Nafzinger connection

A Few weeks back I spoke of the Ray Nafzinger-Agnes Best Nafzinger connection, or what I thought maybe one.  I have since read "The Spell of the Turquoise" By Agnes Nafzinger From March 1954 issue of Love Book Magazine a Popular Publication its pictured in my earlier post on Love pulps, great cover of a blonde with compact.  The Story is one of a unnamed state in the south-west with a dude ranch and a very old turquoise mine found by the grandfather of the present day owner.  OK, the real story is between two woman, an old flame and his "best friend" and two other men who try to get the mine.  Very nice descriptions of the mine and a quality story too. 

Not much info was found by me on the Ray/Agnes deal but did find this<http://www.amazon.com/Colorados-Buried-Treasure-Bancroft-Booklets/dp/0933472161> on a book Agnes helped with, published in 1976, it sounds so much like the story in Love Book, the reviews seem to verify this too.  Seems that Agnes knew her stuff about that sort of activity.  Anyway figure she could be Rays daughter/wife being the age difference is a lot, he was most likely born in 1902 or so, he passed in 1946 and his first stories appeared in 1922 in Peoples Pulp with "Jes a Little Josh".  Matter of fact his first 3 publications were for Peoples and the next bunch for Ace High, seemed they were all westerns.  So that makes him maybe 20 or so writing for the pulps and then didn't live very long either.  But just a guess, there is no birthday given for him. An other bit of info comes from The Pulp Vault #14, an article written by J. Edward Leithead another excellent pulp western writer, gives his starting date at Ace High as 1924.  He said he was the youngest  guy there followed by Nafziner.  Leithead started out at the same time, he doesn't give his age but the photo of him looks like he's in his twenties. Given the date of the Colorado buried treasure book 1976, I guess it could he his daughter or wife, but lean toward it being his wife with the Best Nafzinger name, like my wife's name her maiden name and mine. She Started writing in 1943 for All Story Love and then for Rangeland Romances and what looks like the last year of Rays life 3 collaborations with him "I love Organ Music" from The Saturday Evening Post 1945, "Papa Played the Cello" from Colliers 1945, and "Lady Nightingale" from The Sat. Ev. Post 1947.  Seems a musical connection too.  So interesting stuff, but, nothing concrete, both were very good writers and I plan on reading some Ray Nafziner stuff in the near future, maybe some Holiday type of western would be good. 

Halloween Pulp Stories

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As you can see I'm ready for some horror stories and most of all the H P Lovecraft stories contained in Weird Tales for Nov. 1938. Its a reprint from the Wolverine Nov. 1921 a fanzine out of Detroit, MI.  I look forward to the other stories as well, including: The Hound of Pedro by Robert Bloch, Lynn Foster is Dead by Seabury Quinn, The Thing in the Trunk by Paul Ernst and even a Robert E. Howard poem!  Can't beat the A R Thileburn cover of  I found Cleopatra by Kelley, too bad its only PT. 1.  OK, it was a find I made in an old store, and no not for 5 buck either, but a good trade for some Good House Keeping from the 30's and some other comics as well.  I got about 30 pulps, including these 2 Weird Tales. 

The next issue, March 1938 has a fine M Brundage  cover, and some awesome interior illo's, especially for the Jules de Grandin story by Seabury Quinn, and is the cover feature as well.  The Lovecraft story is Beyond the Wall of Sleep, and contains a ton of other great material such as:
The Ancient Mariner an illustrated poem  by Virgil Finlay, a Robert E Howard poem, The Thing on the floor by Thorp McClusky, Dreadful Sleep by Jack Williamson, Shadow on the screen by Kuttner.  Great tales of wonder if you ask me.  What are you all gonna read for the Trick or Treat season?

Real World Pulp Finds

Here's some real world finds that I located out in W.Virgina one my way home, nothing too exciting, but to me I find lots to dig into when I get new stuff, as I'm sure you all do too.  The Star Western is from Feb 1954, the cover artist is unknown to me, one thing to notice is above the title is Big Romances of the West, kind of sets the tone of the issue.  As you can see from this fine illustration that these are not your push over women, like my wife says "built to pull plows".  The second story by Dan Kirby, Night Rider, has a opening blurb to the effect of "Outlaw Jack McCord wanted a slim, Blonde, lovely Melissa more than anything.  And, Like everything else, he has to get her away from another man---at the point of a gun!"  The next story by William E Cook The Failure, has a opening line: "There was only one place a man could trust that double-crossing daughter of hell Dan Keene pursued--smug and tight and helpless--in somebody else's arms!"  I see a pattern of the kind of stories you or I are going to read.  

And here too, is something that I don't see everyday in a pulp mag: The Cattle Queen Pin-up!  Very cool, I must say, a lead into Lee Floren's Cattle Queens Die Proudly!  Finally, my favorite artist over at Standard pubs in the Dec. 1952 issue of Texas Rangers Gerald McCann who illustrates Giles A Lutz' Throw Lead Or Die. I haven't read any of his work, but look forward to that one.  The lead off story of the Rangers is by Peter Germano writing under the Jackson Cole name, the story is Land Of The Lost.  Other stories are by Robert Horton with the Wedding Gift and Gordon Shirreffs' Face of Fear. The cover by Sam Cherry is a classic boarding of the bat wings!  Over all a nice find, look forward to some more reading. 

Really great $1 Pulpls!

OK, I know what your thinking, man, Love pulps, but 'cha know pretty good reads and I was attracted to one of my favorite writers for Dime Mystery Francis K.Allan. He had one novel in Love Novels April 1954, called All My Tomorrows.  Which to me sounds like a soap opera.  But the story which I had to read was very good, about a singers agent finding his best singer on the porch of his building.  But, she has a secret of course.  Allan's stories in Dime Mystery would have had a weird twist, but this one turns out  well.  And, oddly enough, I find that looking at the Fiction Mags site that he has another name he writes under, Joe Kent, and he has another story in the same issue, The Girl He Wouldn't Believe.  The illustrations on the Tomorrows story is excellent as you can see, and to me, it looks like Gerald McCann, he did a lot of fine drawings for early 50's Ranch Romances and for some reason Vince Colleta comes to mind here too. He did a lot of romance comics with ghost pencil guys.  I dunno, looked at Who's Who and doesn't say much about pulp art, but he did work at Better Pubs, probably on the comics end doing Popular Romance and Thrilling Romances in the 50's. 

I do like the cover art very much here also, not only wonderful art, beautiful women, and all unsigned, which must have been Popular Pubs way of doing business.  They more likely didn't want other publishers to steal away thier talent.  Its amazing to me that these are all Popular mags, they must have had great distribution in this area, I run across their western pulps all the time too.  On the other had, I don't run into Popular's detective, mystery or adventure pulps in the real world much.  I suppose I wouldn't get them for a buck each anyway. 

Francis K Allan had another good story in this last batch of pulps, Dangerous Lady from Brooklyn, about an ex-sports star turned editor who helps a girl with unusual ideas of traffic control. Nice read and good art and title lettering. 

I notice that Agnes Best Nafzinger has a story, The spell of Turquoise in the March 1954 issue of Love Book, its a novel cover featured.  Seems as if she is a relative of Ray Nafzinger, as she writes with him on several stories  in Colliers and Saturday Evening post.  She writes in Love Book on her own, and most of her stories for Ranch Romances. Another reason, I think that can link the two of them together is that Ray lived in New Mexico and the Turquoise story made me put 2 and 2 together, OK, it may not have anything to do with that, but interesting.  Always good mystery stuff going on in the pulps! 

Action : Adventure : Treasure Trove

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That's what I saw this week hunting up some pulps when I had some time.  I was at this antique store and notice the above looking out at me from a rack of magazines.  Being the good pulp hunter that I think I am, pulled it out to find this great mag.  Sea Story Anthology #1 and only, 1948, Street and Smith publication.  Filled with great stories of the sea,  and mind you some excellent western writers too!  Ernest Haycox, and Tom Roan are here as well as better know sea writers, Linclon Colcord, Albert R. Wetjen, and James F. Dwyer.  Most of the stories are reprinted from the 20's, but some good ones none the less.  I read the Roan story because I had to know how he would handle a sea tale, it does have a tendency to read like a western, right down to his use of the words savvy and gat (which is more like a later detective term, the story is hard to put a time to). Either way a good story.  The cover by H. C. Murphy, is an excellent painting, being that he died in 1931, was probably used on a early Sea Story cover.  The cover at one time was a nice slick paper, but after 64 years has faded somewhat.  The whole mag is printed on what looks to be coloring book paper and about the size too!  Dunno, I really like the bed-sheet size pulps like this.

 And, speaking of  bedsheets, the mag,

 I found next to this was nice too, a Blue Book December 1947 it was a cover-less copy, but tucked into the mag was the cover!  And, just to set everything off the price on the Blue Book was Free!  OK, the price on the Sea Stories was $1, yup, a buck!  Man, can't beat that!  I just love these Blue Books, Bed Sheet size, cover by Stoops covering his states issues, this one on New Jersey.  The stories are  just amazing to me, I mean to start off with Theodore Goodridge Roberts' Strike Hard! Bite Deep!  The Quest of the Mazed Knight in ancient Britain/ King Arthur's day.  Its the first story I'm gonna read here and there are some others too. The illustration is by Frederick Chapman, very nice, he worked largely for Woman's Home Companion and The American.  Other stories here include Grandpa and the Werewolf by Georges Surdez, The Golden Cup By H. Bedford-Jones a cool looking story about clipper ships and the China Trade, but the most interesting story is by Ross De Lue called The Flight of the XS-102 a SF story with great illos  by Wilson Thomson, don't know much about him, or de Lue.  Should be a good read.  Finally in this issue, there looks to be a wonderful story by the prolific Wilbur S. Peacock  called A Gambler's Reputation with some great drawings by one of my favorite artist for Blue Book, John Russel Fulton, I can't look at Blue Book without thinking of his work, so good.

I just love Fulton's dry Brush technique and I like the use of color too, it adds some depth to the black and white drawing.  I like to think that Fulton added the color, but suspect that they had a color guy or gal doing that.  Check out his women, especially the one with the fan in the foreground, man that's good!  I've read, I think in the Mike Ashly story of Blue Book in Pulp Vault #14 that Fulton was fazed out because he had an old fashion style, whoever thought that was a good idea, I will never know, these drawing he did are fantastic, and will never be anything but outstanding in the world of illustrations, IMO. Be sure to check out his Facebook page his grandsons have put up for him, some great information and a photo of him working at a painting can be seen there. 

Next time the rest of the pulps from the very same store....all at a buck a piece! 

Judge Magazine finds.

I ran across these 8 issues of Judge at a flea market a few weeks back, and although not much on the pulp magazine side, some really awesome illustrations like this one from Orson Lowell from the  Dec. 16 1922 issue, the feature is The Original Christmas Eve.  Beautiful painting by Lowell, gotta love naked Eve with a clothed Adam.  Lowell was born in 1871 and lived until 1956, most of his work was for Judge, Life, American Girl, around the turn of the century.  He had an excellent pen and ink style, like Gibson and James Mongomery Flagg, but I think he was better than both.  His work had got some humor and warmth to it.  Here is an example of his pen and ink style from March 10 1923 issue of Judge.
The caption reads: A Tired businessman between the acts of a mystery, "tell me who did it so I won't have to go back".  Beautiful work I think, anyway I have two originals on my walls here.  This issue is the mystery issue, so thats the one of the 8 I read and has some pulp ties.  The first story is by Fairfax Downey who wrote for Blue Book, Argosy, and Adventure, writes a humor piece of what happens when you take a girl to a murder mystery.  Other stories and the editorial are of the humor variety, interesting stuff.  Some other artist here, John Held, who did some excellent flapper/jazz age drawings, and James M. Flagg doing some odd humor stuff, he was better know for stuff in Good Housekeeping and the WW! poster of Uncle Sam I want you!  Poster.  Below is my original Lowell it was a piece he submitted to the Opening exhibit of the Art Center ( NY,NY), the title is Carrying the City Fashions back to Hickory Center.  Looks to be a humor spot possibly from Life Magazine, its huge, 3 x4 FEET! Done on two pieces of paper.  Very cool, too bad the photo is so-so.  Its amazing the detail he gets from a pen!  Finally at the bottom is a nice cover for the July 14 1923 cover for Judge, its by Robert Patterson, he did work for Life and French Vogue, he studied as did Lowell, at the Art Institute of Chicago, very stylized stuff and a wonderful cover artist.  Any of you have opinions on these wonderful illustrators?

Charles Beckman Jr. stories from my collection, all good reads.  The first one I read was the Manhunt  Dec. 1953 a attractive cover by Uppwall featuring  the David Goodis story Black Pudding a story of revenge, a dish served cold.  A very good story about a guy who does time for another gangster and the gangster steals his wife and waits for him to get out and lead him to the loot.  The story by Beckman is Killing on Seventh St. a story of a man, who just lived his life until he's praised for killing a would be robber.  He finds himself turned on by what the hood does to his wife and you know where that leads... Seems a bit like the Spicy pulps when you read Manhunt.  There is another story here called Wife Beater by Roy Carrol, with a strange twist, not unforeseen, but, another sexual tale of the Spicy variety, heck makes Spicy Detective reading seem tame at times. 

The next story from Detective Tales April 1952 with the distinctive Norm Saunders Cover, has the Beckman story A Dead Mans Chest a short story about another guy who gets out a jail and  looks for his hidden treasure, but is beaten to it in a strange way by his partner.  I like his hard boiled writing, and his locations, like Corpus Cristi, TX. of which Charles knows something about, being a native.  Nice details like his study of sea shells, adds to the story.  Beckman works a lot into  9 pages.  He was well respected by the editor at Popular Pubs as he did get cover credit.  The interior art is excellent, none signed, but I think a lot of it is by Gerald McCann who you can look up at David Saunders fine site Field Guide to pulp artists.  McCann is a fine artist, who did work in the comics, like Classics Illustrated, and I have a lot of his work in Ranch Romances, which also features some nice art by Ray Kinstler, another blog sometime. Another good tale in this issue by Richard Sale Blind Ad for Murder, is very good, a great murder frame up.  Its a reprint from Detective Tales 1938, still a very good, hard to put down novelette. 

The final story in the last issue of Dime Mystery December 1949 with the Beckman story Run, Cat, Run.   A Johnny Nickle Jazz tale, is an excellent short about a Jazz trumpeter, who records the greatest tune, the best of the best, and then it begins to haunt him...cool story.  There is a reissue of Honky Tonk Gal by Charles Beckman that has been put out by Wildside Press, that would be a good read also with Johnny Nickle.  In addition the Boeckman's his real name( and Patti his wife), have a book out featuring most of the above collecting all of his crime stories.