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Sunday 29 December 2019

Rothvin Wallace - Editor, Author



I came across Rothvin Wallace’s name while reading The Cobra Woman in the Thrill Book, September 1 1919.




A quick search turned up an obituary which I thought was worth sharing.

A brief bio:

Born: February 23 1882 in Christiana, Pennsylvania
Died: November 14 1922 in Oceanport, New Jersey

Of interest to the readers of this blog, he wrote more than 30 stories for the pulps in his career from , 1910 to 1922, all for top magazines including People’s, Cavalier, New Story, Argosy, All-Story, Thrill Book, The Popular Magazine and Short Stories. Four serials in the Cavalier, none reprinted in book form.
Wallace Rothvin c. 1917
Rothvin Wallace c. 1917

Saturday 7 December 2019

J.C. Leyendecker exhibition of illustrations

Wondering what to do as vacation time approaches? Go to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, of course, and find out what these two are looking at.

Illustration by J.C Leyendecker


A new exhibition at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Leyendecker and the Golden Age of American Illustration, includes 42 original paintings and 101 Saturday Evening Post covers from the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island,  and the  American Illustrators Gallery in New York, NY., as well as other materials related to Leyendecker’s work in advertising throughout his five-decade career. Click here for tickets

A couple of photos from the exhibit:



If you go there, send me some photos :-). For those who can't go there in person, you know what they say: Those who can, travel. Those who can't, read a book

PS: If you're thinking of picking up a Leyendecker cover, be prepared to part with a serious amount of cash. A recent sale of a cover illustration for the Popular Magazine by Leyendecker fetched nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

Thursday 28 November 2019

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

As god is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!

Probably had a cover like this to blame.


Alberto Vargas cover for Burten's Follies, November 1933

Friday 22 November 2019

John Randolph Phillips - author bio online

I came across John Randolph Phillips' name when i was looking at an issue of  The Popular Magazine in the 1930s. At this time Popular was past its peak in the early 1900s-1919 or so, and was further handicapped by the death of its long time editor, Charles Agnew McLean, a couple of years earlier.

Even past its peak, it was still full of readable stories if not quite as exciting, as the rest of the general fiction pulps. John Randolph Phillip's Or Maybe Alaska (The Popular Magazine, August 1st, 1930) is an example of this. 
Or Maybe Alaska - Popular Magazine, August 1, 1930 - Story by John Randolph Phillips, illustration by George H. Wert
Or Maybe Alaska - Popular Magazine, August 1, 1930 - Story by John Randolph Phillips, illustration by George H. Wert

The story is told from the point of view of a teenager, Steve Walker, who's run away from home. Steve is currently working in a pool hall managed by a fat, ill-tempered man named Butch who withholds Steve's wages so that he can't walk away.

Into this setup walks a drifting bum, Wirt Coleman, who likes the kid - the affection is mutual and the kid tries to persuade Wirt to take him along on his drifting. Wirt refuses, telling Steve to go home. Wirt also beats Butch in pool games, and Butch decides to get his money back by cheating Wirt in a poker game, with Steve (who Wirt trusts) peeking at Wirt's cards and signalling Butch. Steve refuses, but is physically coerced into going along with Butch's plan. It won't be revealing too much to say that the story has a happy ending for both Steve and Wirt. Nothing outstanding, but nothing to complain about either.


John Randolph Phillips c. 1930 (Photo taken from the Scottsville, Virginia Museum)
John Randolph Phillips c. 1930 (Photo taken from the Scottsville, Virginia Museum)
Phillips' writing career is similarly unremarkable. He started writing fiction in 1928, placing 2 stories in Street and Smith's Sport Story. He followed this up with 15 and 21 stories in 1929 and 1930, and then dropped to 3-6 stories a year in the 1930s and 1940s. Til 1935, he was exclusively publishing in Street and Smith titles - Sport Story, Popular, Complete Stories, Excitement and Nick Carter. In 1935, he broke into Argosy and never appeared in Street and Smith pulps after the end of that year. 

In the 1940s, his output was mostly in the slicks (American Magazine, Collier's, Country Gentleman among them). In the 1950s, he published a story or two each year. His last story was for Chatelaine in 1967.

Click here to go to the author's bio on the Scottsville, Virginia museum's site.

Friday 8 November 2019

New blog for pulp deals

From time to time, I come across cool pulps for sale, that for one reason or another don't fit into my collection. Maybe it's a duplicate, maybe it's something i don't collect or very rarely it's a pulp i own and would like to sell. I thought you'd like to see and maybe even buy them. If you do buy them, I sometimes get a small commission.

You can find the blog at pulpdeals.blogspot.com or click on the Deals link at the top just below the blog's logo. More coming next week, keep checking back regularly or subscribe to the blog. I'll be posting rare titles like All-Story, Super-Detective and many others. Take a look, you might find something that interests you.

Currently listing a couple of All-Story issues with Edgar Rice Burroughs in them.




Know a cool pulp I'm missing? Leave a comment in a post or drop me a message at pulpflakes+deals AT gmail DOT com (Don't forget to replace AT with @ and DOT with .)


Saturday 31 August 2019

Pulpfest 2019 trip report - photos

Lot of the photos i took this year were out of focus, which is why you won't see as many pictures of the artwork as usual. Sorry about that, but enjoy what i do have; there's quite a few rare pulps that I've never seen earlier in person in a decade of collecting...

Dealers room





Artwork

Earle K. Bergey cover for Pep Stories



Sky Fighters cover


Norman Saunders cover for Mrs. Homicide by Day Keene


Harry Kirchner interior for Romantic Range


Charles L. Wrenn illustration


Harry T. Fisk cover for Outdoor Stories



Hamilton Greene cowboy illustration




Cover for Guns in the Valley by Paul Evan Lehman


H.W. McCauley interior for Day Keene story in Imagination


Rawhide Range by Ernest Haycox


Cover for The hinges of Hell by Stewart Sterling




Rare pulps

The Thrill book


Scotland Yard


Thrilling Tales


Nickel Detective


The Gang Magazine


Gang World


Western Adventures


Red Blooded Stories


How


Thrilling Stories



Thrilling Stories


Thrilling Stories


Under Fire


Detective Reporter


Brief Stories


Zoom!


Murder Mysteries


Blue Steel Magazine







Cool stuff around the dealers room
















Weird stuff

Necronomicon (Holding this book felt fleshy and squishy)



That's all folks, till next year.