What to do. Yes, she’s a circus freak whose arms come directly out of her ribcage, but it’s not as if I’m perfect.
Steve Harragan isn’t only the author of Side-Show Girl—he’s its main character. Harragan, aka Bart Carson, aka William Maconachie wrote eleven thrillers starring himself in two years, including Cuban Heel. Side-Show Girl is set at Coney Island and gives Harragan a murder to solve that pits him against deadly lions, a murderous strongman, the hall of mirrors, the dangerously high rollercoaster, etc. It was the first of the Harragan series, coming in 1952.
The only better thing than vintage sleaze is double the vintage sleaze. Above, two cool double novels, front and back covers, from Universal Publishing & Distributing Corp., part of their Giant series, editions 4 and 7, early 1950s. Since we have two double novels here, it's actually four times the vice, but you get the idea. Steve Harragan, by the way, is both the author and main character of Dope Doll and The Bigamy Kiss, as well as other books, and was actually a Brit named William Maconachie. We’ll get back to him. The art here is uncredited.
American horndog experiences sharp cut in growth. Above is the cover of the 1953 gringo-in-Havana thriller Cuban Heel by Steve Harragan, aka Bart Carson, née William Maconachie, which finds the lead character tangled up in political intrigue as well as the arms of a local beauty. We really like the title of this one, because the fact that a Cuban heel is literally a style of boot heel makes it a nice play on words. We also really like the art, which is by that master illustrator Uncredited. We know a bit more about the author, but as with so many pseudonyms, the story behind Harragan/Carson/Maconachie is a bit convoluted. We may return to it at some point, but not today.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1921—Chanel No. 5 Debuts
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel, the pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired styles, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion, introduces the perfume Chanel No. 5, which to this day remains one of the world's most legendary and best selling fragrances. 1961—First American Reaches Space
Three weeks after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard completes a sub-orbit of fifteen minutes, returns to Earth, and is rescued from his Mercury 3 capsule in the Atlantic Ocean. Shepard made several more trips into space, even commanding a mission at age 47, and was eventually awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. 1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed. 2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments.
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