Consul Books #1133, 1962

Title : The Men in My Life

Author : Marthe Watts

Cover art : uncredited

[London : World Distributors, 1962. Consul Books edition, #1133. First published in hardcover by Christopher Johnson Publishers Ltd, July 1960. Printed in Great Britain by C. Nicholls & Co. Ltd. "The wickedest woman in London." Memoir of a French prostitute who worked for the Messina vice ring in London's West End in the 1940s and 1950s. The Consul reprint benefits from the anonymous cover art which depicts the author in a late vintage neo-realist style]. 

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Popular Library Giant G-121, 1953

Title : Look Down in Mercy

Author : Walter Baxter

Cover art : uncredited
  [N. Y. : Popular Library Giant, 1953. G-121. Popular Library edition published, March 1953. Cover in James Avati style, but cover artist is uncredited. "A savage novel of forbidden love." First published in hardcover, London : Heinemann, 1953]

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The author's first book, Mercy is a WWII novel about a British soldier in the Pacific Theater who has an affair with a Eurasian nurse. Includes graphic descriptions of jungle warfare and Japanese atrocities. The [anon.] cover art for the Popular Library reprint depicts two somnambulist-looking guys who frame a shapely, forlorn brunette who wears tropical clothes. Nice texture is provided by bright lighting of the individuals from the undefined source in background. One criticism : lettering for the title is a little too large, and tends to mar an otherwise beautifully balanced design. The cover blurb (“a savage novel ….”) may refer to hero’s affair with the nurse. Some sources refer to a gay theme in the novel -- this may also explain the use of the word ‘forbidden.’

History of Vintage Cover Art VI

All told, it was a glorious run for these and other publishing houses, but the vintage style and the white hot intensity of its disturbing images could only sustain itself so long, and it vanished almost as fast as it had appeared. By the late 1950s its best years were far behind [1]. Postmortem analyses could cite factors like the public outcries, threats of official intervention, and howls of critical disapproval, all of which were ultimately unnecessary. In a final flurry of self-immolation, the sensational era of vintage paperbacks essentially did itself in, due mostly to other, eminently practical considerations : over-production [2], market forces, different types of fiction being written, a newer generation of illustrators. Most of all, times, and tastes, were changing. It was the New Frontier of the early 1960s and the paperback art both literally and figuratively needed a fresher, more stylish look. Paperback publishers rejected the seemingly old-fashioned, realistic, oil painting-heavy cover art style in favor of a lighter touch [3] – leaner, quasi-abstract covers which favored brighter colors, all as if in a conscious effort to avoid the unpleasant, subterranean realms of their predecessors [4]. The golden age of paperbacks thus quietly passed into history, languishing for nearly half a century [5].


[1] “The cover artists of the postwar period either changed their style or faded from the scene. In either case, by the mid 1950s their variously mesmerizing, haunting and outrageous art was fast becoming a thing of the past.” (Server, Over My Dead Body, p. 68).

[2] But competition and over-production had its price – as unsold inventories languished, the desperation to survive drove publishers to even lower standards of promotion, which only reinforced the popular opinion of paperbacks as trashy literature.

[3] Consequently, the curvaceous temptresses who had adorned the postwar pb covers gave way to sleek, Audrey Hepburn-ish types who dominated the new aesthetic, a case of the illustrators and art directors literally preferring a lighter, leaner look.

[4] One could cite at least four alternative paperback cover art styles of the 1950s which challenged the then-dominant Good Girl Art, or Lurid, aesthetic : 1) the aforementioned lighter, leaner style; 2) a related style which rejected the realistic, action-dominated covers and instead favored a collage-like overlapping of graphic images which showed the influence of abstract expressionism, exemplified in the works of Mitchell Hooks, ‘Darcy’, and – sometimes – Barye Phillips; 3) the earthy, low-keyed James Avati look; 4) the flat, quasi-abstract cover designs of Penguin and Penguin USA.

[5] In the ensuing years vintage era paperbacks were largely forgotten except for a small coterie of dedicated individual collectors. (Schreuders, Paperbacks USA, pp. 228-233). To be sure, there were some good publications on vintage pb history (especially Bonn, Schreuders, and O’Brien), but it was the Internet culture of ca. 2005-2010 that allowed a higher public profile, especially for the cover art, with a resultant dramatic increase in both popularity and respectability.

Sterling, Stewart. Nightmare at Noon. N. Y. : Dell 693; May 1953. [pseud. Prentice Winchell]. Front cover : Bob Hilbert. Sterling was considered the ‘king of the specialty detectives,’ with Nightmare at Noon being a mid-range entry of the Fire Marshall Pedley series. Bob Hilbert's gloriously over-the-top cover art is a memorable contribution to the fire/explosions vintage subgenre.

Levin, Ira. A Kiss Before Dying. N. Y. : Signet, 1954. No. 1147. First printing, September 1954. Cover art : uncredited. Features an exceptionally intense cover depiction of a guy kissing a beautiful, terrified(?) woman while he strokes her throat with his fingers menacingly. Love that bright red lipstick the girl’s wearing! No credit is given for the knockout cover : there's what appears to be a signature just above the word 'year,' but it's too small to make out.

Coates, Robert M. Wisteria Cottage. N.Y. : Dell, 1948. Mapback. # 371. "A novel of criminal impulse." Also released as : The Night Before Dying. Front cover art : uncredited. Back cover : map of Wisteria Cottage (of the Hackett family), near Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York. This one sure delivers the goods for a psychological thriller-with-a-touch-of-psychosis genre. What a cover! My favorites: the guy’s eyes (surely the look of a madman), the figure of the girl in his forehead, and the Dell trademark keyhole, always a great creepy touch. The, alas anonymous, design is representative of Dell’s fondness for quasi-surrealist covers in the 1940s. BTW the novel’s psychotic villain works in a bookstore and fancies himself a writer – I like it! Adapted, twice -- once for TV, in 1950-51, for Suspense, and later, in 1958 as the film Edge of Fury.

Shallit, Joseph. The Case of the Billion Dollar Body. N. Y. : Avon, 1954. #558. Cover art : uncredited. "She looked for thrills -- and found murder!" -- front cover. Mystery about an athletic instructor & judo expert who takes a job as a bodyguard for a rich man's mistress. Features another gloriously sensationalist cover [unattributed, alas] in Avon’s best style : a tough guy grabs a blonde in yellow dress by the hair and yanks her head back as he’s about to slug her with a pistol. On the back cover, she turns the tables, biting the guy’s arm as he’s trying to strangle her. Fun to compare the Avon cover to a new Ramble House reprint. I like the Avon cover (quite a bit) better! 

Peter Cheyney. Dark Street Murders. N. Y. : Avon, [1957]. #764. [Released earlier by Avon, #93, 1946, with a different, somewhat blander cover design]. The first Mr. Quayle mystery. Also released as Dark Street. Cover artist is uncredited. Avon 764 is another classic example of the mysterious, not-so-clearly defined figure lurking in the shadows with a beautiful woman in the foreground, in this case part of a woman, anyway! Covers depicting women’s legs, especially when they were adorned with high heels, were a staple of the vintage era, but seldom have they been done with such panache as here, by yet another anonymous artist from the Avon stable of uncredited cover artists. It’s hard to go wrong with hot pink high heels and matching skirt!

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.

Signet 689, 1948

Title : The Silver Tombstone Mystery
Author : Frank Gruber
Cover art : Robert Jonas [?]
[New York : Signet Books, 1949. No. 689. "First printing, October 1949." Anonymous cover art, though some sources credit Robert Jonas.]

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The uncredited cover art for Signet 689 dates from the company's pre-Avati period and features cartoonish tableaux of two tough guys scuffling, with screaming redhead nearby. Fun to compare the cover art of this version with the 1959 reprint [Signet 1677] by Bayre Phillips. I like the later version better.

Crest Giant s178, 1957

Title : The Spiked Heel
Author : Richard Marsten
Cover art : uncredited
  [Crest Giant s178. Paperback. First Crest printing, August 1957. Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) writing as Richard Marsten. Cover art of a woman in bright red high heels standing over a dead? man on the floor is rendered in late fifties, quasi-expressionist, Mitchell Hooks style].


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The golden age vintage paperback cover artists well understood the erotic charge of high heels and women’s legs, but seldom do high heels become the focal point of the cover, much less the book’s story itself. But that’s exactly the case with (you gotta love the title!) The Spiked Heel, a novel of nefarious doings in the shoe industry. The terrific, spicy, and alas, anonymous, cover art for the Crest printing is an eyeful, and perhaps has an allegorical as well as representational function. To wit : “Would you like to know the secret of success? I’ll tell you. Smile. Smile, and crack skulls. Crack them, but smile while you’re doing it.” 

Fascinating to compare the original cover art with the re-worked Third Printing cover of Crest d581 [1963]. Granted, the latter has a certain felicitousness with the image of the girl’s legs inside the form of a giant white high heel, but I much prefer the elegance of the 1950s version; even its lettering is better!

[Reviews : Richard Sullivan, Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1956, p. B11; James Kelly, NY Times, August 12, 1956, p. 219.]

High heels and legs still rule! (ca. 2012)

Site of the Month

Fly-by-Night : Canadian Paperbacks of the 40s and Early 50s is quite the pleasant discovery -- a blog devoted to the Canadian take on the tough style.

Harlequin 45 (May 1950)

Harlequin 154 (1951)