Before they founded Culture Publications and their Spicy line, Frank Armer and Harry Donenfeld were major players in the field of the so-called “girlie” pulps.
Introduced to the reading public by William C. Clayton with the launching of Snappy Stories in 1912, the girlie pulps delved into matters such as sex outside of marriage and featured illustrations — and sometimes photographs — of scantily clad women.
The success of Clayton’s “Magazine of Entertaining Fiction” soon led to imitators — Breezy Stories, Saucy Stories, Telling Tales, and others.
Frank Armer entered the girlie market in 1925 with the release of Artists & Models Magazine. Donenfeld served as Armer’s printer and before long, the two were producing magazines together. Their first success was Pep Stories, offering “New, Snappy, Spicy Stories.” It would run for nearly 150 issues.
Other magazines would follow, among them Broadway Nights, Ginger Stories, Real Story Book, and the popular Spicy Stories.
When civic organizations began to pressure the publishers and distributors of girlie magazines, Armer and Donenfeld decided to combine sex with adventure, detective, mystery, and western fiction. Calling themselves Culture Publications, the two launched Spicy Detective Stories in early 1934. Ashcan editions of Spicy-Adventure Stories and Spicy Mystery Stories would follow later that year. They would wait until late 1936 to launch Spicy Western Stories . . . just in time for the holidays.
Happy holidays to everyone.
Our featured image is excerpted from the December 1928 issue of Pep Stories. The artist is not known. Our lead image is Fred Craft’s cover for the first issue of Spicy Detective Stories, dated April 1934. Craft is best remembered for his contributions to Black Mask.
For more on the girlie pulps, visit the Pulp Magazines Project to read Beau Collier’s “Birth of the Girlie Pulps.”
To learn more about pulp art and PulpFest, visit our YouTube Channel . . .
