THE MAGIC IS GONE

Why do I get the feeling that when you make me disappear every night you don't want me to come back?

Covers like these can be interpreted just about any way. We were going to go with something like, “Ooooo… the great Balsamo. After last night we know you aren’t so great at everything, don’t we?” There were other options too. The book is about a Brooklyn punk and petty thief who rises to become a world-renowned magician. Maurice Zolotow is more famous that you suspect. In addition to being an author he was a journalist for Billboard magazine and a writer of biographies, and when he died in 1991 he was eulogized in the New York Times. The Great Balsamo is from 1964 with cover work from an unknown artist.

Men's magazines come of age with Esquire.


Esquire isn’t a pulp magazine, but it’s a seminal U.S. publication that goes back to that era, debuting in 1933 and becoming incredibly popular within only a few issues. Today’s from this month in 1945 was given to us by a friend. It was an unexpected and generous gift. It’s also an unusual one. Dimensionally it’s thirteen inches by ten, a size we’ve only seen a couple of times before. That meant scanning pages in halves and assembling them digitally, and because Esquire was perfect-bound, the scanning meant the destruction of the issue. Inside, there’s fiction from Richard Gehman, James Stern, George Wiswell, Maurice Zolotow, and others, accompanied by nice story art. There are also some brilliant portraits of show business celebrities—including Virginia Mayo, Vera Zorina, Dorothy Hart, Ann Miller, Daun Kennedy, and ballerina Milada Mladova.

But it’s the ads that catch the eye. Advertising is a trip back in time, a look at what culture considered important, which is why we have a vintage ad feature in our sidebar. Esquire is packed with ads, chiefly for booze, smokes, and suits. Lots of suits. To think that artists sat at easels in studios producing these illustrations is an amazing thought—and bittersweet, considering how little artistic talent goes into advertising today. We picture the cast of Mad Men refreshing their creative reservoirs with an occasional drink, or even better, Darrin Stevens from Bewitched, struggling over his art pad until Samantha gives him a witchy boost. The ads are mostly signed—by the likes of Frederic Fellander, Jay Hyde Barnum, Robert Goodman, and J.N.C. Fenton. Enjoy the scans. We killed the magazine but it was worth it, we think. And thanks to Alex for the donation.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

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 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.

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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