| Femmes Fatales | May 24 2021 |
When you little scamps get together you're worse than a sewing circle.
Sex was her weapon! The line isn't about Uma Thurman. It comes from the cover of Harlot in Her Heart, the Norman Bligh novel she's holding in this promo shot made for her 1994 blockbuster hit Pulp Fiction. An interesting factoid about the movie is that it lost the Academy Award for best picture to a slice of saccharine nothingness called Forrest Gump thanks to a pathologically risk averse voter pool. It's an embarrasing miss for the Academy, because Pulp Fiction ranks as one of the most influential American movies ever. It took the disordered narrative structure that had been established in earlier films and elevated it to a new level. It borrowed the box-of-mystery gimmick that had already been turned on its head in movies like Kiss Me, Deadly and Belle du jour, and turned it on its head again. It incorporated a hip, ethnically mixed cast. It was funny as hell. And it placed Thurman at the center of its hyper-masculine narrative as the femme fatale Mia Wallace—who dug criminals, was tough-minded, graceful, impulsive, and smart. Her line about men being gossipy scamps was one of the best in the film. We can't imagine anyone else playing the role. As for Harlot in Her Heart, we may just buy it despite its exorbitant price. If so we reserve the right to use the cover again in a later post.
Ecstasy NovelsPulp FictionUma ThurmanQuentin TarantinoNorman BlighWilliam Arthur NeubauerFred Rodewaldcover art
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 18 2018 |
*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.
Beacon SignalTrue Crime CasesFred RodewaldOrrie Hittcover artliteraturetrue crime magazinemagazine art
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 13 2016 |
The ptosis with the mostest.
A droopy eyelid is a condition referred to as ptosis, and illustrator Fred Rodewald uses that to great effect on this cover of Passion’s Mistress, written by Luther Gordon (a pseudonym used in this case by James Noble Gifford) for Quarter Books, 1950. Does the character pictured actually have a droopy eye? It would seem not, as both women in the story—“devastating beauty” Olive Haviland and “glamorous actress” Genevieve Gorton—are physically perfect, as only literary characters can be. So credit this quirky eye thing to Rodewald.
Quarter BooksPassion’s MistressPure GirlLuther GordonJames Noble GiffordFred Rodewaldcover artliterature
