Sunday, September 26, 2010

Paperback 355: Strip-Tease Girl / Cal Anton (Beacon B266)

Paperback 355: Beacon B266 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Strip-Tease Girl
Author: Cal Anton
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $40

Beac266.StripTease

Best things about this cover:
  • I'm pretty sure this is why God invented paperbacks.
  • The topic, the painting, and the cover copy are all exquisitely sleazypaperbackesque.
  • That is one fantastically ugly table.
  • Pardon my ogling, buy her rack is phenomenal. A hair's breadth away from seeming fake.
  • Love that "—AND DELIVERED" is in red! Hot. Feverish, even.
  • Also love the lack of a possessive pronoun before "JADED SENSES"; are they hers, his, yours? Who can say?

Beac266bc.StripTease

Best things about this back cover:
  • She also couldn't center her words or stick to one font, and was overly enamored of tiny type.
  • "Goggling!" "Queenly hips!?"
  • "Inevitably..." HA ha. "I mean, come on—what else was she gonna do with that body?"
  • "... and even a woman or two" HELLO! Way to bury the lead, guys.

Page 123~

"Well, I know the place like a school teacher knows a book. Shoot the questions. Mike," he ordered, "how about a head on this coffee?"

Conversation continues with equally forced-sounding attempts at colloquial patter. "Like a school teacher knows a book" is about the flat-fallingest simile I've ever heard. "Which book?" "Oh, you know, *a* book."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah... There was no way that excerpt was going to live up to the outside of the book, was there?

Tulse said...

Wouldn't it be awfully hard to strip in that full-length nightgown?

And I'm amused that although, as Rex notes, she has a fantastic rack on the cover, the back blurb only mentions her tresses, hips, and legs.

DemetriosX said...

I think I'm most bothered by the pseudo-rhyme at the end of the back cover. If it wasn't intentional, they needed a serious rewrite or reformat.

Anonymous said...

Aww come on - I like the table!

Michael5000 said...

They stare at her exciting charms in "utter fascination"? Who goes to this club, Vulcans and research gynecologists?

Ulysses McQueen said...

It's strange just how much this cover looks like the cover of "Celeste... The Gold Coast Virgin."