“A lusty novel about Florida crackers,” the cover bluntly proclaims, but the crackers actually originate from Mississippi, which they've had to leave in disgrace after a preacher becomes the source of a scandal. In Florida he takes up his dubious ways while his son gets into woman trouble of his own. Author Charles H. Baker, Jr. wins extra points for his usage of the word “ho,” a tricky term, with so much encompassed by its single syllable, and which we've discussed in detail before.

Dell Publications pioneered the usage of mapbacks, which you probably know, but sometimes the company deviated from that tradition and this book is a very nice example. Just take a look at the amazing rear cover below. The front was painted by Victor Kalin, the back presumably by some under-appreciated in-house artist, and the whole shebang was published in 1951.

A shell collecting vacationer in Florida comes across a damsel in distress during a late night beach walk and she of course draws him into intrigue way over his head. Before he knows it he's stumbled across a corpse and gotten involved in a murder investigation, as the damsel seems less and less like she's in distress as opposed to causing it for others. Author Richard Powell was known for the wit he mixed into his mysteries, and Shell Game is heavy on the repartee—if light on actual mystery. This Dell edition appeared in 1951 and the fun cover art is by Robert Stanley. 

The noble white men vs. savage primitives narrative around the colonization of the New World gets so ingrained in Americans by the time they're adults that for many it can be a shock or even feel like an attack to learn that the colonists killed millions of Native Americans via the most dishonorable and underhanded means. Literature often tries to explore nuances in this scenario, and Frank G. Slaughter's Fort Everglades has the typical set—i.e., it’s acknowledged that the white men constantly break treaties and kill without provocation, thus Seminole leader Chittamicco has understandable grievances, but his response (killing them) is intolerable and for the good of all there’s only one solution (killing him). It always seems to come down to that, but for those willing to accept the obvious historical and moral whitewashing, there are thrills to be found in these books. The hero here is a doctor whose blonde love is kidnapped by Chittamicco, and the cover depicts the moment he hurls the poor girl into gator infested waters. Artist James Meese deserves extra credit for this one. He really captures a dramatic and action packed moment. 

Sticking with the recent tabloid theme, above is a National Informer Weekly Reader that hit newsstands today in 1974. Inside is a rather funny story about a Honolulu restaurant called Dunes, which was allegedly staffed by nude waiters. Do we buy this tale? We didn’t at first, but we checked online and sure enough—there was such a place and owner Jack Cione did indeed feature nude waiters during lunch service. We’re for nudity of any sort, male included, but we don’t want any stray dick tips in our shrimp salad, so maybe we’d pass on the actual lunch aspect.

Also in the issue editors ask, “What Ever Happened To June?” That would be British pin-up June Wilkinson, who not been seen on the showbiz circuit since starring with her husband—NFL star Dan Pastorini—in the film Weed: The Florida Connection. After Weed Wilkinson didn’t appear onscreen for eleven years. Occasionally, that’s a sign you’ve made a disastrous movie, and Weed is indeed terrifically bad. We’ll talk about it a bit later. We have eleven more scans from National Informer Weekly Reader below, including a nice shot of Italian sex symbol Nadia Cassini.

More hicksploitation from Hallam Whitney, aka Harry Whittington—Backwoods Shack, for Carnival Books, digest format with great cover art by Rudy Nappi. A love triangle in the Florida outback is centered on hot-to-trot “backwoods trash” Lora and her two suitors, uptight Roger and proudly countrified Cliff. 1954 copyright.

One of the early cover collections we put together dealt with the theme of women interrupted while skinny-dipping (for our non-U.S. readers that's a term for swimming naked). Above is a fun addition to that group—Hillbilly Nympho, written by Bob Tralins, for Rendezvous Reader books, published 1961.

This was also put out the same year by Tuxedo Books as Naked Hills. Tralins, a few of you may remember, was the man who ghost-wrote Pleasure Was My Business, the infamous tell-all about the South Florida prostitution trade by flesh peddler Madame Sherry, aka Ruth Barnes. The book was banned in Florida and prompted a massive lawsuit from the former king of Egypt, Farouk I, who Madame Sherry had named as one of her best customers. We talked about that way back. See here. 

We’ve already shared Robert McGinnis covers twice this month, but since it’s in the charter of pretty much every pulp website to feature him constantly, here’s another contribution—Deadly Welcome, written by John D. MacDonald, 1959, for Dell Publishing. Probably a substantial proportion of you have read this, but if not, it deals with a government employee sent by the Defense Department back to his home town, the fictional Ramona Beach, Florida, to locate a missing government scientist. We'll get into what we think about MacDonald's writing at a later date. Not that our opinion matters, but we have to fill up these posts somehow.

As we’ve stated several times before, we’re always willing to do our small part to help out desperate publicity hounds, so above you see a photo of Jasmine Tridevil, a 21-year-old woman from Florida who claimed recently to have had a third breast implanted in the middle of her chest to bolster her efforts to become a reality star. Of course, this is a total Photoshop job. We don’t have to tell you that, right? Having worked at the international capital of bad breast implants—the august smut mill known as Playboy—we can tell you that an implanted breast could never look like this udderly ridiculous blob hanging from Tridevil’s torso. The tautness created by adding mass under existing skin means an artificial breast would come out looking something like half a grapefruit glued to the chest. 

For a good example of a real result, check out Brian Zembic, just right, who had breasts implanted several years ago for reasons we can’t remember right now. We know it hurts the eyes, but that’s what boobs built from scratch look like. We have to say this, though—obvious hoax notwithstanding, Tridevil has already achieved most of her goal. Consider—four days ago nobody had ever heard of her, and now she’s trending all over social media. American television being the morass it is, you can be sure networks the breadth of the cable dial are scrambling to get her into their studios for a tête-à-tête.

On this Confidential from February 1965 the publishers give their cut-and-paste artists a month off and grace the cover with a simple portrait of Brigitte Bardot and her famed pout. Inside the editors air out her love life in a way that today would be called slut shaming—pretty much stock-in-trade for Confidential. The suggestion is she won’t come to the U.S. to act because she’s busy Morockin’ around the clock with Moroccan-born producer Bob Zaguri. Elsewhere in the issue you get Romy Schneider, Jean Harlow, Alain Delon, Peter O’Toole, love behind the Iron Curtain, and an outraged report on pharmaceutical companies marking up medicines 200%, 500%, even 7,000%. Yes, medicines cost too much in the U.S. even back then. But don’t take our word for it. Take Confidential’s—their story ends by declaring that drug companies have Americans by the balls and the only way to avoid the drug price racket is to not get sick.

But moving on, as we mentioned last week, we wanted to look at tabloid attitudes toward  gay culture, and this issue has two articles along those lines. The first involves gay cruises off the Florida coast, an activity Confidential informs readers was devised as a way to avoid Dade County vice cops. Once the boats were in international waters therewas no law, local or federal, which could be applied against shipboard activities. We’ll come back to that in a sec. The other story involves what Confidential describes as the middlesex—i.e. people who lack strong masculine or feminine characteristics. The story is concerned with this only as a social issue and makes no mention of physically intersex persons who genetically are neither male nor female.

The story on gay cruises is a bit more typical of mid-century tabloids—it’s just a takedown piece. Gay men are blithely described as “lavender lads,” “minces,” and other words we wouldn’t dare dirty our website with. The effusiveness of the magazine’s hateful and sneerful terminology suggestsjust how certain Confidential editors were that homosexuality was completely beyond the pale. And yet, nearly every issue harped on the subject, either directly or indirectly. For instance, here we get full reportage on a maritime cabaret show featuring drag queens, followed by detailed descriptions of music, dancing, and gambling. You’d almost think the writer Gaye Bird—nice, right?—was actually there.