EARL STANLEY GARDNER and Perry Mason Through the Years, PART 3

Finally, the end of the Earl Stanley Gardner/Perry Mason cover posts. These date from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s. These are the cover styles I grab when I see them.

On the left 1953, the right 1956.

This one dates from 1952. I love the back cover.

The one on the left is from 1944, the one on the right from 1949.

I find the use of lowercase letters on the 1949 cover interesting.

Interesting to see how often red and yellow were used over the years until we hit the 60s.

I find it fascinating to see how one author has been marketed through the years. What the publisher in each decade thought would sell. Do they reflect each decade or did the publisher sometimes miss the boat completely? I have no idea, but I know I'll keep collecting them when I find them in used bookstores and thrift stores. I like to be surprised by them when I find one and won't be buying them on eBay. eBay isn't fun anymore. It's cold and corporate.

And finally, all past Earl Stanley Gardner posts so you can compare the covers:

She'd only read PERRY MASON

What do you do with A STUTTERING BISHOP?

EARL STANLEY GARDNER and PERRY MASON Through the Years

EARL STANLEY GARDNER and PERRY MASON Through the Years, Part 2

EARL STANLEY GARDNER and Perry Mason Through the Years, PART 2

Now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted by bandwidth issues?

Continuing where I left off, I now give you some Perry Mason covers dating from 1959 to 1966.

This very lazy series cover dates from 1966. I'm assuming it was a decision by the publisher to make the most simplistic series style possible requiring little effort by all involved to say nothing of cheap. No photographer or illustrator to pay. Bring it in the front door, shove it out the back. Or as one fellow designer calls it, "sausage making." I'm not blaming the designer because cover designs are done by committee. Too often way too much input from too many people. This is just a sad case of everyone giving up. In a few years the publisher gave up with this idea and decided sex sold better (see my previous post). Sex sold the year before and sex sold the following years. What was there about 1966? I don't remember pirate things being particularly popular. Yes, I know that skull and cross bones signify death, poison, etc., but this was the best they could come up with in '66?

Printed in 1966.

So let's go back a year to 1965 when sex was selling. Subtle sexuality. These photos could have just as easily been found in a woman's magazine. And though a series design, it was at least flexible. Okay, I have no idea what the redhead on the left is doing. Scouring the shower wall in the middle of the night? Did she sleepwalk and do windows? I can't say the images are particularly thought provoking, but then let's remember the direction the covers went the next year. Let's call these the Stepford years. Mindless looking women posing.

Printed in 1965.

1962 and 1964. We've finally arrived at covers I'm interested in collecting. Yes, the illustrations look like they could have been from an early '60s Playboy, but they're interesting. You look at these women and know something is going on. They make you wonder what the story is. Well, what I wonder the most is why there's an arrow forming the first part of "Perry Mason" on the 1962 cover. I can guarantee you that someone at the publisher said, "...but is it too clever? Too gimmicky?" There was a committee decision behind this arrow. At least one person had to be convinced the arrow was important.

The cover on the left is from 1962, the one on the right from 1964.

1959. Now we're talkin'! This cover, front and back, is just plain fun. A seductress on the front with a strange modern painting of a guy behind her and a brochure in her hand. An interesting blend of vertical and horizontal movement for the eye. Not a stunning cover, but eye-catching. I do wonder what's going on here. On the back we get Earl Stanley Gardner's signature (how many people thought they had just bought an autographed book?) AND an ad for the Perry Mason show staring Raymond Burr.

Printed in 1959.

The original tv series was on the air from 1957 to 1966. Earl Stanley Gardner died in 1970 (though one post on Wikipedia says 1969). I wonder how much input Gardner had in each final cover design if any?

To read Wikipedia's post about the Perry Mason tv show click here. Their post about the character of Perry Mason is here. To read about the author, Earl Stanley Gardner, click here. To read a very interesting post about Gardner click here.

Seriously, no matter what you think of the writing or of the show, Perry Mason has been around for a very long time. Good marketing or good storytelling? I'm thinking both.

More Mason covers to come in the next post showing the evolution of marketing one product through many decades.

EARL STANLEY GARDNER and Perry Mason Through the Years

Since I was moving things, specifically Perry Mason books, around on a bookcase I thought it time to do another post about the small collection I have. I have written about this collection twice in the past:

She'd Only Read PERRY MASON

What do you do with A STUTTERING BISHOP?

I haven't added anything to the collection in quite awhile because I haven't seen any from the time periods I like. This leads me into this post. Marketing a specific author in a specific time period.

It's fun to see how as decades passed covers changed to reflect what the publishers hoped was their market. The covers I like are from the 1940s and early to mid-1950s. They start to loose me in the late 60s, loose me completely in the 70s, and then barely redeem themselves in the 90s.

As I've said in past posts, I used to collect these books for my landlady who died in 1997. The two covers below were from editions that were on the shelf in bookstores in the 90s. They are simple, mainly typographic, with images that are all but forgotten. At the time there were a lot of vintage mystery authors being sold that had really nice covers. Earl Stanley Gardner was not one of them. They were boring. The publisher was obviously choosing safe colors, type style, and a boring image to attract readers. They all looked the same because the illustration was so secondary and pointless. It was sort of rote mystery buying. Mind you, they were only publishing a small selection of Gardner's work. I believe they were counting on Gardner fans to be their market and were not looking to attract new fans. Within a few years I never again saw a newly printed Perry Mason on any bookstore shelves.

The cover on the left is from 1995, the one on the right from 1989.

So let's go back to the 1970s when marketing was obviously geared mainly towards men who wanted to think all women were sexy babes. Many of the covers had what I would call "sex kittens" as their image. Graphically they are very 70s and pretty silly. I can't help but think of Laugh-In when I look at them. Okay, they also look a bit like ads you'd see these days for sex phone lines. The women look a bit stupid, slightly sexy, and the type who would have hung out (so to speak) at Hefner's house.

The cover on the left is from 1970, the one on the right from 1971.

Now, let's try Bond, James Bond. Well of course these aren't Ian Fleming novels, but they certainly do seem to be putting the idea of Bond girls on the covers. These date from the late 1960s. I don't collect these. Nor do I collect the ones from the 1970 through the 90s. They're all just so boring and stupid.

The cover on the left is from 1969, the one on the right from 1968.

The next post will deal with some of the images from the early 1960s and 1950s. For me these are interesting with a point of view that makes some sense to both men and women.

Now, the good and bad news. Some of Gardner's books are again in print. The bad news is that they are POD (print on demand) and have very uninteresting covers. The publisher is House of Stratus in the UK. Okay, I think the covers are pointless and poorly done which is often the case with POD books. I will leave it to you to decide if you think any of these books make you want to read them or if they in any way project the idea of Perry Mason. I give the company credit for getting Gardner out to a new audience, but these anemic covers would have me looking elsewhere for Gardner books. Namely used bookstores.

What do you do with A STUTTERING BISHOP?

Two covers for the same book published five years apart by the same company. How could they be so very different in such a short time?

This first one is from 1943 and includes on the first page:

In order to cooperate with the government's war effort, this book has been made in strict conformity with WPB regulations restricting the use of certain materials.

Editorial decided to, I guess, take a more literal direction for the cover illustration. Okay, the Bishop looks a bit like the Crypt Keeper, but that's coming from my 2010 perspective, not 1943.

Paperback books were still relatively new when this one was marketed so perhaps they hadn't really grasped the idea of splashing sexy babes and rugged guys on the cover. Still, Pocket Books put out 8 editions of this book in 1943. Have no idea if they all had this cover. This one is a second printing.

Notice on the back cover the "Send this book to a boy in the armed forces anywhere for only 3¢". And below are a couple pages from the interior. One is Pocket Books speaking to their buyers. The other is trying to show support for the war effort.

By 1948 the war was over and the boys were back and babes were primping. No stuttering Bishop on this cover. This was the 22nd edition by Pocket Books.

Brief history of Pocket Books thanks to Wikipedia:

Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry. The German Albatross Books had pioneered the idea of a line of color-coded paperback editions in 1931 under Kurt Enoch; Penguin Books in Britain had refined the idea in 1935 and had 1 million books in print by the following year.

In 1944, the founding owners sold the company to

Marshall Field III, owner of the Chicago Sun newspaper. Following his death, in 1957, Leon Shimkin, a Simon & Schuster partner, and James M. Jacobson bought Pocket Books. Simon & Schuster acquired Pocket in 1966.

Penguin's success inspired entrepreneur Robert de Graff, who partnered with publishers Simon & Schuster to bring it to the American market. Priced at 25 cents and featuring the logo of Gertrude the kangaroo (named after the artist's mother-in-law), Pocket Books' editorial policy of reprints of light literature, popular non-fiction, and mysteries was coordinated with its strategy of selling books outside the traditional distribution channels. The format size, and the fact that the books were glued rather than stitched, were cost-cutting innovations.

The first ten numbered Pocket Book titles:

Lost Horizon by James Hilton

Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande

Five Great Tragedies by William Shakespeare

Topper by Thorne Smith

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

Bambi by Felix Salter

The edition of Wuthering Heights hit the best-seller list, and by the end of the first year Pocket Books had sold more than 1.5 million units. Robert de Graff continued to refine his selections with movie tie-ins and greater emphasis on mystery novels, particularly those of Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner.

Pocket and its imitators thrived during World War II because material shortages worked to their advantage. During the war, Pocket sued Avon Books for copyright infringement: among other issues, a New York state court found Pocket did not have an exclusive right to the pocket-sized format (both Pocket and Avon published paperback editions of Leslie Charteris' The Saint mystery series, among others). (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Okay, I love that the kangaroo logo is based on the original artist's mother-in-law. So who did the update in 1948? Had the mother-in-law gotten younger and perkier? She apparently had lasik surgery or was wearing contacts.

And, one other little bit of information is that Pocket Books is headquartered in the same location it was in 1943. I guess once you get a good spot in Manhattan you sit on it. Just as Gertrude, the kangaroo.

She'd only read PERRY MASON

I once had a landlady who would only read Perry Mason books. She was elderly, a Phi Beta Kappa, Berkeley graduate, and the widow of a judge. I believe her family had known Earl Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason. They had also known Jack London, but those books didn't interest her.

She had a stack of well worn Mason's that she'd read over and over. Some held together with rubber bands. I started checking Mason books out of the library for her. Then I began buying them for her at the bookstore. She always paid me back. This was at a time when Earl Stanley Gardner was still being published. Good luck finding any Perry Mason books new on a shelf these days.

Anyway, I also started hunting in thrift stores and used book stores. I enjoyed it. I kept a list with me of the ones I'd bought so I wouldn't buy duplicates for her. I enjoyed the hunt. I wasn't keeping them. I'd even find them on vacation and be thrilled when I got home with my new treasure for her. Always she'd pay me back, even when I'd insist it was a gift.

When my landlady died I asked her family, a husband and wife related to her through her deceased husband, if I could have the Perry Mason collection. Okay, this still irks me. They were so incredibly petty. They'd never shown interest in these books. They'd never bought her any. There were over 50 books in the collection, all paperbacks from various time periods. A really interesting range of covers. Weeks and weeks passed until one day the guy shows up with a box. He said, "Here, my wife kept the rest." What do you think they gave me? The ones falling apart. The ones with rubber bands holding them together. Basically if it was still in useable condition the wife kept it. Annoying people.

Because I spent so many years looking for Perry Mason books I still look for them. Now I buy them out of habit if they have an old interesting cover. I have about 25 books, most in sad condition. Make that VERY sad condition. Below are the rare exceptions.

I have no idea about illustrators for any of them. No information is given.

Oh, and I once went to the home of Raymond Burr, television's Perry Mason. This was after he had died and I was with a group, there to see his hot house. Sound's odd, doesn't it? Well he had a stunning collection of orchids. A hot house full of them. He was renowned for cultivating the mysterious and temperamental flower. You can still visit the hot house at his winery, Raymond Burr Vineyards.