Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.
(Above) So What Killed the Vampire? by “Carter Brown,” aka Alan Geoffrey Yates (Signet, 1966). Of the many Brown titles, Tim Hewitt identifies this as having his favorite Robert McGinnis art. “Kind of subtle compared to some of the more ‘wow’ covers,” he says, “but it speaks to me somehow. That dark gothic touch, I guess.”
(Editor’s note: South Carolina resident Tim Hewitt is a former tech writer, marketing/public relations flack, and Web site administrator. He’s currently the co-editor (with Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham) of the forthcoming The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 3
. He has spent decades collecting vintage paperback books, largely for their cover artwork. Among the painters responsible for those fine fronts, the best represented on his shelves is Robert McGinnis. I asked Tim recently to explain how he started amassing his stock of McGinnises, what lengths (and expense) he has gone to in order to acquire rare works, and which McGinnis paperbacks he still hasn’t been able to find. His essay below answers those questions—and tells us much more besides.)
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I started collecting paperbacks with Robert McGinnis covers, but I do know this: the first artist whose cover illustrations I recognized as being by a single artist was Robert McGinnis!
As a 9-year-old kid searching paperback racks for the latest
Dark Shadows novel or
Lancer paperback collections of Marvel Comics, I could not escape the dozens of
Carter Brown paperbacks that filled spinner racks everywhere. I didn’t know anything about art styles or techniques, and I certainly didn’t know his name. I’m sure I couldn’t have looked at a lot of random covers and picked out the ones by McGinnis, but I definitely recognized that most of the
Carter Brown covers were painted by the same guy, and that the art was distinct from that found on other paperbacks.
Now, I’d been a collector since first discovering comic books. (They’re numbered, right? So, if you’ve got issue #4 there’s likely to be a #5, and if you’re lucky you might even find the first three!) But I began collecting paperbacks, too, after my mom rewarded me for good grades with a copy of
The Curse of Collinwood, by Marilyn Ross (I was a
huge Dark Shadows fan back then).
Carter Brown didn’t really interest me. I was looking for science fiction and fantasy, sword and sorcery, and high adventure. The first paperback artist I actively collected, recognizing his name, his style, and that really distinctive signature, was
Frank Frazetta. He actually made me buy books just for the cover art, and I bought them all! As the years went by, I added artists such as Jeff Jones, Boris Vallejo, Michael Whelan, Ken Kelly, and Don Maitz to the collection.
I bought my first McGinnis paperback in 1971: Bantam’s
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes featuring
his movie poster art on the cover. That same year I picked up the James Bond movie tie-in edition of
Diamonds Are Forever,
followed by
Live and Let Die two years later, both with McGinnis poster art on their covers. But I was still a long way from actively collecting his work.
At some point in the late 1970s, while I was working in a bookstore during college, I finally learned Robert McGinnis’ name and exactly who he was,
and that he’d painted more than just Carter Brown covers.
A lot more!
My first collection of McGinnis covers was the
John D. MacDonald/Travis McGee novels. I was branching out in my reading, and MacDonald came highly recommended by friends who liked mystery books. Most of the covers were painted by McGinnis. Of course, being a completist, I bought them all, and soon added standalone MacDonald novels with more McGinnis fronts.
From there, I casually picked up a McGinnis cover from time to time when his artwork happened to appear on a book I was actually interested in reading, or occasionally when I found one I thought was particularly striking.
It was around the year 2000 when I seriously began to collect McGinnis. Richard Lupoff’s
The Great American Paperback, along with Arnie and Cathy Fenner’s
Tapestry: The Paintings of Robert McGinnis, simultaneously spurred a revived interest in vintage paperbacks and a greater appreciation for McGinnis. I found myself picking up McGinnis covers more deliberately, just for the artwork. Romance novels, historicals, mainstream fiction, whatever, and actively seeking out his early covers for Dell and Gold Medal.
The following year,
The Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis, by Art Scott and Dr. Wallace Maynard, was published. That really pushed me over the edge. So. Many. Stunning. Covers! And a checklist of every book front McGinnis had painted up to that time!
From then on, if I saw a McGinnis cover, I’d buy it. (Assuming it was in very good condition. I’m a stickler about condition. I never bought into the idea of paperbacks being a disposable commodity. Every paperback I’ve
ever bought new still looks new, even if I’ve read it. I view creasing or, even worse, actually cracking the spines of paperbacks as an abomination in the eyes of the paperback gods. They do, too. Trust me on this.)
When I stumbled on a beautiful copy of 1960’s
Target: Mike Shayne, I found myself thinking, “I should get all the
Mike Shayne books with McGinnis covers!” Remember what I said about being a completist?
Just 81 books. Eighty covers (since the second editions of
The Homicidal Virgin and
Marked for Murder share the same cover art). Over a couple of years, that added a significant number of volumes to my collection.
The next obvious set was to round up all those Carter Brown books that had caught my eye as a kid. An even 100 books, if my count is correct.
On to
Perry Mason. A paltry 30 books. Then the 26
Edward S. Aarons Assignment books. And the 25 books by “
M.E. Chaber” (aka
Kendell Foster Crossen). And … well, you get the idea.
As I write this, my stock of McGinnis covers has grown to approximately 700 books, and continues to grow. Just for comparison’s sake, of the other artists whose covers I collect, my next largest set is close to 500 covers painted by
Ron Lesser. (I also have smaller collections of Mitchell Hooks, Robert Maguire, Frank McCarthy, H. Tom Hall, Ted CoConis, Harry Schaare, David Grove, and Jim Sharpe, among others.)
In
The Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis, Art Scott speculates that the top three collectible McGinnis paperbacks are
Beebo Brinker, by Ann Bannon (1962);
Pop. 1280, by Jim Thompson (1964); and
The Big Bounce, by Elmore Leonard (1969). Many years ago, while still just casually picking up McGinnis books, I found a fine copy of
Pop. 1280 in a used bookstore for a whopping 75 cents. And I put it back because it looked like a romance novel, not the gritty noir crime thriller I was looking for.
Doh! Years later, it cost me 35 times that amount to add a comparable copy to my collection.
A lot of vintage McGinnis covers, mostly the Carter Browns, Mike Shaynes, and the like, can be found online for around $10 or less, depending on their condition. Ann Bannon’s
Beebo Brinker is probably the stand-out exception. Copies are few, and I’ve seen them sell for well over $250. (As I write this, there’s a single, very good copy of
Beebo listed on eBay for $675, with 10 watchers! Not sure if any of them are buyers, though. We’ll see.)
Like most collectors, I always try to get what I’m looking for as cheaply as possible (there’s a lot to buy, you understand), and most of my McGinnis acquisitions probably average out to around $10-$12 a book.
I’ve found that covers painted by McGinnis for smaller publishers such as Berkley, Curtis, and in particular, Popular Library are some of the most difficult to find. The majority of those covers were attached to books that sold in relatively modest numbers, done by writers who almost no one remembers, and few copies of them seem to have survived.
McGinnis painted lush and striking covers for many of these books, sometimes engaging in stylistic experiments, such as his covers for Sarah Gainham’s
Takeover Bid, Robert Nathan’s
One More Spring, and Sarah Woods’
The Windy Side of the Law, not to mention the
slightly surreal and trippy covers he painted for six of Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s Leonidas Witherall mysteries (all written under the name “Alice Tilton”). The scarcity of these books has often forced me to purchase
copies in conditions I usually wouldn’t even consider. But beggars, you know, can’t be choosers, and when you find one, you never know if or when another will show up.
The two McGinnis books I’ve paid the most for are Popular Library and Berkley titles: fine copies of
The Bigger the Bust, by Stephen John, and
The Innocent, by Madison Jones. A seller from Australia (!) listed them on eBay, and after a bit of negotiation we agreed on $204 AU for both. Shipping included. So roughly $64 U.S. each (or, if I can rationalize that the outrageous postage was a business expense and not part of the actual price of the books, then they were only about $45 each). Still my most expensive McGinnis covers, but not quite the most I’ve ever paid for a single paperback book. That’s another story.
It all evens out, though. I’ve come by many bargains along the way, as well, on what are usually pricey McGinnis titles, such as a very good copy of J.M. Ryan’s
Brooks Wilson Ltd. (with its gorgeous semi-wraparound cover full of McGinnis women) for just $2.50, and the $10 copy of
Gaywick, by Vincent Virga, that I was lucky enough to stumble upon during a random online search. And I finally managed to pick up a copy of
Beebo Brinker for less than $50, after years of searching and constantly being outbid on eBay. Patience pays off now and then.
The coolest acquisition I’ve made was also a bargain purchase. McGinnis’ art often showed up on the covers of European paperbacks, and usually not on the same book they were originally painted for. They sometimes got better treatment by the European art directors. A notable example is the painting McGinnis produced for the 1961 Fawcett Crest edition of
Sylvia, by “E.V. Cunningham” (aka
Howard Fast). The Fawcett cover shows a head-and-shoulders portrait of Sylvia. But McGinnis’ original painting was a full-body image of a kneeling Sylvia, her wrap and the straps of her dress undone and off her shoulders, bra exposed. Maybe just a bit too provocative for a 1961 Fawcett book? Or maybe just more than the art director wanted? For whatever reason, American readers never got to see the full image.
But Swedish readers did a year later, when Jaguar Books lifted
McGinnis’ full, uncropped art for the cover of their edition of Bob McKnight’s
A Stone Around Her Neck, retitled
Hennes Våta Grav (
Her Watery Grave). I’d wanted a copy of that Swedish novel for years, but never really expected to find one (certainly not in great condition and at a reasonable price). But one day, while searching for a good, high-resolution image of the cover online, I happened to click on an image link that took me to a bookstore in Finland. That image turned out to be the
copy of the book they were selling! For only €2! And shipping to the States was only €5! I immediately suspected a scam. But I took a chance, rolled the dice, and thanks to a credit card with no foreign currency exchange fee, I was able to acquire this very uncommon and desirable McGinnis for a total of about $6.50! All the way from Finland!
I’ve reached the point where I think I have just about all of the highly sought-after McGinnis titles, but I still keep a sharp eye peeled for copies of the Popular Library edition of
Hoffman, by Ernest Gebler (which employed the same cover art as Popular’s
Tangerine, by Christine de Rivoyre—just more of it) and the Berkley edition of
Nell Kimball: Her Life as an American Madam, edited by Stephen Longstreet. These remain the two I’ve spent the longest time looking for, yet they continue to elude me, at least at a price and condition I can accept. (The Australia deal isn’t one I’m inclined to repeat. But you never know.)
One of my college professors once told the class that “The more you read Shakespeare, the more you read Shakespeare.” I think that’s true of collecting Robert McGinnis. You get one book, and see that he painted the cover for another by the same author. Or the book is part of a series. One begats another. And the more you collect McGinnis, the
more you collect McGinnis.
I didn’t set out to own a copy of every McGinnis cover ever printed, but depending on the final count, I seem to have acquired nearly half of them. And I keep adding to the collection all the time, occasionally in trickles, but sometimes in waves.
And the completist in me stirs a little.
* * *
Tim Hewitt's 6 Favorite McGinnis Covers
“Picking half a dozen of my favorite Robert McGinnis-painted covers,” writes Tim Hewitt, “is like asking a chameleon to choose a color and stick with it. Try me again next week, and I’ll likely name six different ones. A lot of my favorites are probably everyone’s favorites (who doesn’t love the original front of Robert Kyle’s
Kill Now, Pay Later?), so for the sake of variety I went deeper into the McGinnis catalogue. Kyle’s
The Golden Urge (Gold Medal, 1954) has always been a favorite, because in a single image McGinnis conveys that there’s
so much story going on outside the frame. The other covers here appeal to me for assorted reasons (I’ve always loved hooded villains and gothic settings), and show variations in McGinnis’ style over the years.”
Also shown above, clockwise:
Gallows Wedding, by Rhona Martin (Berkley, 1980);
All Together Now, by Bob Vichy (Berkley Medallion, 1972);
The Coach Draws Near, by Mary Savage (Dell, 1972);
Blade of Honor, by John J. Pugh (Popular Library, 1964); and
Desert Love, by Henry de Montherlant (Berkley Medallion, 1959).
