vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above is another fun cover from Société d’Éditions Générales, or SEG, for its series Service Secret 078. Graine d’espion translates as “spy seed,” another inscrutable title, which by now you know is par for the course when it comes to French paperbacks. Francis Richard was in reality Paul Bérato, who you can learn a little bit more about here. As usual with SEG, the art is uncredited.
This is such a macabre image, a man stuffing a woman’s corpse in a crate, that we probably should have posted it around Halloween. 1958’s Et un cercueil pour Cecilia was written by Francis Richard, aka Paul Bérato, for Société d’Editions Générale and its collection Service Secret 078. This is one of those tales where the author pretends to be the hero. In other words, it was written by Bérato as Francis Richard, but the main character is also named Francis Richard, and he’s a globetrotting spy who heads to Chile on a mission, where the villains apparently crate up corpses. Though the grim art on this is not attributed, others in the series were signed E.G. or F.G. and the style here is similar. Unfortunately, we don’t know who E.G. or F.G. is.
When it comes to French pulp, the cover art will often be uncredited. Such is the case with this attractive front for the thriller Quadrille d’Espions, published in 1956 by Société d’Éditions Général, aka SEG, for its popular series Espionnage/Service-Secret. The book was written by Francis Richard, which was a pseudonym used by Paul Bérato, who also wrote as Yves Dermèze, Paul Béra, er al. We dug deeper into the identity of this artist, to no avail. Someone out there knows, though, and with luck, we’ll hear from them.
This novel has a rather funny title—Vide ton sac… hé means “Empty your sack… hey!” It was written by Louis de la Hattais for the Allo Police series published by SEG, aka Société d’Editions Générales, 1957 copyright. We didn’t know who painted these covers when we first posted from this series, but now know it’s Auguste Liquois, who did a lot of work for SEG. Learn more about de la Hattais and Allo Police here.
Above, seven covers from Editions Société d’Éditions Générales’ series Le Maître de l’invisible, aka The Master of the Invisible, which was written by Edward Brooker from 1945 to 1947, relaunched in 1953, taken over by Sam Norwood, and finally shelved in 1956. Both Booker and Norwood were pseudonyms, neither conclusively identified at this point, although Booker may have been Austrian born Edward Ostermann. The title character of these books, Pao Tcheou, or Chao Pao, is a creation right out of the psycho-cultural Yellow Peril fever dreams of the era, a Chinese villain who can turn himself invisible, and in order to fulfill his dreams of global domination employs methods as diverse as giant monsters, killer robots, nuclear weapons, and general oriental cunning. He’s of course opposed by a group of upstanding Westerners.
We said we’d get back to Louis de la Hattais and today we’re keeping our word. Above you see four book covers from French author Jerry Lewray, who was a pseudonym invented by de la Hattais, and used by him and possibly other authors who churned out thrillers for Société d’Editions Générales’ Interpol and Allo Police series during the 1960s, as well as stand-alone novels of his/their own. But it turns out Louis de la Hattais wasn’t real either—he was a pseudonym of author and editor Louis Fournel, who, starting in the 1940s, wrote under the names Louis Delaht, Anne-Marie Delfour, Jean Delhat, Lew Dolegan, Anne-Marie Fervel, Louis Hellais and several others. Confused? You’re not alone. But as the mystery deepens, we keep digging. It’s not just educational—it’s fun!
Here’s a little artifact from our trip to Paris last year, which we picked up from one of the booksellers by the Pont Neuf. It’s a Louis de la Hattais novel from 1957, part of the “Allo Police” collection printed by Société d’Editions Générales. It’s called Des Mégots pour al Petit!, which means Cigarette Butts for the Little Girl. De la Hattais was a prolific mid-century pulp author, and we’ve actually seen a lot of his books around, although we suspect he was actually a pseudonym. We’ll find out and get back to you on that. As far as the art goes, while it may be less masterful than that of pulp icons such as Aslan and Robert McGinnis, we find it quite effective. So much so that just for your visual pleasure this Wednesday, we’ve posted a few more “Allo Police” covers below. Enjoy.
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale.
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule’s main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule’s descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission.
Austro-Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.
The newspaper Pravda, or “Truth”, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
