Paperback 355: Strip-Tease Girl / Cal Anton (Beacon B266)

Paperback 355: Beacon B266 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Strip-Tease Girl
Author: Cal Anton
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $40


Best things about this cover:

• I'm pretty sure this is why God invented paperbacks.
• The topic, the painting, and the cover copy are all exquisitely sleazypaperbackesque.
• That is one fantastically ugly table.
• Pardon my ogling, buy her rack is phenomenal. A hair's breadth away from seeming fake.
• Love that "—AND DELIVERED" is in red! Hot. Feverish, even.
• Also love the lack of a possessive pronoun before "JADED SENSES"; are they hers, his, yours? Who can say?

Best things about this back cover:

• She also couldn't center her words or stick to one font, and was overly enamored of tiny type.
• "Goggling!" "Queenly hips!?"
• "Inevitably..." HA ha. "I mean, come on—what else was she gonna do with that body?"
• "... and even a woman or two" HELLO! Way to bury the lead, guys.

Page 123~

"Well, I know the place like a school teacher knows a book. Shoot the questions. Mike," he ordered, "how about a head on this coffee?"

Conversation continues with equally forced-sounding attempts at colloquial patter. "Like a school teacher knows a book" is about the flat-fallingest simile I've ever heard. "Which book?" "Oh, you know, *a* book."

~RP

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Paperback 354: Coming Out Party / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood 32-448)

Paperback 354: Midwood 32-448 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Coming Out Party
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• "Don't mind me, I'm just taking a bubble bath in the sink..."
• Man, Charlotte Rae was *hot* in her youth.
• Soap bubbles look more like shaving cream.
• If nothing else, her right nipple will be very clean.
• Girl in doorway is striking a very unsexy "sexy" pose.
• Did "coming out" have the same meaning for gay people then as it does now?

Best things about this back cover:

• Front cover calls her a "houseguest," but this blurb makes her sound more like a sex slave.
• You can't just go out there and start sinning. You have to train. With a master.
• Oh, "Greenwich Village!" Well, you know what that means ...
• "Cute but topless???" I think you mean "and."

Page 123~

"I'm not a good actress, but I'm a real sexpot in front of an audience. Or in front of a camera. I found out that it does something to me. I get all excited. And I'm pretty sure that it registers on film. Isn't that important?"

And of course he then makes her prove it. Cinema!

~RP

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Paperback 350: Strumpets' Jungle / Sloane Britain & Any Man's Plaything / Rubel (Dollar Double 951)

Paperback 350: Dollar Double 951 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Strumpets' Jungle // Any Man's Plaything
Authors: Sloane Britain // Rubel (HA ha, one name, like Collette, or Ludacris)
Cover artists: Robert Bonfils // Robert Bonfils

Yours for: $40


Best things about the "Strumpets' Jungle" cover:

• One of the craziest covers I own. First of all, full frontal female nudity? They cover the nipples with a narrow tree branch, but leave the crotch wide open!? Is the dark patch hair? Or does she shave and that's just a shadow? These tree lesbians are wild!
  
• Second, tree lesbians?
• I find this cover incredibly creepy, as it reminds me of nothing so much as the crucifixion. There's Jesus lesbian, and then Thief #1 lesbian over there, and then ... I guess the Thief #2 lesbian is off-screen. Really horrifying. Or else they are being eaten by tree creatures (Ents?) who really love voluptuous lesbians. Or else this is some sylvan lesbian sex rite that my lesbian friends have somehow never told me about.
• I'm no ecosystem expert, but that doesn't look like a "jungle."
• And in case you didn't know, "3rd Sex" = homosex...ual

Best things about the "Any Man's Plaything" cover:

• She is antithesis of women on the other cover, as she is wearing panties *and* concealing her pubic region with her hands.
• There's nothing very "shocking" looking about this cover. Pretty girl in her underwear, not letting you peek at her crotch. Only the shoes suggest she has anything on her mind besides shutting the door on you and getting some rest. All I know about her is that she has very good balance.

Page 123 of "Strumpets' Jungle"~

"Paula, I don't understand. What were they ...?"
"Never mind that for now," I said. "We've got to get to our classrooms."

~RP

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Paperback 343: The Mesh / Lucie Marchal (Bantam A1923)

Paperback 323: Bantam A1923 (1st new Bantam ptg, 1959)

Title: The Mesh
Author: Lucie Marchal
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: Not for sale (one of three 'new' books I got from Doug Peterson this past weekend)

Best things about this cover:

• "Strange," "hidden," "forbidden" ... there's a reason it won the "LES Lettres Françaises" prize!
• Love the title font. Ambivalent about the colors. Also, why aren't these telegenic French lesbians wearing mesh? I was promised the mesh, I want to see the mesh.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Inbred!?"—jeez, nice metaphor.
• There's nothing lesbians like more than a good "psychological probing." Oh, and "Balzac."

Page 123~

As long as I live I shall never forget the sight I beheld when I opened the bathroom door, a sight which even today I do not know whether to call obscene or pathetic, but which I know was the start of the subsequent profound change in my whole outlook and my life.

The "sight" involves a topless woman washing a dog. Dum dum DUM!

~RP

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Paperback 329: The Girls' Place / Saxon Craig (Evening Reader 1247)

Paperback 329: Evening Reader 1247 (PBO, 1966)

Title: The Girls' Place
Author: Saxon Craig
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• Joan Collins used to be Hot.
• The tops of those stockings suggest that the artist was planning on drawing a garter belt and then forgot/ran out of time—weirdly peaked.
• Top lady does not appear to be experiencing "Shame." That lower lady, though, yeesh. She's either wasted or sleeping or both. Or maybe she just lost a contact.
• Did you ever see "Sixteen Candles?" If so, do you remember when Jake's hot girlfriend gets sloshed and then gets her hair caught in a door jamb when Jake shuts the door on her, and she's just stuck sitting there until Jami Gertz and some other girl come over and cut her loose with a giant pair of scissors, and so she has a ridiculously huge swath of hair cut out of the back of her head? I think her character was based on the lower half of this cover.

Best things about this back cover:

• You had me at "Vixen..."
• Please, will one of you, this Halloween, dress up as "the witch in the leotards and the red pumps" from "The Girls' Place." It will mean so much to me. Take pictures.

Page 123~

In her world, love was hard to come by, and even Lasky's brutalizing love was better than nothing at all—even if it took form only as sexual expression.

Yeah, that wasn't so hot; let's try this:

Page 80~

But Pat refused to stop, and after a moment or two of trying to push the nurse away, she succumbed to the rise of her passion a second time. Groping blindly, she managed to get the fat nurse to turn so that their love could be enjoyed simultaneously, and though her body was foul smelling, the lovely brunette could not resist the temptation to indulge herself in the one thing that roused her more than anything else. And so they clung together there for many minutes, giving themselves up to the mutual enjoyment of each other, until finally they both found the release they sought.

Walking the fine line between sexy (lesbian nurse sex!) and gross ("foul smelling!?") ... Just be happy I spared you the part about how Jeanne "rocketed over the cliff of climax to plunge into the canyon of satisfied passion."

~RP

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Paperback 258: Perverted Love Slave / Adam Calin (Royal Line 127)

Paperback 258: Royal Line RL 127 (PBO, 1966)

Title: Perverted Love Slave
Author: Adam Calin
Cover artist: in witness protection

Yours for: Unavailable


Best things about this cover:

• Worst. Alarm Clock. Ever. "Alright, alright, I'm up ... dang!"
• "In this house we wear bras and *only* bras! No [crack!] bracelets! [crack!]"
• The lady in the bed is, uh, hot. The lady with the whip is, uh, not. She's pasty and misshapen and has one of the Fry Guys on her head.
• Debbie was distracted from her dominatrix duties when she suddenly noticed a mysterious, massive dollop of lemon frosting at the foot of the bed.
• "She was a lust slave to his every depraved desire" — "his?" Wow, "he" managed to get himself a superior boob job.

Best things about this back cover:

• This feels like it was translated from the Bulgarian in some horrible translating forced labor camp.
• I mean, how am I supposed to do my job? This thing is self-parodic.
• I like how that first paragraph appears to be someone writing out loud, in real time. Stop transcribing every thought you have!
• Misspelling "Jekyll" helps them avoid messy fictional defamation lawsuits.
• "Shame Whims" made me literally LOL.
• My god, the font size, the spacing ... it's all so off, so wrong, so tawdry — the cover copy equivalent of a snuff film.

Page 123~

"I mentioned you to Mrs. Tomane. She's interested in writing. She would like to meet you, since you're writing a novel that has a chance to be published."

"Who told you that?"

~RP

Paperback 253: Each Won Two / Marsha Bates (Fabian Z-101)

Paperback 253: Fabian Z-101 (PBO? 1959?)

Title: Each Won Two
Author: Marsha Bates
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "Each Lost Dignity"
• That Cathy, always egging on the drinks. "Go drinks! You can do it! Be cold and tasty!"
• I'm pretty sure that "veteran impersonators" do not get drunk, wrap themselves in bed sheets, and do impressions of gay lobsters.
• The dude in the middle with the blush and the ear injury appears to be wearing a burlap sack. He also appears to be floating.
• Florine prepares to do what any sensible person would do in her position: drink herself into a stupor.
• Don't look for that wall paint color at your local hardware store. It's available only in hell.

Best things about this back cover:

• Kandinsky strikes again!
• "Florine, Cathy, and Jim — names?" Uh, yes. "Not when you mix them up." Hmm, let's see ... nope, still names.
• I love how there is no way in hell you could possibly have any idea what this book is about despite the fact that the description is lengthy — 3 paragraphs! And no there there at all. "Things ... it ..." Dear god, just tell me what they're doing!

Page 123~

The minute I'd finished, her eyes told me that she knew I had asked a question for which I already had an answer. But I had to know, hear it from her mouth, hear her admit something I'd for some time suspected.

~RP

Paperback 249: A Bit of Fluff / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F256)

Paperback 249: Midwood F256 (PBO, 1963)

Title: A Bit of Fluff
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $60


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the word you're searching for is "Dang ..."
• Paul Rader is possibly the best sleaze cover artist that ever was. He and Robert Maguire are like gods to me.
• I love how "Lesbian" is capitalized, like "Mason" or "Scientologist."
• Strategically placed towel means that I cannot see any bit of fluff.
• I absolutely love this cover — the color, the design, the steam, the casual nudity, all of it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh lesbians. Always with the careful soaping.

Page 123~

There it was again. Only it wasn't a slip this time. She was practically informing me that she was a Lesbian. But her tone was meek and humble — and I wasn't afraid of her any more, now that she knew her place.

Again, I say: Dang.

~RP

Announcement: Paperback 250 will go up on Wednesday. To celebrate this milestone ... a contest. It will be Twitter-related, but I will add a Luddite option for those of you who can't be bothered with Twitter. You'll see. I'm off to conscript some other people to help me judge the contest. Oh, the prize will be the book itself — Paperback 250. And it doesn't suck, as my paperbacks go.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 243: Twilight Women / Les Scott (Beacon 156)

Paperback 243: Beacon 156 (1st, late 50s)*

Title: Twilight Women
Author: Les Scott
Cover artist: uncredited

*[dated 1952, but I don't think Beacon was even publishing then ... probably late 50s, probably first Beacon printing ... and a Gorgeous one at that; slight spine lean, but apparently unread]

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• "This tree makes my pits smell awesome!"
• If you are going to adopt a pseudonym for your first lesbian softcore effort, might I suggest "Les"?
• They Worshipped at the Shrine of Passion — this either made them gargantuan or shrunk them to the size of a bonzai tree, I can't really tell.
• Free Mini-Twilight Woman with every Twilight Woman purchase!

Best things about this back cover:

• From the Unbelievable Names Department, we bring you ... Lakla! Aletha! and introducing ... Rance!
• "But Lakla soon thrust upon him her adorable little companion Aletha" — So that's who the small woman on the cover is. Wow, they're not foolin' about "little companion." "You'll love her, Rance. She fits right in your pocket. You don't have any cats, do you?"
• "Punishment by death for penetrating ..." — insert lesbian joke here.

Page 123~

On and on the quivering ship staggered blindly, strained to the limit of her brave endurance, the sea bellowing around her, threatening disaster, savagely wrathful.

Oh yeah, just what I want from my vintage lesbian paperback: Hot Nautical Action.

~RP

Paperback 233: The Sisterhood / Sheldon Lord (pseud. of Lawrence Block) (Softcover Library S95189)

Paperback 233: Softcover Library S95189 (unknown ptg, 1970?)

Title: The Sisterhood
Author: Sheldon Lord (pseud. of Lawrence Block)
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "Oh, your Scottie-hair wig is so soft ... it makes me want to unbutton my shirt..."
• If there's one thing lesbians love more than anything else, it's grooming each other like monkeys.
• The tall one looks like a transsexual Joan Collins ... is that redundant?
• "swamp of bisexual love!" - worst thing about it: all the damned mosquitoes

Best things about this back cover:

• "For Women Only" - somehow, I doubt that
• "Happy Lesbos Hunting Ground" should totally, Totally be the name of a Vermont resort
• "Countess!" O, man, this stuff is rich
• "Infiltrate men's professions" - holy crap, it's an allegory about feminism. E.R.A. = exotic lesbian plot
• "strange" = paperback cover word of choice for referring to the gays. See also "twilight world," "in-between," etc.

Page 123~

Persistent, isn't he? she thought to herself. Then into the phone, "Look, Brad. Let's take this from the top, huh? I mean - besides the fact that I happen to be, shall we say, occupied - there's something that maybe you haven't thought of."

"Huh? What?" he said desperately.

~RP

P.S. Everyone within earshot of this blog is going to want to go out and pick up / order a copy of "Dames, Dolls & Gun Molls: The Art of Robert A. Maguire" (Dark Horse, 2009). It's a loving, glossy, gorgeous tribute to the greatest paperback cover artist that ever lived (IMHO). Literally, every page I turn, I find myself whispering "wow..." It's a reasonably affordable oversized paperback - the large scale reproductions of the art are what really make this book worthwhile. Plus it has lots of insights into Maguire's process, some of the photos he used as references, pencil sketches, etc. See an online flipbook version of the book here. Then buy it. Now.


P.P.S. Article by writer Brian Ritt about sleaze fiction master Orrie Hitt - find it here (this is why I "Follow" Christa Faust on Twitter)

Paperback 227: Wait for Tomorrow / Robert Wilder (Bantam A1181)

Paperback 227: Bantam A1181 (1st ptg, 1953)

[UPDATED, 4pm Monday 5/18!]

Title: Wait for Tomorrow
Author: Robert Wilder
Cover artist: unknown

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "Get your own pillow, blondie! This one's taken."
• "I know I said I wouldn't kick you out of bed, but ... I'm tired and you're squirmy."
• "I'm the 'power' and you're the 'human weakness,' got it?"
• "Help, I've fallen out of bed onto ... this remarkably plush carpet. Where'd you get this?"
• Love the pseudo-lesbianism of it all: "Are we gay? I don't know ... do you want us to be gay?"

Best things about this back cover:

• That delayed "... of our times" in the Herald-Tribune blurb is making me laugh. "OK boss, here's the tagline I'm thinkin' of: 'A pungent report' ... wait for it ... 'of our times!' Whadya think? Grabby, right? It tells people the story reeks, and then, just when they think it might be about the Middle Ages - BAM, we drop the contemporary relevance factor. They won't know what hit 'em, no sir."
• Love the bottom picture - shortest dance audition ever. "Never gonna give ..." "Goodbye. Next!"

Page 123~

Now, though, the doors were thrown open to the public, and the saloon was loud and packed, sprinkled with shrill-voiced women who stood at the bar, drank their whiskey straight, and were aggressively determined to share a dubious equality with the male patrons.

Ah, dames.

~RP

Paperback 66: Strange Desire / Wayne Wallace (Brandon House 743)

Paperback 66: Brandon House 743 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Strange Desire
Author: Wayne Wallace
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours For: $27 (SOLD - 4/18/08)


Best things about this cover:

• Those panties look like a very late add-on - not part of the original design. Perhaps, amazingly (and ironically), someone at Brandon House had some qualms about the good taste of the cover... and yet the overlaid underwear only makes the picture seem lewder.
• What causes someone to want to lounge around in a state of near-complete undress ... in heels?
  
• The dripping title is So disturbing. Why would a novel about lesbians feature a title that appears to have been written in ... a fluid not normally associated with lesbians?
  
• These are the most bored-looking naked lesbians I've ever seen. Either they are in between takes at a porno film shoot, or they are discussing Sartre's Being and Nothingness. "You know nothing of Jean-Paul's work. I turn my back on you!"
  

Best things about this back cover:

• So sleazy. I hate the photo covers because they just seem so sad and exploitative. This poor woman looks like the photographer found her in some kind of whore house / opium den and told her he'd give her $25 if she pulled her dress down. Kind of reminds me of ... did you ever see "Fame?" If so, then you know the scene I'm talking about. Irene Cara ... weeping ... ugh. I like my exploitation painted (i.e. fictional), thank you very much.
• "Conquest" is the best euphemism ever. It's got all the relevant letters in it, though.

RP

Paperback 9 - Brandon House 705

Paperback 9: Brandon House 705 (PBO, 1964)

Title: Lesbian Starlet
Author: Tony Trelos
Cover artist: Unknown (there might be the faintest trace of a signature in the very lower left corner, but I can't make it out)

PRICE: SOLD! (4-12-08)


Best things about this cover:

• The title
• The world's least sexy office
• The mannish, silver-haired executive with the vacant stare who looks like a blow-up sex doll - is she taking her own temperature or pointing to some dental problem she's having, because whatever she's doing, she sure as hell isn't smoking
• "I paid for a lap dance, not a desk dance"
• "And thus concludes part 1 of my bra-removal seminar..."

I like trying to imagine what kind of interaction could possibly have led to the moment depicted on the cover. The back cover is a cheap, two-tone close-up of the front cover, with some choice copy:
Brandon House publishers did a lot of lesbian and other sex-themed paperbacks. The lesbian paperback was a major, popular niche market in early paperback fiction, and lesbian paperbacks are now very, very collectible. This is the most valuable book I've featured so far from my collection. Condition and scarcity and desirability are the three main features that determine resale value. This book is scarce and desirable, but there are a few condition problems. Condition here is a VG (Very Good) - there are some scuffs, and it's a bit dingy, but it's almost perfectly square and appears to be unread (no reading crease on the cover near the spine). It's probably worth around $35-40, and I wouldn't part with it for under $50. I do love the trashy, cheap paperbacks, and there are many, many more to come...

RP