ACTION THE ART OF SAMSON POLLEN
EDITED BY
PREVIEW ROBERT DEIS & WYATT DOYLE
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ACTION THE ART OF SAMSON POLLEN EDITED BY
ROBERT DEIS & WYATT DOYLE Available now from THE
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ACTION THE
THE ART OF SAMSON POLLEN
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EDITED BY
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Also available from The Men’s Adventure Library: Pollen’s Women
A New Texture book Copyright © 2019 Subtropic Productions LLC All artwork © 2019 Samson Pollen; reproduced by arrangement with the Artist. All Rights Reserved. With affectionate thanks to Jacqueline Pollen and gratitude to Rich Oberg Archival materials provided by The Robert Deis Archive Some pieces courtesy The David O’Dell Collection Special research by TJ Duke Designed by Wyatt Doyle for The Men’s Adventure Library @NewTexture MensAdventureLibrary.com
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Booksellers: Pollen’s Action and other New Texture books are available through Ingram Book Co. ISBN 978-1-943444-20-5 First New Texture hardcover edition: January 2019
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
MANy artists provided illustrations for the men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) that flourished from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. Samson Pollen was one of the greatest. He was born in the Bronx on March 19, 1931. His family moved to Brooklyn when he was 11. From an early age, he showed a talent for artwork. This talent was noticed by a high school teacher who helped him get enrolled at the venerable National Academy of Design in Manhattan. There, he was taken under the wing of the school’s dean, Charles Louis Hinton, a legendary painter, sculptor, book illustrator and muralist. After studying at the Academy and graduating from high school, Pollen got a job as an apprentice at the Wittrup-Patterson art studio in New York, owned by top commercial art illustrators Jack Wittrup and Robert Patterson. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he joined the Coast Guard Reserve and was stationed in New York. When his superiors became aware of his artistic talent, they asked him to do illustrations for the official Coast Guard magazine. By the end of his tour of duty, he was offered a cushy post in the Coast Guard art department if he’d re-up. He decided instead to try to become a professional illustration artist. In the early ’50s, for someone with Pollen’s talent, this was not an unrealistic goal. The magazine and paperback markets were booming and New York City was the headquarters for most top publishers. It was also where most top magazine, book, and advertising illustrators lived and worked. Sam soon linked up with the legendary artists’ representative Ed Balcourt. Through his company Balcourt Art Service, Ed helped launch the careers of dozens of top illustration artists. Many of them, like Sam, became both regular contributors to men’s adventure magazines and popular paperback cover artists, including: Rudolph Belarski, Charles Copeland, John Duillo, Norm Eastman, Charles Fracé, Basil Gogos, Roger Kastel,
Mort Künstler, Bob Larkin, Ron Lesser, John Leone, Brendan Lynch, Robert Maguire, Lou Marchetti, James Meese, Bruce Minney, Rudy Nappi, Victor Olson, Paul Rader, Tom Ryan, Al Rossi, and Robert Schulz. Balcourt helped Pollen get some of his first paperback cover assignments. Over the next forty years, Sam went on to create scores of classic covers for action/adventure, mystery, crime, romance, and young adult novels. But from the mid-’50s to the late ’70s, the majority of Pollen’s illustration assignments came from men’s adventure magazines. And that huge treasure trove of illustration art—nearly 500 paintings—began when Ed Balcourt put Sam in touch with Mel Blum, the art director for Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company. Magazine Management is now most widely known for giving birth and a robust early life to Marvel Comics. What is less well known today is that, through various subsidiaries, it published many of the best and longestrunning MAMs. goodman published many types of periodicals from the ’30s to the late ’70s, as well as comics and paperbacks. He was always watching for new trends and closely followed what his competitors were doing. After World War II, he noted the growing success of Fawcett’s True, the magazine that largely pioneered what would become the classic men’s adventure magazine template. He also noted the launch of Saga in 1950, another early MAM, published by Macfadden Publications. The MAM format was designed to have special appeal to the 16 million military veterans who served in World War II. Those men related to and enjoyed war stories. They enjoyed action/adventure yarns, like those in the pulp fiction magazines and comic books they grew up reading. They were also fans of “cheesecake photos,” like those featured in Yank (the magazine read by most servicemen during WWII) and in the many “girlie magazines” that
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ACTION
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Stag November 1961 “Jay Gould and the Phony War to Steal a Railroad”
Men September 1971 “Raid on the Big Mob’s Secret ‘Murder Mansion’” 16
Stag Annual No. 3 1966 “The Gun Slinging Russian of Monterey”
Man’s World April 1969 “A Nymph for the Mafia” 17
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Stag September 1972 “Three ‘Hit Men’ for a Mafia Don”
Men October 1974 “My Treasure-Heist Vendetta With the Underwater Mafia” 34
Stag March 1974 “The Battling Priest Who Smashed a N.Y. Mob”
Stag January 1974 “We’re Trapped in an H-Bomb Fall-Out Zone!” 35
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Stag October 1963 “Only 17 Yanks Survived”
Male August 1972 “The Mob That Looted Millionaire Row” 64
Men November 1973 “Welcome, Your Graves Are Waiting For You” reprinted in True Action April 1975
Male March 1969 “Bomb Run: America” 65
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For Men Only April 1971 “The CIA Operator Who Infiltrated South America’s ‘Butcher Kidnappers’”
Man’s World February 1967 “Betrayal on ‘Nude Redhead’ Beach” Misattributed in print to Charles Copeland 100
Man’s World October 1966 “Night of the Flesh Seekers”
Men March 1973 “I Rode the Andes ‘Landslide Highway’ in a Nitro Truck” 101
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Man’s World October 1970 “Breakout From the Nazi Stalag Zoo” Credited in print to “Simon Pohl”
True Action February 1973 “Young, Wild and Deadly” For Men Only February 1971 “The Boss’s Play-Around-Girl” 118
For Men Only January 1973 “Bloody War for the Treasure of the Solomon Islands”
Male April 1975 “The Town That Became a Cycle War Battleground” 119
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For Men Only June 1974 “We Stole $1,000,000 on the Fabulous ‘Beach of Diamonds’”
Male September 1961 “69 Days of Hell in a High Seas Penal Boat” 124
Male June 1974 “The Border Snatchers”
Stag October 1956 “The Man Who Lived Underground” 125
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For Men Only October 1973 “Split Open the Mafia’s Hillbilly Fortress!”
For Men Only July 1969 “Stalked by the Killer Shark” 130
Male March 1965 “How a Yank Agent Stole Red China’s H-Bomb Timetable” reprinted in True Action November 1966
Man’s World April 1970 “I Escaped From South America’s Nazi Jungle Compound” 131
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