Vintage Pulp | Apr 9 2023 |
A few days ago we shared a book cover inspired by a 1948 Life magazine photo. We wanted to show you a more direct inspiration from that shot. Here you see Tony Calvano's The Hellions, from 1965 for Greenleaf Classics, published by its sub-imprint Leisure Books. Calvano was in actuality Thomas P. Ramirez.
The art on this is by Robert Bonfils, and he basically copied the dynamic figure in the Life photo, and did so brilliantly, making changes to her hair (more and wilder) and bikini (smaller and flimsier). The result is an illustration that's a real eye-catcher. You can scroll down a few posts if you want to see the Life shot in a larger size. It was part of a photo essay on a performative youth movement called Activationism, centered in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Vintage Pulp | Sep 5 2018 |
We never went to summer school. We just weren't bad enough students for that but now we see it may have had its good points, as seen on this cover for Tony Calvano's, aka Thomas P. Ramirez's Summer Lust, about students in summer session who can't keep their minds on their work. Greenleaf Classics could turn even the most obscure scenarios into sleaze, so you know something as obvious as summer school basically wrote itself. It's copyright 1965, with cover art by an unknown.
Vintage Pulp | Mar 22 2016 |
Vintage Pulp | Mar 21 2014 |
Illustrator Darrel Millsap really had fun with the sleaze covers he painted for Greenleaf Classics’ Candid Reader line. The one you see here for Gage Carlin’s (Thomas P. Ramirez’s) swapping novel Switching Hour is a prime example of the overtly sexual material he produced. And what a treat. In addition to a restrained woman having her… really we have no idea… her hedge trimmed maybe, we also get a bonus shot right up a male character’s crevasse. If you look closely you can see a mountain goat in there. No, really. Go ahead. Um, 1969 on this.