Dell 896 (1954)

Title : The Butcher's Wife
Author : Owen Cameron
Cover art : William Rose
  [Cameron, Owen. The Butcher’s Wife. N. Y. : Dell Books, 1954. No. 896. Cover art : William Rose. First published, Simon & Schuster Inner Sanctum, 1954.] 


"Two lovely ladies on his mind, and two dead dames on his hands." – front cover.

style ***
substance **
collectibility *


  I confess to not being familiar with author Cameron or cover artist William Rose.* Cameron apparently wrote some mystery novels in the 1950s set in California. For the Dell reprint of Butcher's Wife, cover artist Rose provides a knockout cover, quite an improvement over the rather bland hardcover original. The woman in the foreground is rendered in loving detail featuring peach and off-orange tints for her dress [which is nicely matched in the lettering], along with a pouting mouth and a defiant upturn of the head. The shadows in the background of a man carrying a [presumably] naked, dead woman, help to conjure up a sinister, macabre atmosphere. 


* A little research reveals artist Rose to be yet another of the 1950s unsung heroes of vintage cover design. His covers tend to be a synthesis of Mitchell Hooks-like expressionism and James Meese naturalism.   

Inner Sanctum, 1954

Dell S11 (1961)

Title : My Wicked, Wicked Ways

Author : Errol Flynn

Cover artist : photograph

  [N. Y. : Dell, 1961. No. S11. Cover photo of Errol Flynn. "First Dell printing, January 1961."]

"The bare facts just as Flynn himself dared to reveal them. This and only this book includes them all."

style ****

substance ****

collectibility **

  The [uncredited] cover photo for Dell S-11 complements the book’s sensational contents : brandishing a cigarette holder and wearing a smoking jacket, Flynn is rendered in most impish, rascally fashion. But the picture also hints at other qualities we don’t usually associate with Errol Flynn -- grace, dignity and sophistication, qualities which, by the way, appear in My Wicked, Wicked Ways. 


  Which brings us to the fact that - for better or worse - more books have been written about Errol Flynn than any other film actor. Biographers have not always been kind, however. Flynn’s second wife Nora Eddington was, perhaps appropriately, first out of the gate with her warts and all memoir Errol and Me, which appeared a year after the actor’s death. In the following decades authors cranked out Flynn biographies which progressively upped the ante in character assassination and scandal recollection [1]. But it may be that the wily Flynn had outflanked his critics all along, in the process getting in the last word preemptively [2]. Flynn wisely got his peccadillos out in the open in Wicked Ways, and all the trashy tomes which followed merely expanded or enlivened what was already known more than half a century ago. And no, he was not, after all, a sadist, closet gay, or Nazi spy, but all the other stuff was pretty much true, having been confirmed early on by Flynn’s own pen. 


  At any rate, there have been many movie star biographies [3], but Flynn’s is my choice as the best [4] : he was a born raconteur; had great subject matter to work with [his own life story]; and wrote very well.


I leave the last word to Irene Palfy at All That Glistens Could be Old, because it sums up my thoughts so well:


  " . . . I enjoy that much that I'd like to read it forever. So I just read a bit and put it away - and then read again a little bit later."




  [1] There’s a certain belated justice in the generally good press which Flynn enjoys today, which eluded him during his lifetime and the first four decades or so after his death.
  [2] Flynn might have beaten his critics to the punch in another way, albeit in a different context. Much has been made of Wicked Ways' playing fast and loose with the truth -- certain facts are incorrect and some recollections have been exaggerated, fabricated or otherwise 'improved.' However, perhaps an equally compelling case can be made for the book's emotional truth, in that it gives us an insight into the inner nature of the man. Flynn was not exactly the first celebrity to write a somewhat fictionalized autobiography, but one could say that he mastered and crystallized the genre, much in the same way that Truman Capote, with In Cold Blood, perfected the ‘nonfiction novel’ without actually inventing the form. 
  [3] There's also been much commentary on Wicked Ways’ ghostwritten status, and it’s true that author Earl Conrad spent three months in Jamaica in 1958-59, assisting Flynn on the book. However,  sources are vague as to Conrad’s actual role in the mechanics of writing Wicked Ways. Flynn was a great storyteller, and his writing credentials were well-established by this time, with a couple of books and numerous articles and journalistic dispatches to his credit, along with various half-completed projects. Moreover, the book has a quintessentially and uniquely Flynnian voice and attitude. It may well be that Conrad’s contribution to Wicked Ways is much less than traditionally credited, and that his role consisted mostly of more prosaic, if eminently necessary, tasks like keeping the project on track and thus assuring its completion. Flynn hinted as much when he insisted that only his name be listed as the author. In any case it seems that the ghosted meme over-rates Conrad’s role in the book and shows far too little appreciation of Flynn’s genuine literary skills. 
  [4] Even the best biographies like Thomas McNulty’s Errol Flynn : the Life and Career and Peter Valenti’s Errol Flynn : a Bio-Bibliography seem flat and colorless when compared to the original.


Reviews : Piddleville; Via Margutta 51; MissRosen. See also : Scott Eyman, Tragic, Tempestuous Life of Palm Beach’s Forgotten Star, Lili Damita, Palm Beach Post, April 8, 2011.

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.

Dell 833 (1952)

Title : Recipe for Homicide
Author : Lawrence Blochman
Cover art : Verne Tossey

style ***

substance **

collectibility **

Despite the girl's rather melodramatic pose this cover stands out for a certain delicacy and restraint, qualities we don't usually associate with the vintage pb style of ca. 1950. See also review at Pulp International : Two Covers for Recipe for Homicide.

Dell No. 146 (1946)

Title: The Man in Lower 10
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover art: Otto Storch  

Dell 146 is a mystery about a train ride with murder, robbery & romance -- are their any other types of train rides? At any rate, Lower 10 benefits from terrific front cover art by Otto Storch of surrealistic vision of anthropomorphized train. Back cover : map of The Washington Flier – Scene of Murder.

 

style ***
substance **
collectibility *

 

Dell 414 (1950)

Title : Cleopatra's Nights
Editor : Allan Barnard
Cover art : Ray Johnson
  [Dell Publishing Company Inc., New York, August 1950. First paperback edition. Dell # 414. “The Life and Loves of the Queen of Egypt.”]


style ***
substance **
collectibility **

This rare venture by Dell into historical fiction has the added crossover appeal by being a representative – at least marginally so – of that popular if not so easily definable genre of vintage sleaze. However, as was the case in so many paperbacks from the golden era, the racy promise of the book’s cover is never quite delivered in the contents.
Nonetheless, Dell 414 has much to recommend; the various chapters are well-written, even poetic, and Ray Johnson’s lush cover art balances just the right amounts of glamour and luridness, representing a nice departure from Dell’s earlier, non-realistic designs. Best of all, this was one of the last of the company’s famed mapbacks, and this map’s a doozy – the known world, ca. 30 B.C. (i.e. Middle East & the Mediterranean), “where the pagan Queen of Egypt lived and loved.” The usual suspects -- pyramids, sphinx, Paros lighthouse -- they’re all there.

Dell D375 (1960)

Title : The Obituary Club
Author : Hugh Pentecost
Cover art : Robert Maguire
  [N. Y. : Dell, 1960. #D-375. Pseud. Judson Philips. Cover : Robert Maguire. “First Dell printing, August 1960.” Maguire comes through with another knockout cover, this one using a favorite vintage paperback cover theme, that of the beautiful woman opening or peeking through a curtain. Great use of bright reds for the woman's dress, high heels and lipstick].

style ***
substance **
collectibility *

Dell 332, 1949

Title : Fact Detective
Editor : W. A. Swanberg
Cover art : photo of female model
   [N. Y. : Dell, 1949. No. 332. Mapback edition. Edited by W. A. Swanberg. Pin-up girl front cover photo. Titiel page : "These fact detective mysteries were especially written for this book, and are based on true stories of those crimes which were first published in Inside Detective and Front Page Detective magazines." Back cover : map of U. S. depicting the 'scenes of the crime' in the stories within.]

style **
substance **
collectibility *