VERBODEN DANCE

The sweetest fruit is the type that peels itself.

A while back we learned about Dutch illustrator J.H. Moriën through his re-imagining of a famed Paul Rader cover, and here he is again doing good work on the front of Verboden Vruchten, an Erosex-Pocket paperback published in the Netherlands and written by Linda Michaels. We assume that’s a pseudonym, but we can’t find more info. We stumbled across the cover in a Flickr collection, so thanks to the original uploader. The title translates as “forbidden fruits,” although this particular fruit gets eaten plenty as the story deals with a stripper named Sophie and her various assignations, including with a horny judge named Johnson and an abuser named Leander. We don’t know the copyright on this, but Moriën was working in this mode during the mid-1960s. We have other pieces from him that we’ll show you later.

Update: We’re now thinking this author is Joan Ellis, aka Julie Ellis, who sometimes used Linda Michaels as her pseudonym. After searching everwhere for info, you know where we learned that? Right here.

Actually, I'm not nicknamed Flame because of my hair. You know what pyroflatulence is? Toss me that lighter.

Above, another great Midwood cover, this time for Flame, by sleaze stalwart Joan Ellis, aka Julie Ellis. The art is, sadly, uncredited (but looks like Paul Rader).

Once you go down there's no turning back.

But isn’t Third Street in the other direction?

We’re gonna go down the third street.

You mean the third street from here?

If you wanna think of it that way.

Why are you holding my hand?

The third street gets slippery. You’ll see.

Super rare Joan Ellis authored Midwood-Tower lesbian sleaze novel about a painter and model who come together over more than just art, 1964, with Paul Rader on the cover chores.

Let's go upstairs and slip out of our pajamas, daddy-o, then I can tuck you in nice and snug.

This is one of the prettiest Paul Rader covers we’ve seen, which is really saying something considering he painted this and this. But this stellar turquoise and gold effort for Joan Ellis’s Sooner or Later may be our favorite Rader yet. Note how the placement of the girl’s elbow suggests an erection on her tormented brother-in-law. Joan Ellis was in reality author Julie Ellis, and she also wrote as Linda Michaels, Jill Monte, and Susan Richard. She went on to author serious fiction, but even if those later books were better written, we bet none of them looked as appealing as this.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

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 painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

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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