They Also Served: Robert A. Maguire

Illustrator
(1921 – 2005)

“The Damned Lovely,” she of the smoking gun and overturned chair, pretty much sums up ROBERT A. MAGUIRE‘s ouevre.

It’s the original ilustration for a 1955 paperback of the same name by Jack Webb (the mystery writer, not the Dragnet guy). Stripped of text and layout, it’s about as pure Maguire as you can get: a beautiful woman in some sort of distress, caught on the precipice of something. Something that has happened, something that may happen, and a decision that has to be made.

In the course of his half-century-plus career, he painted over a thousand of these women, for magazines and digests such as Hollywood Detective, Super Detective, Manhunt, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and for book publishers such as Pocket, Dell, Ace, Harper, Avon, Ballantine, Pyramid, Bantam, Lion and Graphic — virtually every mainstream paperback publishing house in New York. And sure, he did covers for romances, westerns, fantasy, historical, erotica and everything else, but it’s his crime and detective novels that stand out. 

Maguire began his education at Duke University, but left to serve in World War II. Upon his return, he joined the Art Students League, graduating in 1949. His career as a freelancer took off almost immediately with his first work for Trojan Publications, doing covers for their line for such pulps as Hollywood Detective Magazine . He never really looked back.

In case you weren’t paying attention, let me repeat: Maguire’s speciality was babes, and as he moved on from magazine work to the more lucrative world of paperback covers, he painted some of the best and most memorable paperback femme fatales of the 50s and 60s. His “damned lovelies” were, according to his own web site, “passionate yet somehow down to earth, approachable, though sometimes at your own risk. These images compel one to wonder what led up to that instant in time and where it will lead next, the very stuff of timeless art.”

As layout and illustration styles changed in the seventies and beyond, Maguire adapted and persevered, even as his output slowed down, while his reputation grew among fans of crime and detective fiction, who recognized Maguire, along with a handful of other illustrators—including Robert McGinnis, James Avati and Barye Phillips, as defining the visual style of post-war American paperback fiction.

In deed, although he never painted an original cover for Hard Case Crime, his was a clear influence on their approach to covers, and some of his previously unseen work, unearthed by his daughter Lynn following his death in 2005, was used as the basis for new covers “in his honor.”

Dames, Dolls, And Gun Molls, a long overdue tribute by art historian Jim Silke, was released in 2009.

Look out for

• Dynamic poses, often bold use of light and shadow, vibrant colour palettes, troubled but beautiful women (modestly dressed for the most part ; he left the bikinis, the lingerie and the nudes for McGinnis), guns.

Works include

• The Brass Halo by Jack Webb (Signet #1556)
  I loved this one — we used it for our January 2006 “cover.”
• Black Opium by Claude Farrere (Berkeley G-120)
  One of his most famous covers, considered by some to be “the definitive crime noir paperback cover of the genre.”
• Honey West: Dig a Dead Doll by G.G. Fickling (Pyramid #G540)
  Maguire did several in the series.
• Numerous issues of Hollywood Detective, Manhunt, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
• No Luck for a Lady by Floyd Mahannah (Signet #879)
• The Sure Thing by Richard S. Prather (1975)
  A late entry, type-heavy with an action-packed montage, featuring doofus PI Shell Scott, and reflecting changing ideas on layout. Very 1970s.
• The Digger series by Warren Murphy (1982)
  Another late entry, a type-heavy cover and a montage of action, the same format was used for the entire series.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• DAMES, DOLLS, AND GUN MOLLS | Buy this book
  By Jim Silke and Robert A. Maguire
  (2009, Dark Horse)
• R. A. Maguire Cover Art
  The only commercial, fully authorized web site dedicated to the artwork of Maguire, administered by his daughter Lynn. You can buy high quality prints, postcards and T-shirts of many of his famous covers — and even some copies of original paintings that were never used.
• Dare to Judge This Book
  Some Other Great Pulp & Paperback Cover Artists.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Lynn for all her help.