Vintage Pulp

June 16 2021

WATERY PROOF

You can't keep a dead man down.

Ann Cantor once again does excellent brushwork, this time with a sinister cover for Avon Publications and the 1949 novel Night Cry by William Stuart. We talked about this one a while back. It’s the story of a cop who kills a suspect, does to the body what you see in the art, then struggles to keep proof of his crime concealed. It’s an atmospheric tale capped with an unexpected ending. We haven’t watched the movie based on it, the 1950 film noir Where the Sidewalk Ends, but we’ll get to it. See more art from Cantor here and here,

Avon Publications, Where the Sidewalk Ends, William L. Stuart, Ann Cantor, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

February 11 2016

BAD COP, BAD COP

Ma’am, we're highly trained professionals who can spot guilt a mile away… Okay, you’re clean. Have a nice day!

Night Cry is a thriller about a cop who accidentally kills a murder suspect and covers it up by dumping the body in a river. For a cruel guy like him it’s not a big deal, until he learns the suspect was innocent. That’ll fray the nerves of even the meanest cop a bit. He continues trying to pin the original murder on the presumed-missing-but-actually-dead man, but then the body is found. Whoops. The fact that he ever thought the dead man was just missing starts to look borderline incompetent to his colleagues, but there’s more—the beautiful girlfriend of the deceased now becomes everyone’s prime suspect. We liked this book, so we weren’t surprised to learn that it’s highly regarded. It inspired the movie Where The Sidewalk Ends, directed by Otto Preminger. The 1954 Avon paperback front above followed an earlier version from 1949, and the art is uncredited.

Avon Publications, Where the Sidewalk Ends, William L. Stuart, Otto Preminger, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

August 26 2015

DRAIN WRECK

Hmm... looks like it was four or five shots that did her in—tequila most likely.

Originally published in 1945 as The Dead Lie Still, William L. Stuart’s thriller Dead Ahead is about an ex-naval intelligence officer who after the war runs afoul of a gang of local thugs. The Ace edition here appeared in 1953 and the art is by Norman Saunders. It’s a double novel, and the other side is Day Keene’s Mrs. Homicide, also with Saunders art. Twice the vice, one easy price.

Ace Books, Ace Double Novels, William L. Stuart, Day Keene, Gunard Hjerstedt, Norman Saunders, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 25

1939—Batman Debuts

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.

April 25

1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results

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.

April 24

1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs

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.

April 23

1986—Otto Preminger Dies

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.

April 23

1998—James Earl Ray Dies

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.

April 22

1912—Pravda Is Founded

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.

April 22

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

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.