 She's where? Going for a swim? Didn't you tell her the pool hasn't been cleaned for weeks? 
This Dutch book cover was made for Jonathan Stagge's novel Death's Old Sweet Song, which first appeared in 1941 and was later published in the Netherlands by Uitgeverij De Ster. The Dutch title is “death sues.” This caught our eye—and gave us a laugh—because it brought to mind an occasion when we rented a cluster of three bungalows with a pool in a Guatemala beach town. We partied all day and night and by the light of the next morning were shocked to see that the pool had become like soup, almost as bad as what you see on this cover. We figured it was a mixture of booze, sunscreen, sweat, windblown dust, and bodily dirt. We couldn't even see the bottom. We felt terrible—but not terrible enough to intervene—as a hotel employee went into that bisque, to well over his head, in order to pull the drain. Later we found the meager remains of a hotel chair in the firepit and remembered we'd burned it when we ran out of firewood. As bad foreigner behavior goes, it was complete. We were banned from the place for life. They even taped photocopies of our passports up at the front desk—so said another group of friends who booked a bungalow there months later. And after we'd gone to town and bought them a new chair. Guess they never heard that holding grudges is unhealthy. Anyway, we found this cover in a Flickr group, so thanks to the original uploader, for both the art and the memory.
 We've been seeing each other for a while now. I've decided you can start coming up the front stairs. 
Above, a Jim Bentley cover for L.K. Scott's Backstairs, 1953 for Pyramid Books. Bentley also worked for various men's adventure magazines, including Stag, for which he illustrated the James Jones story “The Knife” in December 1957. Jones, you may remember, wrote From Here to Eternity. We'll see if we can dig up more from Bentley later.
 They also do crap in the garden, do shed on my dresses, and do tongue-lash their own buttholes then lick my face. What was I thinking? 
Some folks are dog people, while others are not. We love dogs. But we'd never own one, for some of the reasons noted above. Add to those dubious qualities the fact that they do find corpses. At least in this case. Written by the duo of Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler under the pseudonym Jonathan Stagge, The Dogs Do Bark is an English style mystery set in the U.S., and deals with events set into motion when a decapitated and disarmed body is discovered down a hole by a bunch of one percenters and their hounds out hunting foxes. This found trunk is later identified by a man whose daughter is missing, and the mystery that follows is as gruesome as its intro. It was immediately obvious that the father—an overbearingly pious type who spews Bible verses and declares that his Jezebel of a daughter has come to her inevitable end—might be wrong in his identification, and that's a narrative problem, but whatever, even if the central conundrum wasn't interesting, the story's gory aspects were (add to the list of doggie behaviors that they do eat severed arms). We gather that Stagge's tales were often shocking, so for that reason alone they may be worth another glance. We're always interested in a bit of gore. Originally published in 1936 as Murder Gone to Earth, this Popular Library edition appeared in 1951.
 Without a doubt seeing you is always the best part of my day. 
This cute photo shows U.S. actress Joan Blondell, who started her showbiz career in Vaudeville, and later made numerous pre-Code films, including The Public Enemy and Blonde Crazy. It was shot when she was making the 1936 film Stage Struck, in which she starred with her husband Dick Powell.
 This Stag hunt turned up a less-than-healthy specimen. 
Above and below are a few scans from a February 1965 issue of Stag magazine. This was thrown gratis into a batch of men's adventure magazines we purchased due to the fact that it had serious issues—i.e. numerous pages missing. That's both bad and good. It's bad because we'd love to see the missing art and read the missing bits of stories, but it's good because, since scanning generally destroys these old staple bound magazines, we had no qualms about scanning what was left of this one. The magazines we like tend never to get scanned, though we keep promising. We did the deed on this one with a clear conscience and tossed the carcass into the recycling bin. But we kept the cover, which was painted by Mort Kunstler. You can't throw away the covers. It's just wrong. Scans below.
 War is hell, but being a prisoner of war can be worse. 
This January 1959 copy of Stag is an example of the joys of collecting old magazines. We bought it for three dollars, but it's being auctioned on Ebay right now for $100. Mort Kunstler handles the cover chores, illustrating Edward Newman's story “The P.O.W.s Who Broke Out of Rat Hell Stockade,” which deals with a group of Union soldiers during the U.S. Civil War who tunneled their way out of Richmond's Libby Prison. The story is true. The escape was one of the most successful breakouts of the war. The escapees were highly motivated due to the fact that Libby Prison was a hellhole that generated high mortality rates due to abuse, starvation, exposure to severe weather, and terrible overcrowding. A contemporary newspaper had this to say: “They are huddled up and jammed into every nook and corner; at the bathing troughs, around the cooking stoves, everywhere there is a wrangling, jostling crowd; at night the floor of every room they occupy in the building is covered, every square inch of it, by uneasy slumberers, lying side by side, and heel to head, as tightly packed as if the prison were a huge, improbable box of nocturnal sardines.” Inside Stag is art from James Bama, Kunstler again, Joe Little, Al Rossi, and Bruce Minney. You also get model/actress Irène Tunc, who was Miss France of 1954 and appeared in about thirty films during a three-decade film career. All this and more below, in twenty-three scans.
Update: we got the following e-mail from James N:
The cover of Stag, January 1959 was painted by James Bama. The credit to Mort Kunstler as printed in the magazine was an editorial error. Bama has confirmed this. For the sake of historical accuracy it would be nice if you changed your Jan. 9, 2017 post to reflect Jim Bama's true credit. We've talked a lot about how official credits can be wrong, so we're inclined to believe the cover was mistakenly attributed by editors because we already know they were human and made these types of goofs. But the process of collecting and curating vintage art offers the chance to get things right. So we're calling this cover a Bama, and thanks to James N. for taking the effort to write us.                       
 Wisdom, chivalry, serenity, honor—these are not those kind of samurai. 
A different type of paperback today, an example of World War II sexploitation, in this case John Slater's Women Under the Samurai, from Stag Modern Novels, which deals with, well... this is not the kind of book to be proudly displayed on a shelf. More like tucked in the back of a closet. The women here are nurses and are believed by the Japanese to know the location of Allied soldiers on the Pacific Island which they all inhabit. Pretty much every torture you can imagine is used, with the whole spectacle serving to both titillate and horrify the reader. Slater, who was a pseudonym used by Ray Slattery (as well as R.L. Taylor, and others) dipped into these murky waters regularly. Some of the titles that resulted: Island Slave, Brides of Terror, Women of Warsaw, Love Slave of Paris, The Captive Women. And so forth. More than eighty times. You can understand these selling during the war and post-war period, but the amazing thing about this genre of fiction is that it lasted until well into the 1970s. This example is from 1964.
 It's ironic they call this place the O.K. Corral, because things have not gone well since I came in here.                      
Above, Stag magazine published December 1957, with an uncredited cover and interior art from James Bama, Emile C. Shurmacher, Jay Smith, Charles Copeland, Jim Bentley, Lou Marchetti, and Mel Crair. We checked the auction sites this morning and saw this issue going for twenty dollars minimum, so we're feeling pretty smart because we got ours for four bucks. Probably the most interesting story is Bill Wharton's “Brother Chalmers,” about a pompous white missionary in Papua New Guinea who has very little in the way of morals. But it has a happy ending—he gets his brains bashed out.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West's considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy. 1971—Manson Sentenced to Death
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed. 1923—Yankee Stadium Opens
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008. 1961—Bay of Pigs Invasion Is Launched
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.
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