Signet 1755 (1960)

Title : Cobra Venom
Author : John B. West
Cover art : Jerry Allison 
  [New York, Signet, 1960. No. 1755].

style ***

substance **

collectibility *

John B. West's Rocky Steele was a lively entry into the crowded field of private eye fiction in the late 1950s. According to one source, Steele was a P.I. so tough he made Mike Hammer look like Liberace [1]. But what was probably most interesting about this series was that author John B. West was a black physician practising in West Africa [2], as well as a part-time owner of a broadcasting company, manufacturing firm, and a hotel/restaurant chain, when he wrote the Steele thrillers. A good summary of the Rocky Steele aesthetic can be found here and here. 

Fittingly, the John B. West novels were rather well served by vintage cover art; even the mid sixties reissues, while lacking perhaps the naive, visceral charm of the Signet originals, nonetheless have a beguiling elegance of their own. 

For the featured title of Signet 1755, Jerry Allison's incredibly intense cover art nicely captures the grittiness of the character in dramatically chiarscuro-esque fashion. But for sheer over-the-top visuals nothing can compare to the usually restrained Barye Phllips' ultra-exploitative take for Taste for Blood.

[1] Max Allan Collins, History of Mystery, p. 148.

[2] Liberia, to be exact.

Dell D298 (1959)

Title : Murder on Broadway (aka The Last Gamble)
Author : Hal Masur
Cover art : Victor Kalin 
  [New York, Dell, 1959. No. D298. Front cover : Victor Kalin. 'First Dell printing, July 1959.'  First published in hardcover, Simon & Schuster, 1958, as The Last Gamble. Published in the UK as The Last Breath. Variant issue : back cover, advertisement for Paris Belts.]

style ***

substance **

collectibility *

Victor Kalin worked in a variety of venues but his vintage pb cover art is among the finest from the classic era. Kalin’s sensitive portraiture of beautiful women had a exceptionally luminous quality ..... indeed the the brightly lit, almost radioactive quality of the women suggest that they are about to burst into flames at any minute. This is in contrast to, say, the cover art of Robert McGinnis, who portrayed women in a cooler, more objective style. It also contrasts with Rudolph Belarski’s somewhat hokier glowing women effects for Popular Library in the early 1950s. The Belarski covers are of course classic examples of vintage cover art at its lurid best but somehow I prefer the leaner, more stylish Kalin look. I’m not enough of an expert on art technique to know what methods are used to get the effects but who cares when the results are this good.

In any case, while Murder on Broadway is a more subdued entry in the Kalin canon, it nonetheless is one of his stronger efforts; great touches abound : the girl’s subtle reflection in the mirror, the quasi-sfumato shadings. It all combines to create a minor masterpiece. We only have to compare to the covers of the later printings, released as The Last Gamble, to know that the Kalin magic is missing in these versions. More on Kalin’s cover art can be found here and here.

Dell D250

Dell 886

Dell 346 (1953)

Title : No Mourners Present
Author : Frank Presnell
Cover art : Robert Stanley
  [New York, Dell, 1953. Mapback. No. 346.]


style **

substance **

collectibility *

Continuing with the fire/explosions subgenre is Robert Stanley’s fetching cover art for Dell 346, which despite a certain cartoonish, mannequin-like quality to the figures, packs a punch with the fire-draped upturned auto in the background. Overall, this one doesn’t quite have the panache of the previously cited Nightmare at Noon but it’s a strong late entry in the Dell canon nonetheless.

Morrow, 1942

Dell 693 (May 1953)

Title : Nightmare at Noon

Author : Stewart Sterling

Cover art : Bob Hilbert

  [New York, Dell, 1953. No. 693. Pseud. Prentice Winchell.] 

style ***

substance **

collectibility *

Wow! Now this is what I call a cover. Bob Hilbert's gloriously over-the-top design is an unforgettable contribution to the fire/explosions vintage subgenre. 

Sterling was considered the ‘king of the specialty detectives,’ with Nightmare at Noon being a mid-range entry of the Fire Marshall Pedley series. The cover for Dell 693, with the girl's startled look (love those eyes!) amid the hellish backdrop of a wild explosion, is an absolute early 1950s classic, easily superior to the 1951 hardcover original.

E. P. Dutton, 1951 

Dell 274 (1949)

Title : The Body Missed the Boat

Author : Jack Iams

Cover art : William Strohmer

  [New York, Dell, 1949. No. 274. Back cover : map of Hillary Judd’s house/scene of murder, in M’Pile, a residential section of Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa. Inset : map of Africa]. 

style ***

substance **

collectibility *

I’m not too familiar with William Strohmer, but his front cover art for Dell 274 is a fine example of Dell’s quasi-deco aesthetic in the 1940s -- a highly stylized tableau depicts a woman in front of a casket gazing at a ship on the distant horizon. The bold colors, omnipresent Dell keyhole, and woman’s peek-a-boo see-through dress combine to create an altogether felicitous design.

Popular Library SP 246 (1962)

Title : Tiara Tahiti
Author : Geoffrey Cotterell
Cover art : Photograph of Rosenda Monteros
  [New York, Popular Library, 1962. SP 246. Movie tie-in : cheesecake photo on front cover; film poster on back cover].

style **
substance **
collectibility **

The cover photo for Tiara Tahiti is of Mexican beauty Rosenda Monteros, who was popular in 1950s and 1960s. This was en era in which Hispanics, especially Mexicans, were often cast as Polynesians in South Seas movies, probably the best known example being Dolores Del Rio in Bird of Paradise (1932). Anyway, Rosenda certainly looks the part of a French/Tahitian maiden and the cover of the Popular Library reprint presents her in most beguiling fashion.

BTW the film now seems to be available in its entirety via YouTube

James Meese's Favorite Model

I’ve always considered James Meese one of the more under-rated vintage cover artists. He’s perhaps better known today as an illustrator of 1950s men’s magazines but his paperback covers are right up there with the best of them.

 

Meese was not one of the more melodramatic practitioners of the vintage cover art aesthetic. His heart was was probably closest to the somber, realistic style of his great contemporary James Avati, but his covers never quite carried the emotional charge of Avati’s. This, along with his lack of a signature style despite proficiency in a variety of settings, may account for his somewhat obscure status in the vintage cover artists pantheon.


In any case, like so many practitioners of the paperback art in the glory years of the 1940s and 1950s, Meese specialized in covers which featured beautiful, frequently dangerous women. His beauties didn’t have the outright glamour of the women portrayed by Barye Phillips or Robert Maguire, or, in the case of Robert McGinnis's covers, the sexiness. Nevertheless, his sensitively wrought portraits revealed subtle insights into character which frequently eluded other artists of the era.

Of all the women which Meese portrayed, he seemed to have a favorite model; she appears again & again in various guises but always recognizable -- tall, brunette [1], with sharp, somewhat chiseled, vaguely exotic features. Quite the mystery woman, and quite the beauty .... does anyone know who she was?


[1] Meese's cover for Kiss Me Deadly is also included below. Although the woman on the cover is blonde she bears a slight resemblance to the model in the other covers and may well be the same person. The woman also bears a resemblance to the model on the gloriously lurid, hopelessly politically incorrect cover for James Hadley Chase's Kiss My Fist (Eton 112). Not sure of the cover artist on this one.