Another Look: “Again and Again”

Warning: Artistic inspiration drawn from book titles may vary.



Left: Again and Again, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1963); cover art by Robert Maguire. Right: Again and Again, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1968); cover illustration by Paul Rader.

Rader Love: “Tall, Blonde and Evil”

Part of a month-long celebration of artist Paul Rader’s work.



Tall, Blonde and Evil, by Greg Hamilton (Midwood, 1966). We’ll see the byline “Greg Hamilton” appear on other novels as this series of posts continues. It was one of publisher Midwood’s “house names,” under which fiction by several authors was released. According to Rader authority Lynn Munroe, the actual author of Tall, Blonde and Evil was Ron Singer, brother of Sally Singer (aka March Hastings).

Rader Love: “The Jealous and the Free”

Part of a month-long celebration of artist Paul Rader’s work.



The Jealous and the Free, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1961). Rader authority and books historian Lynn Munroe calls this “one of Paul Rader’s best covers.” Who am I to argue? (You can read the back-jacket copy here.)

Two-fer Tuesdays: Shape Shifting

A twice-monthly pairing of book covers that just seem to go together. Click on any of these images to open up an enlargement.



As I’ve mentioned on this page before, it was quite common during America’s paperback heyday of the mid-20th century for publishers to recycle cover illustrations from one book to the next, figuring that readers wouldn’t recognize such budget-saving thievery ... or at least wouldn’t care overly much about it. Less frequently, artists were commissioned to refashion their original paintings for a second (or even third) use. That was the case, for instance, with Ernest Chiriacka’s artwork for 1961’s By Love Depraved and Lou Marchetti’s cover image for 1955’s The Wanton Hour.

It was apparently also what Robert Maguire did in order to supply the two attention-grabbing paperback fronts showcased above.

The façade on the left comes from the 1960 Pyramid edition of Ed Spingarn’s Perfect 36, a novel said to offer “a revealing and riotous story of the bosom business.” I don’t have a scan of the back cover from that issue of Spingarn’s yarn; but the verso of the original, 1957 version (from Pyramid, as well) supplies this slightly more ample description of his plot:

How much is a girl’s virtue worth?

A mink coat? A two-carat diamond ring, with husband attached?

A fling with an intellectual?

A career as a model?

Or a flat $100,000 in cash?

It was up to Rosalie to choose—it was her virtue at stake.
Perfect 36 is the rowdy story of Rosalie—and her figure—and the startling emotions it roused in every male she met! It takes you behind the scenes and screens of the fabulous brassiere trade for the funniest, fastest, most titillating novel of the year!

“Titillating,” get it? Yeah, I don’t think the guy who concocted that suggestive copy received (or deserved) a bonus in his paycheck that week. Nonetheless, given the straightforward goal of drawing as many male readers to Perfect 36 as possible, by whatever creative schemes were available, I’m sure he won at least some appreciation from his bosses, and was invited to practice his teaser-penning talents on other novels.

(Left) Lou Marchetti’s art for the 1957 edition of Perfect 36.

Maguire’s artwork for Perfect 36 was exceptional, yet only slightly less provocative than that façade text, with its beautiful young brunette wrapped in a sparkly, curve-clinging dress, striking poses before an audience of leering gents who you just know aren’t whispering among themselves about her intellectual prowess. Pay special attention to that first guy on the left, the bald-headed one twiddling his cigar … because you’ll find that he, along with a version of the woman holding the limelight on Perfect 36, also appear on this week’s second “two-fer” front, shown above and on the right.

Released in 1966, this “Midwood Double Novel” comprises—as the cover line promises—“two stories about the kind of woman around whom no man is safe”: Test in Temptation, by Laura Duchamp; and Cool and Collected, by Blake Randall. It isn’t hard to recognize that the fetching femme Maguire imagined as that “kind of woman” is essentially the same one he’d pictured half a dozen years before on Spingarn’s novel. In this case, however, she’s clad in white, rather than iridescent red; her black tresses are more tossed than before, evidently as a result of her dancing; and her left arm has finally migrated out from behind her back, but the similarities are greater than those differences. And though the scene around her is more lively and colorful than on the earlier book, the gent (in the lower left corner) most obviously moved by her movements is the same grinning stogie-chomper we saw on Perfect 36, now wearing a light blue shirt and black necktie, rather than a dark blue shirt and a yellow tie.

If you recognize the byline “Laura Duchamp,” it may be because I mentioned it a few times last fall, when Killer Covers celebrated the 110th anniversary of artist Paul Rader’s birth. Duchamp was among the pseudonyms employed by author Sally Singer, who composed a variety of soft-porn novels (including Wild and Wicked, Model Mistress, A Weakness for Men, and The Sunday Lovers) for Midwood Books and—as Pulp International recalls—was “one of the few sleaze writers who was actually female. She was also prolific as ‘March Hastings.’” According to a backside blurb, Test in Temptation focused on a woman by the name of Celeste, who “was ready to violate every rule of house and home, ready to chuck it all, husband, family, the works, in order to get the kind of love she wanted from the kind of man she wanted it from.” Meanwhile, its companion volume—Cool and Collected, by Randall (one of several pen names used by science-fictionist Robert Silverberg)—features a protagonist with broader desires: “There’s a man for every woman, but Rebecca was a woman for every man. She knew she could make men or break them. She knew all she had to do was crook her little finger and they’d fall to their knees in humility.”

With these protagonists to work from, it’s no wonder Maguire’s Midwood cover coquette looks like somebody capable of handling her own affairs—in more ways than one.

Rader Love: Face of Fantasy

(Above) The Unashamed, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1960). Paul Rader’s daughter, Elaine, has said she “suspects that both of the women on this cover were modeled by her mother,” Edith. (Below, left) Books historian Lynn Munroe says Kitten, by “Dallas Mayo,” aka Gil Fox (Midwood, 1961), is also fronted by an illustration for which Edith posed.

Months ago, when I started planning Killer Covers’ 110th birthday tribute to the late American painter and paperback cover artist, (Isaac) Paul Rader, I knew that I wanted to interview his only daughter, Elaine, a banker turned jeweler and metalsmith now living in northern Georgia. Fortunately, she was up for the challenge, and the results of our original e-mail exchange—covering her father’s history and work habits—can be found here.

However, shortly after posting that interview, I realized I’d neglected to question Elaine much about another important aspect of Paul Rader’s career: his association with his second wife, Edith—Elaine’s mother—who served as the model for so many of Rader’s captivating novel façades. Born on October 21, 1924, in Yonkers, New York, the former Edith Anne Radley met Paul Rader during the early years of the Second World War, wed him soon afterward, and went on to be immortalized in his now highly collectible cover illustrations. Southern California bookseller and books historian Lynn Munroe, who had the opportunity to speak with Edith Rader before she died in 2005 at age 82, has written that “She was never comfortable talking about Paul’s sexy covers, let alone the fact that she was the nude model riveting our attention on so many of them. She preferred to remain anonymous.” Yet, to a generation of enthusiastic paperback readers who grew up during the mid-20th century, Edith Rader became familiar as “The Rader Girl,” a curvaceous blonde seemingly meant to be celebrated in abundant paint strokes.

Wanting to learn more about Edith Rader’s life, as well as her working relationship with her 18-years-older husband, I e-mailed daughter Elaine another collection of queries.

J. Kingston Pierce: Do you know what your mother’s parents were like, what her childhood was like?

Elaine Rader: Her parents were both immigrants from England. My grandmother, Marion (Maude) Hale, came to the U.S. in the early 1900s as a teenager. She met and married my grandfather, Clifford Radley, and I believe had their first child when she was 18. My mother was the youngest of three children, all girls; her sisters were Mary and Helen. At some point, when the girls were still young, [Clifford and Maude] divorced, and with little or no support, my grandmother raised all three girls alone. The oldest daughter, Mary, was 10 years older than my mother and was a great help in taking care of my mother while my grandmother worked. They moved a lot, as my mother remembered, living in apartments of varying size depending on how much money was earned by her mother and the two older sisters. Sometimes the apartments were large, sometimes modest. The one thing she told me about those apartments was that no matter where they lived or how cramped the quarters, my grandmother always managed to make a beautiful home for them. She had a knack for decorating even when times were rough and money tight. At one point in her life, my grandmother came to live in a grand penthouse for a time. Her final apartment, on the upper west side of New York City (what is now called Washington Heights), was tiny but it was beautiful. She had impeccable taste … and the best costume jewelry collection that any little girl would love, and that I ran to play in every time we visited her. I only knew my grandmother, never meeting my grandfather, as he passed away before I was born. My grandmother was never seen without her makeup being perfect, her hair neat, and just the right clothing. She was not an openly affectionate person, but a caring one. I remember her as stern yet kind. We became quite close when I was a young teenager, but sadly she passed way suddenly when she was 72.

JKP: How and when did Edith and your father first meet?

ER: They lived in the same [Manhattan] apartment building. My mother was still living with her mother at that time. She was 17, and the year was 1942. Air-raid drills were a scheduled weekly event in all the apartments at that time during World War II. Evidently, each floor of the apartment building had its captain to make sure all the residents knew about the drills. My mother was the captain of her floor, my father the captain of his. As she told it, during this one particular drill, they went to the roof where the usual meeting place was, and no one but the two of them showed up. They had never met until then.

JKP: Did your mother ever reveal anything about their courtship? Anything about their early years of marriage, where they lived or any hardships they encountered?

ER: After they met, my grandmother discouraged the romance to the best of her ability, to the point of sending [my mother] off to live with relatives in Canada. My mother was 17 and my father was 35 at the time. They courted long-distance through telegrams written back and forth for over a month. (I still have all of those telegrams and correspondence from that time in a box that my mother saved all the rest of her life.) She finally came back to New York to live with her mother again, and when she turned 18, about three months after [my parents] met, they ran off and eloped. They were married by a justice of the peace—with his wife as a witness—in a small town in South Carolina.

JKP: Was this your mother’s first and only marriage?

ER: Yes.

JKP: Your parents swapped wedding rings in 1942. You were born in 1954. Why did they wait a dozen years to have children, or had they not actually planned a family?

ER: My mother wanted to have children (she told me she dreamed of having six!), but she said my father was not really sure about having any. She had given up on the idea when one day, he said to her—when she was 29—“I guess if we’re going to have a child we’d better do it soon.” So, yes, it was very planned. She was 30 when I was born.

JKP: Tell me what your parents were like together. Did they have many shared interests? Did they argue much, and if so, about what?

ER: They were very close, they shared an equal love of music: my mother played the piano, my father enjoyed playing and collecting classical-music recordings. They were both avid readers. They were also avid debaters; they could agree to disagree and had many fascinating conversations about any number of topics. They enjoyed the theater and they enjoyed each other’s mind.

My mother, like hers, was a bit of a “scheduled” personality and not very yielding in that way. My father was an artist … need I say more? As a result, I remember some problems in that area when it came to everyday things such as dinner times. If he was “in a zone,” it was hard to break that and have “the scheduled 5:00 dinner” every day, so there was that. If there were other problems, I was not privy to them. I’m sure, like any marriage, they had problems, but they were not in the habit of arguing in front of me.


Edith Rader at age 53, painted by Paul Rader.

JKP: Had your mother modeled for your father before he started painting book covers in the mid-1950s? If so, in what sorts of artworks had he employed her image?

ER: My father did a wonderful portfolio (which I have) of modeling photos of my mother for her to try to break into the clothes-modeling world, back when she was in her early 20s. Other than that, she sat for him so that he could do portraits of her, but not to sell them commercially.

JKP: Can I assume that in using your mother as a model, Paul Rader posed her as he wished, photographed her, and then painted from those photos … rather than asking her to remain in one position while he sketched or painted her?

ER: Yes, that’s correct, he would take photographs and then paint from them.

JKP: What was it about your mother that made her an ideal model for your father? And was she happy to serve as The Rader Girl?

ER: Not to be flip about it, but she was beautiful, and available to sit at his convenience, or at least to fit it into their schedule easily. She never admitted that she was ever The Rader Girl. She always said, when asked about this, that that woman was his imagination of the perfect woman.

JKP: Did your mother pose for other artists, as well?

ER: No.

JKP: How did your mother take Paul Rader’s passing in 1986, when he was 79 years old? Had she anticipated it?

ER: No, it was very sudden. He had been declining in a few ways after their move to [Ocala], Florida, but nothing that indicated a serious problem. He had several heart attacks during one day and died at the hospital. It was of course a shock, and a loss that took her years to cope with.

JKP: Did she change much personally, or change her life much, after your father’s death? Did she continue to live in Ocala?

ER: She continued to live in Ocala. She went on many trips during the first few years after his death. She took her very first airplane trip, [as] my father would never get on an airplane; it was one of the first things she did after he died. She joined some groups in her retirement community and tried volunteering for things, but realized she was not a joiner, nor a good volunteer.

JKP: And how did your mother spend the last 18 years of her life? Do you think she was happy during that period?

ER: She hadn’t many close friends in Ocala, but stayed in writing contact with many from New York. She went to visit her sister in Oregon quite a few times and almost moved there, but decided not [to]. She read, she wrote letters, we talked every day, and as we liked to say, “solved the world’s problems on a daily basis” over the phone. She enjoyed her plants and gardening—she had a great green thumb, knew all the correct Latin names of plants, and loved bird-watching. She became an independent woman who was always ready to have a good conversation. Her one regret, she told me, was that she never made it back to visit New York city.

I think that made her very sad.

Rader Love: A Daughter Remembers

Sin on Wheels, by “Loren Beauchamp,” aka Robert Silverberg (Midwood, 1961), with cover artwork by Paul Rader.

Welcome to day two of Killer Covers’ tribute to Paul Rader (1906-1986), who gained fame during the mid-20th-century with his masterful paperback-cover creations. Yesterday’s post provided an introduction to his career. Today, I offer the results of an e-mail exchange I conducted recently with Elaine Rader, the artist’s daughter, who is now in her early 60s. Below she answers questions about her father’s early interest in painting, his marriage to her mother (who also became a model for his often seductive illustrations), her favorite Paul Rader book fronts, and the sad fate of many materials he left behind after his demise.

J. Kingston Pierce: As I understand it, your father became interested in art after he and his parents moved from New York state to Toledo, Ohio. Do you know when that relocation took place? And did your father ever talk to you about his early interest in art?

Elaine Rader (shown on the right): No, I’m sorry I don’t know what year they moved. He told me that he didn’t choose his art career, it chose him. He said he could not recall a time when he didn’t want to paint.

JKP: Is it true that Paul’s carpenter father, Samuel Rader, left Toledo to move to Detroit, Michigan, and work for the Ford Motor Company? And did Paul’s mother, Minnie, move with him to the Motor City? In what year would that have been?

ER: Yes, his father worked for Ford and made the wood panels that went on the station wagons of that time. And of course his mother moved with him to Detroit. I don’t know the year, but it must have been around the 1920s.

JKP: I’ve heard that Paul did not go to Detroit with his parents right away, but remained behind in Toledo. Do you  know what was he doing in Toledo by that time?

ER: I believe he was still studying at the Toledo Institute of Art, so I would think he stayed in order to finish up his classes and he may have had some commissions to do, as well. I believe he lived with his sister* during that time. But that is all from memory. I have nothing in writing to be absolutely sure of that.

JKP: Is it correct that your father first married in Detroit in 1931? Do you know his first wife’s name? And is it true that the young couple moved to Philadelphia, where the wife was from, and that they divorced in 1940? What happened to that first wife?

ER: Yes, her name was Joan Radden (believe it or not!). Yes again on the divorce. She died sometime around the early 1960s—tragically, in an accident involving her being in a tub, and an electric heater.

JKP: Paul married a second time in New York City in 1942. I believe that was your mother, Edith. What was Edith’s maiden name? And what was their relationship like over the years?

ER: Edith Radley. They had a wonderful 48-year-long marriage.


Paul Rader was also a skilled portraitist. Some examples of his work surround him in this photograph. Asked to identify the individual subjects here, Elaine Rader writes: “The one directly above him is me at 5 years old. The one to his right, the man with his arms folded, is his father, Samuel. The one to his left, is my mother and me, stylized a bit. The African-American woman, above and on the left, [was done during] a trip he made to Georgia in the ’20s. The one above and on the right is a vision of Adam and Eve, which I have. I also have the portrait of me.”

JKP: What was the age difference between your mother and father? And is your mother still with us?

ER: My mother passed away in 2005 at age 82. She was 18 years younger than my dad, and they passed away almost to the month, 18 years apart.

JKP: Your mother eventually worked as an administrative secretary at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. But had she held other jobs before that one?

ER: Nothing full-time before that, [though] she did take on dictating jobs and typing jobs for writers so she could stay home with me. After they moved to [the town of Monroe, in] upstate New York, she went on to be administrative assistant to the principal of a high school … until she retired in the ’80s.

JKP: Your mother has been quoted as saying that, in addition to doing his artwork for advertising agencies and book publishes, your father was “a mechanical genius.” In what ways was that “genius” manifested?

(Left) Edith Rader, her husband’s preferred artistic muse.

ER: He could make or figure out anything. He built our first TV set, from the tubes all the way to the outside housing. He built our entire sound system (as you would call it today), building not only the turntable, amp and speakers, but also all the cabinetry they went into. (Wish I still had all of that today.) He worked with me on endless school projects if they involved making something (I remember papier-mâché masks we made that were wonderful), and when I showed an interest in jewelry-making (my present, 20-year career), he and I worked together learning that process when I was quite young. He built all the frames for his paintings, made the architectural drafts/plans for his studio in upstate New York. … He could do anything.

JKP: In what year were you born, and where?

ER: 1954, New York City, New York (Manhattan).

JKP: At what point in your young life did you become aware that your father was a career artist?

ER: He was 48 when I was born, so I never knew him as anything else but an artist. His studio was in our home, so I always knew that that’s what he did for a living.

JKP: Did you watch him work, or did he prefer to paint in solitude?

ER: If he wanted solitude he never mentioned it to me, I often spent hours [looking] over his shoulder, watching him paint. So did our parrot, [which] was always either on top of his head or hanging onto his eyeglass chord! He always had classical music playing and always had an air of calm concentration. He probably was in his zone and didn’t really notice me there most of the time (in a good way!).

JKP: Did your father paint in more than one medium, or did he particularly favor, say, oil paint over watercolors? And did he work on large canvases or small ones?

ER: He painted exclusively in oil until he started his illustration, which he did in colored inks and in gouache on boards. He switched over to acrylic for his fine art in the later years to try and get away from the oil fumes. Very rarely did he use watercolors, except in some very early plein air painting he did as a student in Europe.

JKP: Your father must have had a number of models posing for him. Did he have favorite models?

ER: He did have models later on in his career, but his favorite
was my mother.

JKP: And do you know whether your mother was ever a bit jealous of the other women he had posing for him?

ER: I have no idea. My mother and I never discussed things like that.

JKP: Did your father encourage you toward artistic pursuits?

ER: Absolutely, they both tried to get me to enroll in one of several professional art schools after high school, but I was eager to move out on my own. So instead of following a path of further education in the arts, I became a banker for 20 years, then gradually found my calling in the arts. I am a jeweler and metalsmith now [and have been] for 22 years. Self taught and very happy. You can see some of my work and read my story at my Web site.

JKP: Did your father talk about his work painting paperback book covers? Was he pleased with his accomplishments, or did he really want to be doing something different?

ER: All I know of this is what my mother has told me. He really only did that type of work to make a living. She said she felt it was beneath his ability and talent. I never had the conversation with my father, so I really don’t know how he felt. I do know he much preferred the fine arts, but that being highly competitive, [he] found it hard to make a living unless it was portrait-painting, at which he was amazing. Portraits were the mainstay of his income before he started in the illustration field, and that type of painting fell way to photography over the years.

JKP: What was your home life like when you were growing up?

ER: I had an amazing upbringing in New York City. We lived on the Upper West Side near Columbia University on 108th Street, just off Riverside Drive. I went to public inner-city schools and I was [later] enrolled in the School of American Ballet, which is the [associate] school of the New York City Ballet company. I performed with the NYC Ballet as a student for many years, in many different ballets, [including some] performed at the New York City Center and at the New York State Theater [now the David H. Koch Theater] at Lincoln Center, which is (and was) the home of the New York City Ballet company. I also attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York, in their dance program for two years. My mother’s employment made it possible for me to enjoy my dancing schools and for [my parents] to purchase a weekend home in upstate New York, where they eventually retired to. So I guess our home life was pretty darn good!

JKP: Although I am familiar with, and admiring of your father’s artistry, his work has not always been as well remembered as it should have been. Why do you suppose that is? Could it have been because his creations were quite racy at times?

ER: I think it has just recently (over the last 20 years) become popular, admired, and appreciated as an art form. Times are very different, and those illustrations are mild these days by comparison. Unfortunately for him, he never enjoyed the limelight that he seems to have posthumously acquired. I think he may have been a bit astounded, and hopefully proud of something he really was not thrilled about doing—except I’m sure he enjoyed the good pay.

JKP: Your father was remarkably prolific, so it would be hard to identify just a few top picks from among his book covers. But can you share some of your personal favorites?

ER: My all-time favorite is Sin on Wheels; my mom posed for that. But my other favorites are any of those I can recognize my mother posing for: Million-Dollar Mistress, Open Season (which I own the original of), 69 Barrow Street, Sea Nymph, This Is Elaine (no relation to me AT ALL), Unnatural, The Soft Way, and Pajama Party. She has been referred to as “The Rader Girl,” her face is seen repeated so many times. Two others are Pattern for Panic, by Richard S. Prather [Berkley, 1958], which does not show my mom, but I think it’s a really good work (and that’s our Hans Wegner chair that I still own that she’s sitting in); and the [November 1962] cover for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, that’s a really great one, too. Both of those show so much emotion and movement, and the backgrounds are amazing (something that can make or break a painting).








Eight Rader covers featuring his blond wife, Edith (from the top-left): Million-Dollar Mistress, by “Clyde Allison,” aka William Henley Knoles (Midwood, 1960); Open Season, by Bernard Thielen (Ace, 1960); 69 Barrow Street, by “Sheldon Lord,” aka Lawrence Block (Midwood, 1959); Sea Nymph, by “Peggy Swenson,” aka Richard E. Geis (Midwood, 1963); This Is Elaine, by “Jason Hytes,” aka John Plunkett (Midwood, 1963); Unnatural, by “Sloan Britton,” aka Elaine Williams (Midwood, 1960); The Soft Way, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1963); and Pajama Party, by Peggy Swenson (Midwood, 1963).

JKP: How do you think your father distinguished himself as an artist? What special talents, techniques, or viewpoints did he possess?

ER: He could paint a person's character. He could paint skin in amazing reality, but without making it look like a photograph. His paintings were powerful, emotional, and captured the essence of the person he painted. He was not a huge fan of modern art, fake manipulations, or contrived images. He was a purist.

JKP: Paul Rader retired in 1970, a few years after undergoing surgery for what I’ve heard was a stomach tumor. He would’ve been in his early 60s. Was he simply tired of painting for commercial purposes? I understand he taught adult education art classes and did portrait work after retiring. What was his artwork like in those last years?

ER: He had colon cancer, nonmetastatic, not a stomach tumor. He was on the mend for the better part of a year, and [by then] the publishing companies were turning towards photography for their covers, so it basically put him out of a job for that genre of work. So as life often does, that shift afforded him the opportunity to slow down his pace (people in their 60s, years ago, were not what they are in their 60s today!). Yes, he did teach some adult ed classes at a high school, where he found a renewed interest in sculptural realism. Again, he was amazing at that; I have several of his small statues in clay. He did do many portraits again, but his style changed considerably, from the Old Masters style of his very early portraits of the 1920s and ’30s, to a more commercial look, probably due to the many years of his illustration work, and because that’s what people wanted. I was much fonder of his early works in fine art; he was following his own voice rather than the wants and desires of the public or someone else. I have learned that in my own business: once I started only making things I liked or that I would want to own myself, my business took off. Your work becomes the “genuine you.” I don’t know if he could, or ever wanted to go back to that style after all those years away from it. And it could have been he was ready for a change. All I know is, if he were alive today, he’d be killing it in the art world.

JKP: Is it correct that following your mother’s retirement in the early 1980s, your parents relocated to Ocala, Florida, where you were living? Was your father still painting then?

ER: Yes, my mother did retire then and they relocated to Ocala, but I did not live there. I was living in Miami at the time. My father did a few more portraits of himself and my mother, but he only lived about 1½ years after moving to Ocala and had not been feeling well enough to continue painting much.

JKP: By the way, how did you happen to wind up in Florida?

ER: I married and moved with my [now] ex-husband to Miami in 1979. I left there in 1994. I live in the north Georgia mountains now.

JKP: Do you have any of your father’s artwork in your home?

ER: Yes, I do have many of his older works, which I cherish. I did happen to purchase one illustration at auction (the one I mentioned above) a couple of years ago.

JKP: Is it true that your father’s papers and much of his artwork was destroyed after his death? If so, how and why did that happen?

ER: “Destroyed” is such a violent term. I would rather say that of the few originals he had bought back from the publishers, those were given to one family member who appreciated them. The numerous other book-cover proofs and original sketches and photographs that no one wanted (including myself—I was asked by my mother beforehand) were thrown out. I was not appreciative of that work at the time; as I said, I had always been told it was beneath him, so I looked down on it, I guess.

JKP: Finally, how would you like your father and his artistic accomplishments to be remembered?

ER: Just as he has been in the last 20 years, by the adoring fans of his illustrations. But I would really love to have his fine art showcased, his older portraits shown, but they are so scattered and spread all over the country it would be hard to compile such a show. I have been contacted by so many wonderful people over the years who own his older works, mainly portraits, that I feel he is being remembered in the best way possible—in two different artistic worlds by many, many people.

* As Elaine Rader tells me, her father was one of three children in his family. His sister, Bertha, was born in 1897 and passed away in 1987. His brother, Phillip, came along in 1910; he died in 1999.

READ MORE: “Rader Love: Face of Fantasy,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).