A lurid oddly compelling watercolor painting by Fred Rodewald which appeared as the cover of the December, 1949 edition of the digest sized pulp fiction title Exotic Novel Magazine, which featured “Buy My Love” by Peggy Gaddis, written under her pseudonym Perry Lindsay. The image shows a pretty working girl advertising her wares outside a run down hotel as she smokes a cigarette in classic femme fatale fashion. This is a classic example of the desolate pulp fiction bad girl.

Interestingly, the posed proof photograph of this painting found its way into print as an interior plate in a 1949 edition of Ecstasy Novel Magazine, a sister title to Exotic Novel Magazine also published by Astro Distributing Corporation – NYC.  From the The Bob and Diane Yaspan Collection – Nicely matted and framed under glass and ready to hang. A published high grade edition of the book is included with sale.

Perry Lindsay was one of the many pseudonyms of prolific writer Peggy Gaddis, born Erolie Pearl Gaddis in Gaddistown, Georgia, on March 5, 1895. She married John Sherman Dern in 1931. In her career, she is credited with writing close to 300 books, as well as uncounted short stories that appeared in magazines or serials. She was an expert at romance, particularly nurse stories in the last ten years of her life. She died on June 14, 1966, though her work continued to be reprinted into the 1970s.