Showing posts with label Fireside Publications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fireside Publications. Show all posts

25 June 2012

The World's Most Unusual Detective Magazine!


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
Check out the gams! It took me a while to realize that that blonde's about to take a leap. Or is she being pushed? Whatever's happening here, the fella sure looks happy.

International Detective Cases was "THE WORLD'S MOST UNUSUAL DETECTIVE MAGAZINE!" No question. So unusual was the world's most unusual that it seems to have vanished without so much as publishing a single issue.

The above, which comes to me courtesy of the family of the late Leo Orenstein, looks to be yet another of the artist's unused covers. Formatting and presentation suggest that like Aphrodite, Against the Grain and Curious Relations of MankindInternational Detective Cases was an aborted effort of Toronto's Fireside Publications. But here's the thing, Fireside didn't produce any original material, rather they'd re-issue, re-package, re-package... My hunch here is that publisher meant to mine the corpse of a dead American true crime monthly by the same title.

International Detective Cases, December 1937
I'm keeping the file open.

An aside: Where the title of England's "A Case for Scotland Yard" seems rather ho-hum, the Canadian entry, "The Tale of Singed Dog Island", did intrigue. I spent a happy half-hour yesterday reading newspaper accounts of this forgotten case. It began 23 November 1935 when the appropriately named John Harms, a trapper, murdered his partner. He next terrorized a neighbour by showing her the body, then made repeated attempts to break into her home. Eventually Harms gave up, yelling: "Report to police that the kid is dead. I will be waiting for them at my cabin on Singed Dog Island."*

The Leader-Post, 30 November 1935
It's clear that the papers were hoping Harms would turn out to be another Albert Johnson, the "Mad Trapper" who had led the RCMP on a 16-day manhunt four years earlier. Instead, Harms sat in his cabin and gave himself up when the Mounties arrived on 3 December. Found guilty of murder, he was hanged five months later.

No detectives needed.
* There really is a Singed Dog Island; a nine-acre piece of land just inside the Saskatchewan portion of Lake Athabaska, from the air it resembles a rotting steak. The actual murder took place at nearby Spring Point, but "The Tale of Spring Point" doesn't sound nearly so interesting.

11 June 2012

Monday Morning with Aphrodite


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
What better way to begin the work week than with Aphrodite? Sadly, it seems that this particular edition of Paul Louÿs' erotic novel of Alexandria was never issued.

All signs indicate that the image above, which comes courtesy of artist Leo Orenstein's family, was commissioned by Toronto's Fireside Publications. Had it been published, this Aphrodite would have competed in the Canadian market with American editions flooding in from the south. Since 1933, the novel had been part of the Modern Library – this is the cover being used in the early 'fifties, when Fireside was in operation:


At $1.25, Modern Library's tasteful hardcover might have challenged Fireside's cheap, pulpy 50¢ paperback, but the real competition would've come from Avon. No one exploited Aphrodite quite like Avon:

1946
1950
1951
1955
Avon was having such a good time that in 1957, Berkley got in on the action with this, the first of their two editions:


But just who is that on the Avon and Berkley covers? It can't be the Goddess of Love, she only appears in the novel as a statue.

No, it must be the beautiful courtesan Chrysis, the main female character. It seems that only Leo Orenstein knew the book well enough to depict her as Louÿs describes: a blonde.

22 April 2012

The Curious and Unknown Leo Orenstein


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

Leo Orenstein is worthy of much overdue attention for his work as one of this country's early television directors and producers. I hope that a bookish fellow like myself will be forgiven for focussing on his even earlier work as an illustrator.

Curious Relations of Mankind is one of two recently discovered cover designs that come to me courtesy of the late Mr Orenstein's family. Curious, indeed. It would appear that the book it was meant to grace was never published. WorldCat gives us no hits, Abebooks is silent... and yet the identity  of the intended publisher is clear. Those familiar with the eariest days of Canadian paperbacks will recognize the three-sided Fireside Publicatons style in the price.

But what was Curious Relations of Mankind? And who was Doctor J.G. Wood? I step out on a limb in suggesting that the good doctor was Reverend J.G. Wood. I'll even be so bold as to suggest that Curious Relations of Mankind was the clergyman's The Civilized Races of Men retitled and bowdlerized.


It would not have been the only time Fireside gave an fresh title to an old book. Here's their edition of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon:


Now, to be fair, From the Earth to the Moon is naught but a translation of the true title: De la Terre à la Lune. Yes, it's the most common, but we've also seen the novel published as A Trip to the Moon in Ninety-seven Hours, A Voyage to the Moon, The Moon VoyageBalbicane and Co.,  and The Baltimore Gun Club. The problem I have with Rocket Flight to the Moon is that the novel features no rockets – the adventurers are sent to the moon in a projectile shot from a massive cannon.

Of the two discovered Orensteins, I prefer this mock-up for The Queers of New York (Pocket Books, 1972), his lone novel.


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
One is left to assume that Those Queers of New York was a working title, just as the cover itself was something that was not quite ready. The Queers of New York is a better title, I think.


A favourite Canadian cover of that lost decade, my only complaint is that Leo Orenstein's name is so very small.

Related posts:

21 June 2011

Figuring Out the Queers of New York



The Queers of New York
Leo Orenstein
Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1972

The late Leo Orenstein was a producer, a director, an educator, an illustrator, a playwright and, with The Queers of New York, a novelist. That there aren't other novels in his bibliography comes as a bit of a surprise. As a young man, he played a part with the country's early paperback publishers. Orenstein's art for Fireside Publishing's Baron Munchausen is a personal favourite. "ILLUSTRATED BY GUSTAVE DORÉ"... except, of course, for the cover.


The Queers of New York is the product of a much different time. Its appearance owes a great deal to Pocket Books' belated effort to establish a line of Canadian mass market paperback originals. Orenstein's novel, one of the first, would soon be joined by titles like The Happy Hairdresser, Daddy's Darling Daughter and The Last Canadian, which I maintain is the stupidest novel yet produced in this country.


A much better book, The Queers of New York begins with a "panty-pink Cadillac convertible" being chased through Manhattan. At the wheel is our hero and narrator, charismatic go-getter Paul Norman. A Jewish gag writer for Punch Line – read: Laugh In Paul is doing his darndest to reinvent himself. In the past, he's sunk money into mining and a suicidal daredevil this time it's film production. Paul has gambled on an option for Fruitfly, "a play about homosexuals", which he's trying to mould into something that will sell in Hollywood. The thing is, he knows nothing about his subject, and the play's author, GT Baker, rightly rejects all his ideas. The gag writer thinks he's on to something when he learns that a blackmail ring has been secretly filming the city's wealthiest gays. Adding the blackmail element, along with actual blackmail footage, will make Fruitfly "something every producer in the business would be breaking their neck to get."

What seems too easy a solution becomes complicated when Paul's contact is run down by the crooks while walking away from the panty-pink Caddy. And so, the chase. Paul is also punched, kicked, drugged, kidnapped, shot at, and has a lead pipe thrown in his general direction. It's pretty exciting stuff, relayed with a good amount of humour he is a comedy writer, after all but the pacing is all off.

Blame lies with GT, who encourages Paul to learn a thing or two about homosexuality. His education begins with a visit to Dr Stanhauser, a professor of Anthropology at "the Forensic Clinic of Columbia University". Paul begins with a question:
"Are there any figures on what percentage of the population is homosexual?"
"I think Kinsey provides the most reliable figures so far, on that. At least judging from my work here at the clinic, I have no reason to doubt them. The picture that shapes up in these studies shows that 4% are exclusively homosexual, and another 33% have been involved in at least one enjoyable homosexual experience in their lives."
"Thirty-seven percent altogether? That's more than one out of three!"
"Yes, and that's to the point of orgasm. Mind you, I think Kinsey was a bit too wide on the 33% because he takes it from adolescents on; but altogether its generally assumed that 37% of the male population has at one time in their lives become involved with a male homosexual."
And on it goes, page after page. The whole thing reads a lot like an interview with a sexologist, circa 1970. Who knows, maybe it was. After the meeting, Paul feels it necessary to detail the life story of every second or third "queer" he encounters. Consider them case studies.



Ultimately, what might have been a fun and funny little novel suffers from want of a good editor. Pocket's Canadian branch plant was hardly known for its high standards; one need look no further than the first pages for evidence. No, not the novel itself, but the two-page "GLOSSARY OF YIDDISH WORDS AND PHRASES USED IN THIS BOOK". Not a bad idea, if Paul's own definitions didn't already pepper the narration. Here's our hero in the midst of an otherwise tense break-and-enter:
With all my "potzkehing" around, (potzkehing means fooling around and making a mess of things), I began to worry about Jinx. Could she hear me down here?
Nearly four decades have passed since publication, but I'm betting that in 1972 "Rosh Hashonah", "kosher", "schmuck" and "shmoose" were familiar to the "Goyim" (a word that also features). An equally useless "GAY GLOSSARY" follows the novel. Here, the reader is filled in on obscurities like "heterosexual", "homosexual", "bisexual", "straight", "gay", "queer", "faggot", "fruit", "pansy", "lesbian", "S&M", "narcissism", "buns" and "hooker".

I doubt Orenstein had anything to do with the glossary; there are differences in spelling between it and the novel proper. What's more, Paul's own definitions and those of the OED, for that matter do not match. "Pediaphilia" is "anal enjoyment in sex homosexual or heterosexual" we're told on the last page of the book.

The Queers of New York received only one printing. There was no chance for a correction.


Object: A mass market paperback with a cover illustration provided by Orenstein himself. As bowdler of Fly-by-night noted last year, cover copy tells us nothing at all about the book, presenting instead "an absurdly detailed biography of the author." A loan from bowdler, The Queers of New York is the first book reviewed here that isn't part of my collection.

Access: Held by Library and Archives Canada and just thirteen universities – even the Toronto Public Library fails. Scarce and highly collectable; any decent copy offered for under $40 is a bargain. Of the three copies are currently listed online I recommend purchasing the most expensive. Yes, it's US$75, but the thing is signed.

My thanks to bowdler for the loan, and for the images used in this post.


Related posts:

16 October 2010

The Talented Mr. Orenstein



Something for Saturday. Over at Fly-by-night, dedicated researcher Bowdler uncovers two illustrations by the late director Leo Orenstein, author of The Queers of New York. Good fun!