Showing posts with label Don Ward. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Don Ward. Show all posts

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Paperback 676: Rope / Alfred Hitchcock [No Author Credit] [Don Ward] (Dell 262)

Paperback 676: Dell 262 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Rope
Author: Uncredited [Don Ward] ("from the famous play by Patrick Hamilton")
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $25

Dell262

Best things about this cover:
  • Hello, handsome.
  • Fantastic early movie tie-in. Weird that there is No Writing Credit, anywhere. I do not think that Alfred Hitchcock "wrote" this, in any meaningful sense of that word. I thought "novelizations" got credit. But maybe not in this era (?).
  • Gerald Gregg's cityscape is an understated but gorgeous detail.

Dell262bc

Best things about this back cover:
  • Hell yeah, mapback! 3D mapback!
  • I've seen more interesting mapbacks, but I do like how much detail you can see in this house. The arc of the coffee table, the tile pattern in the bathroom. 
  • That keyhole eyeball really is one of the great icons in paperback history. Up there with the damned kangaroo.

Page 123~

Something seemed to be slowly tearing in Phillip's mind, destroying the fabric of his slim residue of control.

Wow. "The fabric of his slim residue of control" has all the elegance of a rusted-out Ford Fiesta.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Paperback 49: Ballantine 236

Paperback 49: Ballantine 236 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Gunsmoke
Author: Don Ward
Cover artist: photo cover


Best things about this cover

  • "I Was A Sunburned Frankenstein"
  • Wow, colorization could really wreak havoc with your skin back then. Marshal Dillon looks like he just completed an overly lengthy stint at the tanning salon. You live in the DESERT, Marshal. Just walking around outside should give you all the color you need.
  • I'm not sure this cover could be less interesting if it tried. "I am ... walking toward you ... I am huge ... that is all."
  • Love the CBS "Eye"

Best things about this back cover

  • Copy writer should be fired - you don't open your promo with the passive voice, for god's sake.
  • Further, of course it "is remembered." If I'm reading this book in 1957, then I "remember" it from Last Night, When It Was On.
  • "Movie goers" is two words now? Walker Percy's not going to like that one bit.

RP