Eight! Nine! Nine and a half! Nine and five-eighths! Get up! I'm bought off but I can't be obvious! You think I'm a Supreme Court justice or something?
This Dutch paperback cover was painted by an unknown, but we love it. It fronts Judson P. Philips' De gouden handscheon. “Handschoen” is a pretty easy translation if you think literally—handshoe. But what the hell is a handshoe? *checking internet* In Dutch it means “glove.” Makes perfect sense. What do they call a condom? *checking internet* Sadly, it isn't “dickshoe.” Anyway, Philips was a pseudonym for Hugh Pentecost, and this was published by Uitgeverij de Combinatie in 1948.
Update: Same day update, actually, which should give you an idea how much time we spend poking around for information. Turns out the above cover was adapted from a 1936 issue of the pulp magazine Argosy. The art is signed by John A. Coughlin. Also note that Judson P. Philips has a story in the issue. That leads to the reasonable conclusion that De gouden handschoen is a Dutch translation of that story typeset to paperback length.
Whew! Thanks to my diet I just barely made weight for this race.
Since it seems to be Triple Crown season in the U.S., we thought we'd share this cover for Murder Clear, Track Fast from the incredibly prolific U.S. author Judson Philips. He wrote more than one hundred mysteries as himself, Hugh Pentecost, and Philip Owen. This one is set in the horse racing town of Saratoga, New York, where a lawyer named Don Channing is hired by a local luminary to prove her sportsman son was murdered by his beautiful wife. Complications ensue when Channing falls for the widow, and the murder turns out to be tied up in the racing culture of the town. It was published in 1961, and this Penguin paperback came in 1967 with unusual but brilliant cover art by Bernard Lodge.
She’s Andressing you with her eyes.
European publishers, like Italy’s Tecnografica, often used celebrities on their book covers. Here’s a favorite example—Swiss actress Ursula Andress on the cover of the illustrated giallo Invito alla violenza, by Hugh Pentecost, aka Judson Pentecost Phillips, aka Phillip Owen. The shot is from a 1965 photo series, another frame of which appeared in Spain’s Triunfo magazine. We don’t know whether the series was shot for Triunfo and rented by Tecnografica, or vice-versa. Possibly neither. It could have been shot as a promo series and sold to both Triunfo and Tecnografica. Alternatively, maybe Tecnografica simply appropriated the image. We only suggest that because we can’t think of any reason Ursula Andress would have needed to gnaw grass on the cover of a cheapie giallo three years after she appeared in Dr. No. Maybe we’ll find out the answer to that one later. In the meantime, we’re working on an aggregate post of celeb covers, which we’ll get up soon.
Update: Rafael wrote in with this: I suggest that these are promotional photos for 4 for Texas (USA 1963), freely appropriated by magazines everywhere.
And indeed he is right. Once we knew the movie we found many more promo shots of Andress wearing the same outfit. 4 for Texas also starred Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, as well as Anita Ekberg, which all sounds worthwhile to us. We will defnitely screen a copy of it. Thanks Rafael, for the help.
