Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Month of McGinnis: “The Lady’s Not for Living”

I first mentioned back in April that this month, October, would bring the release of what looks to be a gorgeous, must-have new book about 88-year-old Ohio-born artist Robert McGinnis, whose work has appeared on numerous paperback covers and movie posters, but who is also known for his magazine illustrations and landscape paintings. Titan Books is scheduled to make The Art of Robert E. McGinnis, by Robert E. McGinnis and Art Scott, available in stores and online by October 28. In the meantime, though, I have decided to celebrate McGinnis’ work with a month-long series of posts on this page, showcasing some of my favorites from among his extensive variety of book covers--none of which, I believe, has appeared in Killer Covers before.

Today’s opening pick is the 1963 Fawcett Gold Medal edition of The Lady’s Not for Living, written by “Dexter St. Clair” (aka Prentice Winchell) and featuring New York private eye Kirby Hart. This novel features on Cullen Gallagher’s list of “50 Great Gold Medal Titles,” and its cover highlights a hallmark of McGinnis’ paperback fronts: captivating women with markedly long limbs. You’ve gotta love it!

3 comments:

Bob said...

The new Titan book, is this a reissue of the old 'Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis'?

J. Kingston Pierce said...

Co-author Art Scott reports: "This is all new. My first book, The Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis, was an 'illustrated bibliography' of his paperback work only: introductory material, a detailed bibliographic listing of over 1000 books, with reproductions of many of the book covers and some pieces of original art.

"The Art of Robert E. McGinnis is a more conventional life-&-works large-format art book about an illustrator's career. Vadeboncour's book on Everett Raymond Kinstler, Schreuders & Fulton's book on James Avati, Kane's on James Bama are quality examples of the type of book this is. As you'll see, while McGinnis's work as a paperback cover artist gets a large piece of the book, as it should, the book also has extensive coverage of his work on movie posters, illustration for magazines, and finally his late-career works for gallery sale."

TracyK said...

Great, I too was wondering about the differences between the two books. I had already pre-ordered my copy regardless, but really working forward to it now.