Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks — The Coolness of the Past

Welcome this Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks Blog.  The purpose of this blog is to post some hot, cool paperback covers for the gaze of your eye sockets, and to review and discuss selected titles.

Most of the titles will be from Don Elliott, Lauren Beauchamp, David Challon, Mark Ryan  (all pen names of Robert Silverberg), Gerrold Watkins and Mel Johnson (pen names of Barry N. Malzberg), as “notes” toward the two monographs I am writing, one on Malzberg and one on Silverberg and his pen names.

(But I will discuss others too as I go along — Joan Ellis, March Hastings, Andrew Shaw [aka Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake], Don Bellmore, etc etc.]

I wanted to write a short monograph or essay on the Don Elliott/Laoren Beauchamp books, as they were/are of high quality, compared to many books of the time or even erotica today.  They also exhibit Silverberg’s early style. But I was uncertain where such an essay or book would find a home — best here on the net.

I have discussed Barry Malzber’s US-era Olympia Press titles under his name and Gerrold Watkins in a monograph, Barry N.  Malzberg: Beyond Science Fiction, Toward Psychoanalysis (Borgo Press) due out late 2009, but I do not have 3 of the Watkins and none of the Johnson (Midwood Books) that are hard to find…as I do locate them, I will post a blog here.

Some Midwoods by Loren Beauchamp

Loren Beauchamp was Robert Silverberg’s female pen name at Midwood Books, writing at the same time as working for Nightstand, although neither publisher knew he was doing double-duty, as Silberbob was going through the Scott Meredith Agency with Midwood; his real identity was a secret (he also wrote as David Challon and Mark Ryan  for Bedstand/Bedtime Books, L.T. Woodward and Walter C. Brown for Monarch Books, Lancer Books, and Beacon; and at Nightstand did a few as house names John Dexter and J.X. Williams — a busy mofo!).

Many of these Midwood books were illustrated by Paul Rader, who died in obscurity but is now considered one of the masters of sleaze pop art Americana.

As David Challon —

From Lynn Munroe’s site:

Harry Shorten came from the Midwood section of Brooklyn NY. With his partner, artist Al Fagaly, Shorten made his fortune with a comic strip called THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW. Shorten thought up the ideas and Fagaly would do the drawings. Looking around for somewhere to invest all the money he was making from his cartoon, Shorten decided to become a paperback book publisher. He looked at the success of Beacon Books, a series of slick cheap throwaway melodramas and sexy romances with flashy girlie art covers marketed to men and published by Universal Distributing. Shorten figured he could do the same, and at 505 8th Avenue in Manhattan, in 1957, he started a paperback book line named for his old neighborhood. The first batch of Midwood Books were either THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW paperbacks or unnumbered experimental forays in the Beacon style. By Midwood 7 in 1958, the authors and artists we recognize as Midwood Books were in place. Midwood 7 is by Loren Beauchamp and has a cover by Rudy Nappi, Midwood 8 is by Sheldon Lord and has a cover by Paul Rader. Shorten was getting his early manuscripts from the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, where Meredith’s band of employees and clients were soon churning out a book a month for Nightstand Books, too. And he was getting his cover paintings from the Balcourt Art Service, the same agency that supplied many of the covers for Beacon.