 Sometimes a single adaptation won’t get the job done. 
In February we showed you a very cool art deco style cover by Edna Reindel for W.R. Burnett’s 1930 novel Iron Man. Here they’re paired again for Burnett’s Saint Johnson, also published in 1930, because the guy wrote hella fast. The book was turned into a movie called Law and Order in 1932, co-scripted by a young John Huston and starring his dad Walter Huston. It was also filmed that same year as The Beast of the City, and that one also starred Walter Huston. Apparently neither version was quite good enough, because it was made into a movie again in 1937 called Wild West Day, and in 1940, called once again Law and Order, and once more in 1953, yet again called Law and Order. For those who think Hollywood has run out of ideas and just makes the same movies over and over, well, it’s always been that way. So what is this amazing book that needed five film versions about? Maybe the cover character’s crazy eyes and bushy mustache can offer a hint. Give up? He’s supposed to be Wyatt Earp. Anyway, the cover has Reindel’s trademark art deco style, which mixes with the standard Old West tableau of a gunman at a card table and ends up looking a bit like Mexican folk art. We love it. See the other Reindel cover here.
 Well, what if I don’t want to go to my corner? 
Above you see a very interesting dust jacket for W.R. Burnett’s 1930 novel Iron Man, which is the story of a mechanic turned middleweight boxer turned world champion. Burnett had more than fifty films made of his fiction and screenplays, including Little Caesar, High Sierra, The Asphalt Jungle, Scarface, and many more. But we’re focused on the cover art today. It’s by Edna Reindel, and it has both an art deco influence and a purely Reindel style that downplays outright aggression in favor of smoldering defiance, like Enrico del Debbio’s boxer in Rome’s Foro Italico. Alternatively, it could look like something more prosaic, like a male model’s runway pose (it’s okay to think of Zoolander—we did too). Anyway, we find this an incredibly beautiful piece of art, certainly wallworthy, and doubtless a contributing factor why first editions of this book go for between $75 and $200. We will definitely find more of Reindel’s work and share it later.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
2003—Hope Dies
Film legend Bob Hope dies of pneumonia two months after celebrating his 100th birthday. 1945—Churchill Given the Sack
In spite of admiring Winston Churchill as a great wartime leader, Britons elect
Clement Attlee the nation's new prime minister in a sweeping victory for the Labour Party over the Conservatives. 1952—Evita Peron Dies
Eva Duarte de Peron, aka Evita, wife of the president of the Argentine Republic, dies from cancer at age 33. Evita had brought the working classes into a position of political power never witnessed before, but was hated by the nation's powerful military class. She is lain to rest in Milan, Italy in a secret grave under a nun's name, but is eventually returned to Argentina for reburial beside her husband in 1974. 1943—Mussolini Calls It Quits
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini steps down as head of the armed forces and the government. It soon becomes clear that Il Duce did not relinquish power voluntarily, but was forced to resign after former Fascist colleagues turned against him. He is later installed by Germany as leader of the Italian Social Republic in the north of the country, but is killed by partisans in 1945.
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