There are numerous vintage editions of James M. Cain's classic thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice out there, including one from the Spanish publisher Bruguera that we showed you years ago, but we recently got our hands on this 1947 Pocket Books edition, with a cover by Tom Dunn. We read the book, and there are several interesting aspects to the novel, including frightening violence, a generally amoral view of the world, and this:  

We ran across this West German poster for Solange ein herz schlaegt, aka Mildred Pierce, and realized we had a substantial gap in our film noir résumé. So we watched the movie, and what struck us about it immediately is that it opens with a shooting. Not a lead-in to a shooting, but the shooting itself—fade in, bang bang, guy falls dead. These days most thrillers bludgeon audiences with big openings like that, but back in the day such action beats typically came mid- and late-film. So we were surprised by that. What we weren't surprised by was that Mildred Pierce is good. It's based on a James M. Cain novel, is directed by Michael Curtiz, and is headlined by Joan Crawford. These were top talents in writing, directing, and acting, which means the acclaim associated with the movie is deserved.

While Mildred Pierce is a mystery thriller it's also a family drama revolving around a twice-married woman's dysfunctional relationship with her gold-digging elder daughter, whose desperation to escape her working class roots leads her to make some very bad decisions. Her mother, trying to make her daughter happy, makes even worse decisions. The movie isn't perfect—for one, the daughter's feverish obsession with money seems extreme considering family financial circumstances continuously improve; and as in many movies of the period, the only black character is used as cringingly unkind comic relief. But those blemishes aside, this one is enjoyable, even if the central mystery isn't really much of a mystery. Solange ein herz schlaegt, aka Mildred Pierce opened in West Germany today in 1950.

We have no idea why scientists are surprised. Native Americans brewed many types of alcoholic beverages, so it follows they’d come up with ridiculous ways to drink them. Jean d’Ascain wrote L’or qui tue in 1946 for the Paris based publishing company La Caravelle as part of its Collection Le Ranch. On the cover Albert Chazelle art shows an early American colonist named Trish learning how to funnel, while one of the boys cops a cheap feel. The natives would later improve the funneling process by adding a tube, as well as sexually suggestive, horribly out-of-pitch singing. Genealogical note—Trish is the many-times-great grandmother of this person. Also, d’Ascain wrote a sequel where natives invent the drinking game Edward Fortyhands. 

It’s been a while since we’ve put together a pulp collection, so below you’ll find vintage cover art that uses the roulette wheel as a central element. They say only suckers play roulette, and that’s especially true in pulp, where even if you win, eventually you lose the money and more. Art is by Ernest Chiriacka, Robert Bonfils, Robert McGinnis, and many others.

We’ve compiled a collection of Bob Abbett covers, something we should have done years ago. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, working in a couple of distinct styles, he produced some of the most striking book fronts to be found on newsstands. See eighteen pieces of evidence below.

Stay away from the U.S. long enough and when you go back you get really good gifts. The Big Book of Pulps, above, was a belated birthday present—and what a present it is. At over 1,000 pages, this is probably the most comprehensive pulp anthology we’ve ever seen. Published in 2007 by the now defunct pulp revival specialists Black Lizard, the collection contains stories from Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, James M. Cain, Paul Cain and many others, and is even sprinkled with some ink illustrations. We’ll be working our way through this tome for the next couple of years, no doubt. Which means we should finish just in time to go back to the States again and get another great gift. Thanks Neil S.

James M. Cain was never one to shy away from provocative subject matter, and The Butterfly, published in 1946, is no exception. In this one a middle-aged coal miner arrives at his backwoods home one day to find a nineteen year-old girl sitting on his stoop. It turns out she’s his long lost daughter, who he’s never known because his wife left him eighteen years ago. The girl, Kady, is precocious to say the least, which means seduction inevitably follows and, just as inevitably, dangerous complications pile up rather quickly. But nothing is quite what it seems and by the end, paternity is in doubt all over the place. The Butterfly isn’t considered one of Cain’s best, but we thought it was a diverting read, certainly worth the time spent. As with most Cain books, it had many editions, but this one is the 1964 Dell paperback, which we think has the best cover art.

Moving on to the 1982 film adaptation, entitled simply Butterfly, we find ourselves running out of kind words. The film starred Pia Zadora, and while it generated some good reviews and a lot of publicity owing to its supposed steaminess, time has since rendered a judgment and it isn't a kind one. Zadora was not the person for the role of Kady. We have little doubt she's alluring in real life, but cinema is not real life and it takes more than just ordinary beauty to light up the screen as a femme fatale.

It's the same with men, typically. Bogart wasn’t a classic looker, but he had that thing. Zadora doesn’t. The critics who defended her in this role are still answering for it today, and her award as Newcomer of the Year ranks as one of the Golden Globes' biggest embarrassments. Despite her unwonderful performance, Butterfly is worth a glance for its camp factor, as well as for appearances by Orson Welles as a smalltown judge and Ed McMahon as a boozehound. But if you really want to be entertained, read the book instead.

The National Police Gazette devoted more space to boxing than most magazines of its time, and Gazette editors especially loved using boxing photo-illustrations on their covers. The above, from January 1953, is yet another example—albeit an unusual one. You may think that this is actually just a bad painting, but no—it’s a colorized and retouched version of a famous photograph of heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott losing to younger, hungrier Rocky Marciano. It happened September 23, 1952 in Philadelphia, and Walcott—having scored a knockdown in the first round—was ahead on points in round 13 when he walked into Marciano’s right hook. Walcott was a guy who had fought hard all his life. He was the son of Haitian immigrants and had gone to work in a soup factory when he was only thirteen. He had won a lot of bouts, but had lost quite a few as well. He was also the oldest heavyweight champion ever at age thirty-seven. But even with all his experience, guile and drive, he had no chance of surviving the destructive power of a full-force Marciano right. Walcott hit the canvas, and the fight—as well as the best part of his career—was over.

But Jersey Joe Walcott didn’t just fade away—that would have been completely out of character. He had friends in Hollywood and three years later appeared on the silver screen with Humphrey Bogart in The Harder They Fall. He followed that up in 1962 when he acted in the television series Cain’s Hundred. He also became a boxing referee, and was in the ring when Muhammad Ali beat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title in 1965. Walcott was heavily criticized for his officiating during that fight, which meant the end of his career as a ref. But he proved that some men are impossible to keep down when he became sheriff of Camden County,

New Jersey, and later head of the New Jersey State Athletic Commission, a position he held until the age of 70. In 1994 Jersey Joe Walcott died at age 80. He had been neither the greatest nor the least of boxing champions, but he had certainly been one of the most persistent.