Paperback 348: River Queen / Charles N. Heckelmann (Graphic Giant G-221)

Paperback 348: Graphic Giant G-221 (2nd ptg, 1957)

Title: River Queen
Author: Charles N. Heckelmann
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• That's up there with the most maniacal expressions I've ever seen on these covers
• Either his upper body is way out of proportion to his lower body, or that is one blousey top
• Look at his right pinky—it's like he's holding a cup of tea
• Her boobs are going to come out of that dress in 5, 4, 3 ...
• Fear hand!
• "Rawhide II: Rawhider!"
• "War and Love on the Mighty ... Missouri?" Really? I'm sure it's a fine river, but it feels like carob to the Mississippi's chocolate, i.e. a poor substitute
• "Heckelmann?" Really?

Best things about this back cover:

• That boat explosion looks like it was drawn by a child—a child who has no concept of how things explode. I mean, the boat appears to be utterly intact. The explosion lines are comically straight and debris-free. The explosion *does* appear to have catapulted those two fighting guys high into the air—that's *pretty* realistic.
• "Indian-proof," HA ha. Wonder what SPF that is.
• "Hey, baby, mind if I battle my way up your flaming shores...?"

Here's the title page illustration:


Page 123~

The flag whipped jauntily in the stiff, morning breeze.

That comma is super ridiculous.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 38

Title: Postmark Murder (Dell 955, 1st ptg, 1957)
Author: Mignon G. Eberhart
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $5

• Bigfoot finds draft of wife's letter to mystery man named "Conrad." Clad in his best suit and class ring, he sets out for revenge.

• Somebody forgot to adjust-left
• This is about the worst front/back cover work I've seen in one of my books. I know nothing about the book and have no desire to read it.

Page 123~

"Oh," Mrs. Grelly gasped. "Oh—" A fleshy, ringed hand came out from the enveloping folds of her coat. She clutched the policeman's arm and went away unsteadily. Lieutenant Peabody came back to Laura.

I assume the hand was her own. It's hard to tell.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 278: Savage Bride / Cornell Woolrich (Gold Medal 719)

Paperback 278: Gold Medal 719 (3rd ptg, 1957)

Title: Savage Bride
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "Rowrrr! Tigress care not for clothing, or for bed sheets. Tigress eat new husband and leave only giant skull behind!"
• "Uh, honey, when I asked you if you wanted to play a little 'stroke the totem pole,' I didn't mean that literally..."
• This cover has all the "savage" iconography: nudity, writhing ritualistic dance, mysterious carvings, evidence of cannibalism, and miniature tribal elders with flamboyant headwear presiding over it all.

Best things about this back cover:

• Let it be known that I wrote "writhing" re: the front cover before I read this back cover blurb. Prescience!
• Nothing says random exotica like "an ancient tribe." "Which one? Who cares!? It's got human sacrifice and pagan altars, and that's all you need to know. Now writhe!"

Page 123~

They were fed liberally, if monotonously, on an unvarying diet of baked maize cakes [ed. "You call it corn..."], and water was given them to drink from a brackish-tasting pottery bowl.

I like Cornell Woolrich's writing. Rendezvous in Black is one of my favorite noir novels of all time. But this bit from "Savage Bride" is horrible. Liberal use of passive voice ... "they were fed [...] monotonously?" Unless you're at Medieval Times or Applebee's on your birthday, what do you expect? ... and why are they tasting the "bowl?" You're supposed to drink what's *inside*.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 277: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse / Mike Avallone (Gold Medal 718)

Paperback 277: Gold Medal 718 (PBO, 1957)
Title: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse
Author: Mike Avallone
Cover artist: Jack Floherty

Yours for: $19


Best things about this cover:

• Peek-a-boo nighties are a staple of vintage paperback covers, but you rarely see the women in said nighties *actually* playing peek-a-boo.
• Or maybe she's just sad. Or performing some odd modern dance routine. Whatever she's doing, she appears to be doing it while wrapped in the kind of cellophane they use to cover fruit baskets.
• "Oh, what's a corpse to do!? [sob sob, toe point]"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Flounced" is a fabulous word.
• Nice contemporary hot-chick references in the opening sentences. I like how the writer is on a first name / first name / last name basis with these legendary lookers.
• "She wore clothes nakedly" = Avallone at his Hammettiest.
• Second paragraph reads like a tagline discard pile. "You put those on the cover!? Those were just notes!"
• Rarely, upon taking candy from a baby, do you demand that it take off its clothes.

Page 123~

He dug a thick fold of something from his pocket, fanned it out. Checked it the same way you do a map. It was a map.

Sometimes, you gotta stay literal. Keeps readers on their toes.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 219: Combat Nurse / Frieda K. Franklin (Pocket Books 1147)

The Make-Your-Own-Commentary Experiment, Part the Third (sound off in "Comments" section)
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Paperback 219: Pocket Books 1147 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Combat Nurse
Author: Frieda K. Franklin
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $10



Page 123~

In the subdued light their faces were hard voluptuous masks of powder and rouge and thick gleaming lipstick smeared like coating of fat over their pouting mouths.

~RP

Paperback 197: The Farmers Hotel / John O'Hara (Bantam 1594)

Paperback 197: Bantam 1594 (1st ptg, 1957)
Title: The Farmers Hotel
Author: John O'Hara
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• It's @#$#ing John O'Hara and the best blurb provider you can get is Book-Of-The-Month Club News!?!?
• The design on this cover is Fantastic. It's all a bit too cramped with text for my tastes, but the pictures, small though they are, are vivid and dramatic, and the use of color blocks to build a hotel-like structure - inspired! I especially like how "John O'Hara" functions visually like a chimney and the "S" in "Farmers" is hanging out there like a rain gutter.
• Hey, is that "Carrie Corrupted" sharing a drink with Joe Bow Tie? At first I thought that she was on her cell phone, but I think it's just a cigarette.
  
• Is the lady with the G.I. a. dead, b. really drunk, or c. looking at an airplane flying overhead? Her neck is oddly ... unhinged.
• You really don't want to check into the Red Room. That is the lesson I gather from this cover.
• Paperback publishers must have loved O'Hara. He was a writer of "legitimate" fiction who sold off the racks and could be made, with very little fudging, to sound like a writer of soft-core sex fiction. The fifties were all about trying to get glimpses of "brief, shocking intimacy" without being called a perv.

Best things about this back cover:

• The G.I. and his lady have moved to a small cabin and are now fighting / dancing.
• Love the campy, dramatic quotation from the Times!

Page 123~

The quiet of the room was almost total, but not peaceful.

~RP

Paperback 147: Shock Treatment / Wright Williams (Beacon Books 143)

Paperback 147: Beacon Books 143 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Shock Treatment
Author: Wright Williams
Cover artist: Peeping Tom

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• I love how she looks - not terrified, but exasperated: "You again!?"
• Wait - I thought she was in her bathroom and the peeping tom was opening the window shade, but it seems just as likely she's in a hospital with mobile curtain dividers, in which case a. whose arm is that?, b. what's it yanking on?, and c. what is that red cloth? What am I looking at!?
• "AT LAST..." - HA ha. I was just asking myself, "Why is there no book that explores the borderland between love and perversity?" Now, at last, that void is filled.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sure, big Eric was crazy. Crazy about women! And who can blame him? Am I right, guys!? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about ... [amused chuckles from drunk comedy club crowd] ... ah, chicks."
  
• Whimsical drawings of cruel medical experimentation. "It'll cure your pervertedness, but ... you're gonna experience some rubber-arm, I'm not gonna lie."
• Maybe those arms are supposed to represent the gyrations of patients at the "hospital dance" (!?)
• "Not since Snake Pit ..." - I can't stop laughing long enough to comment on that line
• "Frankly!"
• "Passion-wracked!"

Page 123~

Instead of thinking of Katrine as a lovely, attractive girl who had bravely come out of a harrowing experience, I was drawing mental pictures of her in bed with a man married to someone else. It was rotten of me, and I almost welcomed the self-loathing that I began to feel.

Well, we've all been there, right?

~RP

Paperback 138: One-Way Ticket / Bert and Dolores Hitchens (Perma Books M-3100)

Paperback 138: Perma Book M-3100 (1st ptg, 1957)
Title: One-Way Ticket
Author: Bert and Dolores Hitchens
Cover artist: James Meese



Yours for: $7

Best things about this cover:

• "Railroad detective" - my favorite kind!
• The swirling green vortex of nausea and despair
• The distractingly child-like drawing of the upper half of a candle
• Cool stenciled font on the title
• That furniture - the proportions seem off and there are legs that appear to come from / go to nowhere, but in general, it's cool; spare, stark, mid-century modern in the very best way
• If only she hadn't cut her hair by herself in the dark with a bread knife, she would easily be one of the hottest women in my collection - understated yet stunning black dress (that's a dress, right, not a negligee?), fierce black slip-ons, and a perversely casual way with money. What's not to love?
  

Best things about this back cover:

• I love when back covers function like movie teasers: " ... MURDER! Featuring ... Boots! David Bryant! Some other B movie character actors whose names you don't know. And starring Jerry Mathers, as The Beav"
• Which of these names doesn't belong? A: "David Bryant" - what a dud. That last name really ruins the whole vibe of the back cover. Everyone else gets one colorful name, and he gets the full name of some guy from middle management.
• Wait, Rock dies? Uh, SPOILER ALERT!
• This all makes sense except for Boots. I mean, I could write the plot of this book, but I would have no idea what to do with Boots. David Bryant already has two women. Is Boots a cat?

Page 123~

This was a joke on Boots by Boots. They were all expected to enjoy it. They chuckled in chorus and Vic felt a fool.

I'm guessing it was a familiar feeling.

~RP

Paperback 120: While Murder Waits / Bruce Cassiday (Graphic 145)

Paperback 120: Graphic 145 (PBO, 1957)

Title: While Murder Waits
Author: Bruce Cassiday
Cover artist: Al Puhn (that's a painting!?!?!)

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Alternative titles:
  
• "Saran-Wrapped for Murder!"
• "Shrink-Wrapped for Murder!"
• "Harlot Under Plastic!"
• "I Spent My Prom in the Shower"
• "I'm this many years old!"

Best things about this back cover:

• OMG, yes. Please please please can we call it a slay!?
• It began like a game of what?
• "Cash Madigan!" - awesome name, but how much of a tough guy can he be if he has to struggle to fight his way out of some dame's arms?
• "Some like 'em dying!" - god I love this cover copy writer. That phrase isn't even remotely close to an actual phrase. "What rhymes with 'Hot?' ... I know, how 'bout 'dying'?!"

Page 123~

Marty Roan's eyes were narrowed and bright with thought. "Granted she did not have money, there still might be reason for the badger game."

~RP

Paperback 87: The Last Voyage of the Lusitania / A.A. and Mary Hoehling (Popular Library G184X)

Paperback 87: Popular Library G184X (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Last Voyage of the Lusitania
Author: A.A. Hoehling and Mary Hoehling
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best thing about this cover:

• As with "I Am Fifteen and I Don't Want to Die," I am having trouble mocking tragedy here.
• Titanic was basically a rip-off of this paperback cover.
• I know everyone's screaming and flailing and drowning, but ... at least the lady in red looks like she's having a good time.
• There's one guy in this picture I just don't get: the blue-suited sailor on the far left. First, his look is one of casual derision, like he finds the whole scene corny. Second, he appears to be working on a world record for longest fingernails - that, or he is idly scratching his face with breadsticks. Lastly, gravity says that he could not maintain the position he is in. And yet there he is. It's like he refuses to obey the new gravitational pull brought on by the ship's tilting, and is showing off by clutching the wrong side of the pillar for support.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh boy, an orgy ... of frailty? What would that even look like? Who's writing these reviews? Isn't the SF Examiner supposed to be a real paper?
• In case you were wondering what happened to that ship on the front cover ... yeah, it sank. But it's OK, because Lois and Frank survived to repopulate the earth.
• This book is unread, and except for the slightest browning near the spine and faint scuffing on the back cover, it's in perfect condition.

And ... your PAGE 123:

On the other side of the bridge, which was almost completely awash, Turner glanced at his watch. It was 2:28 P.M, exactly eighteen minutes after the Lusitania had been hit. He thought himself to be the last man on the ship - though he was not - and realized that in a few more seconds he would no longer have a command.

-RP

Paperback 76: I Am Fifteen - And I Don't Want to Die / Christine Arnothy (Popular-Eagle Library EB95)

Paperback 76: Popular-Eagle Books EB95 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: I Am Fifteen - and I Don't Want to Die
Author: Christine Arnothy
Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

YOURS FOR: $9


Best things about this cover:

• It's hard to make fun of a 15-year-old who does not want to die, particularly when the people who might kill her are Nazis.
• This book was apparently published in order to capitalize on the brief vogue in diaries written by young girls hiding from Nazis.
• She's pretty chic for a war victim.
• This cover is slightly boring (not nearly Hooks's best work) but I do love the barbed wire detail around her ankles, and the color of the sky.

RP

Paperback 61: The Dice Spelled Murder / Al Fray (Dell First Edition A146)

Paperback 61: Dell First Edition A146 (PBO, 1957)

Title: The Dice Spelled Murder
Author: Al Fray
Cover artist: photo cover

"Oh, dicey dice, I love you shoooo much ... no, silly, I'm not drunk. You silly die. You're silly. Yes, you are. I'm going to kick you with my toe, that's how silly you are... what's that you say? ... 'Murder?'"

Best things about this cover:

• I believe that the first murder will be caused by the Gigantic Die falling out of the sky onto our, er, heroine.
• Absurd lingerie of the most infantilizing, unsexy kind.

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, they just took that one lame photo from the cover, cropped it in different places, blew up the cropped images, changed the angles, added some kind of woodblock print of one side of a die, tinted the images orange or red, and ... voilà! Cheap, cheap, cheap!
• "Of Dice and Death" - "I know, let's make the first half of the teaser phrase a literary allusion, but then close with the good ole standby, DEATH! That makes total sense. I've got some more ideas too, boss. How 'bout?: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of DEATH,' 'Call me DEATH,' or, my favorite, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of DEATH."

RP

Paperback 44: Graphic 149

Paperback 44: Graphic 149 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Murder Without Tears
Author: Leonard Lupton
Cover artist: Roy Lance

"Games without frontiers ... murder without tears"

Best things about this cover:

• "I'd love to stay with you longer in this rock quarry, but my ride's here now, so I better go..."
• Purple Sky, Tree of Death! (my suggested alternate title for this book)
• Hey lady, it's a gun, not a pet.

Best things about this back cover:

• Everything
• What the hell does "Need a Body Cry" mean?! I need a grammatical explanation
• "Need a body? Cry: 'Murder Without Tears'!" - does that make sense?
• This lady has forced me to create a new blog tag: "Bad Hair" (see also Paperback 43)
• I love the "Brady Bunch" feel of the back cover - it's like Bobby's trying to shoot Marcia

RP

Paperback 34: Signet 1724

Paperback 34: Signet 1724 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Triple Slay
Author: Adam Knight
Cover artist: [Robert Schulz]

Best things about this cover:

• Yesterday, I said I'd buy pretty much any vintage paperback that featured a girl with a gun on its cover. I'd like to expand that claim to include girls with knives or other assorted weaponry.
• She's really holding that knife in the jabby / kill position. Not fooling around...
• Why do I find her completely unsexy?
• Unless this novel involves baseball, that title is terrible.

Best things about this back cover:

• God, the copywriter really goes on a cliché bender in that second paragraph. I also love how much mileage (and perhaps joy) said copywriter is getting out of the "[pregnant pause] MURDER!" line...

1. "The beautiful brunette has a face and figure that could send a man ... to murder." (front cover)
2. "LIGHTS ... CAMERA ... MURDER!!!"
3. "... he discovers that a killer is setting the stage - for murder."

• "Mari Barstow" ... "Steve Conacher" ... these names are almost as bad as "Barr Breed." Clearly I need to start a running list of the Most Ridiculous Character Names in my collection. I'll get on that soon.
• What's a "TV singer?"

RP

Paperback 31: Bantam 1679

Paperback 31: Bantam 1679 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Pal Joey
Author: John O'Hara
Cover artist: Barye Phillips


Best things about this cover:

• Ring-a-ding-ding, this cover rules in every way.
• Not the greatest likeness of Frank, but cool nonetheless.
• Love the cover design - the font, the colors - and love the cocky pose Frank is striking.
• Even the inside of his trench coat looks cool.
  
• I wanna be a "two-bit nightclub heel"! That's a great phrase. Considering that one of my students today sent out a message to the entire class (240 students) saying that I am ugly and look like a monkey ... I would love to be called a "two-bit heel" right about now.

Best things about this back cover:

• More great design. Love the colors, and the circles diminishing into the background. The chick in fishnets with her hips thrust forward isn't bad either.
• World's tiniest movie stills.

RP

Paperback 29: Dell D209

Paperback 29: Dell D209 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Paths of Glory
Author: Humphrey Cobb
Cover artist: Walter Brooks

Best things about this cover:

• Ugly, pseudo-abstract expressionist cover - though if you look closely, you can see that there are actually little people in the painting: soldiers scampering up a hill. All the gorgeous cover paintings that go uncredited ... and yet this cover somehow merits an artist credit. Life is unfair.
• Lack of sensationalist cover art, plus 35-cent cover charge, plus blurbs from nearly reputable newspapers, let us know that this is "serious" literature.
• This is our first movie tie-in - a very collectible subset of vintage paperbacks. Though it's nowhere mentioned on the book, Paths of Glory is directed by Stanley Kubrick (one of his first major films - 1957). The novel is not lying when it tells you that the film is "great."

Best things about this back cover:

• The stony mug of Kirk Douglas!
• I wish I knew what "it" was in that blurb by "The Nation" - I'd hammer my students for leaving the referent so ill-defined.

RP

Paperback 14: Popular Libary-Eagle Books EB96

Paperback 14: Popular Library-Eagle Books EB96 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Just So Far
Author: Floyd Miller
Cover artist: Unknown

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• It's not Myra's fault - few people can resist Rex
• "I said listen to my heart, you shirtless bastard!"
• I am as much a fan of big breasts as the next guy, but that right breast is disturbingly large, aggressive, and ominous - it's hard to imagine it has a twin nearby
• I wonder what she has in her supremely tiny pocket - the pocket, like her right breast, appears strangely ... centered. What kind of dress has pockets over the crotch?
• That boat is either menacingly phallic or hilariously random; I can't decide.

Best things about this back cover:

• In the upper left, that's about as close to someone's copping a feel as you are likely to see on a pre-1960 paperback
• It's Big Shirtless Ron again! You'll remember him from the front cover.
• He's shirtless, but she's got on spiked heels - doesn't anyone know how to dress for a picnic anymore?
• Bottom right: Is he preparing to kiss her or adjusting her cervical spine?
• "Myra became a complete wanton" - slightly better than becoming a complete won-ton.

RP

The Great Paperback Project - Paperback 2: Gold Medal 698

Paperback 2: Gold Medal 698 (Paperback Original [PBO], 1957)

Title: The Baby Doll Murders
Author: James O. Causey
Cover painting: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Alliteration!
• Mere mention of "marijuana" drives the resale value of this book Way Up
• She is in color, while teenage lothario with the bourbon is not - clearly he is one of her "games"
• Smoking in bed - if you're going to feature hot women on your covers, they should be one or more of the following things: a. in their underwear, b. drinking, c. smoking, d. armed, preferably with a gun (I have a whole "Girls With Guns" subsection in my collection). We get 2 out of 4 here, which is pretty good

Barye Phillips was a fine and incredibly prolific paperback cover artist. You can tell this is a late 50's cover (the beginning of the end of the paperback's Golden Age) because Gold Medal (GM) is trying to pass off an incomplete painting as artsy. A lame B&W repro of her graces the back cover. Part of posting and commenting on my collection on-line will be trying to pinpoint what defines the style of different artists and eras. Phillips (who always signs his stuff "Barye") did amazing, full-cover art (much of it GGA, or Great Girl Art) for GM throughout the early/mid-50s. He was probably their most active artist. We'll see much more of his works in the coming weeks / years.