Human Detective Art versus the Courtroom Artist Pale by Comparison to Pulp

What do they mean here?  As opposed to bloodhounds?  Now that we rely on cyberslueths more than gumshoes, it is nice to be reminded of the days when a hard working human dick brought in the perps.

Human Detective was lurid, but then so is 48 hours (and the knock-off on A&E The First 48) both which are gripping…and as long as we have criminals, we'll have headlines, even if they come in digital form.

The best Human Detective covers are painted.  Later, tricked-up photographs were used, but one could hardly tell the difference, with all the hyper-realistic color and primary color luridness added.  Still great. 

Here is a question:  How come today's courtroom artists suck by comparison to the old-timers?  Seems to me that market, if one were a commercial artist looking to dominate a field, is ripe for a lurid illustrator rather than a quick sketch artist.

Two lovely books which reproduce covers of True Crime pulps are, first, the way totally cool Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America, which was published in a limited edition of 3,000 copes (and comes with a huge fold-out cover) and True Crime Detective Magazines 1924-1969.  Both are great.

Mark Schneider Master Artist of the Pulp Sir! Neglected Hero of Magazine Illustration Sir! Mark Schneider Sir!

As something of a researcher, I am reminded daily the inadequacies of the internet. If you kids out there think you're writing a good paper based on what is available at your fingertips, you have more learning to do. A case in point is Mark Schneider.

Go ahead, look him up.

Lots of fake Mark Schneiders trying to cash in on the master artist's name, right? Pfft!. Let's remedy that right now. Henceforth, when one searches for Mark, hopefully they will find this small tribute to the strange painter of pulp who has eluded webdom until now.

God Bless Taschen books, for they at least gave Schneider his brief brush with fame for his paint brushes instead of the brush-off. A paragraph in their colorful tome True Crime Detective Magazines 1924-1969. Okay, so they besmirch by calling him "...a marginal talent at best" and practically blaming him for the demise of painted covers on magazines...in this case saying SOMETHING is still better than saying nothing at all.

Schneider was the house artist at Volitant Publications, AKA Histrionic Publications, AKA Mr. Magazine Inc. See why I like "true" crime? You can't make it up! When Mr. Magazine Inc. needed the lurid, they turned to Mark. He must have been working on a short deadline too...just look at his work. Let's say the editor needed..oh...I dunno...a freaking atom bomb going off while a couple prepares for coitus or a pondering Yeti considering his cold, lonely plight. Not an easy photo shoot. Call Schneider!

Now in full disclosure, regular followers of this blog know virtually everything I post comes out of a shoe box behind me. In this case, having come to the appreciation of Schneider, it should be confessed I had to crib these images from the very web I chastise. The owners might not know what fine pieces they have, but they do now.


I have a bone to pick here with Pulp Magazine collectors. (A bone to pick not unlike the vultures hope for from the fellow lacking Vitamin E above) For some reason, Pulp collectors seem to like GOOD art. A big mistake. Folks might like and might appreciate your collection, but a LAUGH is worth a thousand "good" covers. I got one at each and every Schneider cover I found here. Now you guys start doing some real work and load the Mark Schneider archives up on here. My neck hurts.


Dull Tool Dim Bulb Book Catalog HERE




Tweet

Hitched in Hardboiled Heaven Hollywood Hi-jinks of Bellem and Barreaux

Robert Leslie Bellem did the words. Adolphe Barreaux did the art. Decades before Harvey Pekar wrote stories for others to illustrate, Bellem did the same, but his were goofy crime tales told in the Hollywood hills. Bellem was the auteur of the pulps...this one issue of Hollywood Detective is edited by Bellem, contains four articles by Bellem AND a "Dan Turner in Pictures" cartoon done by the two. It's nuts...but it works if you care to immerse yourself in one man's odd vision of fictional crime (supported by another man's vision of the scene.)

During his time, Bellem became something of a joke for his writing. 300 of his estimated 3,000 stories were about Dan Turner. S.J. Perelman satirized his work in a hilarious essay "Somewhere a Roscoe..." for the gumshoe slang he created...and he didn't have to work too hard to make it funny.

I can't put it any better than Kevin Burton Smith does on the outstanding Thrilling Detective website HERE "...it was the high-octane use of every slang word known to man (and more than a few Bellem must have coined himself) that fueled the tales. Women were wrens or frills, and their breasts were pretty-pretties or tiddlywinks, something that Dan, "as human as the next gazabo," always took the time to notice. Cars were chariots, money was geetus and no one ever got killed in the stories, they were croaked, cooled, iced, de-lifed or had an act of killery performed upon them. Guns didn't go bang – they were roscoes and they spat, coughed and belched. Or sometimes they just sneezed, though the end result was the same -- people ended up dead."

I guess when you write 3,000 stories, you reach a bit. I'm glad he did! I could spout the slang all day long and feel tough as nails, even if I am not. It is certainly no coincidence Bellem later wrote the story lines for the stilted Superman television series.

And seldom does an illustrator merge so well with a writer. Barreaux did more than draw, and was actually editor of Trojan Publications later...the company which put out Hollywood Detective. When the comics code came in and artists of his ilk were S.O.Luck and S.O. Work..he turned to producing "art" books with naked photographs of the dames he portrayed in his drawings. He even produced Bunny Yeager's Nudes!


Dan Turner Hollywood Detective (illustrated by Adolphe Barreaux, Story by Robert Leslie Bellem) from Hollywood Detective December 1944 Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE

Vintage Sleaze Art and Illustrators It Ain't Just Paperbacks anymore!

George Jerome Rozen and his brother Jerome George Rozen Artist Illustrator Twins Pulp Painting Geniuses

A double dose of drawing dynamite! George Jerome Rozen had a twin brother named Jerome George Rozen. No kidding! The twins were born in 1875, one lived ten years longer than the other. Jerome was the first to enroll in the Art Institute of Chicago, Jerome followed a year later and had George as an instructor! Jerome was the first to paint covers for The Shadow, but George did them later. Both were in GREAT demand for their pulp magazine illustrations (as these six examples from my collection should serve to illustrate) These were done by George, who is shown in the dreary black and white photo here, which should also illustrate just why artists were favored over photographs for magazines during the 1930's. However, even though the pair of brothers painted their way through the depression, they could not paint their way through the technological progress of the camera, and not long after WW2 the glory days of pulps were over. Between the two, hundreds of pulp covers, from True Crime to Fictional Science were produced. These are six simply incredible examples of George #1's talent. Never mind they didn't quite come true.

Six Modern Mechanix and Inventions Magazines 1934, 1935, 1936 cover illustrations George Jerome Rozen. Collection Jim Linderman