EMBRACE THE MOMENT

Hey! *gasp* Ease off. If you hold me any tighter I'll be behind you.

The passionate embrace is a staple of mid-century paperback art, attempted by virtually every illustrator working at the time, with varying degrees of success. The example above was painted by Robert Maguire for D.H. Lawrence’s The Captain’s Doll, originally a novella published in 1921, with this Berkley edition arriving as a full-sized paperback in 1957.

Lawrence was an interesting writer. Could you call him an early sleaze author? Well, he was better than any sleaze author, but while alive he was persecuted, labeled tasteless, excoriated for being pornographic, and censored multiple times. That sounds like sleaze to us. This cover would have been an attempt to capitalize on his scandalous reputation—successfully, as far as we’re concerned.

It inspired us to compile a small collection of other passionate embraces, which you’ll find below. There are hundreds of such covers out there, and in fact we’ve already shared various kissing collections that have similar moods. But we made sure not to repeat any entries from those (we think). If you want to see them, they’re here, here, and here. Hold on to whoever you care about, but make sure they can breathe okay.

To take my pulse you need to put your finger in just the right spot.


Even writers of utopian sci-fi had to pay the bills. John B. Michel was a founding member of the Futurians, a group of fans, writers, and editors who became a primary influence on science fiction during 1930s and 1940s, but here he writes as Louis Richard, producing a tasty piece of sleaze for Beacon Publishing in 1961 called The Sex Pulse. A professor at fictional Maybrook College performs a survey of students and the results blow the lid off the decrepit morals and depraved sexual habits of the student body, with ripple effects upon the young prof, his hot assistant, and a particularly horny student. Michel published three other books under his Richard pseudo—And Sex Is the Payoff, Secret Lusts, and Artist’s Woman, the latter of which we included in this collection. These novels were a long way from utopia, but have been called more stylish than the typical sleaze fiction. The cover art for the above, with its excellent femme fatale, was painted by Ray Johnson. 

We don’t know art but we know what we like.

What do you do when money is tight? In mid-century fiction, you work that body. You find an artist, present your bona fides as a figure model, then peel down for a fee. Or room and board. Or notice from those who guard the doorway to success. Just remember that however much you generate in cash, barter, or recognition, it all inevitably leads to a romp in the sack, often with several participants, and always with disastrous complications because in pulp there’s no such thing as consequence-free sex. Now that you know the rules make that booty work. Above and below you see an assortment of mid-century bookcovers featuring artists and their models. Thanks to all the original uploaders on these, and don’t forget this awesome example and this one.

Femme Fatale Image

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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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