And now for something different: BGSU!

As has been mentioned before in various posts, I’m lucky enough to live within driving distance of Bowling Green State University and their pop culture library, and I FINALLY made it down there this week!  What was supposed to be a one-day visit turned into a two-day visit, due to me 1.) biting off far more than I could chew the first day, and 2.) actually having the time to spare, such that I could afford a second trip.  BGSU is one of the few places to have a dedicated romance collection, which means their romance pulps (while still nowhere near complete in terms of full runs of titles) are at least far more robust than a lot of other places.  You are (unsurprisingly) not allowed to make scans or photocopies of the magazines, as it stresses the binding too much, but you are allowed to take all the photographs you want.  I have since gotten pretty damn good at photographing pulps (if I do say so myself), so I brought a little kit with weights and props and went to town.

I took A LOT of photographs (almost 700!), so it’s understandably going to take me a while to sort through and edit them all (let alone decide which stories I want to formally review), but highlights include:

• Eleven(!) Frances Lake stories.  (Six were listed on The FictionMags Index, another two I was aware of due to the stories being advertised on cover images, and the other three were complete surprises.)  This now brings the total number of Frances Lake stories I’ve procured in one form or another up to…twenty-three?
• A few Hope Campbell (AKA: G. McDonald Wallis) stories that looked potentially promising, since she was still on my mind.  (She was really quite prolific in the ’40s and early ’50s, and there were a lot of stories I ran across but ultimately passed up this time around.)
• Underworld Romances!  This was a short-lived attempt in the early ’30s to combine the crime/gangster and romance genres, that sadly only lasted for four issues (the last of which was retitled Underworld Love Stories).  BGSU has both the first and the fourth issues, and I grabbed a couple stories from both, including the first (known) Pussy Fane story, from queer author/editor Jane Littell.
• Detective Romances!  Real ones will remember my previous foray into the even-shorter-lived Detective Romances (a two-issue attempt to combine the detective and romance genres, natch), and while the second issue is available online, BGSU has a copy of the other one.  Nothing out of it immediately grabbed my attention, the way “Death-Dance Angel” did back in the day, but I’ll probably take a closer look in the future, when I have more browsing time.
• Parts 1, 3, and 4 of Cornell Woolrich’s rare, 1938 romance/romp, “Deserted!”  Originally published in Sweetheart Stories, it has only been reprinted once (in 2008’s tragically-rare, limited-to-a-mere-two-hundred-copies The Good Die Young—and Other Early Tales of Romance).  Riding high on my visit, I also found and purchased the issue that contains part 2 earlier today, so when that arrives, I’ll effectively own the whole story.
• One more Muriel Page story (1931’s “The Barrier”).  I don’t know if I’d say I’m exactly a fan of Muriel Page, but she nevertheless intrigues me.
• Another Beth Farrell story (1936’s “One-Way Traffic”).  I’ve since learned that “Beth Farrell” was actually a pseudonym of Pearle E. Botsford, and while the third story of hers I read (1941’s still-unreviewed “The Bewitching Hour”) wasn’t quite as good as “Lady Snob,” I am, again, intrigued.
• Two Clinton Spooner stories, including what is apparently his first story ever.  Spooner was mostly known as an illustrator (he did artwork for both Frances Lake’s “Love For the Asking” and Peggy Gaddis’s “Girl Alone”), but he occasionally dipped his toe (pen?) into writing.  I’ve only read 1937’s “Eighth Heaven” so far, which is about an illustrator (👀) who thinks women belong in the home, but then of course ends up falling for a Modern Career Gal, who can art just as well (if not better!) than he can.  I haven’t yet formally reviewed it, but it’s cute, with some surprisingly healthy relationship dynamics.
• Continuing with my “Brides Who Wear Black” project (as mentioned in the end notes here), I got my hand on part 1 of Marcia Ray’s 1938 story, “The Bride Wore Black.”  (It turns out I already own part 2, which is the conclusion.)
• A couple Beulah Poynter stories, including 1933’s short short story, “The Clergyman and the Actress,” which bizarrely reads like some proto Hot Priest erotica, but without the Forbidden Fruit aspect of Catholicism, and also without anything actually erotic.  It has a very strange vibe, like a euphemistic set-up to a porno?  At one point the actress heroine opines to the clergyman hero, “You are a doctor of souls, Mr. Evans.  My soul is sick—oh, so sick.  It is starving for something that not even God will give me.”  GURL, I BET IT IS.  Anyway, it may take me a while to formally review it (if, in fact, I ever do), so if you’re curious you can read it here.

 

In addition to all that, I also came across a few neat ads, including this one for a “free” copy of Cornell Woolrich’s Phantom Lady through the Detective Book Club, as found on the back of the March 1943 issue of Ten-Story Love:

And then a few more, just for the LULZ.  From 1944 issues of All-Story Love and New Love Magazine, respectively:

(I legit want a pair of those earrings.  Pair with matching glow-in-the-dark necktie for Maximum Swag™.)

And, from Love Book Magazine, December 1941:

Battery companies take note and PLEASE bring back this kind of bonkers advertising.  I am BEGGING you!

Tagged: beth farrell, beulah poynter, clinton spooner, cornell woolrich, frances lake, hope campbell, love pulps, muriel page, pulp, romance, short stories