Robert A. Maguire’s “Leopard Woman” – another pulp art treasure from SPORT LIFE magazine...

(Post updated June 15, 2013 with additional text and artwork.)

Robert A. Maguire, often credited as R.A. Maguire, was among the best and most famous of many talented illustration artists who did artwork for men’s magazines and pulp paperback novels in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

He’s primarily known for his noir-style paperback book covers featuring sexy “DAMES, DOLLS AND GUN MOLLS” (the apt title that artist and author Jim Silke chose for his great book about Maguire’s art).

As noted in the bio on the American Art Archives website, Maguire also painted greeting card art at one point in his long career, as well as a limited number of movie posters, album covers and magazine illustrations.

The American Art Archives site is one of the best resources online for fans of vintage illustration.

It’s maintained by illustration maven and writer Thomas Clement and his wife Christiane, whose eBay store is one of the best sources of collectible issues of vintage men’s adventure magazines.

In his bio of Maguire, Clement notes:

“Maguire’s paperback covers sold books far more than the books’ authors or titles. His ability to capture a sexy girl, often holding a gun, a knife, or even a voodoo doll, is instantly obvious.

His women were always intriguing, whether the world was crashing around them or whether they were in decisive control. Each is glamour-page gorgeous.

But talent for curvy dames was bolstered by a knack for dramatic action, bold and exotic colors, and striking throws of hues and shadows; these enticed millions of readers to do what they were supposed to do: buy the books.

Maguire often set his women against some muted slab-gray background or low-key pattern of jagged screens, but just as often he stood them out against deathly greens, bloody reds, or morguish blues.

Of course, basic black also served him well, as for what has become a signature piece, Black Opium.”

Maguire didn’t do a lot of artwork for men’s pulp adventure magazines. That’s why I always consider it a real find when I run across a Robert Maguire cover painting or interior illustration in an issue.

One of my favorites is an interior illo Maguire did for the April 1954 issue of SPORT LIFE. (This is the same issue that has another rare pulp art treasure featured on this blog — the illustrations Mort Kunstler created for a reprint of “HIS MAJESTY O’KEEFE.”)

Maguire’s eye-grabbing illustration for SPORT LIFE was printed as a duotone in shades of red and gray.

It’s for the story “LEOPARD WOMAN” by Richard Hathcock, a little known writer who did a few stories for men’s magazines.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, stories about “Leopard Women” and “Leopard Men” were quite popular in men’s pulp mags. I’ve featured several here in previous posts, including the thriller “DEATH ORGY OF THE LEOPARD WOMEN,” the fact-based but sensationalized story “LEOPARD MEN! AFRICA’S GREATEST TERROR” and the gory yarn “EATEN ALIVE BY LEOPARD MEN.”

Hathcock’s story is less bloody-minded than those. It’s an exotic adventure tale set in the African city of Omduran in Sudan.

During a visit to the city, the white guy who is the narrator of the story hears about a local woman who can turn into “a slavering, yellow-eyed leopard.”

One night, he gets a local guide to take him to see her. In a mud-walled building at the end of a back alley, he witnesses the amazing transformation.

A gorgeous Galla woman — “completely naked, except for a leopard skin wound about her slim waist” — comes out and begins dancing to the sound of hypnotic drums and bamboo flutes. Our appreciative (but obviously racist) narrator tells us:

“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in Africa. Her skin possessed a sheen not often found among Negroes. She was tall and graceful, with high, full breasts, and long, wonderfully molded legs. Her eyes were startling. They were oblique, and flecked with yellow. In the lamplight of that room they gleamed strangely.”

Suddenly, the woman tumbles to the floor and postures on all fours, “the nipples of her breasts raking the dust.”

What happens next? Well, you can read it for yourself by clicking this link to download the entire story in PDF format.

By the way, the cover painting for the April 1954 issue of Sport Life magazine was done by Gail Phillips. I haven’t been able to find much information about Phillips online or in reference books. So, you know of a good bio for him, please shoot me an email or drop by the Men’s Adventure Magazines Facebook group and let me know where it is. 

I do know he Phillips some paperback covers, such as the cover for BEHIND THE CRIMSON BLIND (1952), a novel written by the prolific detective story writer John Dickson Carr under his pen name Carter Dickson.

He also did the cover painting for the Pocket Books edition of the Roy Chanslor’s Western novel JOHNNY GUITAR, which was made into the campy, must-see Western flick of the same name starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ernest Borgnine, Ward Bond and John Carradine.

Phillips did a limited amount of illustration work or men’s magazines, mostly for ARGOSY magazine in the mid-1940s. So his cover painting for SPORT LIFE seems to be another rare pulp gem from that issue.

SPORT LIFE itself is a relative rarity in the realm of men’s pulp adventure magazines. It started out in the late 1940s as a sports fan magazine that focused on baseball, basketball, football and other American team sports.

Around 1954, the format was changed to a men’s pulp adventure format that had a heavy emphasis on sensationalized, often ludicrous stories of animals attacking humans (like the killer mountain goat example below) and obliviously cruel articles about manly hunters slaughtering various kinds of large and small animals.

The April 1954 issue of SPORT LIFE with the Maguire illo was published by Official Magazine Corp. 

Official was one of the companies owned by Martin Goodman, founder of the Magazine Management/Atlas/Diamond/Marvel publishing empire. Earlier and later issues of SPORT LIFE were published by other Goodman subsidiaries.

The men’s pulp/hunting mag version of SPORT LIFE was published quarterly from 1954 to 1957. During that time, only 15 issues were published.

That’s why copies are now a bit harder to find than issues of the longer-lasting men’s pulp mags. So, if you’re a collector, snag ‘em when you can (if I don’t get them first).

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Comments? Corrections? Post them on the Men’s Adventure Magazines Facebook Group.

Related reading: cool books by Jim Silke…

RAGE magazine, January 1963, featuring a whip-mad sheik, a Beatnik brothel, man-starved nymphos, and more…

RAGE is one of my favorite low-budget men’s pulp magazines, though I have always been a bit puzzled by its name.

Was it supposed to appeal to some subset of guys who were really angry?

I don’t know.

However, the editor’s note that introduces the very first issue (December 1956) does express some manly grumpiness about the state of men’s magazines. It even sounds slightly angry.

It says:

     This is the first issue of RAGE, the best damned men’s magazine in the country. Here’s why we know so: In a day and age when men’s magazines are pussyfooting over one hot subject after another, RAGE plans to call a spade a spade, a crook a crook, a bum a bum. We’re pretty sure that’s what you want in a magazine for men-we know it's what we want. If you think the way we do, stick with us.

I guess THE BEST DAMNED MEN’S MAGAZINE IN THE COUNTRY was a bit too long for a name. And, RAGE does at least seem better than GRUMPY or SLIGHTLY ANGRY.

Initially, the full name shown on covers of this no-pussyfooting periodical was RAGE FOR MEN.

It was one of several men’s adventure magazines published by the pioneering comics and magazine publisher Everett M. “Busy” Arnold. Others included GUSTO (one of other personal favorites), MAN’S PERIL and WILD.

RAGE FOR MEN was published bimonthly by Arnold’s flagship company Arnold Magazines, Inc. from December 1956 to February 1958.

After a year-and-a-half hiatus, Arnold resurrected the magazine in September 1960 with the shorter title RAGE on the cover.

At that point, it was subtitled “THE MAGAZINE FOR REAL MEN” — making it one of a number of magazines that were meant for “real men” who wanted “real” adventure stories back in the 1950s and 1960s. (As opposed to those fashion-conscious girly men who wanted to read candy-ass, egghead fiction stories like those published in magazines like PLAYBOY, ya know?)

The second series of RAGE magazine was published bimonthly (with a few gaps) until July 1964 by Natlus, Inc., another company owned by Busy Arnold. For some reason the last few issues reverted to using the title RAGE FOR MEN on the cover.

Throughout both runs the content of RAGE/RAGE FOR MEN was the typical mix common to most vintage men’s adventure mags: pulpy, over-the-top action and adventure yarns, exposés and sexposés, “true crime” stories, cheesecake photo spreads, sexist cartoons — and some very cool, but generally uncredited, cover paintings and interior artwork.

For example, the painting used on the cover of  the January 1963 issue is a classic, well-executed “sweat magazine” bondage-and-torture scene.

It shows a chubby, demonic-looking Arab sheik getting ready to use a whip on a busty, barely-clothed redhead as two henchmen look on and several other hapless, bound damsels cower in the background.

There’s no artist credit for the cover painting and no visible signature. But it looks like a John Duillo painting to me. When I asked my friend Rich Oberg, the world’s foremost collector of and authority on men’s adventure magazine art, he agreed.

The cover painting was also used inside, as an interior illo. It goes with the story “THE THOUSAND SEX-SLAVES OF THE WHIP-MAD SHEIK,” one of a number of outré gems in the January 1963 issue of RAGE.

On the contents page, that story is listed in the so-called “True Adventure” section, along with another “true” tale (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) about the “TORRID TEMPTRESS OF THE KOREAN WAR.”

The illustration for this spicy Korean War war story is signed “L.R. Summers,” an alternate name used by Leo Summers (full name Leo Ramon Summers). He is probably best known for his superb science fiction pulp magazine artwork, but he also did illustrations for men’s magazines.

Several other wild stories are included in a section of this issue of RAGE that’s dubbed “True Experiences.” This is also a section where the word true means something other than, er, true.

The stories listed under the “True Experiences” heading include two awesomely gonzo yarns: “I WAS TRAPPED IN A BEATNIK BROTHEL!” and “THE BIZARRE FLIGHT OF CAPT. BAYLISS AND HIS 29 MAN-STARVED NYMPHOS.”

There’s also the naughty nautical sexposé “LATEST VICE-TWIST: MATE SWAP CRUISES.” 

The “Exclusive Exposes” section of the magazine includes two articles of historical interest from a cultural perspective.

One is a graphic and grim article about executions, titled “THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT DEATH IN THE ELECTRIC CHAIR.”

The second, titled “THE BIG BOOM IN BIG BOSOMS,” provides an intriguing overview of men’s fascination with well-endowed women, the tendency of many women to worry about their bust size, and an intriguing mention of “the new tricks of ‘mamaplasty,’ as plastic breast surgery is called by the medics.” Yep, that mispelled term refers to breast augmentation using implants, a procedure that was relatively new in 1963. Of course, “the medics” actually spell it mammoplasty or mammaplasty, since it involves the mammary glands. I’m not sure if “mamaplasty” was a mistake by the author, a typo or a Freudian slip.

There’s also a “Fiction Bonus” story titled “TO HELL WITH WOMEN!” (which turns out to be a humorous fiction yarn).

In the “Glamour Department,” there are tantalizing (but not explicit) photo spreads featuring three aspiring pinup models: Fione “Freckles” Clarence, Penny Russell and Laure Lord.

And, in the “Tongue in Cheek” section there’s a classic Bill Ward cartoon, featuring one of his trademark, giant-boobed bimbo babes. (Beneficiaries of the cartoon version of “mamaplasty.”)

As you can tell, the January 1963 issue of RAGE is far less serious-minded than something like the the BATTLE CRY issue featured in my previous post here.

But, like that issue of BATTLE CRY, I view it as a great example of a men’s pulp adventure magazines in its own way.

So, I’ve added a complete PDF copy of it in the MensPulpMags.com virtual newsstand. Just click on this link or the image of the cover and contents page below to download it.

By the way, speaking of great...

Tom Ziegler, author of the must-have book about one of the greatest of all men’s adventure artists, Bruce Minney, recently posted a note on the Bruce Minney Facebook page saying that Bruce is currently in a rehab hospital recovering from a stroke.

Fortunately, Tom said the prognosis is good.

He noted that when the physical therapist asked Bruce what he wanted to do when he was discharged, Bruce said “I want to be able to paint again.”

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Bruce. I hope you’re back at your easel soon. (You can read more about Bruce here.)

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Comments? Corrections? Post them in the Men’s Adventure Magazines Facebook Group.

Click this link or the image below to download a PDF copy of: RAGE magazine, January 1963

BATTLE CRY, December 1955: the classic first issue of a long-running men’s adventure magazine...

Memorial Day is a day to remember and honor the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

But it also makes me think of my late father, Robert Carl Deis, who served in the Army during World War II and survived

Dad was a Scout and Rifleman in the 6th Infantry Division (specifically, G Company of the 1st Infantry Regiment). He saw hellish action in the South Pacific.

Like many veterans, when Dad came back to the States, he worked in blue collar jobs to support his family and struggled to understand and adjust to the enormous social changes that were taking place in the 1950s and 1960s.

American military veterans like my Dad and his Army buddies, who served and survived, were the primary audience for many of the men’s adventure magazines of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

And, there were millions of them.

In fact, there were nearly 16 million male veterans of World War II when that global conflict ended in 1945.

Some of them also fought in the Korean War, which began five years later. More than 5.7 million Americans served in that conflict by the time it ended in 1953.

Most of the 160 or so magazines in the men’s adventure genre were designed to appeal to the interests those veterans and, later, to the 8.7 million American men who served in the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1975.

Thus, almost all included war stories of various kinds: true history pieces and eyewitness accounts; serious dramatic war fiction; highly-embellished articles that mixed fact and fiction; and, wild over-the-top yarns featuring sadistic Nazis and Commies, scantily-clad babes, and battling Yanks. However, only some of men’s pulp adventure magazines had a specific focus on war.

They included: BATTLE CRY, BATTLEFIELD, BATTLE ATTACK, BATTLE STATION, MAN’S COMBAT, MEN IN COMBAT, REAL COMBAT STORIES, REAL WAR, SALVO, TRUE BATTLES OF WORLD WAR II, TRUE SPY AND WAR STORIES, TRUE WAR, TRUE WAR STORIES, WAR, WAR CRIMINALS, WAR STORIES, WAR STORY and WOMEN-IN-WAR.

Most of the magazines in the war mag subgenre were fairly short-lived (as were many other magazines in the men’s adventure genre in general). The longest-lasting was BATTLE CRY. It was published from late 1955 to mid-1971 by Stanley Publications, Inc., the flagship company of pioneering comic book and magazine publisher Stanley P. Morse.

When the puritanical 1954 Comics Code essentially banned violent or sexy images in comics, Morse discontinued his BATTLE CRY comic book and created the men’s adventure magazine BATTLE CRY.

The comic had lasted for 20 issues. That’s why the first issue of the men’s adventure magazine version, dated December 1955, was numbered Vol. 1, No. 21.

The first issue of BATTLE CRY magazine features a moving cover painting by the great pulp illustration artist Clarence Doore. It shows two American GIs driving a jeep loaded with the flag-covered coffin of a fallen comrade. The words “LAST TRIP,” printed at the bottom of the cover, are the poignant title of the painting, not the title of a story inside.

On the contents page of this issue, there’s a fascinating introduction about the purpose of the magazine, presumably written by the magazine’s initial Editor, Harry Kantor.

This intro doesn’t mention anything about the transformation of the BATTLE CRY comic into a men’s adventure magazine.

Here’s how it explains the genesis and purpose of the new periodical:   

WE’RE mad. Good and mad. P.O’ed.
     This started because of something we overheard. We were reminiscing about the old days in England with the 8th AAF, when some joker butts in with, “The war’s over! When are you guys gonna forget it?” We didn’t answer him. We were too stunned to answer. But his remarks set us to thinking. And wondering.
     We wondered if that’s how most people felt. “Forget about 1940-45, it’s over and done with. World War II and Korea are just history.”
     Well, maybe so. But not to us who were in it. Especially those who shed some blood. We don’t forget that easily. Even if the others do. Korea was an example of that. Just a nice private little war. Only concerned those who were there and their families. Didn’t concern anyone else.
     Well, that’s what we’re sore about. You don’t forget that easily. Or you shouldn’t. And that’s why this magazine. BATTLE CRY is to make sure you don’t forget.   
     What are our purposes? Our aims? Well, we’re not going off half-cocked and say that through these pages we hope to stop wars. We know that can’t happen. Even though we wish it could. Magazines don’t stop wars. People do.
     But we felt that it’s about time people found out what war is really like. The frustrations, the fears, the anguish, the futility, and all of the rest that makes up combat and the military.
     That’s why this magazine.
     Another reason. Sixteen million present and ex-service men and women. Somewhere on these pages you’ll find something that interests you. That concerns you. A shot of your old outfit. A battle you fought in. A buddy you lost contact with. We’re trying to make this the postwar YANK. We’re trying to make this YOUR MAGAZINE.
     No, we’re not forgetting we were once in The Service. We’re damned proud of it.
     BATTLE CRY will help us to remember.

Inside the first issue of BATTLE CRY there are announcements of several regular features designed to let veterans communicate with each other — in the same way a modern Internet forum or Facebook group does for people who share certain interests.

For example, the “Whatever Happened To...” section was designated as a place where vets could post messages to old buddies they were trying to find or to announce dates and locations of reunions for their outfits. The “So You’re Out Now” feature was launched as an ongoing source of information about programs for veterans and to provide answers to questions vets sent in about problems they faced. 

The articles and stories in the December 1955 issue of BATTLE CRY and other early issues are not the type of wild-and-crazy “sweat magazine” style yarns that were the primary content of most Stanley Publications magazines in the 1960s and early 1970s (including issues of BATTLE CRY published in those decades).

Many stories were gritty, but not lurid, non-fiction and fiction war stories, such as:

“CALL ME TRAITOR!,” an insightful “as told to” story about a soldier who was a prisoner of war in Korea;

“THE BLOODY 100th,” a fact-based story about B-17 crews in the 100th Bombardment Group that reminded me of the recent history books MISSION TO BERLIN and MISSION TO TOKYO, by former men’s adventure writer Robert F. Dorr;

“TANK TRAP,” another fact-based story, about WWII tank crews;

“WORLD’S TOUGHEST KILLERS IN KHAKI,” a salute to the Australian military;

“THE BLOODY BUTCHERS OF MILNE,” an account of the WWII Battle of Milne Bay in New Guinea

“YOU DON'T COUNT FOR A DAMN,” a ripping WWII fiction yarn;

“YA GOTTA KILL ‘EM TO TRAIN ‘EM,” an endorsement of tough basic training techniques;

“WHAT MEN THINK OF IN THE FACE OF DEATH,” another story about the bravery of American bomber crews, this time B-24 crews in the South Pacific; and,

“SUICIDE SUB,” a true story about the USS Tang, a famed WWII submarine that sank 33 Japanese ships before being sunk by a malfunctioning torpedo in 1945, killing most of the crew.

Not all of the stories in the first issue of BATTLE CRY are serious. For example, there’s an article about the often laughable “GI SEX INSTRUCTION FILMS” (a.k.a. sex hygiene films) that were supposed to educate American soldiers about how to avoid catching a venereal disease (or getting the local gals pregnant).

There’s a humorous story about the, uh, side benefits of serving behind the lines in an office that had female staff, titled “I WAS A FILING TIGER.”

And, as usual in vintage men’s pulp mags, there are advertisements that often provide unintended humor, like the oddly-placed ad about the power of prayer that’s sandwiched between ads for illustrated porn booklets on one of the back pages.

There are also some classic cheesecake photo spreads in this issue, featuring the famed stripper Evelyn “Treasure Chest” West, the alluring, somewhat notorious actress and model Francesca De Scoffa and a lesser-known pinup model named Lee Wilson.

In the 1960s, BATTLE CRY moved increasingly into “sweat magazine” territory and left behind many of the original goals outlined in the Editor’s introduction in the December 1955 issue.

Yet, as noted by vintage magazine expert Dr. David M. Earle, author of the excellent book ALL MAN!: HEMINGWAY, 1950s MEN'S MAGAZINES AND THE MASCULINE PERSONA, men’s adventure magazines published in both the ‘50s and ‘60s played an important role in the lives of America’s military veterans. 

In an interview I did with Dr. Earle a while back, he explained:

“The most concentrated exploration of men’s adventure magazines that I make in the book, and which I find pretty enthralling and novel still, is how they offered veterans of World War II a means to deal with and categorize both their wartime experience and the difficulties of returning to United States. They returned to a society that was, for a large part, unaware of exactly how horrible their experiences had been. The bloody realities of the war had generally been censored by the government and avoided by the press.

Yes. The end of the war was obviously a happy time, but also a very traumatic time: a difficult shift to a postwar economy, pressures of suburbanization, the simple difficulties of readjusting, and even the difficulty of expressing, to your family and yourself, the experience of war. Men’s adventure magazines like BATTLE CRY featured stories by and about vets, soldiering, battle. They offered columns for reuniting with former war buddies. They returned men to the camaraderie of soldiering, but in a safe place. The stories about war provided a text and narrative for vets to identify with. This is one of the important parts of healing for PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder], hence why ‘rap sessions’ were implemented for vets returning from the Vietnam War. Audie Murphy, the World War II hero who became a famous actor, wrote an amazing story about this for BATTLE CRY in 1956 [“The Day I Cried,” August 1956] that was instrumental in breaking the previous taboo about discussing war-related mental problems.

The aspects of men’s adventure magazines mentioned by Dr. Earle are front and center in the first issue of BATTLE CRY. It remains one of the best issues of the magazine from its early, pre-sweat mag years.

In fact, I consider it a classic within the entire men’s adventure genre. That’s why I scanned in the entire copy and added it to the MensPulpMags.com virtual newsstand.

To download a complete, high resolution copy of BATTLE CRY, December 1955, click this link or the image below…

This one’s for you, Dad.

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Comments? Corrections? Post them on the Men’s Adventure Magazines Facebook Group.

Click this link or the image below to download a PDF copy of: BATTLE CRY, December 1955 This is a digital copy of the complete issue, in high resolution PDF format, featuring gritty war stories, classic pulp art, vintage cheesecake photos of Evelyn “Treasure Chest” West, and much more.