Pecos Hank "Fallen Angel" 1930's Pulp Art Slideshow

Spicy Mystery pulp magazine slideshow with "Fallen Angel" by Pecos Hank from the album "El Reno Blues." Available on iTunes, Amazon and CD Baby.

The Great Depression of the 1930's was a golden age of the popular magazines. Manufactured from cheap pulp paper, they cost only two cents to make, sold wholesale to the newsstand for a nickel, and retailed for one dime. A bargain? Not during a time when a nickel could buy you a thick hot dog with sauerkraut, a Hershey bar, a cup of coffee at the Automat, a large scoop ice cream at Coney Island, or, if you were homeless and unemployed, an all-night ride in a heated subway car in the winter. But if you had that extra dime and bought a pulp, you got a lot. The cover caught your eye first. The formula for the cover was "V.V.V" A typical scene might include the victim, a beautiful young blonde with her dress ripped, shown terrified by the violent acts of a lusty villain. Enter the handsome victor, with gun or knife or just fists to rescue her. Who would win? It would cost you a dime to find out.

It was the covers that sold the magazines. Once inside and reading, each page was a thrill, all fast action, a ten cent escape from all your troubles. Suddenly the printed page became a magic mirror. in which you saw yourself as a rugged hero, catching the criminal and saving the beautiful girl... Her sexual gratitude implied. The identity of The Shadow or The Spider or The Secret Agent X. The pulp magazine was a three hour escape, a new life of adventure all over the world.

Glamorous adventure was the fiction side. the non-fiction side was the business. Who bankrolled the pulps and why? For the new York printers, keeping their presses rolling during the depression was costly and at two cents a magazine, their cost, they made the deals. The dominant publishers were the old Street and Smith and the new thrilling and Popular Publications.

Popular Publications' Harry Steeger, fresh from Dartmouth. borrowed five thousand dollars in start-up cash. from his father-in-law. Writers were paid a quarter of a cent per word, four dollars for an interior black-and-white illustration and an oil-on-canvas full-color version. It was all freelance work with no steady employment and if your cover or story didn't help sell last months magazine, the publisher didn't answer the phone the next time you called. Tough times.

Remember the power of the dime? When Steeger put that in front and titled the magazines "Dime Detective" and "Dime Mysteries" they had sudden success. A million pulp magazines a month were being sold at the nations newsstands, and during the worst year of the depression Steeger wrote a six-figure check to the IRS. Harry Steeger became a millionaire and pulp circulation soared to a total of ten million. "Pulp People" got rich while everyone else stayed poor. and that got some jealous. Herbert Hoover, still president in the early years, formed a commission to determine if the pulps should be banned, but Franklin D. Roosevelt was a subscriber and an avid reader.

Power of the dime? Fuggetaboutit! In came the power of the quarter! Spicy Magazine, Spicy Adventure, Spicy Western, Vice Squad, Spicy Movie Tales all started publication in the early '30s and flourished, selling at the then exorbitant price of one whole quarter. The stories and covers took sex as far as it could be be taken without being taken to jail. Understand the environment... It was a very different time. Drinking a glass of beer on a hot summer day was a crime. A teenage boy wondering what a girl had under her clothes might peep through the keyhole while his buddy's sister was taking a shower to find out. Gambling was illegal coast to coast except at the tracks. Horse racing was a rich persons sport and therefore immune. The law was for the lower classes.

What killed the pulps? World War 2. The writers and the artists were drafted to war. Paper for the magazines was hard to get and the depression dimes and quarters lost their pulling power. The pulps were a marvelous invention but really locked into the 1930s. They couldn't change with the times. In 1953, the pulps lost their newsstand privilege but morphed into paperback form, often using the same artists and writers.

The pulps were a uniquely American contributor to popular culture. No other country dared. They were a gift of reading pleasure to what has been called the Greatest Generation. - Robert Lesser