Cheers and Happy Valentine's to all you girlie pulp lovers out there. Here's a scan of the first issue of an intriguing love pulp from December of 1933. Bottoms up!
Cover artist unknown. Later cover artists in the four issue run are R.A. Burley and Zoe Mozert.
Full scan available here, and the issue can be read online or downloaded in alternate formats from the Internet Archive here.
This issue marks something of a return of Frank Armer to the girlie pulps who was a pioneer of the Artists and Models and girlie pulp genres creating titles like Pep! (Stories) and Spicy Stories. Suffering losses in the stock market, printer/partner Harry Donenfeld took over his books out of printing debt (a tactic he used with other players in the pulp game, most notably Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson). Donenfeld owned this title, too, which aimed to appeal to the romance crowd as well as the girlie pulp lovers. Doug Ellis' Uncovered notes that material from this issue later appears in ashcans for the Snappy line (Snappy Detective/Adventure/Mystery). Frank Armer is the editor of Love Revels. I've written about Armer here at Darwination Scans before, but I'd refer those interested to a longer essay on the girlie pulps at pulpmags.org here.
Love Revels ran for only four issues, the final issue being April 1934.
As one of the lone champions of the actual content of the girlie pulps versus just their cover art (and likely one of the lone readers, heh heh), a friend recently asked me if there were any truly great stories from these pulps. There are, but the funny thing is, like with most pulp, I sort of read pulp stories and forget them, though I have started to take note of any "classic" stories in case I ever want to put a collection together in print in celebration of these underappreciated stories. This issue doesn't have any stories that make the cut, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Like a box of grocery story valentine's chocolates, these short entries come in different flavors, perhaps none too refined, and, ala Forrest Gump, when you start a girlie pulp story, you never quite know what you're going to get. If you're a frequent reader of my blog, you'll notice I try not to spoil any stories while still pointing out the fun ones when "thumbing through" and issue in review.
The inner cover. I've often pointed out here that the readership of the girlie pulps was split between men and women. The modern perception with the saucy covers and inclusion of nude photography (though this title has none) is that the girlie pulps were male-oriented. The letter pages (which often offered inter-gender pen pals where romance pulps would not), the advertising, and the nature of the fiction all point towards female readership as well. Ribald romantic comedy and a bit of naughty humor are enjoyed by all, even if a lady in the 30s might blush if granny caught her reading a girlie pulp.
Is the inner cover aimed at a male audience? Hardly - and body image concerns are nothing new even if the contraptions, medicines, and trends in what's attractive do change over time - the "perfolastic girdle," money back if you do not like
But the next page, the first pulp page, which sex is this aimed at? Could be either, eh? But don't get edgy when your missus comes looking to up the life insurance benefit, gentlemen, she's not poisoning your tea or anything...
Contents, no author names jump out at me here, though a couple of these writers do have a good number of pulp credits. The use of throwaway pseudonyms was very common in the genre, though we've managed to associate some of the more prolific girlie pulp scribes with their more famous mainstream monikers.
The first issue mission statement, always revealing in a magazine, as they tend to lay out goals and intentions and to invite the reader into the pow-wow:
I think what you're getting here is a pitch at both girlie pulp and love pulp readers. Romance pulps like Love Story and All-Story Love were very successful, but you also see more and more smaller titles popping out of the woodwork as well as a push to "modernize" the genre, maybe push the prim and proper boundaries as possible. Here a nod to "life as it IS" and "romances of youth told in the modern manner...entertaining." Young lovers are drinking, making merry, struggling with the effort to stay chaste and perhaps not always succeeding. And, yet, the boundaries, though pushed at and teased, are mostly still respected. These tales are "clean and wholesome" even if "red-blooded." Changing romances for changing times. And maybe this tension was even more in play in the mid-30s that had moved on from the jazz-age in a return to more traditional moires, but still the heart (and body) want what they want -
The first story, A Date for Tonight, teases this tension. Martin Cavendish, hardworking and traditional New Yorker, is ordered by his doctor to take a vacation for the good of his nerves in sunny Florida. A stranger in a strange land, Martin marvels as the bronzed and lightly clothed Floridians, "They weren't convalescents like himself; this was their normal and accustomed manner of living. A gay, carefree lot of pagan sun worshippers!" Almost immediately, Martin falls under the spell of young Patty and the Florida night. Love is in the air, Martin's ginger ale is replaced by stronger spirits, there's dancing and cavorting, and before you know it, puritanical Martin's blacked out. Imagine his fright on waking -
Artist unknown.
Has Martin dishonored this young lass? Does she even care? She seems none too concerned about such weighty matters. Does she make a good cup of coffee? A fun opener that sets a whimsical tone for the rest of the issue.
Fangs regards a pair of longtime friends reunited in Mexico. Tall and Blonde ladies' man Ed Huntley hasn't seen his friend Walter Winslow in years. In the meantime, Walter's seen hard times but has found fortune in Mexico as a coral snake farmer as well as marital bliss with his beautiful Mexican bride, Conchita. Huntley always wooed the ladies back in college, and Walter seems to think Conchita has taken a liking to his blonde friend. Who is snaking who here as the fangs come out?
Between story pages, there are illustrations and jokes, Bo and Flo, adorable:
Jealousy is a one pager wherein a husband has tracked his wife to an unknown apartment and confronts the man within after she leaves. Good for a guffaw or few.
Going Up from Robert Clairborne Pitzer is far and above the oddest entry in this issue. It involves the young Mary Kelly who has been orphaned by her mother and given by the county to be raised by the unkindly Kirschwalder clan and forced into a sort of servitude on the farm, spreading manure and weeding the crops. She's been arranged to marry the son of the Kirschwalders and to take the family name yet manages to keep fine spirits and a rebellious attitude in her secret dancing in the pasture, prancing about as god made her. But Kirschwalders and visitors from on high catch her in the act and violent passions are roused. How will Mary get out of this dire predicament?
A Grand Place for a Honeymoon is from Esther Schwartz who is perhaps the most accomplished writer of romances in the issue. Esther appeared regularly in the romance pulps in titles like Breezy Stories, All-Story Love, and Love Story Magazine, and she has a story in all four issues of Love Revels. A Grand Place for a Honeymon begins with an unnamed lass walking alone along a road in the Adirondacks as the sun is setting and a heavy blizzard is about to fall. She refuses a ride from a group of "rather forbidding-looking" men and seems to realize she is in a horrible situation as a second car with alone gentlemen approaches, and a man implores her to hop in. His behavior grows rather impertinent from her on out, as he takes her to a nearby cabin with only a single bed, a grand place for a honeymoon he tells her, as the snows come down, no doubt trapping them together for days.
Keepsake A short and saucy tale of a trusting but clever husband.
Pajamas on Venus, from Nigel (also Don?) Stuart, is one of better stories in the issue and is set at Snowden college where the young rapscallion Grant Walker is trying to make it with his sweetie, Barbara. She insists that they wait for any hi-jinks until Grant has graduated meeting the terms for a fifty grand inheritance.
Please, baby, baby, please...
Complicating matters is the fact that Dean Manwaring (a horrible prude that kicks any slightly unvirtuous women out of the school but who nonetheless keeps a nude venus in his garden) is out to keep Grant from graduation. Involving a wicked bootlegger, poor decisions, police pursuit and a dance marathon.
Late Laughter - A wicked married woman chases a faithfully married man at a Summer colony. Defenses crumble as one learns from another the nature of love.
The Masque - "a flirt may tempt but does not always conquer" - After a masquerade at an inn, Mel's had it up to here with his betrothed, Janice. He's given her a ring, yet she gives him no honey. During a quarrel, she gives the ring back. That night, cocktails are prepared, poured, and imbibed by a the group of young merry makers. Intrigue and partner swapping are afoot, and the catty and sensuous Peg is out to score with Mel. What beds will all of these young wake up in? I liked this one.
The Pest - Shirley, "one of those rarities : a beautiful girl with brains," just can't get it through the thick head of Claude that she's not interested in him despite his wealth. Claude won't take no for an answer, so Shirley sets out to let Claude know she's not the nice girl he thinks he's after:
Shirley, you bad girl, you (art by Max Plaisted)
The best laid plans of mice and men -
Lastly, maybe the funniest story in the issue, Wise and Otherwise, is from Adelaide Thomas who I have to speculate might just be Adelaide Humphries, a romance author I've been investigating but who I haven't written about here on my blog yet. This is the only Fictionmags entry from an Adelaide Thomas, but the writing style and pulp neighborhood certainly line up with Adelaide Humphries (Rowe), so I consider it a strong possibility. But more on Adelaide Humphries later, I promise - Wise and Otherwise involves Adele Allison who has just gotten a fancy fur coat from a man other than her husband, the cheap bastard. She must simply have this coat and out in the open, too, so her sugar daddy, who cares not about the conventions of marriage, comes up with a simple plan involving her husband and a found pawn ticket. Hilarity ensues.
Ah, a fun girlie pulp, love and lust, the turning of tables, transgression and forgiveness. Happy Valentine's to all you lovers out there. Be good to your sweetie, and she'll be good to you. On the way out - a couple more vintage advertisements. We began this post with a girdle for her. I told you the girlie pulps are equal opportunity - a girdle for him?
Don't eat all those chocolates at once!
I admit I'm a last minute shopper, perhaps some diamonds for my honey on Valentines, cheap, too -
We do our part, yes we do.
Note: Sharper eyes may recognize that this doesn't look like one of my usual scans, and it isn't. This issue was scanned with an overhead scanner from a university collection. I've left the front cover a bit rougher than I usually might to match the look of the rest of the issue (and who doesn't love a newsstand or under the counter star stamp *swoon*). I've worked with images from overhead scanners before, and the images from this machine are similar in quality to what can be achieved with the overheads at the Library of Congress. The scans are sharp, and the process is easier on a delicate book, but there's a trade-off in color quality and uneven lighting gradients as well as some photo-realistic distortions having to do with page curvature and perspective. All in all, though, I'm pleased with the results and even enjoy the "realness" of an overhead scan (even if a flatbed scan is much preferred for archival purposes). I plan on pulling some more treasures from this collection when circumstances and proximity allow -
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