Earle K. Bergey (August 26, 1901 – September 30, 1952) was an American artist and illustrator who painted

cover art Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper ( tabloid), comic book, video game (box art), music album (album art), ...

for thousands of pulp fiction magazines and paperback books. One of the most prolific pulp fiction artists of the 20th century, Bergey is recognized for creating, at the height of his career in 1948, the iconic cover of

Anita Loos Corinne Anita Loos (April 26, 1888 – August 18, 1981) was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triang ...

's '' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'' (1925) for

Popular Library Popular Library was a New York paperback book company established in 1942 by Leo Margulies and Ned Pines, who at the time were major pulp magazine and newspaper publishers. The company's logo of a pine tree was a tribute to Pines, and another P ...

. Bergey was born in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

to A. Frank and Ella Kulp Bergey. He attended

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Public Ledger'', and he drew the comic strip ''Deb Days'' in 1927 for the Public Ledger Syndicate. Early in his career, Bergey contributed many covers to the pulp magazines of publisher

Fiction House Fiction House was an American publisher of pulp magazines and comic books that existed from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was founded by John B. "Jack" Kelly and John W. Glenister.Saunders, David"JACK BYRNE (1902-1972),"Field Guide to Wild American ...

. By the mid-1930s, Bergey made a home and studio in

Bucks County, Pennsylvania Bucks County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 646,538, making it the fourth-most populous county in Pennsylvania. Its county seat is Doylestown. The county is named after the Englis ...

, and he married in 1935. In the late 1940s, he also started to sell cover illustrations to the rapidly expanding paperback book industry. Bergey died suddenly and unexpectedly on September 30, 1952 in

New Hope, Pennsylvania New Hope is a borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The population was 2,612 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. New Hope is located approximately north of Philadelphia, and lies on the west bank of the Delaw ...

with family at his side. Cause of death according to his death certificate was acute coronary thrombosis due to coronary artery disease.

Pulp magazines

Throughout the 1930s, Bergey worked freelance for a number of publishing houses. His eye-catching paintings were predominantly featured as covers on a wide array of pulp magazines, including romance (''Thrilling Love'', ''Popular Love'', ''Love Romances'') as well as detective, adventure, aviation, and Westerns. Bergey also illustrated mainstream publications during this time, such as ''

The Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely c ...

'', and produced cover art for fitness magazines. Along with pin-up painting peers such as

Enoch Bolles Enoch Bolles (3 March 1883 – 16 March 1976) was an American painter of pin-up art. He was among the earliest and most widely circulated glamour illustrators. While known today solely as a pinup artist, Bolles was a versatile illustrator who a ...

and

H. J. Ward Hugh Joseph Ward (March 8, 1909 – February 7, 1945) was an American illustrator known for his cover art for pulp magazines. He is noted especially for his paintings for ''Spicy Mystery'', ''Spicy Detective'', and other titles published by Harry ...

, Bergey was one of the first prominent American pin-up artists, contributing hundreds of covers to influential magazines including ''Gay Book Magazine'', ''Pep Stories'', and ''Snappy''. During the 1940s, Bergey continued to paint covers for romance, sports, and detective pulp magazines, and he began working on a number of

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

magazines, including Standard Magazines's ''

Strange Stories ''Strange Stories'' was a pulp magazine which ran for thirteen issues from 1939 to 1941. It was edited by Mort Weisinger, who was not credited. Contributors included Robert Bloch, Eric Frank Russell, C. L. Moore, August Derleth, and ...

'', ''

Startling Stories ''Startling Stories'' was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1955 by publisher Ned Pines' Standard Magazines. It was initially edited by Mort Weisinger, who was also the editor of ''Thrilling Wonder Stories'', S ...

'', and ''

Captain Future Captain Future is a pulp science fiction hero — a space-traveling scientist and adventurer —originally published in his namesake pulp magazine from 1940 to 1944. The character was created by editors Mort Weisinger and Leo Margulies. The maj ...

'', and later for ''

Fantastic Story Magazine ''Fantastic Story Quarterly ''was a Pulp magazine, pulp science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1955 by Best Books, a subsidiary imprint of Standard Magazines, based in Kokomo, Indiana. The name was changed with the Summer 1951 issue to ...

''. Bergey's fine art training and salient gift for depicting anatomy made him a go-to artist across a diversity of genres that required scenes with dramatic movement, from

photo-realistic Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be ...

sports portraits of famous athletes including

Mickey Cochrane Gordon Stanley "Mickey" Cochrane (April 6, 1903 – June 28, 1962), nicknamed "Black Mike", was an American professional baseball player, manager and coach. He played in Major League Baseball as a catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics and Detro ...

Lou Gehrig Henry Louis Gehrig (born Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig ; June 19, 1903June 2, 1941) was an American professional baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees (1923–1939). Gehrig was renowned f ...

, and

Jim Thorpe James Francis Thorpe ( Sac and Fox (Sauk): ''Wa-Tho-Huk'', translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native ...

to his signature Bergey Girls that appeared on risque pulps throughout the Depression and in science fiction scenarios from World War II. Bergey's science fiction covers, sometimes described as "Bim, BEM, Bum," usually featured a woman being menaced by a Bug-Eyed Monster, alien, or robot, with an heroic male astronaut coming to her assistance. The bikini-tops he painted often resembled coppery metal, giving rise to the phrase "the girl in the brass bra," used in reference to this sort of art. Visionaries in TV and film have been influenced by Bergey's work.

Gene Roddenberry Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Sr. (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American television screenwriter, producer, and creator of ''Star Trek: The Original Series'', its sequel spin-off series ''Star Trek: The Animated Series,'' and ''Sta ...

, for example, provided his production designer for ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...

'' with examples of Bergey's futuristic pulp covers. The artist's illustrations of scantily-clad women surviving in outer space served as an inspiration for

Princess Leia Princess Leia Organa is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists in the ''Star Wars'' franchise, portrayed in films by Carrie Fisher. Introduced in the Star Wars (film), original ''Star Wars'' film in 1977, Leia is princess of th ...

's slave-girl outfit in ''

Return of the Jedi ''Return of the Jedi'' (also known as ''Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi'' is a 1983 American epic space opera film directed by Richard Marquand. The screenplay is by Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas from a story by Lucas, who ...

'',

Rikke Schubart Rikke Schubart (born November 16, 1966) is a Danish author and film scholar, who teaches at Institute for the Study of Culture at University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark. Her research is on emotions, gender, and genre in film and televi ...

, ''Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970-2006'', page 225, McFarland & Co., 2007, and

Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...

's conical brass brassiere.

Paperbacks

In 1948, Bergey made the transition to the rapidly expanding paperback book industry along with skilled pulp artists like

Rudolph Belarski Rudolph Belarski (May 27, 1900 – December 24, 1983) was an American graphic artist known for his cover art depicting aerial combat for magazines such as ''Wings'', '' Dare Devil Aces'', and ''War Birds''. He also drew science fiction covers for ...

, whose work is often confused with Bergey's. While continuing to paint pulp covers until his death, Bergey sold illustrations to at least four leading paperback publishing houses, including

and

Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing in ...

. His art graced the covers of dozens of novels and helped to sell millions of volumes. His paperback cover illustrations were as diverse as his work for the pulps. In addition to his work on the 1948 Popular Library edition of

's '' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'', Bergey painted cover art for well-known authors from

Émile Zola Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...

to the Western master,

Zane Grey Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author and dentist. He is known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American frontie ...

, whose 1951 Pocket Books edition cover painting for ''

The Spirit of the Border ''The Spirit of the Border'' is an historical novel written by Zane Grey, first published in 1906. The novel is based on events occurring in the Ohio River Valley in the late eighteenth century. It features the exploits of Lewis Wetzel, a historica ...

'' is a Bergey classic. Many of his paperbacks are now cult classics, some featuring hidden self-portraits.

References

*Bergey, Joshua David (2019). "

ulp ULP may refer to: Science and technology * Unit in the last place in computer science * File extension for CadSoft/Autodesk EAGLE User Language Program Organisations * ''Université Louis Pasteur'', Strasbourg, France * Former United Labour Part ...

Art is Not a Mirror: When the Male Gaze Determines the Defining Narrative of American Pulp Fiction Art." National Conference of the Popular Culture Association: Washington, DC. *Bergey, Joshua David (2014). "Doubling in Murder: American Pulp Art and the Visual Legacy of Earle K. Bergey." Maine College of Art, Department of Illustration: Portland, ME. * Di Fate, Vincent. ''Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art, with Foreword by Ray Bradbury''. New York, NY: Penguin Studio, 1997. . *. *. * *Scott, Alison M (1997). "They Came from the Newsstand." Primary Sources and Original Works. 4:1-2: 39–46. doi: 10.1300/J269v04n01_04. * Strickler, Dave. ''Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index.'' Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. .

External links

*
14 covers by Bergey
* ttp://www.earlekbergey.com Official site for the artist Earle K. Bergey - coming soon {{DEFAULTSORT:Bergey, Earle K. 1901 births 1952 deaths American illustrators American speculative fiction artists Artists from Philadelphia Pin-up artists Science fiction artists Pulp fiction artists

Pulp magazines

Paperbacks

See also

References

External links