Sheesh...did we really save the Brits during World War Two so they could BURN OUR BOOKS? Especially one so lovingly drawn by Bill Ward, our national hero of the big boob cartoon? SHAME on you Limeys. Was it that you feared good, strong competition from over here for your own sleaze, the big boob postcards of Bamforth?
The caption here indicates not only that Novel books tried to sneak these across the pond packed with BIBLES, but that they snagged some 350,000 of them! Heck, what was the population of London during the "swinging mod sixties" anyway? Something must have convinced Novel there was a ready, steady, teddy market for this crap over there or they wouldn't have sent so many. And such a shame...letting this Bogart wannabe sort through them to see which would burn best.
The Brits are as bad as us. They can ogle Murdoch's page "page three" girls every day, (some as young as 16 until they passed a law requiring topless models to be 18 in 2003) but try to send them some real AMERICAN smut and they wilt like a Glastonbury garden in summertime without a hose!
Novel books was but a small part of Joseph Sorrentino's Camerarts operation in Chicago. As early as 1950, Joe was peddling "figure photography" as the editor of "Amateur Screen and Photography" which pictured nude women posing as art. He also printed a cheesecake digest called Rascal in 1956, but I don't think it did too well. At any rate, Joe Sorrentino is but one more example of porn posing as art...have a made my point yet? If not see PROTO-PORN...What a scam.
Over here, Novel books was raided by Chicago police in 1960, and a similar bust took a few of them off the market in New York too. You can see a similar staged photograph of Police Commissioner Michael Murphy thumbing through one in feigned disgust for the press photographer while a whole wall of Novel books are displayed behind him in SIN-A-RAMA on page 18. So it was a good thing we could dump them on England.
They were also trying to peddle their swill in Canada! In 1963, A Regina "city druggist" brought some Novel books to the cops and told him teenagers were "grabbing the books as soon as they were put on the shelf." Which led the Police Chief to describe one of them, (Swamp Lust, shown below) as "an unexpurgated portrayal of raw sex, drunkenness, adultery, rape, kidnapping and murder" and that "For plain unadulterated rot, it would be hard to beat...lurid and lewd...a paperback of trash...as a story it is a hopeless failure." Thanks, Camerarts!
Wow! I hope he wasn't referring to the one Harlan Ellison wrote for Novel. I don't own Swamp Lust...but that review sure made me look on the shelves to see if I did.
I've been picking up Novel books when I see them for a post, but now I might even have to search eBay for one. Swamp Lust. Hmm...isn't that a new show on A&E?
Original Keystone Press Agency (London, sent to U.S) 8 x 10 photograph with affixed caption. 1964 Collection Jim Linderman.
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