 So I thought to myself, why stop at my lips? I had plenty of lipstick and I was bored with this gold colored dress so I just kept going.  
This is top quality George Gross art fronting R.R. McCollum's 1951 novel Passion Has Red Lips. You'll notice once again that trick of subtly phallic content in the art. Just look at the guy and the bottle he's holding that seems ready spill at any moment. This was published by Rainbow Books, a company renowned for its brilliant cover art. You can see more amazing examples by clicking its keywords below.
 Sorry about that. But since you caught me looking—in my opinion the black bustier and thong were much more flattering. 
Writing as woman wasn't uncommon for male sleaze authors, so it's no surprise 1951's Wild Is the Woman was written by a man inhabiting the pen name Laura Hale. The question is who was the man? Some sources say the author was Fredric Lorenz, but The Catalog of Copyright Entries—Third Series: 1951, which is old fashioned paper info scanned to an archive, says it was Lawrence Heller. They seem to be same person, with Lorenz serving as another pseudonym used by Heller. Now the question is who painted the cover? Unfortunately, nobody can say definitively, but we'd bet a lot of cash it's George Gross.
 So those four cards with A's on them mean you might win, right? 
First published as an Ecstasy Novel with different art the previous year, this edition of Reno Tramp, appeared in 1951 on the Rainbow Books imprint with uncredited art. But the cover is by either Howell Dodd or Rudy Nappi, two artists whose work was similar, though we think Dodd tended to be a hair more precise—literally, as he expended more effort on his women's coiffures, in our opinion. In any case, the story in Reno Tramp deals with a girl from an impoverished childhood who arrives in Reno, Nevada as a beautiful young woman seeking a divorce, and whose need for money is a pathological drive. She finds just the rich pigeon she wants, but naturally another man comes along to complicate matters and make her question whether cash is really king. We'll keep an eye out for updated info and see if we can identify this cover artist down the line. In the meantime, you can see more from Dodd here, and Nappi here.
 Red-headed femme fatale looks mighty familiar. 
Gary Lovisi's guide to mid-century paperback cover art Dames, Dolls and Delinquents: A Collector's Guide to Sexy Pulp Fiction attributes this cover to George Gross but many online sources say it's the work of Howell Dodd. Though the internet is incredibly useful for replicating errors, we think the onliners are right this time. While the femme fatale here has some Gross-like elements to her, she has some Dodd traits too. For instance, Dodd's hair is a bit more sculptural than Gross's and his women's faces tend to be more severe. And speaking of faces, we think we know this one. Doesn't it belong to legendary red-headed actress Ann Sheridan? Yup, it's her—right down to the little bump in her classic nose. And he used her more than once, we think. A basically identical face appears in several other pieces of his. We're taking full credit for this discovery. Unless of course we're wrong, in which case we deny making any Sheridan related statements. Hey, if it works for presidential candidates it can work for us, right? 
 It’s true I’m a little devil. But by morning you’ll say I made you see God. 
And now for some beautiful art to wipe the memory of Rope Cosmetology from our heads. Above is a George Gross cover for Nora’s No Angel by Tom Stone, aka Florence Stonebraker, aka Ted Stratton. This came from Rainbow Books and you can see that Gross has his femme fatale dressed in the same style of off-the-shoulder drawstring blouse we pointed out before. 1951 copyright.
 Aw, don’t fret. Sure, you're corrupt, but you still protect a few people, and you’re about to serve me right now. 
This excellent cover art for Vice Cop is uncredited but it’s very likely by Howell Dodd, he of the bombshell redheads. The art was reused in a slightly cleaned up version for a Phantom Books edition, and the two are worth comparing. Have a look here. Author Mark Reed was aka Norman A. Daniels. We’ll get back to him.
 Dammit! First he goes after the sword swallower and now that contortionist. What do these women have that I don’t?  
Carnival of Passion, written by Val Munroe and published in 1952. The excellent art is by George Gross.
 They got on like a hayloft afire—until the barn burned down. 
In pulp, people are careless with cigarettes, as we’ve pointed out before, and above is another example. Originally published in 1937 as Too Smart for Love, Rainbow Books came out with this digest paperback in 1951. The set-up here is simple—bad girl Janet Stang pursues men for their money. Author Kathryn Culver was in reality the prolific Davis Dresser, who also wrote as Brett Halliday, Don Davis, Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, et.al. The art here is by Howell Dodd and it’s top quality work, in our opinion. Dodd had a thing about redheads and made them a staple of his work, so we’re going to gather up a collection of these women and show you more later.
 Say handsome, you wanna play connect the dots? 
Above, a truly excellent cover for David Wade’s Walk the Evil Street, published in 1960. Rainbow Books had a habit of not crediting art, so we have several suspects for this one, but sadly, no perpetrator.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1947—Journey of the Kon-Tiki Ends
Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into a reef in the Tuamotu Islands after a 4300 mile (7000 kilomteter) journey from South America. Heyerdahl was attempting to prove —in rather circuitous fashion—that South American natives were descended from Pacific Islanders. 1945—First Nuclear Weapon Is Used on Hiroshima
Hiroshima is leveled when the atomic bomb codenamed Little Boy is detonated over the city by the United States. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and tens of thousands more die in the months and years ahead due to burns and radiation poisoning. 1962—Nelson Mandela Jailed
Thanks mainly to intelligence-sharing efforts from the CIA, South African police are able to locate and arrest Nelson Mandela, who is imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort. He would spend his next twenty-seven years imprisoned, most of them on Robben Island, where he and other inmates performed hard labour in a lime quarry. 1962—Marilyn Monroe Found Dead
Global screen icon Marilyn Monroe, who had starred in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch, is found dead in her Brentwood, California home of acute barbiturate poisoning. Her death sets off a frenzy of conspiracy theories that continue to swirl even today. |
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