This Saturday is the 78th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s time to celebrate the most famous book and movie adaptation set before and during the attack. Even in a crowded field of war novels, James Jones’ book stood out. The movie was pretty darn good as well.
Since my Now Be Thankful post has migrated to Bayou Brief, it’s time to get back to the basics with a book cover that ran in 2015 and 2016:
As urban commie pinkos, we here at First Draft believe in recycling. This post is a rerun from last Thanksgiving with some lagniappe at the end:
If your crazy right-wing Uncle who watches too much Fox News goes off on you today, please do not re-enact this book.
How about some cheesecake for dessert?
When I promise lagniappe, I mean it. So do Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. This is the first time that exceedingly odd couple cooked together on teevee:
The impeachment hearings ate my week. At least I’m not charred:
This post is dedicated to my friend and fellow pulp fiction aficionado Kevin Allman. He’s leaving Louisiana and returning home to California. Happy trails, amigo.
The last word goes to Emmylou Harris:
It’s the first time dinosaurs have taken the starring role on Pulp Fiction Thursday. Will it be the last? Only T Rex knows for sure.
By T Rex, I meant the glam rock band:
It’s time for another seasonal book cover. The Halloween Tree is a 1972 fantasy novel that Ray Bradbury later adapted for an animated teevee flick. The cover is by Bradbury’s frequent collaborator Joseph Mugnaini.
Horror fortnight continues with two venerable Tales From The Crypt comics featuring stories by Ray Bradbury. I’m trying to class the joint up a bit:
This week we go to the movies with New Orleans Uncensored. It’s a tawdry bit of pulp cinema from William Castle who is better known for his horror movies. This flick isn’t horrible but it isn’t great either. The best thing about it is seeing the city in 1955.
Here’s the whole damn movie:
The Fall Guy theme continues. This time without Lee Majors or Rick Perry.
Could this vaguely Slavic looking gent be Rudy’s bag man?
It’s time for an encore performance of a 2016 post with a twist. This time we have a triptych of covers:
Blood Money is late period Hammett. The covers are a bit dogeared but that’s okay so was Dash in 1951.
Speaking of money, it’s our annual fundraiser. If you like this feature, please throw a few bucks our way.
The last word goes to Pete Townshend:
You’re not seeing double. The theme song for Town Without Pity was indeed the theme song for the last Saturday Odds & Sods. I did not, however, include a movie poster or book cover. Here they are:
Here’s the trailer for this underrated Kirk Douglas classic:
Finally, one more version of the theme song; this time an instrumental.
Nelson Algren was known for his gritty novels. A Walk On The Wild Side was set in and around a New Orleans bordello. It was turned into a movie with an all-star cast in 1962. The producers dropped the A from the title. I did not.
The last word goes to Lou Reed with a song that has nothing to do with either the book or movie. It’s also not PC in 2019 but it’s still a good song:
The guy on this cover looks like a regular guy circa 2019. Times have changed.
I wonder if the Hippie Doctor was at Woodstock? They needed help with the brown and flat blue acid, man. He looks tough enough to subsist on apples, gruel, and JCC sammiches, man.
The last word goes to CSNY, man:
Dr. A and I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood last weekend. We both loved it. I thought it was his best movie since Jackie Brown.
Anyway, Sharon Tate is a character in the movie and went to the cinema to watch her own movie, The Wrecking Crew. Here’s a side-by-side image of Donald Hamilton’s book and the poster for the Dean Martin movie.
It’s trailer time:
The Wrecking Crew became the nickname of a group of elite LA studio musicians. They were celebrated in a documentary of that title in 2015:
You’re not seeing double. This Salome is Oscar Wilde’s play with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. You know, the book that provided the book for the Strauss opera featured yesterday. The mind still reels.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways is technically not fiction as it’s a memoir. But like most memoirs, it takes substantial liberties with the truth, which makes it faction but not factional. It’s definitely pulpy.
I chose Flynn’s memoirs because I’ve been watching some of his classic movies lately, I saw Dodge City for the first time the other day. A major omission as it’s the town-taming movie that Blazing Saddles parodies along with Destry Rides Again.
I guess that covers it. Here are the book covers.
This week’s selection is inspired by Muellerpalooza:
To go along with the Happy Trails post, I searched for “western paperback covers” and stumbled into some early 20th Century dust jackets. Dane Coolidge was a California writer of genre fiction; mostly Westerns. His first two books featured covers by the great painter Maynard Dixon who got first billing in the post title because I’m very familiar with his work. The only Coolidge whose work I’m familiar with is Calvin and I’m not a fan.
Hidden Water was published in 1910 and The Texican in 1911. Sometimes it’s fun to fall down an internet rabbit hole.
