Spotting old books and magazines and dummy newspapers in TV, movies and old photos

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One more! I Want to Live!
 
TZ 6.JPG
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Marie of the Isles on the far right.
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One thing that my couple of hours or so of researches, into spotting the paperbacks in that Twilight Zone teleplay, have indicated to me, is how the revolution in sexual morality often associated with the 1960s was probably prepared for by paperbacks, especially the cover art. Suggestive designs abounded. These weren't sleazy pulp magazines displayed at newsstands that (I suppose) the customer had to ask for, but books on spinner racks in drugstores -- as we see here -- and other places where they were easy to pick up.

This helps me, too, to understand the misgivings that people felt about paperbacks in the schools in the 1960s -- something that I've read about, however surprising that might seem to you if you are 40 or younger. I have some old Read magazines -- these were free language arts magazines distributed in middle school classrooms in the 1960s -- and I recall some promotion of paperbacks there, just the idea that paperbacks could be fun and good for you as a young reader. Nothing is said blatantly along these lines -- "Young people and teachers are discovering that paperbacks aren't just immoral pocket books" -- but that's probably in the background there.

Read had a "book club" whereby a classroom could order paperbacks at a slight discount, with the teacher collecting the students' choices and the books coming some time later. This was a way some of us got some of our first sf paperbacks.

You can read my article about Read here:

 
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Extollager said:
View attachment 78017View attachment 78018
Marie of the Isles on the far right.
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One thing that my couple of hours or so of researches, into spotting the paperbacks in that Twilight Zone teleplay, have indicated to me, is how the revolution in sexual morality often associated with the 1960s was probably prepared for by paperbacks, especially the cover art. Suggestive designs abounded. These weren't sleazy pulp magazines displayed at newsstands that (I suppose) the customer had to ask for, but books on spinner racks in drugstores -- as we see here -- and other places where they were easy to pick up.

This helps me, too, to understand the misgivings that people felt about paperbacks in the schools in the 1960s -- something that I've read about, however surprising that might seem to you if you are 40 or younger. I have some old Read magazines -- these were free language arts magazines distributed in middle school classrooms in the 1960s -- and I recall some promotion of paperbacks there, just the idea that paperbacks could be fun and good for you as a young reader. Nothing is said blatantly along these lines -- "Young people and teachers are discovering that paperbacks aren't just immoral pocket books" -- but that's probably in the background there.

Read had a "book club" whereby a classroom could order paperbacks at a slight discount, with the teacher collecting the students' choices and the books coming some time later. This was a way some of us got some of our first sf paperbacks.

You can read my article about Read here:

Click to expand...
I remember Read. Still have a few somewhere, the one with Mary Quant and one with an article about Stanley Kubrick/2001.

There was one with Twyla Tharp, really cool picture of her dancing, but not sure I kept it.
 
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In #89 above, on the top rack of the spinner on the left, the book farthest to the right is The Flower Drum Song.
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By the way, to the left of Vor is another copy of Marie of the Isles.
 
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There’s another of the books in #89 above, if I’m not mistaken. Look at the rack the man is touching, and above his wrist.
 
OK, a couple of screens from the movie Interstellar, scenes in Murph's room. Here's the first:

Interstellar books 1 The Stand etc.JPG

I spot Stephen King's The Stand, something by Armistad Maupin and then Moby Dick, James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere, and E. B. White's Charlotte's Web. There's also a biography of Lindbergh.
 
Here's one more image from the movie.

Interstellar books 2 Scrabble etc.JPG


There's a Scrabble book (white letters on red), then a book in the old Modern Library I believe, then I'd bet dollars to doughnuts it's John leCarre's The Little Drummer Girl. The twin books look to me like old Harvard classics. I see a Dorothy Parker collection.
 
A British TV import to the States was The Champions. I just saw a bit of a clip that someone had posted in which the heroine is withdrawing a book. Good choice! But look to the left of that book. The greenbound book with a handlettered title and author is Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope. The book just to the left of it is also by Trollope -- The Claverings, I guess. The Skin Dealer is a novel about animal hides by Miles Tripp.

Tolkien Champions TV show.PNG


The Long Avenues is by James Turner, who wrote a lot of crime novels.

James Turner Bibliography - a list of First Edition Books in order

James Turner's Rampion Savage books a Bibliography - Checklist of books.
www.classiccrimefiction.com

The book at the far right might be S. C. George's The Trouble Maker. The book farthest left is Fyson's The Journey of the Eldest Son.

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Does anybody want to guess what the Victor Gollancz book (yellow) might be? That outfit published lots of sf....
 
Don't forget The Hobbit between the Tolstoy and the Turner.

The image's filename is actually Tolkien Champions TV show (dot) PNG...
 
The red book to the left of the James Turner looks like The Warm Nights of January, by Frank Tuohy.

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Pyan said:
Don't forget The Hobbit between the Tolstoy and the Turner.
Click to expand...
He didn't.
Extollager said:
But look to the left of that book.
Click to expand...
The Gollancz SF book - I can't read it. If I blow up the letters it becomes illegible, but it seems to be a four word title. I tried counting the letters but it's impossible, and the authors name is beyond me. Second word is probably "the". Possibly "When the _______ ____"
 
In Jackie Brown (1997), at the start of the money exchange scene at the mall, Jackie fills the bottom of a bag with books before putting money on top of them:

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Short Blade by Peter Emshwiller is obvious, but you can also see Line of Fire by Donald Hamilton.
The SF connection is that Peter Emshwiller is Ed and Carol Emshwiller's son.
 
The 1946 noir Black Angel, from a Cornell Woolrich story --

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-- has a richness of newspaper headlines, as we shall see in the next few postings.
 
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