Paperback cover illustration by Fred Pfeiffer for The Memory of Eva Ryker. Oil on board, 32" x 20". Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions, HA.com
Leone is a noted artist today. Robert Maguire: “Actually, Bob Maguire came out of the Art Students League and studied under Frank Reilly. I understand he did a couple of paperback covers before he met me. He had to do a book a week to make a living. I used Maguire on many paperback accounts for mysteries, sexy girl scenes, he also did inside magazine illustrations. He was a great friend to me. “Maguire and Rudy Nappi did a lot of work through me. Maguire was always a little stronger and versatile, but the artists remained close friends. Maguire’s Gothic mysteries were the best. Maguire did the covers for a lot of Signet Books in the 1950s. He, Nappi, and John Leone went to a greeting card company when the field slowed down for a while, like 9 years in the late 1960s. That was when John Legakes came to me from Signet Books to be my art director, so I couldn’t sell at Signet for a while, for obvious reasons. When Bob came back to me I put him on Gothic covers for Avon Books, and his price shot up from $400 to $1,000! “What Maguire did was emulate Marilyn Monroe. He used Chickie James as the model for the Signet Book, The Stone Cold Blonde by Adam Knight (#1322). I started a lot of models like Chickie James, sent a lot of girls like her to the photographers, such as Bob Osonitsch who shot for the artists. If an artist came up there and asked who could represent him, Osonitsch would tell them to see Ed Balcourt, so he was a good friend of mine. I would send my artists to Bob Osonitsch to have their photography done there, and Bob would send his new artists to me. I was always looking for new talent. 60 Illustration
“I used to go to Magazine Management, who also had Lion Books, and I’d walk out with a minimum of 17 jobs. Maybe some for Bob Maguire, Rudy Nappi, James Meese, Lou Marchetti, and down my list of 64 artists at the time. My accountant came to me in the middle ’50s and said that he had to fill out sixty-four 1099 forms, so I said that means I’m representing 64 artists. But then again some didn’t make the amount to warrant the form, since they only worked a few specialty jobs for me, so that meant I repped more! Some of the art was for stories in black-and-white, and they only paid $150. $250 to $300 for a two-color double-page spread. They were very easy to do, and you could knock these out fast using black-and-white. You could do it in a couple of days. I once got $1,000 for a magazine cover for artist Brendon Lynch at the time they were only paying $400 tops for covers.” Rudy Nappi: “Rudy Nappi and Bob Maguire came to me at about the same time. They were close friends and I had them pretty much on the same accounts. Nappi is a good artist and emulated Bob Maguire at times. He was with me for a long time. He also designed some soldiers and other figures for my Marx Toys account, where they made a cast of them. He did a long list of mysteries and sexy type cover work” Mel Blum: “Lion Library had an art director who was deaf, Mel Blum. He was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Whenever I invited Mel to my house, he would sit in a corner and read everybody’s lips. Later he’d pull me over and say, ‘You know what he’s saying about you?’ Well, I knew who my friends were. But because Mel was deaf and I had a load of