 He would've wanted me to find happiness. Maybe not this often, but hey, a girl’s gotta live, right? 
How long is a proper mourning period? Not very long, apparently. Above is an excellent piece of cover art from Charles Copeland for Rick Holmes’ 1963 Beacon-Signal sleaze novel New Widow, about a woman whose husband of six years dies in an automobile accident, and who suddenly finds that four men she thought were friends now just want to get into her panties.
 Whoops, wrong room. Unless you're the one who wanted the kilo of blow. 
Sometimes when you're a cop crime comes right to you, such as on this cover for Lady Cop by J. T. Pritchard. This was a fast read. Basically, when her father's death is ruled a suicide, a woman comes to believe it was murder and joins the police force with the ultimate goal of finding the killer or killers. Pritchard has zero inclination to make a true mystery of this, so he takes the easy route of having the killer come to the heroine. Then, having put her in hot water, he again takes the easy route by having someone else save her ass. The provocative cover by Eddie Chan doesn't actually reflect a scene in the narrative. Lady cop is smart enough to lock her door. Conversely, girl wrestlers are not—the art came from 1952's Loves of a Girl Wrestler, below. See another cover for that at this link. Copyright on Lady Cop is 1955.
 That old quote is true. Since I got into politics I've had quite a few fellows in bed and most of them were strange. 
In Winchell Barry's Scarlet City ambitious anti-heroine Lora Paton insinuates herself into the inner workings of a big city's political and vice machines by using her own inner workings on various lustful men. Her constant sexual activity leaves her by turns empowered and embittered, depending on how her scheme to get her main man into the governor's mansion is going at any given moment. If she can get him elected, they'll marry and live on the taxpayer's dime happily ever after. But is he playing straight with her? Hint: politicians are generally scum.
Scarlet City is pretty frank stuff from Barry, who was in reality longtime television writer Leo Rifkin. Through various plot covolutions he manages to get Lora in bed with five different men, each a rung on her ladder to the top. The book was originally published in 1953, with this Beacon edition coming in 1960. It was also reprinted in a 1954 issue of Daring magazine, so its mix of easy sex, political chicanery, and strange bedfellows must have done well on newsstands. It's not going to be studied in any creative writing classes, but we'll admit we liked it. 
 So she likes to have fun. Do we really need to put a label on it? 
 The lush of Orrie Hitt's The Lady Is a Lush is the character Amy Collins mentioned in the cover blurb, but her husband Chip really deserves the title. Like his wife he's screwing around, and like her he makes terrible decisions under the influence of booze, but lacks the sense to avoid getting one of his flings pregnant. At one point he finds condoms in Amy's purse and is relieved she's being careful about her extracurriculars, but does he follow her example? No. Things get pretty dark, but after some drama and soul searching he basically comes up roses. Not so for Amy, who does the full downward spiral. We'll say this much—this is a better-than-usual effort from Hitt. The characters are believable and the backdrop of a small-time trucking company works. If you're going to read him, this is one to try. The Beacon-Signal cover is iconic, yet uncredited.
 So I gather *smooch* we're not going to make it *smack* to the movie? 
Orrie Hitt's 1957 sleazer Untamed Lust is better-than-usual work from him about a strapping farmhand and trapper named Eddie who lands a job on a big spread peopled by a sadistic invalid, his highly sexed wife, and his highly sexed daughter. Eddie has a girlfriend, highly sexed, who wants to marry him, but Ed, who's highly sexed, wants to nail the wife and daughter, not lose his job as a result, and avoid a murder-for-inheritance plot. Complications ensue.
Is it just us, or is it way too exhausting to consider trying to bed three women who are part of the same household? Maybe we're not highly sexed enough. Eddie spends a lot of time snaring defenseless animals, and we think there's a metaphor in there, but for the life of us we can't puzzle it out. Hitt is just too subtle for us. The cover art here is obviously in no way farm related. It looks more like office or suburban sleaze.
Beacon assistant editor: “But this art has nothing to do with the story. Eddie's a trapper who never wore a suit in his life, and the chicks are all earthy farm girls.”
Beacon head honcho: “You're fired.”
The cover art is obviously something Beacon-Signal picked up, possibly from an earlier paperback, just because it was easier than commissioning a custom cover. They didn't even bother to credit the artist. But whatever. You like highly sexed farm girls and hunting? This book is for you. But keep in mind, though we said above it's better than the usual Orrie Hitt, it's still nothing approaching a masterpiece.
 Then she smashed my head repeatedly into the turnbuckle until I lost consciousness. So... how was your day? 
Nice cover for Ben West's Loves of a Girl Wrestler, from Beacon Books, with art by Al Rossi. We won't bother to summarize this one because we've also uploaded the interesting rear cover, just below, and it has a full rundown. Originally 1952 copyright, with this edition appearing in 1960.
 I know you were expecting a trio, but that third chick was too freaky even for us. 
We don't know why only two women appear on the cover of Three Strange Women. Sleaze author extraordinaire Orrie Hitt occupies the Kay Addams pseudonym for a story of underwear models, nudie photos, dirty movies, and the always popular lesbian evil. There's Norma, Gail, Susan, and a male love interest, and as our subhead hints, one of the women does end up too freaky for polite society and finds herself in the legal system being sentenced for violent crimes. We have several efforts from Hitt we'll discuss in more detail later. This one is from 1964 with cover art by unknown.
 But I don't want a new husband. I never even liked the old one. 
The Widow is typical Orrie Hitt sleaze about a man torn between nice but sexy Norma, and bad girl Linda, whose husband leaves the narrative early when he cracks up his hot rod. The main character Jerry, a widower who hasn't been the same since that tragic event, soon finds himself not only caught between the nice girl and the new widow, but being pushed into a murder-for-money plot. This is always a bad idea, but reading Hitt is sometimes a good one, as long as you can appreciate his unique stories without being too concerned with writing ability. We just scored eight of his books, so you'll be hearing about him in more detail. 1959 on this one, with uncredited cover art.
 Hold my calls, people. I'm formatting my new laptop. 
This is a nice cover for Office Affair by Mark West. The novel is an entry in the office sleaze genre, and the story is focused on a love triangle and business sabotage. Basically, an exec gets two new women on his staff but when things start to go wrong with his business he needs to find out which one is on his side, and which is trying to torpedo him to advance her own career. We've featured many of these on the website and we're not likely to run out soon. West contributed at least a couple. You can see another example from him here, and an entire collection from various authors here. This one is copyright 1961, with art by unknown.
 *sigh* Sense of safety. Last shred of dignity. Trust in people's basic goodness. I think I lost all those tonight. 
Sleazemeister general Orrie Hitt's Ex-Virgin is the story of a gaggle of youthful characters with zero life prospects stuck on the worst street in a jerkwater town. Abysmally dumb boys and girls have sex, cheat on each other, and roll the dice on pregnancy. In the midst of all this an innocent beauty hopes to make a good life for herself. But she lets a boy sample her wares, and once that becomes known her reputation goes down the tubes, with detrimental effects. Put this in the scare-kids-out-of-having-sex category. It's all very monotonous thanks to Hitt's colorless writing style. The cover art on this 1959 Beacon edition, which does not depict a scene that occurs anywhere in the story, is by Fred Rodewald, and was adapted from a piece that originally appeared on a September 1949 cover of True Crime Cases.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. 1945—Germany Announces Hitler's Death
German radio in Hamburg announces that Adolf Hitler was killed in Berlin, stating specifically that he had fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany. But in truth Hitler had committed suicide along with his mistress Eva Braun, and both bodies were immediately thereafter burned. 1960—Powers Is Shot Down over U.S.S.R.
Francis Gary Powers, flying in a Lockheed U-2 spy plane, is shot down over the Soviet Union. The U.S. denies the plane's purpose and mission, but is later forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft when the Soviet government produces its remains and reveals Powers, who had survived the shoot down. The incident triggers a major diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. 1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's
Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established.
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