The March, 1952 issue of Startling Stories includes four illustrations by Virgil Finlay, of his typically masterful quality. Three are for “The Well of the Worlds”, while the fourth – show below – is for “Things of Distinction”. As for Early Bergey’s cover art? Well, the table of contents has no actual mention of Bergey, and, I don’t think the cover has any relation to any story carried within the magazine. It’s simply a nicely representative example of Bergeyology!
As for “Things of Distinction” itself? It seems to be an example of science-fiction humor, a sub-genre which to me is a literary oxymoron that falls flatter than flat. The story itself was only anthologized once; that in The Bodley Head’s 1954 Future Tense. Regardless, Virgil Finlay’s lead illustration – taking full advantage of the horizontal format available by virtue of the magazine’s size – is imaginative and playful. Even that is outdone by his three illustrations for Henry Kuttner’s never (really) anthologized “The Well of the Worlds“, which, like many Finlay compositions, seem to emanate from a world of unrecorded myth.
“…writing is different because you do not have to learn or practise…”
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“Kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond bracelet lasts forever.”
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Bergey, Bergey, Bergey!…
Earle K. Bergey, cover illustrator of mainstream publications, pulp magazines, and paperbacks – all in a variety of genres – produced a body of work that while more conventional in terms of subject matter than that of artists like Frank Kelly Freas or Edmund Emshwiller, is eye-catchingly distinctive, and is truly emblematic of mid-twentieth-century illustration.
His science-fiction art commenced in the late 1930s and continued until his untimely death in 1952 … see examples here, here, and here. As described at Wikipedia, his, “…science fiction covers, sometimes described as “Bim, BEM, Bum,” usually featured a woman being menaced by a Bug-Eyed Monster, alien, or robot, with an heroic male astronaut coming to her assistance. The bikini-tops he painted often resembled coppery metal, giving rise to the phrase “the girl in the brass bra,” used in reference to this sort of art. Visionaries in TV and film have been influenced by Bergey’s work. Gene Roddenberry, for example, provided his production designer for Star Trek with examples of Bergey’s futuristic pulp covers. The artist’s illustrations of scantily-clad women surviving in outer space served as an inspiration for Princess Leia‘s slave-girl outfit in Return of the Jedi, and Madonna’s conical brass brassiere.”
Commencing in 1948, Bergey became heavily involved in creating cover art for paperbacks. This began with Popular Library’s 1948 edition of Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was first published in 1925. Though the book is a light-hearted work of conventional fiction (perhaps lightly semi-autobiographical; perhaps loosely inspired by fact), Bergey’s cover is a sort-of…, kind-of…, maybe…, perhaps…, well…, variation on a theme of “Good Girl Art” characteristic of American fiction of the mid-twentieth-century, and likewise is a stylistic segue from Bergey’s science fiction pulp cover art. Sans shining copper brassiere, however.
Here is it…
From Bergey’s biographical profile at Wikipedia, here’s an image of the book’s original cover art. The only information about the painting (does it still exist?) is that it’s “oil on board”.
A notable aspect of this painting, aside from the extraordinarily and deliberately idealized depiction … exaggeration?! … of Miss Lorelei Lee (looks like she’s being illuminated by a klieg light, doesn’t it?) is the appearance of the men around her, each of whom is each vastly more caricature than character. Well, exaggeration can work in two directions.
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She was a
GIVE AND TAKE GIRL
Lorelei Lee was a cute number with lots of sex appeal and the ability to make it pay off. With her curious girl friend, Dorothy, she embarked on a tour of England and the Continent. And none of the men who crossed their path was ever the same again. When one of Lorelei’s admirers sent her a diary she decided to write about her adventures. They began with Gus Eisman, the Button King, who wanted to improve her “mind” and reached a climax in her society debut party – a three-day circus that rocked Broadway to its foundations. A hilarious field study of the American chorus girl in action set down in her own inimitable style!
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Lorelei Lee’s appearance in Ralph Barton’s cartoons in the 1925 edition of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is – wellll, granting that they’re just cartoons; thirty-three appear in the book – vastly less exaggerated than her depiction on Bergey’s cover. Three of his cartoons are shown below…
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It would be strange if I turn out to be an authoress. I mean at my home near Little Rock, Arkansas, my family all wanted me to do something about my music. Because all of my friends said I had talent and they all kept after me and kept after me about practising. But some way I never seemed to care so much about practising. I mean I simply could not sit for hours at a time practising just for the sake of a career. So one day I got quite tempermental and threw the old mandolin clear across the room and I have never really touched it since. But writing is different because you do not have to learn or practise and it is more tempermental because practising seems to take all the temperment out of me. So now I really almost have to smile because I have just noticed that I have written clear across two pages onto March 18th, so this will do for today and tomorrow. And it just shows how tempermental I am when I get started. (Illustration p. 13)
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“Kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond bracelet lasts forever.”(Illustration p. 101)
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“Dr. Froyd seemed to think that I was quite a famous case.”(Illustration p. 157)
A qualifier: Despite being a movie aficionado and voracious reader, I’ve not actually viewed this movie, for … despite being able to appreciate and enjoy most any genre of film … I’ve absolutely never been a fan of musicals. (Ick.)
What would Gentlemen Prefer Blondes be without “Diamond’s Are a Girl’s Best Friend”? (Starts at 59:00 in the film.) The idea of a rotating chandelier formed of women strikes me as really bizarre, if not disturbing… Oh, well.
Get your ticket to that wheel in space while there’s time The fix is in You’ll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky You know we’ve got to win
Here at home we’ll play in the city Powered by the sun Perfect weather for a streamlined world There’ll be spandex jackets, one for everyone
What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free
Here’s an interesting variation on a theme of space stations. Or, to be specific, the construction of a space station.
First, the front and rear covers of Pocket Books’ 1953 edition of Murray Leinster’s Space Platform, as illustrated by Earle K. Bergey (albeit sans Bergey Girl). Artistically it’s a fine illustration, and the scene depicted is consistent with the story, but with that, it’s still – well – odd. The setting of the space platform’s creation is weird: Given that the station is under construction on land – on the surface of the earth – in a facility that seems to be a cross between a shipyard and steel mill, how “on earth” (small pun there…) how did Leinster propose to get the thing into space once completed?
(Don’t know. Haven’t yet read the book. However, you can find numerous comments about it at GoodReads.)
In the little desert town of Bootstrap stands a huge metal shed. In the shed men are building an object that can change the history of mankind. It is a Space Platform. Propelled to an orbit 4000 miles from Earth this platform will serve as the staring place for man’s exploration of mysterious outer space.
SPACE PLATFORM tells the exciting story of a young man helping to build this first station. With scientific accuracy and imagination Murray Leinster, one of the word’s top science-fiction writers, describes the building and launching of the platform. Here is a fast-paced story of sabotage and murder directed against a project more secret and valuable than the atom bomb!
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And then it hit me: The story and Bergey’s illustration reminded me of something quite contemporary: The scene of the entirely earthbound construction of the USS Enterprise, as depicted in J.J. Abrams stunningly, sublimely, transcendentally awful – not initially-panned-and-eventually-recognized-as-a-great-film awful, just irrevocably-and-perennially-awful – 2009 Star Trek. Though effective in terms of color and lighting (the bluish-white background illumination, suggesting a combination of floodlights the light from sunrise or sunset, works well), and imparting a feeling of “busy-ness”, the scene is – frankly – idiotic. I know that post-TV-series iterations of Star Trek have the Enterprise (and other Federation starships?) capable of some degree of atmospheric flight, but…
Really??
And, talking of security precautions: I’m sure the fence and “Authorized Personnel Only” sign is entirely capable of dissuading any intruders. Well, barbed wire has long been known to be utterly impenetrable to phasers, disruptors, anti-matter, paper airplanes, and stray golf-balls.
Back to art: I guess the platform’s earthbound construction is genuinely a part of the novel, and not something invented by Bergey solely for the cover of the Pocket Books’ edition, as seen in I. Heilbron’s cover for the Shasta edition (one of five science fiction novels published by Shasta in 1953) which conveys a more sedate impression.
Amidst blogging, I’ve spent the last several weeks working on a certain “project”, fruitlessly searching for a Cathmium tube with an Indium Complex of +4, Bead Condensers (Model # AB-619*), and Intensifier Disks. So far, no luck. Needing a respite from my quest – which I naively assumed has been unknown to the outside world – I sought diversion in the pages of a certain pulp magazine which features Leigh Brackett’s story “Sea Kings of Mars”: Thrilling Wonder Stories, of June, 1949.
*Supercedes Models AA, and, all Models prior to AB 617, as these are only compatible with Cathmium Tubes having an Indium Complex of +3 and lower.
Perusing the magazine, I was at once aghast…startled…to find the illustration below:
So, being that I’m not at all alone in my “project” (drat!) I finally confess that I’ve been building (ahem * trying to build * ahem) an Interocitor. But…!
…really! I’d first assumed that this double-page illustration was created by Virgil Finlay, given its detail and intricate, fine line-work. But, not so, for it lacks Finlay’s distinctive logo, which typically appeared in the lower right or left corners: The artist is unknown.
Artistic aspects aside, until actually reading Raymond Jones’ tale, I hadn’t known that this story is actually the first of a trilogy in Thrilling Wonder Stories (the second and third being “The Shroud of Secrecy” (December, 1949) and “The Greater Conflict” (February, 1950)) that combined became the 1952 novel entitled This Island Earth, which then became the basis for the 1955 science fiction film by that name. As such, “The Alien Machine” (I’ve not yet read the second and third stories) is only the basis of the first, purely earthbound, part of the movie.
As for the film “This Island Earth“, well (so this dates me…) I saw the film, in whole or in part, several times during the 60s and 70s: on “Dialing For Dollars” broadcast on late afternoon weekdays by my local television station; on late (very late) night television; on weekend afternoons. Then, I wasn’t interested in appreciating nor admiring nor critiquing it. I simply enjoyed it; no more, no less. It was fun.
(Well, even then, though, I kind’a really liked the part where, y’know, the hero and heroine are taken to that planet far out in space and the sky’s all purple and blue and there’s these explosions going off above them and there’s this ugly big-headed-big-brained goggle-eyed monster chasing them, and… Yeah, for a kid, it was fun.)
But unsurprisingly, the description of Raymond Jones’ novel at Wikipedia reveals that the full story is more substantive, complex, and ambiguous than the movie. (What else is new?) In this, the plot does not revolve around an alien civilization obtaining the assistance and knowledge of human scientists – through persuasion or kidnapping – in order to defend themselves in a war between their own world, an another alien race. Rather, Earth serves as a backdrop or near-incidental place of conflict between the two alien civilizations (the Guarrans and the Llannans), with the Llannans eventually becoming defenders of earth against their Guarran foes.
As for the interocitor? In some ways, it’s the coolest part of the film. Some of the parallels between that device, as depicted in the June, 1949, issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, and the interocitor as created for the the movie, are more than coincidental: The flat (as opposed to deep cathode ray tube) view screen; those thick, clunky cables; the huge coils and vacuum tubes. Doubtless this illustration influenced the film to some extent, though the flat view screen in the movie is triangular in shape.
Anyway, you can learn much more about the interocitor in this article by G.F. Willmetts, at SFCrowsNet. You can also find a nice discussion of the film, with insightful talk-back comments, at ThePulp.Net.
Now where’d I put that intensifier disk…?
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The 1955 trailer for “This Island Earth”, showcasing Jeff Morrow and Faith Domergue, at Trailer Chan’s YouTube channel:
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At Jack Fuller’s YouTube channel, you can view “This Island Earth” in all it’s 50s color glory…
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Here’s SciFiSteve1954’s imagineering of the interior of Exeter’s spacecraft. Appropriate title: “3D tour of Exeter’s Ship from the movie This Island Earth”. Though I’m not certain, I’m wondering if SciFiSteve1954 is (was?!) the alter-ego of pop-culture / film / science-fiction critic and commentator Dicktor Van Doomcock…!
And a little bit more…
