get his fortune, the husband is, and he has a big mouth. That mouth entices a psychopathic killer into hijacking the robbery scheme, with the ultimate plan of killing both his partners and—probably—everyone living in the house. For people acquainted with MacDonald but who haven’t read April Evil, the approach will be familiar, particularly the character crosscurrents and fateful timing. It’s well written, enjoyable, and free of pseudo-sociological content, which we consider to be a problem with McDonald’s Travis Magee novels. We recommend it, even more so if you can score Dell’s 1956 edition with Robert McGinnis cover art. 

The cover art for Murder in the Wind changes like the weather.

The copy we read of John D. MacDonald’s natural disaster thriller Murder in the Wind a while back had a front painted by George Gross. The two covers you see above were painted by Bob Abbett and Robert McGinnis. Their art goes in different directions. Abbett’s shows nothing related to bad weather but uses a dilapidated background to imply that his cover figure is stranded, while McGinnis went for an outdoor setting cut by slanting rain, also using a dilapidated house motif. Both efforts are excellent, and the book is good too, as we mentioned here

Southwest Florida gets obliterated but most of the wreckage is human in MacDonald disaster drama.

The three weather based thrillers we’ve discussed—A Town Is DrowningTropical Disturbance, and Death at Flood Tide—represent a minor fraction of the total in mid-century fiction. It’s no surprise, then, that an author as prolific as John D. MacDonald also tested the waters. Murder in the Wind, also known as Hurricane, came in 1956 during the more fertile, less censorious period for MacDonald, and presents readers with a disparate selection of people who all hole up in an abandoned house during a hurricane named Hilda. Eventually the house is swept away entirely, but the story is never less than solidly grounded and engrossing. If your time is limited you might skip this one in favor of The Damned, which is a close cousin, conceptually speaking, but otherwise Murder in the Wind is a necessary read. You get all the fulfillment you’d want from a disaster drama.

What a perfect day. It's days like this that make me glad we invested early in cryptocurrency and retired before thirty.

Above is a Charles Binger cover for John D. MacDonald’s 1959 novel The Beach Girls. At this point, we know anything he wrote pre-Travis McGee is going to be good, and even the McGee books are mostly entertaining despite the main character’s off-putting social judgments. The Beach Girls is a bit different from other MacDonalds we’ve read, largely written in a sort of round robin style where the final words of each chapter lead mid-sentence into the first words of the next, but with a change in first person point-of-view. The book cycles through numerous characters via this interesting trick before settling into standard third person narration for the finish.

The story deals with the inhabitants of a marina in fictional Elihu Beach, Florida, some of whom are friends, others enemies, some longtime residents, others newcomers, and how jealousy and resentment lead to a shocking act of violence. From the earliest pages you know this event is coming, and as the book wears on you become pretty sure who’s going to be the unfortunate though deserving recipient, and who’s going to be the giver. The main question becomes whether MacDonald will subvert these expectations and throw readers a curve. We’ll just say it wasn’t a predictable tale.

The only thing we don’t get is why it’s called The Beach Girls. The nearby beach area of the town is mentioned only a few times, no scenes are set there, and the book has an ensemble cast, with the women no more important than the men. There are groups of tourist women that pop up here and there, but they don’t impact the story at all. Oh well. The title is a mystery, but an unimportant one. We’ll get back to MacDonald a bit later. These 1950s efforts of his have been very worthwhile.

Wow. And to think I criticized my last boyfriend for not showing his emotions.


Above, a cover for Weep for Me by John D. MacDonald, for Gold Medal Books with art by Owen Kampen featuring a female figure who looks completely over it. This has the feel of an exact moment from the narrative, but we haven’t read it. However, we do have a copy we’re going to get to at some point. When we do we’ll report back on this fraught scene. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the panting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains nearly 2,800 stars.

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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