Everyone except me ended up hospitalized, jailed, or married. So yeah, it was pretty wild.
Above: a Monarch Books paperback, Wild Weekend by Henry Ellsworh, about the throngs that flee New York City during summer weekends to the adjacent wilds, in this case to the Bacchus Inn, and the various intrigues and peccadilloes that result. It was published in 1963, and the art, while it resembles that of Robert Schultz, is uncredited.
In pulp you're always on the wrong side of the tracks.
We're train travelers. We love going places by that method. It's one of the perks of living in Europe. Therefore we have another cover collection for you today, one we've had in mind for a while. Many pulp and genre novels prominently feature trains. Normal people see them as romantic, but authors see their sinister flipside. Secrets, seclusion, and an inability to escape can be what trains are about. Above and below we've put together a small sampling of covers along those lines. If we desired, we could create a similar collection of magazine train covers that easily would total more than a hundred scans. There were such publications as Railroad Stories, Railroad Man's Magazine, Railroad, and all were published for years. But we're interested, as usual, in book covers. Apart from those here, we've already posted other train covers at this link, this one, this one, and this one. Safe travels.
*psst* I want you to stick your finger in my handhole, only I don't really mean finger or handhole.
The iconic sleaze publisher Midwood Books uses Robert Schultz art twice on covers for John Turner's Take Care of Me and Vin Fields' The Come On, 1963 and 1966 respectively, in which a woman makes clear in her not-so-subtle way what's on her mind. You can make a case that she's not actually simulating sex with her hands. We won't make that case though—we think the slight mispositioning of her finger merely provides enough wiggle room to deny the undeniable, probably a necessary precaution during an era when publishers were occasionally hauled into court on obscenity charges. We think this is a pretty daring piece of art.
The score was never in question. I'm a 10, and you're a zero.
Above, a nice Robert Schultz cover for the 1962 titillation novel I Know the Score, written by the curiously named Ort Louis. Surely Ort is a pseudonym, one that sounds like the noise a hungry seal makes, however he's also credited with 1963's The Pleasure and the Pain, and wrote for crime magazines such as Manhunt. So maybe he's a real person. We'll keep an eye out for more info.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1951—The Rosenbergs Are Convicted of Espionage
Americans Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage as a result of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. While declassified documents seem to confirm Julius Rosenberg's role as a spy, Ethel Rosenberg's involvement is still a matter of dispute. Both Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953. 1910—First Seaplane Takes Flight
Frenchman Henri Fabre, who had studied airplane and propeller designs and had also patented a system of flotation devices, accomplishes the first take-off from water at Martinque, France, in a plane he called Le Canard, or "the duck." 1953—Jim Thorpe Dies
American athlete Jim Thorpe, who was one of the most prolific sportsmen ever and won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball, dies of a heart attack. 1958—Khrushchev Becomes Premier
Nikita Khrushchev becomes premier of the Soviet Union. During his time in power he is responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, and presides over the rise of the early Soviet space program, but his many policy failures lead to him being deposed in October 1964. After his removal he is pensioned off and lives quietly the rest of his life, eventually dying of heart disease in 1971.
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