April 2005

--e*I*19- (Vol. 4 No. 2) April 2005, is published and © 2005 by Earl Kemp. All rights reserved.
It is produced and distributed bi-monthly through http://efanzines.com by Bill Burns in an e-edition only.

Contents -- eI19 -- April 2005

…Return to sender, address unknown….11 [eI letter column], by Earl Kemp

Reflections, editorial by Bill Burns

It’s Over, by Earl Kemp

Nightmare With a Queen…of Blood, by Charles Nuetzel

The Bitch Queen of Blood, by Earl Kemp

The Queen of Blood, by Forrest J Ackerman

Curious Couplings 1, by Earl Kemp

Finding Doug Weaver, by Brittany A. Daley

The Star of the East, by Earl Kemp

Last Call! Closing Time!, by Earl Kemp

Nostrilia Press: The Fannish Way to Publish, by Bruce R. Gillespie

I Remember Fred Fixler, by Gary Sohler

“TAWCE’d About….,” by Ryan Richardson

Fred Fixler – Mystery Artist at Last Unmasked, by Art Scott

The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, 'There's a Chaplain who never visited the front.'
               -- Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, pg. 182

THIS ISSUE OF eI is for Mr. Science Fiction, Forrest J Ackerman, and about time, too.

In the world of science fiction, it is also in memory of G.M. Carr, Jack Chalker, and Andre Norton, but most especially for dear old friend F.M. “Buz” Busby; a better fan never lived.

In the world of counterculture and gonzo journalism, it is also in memory of my hero Hunter S. Thompson. It was Thompson, with his acute appreciation of master criminal and superevil person Richard Nixon, who set the course for the way I approach my own memoirs. My piece “Fear and Loathing in Evanston,” in eI11 (December 2003), was an unstated tribute to his influence on me.

#

As always, everything in this issue of eI beneath my byline is part of my in-progress rough-draft memoirs. As such, I would appreciate any corrections, revisions, extensions, anecdotes, photographs, jpegs, or what have you sent to me at earlkemp@citlink.net and thank you in advance for all your help.

Bill Burns is jefe around here. If it wasn’t for him, nothing would get done. He inspires activity. He deserves some really great rewards. It is a privilege and a pleasure to have him working with me to make eI whatever it is.

Other than Bill Burns, Dave Locke, and Robert Lichtman, these are the people who made this issue of eI possible: Forrest J Ackerman, Robert Bonfils, Bruce Brenner, Brittany A. Daley, Bruce Gillespie, Elaine Kemp Harris, Erik Kemp, Miriam Linna, Lynn Munroe, Charles Nuetzel, Adam Parfrey, Ryan Richardson, Art Scott, Gary Sohler, Robert Speray, Jodi Walli, and Peter Weston.

ARTWORK: This issue of eI features original artwork by Harry Bell and recycled artwork by William Rotsler.

I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in church quite a lot).
               -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., "Fates Worse than Death: An Auotbiographical Collage of the 1980s"

By Earl Kemp

We get letters. Some parts of some of them are printable. Your letter of comment is most wanted via email to earlkemp@citlink.net or by snail mail to P.O. Box 6642, Kingman, AZ 86402-6642 and thank you.

Also, please note, I observe DNQs and make arbitrary and capricious deletions from these letters in order to remain on topic.

This is the official Letter Column of eI, and following are a few quotes from a few of those letters concerning the last issue of eI. All this in an effort to get you to write letters of comment to eI so you can look for them when they appear here.

Saturday January 29, 2005:

In the December issue of eI you ran a Milton Luros Science Fiction Cover Painting Archive [“Cherry Pink and Uncle Milty Time,” eI18 and it was very nice to see all those cover paintings together like that.

I’ve discovered two more Luros cover paintings, only they aren’t on science fiction pulp magazines, they’re on men’s magazines. One is from Man’s Life, July 1956 and the other from Real Men, November 1956. I’m sending them to you so your readers can enjoy them also.
                --Tony Jacobs

Thursday February 3, 2005:

Hey, the issue is GREAT!!!  (Of course, I've only skimmed over it -- other than Real Deep Study of mine, of course.)  The puffin you found was pretty much like the one I was gonna draw -- except that I was going to put a mask on it and label it 'Incognito.'  And I see you found covers, and lotsa info about Novel.  So I'm the recipient of mafia money, huh. . .?
                --Shelby Vick

Friday February 4, 2005:

Sunday February 6, 2005:

I note that you dedicate eI18 to, among others, my deceased friends Stieg Larsson and Sven Christer Swahn. A very nice gesture, and one I appreciate greatly and would like to thank you for.

As always, eI is a fanzine I read with great enjoyment and find myself hard up to comment on. Most of the texts are self-contained; good writing, interesting topics, more than a few insights and -- perhaps that is the comment which most easily does suggest itself -- an extremely refreshing reminder that the current wave of repressive moralism is reasonably not more than just a backlash, which will run its course and wither, as it should. But while we're wallowing in it, it can break your heart. This last week, two of the major news items in Sweden have concerned first, a experimental theater project centered on children's perceptions of sexuality, where students from the Stockholm Institute of Drama have confronted kids from six to twelve with different sexually charged experiences (in one instance, a drama student read a very short story about two small girls engaging in oral sex; in another, kids were played a sound recording of an intercourse); and second, a direct-mail campaign by a German liquor manufacturer who has sent very small sample bottles of his product to a number of Swedes. In both cases, police investigations are now underway, since numerous Outraged Citizens have complained to the authorities -- in the first case, accusing the drama students of sexual molestation of children, in the second, accusing the liquor company of breaking the Swedish alcohol monopoly laws and inciting to illegal consumption of liquor. The direction in which Sweden is moving otherwise can, perhaps, be inferred from a third news item, also appearing this week but causing virtually no public outcry at all, as opposed to the two other: the Swedish attorney general is proposing a new law, by which "any person suspected of any crime the possible punishments for which include a prison sentence" (my italics) will be forced to give a DNA sample which will then be kept in a national criminal DNA library. Obviously, about the only crimes where a prison sentence is not possible are spitting in the street and parking in an allowed space but without paying the fee; also obviously, if they want the spitter's or parker's DNA, they can always suspect them of committing their foul deeds under the influence of *gasp* illicit drugs. But this suggestion has by most been greeted as very helpful to the police. Which I'm sure it is.

Oh, well. I should have written many issues ago; I should have congratulated you on your birthday (I really did mean to, since your daughter kindly invited me to the celebrations and I, unfortunately but inevitably, had to decline); I should have stayed more in touch. What the hell. Keep up the excellent work and keep doing your excellent fanzine, for which I'll keep vainly voting in the Hugos.
                --John-Henri Holmberg

Thanks very much for the presentation of the Cordwainer Smith article. Love those Galaxy covers -- many are from an era slightly before I started buying Galaxy, so I've never seen the covers before.

However, it's hopeless trying to print out from an html file, so I will still appreciate having the PDF file from efanzines.com.
                --Bruce R. Gillespie

Saturday February 12, 2005:

LET IT B.E. ~ "Finding Bill Edwards" (revised)

Disappointment quickly replaced my glee over finding the Bill Edwards piece in e*I*18. My initial solution was to let the matter slide (after all, it's a short piece addressed to a small community about an obscure artist), but alas the author's omissions are too significant to ignore. The first and most important fact neglected was proper credit to the person who actually solved the B.E. puzzle: Eric Deutchman from, appropriately enough, the Show Me State. I'll admit L. Truman Douglas bears a passing resemblance, but really Eric's mug should be smiling back at us under the heading "Finding Bill Edwards."

Eric had the sort of good fortune that paperback collectors only DREAM of: being the sole heir to a vast archive of vintage smut paperbacks and magazines. Bequeathed by a distant uncle, this jaw-dropping collection almost went the way many other such collections have gone...to the dump. Eric sheepishly admitted to trashing one load before making the wise decision to investigate the outlandish notion that perhaps these books had some value. He quickly discovered this uncle -- whom he'd barely known -- had left him a treasure trove. eBay seller "showmemags" was born.

Like so many newcomers to the genre (myself included), Eric enjoyed and absorbed and quickly learned to differentiate between different artists and their styles. While our tastes in cover artwork often didn't jibe, there were a couple imprints that we agreed had consistently top-notch artwork, and one such imprint was SABER. I told Eric that Saber, like Brandon House, had fantastic artwork that was unattributed or, in the case of Saber, credited to an artist known only as "B.E."

On a visit to Kayo Books in San Francisco, Ron Blum had shown me some original Parliament magazine pencil drawings that were -- without a doubt -- the work of the Saber artist. Many of the pieces bore the initials "B.E." Who was this B.E.? I wasn't the only one wondering....the collecting duo of Brittany Daley and L. Truman Douglas said they, too, were "on a quest" to put a name to the Saber artist. A few weeks later (June 2004), I told Brittany that Sanford Aday's daughter had provided me with a tantalizing lead (not matching the initials), though nothing to date had panned out.

Two months later (August 2004), I received the following e-mail from Eric Deutchman: "I've also discovered who B.E. is, I found his artwork in some of my old Knight mags from the early to mid ‘60s and he actually signed the work Bill Edwards. His telltale Mole on the cheek of his women and great legs. He's the artist that did so many of those 'Saber,' 'Vega.' and other PB covers." Eric followed up this e-mail with some scans which were indisputable proof that he'd found our man. I immediately dropped a line to Brittany and included the scans. She, in turn, Googled an artist bio that appeared to match THE Bill Edwards. That bio, written by Edwards' widow and posted on the Judith Hale Gallery website (http://www.judithhalegallery.com/featured_artists/artist_edwards.html), provides the word-for-word bulk of the "Finding Bill Edwards" article. Mrs. Edwards, like Eric Deutchman, is not credited.

Sorry for the long letter...the facts compelled me to set the record straight. Eric Deutchman was astute enough to notice and kind enough to share and, more than anyone else, he deserves the "hats off" for cracking the B.E. code. I only wish Bill Edwards (R.I.P. 1999) could've been around to enjoy some fan mail.
                --Ryan Richardson

Sunday February 13, 2005:

Immensely enjoyable as I find your ezines, I have never had occasion to comment until now, and it is a suggestion rather than a "fact".

In your newest ezine, rich brown (page 5) mentions a TV interview where a "WW1 fighter ace" on the (US) This Is Your Life, told the joke about fokkers and messerchmits. While I cannot prove this did not happen, it would seem to be overly coincidental that this happened on a _ British _ TV chat show only a few years ago. A Liverpool comedian, Stan Boardman, was being interviewed by Des O'Connor, a singer-turned-chat-show-host. He began to tell the joke, and the nervous laughter and silence became greater the longer he went on... it was obvious he couldn't _ not _ go on, but just as obvious he wished he hadn't started. When he came to the punchline, "..those Fokkers were Messerschmitts," Des immediately jumped in, asked the audience for a round of applause, and went straight to commercial.

Boardman was never asked onto the show again (or any other chatshow for that matter), and was attacked in the media, as was the show for not stopping him, but the show was "live," which made it almost impossible to do so.

Why he told the joke at the time (8.30 pm on a family show), God only knows, 'cos I don't think Boardman does.
                --Ian Covell

Saturday February 19, 2005:

I managed to pull two different kinds of homesicknesses out of eI18. Rich Coad's piece brought back a rush of associations with San Francisco. I was born and raised there, but rarely get over to that side of the bay, now that I am settled in Oakland. (I don't work any more, so I can't write about walking to work, but I'm tempted to try something similar about jogging to my gym in downtown Oakland.) The other nostalgia-provoking piece was Bruce Gillespie's introductions to Cordwainer Smith. I'd forgotten what a really fine magazine the Galaxy of that era was. Bruce's writing and the cover shots brought it back vividly.

Then there is rich brown's piece. He does go on a bit, but I can understand why he is steamed. I would be too in a similar situation. In her comments, Cheryl comes across way too much as someone who lives in a tall tower, and would rather not be disturbed by voices from the sweaty, roiling mobs in the street below. This may not be her actual attitude, but it's what the words convey.
               --Jack Calvert

Friday March 11, 2005:

I saw a photo of Billy Pettit in an issue of Arnie Katz’ Vegas Fandom Weekly, perusing a copy of Sin-A-Rama. Nothing was revealed about his own thoughts on the book… I hope he had the chance to talk to you when he was in Las Vegas.

A little news I am quite happy with…2005 FAAn Awards, given out at Corflu Titanium in San Francisco February 27, 2005, picked me as Best Letterhack.

Murray Moore brought my certificate back from San Fran, and presented it to me at our last First Thursday pubnight. I wasn’t happy with fandom for a while; I’m feeling a little better now. Next year’s Corflu will be in Toronto some time in April, and I am hoping to meet a lot of faces and apply them to the names I’ve seen for so many years.
               --Lloyd Penney.

Think a little! Don't be afraid of straining your brains. They won't break.
               --Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

Reflections

by Bill Burns

It all started so innocently. I created eFanzines.com in December 2000 as a central resource for science fiction fanzine editors to publish on line. My thought was that freed from the need to set up web space and learn HTML, editors would be encouraged to put their work before a wider audience, and indeed that’s what has happened.

Meanwhile, some old time fan named Earl Kemp emerged from a 37-year gafiation and started contributing to the SF email lists. He wanted to create a tribute page to the late fan artist Bill Rotsler (whose work enlivens every issue of eI), and asked if I’d help him put it together. Of course I agreed, and the result was "…be forgot, and never….", an on-line re-creation of a Rotsler portfolio which Earl first published in his fanzine SaFari in 1965.

Earl’s next project was another reprint from SaFari, this time a Hannes Bok Christmas portfolio entitled Feliz Navidad, published on line in December 2001.

These first ventures into on-line publishing fired Earl’s enthusiasm, and in January 2002 he emailed me:

“I got up yesterday morning with the strongest compulsion to produce an ezine. I really had to fight against it and the funny part is, I hadn't even given the subject a passing thought.

 “I grabbed paper and pen and began noodling around with a masthead and fought off writing an editorial.

 “Today is a different story. The compulsion is still here and, if I allow it to grow at all, it will take a lot of help from you.

“The way I think of it is sort of like what you have already done for me, but different. I've rejected the thought of pages, and think of it as one long continuous sheet of paper for each issue and I think of it as being maybe a quarterly at best.

“The main reason why I am thinking about an ezine is because most of whatever it is I think I have to say is not interesting to most other people or most younger people who don't remember anything about any of it to begin with.

“So, Bill, is this a way to start a year or what?”

Well, Earl’s concept has lasted into its fourth year so far, through 19 issues of eI and over 1500 pages of incredibly valuable articles on the history of science fiction, fandom, and the sleaze industry, and how they were interconnected. Much of this material is first-hand, from the writers, artists, and editors who were there, and would surely have been lost without Earl’s encouragement. And that’s not to mention eI’s portfolios, archives, and bibliographies, which will be a major resource for researchers in years to come.

Earl spends most of his time between the bi-monthly issues of eI prodding, poking, and cajoling his contributors to create their best material. Then once every two months a CD containing a couple of hundred assorted images and anything up to a hundred thousand words of text drops in my mailbox, and I put the issue together. eI is electronic publishing at its finest, taking full advantage of the Internet for research, communication, collaboration, editing, and distribution. It’s exactly what I envisioned when I started eFanzines.com (although I don’t think I ever could have anticipated the range of content!), and I’m honoured to be associated with Earl and eI.

You stand outside a society and a culture and realize that it is an invention and that you can improve it.  Well, I like the American culture, such as it is, but let's get rid of the fucking guns.
               --Kurt Vonnegut

It’s Over*

By Earl Kemp

It’s over, and I’m not talking about waiting for Roy Orbison. Only for some reason I’m feeling like I’ve blown one of those too-brief, too-intense love affairs again. I’m weak and exhausted from the ordeal, limp from expended energy and expectations. Basking in the afterglow of orgasmic rushes of unfulfilled lusts.

It’s Firefly…it flickered its last incandescent glow and faded away…unfinished, the foreplay long and extensive, but no…no reward? No release? Prurient pleasure indefinitely postponed again.

There were numerous postings on the science fiction discussion lists on the Internet in the short-time past talking about Firefly, perhaps even raving about Firefly, and I did my best to not read them very carefully because I didn’t want any interference with my enjoyment, my interpretation, of viewing that attempted epic. I don’t even know where it appeared originally, or when.

For over a year now I’ve been off the satellite dish and exclusively onto DVDs for my evenings’ entertainments. And, I’ve been inundated in discs to watch, far more than I can ever view and a few of them are worth the time and effort spent to watch them.

And then came Firefly. When my friends got their 4-disc set containing all the episodes in the complete run of Firefly, and a few extra goodies, they watched it straight through in one continuous viewing. They started at 6 AM and finished at 10 PM.

And gave the DVDs to me along with abundant raves of their appreciation of the series.

At last! I had it! I could now proceed at my own pace and find out what all the excitement was about.

#

I spent the entire last week watching two or three episodes of Firefly every evening. I started with the episodes in the order that they appear on the DVDs and presume that was broadcast order. I viewed them straight through in that fashion, finishing last night.

In fact, I squeezed every last digit out of those DVDs including the outtakes, the unused scenes, goofs, screen test, and “more” until the TV finally just faded into blackness and I still wasn’t ready to let go, to call it quits.

What a disappointment.

Not a disappointment in what they had accomplished, but a disappointment in the fact that they had not been allowed to finish their public service duty.

I found Firefly to be just about as close to perfect as anything can be in every respect that I judged it by. It was the perfect combination of horse opera and space opera. It was 1940s pulp with a hint of 1960s porno. It was the essence, the very flavor of “pulp” magazines, writers, editors, and illustrators.

The costuming and stage sets, all from the old American West, fit in perfectly with the nuts and bolts of advanced spacecraftery. The music also a perfect reprieve of Saturday afternoon matinee Western double features with a sinister “Dr. Fu Manchu” serial and two cartoons all for a dime. That pulp-era Fu Manchu impression is further carried into the future by having numerous incidental and background characters in Firefly costumed in period-piece Chinese robes.

Plus having everyone in the cast occasionally speak passable Mandarin. Delicious!

Firefly moved effortlessly and naturally into the world of the far future where whores were whores but Companions were unbelievably expensive. Where criminals you wanted to touch and know did crimes and Feds you wanted to hate were Alliance blacksuits. It used all the bottom-line expectations of lust and rewards of early days porno books involving a group of characters who were hornier than most, the endless erotic tease, the lips almost but not quite touching, the lustful leers at crotch areas, Nathan Fillion’s (as Captain Mal Reynolds) freedom of release when finally flaunting his stature to all and sundry, bold bareass shots, and on endlessly.

I was thrown off stride initially by the bizarre order of appearance of the episodes. I am a traditionalist and I expect to be introduced to the characters and given at least an initial hint as to who is good, who is bad, and what’s being stolen from where and why. Not just tossed into the middle of a big battle with no one to cheer for and no one to booh!

By the time I had forced my way through two episodes, I was hooked and dragged into the boat, flopping and gasping for more.

The spacecraft itself, Serenity, is the star of the series. It is big and empty and houses vast echoes and hoped-for loot…and the hopes and expectations of all the crewmembers and all the helpless watchers somehow intertwined in unquestioned love.

I loved every cast member, including especially the villains. I love the wishy washy flip-flop of apparent motivation especially on the part of Jayne (really great acting job by Adam Baldwin). I loved the guffaw uncontrollable laughter that erupted from me when certain very unexpected lines were delivered with more style than the writer of those words could have ever had any reason to expect was possible. I can see the writers just off set, giggling into their hands.

I do not know why or how the plug was pulled on this series prematurely. It is of such quality, across the board, as to be too good for television itself. Fox should have been proud to control such a thing of joy and perfection, and to push it forward energetically, but then they are Fox.

Firefly will appear again, briefly, in September as a feature-length film. As I understand it, the original cast all have included in their contracts the option for three feature-length films as follow-ups. The first of those, Serenity, will focus on River Tam (Summer Glau) and who and how she was so screwed up. It has been announced for a September 2005 release date. I have no clues as to the other two films, if ever. Sob!

I will have to wait and see, impatiently as usual.

- - -

*This is for Steve and Elaine Kemp Harris…with a whole lot of love. Dated January 2005.

There's a game for every season--ice hockey, basketball, baseball, football. Life soon appears to be a game, and it isn't. In games the object is to win, but in life the object is not to win. The object of the whole world is to preserve the game board and the pieces, and there is no such game.
                --Kurt Vonnegut, March 1969

Nightmare With a Queen…of Blood*

By Charles Nuetzel

Oh, the Queen of Blood, the Planet of Blood, call it what you want, but the Queen herself came to me via my agent Forrest J Ackerman (no period, thank you!). She came, probably, in the darkness of night like a very hateful vamp, teeth dripping in the blood of her victims (soon to add me to that list)! She was a vile, perverse, hungry creature from a hellish universe – dimension if you will – all her own: Hollywoodland! And it was shaped as a script of a somewhat inexpensively produced horror/sf flick written and directed by Curtis Harrington, Jr.

Well, as it turned out, it was my duty to convert these pages into a novel. And as I remember, it was one of those quickie assignments.

I approached this whole thing with mixed emotions! Looking at the script was going to be hard enough, reading its contents might even be somewhat yucky. Converting it to a novel might be okay, since I’d been working in that area for some time – not conversions, but novels for paperback publication.

I had never been very interested in scripts. I mean in writing them. I had decided many years ago that possessing a mimeographed copy of some masterpiece I’d skillfully designed in a flush of creative madness was not very impressive. I mean: who the hell can’t simply type something up and have it mimeographed? Not every impressive, that. And early on all my doubts concerning such projects were proven totally valid when I learned how many a script typist prided themselves in adding minor revisions, to say nothing about directors, actors, and who knows what other members of the production team, including producer and even his secretary with the REVISING compulsion! After all, the original author is considered less than a lowly flunky of first-draft concepts.

Hell, these Hollywood types figure that the jerk writer was already overpaid for his outline in dialogue form! What does he know? Less than nothing. And even if he does, so what? He’s cashed his check and is now out of the picture – for good!

So. I figured. To hell with scripts. I wanted hard evidence of my creative genius printed on paper, bound solidly in place with an attractive full color cover. Plus, of course, a boldly obvious byline announcing my name in large letters under the title would be hard evidence of my importance. Even better: over the title. But, heck, and golly gee, I’d settle for even a small mention on the lower left or right – just so they spelled my name right: Charles Nuetzel!

That was what had driven me through a normally difficult teenage of hiding behind books and practicing behind a portable typewriter until I finally learned enough to think of myself as an author.

Oh, to be an author! To have my name in print. The glory of it all!

Well, reality was soon to flush some of those idea down the drain.

Interestingly enough, once you are skilled enough, getting your name in print isn’t all that difficult, expect for a minor little factor:

Does ya really wanna have ya name linked to that manuscript?

Well, maybe. But, just think, I could invent a penname just for the hell of it! Why not? Hide behind that fake identity while you are learning your craft. And, geeze, now you’ve invented a “real” person that people will truly believe exists! A byline proves the existence of an author! Alive and breathing!

And I can save my real name for what I consider “quality” stuff. Ha! One wonders about the importance of that word! Quality! Yet a much desired concept!

My agent, nice man that he has always been, sweetly informed me that “quality comes with quantity” and like a devout devotee of a true godman’s words, I listened and believed.

This drove whatever talents I had into turning blank pages into useless paper!

I mean, the writer splatters ink across the white surface of cheap paper, marring it forever more! If lucky he finds some editor foolish enough to believe that these pages should be magically converted into a printed form. I mean, WOW, they actually pay for this kind of used-up paper!

Well, I was soon in the paper selling business, though I didn’t really think of it in quite that manner.

I was being paid while learning! And getting all those credits. Inventing not only fictional characters but “real life” authors!

I ended up with a number of pennames and a larger number of short novels scattering the local and national newsstands. Oh, the wonderful life of an author.

But it was some time before I considered offering up my own name to a book. And the first one was what else? WHODUNIT? HOLLYWOOD SYTLE. Horrors: a book on Hollywood; about the film industry. Was I mad or something?

Or something.

Then came this script to pervert my lingering doubts about the movie industry at large.

Now it isn’t that I don’t like Hollywood, hell I grew up in the business – indirectly. My father had been a commercial artist for Pacific Title & Arts for many years (they did the special effects and screen credit titles for some of the biggest movie industry’s films). I’d been exposed to movies since a mere babe in San Francisco, where my dad worked for Fox West Coast Theaters, doing huge paintings for the theater lobbies (this was previous to the printed posters later used to announce the currently running movies). Remember, this was way back in the 1930s and beginning ‘40s. He got us into any picture we wanted to see for free! And that was something we enjoyed to the fullest on a weekly basis.

Anyway, I’ve gotten far from the dern track of the naughty, nasty Queen of Blood!

Ah, yes. That bloody screenplay!

The script had to be turned into a novel in quick time (and this was before computers, mind ya all!). I had a faithful electric typewriter with instant return carriage and all that, but any revisions meant a retyping! YUCK to that, thank you. And no thanks!

Anyway, I soon discovered that the Queen was somewhat missing in much of her details. I mean, the “lady” was stripped all but naked of anything but a big mouth that screamed endless dialogue. Well, okay, the Queen herself wasn’t the only voice chattering madly away on these mimeographed pages!

But truth be known, the script, beyond mention of Mars and some sandstorms and a couple of rocket ships and a lotta eggs of questionable design, was on the short side of visual verbiage and/or background details. The only information offered concerned the vampin’ Queen herself and a number of characters to serve as delicious meals for our hungry female alien monster from God knows where! Of course there was the “plot” of the thing – your standard science fiction storyline of people in distress and the normal run of the mill implication of what would devour Earth by the time the film ended. There really wasn’t much to it other than the dialogue that filled around 100 pages or so – if that! I had to convert this into about 55,000 words, more or less.

Well, I did a bit of instant calculations. After deleting all the FADE INS & OUTS and character names above lines of dialogue and the now and then camera instructions or scene setting paragraphs, I learned I’d have to turn each script page into three pages of manuscript!

Well, it was typin’ time! And no time to look back.

Nor be very inventive.

Nor take much time to breath between work sessions.

Expanding dialogue was easy enough. But I had plenty of that as a central core. What I needed to do was write details that were missing! Landscapes. Rocket ship. Travel through space to Mars in days …

HEY WAIT A MINUTE!

That ain’t possible! Tain’t gonna take a few days to leap across the vast distance between Earth and the Red Planet (being turned ever redder by the vampy Queen of Blood herself!).

Well, I had to be somewhat inventive there, creating what was, if memory serves me right, the Harrington drive to explained away the swift trip from Earth to Mars (a polite bow to the script writer/director!). 

Little matters like that was necessary add-ons.

Then there was a small walk-on part that Forry Ackerman had in the film – courtesy of Mr. Harrington himself! I figured, heck, why not be a little more generous with this man who is so responsible for my nightmare with a queen.

So I literally invented an expanded role for my agent to play out. Even some actual dialogue! SUPER! But what are we gonna call this fella? Well, all authors and editors and agents and even would-be and real actors have an ego! Don’t we all, man! Super-egos deluxe.

So what can I call him. Oh. Gee, let’s see. Give him some importance. Ah. Yes. Make him a doctor. Sure fits in a sf flick. Now don’t it? Sure does!

But Doctor who? Certainly not Who, that was already taken, natch, of course.

Dr. Ackerman? Well, that was too close to reality. After all Mr. Forrest J Ackerman has some kind of degree – even if it is simply a third one! Yes, I do believe he does hold a doctor of some sort that kept hangin’ round the Ackermansion in all its modern variations.

So. That’s out. Like flout! So to speak.

He was already famous as Dr. Acula in his Famous Monsters of Filmland, which he had edited and almost totally written over a 20-year period.

So maybe I should go Hollywoodish and in like Flynn!

Ah, ha. FORREST is the man’s name.

Doctor is the first degree.

DR. FORRESTER became his name in actual fictional fact, Hollywood Style!

Enough of this foolishness.

Back to the Queen, once more. The blood-sucking vamp of somewhat greenish tint!

Well, first of all, let’s get something straight right from the start: okay, from this point, anyway:

This was a somewhat young person’s tale of a trip to Mars where our heroes come in bloody contact with a seductive lady from deep space! An alien creature that couldn’t get enough of the living blood of these delightfully delicious Earthmen’s bods. And don’t forget the female scientists! After all you gotta have some implied romantic interest, even if it has to remain squeaky clean!

Oh, I’ll admit it could have gone in either direction: slanted to a teenage market or liberally speckled with erotic scenes for an all-adult audience.

Forrest Ackerman and Charles Nuetzel in the late 1960s.

Well, I always figured that sf and sex simply didn’t mix: not the same audience. Minors wanted adventure on a grand scale! Battling to the death against BEMs (bug eyed monsters) with super rays and screaming boy-like ladies who had to be rescued by daring deeds for, perhaps, a light embrace and maybe even a shocking kiss on the lips – closed mouth, of course, natch! While the adult market demanded super male studs and voluptuously vamping tarts hungrily seeking one another out like desperate wantons from orgyland.

Not, mind you, would those sexually overcharged teenagers be more than willing to share a bit of stimulating adventures between the covers of a paperback book (or bed sheets for that matter!).

This was a matter of a serious consideration of the law itself.

Adult meant adult in years – not necessarily in maturity, of course!

So, this was totally out of the question for teenagers – well commercially, anyway! Remember we’re talking about the never-never land of the mid 20 th century where people saved such “trash” for adult consumption only!

Natch. Of course! That’s the law, babe!

So gotta keep it clean as glass for the pure, untouched kiddies. Well, as they say in the cartoons: That’s all folks!

Not so. Believe it or not!

And I ain’t playin’ dat game! Mind ya manners!

Well, I whacked out the manuscript in due time, and deadline time, too, to boot (and I did tell ya this was previous to the PC where ya can get the boot at the twist of a perverted mouse! And you always have to boot up just to get started. To boot!).

Again, I’ve perverted the sticky trail to the publication of the very Queen we’ve been chattin’ about! But ain’t sorry about that, thank you! I think I’m avoiding the obvious (to me, anyway!).

Back to the subject at hand, which could, under other circumstances be, perhaps, a delicious detour to land of passions unknown. But, alas, things never work out as you expect them to.

The very colorful Queen herself was something else, indeed! To say the least. And the least said about her the safer we all are. I mean, who wants a veggie suckin’ a bod dry?

Veggie? Did I say Veggie? Sure did. With, perhaps, good reason. [And maybe pure madness!]

Thus it is that we come to the very color of her skin: Green as any proud celery stalk. And this, surprisingly enough, matched the name of the publisher! GREEN. Turn the leaf of a book and what do you get?

GREENLEAF.

[See how I manage to go quickly to the point?]

And since this was such a major production, both in the quickie production of the film and the rapid delivery of the manuscript, why not just give it a suitable label? After all it is truly a classic example of fast creative energy doled out to the public at large for a quick buck!

GREENLEAF CLASSICS.

For sure that’s impressive, don’t ya think?

Sure was. As far as that goes.

And it actually went quite a distance.

The publishing complex which would deliver the Queen to the newsstands of America was owned by a master publisher with a magnificent background in the science fiction field!

William L. Hamling had been a publisher of sf magazines like Stardust,Imagination, Imaginative Tales, and Space Travel in the early fifties. Before that, he worked as an editor on Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures for Ziff-Davis. Chicago. He was sure to respect the teenage sf market which had started in the mid-‘20s when Amazing Stories first hit the newsstands. This magazine literally invented, just about single handedly, a totally new kind of pulp fiction called scientifiction that ended up being more classically labeled science fiction, which was changed by Mr. Science Fiction himself, Forry Ackerman, to sci-fi! BIG BILL H would certainly honor the memory of that grand literary standard of which he’d been such a famous supplier during his grand editing/publishing career.

Okay, I know. That was somewhat of a complicated footnote slapped into the above paragraph. Maybe implying far more innocence to those involved, but, well, never you mind that. The point is made.

Yes, I know that Big Bill was heavily involved in the adult fiction field!

Hamling was GREENLEAF CLASSICS, and well-known science fiction fan Earl Kemp was his editorial director. Before that, Kemp has been a co-founder of Advent Publishers in Chicago.

This certainly was the quality line of Hamling’s many multiple lines that ground up endless adult titles from its San Diego central.

So this “classic” factor certainly must promise the best possible packaging for such a fine and deserving teenage novel of sf adventure in outer space with a vampire alien lady thirsty for an endless supply of blood that only Earth could, in the end, so generously offer.

Another of my magically complex statements. But it makes the point. I think. Maybe. I hope.

This was super clean, teenage packaging to match the squeaky pure story contents, based on the quickie sf horror flick slanted for the 20 th century movie audience.

Gulp!

Keep it Hays Office perfect!

How’d Mr. Hays get into the act? Again? And again. And again! I mean, he was always stickin’ his prudish nose into the imaginary bedrooms of the All American Public. Okay. More clearly put: his famed office was the mighty voice of Censorship Deluxe! These blue nosey folk monitored the film Industry like super hawks to ax anything suggestive that might pervert the public morals. I mean, oh, heck! As Bette Davis might say: “What a dump!”

The Hays Office dictated that no couple could be seen together on a bed! If it so happened that a cozy bed was being used by a, say, lady much desired by all concerned, her male companion (married to her or not) had to keep one foot planted safely on the floor!

Heaven’s to Betsy were they inventing a new, interesting sexual position to foster onto the nation’s public at large.

Hell no! [Though I’m certain that some creatively talented adult author could come up with something quite stimulating to teach his (or her) audience about a new and joyfully stimulating adult position to ecstasy. The One-Foot Passion Dance?]

Okay, bad idea.

Anyway, I’ve delayed long enough with coming to the most sinful element of this story of woe concerning the QUEEN OF BLOOD.

On the cover they literally offered up: MOVIE NOW SHOWING against a classic cover painting by the great Robert Bonfils of the Martian landscape featuring a threatening sandstorm with a couple of space-suited men in the distance approaching the green QUEEN who was blatantly presented totally stark naked for all to see! Can you believe? Believe! On your knees and believe you sinners all!

For shame! Perverting countless teenage boys to snap her up and devour that sensuously stimulating image until they turned as green as she appeared – but with envy that she wasn’t real! How they must have wanted this lovely creature desperately clutched in their arms in a passionate embrace destined to drain them of all their throbbing hot blood!

Okay. I made that up. Darn if I ain’t ashamed of myself.

But, another point has been hammered home!

If I had retained any doubts about the book, a very delightful man named Bill Trotter told me that the Queen had been literally published as an Adult Novel. He was a part of this publishing giant in San Diego long before branching out on his own with Powell Publications. I packaged a number of books for his various lines, including “inventing” and developing POWELL SCI-FI during its first year of existence.

Well Trotter’s words had stripped naked any doubts I might have retained in my mind.

The BIG BILL PUBLISHING HOUSE had lived up to its true rep and released just another grand sampling of Adult Packaging that has stayed with the book forever more!

Cheesy Adult fiction it has been called.

Imagine that. How insulting can “they” get (whom ever “they” may be!)?

I don’t mind the Cheesy part for a quickie flickie turned into a quickie bookie of questionable quality – to boot.

But this was pushing things beyond bearable torment!

Can you imagine having your second book under your own name coming out as a cheesy adult novel of questionable design? And, on top of that, it was my very first sf novel ever published!

Of course there are some rewards hidden in what was to be the Queen’s future, and now her present status in the world of collectable items. Today the pricetag, which was originally a mere 75 cents has elevated to well, blushing at the thought, $360 if you can get it!

[Just checked that out on the Internet and you can have it! Every bloody word and even that delicious, delectable Bonfils cover painting of the Queen lounging there in all her naked glory, stripped bare for all to feast upon before she catches you under her alien spell and drains the red blood out of your veins forever more!]

Well, Earl Kemp asked for it and he sure as hell has gotten it: a pure verbal nightmare designed to reveal an author’s memory of his involvement with a Queen of Blood.

Now, just to confess something: I am fully aware that Mr. Kemp was intimately involved with Big Bill and all the many houses that were so furiously publishing at least fifty books a month – so it has been reported, real or imagined, myth or magic. Earl may have even been involved with the Queen, too, for all I know. And he probably knows far more about her than I have herein offered the reader.

Quite frankly, I guess I shouldn’t be too pushed out of shape about how it all came out in the end. Taking everything into account, that is.

The hard facts (excuse the H word, please) is that all too many of those science fiction pulps of the ‘40s were known for offering cover art that presented horrid, terrifying BEMs (remember those Bug Eyed Monsters?) threatening nearly naked ladies screaming in desperate horror! And all those Damsels needed to be rescued! What red -blooded American boy would not eagerly leap across a thousand magazine stands to win their favor?

Certainly the fantasies held by these young male would-be studs ranged from more innocent motivations to rather raw dreams of ravishing their lush bods! Natch.

Those semi-naked ladies certainly served the same purpose, I suppose, as the fully naked green QUEEN OF BLOOD.

Perhaps those guys in San Diego knew what they were doing.

I suppose she’s kinda okay, after all. And maybe that inflated pricetag now being demanded to totally possess her isn’t out of line!

After all she is a bloody QUEEN?

Most fascinating game there is, keeping things from staying the way they are.
                --Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

The Bitch Queen of Blood*
or,
Footnote to “Nightmare With a Queen…of Blood”

By Earl Kemp

In 1965, shortly after The Porno Factory had moved to San Diego and became reborn as Greenleaf Classics, Forrest J Ackerman came calling. Forrie had every right to do that; Greenleaf Classics boss William Hamling, Forrie, and I had been friends within the science fiction community for many years by that time. Besides that, Ackerman and I shared something genuinely unique together; Robert Heinlein disremembered both of us.

What Forrie had in mind was packaging a series of books for Greenleaf Classics. They would be just a little unusual in that each would be a movie tie-in involving allegedly a science fiction or fantasy film in the making. And, each book would be half text and half stills from the film itself. (Actually, that’s still photographs made at the same time as the filming, not snips from filmstrips, but that’s technical jargon.)

That’s me in the right picture posing with an old fantasy friend from my childhood…Bela. His three Ladies of the Night (in the left picture) are Leigh Brackett, Nancy Kemp, and _______ [Identify please? earlkemp@citlink.net thanks}. Both photos taken at the Ackermansion, Solacon, Los Angeles, September 1958.

Ackerman’s proposal was kinky enough to tease us for a bit, wondering how it would all work out. Eventually we decided to give it a go and to try two of them as a test fostered upon the waiting market. In due time, Ackerman presented us with two complete packages including stills, manuscript, and an Introduction by the one and only Dr. Acula himself.

Both of those books made instant history. Today, both of those books are eagerly sought after by people willing to pay embarrassingly large amounts of real-time dollars for a copy in almost any condition.

The first one was GC205, Orgy of the Dead, by Ed Wood [I wrote about this in “The Bela Tolls For You,” in eI12, February 2004], and the second was the very next book in line, GC206, Queen of Blood, by Charles Nuetzel. They were both published in 1966, the year of release of both films.

And both of them dropped dead on the newsstands. We couldn’t give copies of them away. Eventually they were stripped (front covers ripped off) then pulped to make more newsprint.

The reason was obvious…we were a specialty house providing masturbatory aids to chronic aloners and there was absolutely nothing for them inside either of those two books, however horny they were and however far-ranging their imaginations. There was simply nothing genuinely erotic about either effort.

Flashforward, science fiction style: Today, almost forty years later, a copy of either of those two books is worth its weight in gold.

If Forrest Ackerman had intended to create an unequaled legacy for himself, he certainly succeeded. Imagine, in one move, creating two of the most valuable paperback books ever published, and doing them simultaneously. So what if the market they went to didn’t appreciate them originally…just look at them today.

#

Shortly after our book version of Queen of Blood was released, we received a very threatening, demanding letter from a big-time Hollywood law firm on behalf of their client, Florence Marley. It was she who played the part of the bloodsucking, green vegetable alien from outer space in Queen of Blood. Our book, it seemed, had permanently crippled her Great Film Career by portraying her as some form of sleazy slut. She would never be able to work again (while a Google of her shows her still working, and still badly, well into the 1990s), and it was all Greenleaf Classics’ fault. We had to Pay Up Largely for Miss Marley Or Else.

Ho hum…another one….

One thing we had at Greenleaf was lawyers. We had all kinds of lawyers for all kinds of things, like specialists at a hospital. The boss of all of them was Stanley Fleishman, himself a big-time Hollywood lawyer and The Master of All He Surveyed. We were used to receiving threatening letters all the time and had a standing routine of passing them directly on to Fleishman.

In this case, after Stanley finished laughing while reading the letter, he composed a very brief reply. Paraphrased, it went something like this:

“Thanks for your kind offer in regard to Miss Florence Marley. I couldn’t imagine anything that I would enjoy more. By all means please do proceed with the proposed action. Can I do anything to help accelerate your schedule?”

There was never a reply to Fleishman’s letter and Miss Marley promptly dropped her lawsuit against Greenleaf Classics before it ever got off the drawing board.

The right man for the right job at the right time is all it takes now and then.

- - -

*For Forrest J Ackerman, No. 1 Science Fiction Fan, Dr. Acula, and Famous Monsters of Filmland; I owe you. Special thanks to Bruce Brenner http://www.vintagepbks.com for help with this article.

The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent…
                --Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan

By Forrest J Ackerman

No one who ever saw Bela Lugosi while he lived, in person on one of those thousand and one magic nights that he appeared on the dim-lit stage in Dracula;   

Nor anyone who has ever sat in a darkened theater or before a TV set and seen the film version of Lugosi's DRACULA:

Is ever likely to forget those shuddersome sanguinary lines -- "For the blood is the life.…"

Indeed, blood has proved to be the life of many a horror film.

It even, as spilled out on marquees, has definite box-office lure.   

Consider:
    BLOODLUST.
    BLOOD AND ROSES.
    BLOOD CREATURE.
    BUCKET OF BLOOD.
    BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE.
    And now -- QUEEN OF BLOOD.

Zsa Zsa Gabor gave a crowning performance in QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE.

Gloria Holden knew the gore score as DRACULA'S DAUGHTER.

Carroll Borland made an indelible impression as Countess Luna in MARK OF THE VAMPIRE.

BLOOD OF DRACULA gave Sandra Harrison evil opportunities to quench her unnatural thirst.

Maila Nurmi made a "dying" out of her video career as Vampira, the TV horror film hostess, with a role she could really sink her teeth into.

And now, remembered for her lead in Karel Capek's KRAKATIT, comes the newest of the screen’s vampires; suave, svelte and sinister Czechoslovakian-born Florence Marly as ... Velana. QUEEN OF BLOOD is her story.

It is also a fine vehicle for Basil Rathbone, who has distinguished himself in such past sci-fi and horror films as SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, TOWER OFLONDON, POE'S TALES OF TERROR and THE MAGIC SWORD.

The Photo that Didn’t

We had grand plans of taking the Queen of Blood photograph in Los Angeles at the Paperback Show and Sale in March 2005 only, as it often happens, everything went astray.

It was all set that Bruce Brenner would take the photograph and rush it to this issue of eI, only it never happened. We four of us simply couldn’t get together at the right time in the right place so Charles Nuetzel came up with this substitute, separate photos of us taken most recently.

So here is the substitute Queen of Blood photo…er…photos:

Forty years after the fact, the original Queen of Blood crew reunites. In the photo to the left are Forrest J Ackerman (packager) and Charles Nuetzel (writer) made in February 2005. In the center photograph Earl Kemp (editor), and the right photo, Robert Bonfils (cover painting), both taken at the Mission Hills show in March 2005. Courtesy Charles Nuetzel Collection.

It is also an incidental opportunity for readers of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster World to see the editor (hey, that's me) do a little emoting.  In case you miss any of the other actor's dialogue, you're bound to understand my lines as I don't say a word.  However, I'm not so dumb: look at Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre dame -- he was played by a man whose father and mother were deaf mutes, and he became world-famous as an actor. I wouldn't mind being the new Lon Chaney, or the old Lon Chaney, in fact. 

The author of the original screenplay, and director of the picture, is Curtis Harrington, who as a child prodigy made a version of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and as an adult prodigy made NIGHT TIDE, nocturnal, underground sleeper of the New Wave.  (In fact it's the only New Wave film with a mermaid in it -- but that's another tail.)

The author of the novelization, Charles Nuetzel, has over thirty pocketbooks to his credit.

Read the book.  See the picture.  Watch for the sequel.
               --FJA

- - -

*Reprinted from Queen of Blood, GC206, 1966. Special thanks to Charles Nuetzel http://haldolen.com for help with this article.

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
                --Kurt Vonnegut

Curious Couplings 1

By Earl Kemp

My old friend Robert Bloch used to live in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, a small suburb of Milwaukee. He would tell people that it was so dull there that he had to walk beside the railroad tracks and watch the trains coupling for excitement.

Now see how curiously that couples into the subject at hand:

I have noticed a number of odd coincidences regarding sleaze paperback covers and other publications that have intrigued me. Some of them were reasonable and understandable, some of them were outright criminal theft, and some of them were beneath contempt. Because of that, I wanted to run an article about them, only everyone I approached with writing ion the topic laughed at me and turned me down flat.

“That’s too old hat,” they all said. “Been there, done that….”

Only I haven’t. And I suspect there are a lot more people out there who haven’t either. So, even though I’ve been put down on the subject, I’m continuing anyway.

What I propose to do is to run a few of them in some issues of eI to see if I can create real interest in perusing the venture. It is a participation project. You send me jpegs of your favorite duos to earlkemp@citlink.net and I’ll take it from there.

This is the first installment of this projected new reader participation series.

The last time I began something similar, “Who Dat?,” to identify old photos of science fiction fans from the past, the attempt hit my viewers with a resounding silence. I hope I am not repeating the same mistake again.

Here then are the first examples of Curious Couplings. The ever-popular Lynn Munroe, the man to go to for the books you most want, contributed them.

Then there are the following three jpegs also contributed by Lynn Munroe. The first is a still from the movie La Dolce Vita and the other two are the results of that photograph.

#

And one more to close out this installment of Curious Couplings. This one contributed by Brittany A. Daley.

#

We welcome your contributions to this series. Please email your jpegs to earlkemp@citlink.net and thank you very much for participating in this novel and interesting exercise in futility.

Epitaph: "The good Earth--we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy."
                --Kurt Vonnegut, 10/99 Salon interview

Finding Doug Weaver

By Brittany A. Daley

As a collector and researcher of 1960’s sleaze paperbacks, I always find it exciting to discover the identity of or more about a previously unknown artist who worked in the industry. I had always known the name of an artist named Doug Weaver because of a few covers he had signed including the famous lesbian classic Satan’s Daughter by Jan Hudson [a pseudonym of George H. Smith] (Epic Book 113; Dated 1961), which was repainted to become the even more famous lesbian classic Satan Was a Lesbian by Fred Haley (P.E.C. Giant G-1103; Dated 1966).

I had performed numerous Internet searches for this artist to find out more about him but was unable to find anything when I typed in “Doug Weaver.” One day, I was casually surfing the net, and it occurred to me that I should try “Douglas Weaver.” It seemed obvious enough, but for some reason I had never tried that variant. When I typed in “Douglas Weaver,” I immediately came to the website of an artist named Douglas B. Weaver out of Roswell, New Mexico.

Looking at the artwork Douglas B. Weaver had posted on his website, I noticed immediate similarities with the sleaze paperback art that made me feel this was more than a shared namesake. This artist, like the Weaver I was looking for, tended to paint shiny, glossy skin and painted men with a certain look. It is hard for me to put into words because of my lack of art training, but the art looked strikingly the same in other ways as well, albeit the artist was no longer depicting beautiful women in sexy scenes.

Then, I tried to compare signatures. I looked around the site but had little luck because most of Doug Weaver’s sleaze paperback signatures were in block print lettering whereas most of Douglas B. Weaver’s signatures were in cursive. Finally, I came upon a portrait Weaver had done of his son at age 12, which looked to be from the 1960s. This time I had a match, as the signature on this piece was the exact same style of block lettering as on the sleaze paperback signatures. It would make sense that he might change his signature over the years, and this portrait of his son was from approximately the same period as the sleaze paperbacks, and it was the same signature!

This was enough evidence for me to get on the phone with Douglas B. Weaver, as there was a phone number on the website. On the phone with Weaver, he said that he did commercial art at this time and that he did do these paperback covers. He said that any that were signed with “Doug Weaver” or any variant were for sure his work. He said also that he didn’t know the exact imprints he worked for, since he was employed by an art agency.

Overall, though, Weaver was quite irritable over the whole conversation and probably only answered these questions because he was taken off guard. He seemed to have a condescending attitude toward the “commercial art” he did and mentioned that he was doing “fine art” now. Despite his overall crabbiness, Weaver agreed to let me send him pictures of paperbacks to identify as his work or not, since many were unsigned.

I was overjoyed at the prospect of being able to confirm certain covers as Weaver’s, because even though I feel I am very adept at recognizing his work, I wanted that verification. So, I got together a packet of photocopied covers along with a nice letter detailing his popularity among sleaze collectors and researchers, and a photocopy of the Illustration Magazine article on Robert Bonfils to evidence the popularity and appreciation of sleaze paperback art. I even made sure to be careful about the kind of language I used. Here is an excerpt of my letter to Douglas B. Weaver:

“This art helped create a world with greater freedom for all. This art is of historic importance and deserves to be researched and recognized. Forty years ago the subjects painted on these covers were taboo, and they broke the taboos.”

In fact, in writing this letter to Weaver, I never even used the words “sleaze” or “adult” or anything of that ilk. I was aware that this is a sensitive subject for many people involved in the industry and wanted to be as careful as possible with how I framed things. So I sent my packet to Weaver along with an SASE so he would incur no costs and hoped for the best.

About ten days later, I received my packet back from Weaver with everything I had sent him inside of it accompanied by a typed note that said “Sorry, I can’t help you. Douglas Weaver.” The man didn’t even give me his autograph! I was quite saddened that he would agree to this and then turn back on his word, but I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Nonetheless, if he didn’t want to help me out, I wish he had said so on the phone and saved me the trouble of all the scanning and typing I did.

Because of Weaver’s unwillingness to enrich the sleaze community with information and cover identification, all covers shown in this article are either signed by Weaver, or I am 99% sure they are his (I could only be 100% sure if he would identify them). Furthermore, the biographical information I have on Weaver is limited, as my only resource at this point is his website.

What I do know about Douglas B. Weaver is that he began doing commercial artwork in the 1940s. Other than paperbacks, he did girlie pin-up work, men’s adventure magazine covers, and miscellaneous advertisements. Weaver did a huge portion of covers for P.E.C. (Publisher’s Export Company), which was run by Donald Partrick out of El Cajon, CA, and in the sleaze community, he is probably best known for his P.E.C. work.

Weaver also worked for companies like Rapture Books, All Star, Raven Books, Nite Time Books, and Epic Books, although I am still trying to compile a more complete list of who he worked for. Weaver signed a few random covers here and there either as “Doug Weaver” or “DBW” on at least one book cover, but mostly did not sign his covers, probably at the agency’s request. Although I have no formal art education, from what I can see Weaver art characteristics include shiny, glossy looking skin tones; some characters, mostly women, that look like elves; and a tendency to paint a large face of one character surrounded by the smaller faces of other characters. Weaver probably began painting for sleaze paperback companies in the early 1960s and likely ceased in the late ‘60s or early ’70s. He painted throughout the 1960s but interestingly, I have never encountered any ’40s or ’50s covers by him for “legit” pulp publishers like Bantam, Avon, Popular Library, etc even though he began doing commercial art in the 1940s.

Today, Weaver paints the Old West, various cultures, and portraits. He has had many exhibitions particularly around the Southwest and such famous figures as President Ronald Reagan and California Governor Pete Wilson own his paintings. Weaver, who currently resides in Roswell, New Mexico, prides himself on his “fine art” work and seems most notable nationally for artwork featuring Native Americans.

Unfortunately, Weaver’s website does not provide such basic information as his date of birth or location of birth, and our phone conversation was so quick that I did not get a chance to ask him those questions. While I am unable to provide a photo of Weaver as he obviously wouldn’t give permission, I have provided a scan of The Hypnotist by Jack Kahler (P.E.C. N-143; Dated 1966); this is a Weaver cover painting that he obviously used himself as the male model for. I wish I could provide a photograph of Weaver to prove my point!

If anyone reading this has any further information to add on Weaver, I would appreciate being notified. I can be reached through eI or emailed directly at daley@intergate.com.

Publication data to Doug Weaver Images:

1.) Girls in Bondage by Patrice Caval. P.E.C. N-155. Dated 1967. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

2.) Passionate Satyr by Jack Kahler. Rapture Book 404. Dated 1964. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

3.) Suburban Sexpots by Frank G. Harris. All Star Books 8. Dated 1963. Cover art by Doug Weaver (signed).

4.) The Hypnotist by Jack Kahler. P.E.C. N-143. Dated 1966. Cover art by Doug Weaver (self-portrait).

5.) Love Me To Death by Alex Blake. Epic Book 105. Dated 1961. Cover art by Doug Weaver (signed).

6.) Satan Was A Lesbian by Fred Haley. P.E.C. G-1103. Dated 1966. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

7.) Delta Mistress by T.R. Young. P.E.C. G-1122. Dated 1966. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

8.) Sex Alley by Ron Gold. P.E.C. G-1106. Dated 1966. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

9.) Gay Brother by James Harper. P.E.C. French Line 43. Dated 1968. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

10.) The Rapist by Jeff Hart. P.E.C. N-153. Dated 1967. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

11.) Strange Honeymoon by Ray Wilde. P.E.C. N-111. Dated 1965. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

12.) Silent Siren by Jack Love. P.E.C. N-131. Dated 1966. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

13.) Flesh Trap by Jack Love. P.E.C. N-133. Dated 1966. Cover art by Doug Weaver.

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.
                --Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday

The Star of the East*
or,
Lo Mejor de lo Mejor

By Earl Kemp

It was customary, in those days, to punish convicted criminals and habitual troublemakers, and not at all unusual to crucify them in public displays as object lessons to disinform and amuse the populace. A prototype Orange Level exercise. So, in A.D. 29, when it was Christ’s turn, Jesus of Nazareth, to die for your sins, there wasn’t anything very special about it…just another one.

Fifty miles away, no one even knew anything about it happening at all.

Another one hundred miles, down the side of the incredibly blue Mediterranean Sea and onto the sunny side, they hadn’t even heard of him.

All the way west along those fabulous African beaches to where the Mediterranean converged with the Atlantic Ocean, right on that perfect point of the Strait of Gibraltar, a settlement was already forming, a Phoenician trading post. It was the most logical place for it, with that unimpeded view into two vast oceans and where, seemingly, everything in the world passed by if you happened to be watching for it. A paradise in the birthing…the very best of the very best…lo mejor de lo mejor.

After the Phoenician period it became a Carthaginian and then a Roman settlement. The Romans renamed it Tingis. It became a free city in A.D. 42 and was capital of the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana, from which the Romans ruled for five centuries.

There followed a long series of captures, occupations, releases, recaptures, etc. through centuries of Byzantines, Arabs, Islamic dynasties, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the British, the French, and finally the Moroccan in 1956.

Tangier is built right on the oceanfront on slopes of a chalky limestone hill. The Medina (the old original city) is enclosed by 15 th-century ramparts. It is dominated by a Casbah (a dream fantasy of an incredible marketplace), the Museum of Moroccan Art (that was formerly the sultan’s palace), and the Great Mosque.

It became a Mecca for intelligentsia, for writers, artists, and creative types, for freethinkers and sexual and moral experimenters and extentionists. Many such passed through from time to time, remaining for as long as they dared. In 1867 Mark Twain wrote that the houses were so jammed together it seemed like “a crowded city of snowy tombs.” And was he ever right about that. From a distance, the outlines of the Tangier rooftops blend into one continuous undulating blanket of bright new snow.

In the early 1900s, Matisse lived there long enough to have many unique experiences and to paint many canvases.

But Tangier was also gaining a reputation of another sort as well…running right along the cutting edge of alternate routes to perception. Here, hard drugs were sold over the counter to anyone with enough money to pay for them. Kif and hashish were smoked openly everywhere. Of this, Robert Ruark wrote that Tangier “contained more thieves, black marketers, spies, thugs, phonies, beachcombers, expatriates, degenerates, characters, operators, bandits, tramps, politicians, and charlatans” than any place he’d ever visited.

#

Josephine Baker, naked, was the toast of all Paris in 1929, when I was born. I loved her from the first moment I ever saw her. I grew up with the conviction that she personified my fairy godmother and it was Josephine, naked, who watched over all my formative years. She alone insisted that I owed genuine allegiance to Paris, the home of her real birth, the residence of my unknown and unrealized literary aspirations.

In 1931, Paul Bowles went to Morocco. Gertrude Stein sent him. She was always doing things like that, damn her. She did it to everyone but me. After all, I was two years old at the time, and aching all over for the touch of her magical mind.

It’s all somehow connected with the fact that I managed to get out of the time machine at the wrong time and place. I’ve always been from ten to twenty years out of phase with myself, and it’s been damned hard to accommodate, too. Imagine never being with any of your friends or contemporaries. Never being able to have those long, meaningful conversations with every idol in front of a fireplace while sipping select Sherry. Never being able to enjoy those brilliant letters exchanged with Great Writers with such enthusiasm and joy, imparting so much knowledge and worldly wisdom.

I was supposed to have been an adult by then, by the date of my birth in 1929, and right in the middle of Paris’ burgeoning, free-running thinkers…sitting at Gertrude Stein’s feet and trying to not look too stupid while scarfing up Alice’s too-damned-good brownies. Pet meplease. Lay some truthandfacts on me….

In an interview with Paul Bowles [named “Stranger in a Strange Land”], Gaither Stewart wrote”

Paul Bowles went to Morocco the first time in 1931, on the recommendation of his new friend, Gertrude Stein. “I had spent that spring in Berlin studying music with Aaron Copland,” he recalled. “In Paris I told Gertrude that I planned to pass the summer in Villefranche. She found that idea frankly absurd. Alice Toklas said: ‘Tangier!’ And Gertrude said: ‘That’s the right place.’ So Aaron and I came here together and rented a house. That summer he worked on his Short Symphony and I composed my first piece – Sonata For Oboe and Clarinette - that was played that winter in London.”

#

Enter Significant Person No. 1 Henry Miller. My hero of heroes. My self-identified other. The man I once thought I wanted to become in the worst way possible. He answered the call of the sirens that lured him to Paris in 1932 when I was only three years old. When I was five, his world-shaking book Tropic of Cancer was published. Miller remained in Paris for a few more years, writing more and more of the books that were by law forbidden to know about, to own, or to read in the USA. I would eventually get to read, to possess, and to own those books. To republish them and glorify them and spread them as far and as wide as I could.

I even handset the type for Greenleaf Classics’ first paperback edition of Tropic of Cancer. It was the first time I had ever touched a rack of type fonts. Not necessarily an experience I’d want to relive but at the time it was all part of being the boss and needing to ram a project through the works as quickly as possible in order to beat Grove Press onto the marketplace.

Every day it seemed they all called to me, Gertrude and Alice and Henry. Bowles and Jones and Hemingway. Anais Nin, the secret love that I somehow acquired second hand from Henry but loved her nonetheless.

“The 1920s and 1930s radiate a glamour they can only possess for someone who didn’t live through them.” Here, then, are Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas installed in the rue de Fleurus, Hemingway and the Shakespeare & Co set, Man Ray, Dali and the other surrealists turning the world upside down, Josephine Baker dancing naked but for a feather between her legs or a skirt of rampant bananas; while the girls at the Moulin Rouge do their high kicks, the Crazy Horse gang struts its stuff in the half-light and clients are entertained at the Sphinx and other brothels. The spirit of George Orwell, down and out in Paris during this period, will cry out in vain to be heard.
               --Anthony Sattin, We’ll Always Have Paris, by John Baxter,
                                        The Sunday Times, January 30, 2005.

Where are you? They all keep asking. We’re still waiting. What’s keeping you? Don’t you know you have to get it while you can? Most of it only goes around once….

#

I went to Paris looking for them, hoping I would find them there where I found them, between the pages of their books and leering outward toward a world that no one else could recognize except them, and they were trying to give it to me and all I had to do was reach out and take it from their hands ten years earlier. I dogged the memory of their shadows and the echoes of their footsteps. I sought out Gertrude and Alice, and Henry and Anais, and I saw where they lived and loved…and had sex, where they thought and worked, where they ate and where they starved. I climbed their stairs and I trod over their footsteps. I sat in their favorite restaurants and ordered their favorite meals. I breathed the air that they breathed…so where was it? All that magical stuff that was supposed to appear up there inside my head as if by magic to download within me all the essences of life itself.

Hey, wait for me, guys. I want to belong. Teach me how to think great thoughts and write great words and hear the lost chord.

#

Enter Significant Person No. 2 William S. Burroughs. He was born in 1914, fifteen years before me. Bad timing again; he should have waited. I would have done it for him. We could have found new and novel ways to spend more of daddy’s money together…Burroughs adding machine money that, in those days, came in endless, big-number quantities.

When he went away to school, mostly sent somewhere reasonably safe and out of the sight of his parents, he could let himself run free. That other self, the one inside him that he hardly knew and who was bugging the crap out of him day and night pleading for a little recognition. All those questions he kept asking himself about who he was and what he was and what he was supposed to be. All those desires that couldn’t be suppressed that needed feeding…experimenting with…touching bodies…those inescapably haunting sexual images where gender had much less to do with whatever was ongoing than simple physical communion and much needed relief.

It was there Burroughs encountered people who would become life-long friends: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Joan Vollmer Adams, who became Burroughs’ common-law wife and mother of his children…until he played William Tell and shot a glass off the top of her head and missed.

Wallowing in remorse, guilt, and all those plaguing, unanswered questions, Burroughs began wandering the world and experiencing forbidden things and living in remote places in strange and unusual circumstances. Of grabbing his love where and with whom it happened to arrive. For delving deeply—perhaps too deeply—into drugs and degradation.

Burroughs had read two of Paul Bowles’ novels, Let It Come Down and The Sheltering Sky, with locations in Tangier and elsewhere in Morocco. Burroughs recognized his kind of place from Bowles’ books indicating that Tangier had a wide reputation as a city of wickedness. He arranged his transportation quickly and headed for Morocco. Once there, he knew he had been right all along, he had found his sanctuary of noninterference that he had been looking for in all his journeys around the world.

Naturally he met Bowles right away, and they became good friends and dope buddies. And it was there, in Tangier in 1954, that Burroughs celebrated his fortieth birthday, ten years after he first had attempted to write seriously. I was 24 years old then, and would have been glad to try to keep up with him had he asked. As it was, it took me an extra 13 years to get there on my own; I didn’t make it to Tangier until 1967. Always dragging in much too late and much too broke for any real-time brain stuff that I really, really needed.

Under the drug-induced euphoria of sultry Tangier, William Burroughs wrote his first novel. It appeared as Junkie from Ace Books in 1953.

Encouraged by his friends and based on that minimum success, he produced his greatest work, Naked Lunch, in 1959.

#

Finally I came along, dragging ass and badly in need of a good joint, always running late as usual. Only, for the first time in my life, I managed to do it ahead of William Burroughs. He was 40 when he first visited Tangier, and I had just turned 38 the week before in Paris.

It was 1967…a very good year, ignoring the fact that Hugo Gernsback, the father of science fiction, died. Public Law 90-100 became effective, creating the president’s commission on obscenity and pornography, an act that would figure prominently in my future. And I did one hell of a lot of traveling.

I don’t even believe it myself. Yet, there I was, only three months earlier, hanging out with my jarhead buddies in Chu Li, Vietnam, getting royally blasted and listening to bloody death stories between head-cleaning visits to the underground Dragon’s Asshole. I wrote of this in “Shrink, I Wanna Kill….,” and “The Dragon’s Asshole,” in eI16 for October 2004.

My travel log tells this tale of those hectic days: Saigon to Phnom Penh to Hong Kong to Sydney to Auckland to Sydney to Tahiti to Acapulco to Guadalajara (my home away from home in suburban Ajijic) to Tijuana (25 miles to the Greenleaf Classics office in San Diego and another 6 to my residence in El Cajon) to London to Copenhagen to Paris to Athens to Milan to Tangier. Damn, those three months just seemed to fly past.

#

While I was in Paris, I celebrated my 38 th birthday with a round of my favorite showgirl nightclubs like Moulin Rouge, Crazy Horse, Alcazar, Bobino, etc. I figured it was the best I could do so far away from home and all that, and with a cooperative expense account to pick up the tabs.

After I reached Milan, I discovered that my business was concluded earlier than expected and I had a gap of over a week in my schedule before my next appointment in Nice. What to do? Oh, the agony of it all…decisions, decisions, decisions.

I could hear Josephine Baker in the background, Thighmastering her bananas from side to side. Baby, you’re not listening again, she said. Henry and Anais paused just long enough to take notice of my predicament and laugh before picking up where they left off. Gertrude was pissed. Goddamnit! Haven’t you learned anything yet? Alice, always the kind one, leaned over with a couple of special brownies and stuck them inside my hand clandestinely. That’s how I knew she liked me. Tangier, she said, like I said before. It’s where you want to go.

Calling to me, all of them, demanding that I hurry, complaining about being tired of waiting. Endlessly bitching.

In 1947, Paul and Jane Bowles, talented writers, homosexuals, and married… …found a refuge in Morocco's exotic blend of worldly pleasures, decadence, spirituality, and occult. Over the next 40 years, they were joined or visited by Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Susan Sontag, Mick Jagger, New York intellectuals, European aristocrats, and American heiresses such as Barbara Hutton and her various consorts…. [T]he sybaritic expatriates, their activities only partly curtailed by new restrictions, wandered about the Casbah…gathered periodically at the Parade bar, exchanged sexual partners, experimented with drugs, and created an entire culture of their own, hallucinatory and brutal, where deviance, eccentricity, extravagance, even insanity were the norm. Here Burroughs, living in a male brothel he called “Villa Delirium,” wrote “routines” that his friends, particularly Ginsberg, gathered into Naked Lunch.
                --Kirkus Reviews, The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the
                                          Literary Renegades in Tangier, by Michelle Green, 1991

Where are you? They all keep asking. We’re still waiting. What’s keeping you? Don’t you know you have to get it while you can? Most of it only goes around once….

#

Damn! I had waited so long and there it was, wintertime or not, just waiting for me and resounding with all the words and thoughts and drug-induced realizations of countless people calling out just to me.

Gertrude sent me, Paul Bowles said.

Funny, I said. Me too.

So I bought a ticket on the next nonstop flight from Milan to Tangier.

Major international airports have a sameness to them that can be hypnotic to frequent flyers, wondering where they are between planes, trying to remember where it is they’re going to and why. Tangier has one of them. The big airliners keep coming in and out with ever-increasing frequency just like Somewhere Important and everything you see looks just like everything you see in every other airport.

The flight to Tangier and the landing were both uneventful, smooth as silk. As soon as I entered the airport, I went to baggage claim to pick up my checked baggage and was surprised when it bounced through on the conveyor belt. There had been numerous times in the past when it never did.

With my bag in hand, I proceeded to Immigration and Customs, the obligatory cursory glance at my passport, a couple of rapid rubber stamps, and on to Customs. Here the incoming passengers waited patiently in line while the contents of their luggage was glanced at almost as cursory as the Immigration person had looked at their passports. Only not this day of all days.

The person two people in line ahead of me was flat-out busted smuggling a kilo of weed into Tangier. From Milan, of all places…talk about ridiculous.

The custom’s man hardly knew how to react to the aromatic package he was holding up in his hands for all to see. He broke out into near hysterical laughter as did a number of his counterparts. Finally, the people waiting in line to have their luggage checked realized what was ongoing and they, too, broke out into boisterous giggles that turned into loud guffaws. It was hardly necessary to smuggle pot into Tangier where it is dispensed free in large quantities of exquisite quality for all takers around the clock.

Once through the easy Customs routine and released into the general airport population, everything still looked just like everywhere else I had ever been, except that it was winter, and a little bleak and overcast, but you expect that from oceanfront locations. I boarded a normal-looking bus that would take me directly to my hotel in downtown Tangier, an unknown number of miles away. Soon, having taken on a number of passengers, the bus slowly began moving away from the airport terminal. And out of the airport compound, and onto the highway leading directly into several centuries earlier. Talk about being aboard a time machine and getting dumped into the wrong century….

#

There I am, seated inside the airport bus pulling clear of the airport area and heading toward Tangier. And I am scared. I recognize the feeling instantly and the shocked initial reaction came in rapid waves of questions: What the fuck am I doing here? Is this the one? The place where I lose it? How do I get out of here?

The bus is tooling along at a nice, safe pace down an ordinary looking highway through…indescribable unrealities…unfolding right before my eyes in every direction like some kind of Cinera