Classic Gothic Romance Cover Artists: George Ziel

It’s been awhile since The Midnight Room took a trip to the used paperback bookstore. This week I’d like to introduce readers to the terrifying Gothic imagery of George Ziel (1914-1982). Whereas artists like Harry Bennett and Lou Marchetti emphasized the romantic elements in their Gothic Romance paintings, George Ziel emphasized the Gothic. His heroines wear expressions of palpable fear, eyes often wide with terror. If that isn’t enough, he frequently incorporates other Gothic and occult elements including black cats, skulls, candles, and swarms of black bats that skitter across the painting.

Original painting for Paperback Library for the cover of Shorecliff by Marilyn Ross

Ziel’s images of death and fear are so striking that he employed virtually the same style for his series of thirty-one cover paintings for Jove’s paperback reprints of New Zealand mystery novelist Ngaio Marsh, as well as covers for the George Simenon reprints for Pocket Books.

Gothic Romance collectors, however, are more familiar with his work for Paperback Library where he produced outstanding covers for titles by such prolific writers as Christine Randell, Dorothy Daniels, and Marilyn Ross, often delivering three to four paintings a month. In an era when writers could not produce original Gothic Romance novels fast enough, publishers such as Paperback Library often reprinted older mysteries and some classic works, sometimes with new titles, always with an eye toward attracting the readers who sought these books ravenously, month after month, for nearly two decades.

Archivist Lynn Munroe presents an extensive portrait of Ziel’s life and work at Lynn Munroe Books wherein he states: “Ziel appeared to have tapped into our darkest fears and nightmares, and presented them on vivid paperback covers. Some of them were romances, some were mysteries; all of them were haunting. The average reader, with no knowledge of Ziel’s past, could only wonder. To those who knew his story, the signposts were all clearly marked. Like all great artists, George Ziel drew on his own experiences and memories, his own visions and nightmares, to infuse the horrifying world of his best cover art. Although he rarely signed his name or received a printed artist credit, he nonetheless became a true modern master of horror.”

 

The story of Ziel’s past is as horrifying as any of his covers. He was born Jerzy Zielezinsky in Poland in 1914 where, as a youth he was relegated to the Warsaw Ghetto before ultimately being shipped off to Dachau.

As “an artist; he felt a powerful need to create art that the restrictions at Dachau could not destroy. Paper and pencils were forbidden, so Jerzy used to sketch on pieces of scrap paper using bits of charcoal. He made sketches of his fellow prisoners and of life in the camps.  When Dachau was liberated, Jerzy was taken to a hospital. During his convalescence there, he turned his rough sketches into drawings and created new images from the memories burned into his mind.”

Is it any wonder then that Ziel’s covers for Gothic Romance paperbacks are infused with more dark imagery than the majority of his contemporaries?

For more book cover goodness, visit the George Ziel checklist at Munroe’s website. I’d also like to personally thank Munroe for allowing me to use material from his exhaustive overview of Ziel’s life and work.

Classic Gothic Romance Cover Artists: Harry Bennett

Any fan of classic Gothic Romance paperbacks from the 1960s who religiously scavenges used book stores and trolls eBay to satiate their appetite is familiar with the remarkable covers of Harry Bennett. Not only did he sign his work, making them easy to identify, but along with Pocket Books’ art director, Milton Charles, he helped create a lushly romantic and easily recognizable style that was often imitated by other artists throughout the genre’s two decade heyday.

Harry Bennett was born in New York State, raised in Connecticut, and after a tour of duty in South America during World War II studied painting and illustration at Chicago’s American Academy of Art.

Harry was a facile master at medium and technique and managed to adapt with the times and his own interest. In the 1950's he used caseins, gouache, and oils. In the 1960's he variously used colored inks, collage, oil, acrylic, and spent years working with egg tempera. He was fascinated with the old masters' techniques and mediums and made his own egg tempera paints and oil paints as well. "Black oil", or 'maroger medium', was a personal favorite oil paint medium, based on recipes from Rubens and the Baroque painters.

Harry’s commercial career began in advertising where he created illustrations for Pepsi Cola and U.S. Keds, among others, before turning to book cover illustrations. The Gothic covers began to emerge in the late 1950s with his first egg tempera and oil glaze illustrations for such early Mary Stewart novels as Madam, Will You Talk? And Thunder on the Right. Already in Thunder on the Right we can see the beginning of the “windswept” look which would become more pronounced and clearly defined as his career as one of the premier illustrators of Gothic Romance paperbacks blossomed. While Harry created covers for the major paperback publishers of the day, Simon and Schuster's Pocket Books, Avon, Dell, Berkeley, and Bantam Books, Fawcett Crest was a leading reprint publisher for established best-selling novelists with large print runs. With only a minimum of effort collectors can easily turn up Harry Bennett covers on novels by such Gothic Romance luminaries as Barbara Michaels, Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, and Victoria Holt.

In his 60s, Harry Bennett retired from the industry and pursued a lifelong dream: he moved to Oregon and spent the next twenty years pursuing his personal artistic vision painting and exhibiting original work. One of Harry’s greatest achievements was a series of more than 100 paintings created with ink over gessoed board for a 1966 edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (translation by Louis Biancolli, published by Washington Square Press).

I’ve had a lifelong affinity for the cover artwork of Harry Bennett. One of the first paperback novels I bought as a ten year old was Barbara Michael’s Prince of Darkness, and I have been hooked on Harry Bennett covers ever since. I search eBay on a regular basis, buying books I will never read just to have another Harry Bennett cover for my collection. It is a pleasure to be able to share these magnificent works of art with my readers here and other fans of paperback art throughout the internet. I would also like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to Harry’s youngest son, Tom, who has graciously corresponded with me providing more biographical material and anecdotes than I knew what to do with. Thank you Tom and thank you Harry Bennett.

In 2005, Harry Bennett enjoyed a collaborative exhibit with his son, artist Tom Bennett, at the Riversea Gallery in Astoria, Oregon. This article featuresrare internet photos of the artists together.

An Appreciation of Barbara Michaels Part III of III - The Dark on the Other Side

”Well, Babs,” Barbara Michaels’ agent said one stormy afternoon in New York City, “Quentin Collins is the hottest thing on television; how about writing something with werewolves, only make it more Gothic this time. Throw in a good thunderstorm and a big old house.”

Barbara went away, and after a shot of vodka or two, sat down and wrote The Dark on the Other Side, her third and final foray into the occult themes so popular in the late 1960s.

2006 Berkley Reprint

This is Barbara Michaels subverting the Gothic Romance as far as she can, with once again predictably mixed results. Again the role of the Innocent thrust into situations beyond his control is played by a male, this time Michael Collins, a writer who becomes involved in the lives of Gordon and Linda Randolph when he visits the estate to interview Gordon for a forthcoming biography. And what an estate it is, a lavish house modeled on a British country estate complete with towers and gardens, servants and a particularly unctuous personal secretary.

Charles Geer jacket painting for the original 1970 hardback edition.

Gordon's wife, Linda, assumes the role of Byronic hero, a brooding, dark haired beauty ravaged by alcoholism and a tendency toward paranoid schizophrenia. In the first chapter alone, the house and its furnishings speak to Linda, commanding her to kill Gordon, and at my count she consumes at least six cocktails before dinner, numerous glasses of wine during dinner, and finally collapses in a drunken stupor and has to be carried to her room, all within the first twenty pages.

But Linda may not be as crazy as she seems. Michael's investigation into the life and career of Gordon Randolph begins to uncover a number of former students and other acolytes whose lives have been shattered by psychosis, drug abuse, and suicide. Remember we're in Barbara Michaels' country and it's not long before Collins begins to suspect that Randolph is flirting with something dark and dangerous, namely getting in touch with his inner beast, or in Michaels' own words, the dark on the other side, a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Fire.

The Dark on the Other Side is one of Michaels' most interesting works, and also one of her most frustrating. Her attempt at constructing a psychological thriller is weakened by undeveloped characters. Randolph is not nearly interesting enough to merit someone writing a full length biography, or nearly as sinister in his role of Gothic villain as he should be. Like Prince of Darkness' quasi-satanic hooey, it's pretty tame stuff. But how often in the late 60s Gothic Romances did the novelists flirt with not only adultery, overt or implied, female alcoholism, or bondage scenes? Yes, there is a startling moment late in the book when our hero keeps our heroine gagged and tied to a bed allegedly to keep her from doing harm to herself or others.

Harry Bennett's illustration for the 1971 paperback reprint gives away the ending, much like the beginning of this blog post.

Following Michael’s late 60s occult trilogy she returned to less experimental forms of Gothic writing, the ghost stories for which she is most remembered (The Crying Child, The Walker in Shadows) and the historical Gothic Romance (Greygallows, Black Rainbow) before abandoning the pseudonym altogether as her Elizabeth Peters Amelia Peabody mysteries soared to the top of international best seller lists.

Fans of the genre seem to either love or hate Michaels' works with passion either way. For me the experimentalism, edginess, and deliberate subversion of the genre in these early gems make them enjoyable to return to every few years.

Stalling For Time

Part of my collection of vintage Gothic Romance paperbacks displayed in a vintage paperback book rack.

An Appreciation of Barbara Michaels Part I: Ammie, Come Home

After finishing my first novel (a lurid, over-the-top occult potboiler) I decided I wanted to try my hand at a more traditional Gothic romance, so I spent a few months rereading a number of old paperbacks from my collection. Of course, I had to start with Barbara Michaels. I had reread her first two books, Master of Black Tower and Sons of the Wolf, about a year before, so I picked up Ammie, Come Home, and was reminded once again what an underrated gem of a ghost story this little book is.

First published in 1968, a full two years before William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist made this type of old fashioned ghost story all but obsolete, Michaels’ tale of avenging ghosts and spiritual possession pushed the envelope for the Gothic romances of the era. The bona fide supernatural was not a popular theme among Gothic romance purists, and despite her continued popularity forty-odd years later (Michaels’ back catalog has never gone out of print), readers of old school Gothics still have difficulty embracing Michaels as the premier American Gothic novelist of her day. Ammie, Come Home was to be the first in Michaels’ unofficial occult trilogy.

Beginning with Ammie, Come Home and continuing throughout the rest of her career under the name Barbara Michaels (she is better known as Elizabeth Peters of the best-selling Amelia Peabody mystery series), Michaels makes a concentrated effort to subvert and expand the conventions of the Gothic romance genre which was enjoying it’s heyday in the late 60s and early 70s. Here, the protagonist is a middle aged, widowed aunt, and the romantic lead an irascible red-headed anthropology professor in his early fifties, but the romance takes a back seat to the ghostly manifestations.

 Original 1968 hardcover edition by Meredith Press, jacket illustration by Charles Geer

Our heroine, forty-something Ruth Bennett, takes a casual romantic interest in her niece Sara’s anthropology professor, Pat McDougal, and soon Ruth has scheduled a séance in her historic Georgetown home after meeting a famous society medium at a fancy soiree. First mistake. Before you know it, niece Sara is speaking in an otherworldly voice and violently attacking her aunt with no recollection of her actions in the morning. Said anthropology professor plays the devil’s advocate throughout, eager to cart Sara off to an asylum to have her checked out for multiple personality disorder. But Sara’s boyfriend, Bruce, and Aunt (and of course, we readers) know better. It seems Ruth’s home was the scene of a Civil War era domestic drama, and not only Sara, but Bruce, Pat, and Ruth are all players in the necessary reenactment of the crime and its vengeance.

No one will ever mistake Barbara Michaels’ books for being high brow Gothic literature of the Shirley Jackson variety, but Michaels has clearly done her research, managing to tell a rollicking tale of the supernatural judiciously sprinkled with arguments, both pro and con, to support the theory of ghosts and possession.

Whether you have or have not experienced Ammie, Come Home for yourself, late autumn is prime time to snuggle up on the couch with a classic late 60s ghost story while the November winds rattle the windows and icy tendrils snake their way across the floor. And if you listen carefully, you just might hear a voice calling to Ammie in the lonely darkness outside your window. ”Ammie…come home!”

Harry Bennett cover for the 1969 Fawcett Crest paperback edition