REVIEW: Queen of the Pulps: The Reign of Daisy Bacon and Love Story Magazine

Daisy Bacon at work in her office in the Street and Smith Building

Among the pulp genres, the love pulps are the ones with the highest circulations and the least discussion. This has been true for a long time. The early pulp fanzines I've seen were from the 1930s, Fantasy Fan and Phantagraph among them, and they focused on science fiction/fantasy. Later pulp fanzines covered the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Burroughs Bulletin being the most prominent among them; the hero pulps, of which Bronze Shadows might have been the first; and a few focused on Frederick Faust/Max Brand. In the 1970s and 1980sThe Pulp Era, Xenophile and Echoes were also slanted toward science fiction/fantasy and the hero pulps. Detective and mystery fandom had their own zines, but discussion of the pulp era stories was limited. Very few people actively collected, and even fewer read the pulps - Black Mask, Dime Detective, Clues - that we now collect avidly.

Love, adventure, westerns, sports, aviation - the pulps that actually sold the most, were the least discussed. And while the rest had at least some discussion, there was nothing I'm aware of written on the love pulps other than Daisy Bacon's guide to writing for the love pulps - Love Story Writer. When i read it a few years ago, I was struck by how similar her guidelines were to those I've seen for the other pulps targeted at adults, regardless of genre. But enough of my musings. Why should you read this book? Laurie tells it better than i could:

Because the woman in question, Daisy Sarah Bacon, was an editor whose magazine, Love Story Magazine, probably touched more women during her twenty-year career than any other woman of her generation. Her influence was felt far and wide by a group of readers who suffered silently through the Great Depression, who had very little leisure time on their hands, and whose only source of entertainment was the family radio, an occasional movie, and reading pulp fiction magazines that sold for a dime or fifteen cents.

Daisy was the defender of the "modern girl." She told them it was okay to work and be married. She presented the possibility that they could even make more money than their husband. She told them that they could have it all but, in no uncertain words, they needed to buck up and not wait for a man to hand it to them. She was what one journalist called a "violent, vociferous feminist," decades before the term "feminist" even became part of the common lexicon.

...

Queen of the Pulps: The Reign of Daisy Bacon and Love Story Magazine is the story of Daisy as the editor of that magazine from 1928 until 1947. Under her management, Love Story Magazine hit a rumored circulation of 600,000 copies a week in the late 1920S and early 193os, a record never surpassed by any other pulp fiction magazine. Under her guidance, Love Story became the go-to magazine for hundreds of thousands of readers every single week for almost twenty years. Love Story's success ushered in a wave of imitators that fueled the red-hot romance magazine industry that began in the 192os and didn't die away until the 195os.

Daisy wasn't the editor of just Love Story Magazine. Over her twenty-three career at Street & Smith, she was manager of seven other periodicals, some of which were the most storied icons to emerge from the pulp fiction phenomenon. Some were under her management for their entire runs: Real Love, Ainslee's Smart Love Stories, and Pocket Love. For others, she replaced their previous editors: Romantic Range, Detective Story Magazine, The Shadow, and Doc Savage magazines during their last years as pulp fiction magazines.

In telling Daisy's story, Laurie has done a superb job. I am in awe of how much research must have gone into this book. Lucid writing and excellent photos tell a family history that's funny and poignant by turns. With the contextualization of place and time (Street and Smith's offices, the linotype machines) it all comes together into a beautiful journey through a successful and eventually embittered, semi-monastic life.

Don't run out and buy this book; it's much easier and safer to order it online from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. And while i enjoyed the book, it didn't turn me into a love pulp collector. But it did turn me into a Laurie Powers collector. We will have our own convention someday :-)

Rothvin Wallace - Editor, Author

I came across Rothvin Wallace’s name while reading The Cobra Woman in the Thrill Book, September 1 1919.

A quick search turned up an obituary which I thought was worth sharing.

A brief bio:

Born: February 23 1882 in Christiana, Pennsylvania

Died: November 14 1922 in Oceanport, New Jersey

Of interest to the readers of this blog, he wrote more than 30 stories for the pulps in his career from , 1910 to 1922, all for top magazines including People’s, Cavalier, New Story, Argosy, All-Story, Thrill Book, The Popular Magazine and Short Stories. Four serials in the Cavalier, none reprinted in book form.

Rothvin Wallace c. 1917

John Randolph Phillips - author bio online

I came across John Randolph Phillips' name when i was looking at an issue of  The Popular Magazine in the 1930s. At this time Popular was past its peak in the early 1900s-1919 or so, and was further handicapped by the death of its long time editor, Charles Agnew McLean, a couple of years earlier.

Even past its peak, it was still full of readable stories if not quite as exciting, as the rest of the general fiction pulps. John Randolph Phillip's Or Maybe Alaska (The Popular Magazine, August 1st, 1930) is an example of this. 

Or Maybe Alaska - Popular Magazine, August 1, 1930 - Story by John Randolph Phillips, illustration by George H. Wert

The story is told from the point of view of a teenager, Steve Walker, who's run away from home. Steve is currently working in a pool hall managed by a fat, ill-tempered man named Butch who withholds Steve's wages so that he can't walk away.

Into this setup walks a drifting bum, Wirt Coleman, who likes the kid - the affection is mutual and the kid tries to persuade Wirt to take him along on his drifting. Wirt refuses, telling Steve to go home. Wirt also beats Butch in pool games, and Butch decides to get his money back by cheating Wirt in a poker game, with Steve (who Wirt trusts) peeking at Wirt's cards and signalling Butch. Steve refuses, but is physically coerced into going along with Butch's plan. It won't be revealing too much to say that the story has a happy ending for both Steve and Wirt. Nothing outstanding, but nothing to complain about either.

John Randolph Phillips c. 1930 (Photo taken from the Scottsville, Virginia Museum)

Phillips' writing career is similarly unremarkable. He started writing fiction in 1928, placing 2 stories in Street and Smith's Sport Story. He followed this up with 15 and 21 stories in 1929 and 1930, and then dropped to 3-6 stories a year in the 1930s and 1940s. Til 1935, he was exclusively publishing in Street and Smith titles - Sport Story, Popular, Complete Stories, Excitement and Nick Carter. In 1935, he broke into Argosy and never appeared in Street and Smith pulps after the end of that year. 

In the 1940s, his output was mostly in the slicks (American Magazine, Collier's, Country Gentleman among them). In the 1950s, he published a story or two each year. His last story was for Chatelaine in 1967.

Click here to go to the author's bio on the Scottsville, Virginia museum's site.

Donald Francis McGrew - Author, Journalist

I first came across one of Don McGrew's stories in The Frontier, a year ago. After reading one, i wanted more. Came across his other pirate story in The Frontier, thanks to Pulpmags.org. It was as good as the first one, and i got interested. Here's what i found out about him.

Donald Francis McGrew, c. 1930

Elliot W. Chess – Fighter pilot, Author

Elliott Chess c. 1926, courtesy the University of Texas at El Paso

[Recently read Chess’ first story in Western Story magazine, The Sign of the Skull, an unusual western story of revenge set in a pirates’ inn in the Chihuahuan Desert. After reading the story, I wanted to learn more about the author and what I found was enough to warrant this article.]

L.L. Foreman - Western Author

L.L. Foreman was a frequent contributor to the western pulps from the mid 1930s to the early 1950s. His series character Preacher Devlin started in 1934 and appeared in more than 45 stories till 1949, becoming one of the longer lasting series characters in the western pulps. Coincidentally, Star Western had the Deacon Bottle series by Robert E. Mahaffay running at the same time, from 1934 to 1946, about both of whom l should probably have a later article.

Foreman’s stories revolved around character, dialogue and plot rather than frenetic action, and the setting is usually somewhere in the American Southwest, an area he was familiar with. The harsh landscape and weather in the area sometimes figure as plot elements, but more often as a backdrop for the tough characters that are drawn to such areas. In the 1950s and early 60s, a few movies and television episodes were made from his stories, none of which set the screen on fire.

Leonard "London" Foreman, c. 1945

Richard Dermody - Author, Journalist

Author Richard Dermody (1904-1952)

Richard Dermody had, according to the FictionMags Index, almost forty stories published in the pulps from 1942 to 1949. While he wasn’t prolific, he was popular, and had a series of stories about Doc Pierce, a peripatetic conman. The series started in 1942 in Dime Detective, and from then till 1948 he had at least 3 stories every year in that series. Apart from this, he published 17 stories in other magazines, mostly detective stories. Other than that, his only story in Blue Book was accompanied by a biographical article that is the source of most of my information.

Richard Deming - Detective/Mystery author

Read a story by Richard Deming in the  August, 1952 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The story is “For Value Received” and it’s an excellent revenge story. I wanted to learn something about the author and came across this article in the Dunkirk-Fredonia Evening Observer, July 9^th, 1960. If you have any recommendations of stories by him that you’ve read, leave a note in the comments.

Full Name: Richard Franklin Deming

Born: Apr 25 1915 in Des Moines, Iowa

Died: Sep 05 1983 in Los Angeles, California

Richard Deming - Crime/Mystery/Detective Author c. 1960

Joe Gores - Author, Detective

On the occasion of his 87th birthday comes this article about the author Joe Gores originally published in the San Rafael Independent on Sep 27, 1975. I enjoyed all of his books that i've read so far, the best might be Hammett but the most fun was 32 Cadillacs.

Joe Gores: A writer with a lively past

By Albert F. Nussbaum