The Lovely Ladies of Lesser’s Life

Assignment Zoraya, by Edward S. Aarons (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1977). Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens explains that when Ron Lesser’s painting was printed on this novel, “the image was flipped, which is why his signature is backwards.”

This is the first time my byline has appeared on the front of a book without my expecting to find it there. The work in question is The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens, a gorgeous, full-color collection of 81-year-old artist Ron Lesser’s classic paperback and movie poster art. It was published late last month, and has already won a flurry of favorable critical responses.

According to Robert Deis, a South Florida authority on the art of vintage men’s adventure magazines, it was a lengthy 2018 interview I conducted with Lesser for Killer Covers that gave him the idea to create this 145-page book. Together with Bill Cunningham, the Southern California-based head of Pulp 2.0 Press (and his collaborator on Men’s Adventure Quarterly magazine), and with Lesser’s enthusiastic approval, they set about gathering together prime examples of the painter’s work from the last six and a half decades. Because they introduce this hardcover book with a slightly edited version of my original interview, I was given a cover credit.

Much to my delight, I should add.

I have a much-prized collection of volumes having to do with paperback cover art and artists, among them Ed Hulse’s The Art of Pulp Fiction: An Illustrated History of Vintage Paperbacks, Colin Larkin’s Cover Me: The Vintage Art of Pan Books: 1950-1965, Art Scott’s The Art of Robert E. McGinnis, and Mort Künstler: The Godfather of Pulp Fiction Illustrators, which was co-edited by Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle. Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens certainly holds it own with the best of those. Not only is it handsomely illustrated with Lesser’s finished pieces, original art, and some of the model photographs to which he referred when creating his canvasses, but it also features comments from Lesser about his artistic techniques and spreads that highlight a selection of his favorite female models, including his wife of four decades, Claudia. (Click here to enjoy an online sneak peak at some of this book’s contents.)

The full cover of Deis and Cunningham’s tribute volume.

Recently I took the opportunity to question Deis and Cunningham—via e-mail—about their new book. The results are quite wide-ranging, and cover everything from their introductions to Ron Lesser’s prolific artistry and their innovative design for Deadly Dames, to their collaboration process with the book’s subject and the lengths to which they went in acquiring specimens of his work (an endeavor that often drew the aid of South Carolina resident Tim Hewitt, a former tech writer and “web monkey,” now an ardent paperback collector who says he owns “somewhere around 350 books with Lesser covers”).

Amazingly, this study of Lesser’s life and labors is only the initial installment in a planned series of similar tributes. Bob Deis (who also co-edited a recently released compilation of Lawrence Block’s early stories) says “there could be more than three volumes” to come, exploring differerent periods of the painter’s career and the diversity of literary genres to which he has contributed. Like other old paperback fans, I shall be waiting anxiously to snap those up, too—whether they have my name on their fronts or not.

J. Kingston Pierce: Do you recall how you were introduced to Ron Lesser’s artistry? And what was it about his work that most caught your eye? Are you, perhaps, longtime collectors of his book covers?

Robert Deis: About 20 years ago, I began collecting and studying men’s adventure magazines published in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. That led me to write a blog about them and the artists and writers who worked for them. I sought out and did interviews with a number of those artists and writers who were still alive, and that led to connections with other MAM fans. One of them was Wyatt Doyle, head of the New Texture indie publishing company. In 2012, Wyatt and I started publishing books that reprint MAM stories and artwork. We’ve also done a series of art books focusing on particular artists, including Mort Künstler, Samson Pollen, Gil Cohen, and George Gross.

(Right) Girl from Havana, by Eric Colby
(All Star, 1966).

Most of the artists who did MAM artwork also did paperback cover art. Ron Lesser only did a handful of paintings for MAMs. I was vaguely aware that he was a major paperback cover artist, but it wasn’t until I saw your in-depth interview with Ron in 2018 that I realized just how major. And, it wasn’t until I saw the Lesser covers and artwork in that interview and your later “Lesser Look” posts that I focused on how great his artwork is. I was struck by how it reflects the beautifully rendered, often dramatically lit, attention-getting style common to other top paperback cover artists, like James Bama, Frank McCarthy, Robert Maguire, and Robert McGinnis. When I found out that, unlike those artists, there was no book about Ron’s artwork, I decided to try to fill that void. I contacted him and he was excited about the idea of doing a book.

That’s when I got into collecting books with Lesser cover art in a big way. Since paperback cover art was not a focus of the books I do with Wyatt, I asked book designer and publisher Bill Cunningham if he’d like to do a Lesser art book with me. I’d been working with Bill for about two years on a lushly illustrated magazine that showcases MAM stories and artwork, called the Men’s Adventure Quarterly, so I asked if he wanted to do a Lesser art book. He said yes—enthusiastically.

Bill Cunningham: To be honest, I wasn’t aware of Ron Lesser as an artist until Bob started sending over paperback covers, and I thought, “OK, this seems familiar.” Then I worked as the designer for Michael Stradford’s book Steve Holland: The World’s Greatest Illustration Art Model and realized that Ron created the covers for one of my favorite western paperback series, Fargo. That’s when I had an appreciation for what he did, as it was based on that emotional connection I had with the Fargo series. I branched out after that.

(Left) Lesser’s self-portrait sketch.

JKP: How would you rank Lesser among paperback cover artists?

BC: Obviously, my appreciation for him and his body of work has only grown as I’ve worked on this book. One aspect to the project that we’ve tried to explore is showcasing the man, his work, and the world he worked within. He was able to apply his skills to a variety of media—paperbacks, magazines, advertising, movie posters, and even landscapes and portraiture—and not every artist is able to pull that off. The fact he was skillful, talented, and flexible enough to do that is amazing and should be celebrated far more than it has been.

RD: To me, Ron ranks right up there among the top illustration artists who started out doing paperback cover art in the ’50s and ’60s. Clearly, the art directors at paperback companies felt that way. He did covers for almost every major publisher. I am especially fond of illustration art in the realistic style championed and taught at the Art Students League of New York, where Ron and many other great artists studied. Artists such as Jim Bama, Stan Borack, Mel Crair, Jack Faragasso, Roger Kastel, Robert Maguire, Frank McCarthy, Lou Marchetti, Rudy Nappi, Tom Ryan, and Robert E. Schulz.

JKP: How long ago did you decide to put this book together?

RD: We started working with Ron in 2021. After we realized he’d done thousands of book covers and movie posters, we decided a series of books was needed to do justice to Ron’s career.

For the first book, we decided to focus on his early illustration art from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s that features sexy women, one of the most common eyeball-grabbing subjects on books covers from those decades. I asked Bill to create a layout that would give a book showcasing vintage covers and artwork a fresh look, and figure out how to intersperse those visual elements with quotes I put together from phone interviews I did with Ron and reference photos he gave us. Bill succeeded far beyond my expectations.


Ron Lesser and Robert McGinnis are the artists most closely associated with John D. MacDonald’s best-selling Travis McGee detective novels. “Both did many cover paintings for the 21 books in the series,” explains Deadly Dames, “and Lesser’s covers are often wrongly credited to McGinnis.”

BC: Applying our thoughts to celebrate the man, his work, and the world he worked in, we began to break down how we could accomplish this. We broke it down by years with sub-groupings of series here and there—the Travis McGee books, the Johnny Liddell series, etc.—and groupings of Ron’s model reference photos. It was comical at times, because we would get to a point where, after I had the layout going, Ron would send us an e-mail with some new piece for the puzzle—a cover we hadn’t seen, a note about a model, or even just an anecdote that would spin us off in a new direction. Then we would get a note from über paperback collector Tim Hewitt, who kept finding covers that Ron had forgotten about—and that would get the merry-go-round spinning again.

As far as the look of the book, I didn’t ever want to create a book that anyone could make. That is, a book with white pages and the art placed just so. It had to be a book that again reflected the man, the work, and the world. Many of the early pages mimic a mid-20th-century modern design aesthetic (or my version of it, anyway) to showcase that era of his work. We then progress into the “mod” ’60s, the’70s, and onward. Hopefully, the reader will subconsciously pick up on that and set the artwork within the right framework of time.

(Right) Make Me an Offer, by Charles O. Gorham (Berkley, 1962).

JKP: What were your initial expectations for this book? Who did you see as your audience?

RD: My interests—vintage paperbacks and magazines—are niches. Luckily, there are enough people interested in those niches that there is now a pretty good following for projects I do with Bill or Wyatt. And, I think books featuring Ron Lesser’s artwork will have broader appeal than say, the Men’s Adventure Quarterly Bill and I publish. You don’t really have to be a major vintage paperback or illustration aficionado to enjoy Ron’s amazing artwork and read what he says about what it was like to be an illustration artist in the ’50s and ’60s. As I write this, the book has only been available for a couple of weeks via Amazon worldwide, but early sales suggest that it will likely be one of our best sellers.

BC: My initial expectations for any project, whether it’s comics, pulp, or an art book like Deadly Dames, is to best tell the story that’s presented. If I take care of that first and foremost, I know that I can count on the book to have “legs.” I’m certain this book is going to appeal to paperback collectors, commercial art collectors, and those who appreciate good artwork. We tell Ron Lesser’s story during that period of time between 1959 and 1979. For most people, that would be a full career, but for Ron he was just getting started!

JKP: When did you first go about contacting Long Island, New York, resident Lesser and convincing him to participate in this venture? Did he agree right away to help, or was there arm-twisting Involved?

BC: I didn’t come aboard the project until Bob had already finagled the deal. That made it especially easy for me.

RD: I e-mailed Ron not long after I saw your interview with him on the Killer Covers blog. I told him I had published illustration art books featuring artists he knew, like the book Mort Künstler: The Godfather of Pulp Fiction Illustrators, and wanted to do a book about him. Naturally, he wanted to see those books before he agreed to anything, so I sent them to him and he liked them. As we talked about my love for illustration artwork and what elements we could showcase in a book about his, I think he realized we would do justice to his legacy and quickly became enthusiastic. No arm-twisting required.

(Left) Make My Bed Soon, by Jack Webb (Avon, 1965).

JKP: What was your working relationship with Lesser like? How involved was he in bringing this exceptional project to market?

RD: After Ron got on board, he was very heavily involved and very responsive to any requests we had, which were many. He sent us lists of his books, covers scans, anecdotes, photos, and suggestions on a regular basis. He also helped identify book covers as his (or not) that we thought looked like his, but didn’t have his signature. He also very carefully reviewed and weighed in on the layout, and the quotes we used, and sent us new images and quotes along the way as he saw layouts for various pages. For me, it was great fun to talk with Ron and learn about his life and work and what it was like to be an illustration artist during the heyday of illustration art. It was sometimes a bit hard on Bill, since we went through nine versions of the layout to address his suggestions and additions before it was complete.

BC: Ron is a lovely man, but he can be a bit picky and prickly. He is often overly critical of his own work. He would look at certain pages and say he didn’t like certain covers we wanted to include. Sometimes it was because there was an emotional component to it. Sometimes he didn’t like some minor aspect of a cover. Sometimes he had a different view on how to design certain pages. After a while, I understood that Ron approached every aspect with a critical eye, but didn’t realize that readers would enjoy certain things he didn’t like. For example, I think some of the covers he didn’t want to include for some reason are going to be the covers readers will remember most. Bob interviewed Ron several times, and I sat in with both of them when we reviewed several drafts of the book. My job as the designer was to listen more closely than anyone else and try to understand the nature of Ron’s critical eye on his work. Understand the man and begin to understand the work.

JKP: What’s the most interesting thing you learned about Lesser and his career over the course of putting this book together?

RD: The most amazing thing to me was when I began to realize just how much great artwork Ron has done over the past six decades and how varied it is. Between 1959, when he first became a professional artist, and the 1990s, when the market for high-quality illustration art faded away, he did thousands of paintings for book covers, movie posters, album covers, and ads for TV shows. Then, like many artists who started out in those realms, he went on to do western and Civil War paintings for galleries. He also did sports paintings and in recent years a lot of paintings of old and new female celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, Margo Robbie, and Gal Gadot. He’s also been doing new versions of his early paperback cover paintings. In fact, Ron is one of the last of the top mid-20th-century illustration artists who is not only still alive but still painting. He calls himself “the last man standing.” I also learned that Ron is a workaholic. Throughout his long career, he has worked on some painting virtually every day.

BC: Again, I think it’s the variety within his career. He did a bit of everything and has been doing it well for a very, very long time. That is something to be celebrated.

(Right) The Shaking Shadow, by Elizabeth Stuart (Signet, 1967).

JKP: What sort of challenges did you face in gathering all of the art for this volume? My presumption is that Lesser didn’t have most of the paintings you needed, so how did you find everything?

BC: Bob can speak to this better than I can, but Ron provided a wealth of material from his archives. The running joke was we would get a draft done and wait for Ron to find something new in his attic.

RD: One big challenge we faced was that Ron had been incredibly busy and he was so focused on getting paintings done and meeting deadlines, he didn’t keep a record of everything he did. So, we had to piece together the list of Lesser covers from various sources. The Killer Covers posts and Ron’s Web site provided good starting points. But he did many more covers between ’59 and ’79 than are shown on those. So, I had to do a lot of Googling and a lot of sleuthing on Facebook groups that feature paperback covers.

The other challenge was that many of the old paperbacks Ron did cover art for are hard to find and there weren’t good-quality scans of them online. Luckily, through Facebook, I connected with Tim Hewitt, who has a huge collection of vintage paperbacks and a great eye for IDing the artists. Tim had or searched out and bought scores of books we would not have otherwise had scans of. We also got help from other folks who hang out in those Facebook groups, who had certain books, or who owned original Lesser paintings and gave us photos of them. People such as art dealer Rubén Azcona, artist Joe Jusko, and art collectors Brian Emrich and Jimmy Willis.

JKP: Were there examples of Lesser’s early artistry that you just couldn’t locate, no matter how hard you tried?

RD: Oh, yeah. In fact, almost all of the original paperback cover and movie poster paintings Ron did between 1959 and 1979 are lost in space. They were not returned to him [by the folks who commissioned them], and he was too busy to worry about it at the time. He was focused on getting the next assignment done. And, unfortunately, Ron didn’t think about taking high-quality photos of them for later use. So, we could only find photos of a limited number of his originals from that period that have appeared on online art auction sites or that we were given by a handful of vintage art collectors. In other words, as far as specific examples of his original art are concerned, almost all are missing from the period covered by this first book. The good news is that, starting around 1979, Ron had large-format transparencies shot of his paperback cover paintings, and he gave us hundreds of those to use for Volumes 2 and 3.


Lesser often used his wife, Claudia, as a model for his paperback cover paintings. Unfortunately, she passed away in 1998.

JKP: How did you choose the two Lesser paintings that made the front and back of this book? Did you know from the outset that those were going to be on the covers?

RD: Bill chose the front cover art, and Ron and I loved his choice. It’s Ron’s original painting for the 1962 Lancer paperback Curtains for a Lover, by Robert Dietrich, a pseudonym for Watergate conspirator and prolific novelist E. Howard Hunt. The model was Ron’s wife, Claudia, which made it doubly cool to me. Bill’s initial pick as artwork for the back cover turned out to be one of the ones Ron didn’t think was one of his best, so Bill suggested the painting Ron did for the 1965 novel The April Robin Murders, by Craig Rice and Ed McBain, and that was blessed by Ron. The model was Lisa Karan, one of his favorites in the ’60s other than his wife.

BC: The front cover has always been the front cover. From a design perspective, how could you go wrong with a single subject, brightly colored on a black background? You can recognize the cover immediately from yards away. The back cover changed when Ron didn’t like my choice of Crime of Their Life, by Frank Kane (Dell, 1962), because he thought the image looked “cartoony.” I initially chose it because it was a composition that stood out against a black background. It was a canvas that I could easily compose text against without intruding on the image itself. We went back and forth about it, because I really liked the painting and thought it worked for the book cover as a whole, and reflected what he was doing at the time. He thought it wasn’t his best work. We compromised by using the April Robin Murders artwork. It was also black with blue accents, and I could accomplish what I wanted to accomplish design-wise.

(Left) The Deadly Doll, by Henry Kane (Zenith, 1961).

JKP: And how hard was the culling process, when it came to choosing which examples of Lesser’s artistry could be squeezed into this book and which you had to leave out?

BC: By breaking things up into years, we were able to edit things rather rigorously at the outset. Occasionally, as I said earlier, Ron would find something we would want to add or store for future volumes. It blurs together sometimes, but Bob and I were usually on the same page when it came to what we thought readers would want to see. When layout edits came, I would take Bob’s initial ideas and lay them out, then rework or edit them as necessary in order to enhance the presentation and tell Ron’s story.

JKP: So Bob, you have said that Bill’s design for this book “is particularly fresh for an art book.” Can you be more specific?

RD: Sure. A lot of illustration art books tend to have page after page of full-page reproductions of original paintings or scans of a set of covers on a white background. Often the text is limited to the initial introduction. I told Bill I wanted to intersperse quotes from Ron and other text with images throughout the entire book, similar to what he does on layouts for the Men’s Adventure Quarterly magazine. I’d been working with Bill on the MAQ for over a year, and his layouts for those have design elements I said I’d like him to use for the Lesser book. Those elements are things like adding a “texture” to the pages and tinted patterns, so the pages are not simply white; blowups of parts of the artwork; sidebar-style text paragraphs; and other touches that are not common in art books. His designs for MAQ and other projects he’s done that I’ve seen, reflect Bill’s special vision as a graphic designer who likes to make people say “Wow!” when they see them. They are works of art in themselves, in my opinion, that creatively incorporate art and text elements. Ron told us he really loves the book design, too, which makes us very happy.

JKP: And Bill, what did you try to do with the presentation of this volume that was particularly innovative, satisfying, or a stretch for you to accomplish? What aspect of its design makes you most proud?

BC: Every project is a learning project—or should be. My goal was to figure out the best way to showcase Ron. Period. I especially like that I was able to take scans of Ron’s art and develop some good two-page spreads to focus on his brush strokes. It’s invaluable for the reader’s understanding of illustration. I look at Isle for a Stranger, The Third Spectre, and Horror at Gull House and see the swirl of a brush that creates a stormy landscape, or a dab of a dry brush that renders beautiful hair around a face. The thinking in “layers” I find fascinating, because I must think the same way in using Photoshop and InDesign in order to put the book together.

(Right) Horror at Gull House, by Patty Brisco (Belmont Tower, 1973).

JKP: You identify this work as “Volume 1.” Can you say yet how many more volumes you plan for the Lesser series, and what specific subject matter those sequels will cover?

BC: We have several planned, but as always, how many more volumes we create depends on how many books we sell. We are a boutique publishing entity. We live and breathe by readers buying our books and, more importantly, telling their friends they bought the books. We do this for the love of books, but we don’t get to do it if it costs us money.

RD: One future volume will focus on Ron’s western, crime, and action/adventure cover art. Another will showcase his post-1979 artwork featuring beautiful women.

BC: Ron has a diverse and extensive archive of art that appeals to different audiences, so there could be more than three volumes in the series. I am ready to design a book that showcases the celebrity portraits and gallery paintings he’s done. I’m also ready to design a book featuring all of the romance art he’s done for Harlequin and other romance publishers. Wherever there’s an eager audience, I want to be able to give them a book they can enjoy.

JKP: Is there going to be a paperback edition of Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens released, or are you happy just putting out the hardcover?

BC: Yes, we plan to release a paperback, but it will be a while. Maybe late 2023.

JKP: After celebrating Ron Lesser in this major way, are there other vintage book illustrators whose work you’re hoping to explore with equal depth in the near future?

RD: Well, most of my other favorite artists who did paperback, magazine, and movie art in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s are dead, so we couldn’t do projects with them in the quite the same way we have with Lesser. But I do plan to do more books featuring the men’s adventure magazine artwork of Mort Künstler and Gil Cohen. And, although Samson Pollen has passed since Wyatt Doyle and I did two books with him (Pollen’s Women and Pollen’s Action), his wife, Jacqueline, has made his art and reference photo archive available to us. We recently tapped that for a third book, Pollen in Print: 1955-1959, and there’s plenty there for more books.

BC: We both have a lot of projects in the future. I am working with Michael Stradford to bring international adventure comics here to the U.S. in English. I’m also working with award-winning film editor Allan Holzman on the second volume in his Celluloid Wars film books, and republishing the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series of YA books. Of course, Bob and I are continuing to deliver Men’s Adventure Quarterly, and I have ideas to expand our offerings in that arena.

Bennett’s Beauties: A Father’s Legacy

Murder’s Little Helper, by “George Bagby,” aka Aaron Marc Stein (Pocket Cardinal, 1964), with cover art by Harry Bennett.

Over the course of 43 posts, running from early December 2017 through the opening week of 2018, Killer Covers celebrated the remarkable career of American artist and illustrator Harry Bennett (May 15, 1919-November 29, 2012). I’d been thinking for some while before then of how best to honor Bennett, whose paintings for vintage paperback covers I have long admired, and decided that an ideal kickoff for such a tribute would be the fifth anniversary of his death at age 93. Yet as I promised on the concluding day of that series, my interest in Bennett was not yet exhausted.

Amid the month-long presentation of posts, I began an e-mail interview with Bennett’s youngest son, Tom—an artist himself—who I had found by way of his personal page on Flickr. Although I’d hoped our exchange could become part of the original Killer Covers salute to his father, it just wasn’t possible: Tom Bennett and I were still going back and forth with questions and responses weeks after the series finished. Only now am I able to present the results of our online conversation—the first of three Bennett posts I have planned for Killer Covers this week.

(Right) Harry Bennett, busy in his studio.

The youngest of Harry Bennett’s five children, at 58 years old, Thomas Bennett is a painter, printmaker, and illustrator currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. “I always wanted to be an artist,” he has said, “my oldest recollections are of time spent in the studio painting alongside my dad. I wanted to be him and he taught me how to paint without imposing any style on me.” Tom went on to study art in college and then, after “a short stint as a cab driver,” he moved to Europe and settled into an apartment near the beaches in historic Barcelona, Spain. There he painted and was able to take part in group shows with fellow artists. Later in the 1980s he returned to the States, and married in the late ’90s. Albums of his beautifully expressive artistry—oils, monotypes, ink-and-pencil illustrations, and more—can be enjoyed here. He also maintains a blog, Tom Bennett Art, filled with his sketches, prints, and photographs.

Over the course of my interview, I asked Tom about Harry Bennett’s personal history and education, his move from commercial work to paperback illustrations, his preferred painting techniques, his favorite softcover book publishers, and his ultimate retirement and declining health in old age. I was also curious to know which of his father’s thousands of book covers Tom Bennett likes best.

J. Kingston Pierce: Your dad never knew his own father, who had passed away from the Spanish flu before he was even born. Was it in 1918 or ’19 that Harry Bennett Sr. died? And how did it affect your dad, growing up fatherless that way?

Tom Bennett: It was 1918, from the worldwide epidemic. He was raised by his mother, Anna Karlsson Bennett, who never married again. My father was the youngest of three children. He had two older sisters. He grew up looking for father figures in his extended family; his sister’s husband, Olinto Carboni, became that surrogate brother/father.

JKP: And your dad’s mother was a Swedish immigrant?

TB: She was born in Kalmar, Sweden, to a poor farming family and emigrated alone to New York City early in the 20th century.

JKP: What was your father like growing up in Ridgefield, Connecticut? Did he share any interesting childhood memories with you?

TB: His stories of his youth in Ridgefield and his subsequent experiences in the service during World War II were fascinating. He spent his early childhood kept from physical activity, because the family doctor told his mother his heart couldn’t take the stress (my dad had been born with a heart murmur). That all changed when, as a young adolescent, he discovered basketball and became a champion player in high school.

He joined the Army in 1940 to put in his required one year in the service, and was about to be discharged when [the December 1941 attack on] Pearl Harbor happened. He then went to officers’ training school and became an intelligence officer in the South Pacific for the next four years. He saw many horrible things.

(Left) Tom Bennett

JKP: It’s not clear from his obituary in Connecticut’s Ridgefield Press what exactly your dad did in the South Pacific. It says, “Bennett was a veteran of the Hollandia operation, in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces cut off the entire Japanese 18th Army, and in which Major Bennett himself won the Bronze Star." Do you know in what particular capacity your dad participated in that operation? Did he tell you specifically what act of bravery won him the decoration?

TB: All I know is his work as an intelligence officer helped gather the necessary intel/reconnaissance to thwart an attack, saving the lives of hundreds if not thousands of soldiers. Hence the Bronze Star.

JKP: Your father wed your mother in 1945, after he returned from the war. Had she also grown up in Ridgefield? What was your mother’s full maiden name? And do you know how she and your dad met, or the circumstances of their deciding to get married?

TB: My mother was born Margaret Mary Shean on January 12, 1921, in West Hartford, Connecticut, the second of eight children. My grandfather was a top executive at the Fuller Brush Company; they were very well off. The family moved to Woodbury, Connecticut, when my mom was in middle school. She was a senior at Woodbury High School when my grandparents moved the family to Ridgefield in 1939.

My father was working at a grocery store, when one day my mother walked in—and it was love at first sight for him. She was a very beautiful young woman. He finagled a way around all the other guys lining up to get a date with her, and the rest is history. Before the war, she and my father would borrow someone’s car and drive to Bridgeport, New Haven, New York state, and down to the Cotton Club in Harlem to dance the jitterbug. My dad was an excellent dancer. He asked her to marry him before he went off to war, but my grandfather refused to allow them to get married before he came back. He didn’t want his daughter to be a widow.

JKP: Is your mother still around?

TB: My mother passed away at the age of 96 on October 24, 2017.

JKP: Did your dad demonstrate an aptitude for art early on, or was that an interest that arose later in his life?

TB: My father started drawing at a young age and had an aptitude for comic and humorous styles. He even worked for a color-separation company in Stamford which was responsible for comic books at the time, in the late 1930s. He told me a story once that he was there when they brought in the original art for the very first Superman cover, dated 1939 or 1940. He was blown away by the art.

JKP: Is it true that your mother encouraged your dad to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Academy of Art in that same city? Does that mean he was away in Chicago by himself for two years, or did your mother go with him?

TB: Yes, she did [go with him]. She had initially encouraged him to go to Yale [to study] fine art on his G.I. Bill. My father was very practical, though, and chose to study illustration in Chicago in order to provide for a potential family. He attended the Art Institute to study painting as well.

JKP: What was your mother doing while your dad was studying?

TB: My parents had just gotten married and lived in Chicago in a one-room apartment, with a Murphy bed and his drawing table. My oldest sister, Debbie, was born in 1947 and my mother stayed home in that cramped apartment while my father was at school during the days.

JKP: After graduating, your father started working as a commercial artist, illustrating advertisements for companies such as Buick and Pepsi-Cola. Was he employed by an agency, or was he freelancing?

TB: He got a position in a commercial art studio in New York City called Berman Studio. He was there for a few years before he went freelance. One of the other artists with him in the stable was Al Hirschfeld.

JKP: So at what point did he begin freelancing out of his home on Main Street, in Ridgefield?

TB: We moved to the Main Street house in the early ’60s. My dad bought it from my grandfather, my mother’s father. Prior to that he was in Stamford, Connecticut, and at two other addresses in Ridgefield.

JKP: And when, exactly, did he start doing book-cover art? Was it at the same time he was working on ads?

TB: He was tiring of the ad business and its deadlines, so he took some advice and put together a portfolio of book-cover art and started that career in the mid-’50s, while he was still doing advertising and magazine story art. My mother was his first “rep,” so to speak, and brought his portfolio to publishing houses in New York and got him his first book covers.

JKP: When did he make book-cover art his main occupation?

TB: Around 1957 or so.

JKP: In what years were you and your siblings born?

TB: My sister Debbie was born in Chicago in 1947; next was my sister Pam and brother Harry Jr. in Stamford, in 1949 and 1950, respectively. My brother Mike was born in Ridgefield in 1954, and I came along finally in Ridgefield in 1959.

JKP: As a boy, did you spend much time watching your father work, or did he prefer to paint in solitude?

TB: He allowed me the privilege to hang out in his studio at times starting at age 2. I’d watch him work as I drew constantly. It was a great experience.

JKP: Did your dad encourage you and your siblings toward artistic pursuits? Am I correct that you aren’t the only artist in your immediate family nowadays?

TB: My oldest sister, Debbie, showed great talent and interest in art and he encouraged her as a child. She ended up studying in Florence, Italy.

JKP: You describe yourself, on Flickr, as a “painter, printmaker, and illustrator.” Can you sketch your career out a bit more fully?

TB: I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of Connecticut and realized I wanted to try to support myself as an illustrator as well. I have had a career as a gallery artist, showing in one-man shows and group shows throughout the country and in Europe; I have supplemented my income [with work] as a commercial and film storyboard artist. My second major medium, next to painting, is the monotype.

JKP: Did your father paint in more than one medium, or did he particularly favor, say, oil paint over watercolors? And did his preferences change as his career evolved?

TB: My father had a great facility with mediums, and he experimented and adapted to new trends with different techniques. His favorite medium above all, in both his painting and illustration, was oil. He also worked extensively in egg tempera, inks, and various combinations of tempera and oil. In the 1950s and early ’60s he worked a great deal in water-based media like gouache. Later, he would occasionally work in acrylic. But late in his career, it was almost exclusively oil with a black oil medium.

JKP: Your dad applied a wide range of artistic styles to his book fronts. How would you characterize his efforts in that field?

TB: He had a wonderful facility and great design sense. His tendency was to throw a bit of expressionist power into his work, though often the publishers were much too conservative for that.

JKP: I understand your dad used his neighbors and friends as models for his art. Did he also employ professional models?

TB: He did employ professionals in the ’50s. One of his early models was Ellen Burstyn, who later became an Academy Award-winning actress.

JKP: Did he have favorite models, who appeared on multiple covers? And did your mother model for him often?

TB: He did have favorite models. My mother modeled for him in the early days; my brothers and sisters and I did, as well, in the ’60s and ’70s. I last modeled for a book cover for him in the early ’80’s.

JKP: Can you venture a guess as to how many book covers Harry Bennett painted? And were they all for paperback editions?

TB: He created possibly over 3,000 covers. He also did … a great [three-volume] edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy in 1966. That was his masterpiece at the time, a Washington Square Press edition translated by Louis Biancolli. [See the books and art here.]

JKP: Do you have favorites among your father’s book fronts?

TB: I have many [favorites]. Among them are Fertig [by Sol Yurick, Pocket, 1967], The Godfather [by Mario Puzo, Fawcett Crest, 1970], God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater [by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Dell, 1966], and many of his Gothics from the ’60s. But too many to really get into.



JKP: What were your father’s work habits?

TB: He had a strong work ethic and self-drive. His discipline was formidable and he always had a set routine. He spent hours and hours in his home studio, taking breaks for lunch and dinner, etc. But he always made time for his family.

JKP: Can I assume your dad did not read all of the books for which he created cover art, that he instead worked from plot and character descriptions supplied by the publishers?

TB: My mother, early on, would read the books and give him a synopsis. Later, the publishers would give him the synopsis. Many of the books were unreadable, in my opinion.

JKP: Did you father have favorite publishers for which he worked?

TB: His favorites were Pocket Books (with Simon & Schuster), Avon, and Fawcett Crest.

JKP: After he retired in 1986, your parents headed west to Oregon, finally taking up residence in Astoria, a town at the mouth of the Columbia River. Why did they go out there?

TB: My father sold the house in Ridgefield in ’86 and took off alone across the country in an old van he outfitted for living and painting from. He had waited for 40 years to just paint, so he did. He ended up in Oregon and loved it. Later on he invited my mother out to live. He painted and showed in Oregon, and I showed with him in several two-man shows and group shows in Astoria and Portland.

JKP: How did your dad’s painting style change in his retirement?

TB: He had to shake off the illustrative and realist habits at first,
but he ended up finding his expressionist voice. He discovered [Chaïm] Soutine, the French 19-century painter, whose work became a huge influence on his later painting.



Above and below are two of Harry Bennett’s post-retirement paintings. The one on top carries the name “Blue Shoes,” while the canvas below is titled simply “East Basin.”



JKP: Your parents moved back east again in 2008, to Maryland, to stay with daughter Pamela in Towson. What provoked that relocation? Had your father’s health declined?

TB: Both of my parents’ health had declined. They were in their late 80s and my father started to lose his memory. He quit painting in 2008. I would rouse him to paint with me on occasion, and he would draw as much as he could, but his drive to make art just dropped. He accepted that.

JKP: Looking back on your father now, what were the qualities you admire most about him as an artist and as a man?

TB: He was a very kind, yet strong, self-aware person. His determination to work and create was unparalleled. His innate and learned sense of design, drawing, color, and mastery of mediums was amazing. He would make his own paint, mediums, gesso, supports, etc. He had a great sense of love for individuals, and was the driving support and influence in my life as a man and as an artist. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with him in his last few years, and I made sure he knew how much he was loved by me and his family and friends.

JKP: Finally, do you have any of your father’s art in your home?

TB: Yes, I have quite a few of his paintings and drawings. My siblings do as well. We also all share a number of [examples of] his book-cover art, many on canvas, mostly on gessoed board.

* * *

One thing I forgot to ask Tom Bennett was where his father’s grave might be found. However, he eventually volunteered that information, informing me after our official exchange was concluded that “My family will be holding a memorial service for my late mother and her ashes will be interred next to my father at the Fairlawn Cemetery in Ridgefield on Saturday, May 12, at noon.” It’s in that same historic burial ground, by the way, where the gravestone marking the last resting place Harry Bennett’s father and mother can be found.

UP NEXT: The first of two Bennett cover galleries.

Rader Love: Face of Fantasy

(Above) The Unashamed, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1960). Paul Rader’s daughter, Elaine, has said she “suspects that both of the women on this cover were modeled by her mother,” Edith. (Below, left) Books historian Lynn Munroe says Kitten, by “Dallas Mayo,” aka Gil Fox (Midwood, 1961), is also fronted by an illustration for which Edith posed.

Months ago, when I started planning Killer Covers’ 110th birthday tribute to the late American painter and paperback cover artist, (Isaac) Paul Rader, I knew that I wanted to interview his only daughter, Elaine, a banker turned jeweler and metalsmith now living in northern Georgia. Fortunately, she was up for the challenge, and the results of our original e-mail exchange—covering her father’s history and work habits—can be found here.

However, shortly after posting that interview, I realized I’d neglected to question Elaine much about another important aspect of Paul Rader’s career: his association with his second wife, Edith—Elaine’s mother—who served as the model for so many of Rader’s captivating novel façades. Born on October 21, 1924, in Yonkers, New York, the former Edith Anne Radley met Paul Rader during the early years of the Second World War, wed him soon afterward, and went on to be immortalized in his now highly collectible cover illustrations. Southern California bookseller and books historian Lynn Munroe, who had the opportunity to speak with Edith Rader before she died in 2005 at age 82, has written that “She was never comfortable talking about Paul’s sexy covers, let alone the fact that she was the nude model riveting our attention on so many of them. She preferred to remain anonymous.” Yet, to a generation of enthusiastic paperback readers who grew up during the mid-20th century, Edith Rader became familiar as “The Rader Girl,” a curvaceous blonde seemingly meant to be celebrated in abundant paint strokes.

Wanting to learn more about Edith Rader’s life, as well as her working relationship with her 18-years-older husband, I e-mailed daughter Elaine another collection of queries.

J. Kingston Pierce: Do you know what your mother’s parents were like, what her childhood was like?

Elaine Rader: Her parents were both immigrants from England. My grandmother, Marion (Maude) Hale, came to the U.S. in the early 1900s as a teenager. She met and married my grandfather, Clifford Radley, and I believe had their first child when she was 18. My mother was the youngest of three children, all girls; her sisters were Mary and Helen. At some point, when the girls were still young, [Clifford and Maude] divorced, and with little or no support, my grandmother raised all three girls alone. The oldest daughter, Mary, was 10 years older than my mother and was a great help in taking care of my mother while my grandmother worked. They moved a lot, as my mother remembered, living in apartments of varying size depending on how much money was earned by her mother and the two older sisters. Sometimes the apartments were large, sometimes modest. The one thing she told me about those apartments was that no matter where they lived or how cramped the quarters, my grandmother always managed to make a beautiful home for them. She had a knack for decorating even when times were rough and money tight. At one point in her life, my grandmother came to live in a grand penthouse for a time. Her final apartment, on the upper west side of New York City (what is now called Washington Heights), was tiny but it was beautiful. She had impeccable taste … and the best costume jewelry collection that any little girl would love, and that I ran to play in every time we visited her. I only knew my grandmother, never meeting my grandfather, as he passed away before I was born. My grandmother was never seen without her makeup being perfect, her hair neat, and just the right clothing. She was not an openly affectionate person, but a caring one. I remember her as stern yet kind. We became quite close when I was a young teenager, but sadly she passed way suddenly when she was 72.

JKP: How and when did Edith and your father first meet?

ER: They lived in the same [Manhattan] apartment building. My mother was still living with her mother at that time. She was 17, and the year was 1942. Air-raid drills were a scheduled weekly event in all the apartments at that time during World War II. Evidently, each floor of the apartment building had its captain to make sure all the residents knew about the drills. My mother was the captain of her floor, my father the captain of his. As she told it, during this one particular drill, they went to the roof where the usual meeting place was, and no one but the two of them showed up. They had never met until then.

JKP: Did your mother ever reveal anything about their courtship? Anything about their early years of marriage, where they lived or any hardships they encountered?

ER: After they met, my grandmother discouraged the romance to the best of her ability, to the point of sending [my mother] off to live with relatives in Canada. My mother was 17 and my father was 35 at the time. They courted long-distance through telegrams written back and forth for over a month. (I still have all of those telegrams and correspondence from that time in a box that my mother saved all the rest of her life.) She finally came back to New York to live with her mother again, and when she turned 18, about three months after [my parents] met, they ran off and eloped. They were married by a justice of the peace—with his wife as a witness—in a small town in South Carolina.

JKP: Was this your mother’s first and only marriage?

ER: Yes.

JKP: Your parents swapped wedding rings in 1942. You were born in 1954. Why did they wait a dozen years to have children, or had they not actually planned a family?

ER: My mother wanted to have children (she told me she dreamed of having six!), but she said my father was not really sure about having any. She had given up on the idea when one day, he said to her—when she was 29—“I guess if we’re going to have a child we’d better do it soon.” So, yes, it was very planned. She was 30 when I was born.

JKP: Tell me what your parents were like together. Did they have many shared interests? Did they argue much, and if so, about what?

ER: They were very close, they shared an equal love of music: my mother played the piano, my father enjoyed playing and collecting classical-music recordings. They were both avid readers. They were also avid debaters; they could agree to disagree and had many fascinating conversations about any number of topics. They enjoyed the theater and they enjoyed each other’s mind.

My mother, like hers, was a bit of a “scheduled” personality and not very yielding in that way. My father was an artist … need I say more? As a result, I remember some problems in that area when it came to everyday things such as dinner times. If he was “in a zone,” it was hard to break that and have “the scheduled 5:00 dinner” every day, so there was that. If there were other problems, I was not privy to them. I’m sure, like any marriage, they had problems, but they were not in the habit of arguing in front of me.


Edith Rader at age 53, painted by Paul Rader.

JKP: Had your mother modeled for your father before he started painting book covers in the mid-1950s? If so, in what sorts of artworks had he employed her image?

ER: My father did a wonderful portfolio (which I have) of modeling photos of my mother for her to try to break into the clothes-modeling world, back when she was in her early 20s. Other than that, she sat for him so that he could do portraits of her, but not to sell them commercially.

JKP: Can I assume that in using your mother as a model, Paul Rader posed her as he wished, photographed her, and then painted from those photos … rather than asking her to remain in one position while he sketched or painted her?

ER: Yes, that’s correct, he would take photographs and then paint from them.

JKP: What was it about your mother that made her an ideal model for your father? And was she happy to serve as The Rader Girl?

ER: Not to be flip about it, but she was beautiful, and available to sit at his convenience, or at least to fit it into their schedule easily. She never admitted that she was ever The Rader Girl. She always said, when asked about this, that that woman was his imagination of the perfect woman.

JKP: Did your mother pose for other artists, as well?

ER: No.

JKP: How did your mother take Paul Rader’s passing in 1986, when he was 79 years old? Had she anticipated it?

ER: No, it was very sudden. He had been declining in a few ways after their move to [Ocala], Florida, but nothing that indicated a serious problem. He had several heart attacks during one day and died at the hospital. It was of course a shock, and a loss that took her years to cope with.

JKP: Did she change much personally, or change her life much, after your father’s death? Did she continue to live in Ocala?

ER: She continued to live in Ocala. She went on many trips during the first few years after his death. She took her very first airplane trip, [as] my father would never get on an airplane; it was one of the first things she did after he died. She joined some groups in her retirement community and tried volunteering for things, but realized she was not a joiner, nor a good volunteer.

JKP: And how did your mother spend the last 18 years of her life? Do you think she was happy during that period?

ER: She hadn’t many close friends in Ocala, but stayed in writing contact with many from New York. She went to visit her sister in Oregon quite a few times and almost moved there, but decided not [to]. She read, she wrote letters, we talked every day, and as we liked to say, “solved the world’s problems on a daily basis” over the phone. She enjoyed her plants and gardening—she had a great green thumb, knew all the correct Latin names of plants, and loved bird-watching. She became an independent woman who was always ready to have a good conversation. Her one regret, she told me, was that she never made it back to visit New York city.

I think that made her very sad.

Rader Love: A Daughter Remembers

Sin on Wheels, by “Loren Beauchamp,” aka Robert Silverberg (Midwood, 1961), with cover artwork by Paul Rader.

Welcome to day two of Killer Covers’ tribute to Paul Rader (1906-1986), who gained fame during the mid-20th-century with his masterful paperback-cover creations. Yesterday’s post provided an introduction to his career. Today, I offer the results of an e-mail exchange I conducted recently with Elaine Rader, the artist’s daughter, who is now in her early 60s. Below she answers questions about her father’s early interest in painting, his marriage to her mother (who also became a model for his often seductive illustrations), her favorite Paul Rader book fronts, and the sad fate of many materials he left behind after his demise.

J. Kingston Pierce: As I understand it, your father became interested in art after he and his parents moved from New York state to Toledo, Ohio. Do you know when that relocation took place? And did your father ever talk to you about his early interest in art?

Elaine Rader (shown on the right): No, I’m sorry I don’t know what year they moved. He told me that he didn’t choose his art career, it chose him. He said he could not recall a time when he didn’t want to paint.

JKP: Is it true that Paul’s carpenter father, Samuel Rader, left Toledo to move to Detroit, Michigan, and work for the Ford Motor Company? And did Paul’s mother, Minnie, move with him to the Motor City? In what year would that have been?

ER: Yes, his father worked for Ford and made the wood panels that went on the station wagons of that time. And of course his mother moved with him to Detroit. I don’t know the year, but it must have been around the 1920s.

JKP: I’ve heard that Paul did not go to Detroit with his parents right away, but remained behind in Toledo. Do you  know what was he doing in Toledo by that time?

ER: I believe he was still studying at the Toledo Institute of Art, so I would think he stayed in order to finish up his classes and he may have had some commissions to do, as well. I believe he lived with his sister* during that time. But that is all from memory. I have nothing in writing to be absolutely sure of that.

JKP: Is it correct that your father first married in Detroit in 1931? Do you know his first wife’s name? And is it true that the young couple moved to Philadelphia, where the wife was from, and that they divorced in 1940? What happened to that first wife?

ER: Yes, her name was Joan Radden (believe it or not!). Yes again on the divorce. She died sometime around the early 1960s—tragically, in an accident involving her being in a tub, and an electric heater.

JKP: Paul married a second time in New York City in 1942. I believe that was your mother, Edith. What was Edith’s maiden name? And what was their relationship like over the years?

ER: Edith Radley. They had a wonderful 48-year-long marriage.


Paul Rader was also a skilled portraitist. Some examples of his work surround him in this photograph. Asked to identify the individual subjects here, Elaine Rader writes: “The one directly above him is me at 5 years old. The one to his right, the man with his arms folded, is his father, Samuel. The one to his left, is my mother and me, stylized a bit. The African-American woman, above and on the left, [was done during] a trip he made to Georgia in the ’20s. The one above and on the right is a vision of Adam and Eve, which I have. I also have the portrait of me.”

JKP: What was the age difference between your mother and father? And is your mother still with us?

ER: My mother passed away in 2005 at age 82. She was 18 years younger than my dad, and they passed away almost to the month, 18 years apart.

JKP: Your mother eventually worked as an administrative secretary at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. But had she held other jobs before that one?

ER: Nothing full-time before that, [though] she did take on dictating jobs and typing jobs for writers so she could stay home with me. After they moved to [the town of Monroe, in] upstate New York, she went on to be administrative assistant to the principal of a high school … until she retired in the ’80s.

JKP: Your mother has been quoted as saying that, in addition to doing his artwork for advertising agencies and book publishes, your father was “a mechanical genius.” In what ways was that “genius” manifested?

(Left) Edith Rader, her husband’s preferred artistic muse.

ER: He could make or figure out anything. He built our first TV set, from the tubes all the way to the outside housing. He built our entire sound system (as you would call it today), building not only the turntable, amp and speakers, but also all the cabinetry they went into. (Wish I still had all of that today.) He worked with me on endless school projects if they involved making something (I remember papier-mâché masks we made that were wonderful), and when I showed an interest in jewelry-making (my present, 20-year career), he and I worked together learning that process when I was quite young. He built all the frames for his paintings, made the architectural drafts/plans for his studio in upstate New York. … He could do anything.

JKP: In what year were you born, and where?

ER: 1954, New York City, New York (Manhattan).

JKP: At what point in your young life did you become aware that your father was a career artist?

ER: He was 48 when I was born, so I never knew him as anything else but an artist. His studio was in our home, so I always knew that that’s what he did for a living.

JKP: Did you watch him work, or did he prefer to paint in solitude?

ER: If he wanted solitude he never mentioned it to me, I often spent hours [looking] over his shoulder, watching him paint. So did our parrot, [which] was always either on top of his head or hanging onto his eyeglass chord! He always had classical music playing and always had an air of calm concentration. He probably was in his zone and didn’t really notice me there most of the time (in a good way!).

JKP: Did your father paint in more than one medium, or did he particularly favor, say, oil paint over watercolors? And did he work on large canvases or small ones?

ER: He painted exclusively in oil until he started his illustration, which he did in colored inks and in gouache on boards. He switched over to acrylic for his fine art in the later years to try and get away from the oil fumes. Very rarely did he use watercolors, except in some very early plein air painting he did as a student in Europe.

JKP: Your father must have had a number of models posing for him. Did he have favorite models?

ER: He did have models later on in his career, but his favorite
was my mother.

JKP: And do you know whether your mother was ever a bit jealous of the other women he had posing for him?

ER: I have no idea. My mother and I never discussed things like that.

JKP: Did your father encourage you toward artistic pursuits?

ER: Absolutely, they both tried to get me to enroll in one of several professional art schools after high school, but I was eager to move out on my own. So instead of following a path of further education in the arts, I became a banker for 20 years, then gradually found my calling in the arts. I am a jeweler and metalsmith now [and have been] for 22 years. Self taught and very happy. You can see some of my work and read my story at my Web site.

JKP: Did your father talk about his work painting paperback book covers? Was he pleased with his accomplishments, or did he really want to be doing something different?

ER: All I know of this is what my mother has told me. He really only did that type of work to make a living. She said she felt it was beneath his ability and talent. I never had the conversation with my father, so I really don’t know how he felt. I do know he much preferred the fine arts, but that being highly competitive, [he] found it hard to make a living unless it was portrait-painting, at which he was amazing. Portraits were the mainstay of his income before he started in the illustration field, and that type of painting fell way to photography over the years.

JKP: What was your home life like when you were growing up?

ER: I had an amazing upbringing in New York City. We lived on the Upper West Side near Columbia University on 108th Street, just off Riverside Drive. I went to public inner-city schools and I was [later] enrolled in the School of American Ballet, which is the [associate] school of the New York City Ballet company. I performed with the NYC Ballet as a student for many years, in many different ballets, [including some] performed at the New York City Center and at the New York State Theater [now the David H. Koch Theater] at Lincoln Center, which is (and was) the home of the New York City Ballet company. I also attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York, in their dance program for two years. My mother’s employment made it possible for me to enjoy my dancing schools and for [my parents] to purchase a weekend home in upstate New York, where they eventually retired to. So I guess our home life was pretty darn good!

JKP: Although I am familiar with, and admiring of your father’s artistry, his work has not always been as well remembered as it should have been. Why do you suppose that is? Could it have been because his creations were quite racy at times?

ER: I think it has just recently (over the last 20 years) become popular, admired, and appreciated as an art form. Times are very different, and those illustrations are mild these days by comparison. Unfortunately for him, he never enjoyed the limelight that he seems to have posthumously acquired. I think he may have been a bit astounded, and hopefully proud of something he really was not thrilled about doing—except I’m sure he enjoyed the good pay.

JKP: Your father was remarkably prolific, so it would be hard to identify just a few top picks from among his book covers. But can you share some of your personal favorites?

ER: My all-time favorite is Sin on Wheels; my mom posed for that. But my other favorites are any of those I can recognize my mother posing for: Million-Dollar Mistress, Open Season (which I own the original of), 69 Barrow Street, Sea Nymph, This Is Elaine (no relation to me AT ALL), Unnatural, The Soft Way, and Pajama Party. She has been referred to as “The Rader Girl,” her face is seen repeated so many times. Two others are Pattern for Panic, by Richard S. Prather [Berkley, 1958], which does not show my mom, but I think it’s a really good work (and that’s our Hans Wegner chair that I still own that she’s sitting in); and the [November 1962] cover for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, that’s a really great one, too. Both of those show so much emotion and movement, and the backgrounds are amazing (something that can make or break a painting).








Eight Rader covers featuring his blond wife, Edith (from the top-left): Million-Dollar Mistress, by “Clyde Allison,” aka William Henley Knoles (Midwood, 1960); Open Season, by Bernard Thielen (Ace, 1960); 69 Barrow Street, by “Sheldon Lord,” aka Lawrence Block (Midwood, 1959); Sea Nymph, by “Peggy Swenson,” aka Richard E. Geis (Midwood, 1963); This Is Elaine, by “Jason Hytes,” aka John Plunkett (Midwood, 1963); Unnatural, by “Sloan Britton,” aka Elaine Williams (Midwood, 1960); The Soft Way, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1963); and Pajama Party, by Peggy Swenson (Midwood, 1963).

JKP: How do you think your father distinguished himself as an artist? What special talents, techniques, or viewpoints did he possess?

ER: He could paint a person's character. He could paint skin in amazing reality, but without making it look like a photograph. His paintings were powerful, emotional, and captured the essence of the person he painted. He was not a huge fan of modern art, fake manipulations, or contrived images. He was a purist.

JKP: Paul Rader retired in 1970, a few years after undergoing surgery for what I’ve heard was a stomach tumor. He would’ve been in his early 60s. Was he simply tired of painting for commercial purposes? I understand he taught adult education art classes and did portrait work after retiring. What was his artwork like in those last years?

ER: He had colon cancer, nonmetastatic, not a stomach tumor. He was on the mend for the better part of a year, and [by then] the publishing companies were turning towards photography for their covers, so it basically put him out of a job for that genre of work. So as life often does, that shift afforded him the opportunity to slow down his pace (people in their 60s, years ago, were not what they are in their 60s today!). Yes, he did teach some adult ed classes at a high school, where he found a renewed interest in sculptural realism. Again, he was amazing at that; I have several of his small statues in clay. He did do many portraits again, but his style changed considerably, from the Old Masters style of his very early portraits of the 1920s and ’30s, to a more commercial look, probably due to the many years of his illustration work, and because that’s what people wanted. I was much fonder of his early works in fine art; he was following his own voice rather than the wants and desires of the public or someone else. I have learned that in my own business: once I started only making things I liked or that I would want to own myself, my business took off. Your work becomes the “genuine you.” I don’t know if he could, or ever wanted to go back to that style after all those years away from it. And it could have been he was ready for a change. All I know is, if he were alive today, he’d be killing it in the art world.

JKP: Is it correct that following your mother’s retirement in the early 1980s, your parents relocated to Ocala, Florida, where you were living? Was your father still painting then?

ER: Yes, my mother did retire then and they relocated to Ocala, but I did not live there. I was living in Miami at the time. My father did a few more portraits of himself and my mother, but he only lived about 1½ years after moving to Ocala and had not been feeling well enough to continue painting much.

JKP: By the way, how did you happen to wind up in Florida?

ER: I married and moved with my [now] ex-husband to Miami in 1979. I left there in 1994. I live in the north Georgia mountains now.

JKP: Do you have any of your father’s artwork in your home?

ER: Yes, I do have many of his older works, which I cherish. I did happen to purchase one illustration at auction (the one I mentioned above) a couple of years ago.

JKP: Is it true that your father’s papers and much of his artwork was destroyed after his death? If so, how and why did that happen?

ER: “Destroyed” is such a violent term. I would rather say that of the few originals he had bought back from the publishers, those were given to one family member who appreciated them. The numerous other book-cover proofs and original sketches and photographs that no one wanted (including myself—I was asked by my mother beforehand) were thrown out. I was not appreciative of that work at the time; as I said, I had always been told it was beneath him, so I looked down on it, I guess.

JKP: Finally, how would you like your father and his artistic accomplishments to be remembered?

ER: Just as he has been in the last 20 years, by the adoring fans of his illustrations. But I would really love to have his fine art showcased, his older portraits shown, but they are so scattered and spread all over the country it would be hard to compile such a show. I have been contacted by so many wonderful people over the years who own his older works, mainly portraits, that I feel he is being remembered in the best way possible—in two different artistic worlds by many, many people.

* As Elaine Rader tells me, her father was one of three children in his family. His sister, Bertha, was born in 1897 and passed away in 1987. His brother, Phillip, came along in 1910; he died in 1999.

READ MORE: “Rader Love: Face of Fantasy,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).