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Pulp International - Gene+Bilbrew
Vintage Pulp Mar 6 2024
SHAHARR HER WISDOM
The Princess sees all and knows all.


Above are the front and rear covers of another dream book from the Wholesale Book Corporation, featuirng art from the one and only Gene Bilbrew. He's unique in the annals of paperback cover art, as you can see here and here, and while these dream books don't showcase him at his best, they still demonstrate his unusual style. This one is also interesting because it's bilingual. The copyright is 1972. If you don't know what a dream book is, it's for gambling. We explain the book's purpose in detail here, and the numbers gambling associated with it here

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Vintage Pulp Aug 31 2023
DRESS FOR SUCCESS
Well, you both meet the basic requirements, but a job like this also hinges on having a big personality.


It's been a couple of years since we featured paperback illustrator Gene Bilbrew, so above you see a piece he painted for Hugo Paul's novel Topless Waitress, from Chevron Books in 1967. Paul allegedly wrote as many as 700 sleaze novels under more than forty pseudonyms. That level of output usually makes for rushed and mediocre final results, which was worry enough, along with a thirty dollar price tag, for us to pass on this book. Then we found an electronic copy going for virtually nothing, took the leap, and found ourselves reading the tale of Jody Moran, virginal and headed toward marriage, and her mother Marian, far from virginal and headed toward divorce.

The heart attack death of their father/husband followed by financial need brought on by a business scam sends mother and daughter into the San Francisco nightclub scene, with mom eventually taking a job as the topless waitress of the title, and daughter becoming a topless “a-go-go dancer” in the same club. Along the way they deal with many opportunistic men, including one nightclub owner who manages to bed down both women, pitting them as rivals. Does decadent San Francisco ruin the pair? We won't say. They're sufficiently taken advantage of to satisfy prurient readers. Paul goes lyrical rather than graphic with his sex scenes, which is fine we guess. He's a competent storyteller. In the end, though, we wouldn't say Topless Waitress is anything more than a typical mid-century sleaze novel built on various sexual (and a few sexist) tropes.

The cover art, on the other hand, is far from typical. It features one of Bilbrew's more striking scenes, with his trademark pneumatic women and almost comic book-style execution. He had a singular vision—clearly, considering one woman has a beehive and the other a bucket hat—and was, significantly, one of the only black paperback illustrators during the mid-century period. Since we've seen books with his art go for a hundred dollars, pricewise thirty is actually okay, even enticing, if we were inclined to resell one day. But somehow we never get around to reselling, so we think the cheap e-book route was a good decision. You can see more Bilbrew by clicking here.

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Vintage Pulp Apr 12 2021
OVERDUE BIL'
Better late than never is our motto around here.


We're finally getting back to paperback artist Gene Bilbrew, whose odd style, with its scantily clad women and their muscular butts has become collectible in recent years. We didn't get it at first, but like a lot of art, once you're exposed to it regularly you begin to appreciate its unique qualities. There's clear intent in Bilbrew's work, a deliberate attempt to approach illustration from a different angle, and we've grown to understand that his cartoonish, chaotic, often humorous, and often bondage themed aesthetic is purposeful. In fact, his imagery has become so intertwined with the bdsm scene that in 2019 the National Leather Association International established an award named after Bilbrew for creators of animated erotic art. While it's not exactly a Pulitzer Prize, the point is that Bilbrew's bizarre visions keep gaining wider acceptance. So for that reason we've put together another group of his paperback fronts. You can see more of them here, here, and here, and you can see a few rare oddities here, here, and here.

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Mondo Bizarro Jan 9 2020
DREAM ON
I have a vision... It's getting clearer... It's you... buying the updated and revised edition of my book.

Above you see the cover of Old Aunt Dinah's Dream Book of Numbers. We've already talked about Gene Bilbrew's covers for 1970s dream books. We're revisiting the subject today to give you this additional look at his work, but also to take a historical angle on his specifically African American art. Playing daily numbers was an African American invention, part of an underground economy that flourished in many large cities, but reached its apotheosis in Harlem.

It's impossible to know when playing the numbers began—certainly long before the turn of the twentieth century—but the practice took off during the 1920s when a black West Indian man named Casper Holstein began using bank-to-bank transaction data published in New York City papers as the selection mechanism for his daily numbers. Previously, numbers had been chosen in various unreliable ways, but Holstein's innovation placed the selection of numbers in public view, removed any suggestion of corruption, and as a result Harlem's daily lottery thrived.

Which is exactly why the city of New York decided to take it over in 1980, a coup it managed in part by promising to use a portion of the numbers revenue toward public education costs. And of course, proving once again that politicians are the lowest creatures that ever crawled from beneath slime covered logs in miasmic swamps, the city then cut its contributions to the education budget so there was ultimately no net gain for schools, while profits were neatly excised from the black community.


Old Aunt Dinah's Dream Book of Numbers is the third dream book illustrated by Bilbrew we've shared. We're fascinated by the exotic, made-up personae on the covers. The idea of gypsies, Arabs, creoles, Asians, or very old people somehow tapping into mystical power thrived in pulp fiction, early movies, cartoons, and, as you see, even on the covers of dream books. Old Aunt Dinah is our favorite dream book invention, but the characters Madame Zodia and Princess Shaharr—the latter of whom we'll show you later—are close runners up.


For those who don't know what books like these are about exactly, we explained that in our typically roundabout way in previous write-ups, here and here. Shorter version: Dream until your dreams come true. We already have a couple more to share, and we'll keep an eye out for others. And of course we'll continue to be on the lookout for paperback art by Gene Bilbrew. You can see what he's about by clicking this link.

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Mondo Bizarro Jul 28 2019
ZODIA WANNA BE RICH?
Make your money dreams come true.


Do you ever play the lottery? We don't, except occasionally the local Christmas lottery in which a 150 kilogram pig is the prize. But presumably, if you play the lottery it's in hopes of winning a mountain of cash rather than a mountain of pork. Well, hope no more. Above you see just the ticket to help you score those megamillions. Zodia's Book of Numbers was published in 1972, but you'll still find it for sale rather cheaply on auction sites.
 
The way it works is, first you have a dream— Go ahead. We'll wait.
 
Okay, now you take elements from your dream, such as “coffee” or “kettle” and inside the book you'll find those words assigned a three digit number, which you then sprint with down to the local convenience store and feed your hard earned cash into the ravenous maw of state sponsored voluntary taxation. Or if you speak Spanish, there are also entries in that language. Because scams are nothing if not inclusive. And in addition to a useless number the all-seeing Zodia also provides something more permanent—a useless fortune related to the word you looked up.

Here's an example. Say your word is “key.” You check the book, and it says: Key 934—To dream of a key means a plan will succeed with advice from friends. If the key opens a door success and money are assured.

All well and good, but the reason we're sharing this item is because the cover was painted by Gene Bilbrew, a unique African American paperback illustrator of the 1960s and 1970s. He's one of those guys we've talked about whose work has been reevaluated in recent years and become highly collectible. An example appears in the post below. We also put together a collection a while back, which you can see here. And apparently, Bilbrew made an industry of illustrating these dream books, because this is second we've found. Look here.

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Vintage Pulp Jul 26 2019
BEASTS OF THE FIELD
Then artichoke prices collapsed and we had to do something drastic or lose the land. This fetish thing really saved us.


Above, a cover for the 1966 sleazer Fetish Farm, by Ken Gardner, author of Sex Hospital, Night Lust, and Sex Hostage. You've heard of cruelty free farms? This one is the opposite, but at least no animals are harmed. The art on this is by Gene Bilbrew, who we've written about plenty. Learn about him here and here.

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Vintage Pulp Mar 6 2017
CATCH OF THE DAY
Okay, I'll take one last guess. You're from Parks and Wildlife and you want to check my fishing license.


African American illustrator Gene Bilbrew uses his unique aesthetic to create yet another arresting paperback cover, this time for Lee O. Miller's 1967 sleazer Vacation Fun. Bilbrew is one-of-a-kind. When we first saw his work we pronounced it “not great,” but since then we've come to understand how unique and talented he really was. So has the art world—we've seen pieces of his priced upward of $12,000. We have a small collection of his work here, so have a look and judge for yourself. 

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Mondo Bizarro May 20 2016
WITCH'S BILBREW
Dream a little dream with us.


Gypsy's Witch Dream Book of Numbers is a lucky number book published in 1972 and based on the principle of dream interpretation. Basically, you have a dream, look up its elements, and find the associated numbers. For example, take an average dream—say you're in an all nude, alcohol licensed strip club on the Turks and Caicos with about 10K in your pockets and the dancers include Anjelique Pettyjohn, Kimiko Nakayama, and Joey Heatherton, along with assorted Miss Universe contestants, and on a small stage in the corner the music is being played live by Shakira, but she's performing Curtis Mayfield's “Give Me Your Love” and the rest of the Superfly soundtrack. You can't decide who to buy a lap dance from, so in order to convince you Anjelique, Kimiko, and Joey begin demonstrating progressively more amazing and shocking contortionist maneuvers, even going so far as to ask you to help them achieve certain positions, at which point your waitress Elke Sommer brings a raspberry Rickey and tells you she's off work now, but go ahead and have a lap dance first, because she'll wait. We'll stop there. So then you go into the dream book and look up “naked,” “island,” “dancer,” and maybe, just to cover your bases, “summer,” “Star Trek,” and “pretzel.” You find the three-digit numbers associated with those items, which you take to the nearest 7-Eleven, buy several Powerball tickets containing those numbers, and win diddly squat. That's basically how the dream book works. Oh, and the cover was painted by mid-century paperback artist Gene Bilbrew. Almost forgot to mention him.

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Vintage Pulp May 4 2016
THE ART OF BURLESQUE
Mid-century paperbacks and the many sides of erotic dance.


We've seen more paperback covers featuring dancers than we can count. No surprise—they are after all an essential element of crime fiction, and many of the covers depicting them are excellent. But as you might imagine, novels that feature strippers, showgirls, and burlesque dancers as characters also fall into the sleaze genre quite often, which in turn makes for a lot of low budget cover work. So we have the full range for you today in a collection depicting the kinetic art of stage dancing, with illustrations from Bernard Safran, Robert Maguire, Robert McGinnis, Gene Bilbrew, Doug Weaver, and others, as well as numerous unknowns. Enjoy.

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Vintage Pulp Feb 24 2016
SOMETHING BREWING
He cooked up a different formula for paperback art.
 
Gene Bilbrew is one of those illustrators whose art seems at first glance below the usual standard, but he had a strong style, and the more you look at it the more you see it as the purposeful product of a unique talent. Like the work of leftfield illustrator Eric Stanton, Bilbrew's paintings eschew realism of any sort and instead strive to catch the eye, achieving the ultimate goal of commercial art. Check out the assortment below. 
 
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Next Page
History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
March 19
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived.
1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight
During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service.
March 18
1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe
Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane.
1965—Leonov Walks in Space
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod's airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk.
March 17
1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
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