My Scrapbook
That cover. Again!
Glenn Grohe’s much-used cover
From the March 1954 issue of Bluebook.
Take a look.
If you’ve been poking around the Shamus Game (or even just this site) for a while, chances are you’ve seen that chisel-jawed, hard-boiled private dick somewhere before, resplendent in the obligatory trenchcoat-and-fedora, skulking around the corner of a building, in a neighbourhood much the worse for wear.
I’ve used a portion of it as a banner myself (see below), Max Allan Collins used a slice of it as the cover for his non-fiction coffee table masterpiece The History of Mystery, and it’s been “borrowed” for everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs. Most recently, it’s been used, in slightly altered fashion, as the cover for The Men’s Adventure Quarterly #12 (2025), appropriately enough for its The Private Eyes Issue.
I just hope that artist Glenn Grohe is getting his cut. Or at least some respect.
Blue Book was, of course, a popular 20th-century American mag that ran for seventy years (1905 to 1975) and could rightfully be considered one of the longest running pulp titles. Devoted to short fiction and excerpts from longer works, it quickly gained a reputation for quality, publishing science fiction, westerns, adventure, fantasy, romance and crime fiction from such diverse writers as H. Rider Haggard, Albert Payson Terhune, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Luke Short, Agatha Christie, Sax Rohmer, Ian Fleming, P. C. Wren, Max Brand, Robert A. Heinlein, Clarence E. Mulford, MacKinlay Kantor, Theodore Pratt, Booth Tarkington, Georges Simenon, Shelby Foote and William Lindsay Gresham.
There’s no private eye story in this particular issue from March 1954, as far as I can tell, but it boasted “The Natural Inferiority of Women” by Lester David Button, “Button, Button” by noted sci-fi author Nelson Bond, and “Report From The Dean” by Octavius Roy Cohen, whom you may know as the creator of detectives Florian Slappey and Jim Hanvey. Other contributors included Frank O’Rourke, H. Allen Smith, and Rhodes Sturdy.
As for the cover, internationally renowned American artist Glenn Grohe (1912-1956) may not have been known necessarily as a pulp artist, but he sure nailed the private eye mythos with this one. He wasn’t afraid to mix it up in his long career — he’s renowned for his blending of elements of traditional classicism, impressionism, abstract expressionism and probably a few other isms I’m not sure of, utilizing bold composition, vibrant colours and abstract shapes, as well as more traditional elements like landscapes and still-lifes (just check out the composition of the illustration above, how the eye’s steely gaze directs the viewer to the magazine’s contents, the tattered poster on the battered bricks, the seen-better-days background, and how the detective’s left hand is half-raised, clenching a smoke, like he’s ready to flick it away, waiting for whatever might be about to go down. And this rough customer looks more than ready for it — check out his face. Is that a scar running down his cheek? I just love it.
Responsible for over 2,600 works of art in his lifetime, and from what I can see, Grohe’s work is never chicken shit.
Let’s see AI do that.
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Dare to Judge This Book
Some Great Pulp & Paperback Cover Artists. - My Scrapbook
A Cornucopia of Tear Sheets, Illustrations, Photos, Cartoons, Scribbles & Other Crap That I Think is Sorta Cool.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
