MAN OF STEAL

You're going burgling again, aren't you? Don't lie to me, buster. I always know the signs.
David Goodis’s novel The Burglar is one of our recent favorites. Above is a nice edition from Banner Books, which we gather was a British sub-imprint of Lion Books, but one that must not have been around long, since we can’t locate any mention of it except in the seller’s auction. Indeed, the vendor could simply be wrong. It happens. The art on this is uncredited. You can read our rave of the novel here.

Update: the May 1955 cover of Justice you see below is attributed to Julian Paul, so that solves the mystery of The Burglar.

Forget it, buster. You look good now but we both know there's a useless tub of lard just dying to get out.


Careful girls—inside every hunk there’s a pot-bellied sofa sloth waiting for an opportunity to emerge. All it takes is beer and time. John Garth’s Hill Man, published in 1954 by Pyramid Books, concerns opportunity as well. It deals with an opportunistic country boy who marries and beds his way into property and riches. Garth was a pseudonym used by Janice Holt Giles, who under her real name wrote numerous historical novels set in Kentucky. Hill Man isn’t a historical novel. It fits more into the long tradition of rural dramas we’ve talked about often. The cover art on this particular example is by Julian Paul. 

Instead of fighting about this, let's compromise. My soul will go to church with you while my body stays in bed.


Julian Paul does top work on this cover for Richard Matheson’s 1953 thriller Fury on Sunday. Paul painted some nice covers for men’s adventure magazines as well, two of which we showed you here and here. We read this novel, and from a complex intro that hurries to introduce five main characters, it settles into a streamlined narrative of people stalked and held hostage by a madman. Of the captives—the coward, the tart, the everyman, and the good girl—we knew right away who would be killed, which dampened some of the suspense. Another problem is that the characters do not make the smartest decisions, sometimes to the point of straining credulity. If Fury on Sunday were a horror movie they’d all be murder bait, pretty much. For those reasons the book, Matheson’s second, resides in the same not-fully-realized territory as his first, Someone Is Bleeding, also published in 1953. But in 1954 he would strike gold. That year he published I Am Legend, which is a sci-fi classic and became a movie four different times. We have that book lined up for later.

Slow down, tiger—that isn't the opening I had you in mind for.

This is a very successful cover. In pulp and sleaze fiction, it’s the male boss who typically attacks his female assistant, but here, by using subtleties of facial expression and briefcase style, the artist makes clear that the woman is the boss in this situation, stuck with fending off the advances of her subordinate. These days he’d probably be fired, possibly arrested, and maybe even sued. But in 1954, when Nine to Five was first published, you don’t even have to guess what happens—he gets fully up in the boss’s panties and she loves it! But that’s why it’s fiction. This edition comes from 1960 via Berkley Books, the artist is Julian Paul, and it’s unrelated to the movie starring Fonda, Tomlin, and Parton.

Two’s company, three’s dead weight.

Pulp books and magazines reused art quite a bit, and the piece above—by Julian Paul—is a good example. Here you see a tough soldier of fortune and a native girl floating on dangerous waters, but on a version we posted from Action for Men back in March, there were three figures. We joked that whenever two men and one woman were involved, a disagreement was soon to follow. Looks like the guy with the gun won. 

Missing man found with native girl—no sign of man's friend.

March 1960 Action for Men with cover art by Julian Paul. This trio will soon have some serious issues to sort out, because once immediate danger passes the male mind focuses entirely on getting laid. Usually two virile guys and one beautiful, sarong-clad girl means there’s one too many swinging dicks in the picture, but it could also be the girl who’s the obstacle to hot tropical love. You better recognize. Regardless, somebody’s getting cast adrift. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1937—Hitler Reveals His Plans for Lebensraum

Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting with Nazi officials and states his intention to acquire “lebensraum,” or living space for Germany. An old German concept that dated from 1901, Hitler had written of it in Mein Kampf, and now possessed the power to implement it. Basically the idea, as Hitler saw it, was for the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations to the east, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate those lands with a Germanic upper class.

1991—Fred MacMurray Dies

American actor Fred MacMurray dies of pneumonia related to leukemia. While most remember him as a television actor, earlier in his career he starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity, one of the greatest films noir ever made.

1955—Cy Young Dies

American baseball player Cy Young, who had amassed 511 wins pitching for five different teams from 1890 to 1911, dies at the age of 88. Today Major League Baseball’s yearly award given to the best pitcher of each season is named after Young.

1970—Feral Child Found in Los Angeles

A thirteen year-old child who had been kept locked in a room for her entire life is found in the Los Angeles house of her parents. The child, named Genie, could only speak twenty words and was not able even to walk normally because she had spent her life strapped to a potty chair during the day and bound in a sleeping bag at night. Genie ended up in a series of foster homes and was given language training but after years of effort by various benefactors never reached a point where she could interact normally in society.

1957—Soviets Launch Dog into Space

The Soviet Union launches the first ever living creature into the cosmos when it blasts a stray dog named Laika into orbit aboard the capsule Sputnik II. Laika is fitted with various monitoring devices that provide information about the effects of launch and weightlessness on a living creature. Urban myth has it that Laika starved to death after a few days in space, but she actually died of heat stress just a few hours into the journey.

1989—Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Folds

William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, which had gained notoriety for its crime and scandal focus, including coverage of the Black Dahlia murder and Charles Manson trials, goes out of business after eighty-six years. Its departure leaves the Los Angeles Times as the sole city-wide daily newspaper in L.A.

Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.
T’as triché marquise by George Maxwell, published in 1953 with art by Jacques Thibésart, also known as Nik.

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