vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above are fourteen more covers from French artist James Hodges, who we’re still trying to learn details about. Was he actually French, with a name like James? That much seems certain. Was he a genius? Clearly. We’ll keep digging until we know all there is to know.
Update: On the other hand, he could be less of a genius than we thought…
Above: a cover for the thriller Où est le cavadre?, which as you might guess means, Where Is the Corpse?, a question the man involved here seems to be asking with some urgency. Well, if you can’t find a corpse you might as well make one yourself. This book, which appeared in France in 1962, actually originated in Italy with Editions ERP, where in 1961 it was published as part of their I Gialle dello Schedario series. The writer, Joe Vivard, was really Pino Belli, and wrote under several names, including Ricky Lambert, Steve Cockrane, and others. The excellent is art by Mario Ferrari, whose work we showed you a while back when we did a post of eleven I Gialle dello Schedario covers. See those here, and see more from Ferrari later.
Harper Lee’s racially charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. The book is hailed as a classic, becomes an international bestseller, and spawns a movie starring Gregory Peck, but is the only novel Lee would ever publish.
As part of the nuclear tests codenamed Operation Dominic, the United States detonates a one megaton bomb on Australian controlled Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. The island was a location for a series of American and British nuclear tests, and years later lawsuits claiming radiation damage to military personnel were filed, but none were settled in favor in the soldiers.
The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.
Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.
Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.
