Beginning in the Mid-20th Century, model Steve Holland found plenty of opportunities to influence the look and feel of men's action-adventure poaperbacks. Transitioning from a mediocre acting career, Holland went on to become the “Face That Launched a Thousand Paperbacks”. Collaborating with artist James Bama, Holland would be the face of pulp icons Doc Savage and The Avenger and later era heroes including Richard Blade and Mack Bolan. After Holland's immense impact on the genre from the 1950s through the 1970s, a new face began to emerge, seemingly a successor to Holland's photo-realistic throne.
That man was Jason Savas.
After years of rigorous investigation, Paperback Warrior was finally able to locate Savas. In a revealing interview, we discussed his childhood, modeling career and his current endeavors as an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter.
Jason Savas currently lives in the same New York City apartment he was born in. Surrounded by his large collection of sports memorabilia, the 65-year old explained that athletics at an early age led to his eventual introduction into the lucrative world of modeling.
“My mother put me into the dojo when I was six-years old. I studied Judo and practiced it for a long time. I was a jock and competed in Judo tournaments and then in high school I did wrestling and lacrosse. I wanted to be a jock, and jocks played college sports. I wanted to play professional sports. This was 1977 and I had long hair down to my shoulders. My girlfriend in college was with me and we were walking by a poster or sign of a model and she said you look like that guy up there.”
After graduating from the City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.), Savas found himself walking through Central Park and bumped into a former wrestling competitor from high school named Joe. Little did Savas know that this quick exchange would effect the next 11-years of his life.
“Joe told me he had become a model and said I could do it too. He gave me a name and a number. We ended up going to the beach and someone took some photos. I stumbled into fashion modeling during the summer of 1979 and was lucky enough to work almost everyday for years after signing with Wilhelmina Model Agency. My earliest work consisted of trade publications...newspaper and magazines...catalogs, designer press kits and magazine work such as G.Q. and Men's Wear doing both editorial and advertisements. I was still new to the industry and both surprised and excited by the wide variety of modeling work available.”
In December 1979, Savas began modeling for the first of several Gianni Versace ads and by 1980, he was all over the fashion world posing everywhere from cigarette ads to cosmetics. But in 1981, Savas also found himself doing a different type of modeling.
“I found myself in a studio shooting a book cover. It was very strange because I had never done illustration work and it was different. I got to wear a costume and it was over in a flash because a shoot only lasted one hour and you were done. Very simple, but fun. Then I started doing more and more book covers. I guess I took over the reins from Chad Deal [a popular 1980s cover model]. I did over 1,000 covers and interestingly, I did more romance novels than action or western. Romance was the largest market and many times we got to wear period clothes which makes it even more fun. The one-hour shoots allowed a modeling agency to slip us into several photo shoots a day and/or in between 'real modeling' jobs. Book covers were a bit like play acting. I enjoyed shooting the covers because you never worried how you looked because you would be painted.”
Savas explained that these shoots originated with the publisher contacting the modeling agency and requesting a certain type of model – rugged, blonde or dark hair. He stated that 99% of the time the illustrator was present at the shoot. Once the photos were taken, the illustrator would then paint the photo and insert various location settings. For the majority of Savas' career, he paired with photographer Robert Osonitch.
“Robert Osonitch was the king of illustration photographers. He had the operation down pat for every type of shoot: lighting, back drops, clothes. His studio had a major wardrobe collection and he was an excellent director as well.”
Savas adds, “I own one oil on Masonite, 20” x 30” without the type (pictured) that I bought from the artist Steve Assel. He used me many times for western covers, including a half-dozen Louis L'amour stories. He was an excellent artist and I enjoyed working with him. Also there is a vast difference in talent among the artists, very noticeable. It seemed to me that Harlequin used the lesser artists while Zebra, Warner, Fawcett and several other companies had more money to pay for the better artists.”
The model's painted photo can be found on a majority of Stephen Mertz's 'M.I.A. Hunter' series published by Jove. He is also featured on noteworthy action-adventure series like 'Avenger', 'Eagle Force', 'Out of the Ashes', 'Vietnam Ground Zero' and a number of stand-alone titles like “Black Moon”, “The Raid” and “Long Ride Home.”
“I have a list of over 1,000 covers and probably found close to 250 physical books mostly in airports. One of the Harlequin romance writers, who lived in Iowa, requested me several times and showed up to a shoot one day. We became friends and she gave me a book cover of myself in nine different languages.”
After his 11-year modeling career, Savas invested in a business and his passionate sports memorabilia hobby (click HERE to see videos of his vast collection). He even authored his own action-adventure novel titled “The Messenger” in 1999. These days, Savas is hard at work writing screenplays and hopes to find some Hollywood interest.
Find a paperback featuring Jason Savas? Email us a photo or the book's title at paperbackwarrior@yahoo.com.
Between 1947 and 1981, attorney-turned-author Harold Q. Masur (1909-2005) wrote 11 installments of a successful mystery series starring attorney-turned-private-eye Scott Jordan. The books come highly recommended, so I’m beginning at the beginning with the first novel, Bury Me Deep, originally released in the March 1947 issue of Mammoth Detective Magazine and then re-edited into a Pocket Books paperback in the early 1950s. The novel remains available as a $3 ebook for modern readers who like to consume their vintage paperbacks digitally.
As depicted on the cover, Bury Me Deep opens with narrator Scott Jordan coming home from a trip to find an unknown hot blonde in lingerie curled up on his couch drinking a brandy. After talking for a minute, Scott learns that her name is Verna, and she is very drunk. Scott dresses the girl, pours her into a cab, and sends her on her way without ever learning how she came to be there in the first place.
The next morning Scott is awakened by the police. The cops have the cabbie in tow who immediately identifies Scott as the man who put Verna into his taxi. It turns out she died a few minutes later - apparently poisoned. The police logically assume that Scott was somehow involved and bring him to the station for questioning. After convincing the police that he’s not a murderer, Scott collaborates with them to get to the bottom of the situation.
Bury Me Deep is an enjoyable enough mainstream mystery typical of the 1940s American output, and Masur was a decent writer who honed his skills in the pulps. The problem is that American crime fiction really hadn’t grown a set of balls by 1947 (with Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op being a rare exception). As such, Scott Jordan owes more to Perry Mason than Mike Hammer, whose debut, I, The Jury was first published the same year. I’d be interested in reading later-era (say 1950s and 1960s) novels in the Scott Jordan series to see if the character evolves and the stories become edgier. Until then, the debut is a pleasant enough diversion but nothing more.
Addendum - The Scott Jordan Series:
1) Bury Me Deep (1947)
2) Suddenly a Corpse (1949)
3) You Can't Live Forever (1951)
4) So Rich, So Lovely, So Dead (1952)
5) The Big Money (1954)
6) Tall, Dark and Deadly (1956)
7) The Last Gamble (1958; aka The Last Breath)
8) Send Another Hearse (1960)
9) Make a Killing (1964)
10) The Legacy Lenders (1967)
11) The Mourning After (1981)
There are also over 25 short stories starring Scott Jordan that appeared in magazines including Manhunt, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Several of these are compiled in the collection The Name Is Jordan from 1962.
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Between 1950 and 1969, Louisiana native and WW2 veteran John Burton Thompson (1911-1994) authored and sold around 75 books. His paperbacks were considered to be so racy at the time that NYPD raided city bookstores and seized over a thousand copies of paperbacks written by him and others. Thereafter, much of his writing was done using pseudonyms to remain marketable to skittish booksellers. By today’s cultural standards, the sex in Thompson’s work wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, and Lee Goldberg’s new publishing imprint, Cutting Edge Books recently put that to the test by reintroducing Thompson’s 1962 paperback Kiss or Kill back into print.
Our narrator is Jack McKnight looking back on his adolescent years when he was raised by his evil mother and his wicked half brothers from his mom’s previous relationship. His mother and siblings are bitter that dad left half the estate to Jack, his only biological heir, before dad’s early demise. His teen years are filled with disdain from mom and savage beatings from the brothers.
Young Jack has an ally in his late father’s best friend, Mr. Palmer, who explains the birds and the bees to Jack and seems genuinely invested in the young man’s well-being. As Jack pursues a variety of romances while moving into adulthood, there’s a lot of great fatherly advice that Mr. Palmer bestows upon Jack about life and women. I can’t remember a more satisfying “young man and adult mentor” relationship in any book I’ve read in ages.
However, there’s an real air of menace lurking in the background of this paperback. Jack’s mother and half-brothers become increasingly unhinged, and Jack worries with good reason that they are plotting to murder him to take over his half of his father’s estate. The violence - real and threatened - escalates throughout the novel building to a bloodbath of a climax.
Kiss or Kill is a really odd book. There are scenes of shocking violence, but it’s not an action novel. There are hot scenes of seduction, but it never felt like a graphic sleaze novel. There are a few genuinely romantic storylines, but it’s certainly not a romance novel. And so on. It’s really a fictional autobiography of a compelling character overcoming a difficult upbringing and becoming a man. In that sense, it’s a very mainstream novel masquerading as a tawdry 50-cent paperback.
Although this is pretty far afield from the classic crime-adventure novels we normally cover here at Paperback Warrior, I can enthusiastically recommend Kiss or Kill to anyone who enjoys a good vintage coming-of-age tale. Thompson is a way better writer and storyteller than either iteration of the novel’s packaging would lead you to believe, and I look forward to exploring his body of work in greater depth. Recommended.
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Popular crime-fiction author Wade Miller was actually a collaborative pseudonym utilized by two writers – Bob Wade (1920-2012) and Bill Miller (1920-1961). While the two mostly concentrated their efforts on stand-alone titles, they did launch a successful six-book series in 1947 starring private-eye Max Thursday who works cases in and around San Diego, California. The series debut, Guilty Bystander, was adapted to film in 1950 and switched the location from San Diego to New York City. I've always enjoyed the Wade Miller brand, so I'm sampling this series with the third installment, Uneasy Street, published by Signet in 1948.
It's December 23rd and our private-eye protagonist wants a quick job before the Christmas break. Instead, an older client named Syliva Wister engages Thursday to transport a music box for her. However, after being told where to deliver the goods, Wister is murdered and Thursday immediately becomes the prime suspect. Teaming with series ally Lieutenant Clapp, Thursday hopes to clear his name while also determining what's so special about the music box. Who wants it? What secrets does it contain?
As much as I hoped to enjoy this novel, I found it incredibly dull. The authors incorporate dozens of characters and involve them with a handful of crimes. By page 80, I was dumbfounded by PI fiction's two important elements – the client and the mission. These should be easily defined but in this case it's a moving target. The plot becomes a confusing chain-reaction of bribery for nude photos, a stolen painting, international smuggling and murder. It was so dense I couldn't tell the murdered from the murderer. I think the authors were flying by the seat of their pants – winging it all the way.
If you are a Wade Miller completest, maybe this is worth owning. It’s also available as a cheap ebook. However, be prepared: Uneasy Street wasn't an easy read.
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It’s time for Paperback Warrior Podcast Episode 35. In this episode, we discuss the meaning of noir fiction as a jumping off point for a career retrospective on Bruno Fischer. We discuss the weird menace subgenre of pulp fiction, and Eric reviews “Crime Commadoes by Peter Cave. We are on all podcast platforms or you can stream below. Download directly HERE
Listen to "Episode 35: Bruno Fischer" on Spreaker.
“After the success of I Killed Stalin, Sterling Noel (1903-1984) settled into a niche of writing international espionage and crime-noir fiction with a distinct emphasis on atomic energy and its protection from various Communist regimes. Few Die Well, published in 1953 by Dell, continues that same trend.
The book introduces Jeff English, an American spy who's employed by a defense contractor named Bureau X, the same agency Noel utilized in his I Killed Stalin narrative. English's leash is long when it comes to not only defending US intellectual property, but seeking and destroying Communist cells throughout the world. In one unfortunate mix-up in Teheran, English, posing as a Frenchman, kills two Soviet agents and is placed on a hit list by the Russians. The assassin is a man named Constantine Bardor, a determined Russian who never forgives or forgets.
English's most recent assignment is to assume the identity of a U.S. Army Captain named Randall McCarey and infiltrate an atomic laboratory in New Jersey. His mission is to kill a scientist who is collaborating with the Russians and spilling state secrets. To do this, he must contend with a number of Russian informants who have been implanted among the facility's 900 residential laborers. Noel's harrowing narrative has English essentially living with the enemy while locating the leaks and attempting to make the facility more impenetrable in the future. Once Bardor appears to settle the old score, English and a few allies are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. It's a fun position for the readers, but a rough ride for the good guys.
Few Die Well is an absolute treasure. Without giving away too many spoilers, Noel's slower character development regarding a love interest is effective. It's this element that adds a personal touch to what is otherwise a violently cold, calculated mission to fight Russian agents and Communist sympathizers. It's certainly a period piece, explicitly reflecting the heightened Cold War era in a methodical, action-oriented way. Noel knows his audience, loves this style of writing and delivers another top-notch spy entry.
Note – In one humorous parody of Noel's newfound success, he describes English reading a “rip-snorting and impossible spy-chiller called I Killed Stalin by somebody by the name of Sterling Noel.” It's enjoyable to see authors have fun with their fans.
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After the third Dirty Harry film, The Enforcer, star actor Clint Eastwood announced he would no longer contribute to the film franchise. The studio, Warner Brothers, decided that fans of these flicks would still be willing to shell out cash for more of the character's adventures. Under their publishing brand of Men of Action (S-Com, C.A.T.S.), the studio licensed 12 paperbacks starring Dirty Harry himself, Lieutenant Harry Callahan. The house name was Dane Hartman, but in reality the books were authored by Richard S. Meyers (1953- ) and Leslie Alan Horvitz (1948- ). Strategic marketing created striking, illustrated book covers to lure men's action-adventure readers like myself. I happened upon the series second installment, Death on the Docks, published in 1981.
A San Francisco labor union called Local 242 of the Brotherhood of Longshoremen has found itself in a political upheaval. The union is led by a vile criminal named Braxton. A candidate to the union's presidency, Tuber, hopes to wrest control from Braxton, but those attempts are quickly flushed in the novel's opening pages. In a violent crescendo, Braxton has hitmen kill Tuber and his family. Problem solved...until Callahan is called in to lead the murder investigation.
In what becomes a familiar pattern, Callahan is handed various clues in haphazard fashion from shallow characters that have a one or two chapter lifespan. The author doesn't attempt to create a mystery or develop a story in which Callahan, and readers, slowly solve the crime. Instead, the chapters just feature Callahan being directed to various locales – bar, dock, store, house - and shooting a criminal. When the action is exported to a small Caribbean island, where Braxton has fled, the climax comes in baby steps that fail to deliver an explosive, plausible or satisfying conclusion.
In short, Death on the Docks is like one of those dives located south of the Mason-Dixon Line that swears they have real New York pizza. After a few bites you realize it's just a soggy, messy imitation. No validity. It's just not authentic. On sample size, these novels aren't of the same quality as the film franchise. They won't "make your day"...only ruin it.
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