Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Vault of Coolness: Station West--The book!



I've always been a big Dick Powell fan, not least because of his fascinating transition from crooner to hard-boiled noir star to behind-the-scenes power broker. If you ask me, to paraphrase Norma Desmond, Hollywood is still big; it's the Dicks that got small.

Ivan's excellent TDOY post about "western noir" Station West inspired me to visit the Vault of Coolness and retrieve this artifact: a beat-up Bantam paperback of the Luke Short's novel RKO adapted. Of course, this version is one of those nifty movie tie-in deals, so we get to see Dick and Jane (Greer, that is) in their glory on the cover. It's nice to know that the Hollywood-Publishing Industry connection did this kind of thing way back in 1948. Of course, today if this happened, I'd be complaining about how they wrecked the book with a stupid tie-in cover. But since this is from 1948 and features Dick Powell, it's cool.


Here's a look at the back cover:


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