Vintage Espionage IV

Chaber, M. E. So Dead the Rose. Pseud. of Kendall Foster Crossen. N.Y. : Pocket, 1960. Number 1274. Front cover art : Jerry Allison. First printing. [Originally published in hardcover, New York, Rinehart, 1959]. “She was dangerous – but beautiful!” Vintage Cold War skullduggery in East Berlin & Moscow : insurance investigator (and former OSS & CIA agent) Milo March is recruited by the CIA to recover stolen government files. Jerry Allison’s front cover art for the Pocket reissue depicts the elegantly sinister Soviet femme fatale in most alluring, spider-woman fashion.

Hamilton, Donald. Death Of A Citizen. Greenwich, Conn. : Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960. Number 957. First printing, January 1960. Matt Helm, a former WWII OSS agent, revives his career as a professional government assassin. The first of the nearly 30 Helm novels. Cover art is in the Barye Phillips style, but no artist is credited.

Miller, Marion. I Was a Spy. Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill, 1960. This copy inscribed by the author : "To Thelma Spring, Nov. 15, 1961, God bless America! Cordially, Marion Miller." An irresistible slice of Cold War nostalgia, I Was a Spy is the true story of a Los Angeles housewife who was recruited as an undercover agent by the FBI in the 1950s to spy on the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of the Foreign-Born (LACPFB), a purported communist front organization. Miller’s story was later adapted for television by General Electric Theater, starring Jeanne Crain as Marion Miller and Ronald Reagan as the author’s husband Paul Miller. [the GE adaption is recalled by Reagan in : Reagan : A Life in Letters, edited by Kiron K. Skinner et al., N. Y., Free Press, p. 145]. See also : Michelle Nickerson, “Politically Desperate Housewives: Women and Conservatism in Postwar Los Angeles,” California History, Summer 2009, pp. 11-13.

Caillou, Alan. Marseilles. (Pseud. Alan-Lyle Smythe). N. Y. : Pocket Books, 1964. Pocket Cardinal 35006. Paperback original. Nefarious goings on in the ever-wicked city of Marseilles : former OSS agent Mike Benasque, now an out-of-work journalist, is hired to pentetrate a French terrorist organization. The second novel in Caillou's Benasque series. "His job was to expose a terrorist organization-which had already marked him for death." Cover art by Harry Bennett in high intensity, expressionist style.

Vintage Espionage III

Chaber, M. E. The Splintered Man. Pseud. Kendell Foster Crossen. N. Y. : Perma M-3080. Cover art : Roger Schultz. First printing, April 1957. [First issued in hardbound, N.Y. Rinehart, 1955]. Undercover agent Milo March tracks down a defecting West German. The Perma reissue benefits from one of vintage paperbackdom’s most unforgettable covers : a prisoner (agent March?) is being held by two KGB thugs, while in the foreground there are two sinister-looking red hands, one of which holds a red hypo. Splintered Man is of principal interest today for two reasons : 1) it's one of the earliest fictional treatments of LSD; 2) its cover, which is a colorful representative of one of the most beloved of all vintage paperback cover art themes, that of the giant hypodermic.

Mason, F. Van Wyck. Two Tickets for Tangier. N. Y. : Pocket Books 1115. First printing, April 1956. The mysterious, exotically beautiful city of Tangier has always been a natural as a backdrop for international intrigue, ranking with the likes of Vienna, Istanbul, Havana, et al. In this somewhat far-fetched Cold War yarn, the city is a principal character as globetrotting intelligence officer Col. Hugh North matches wits with a mad scientist, a Soviet master spy, and an assortment of exotic beauties in the race to find the formula for the mysterious chemical ‘Thulium-X.’ Cover art by Lou Marchetti depicts mysterious goings on in a Tangier nightclub : a scantily clad exotic dancer surreptitiously passes a note to a very suspicious-looking Col. North, with African musician in left foreground. “Colonel Hugh North tracks an alluring spy in the world's most sinful city.” – front cover.

Reed, Eliot. The Maras Affair. [Pseud. Eric Ambler]. N. Y. : Perma Books #M3025. First printing, October 1955. An American journalist in unnamed Iron Curtain Balkan country is caught up in helping refugees and also finds romance along the way. James Meese’s cover art adds emotional texture to yet another Cold War interrogation scene, this one depicting the title character in a tight spot indeed and looking very nervous as she is questioned by a menacing Red agent while a guard hovers nearby.

Sereny, Gitta. The Medallion. London : Pan Books Ltd., 1960. The story of a boy, hunted and alone behind the Iron Curtain, culminating in a hunt in occupied Vienna. An early Cold War fiction entry by an author known mainly for her nonfiction works, most notably Albert Speer : His Batle with the Truth. Nice, murky, paranoid-style front cover art, alas, unattributed. "The tension becomes almost unbearable." -- Manchester Evening News [from back cover].

Vintage espionage II

Kendrick, Baynard. Odor of Violets (aka Eyes in the Night). N. Y. : Dell, 1947. No. 162. Mapback. Cover art : Gerald Gregg. Map : Ruth Belew. Blind detective Duncan Maclain matches wits with agents of a certain foreign power. Gerald Gregg contributes a stunning, whimsically creepy deco cover which depicts a severed woman’s head on platter, with ax in background.

Greene, Graham. The Third Man. New York : Bantam 1950. No. 797. The classic novel The Third Man is not, strictly speaking, a spy story but it has enough ingredients – a post-WWII black market milieu, shady characters, Cold War tensions, and that most quintessentially intriguish of cities, Vienna – to merit inclusion. The cover for Bantam 797 is a collage-like combination of movie tie-in photo of Alida Valli and Joseph Cotton, with menacing figure of shadow nicely superimposed in background.

MacDonald, John D. Murder for the Bride. [Manchester], UK: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1951(?). Paperback. First edition thus. “Printed at the Philips Park Press and published in Great Britain by Frederick Muller, Ltd.” Murder for the Bride is John D. MacDonald’s second novel and dates from his pre-Travis Magee period. Very much a product of its time, it’s a good example of how the tough school of writers could give the hard-boiled treatment to a Red Scare story. Bride is the story of a man who unknowingly marries a communist agent. She is killed a week or two after their honeymoon, and, Mike Hammer-like, the righteous, bereaved husband searches for her murderer[s], who ultimately turn out to be a nest of reds.

This version is a rare British paperback reissue. The cover art – by Barye Phillips – is the same as the American Gold Medal release: an attractive blonde, presumably the title character, reclines on the floor and wears what appears to be a wedding gown. Cover artist Phillips usually emphasized glamour in his portrayals of women, and this woman has the glamour but a sharp edge as well. Contributing touches are the shadows in the background and a menacing gigantic red hand superimposed over the [anti] heroine, which seems to suggest the Red Menace.

Kirk, Lydia. Postmarked Moscow. New York : Scribner, 1952. "Wife of the ambassador to the USSR, 1949-1952." Cover design by Emil Antonucci. Postmarked Moscow is notable for its breezy style which nicely captures authentic U.S.-U.S.S.R. diplomatic atmosphere during some of the Cold War’s hottest years. Postmarked is not exactly an espionage book and was never released in paperback, but the Scribner hardcover original is worthy of consideration due to the author’s impeccable credentials and the striking cover design (love that red lettering!). See also the author’s Distinguished Service : Lydia Chapin Kirk, Partner in Diplomacy, 1896-1984, Syracuse U. Pr., 2007.

Vintage Espionage I

Chronicle Books, ISBN-13: 978-0811828871, 2001
Title : Red Scared! : The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture
Authors : Michael Barson, Stephen Heller
 
style ***
substance **
collectibility **

Review : “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”

The subtitle pretty much says it all in describing this immensely enjoyable tome. The authors go to pains to express that the book is not an apology for the real Soviet threat posed by its military, and by extension, its spy apparatus, to the Western democracies in the roughly two decades following the Second World War. Rather, Red Sacred! is a pulpy, camp romp through the excesses and absurdities of Cold War imagery [1].


Ace graphic arts commentators Barson and Heller contribute a sprightly text but the real joy is the plethora of over-the-top illustrations from books, movie posters, advertisements, magazines et al, in all their orange-, red- (no pun intended), and yellow-splattered glory.


The style is vintage paperback lurid all the way, and almost every page is a visual delight, and thus it’s difficult to pick out some favorites, but I’ll try anyway! The poster for the film The Red Menace [2], which has been described as the Reefer Madness of Cold War movies; an article from the magazine True Pictorial Stories, April 1940 (“The Mysterious Woman Who Rules Stalin”), which posits the unlikely concept of Stalin-as-romantic heartthrob; the hopelessly in bad taste paperback Red Rape, the cover of which takes vintage sleaze to new heights (or would it be lows?) [3]; the poster for the film I Married a Communist (aka The Woman on Pier 13), which features a sexy photo of a ‘nameless, shameless woman!’ (Janis Carter), who has a crazed look in her eyes and a sinister smile with gleaming, wolf-like teeth (perhaps de rigueur qualities for Red seductresses) [4].

[1] For more scholarly takes on Cold War pop culture in the 1950s, see : Meredith Hohe, American dreams and Red nightmares : popular media and the framing of a Cold War enemy, 1949-1962, Master’s thesis (M.A.), Ohio University, 2010; Thomas Doherty, Cold war, cool medium: television, McCarthyism, and American culture, New York, Columbia University Press, 2003; Margot A. Henrikson,  Dr. Strangelove’s America: society and culture in the atomic age, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997; Douglas Field, American Cold War culture, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2005; Greg Barnhisel, Catherine Turner,  Pressing the fight : print, propaganda, and the Cold War, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.

[2] I just saw a clip from this film on YouTube. Actually it's pretty good, in a camp sort of way.

[3] But for the ultimate in kitschy sleaze see the cover of the unforgettable [alas not referenced in Red Scared], Commie Sex Trap.
[4] Or as one commentator colorfully describes the phenomenon of the Red femme fatale : “That fixture of 1940s noir, the femme fatale, is prominently featured in I Married a Communist; Janis Carter’s predatory image dominates not only the film itself, but all the publicity materials for the project. ‘Nameless, shameless woman,’ the poster screams. ‘Trained in an art as old as time . . . trading her love . . . yielding kisses that invite disaster, destroy, then – KILL!,’ superimposed over the image of Carter spilling out of a low-cut evening gown, her hair swept back in a platinum blonde hairdo, as her teeth glisten with an almost vampiric urgency.” (Wheeler Winston Dixon, Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia, New Brunswick, N. J., Rutgers University Press, 2009, pp. 82-83). For more on the American cinema’s response to the Red Scare, see Better Dead Than… the “Red” Communist Films during the 1950…, which includes a list of films, with commentary, that were in one way or another influenced by the Red Scare era.






Arrow Books Ltd, No. 576 [Reprint edition, 1963]
Title : The Eunuch of Stamboul
[First published in harcover, London, Hutchinson & Co., 1935]
Author : Dennis Wheatley
style **
substance **
collectibility *




Eunuch is a Between-the-Wars story by the now largely forgotten British mystery author Dennis Wheatley. The plot is about a gentleman amateur spy, Captain Destine, who is dispatched to Turkey to foil a plot to overthrow the Ataturk regime and restore an Islamic theocracy to power. The Arrow reprint benefits from the unforgettable [and, alas, uncredited] cover art of the title character. The orange-red halo that engulfs the entire front cover creates a subtly sinister effect. The guy on the cover is not the kind of character I would want to meet in the proverbial dark alley! The novel was the basis for the 1936 film Secret of Stamboul (a.k.a. The Spy in White) starring James Mason.




 
Pennant #P3, 1953 
Title : Epitaph for a Spy
[First published in harcover, London, Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 1938.]
Author : Eric Ambler
style **
substance **
collectibility *

“Prostitution may be the oldest profession in the world but that of the spy cannot be much younger.” - Eric Ambler, Footnote to Epitaph for a Spy

An ordinary man of uncertain citizenship finds himself caught up in international intrigue on the French Riviera over a mistaken roll of film. Epitaph for a Spy was one of the first ‘modern’ spy thrillers, and paved the way for such later writers as Ian Fleming, John Le Carré, and Robert Ludlum. The 1953 Pennant reissue features stunning cover art by an uncredited artist. The Cold War was at its peak and the cover updates the interrogation scene to depict a very threatening and decidedly Sovietesque police chief questioning a down-and-out prisoner as a guard hovers nearby.