A Lionel Shapiro Cover Cavalcade

Either you hit the jackpot or get nowhere. There are much better writers than myself who can't even get to first base for coffee money.

– Lionel Shapiro, 1956

Having endured all 351 pages of The Sixth of June, I doubt I'll ever find the strength to open another Lionel Shapiro book – but if I do, A Star Danced, Gertrude Lawrence's 1945 "autobiography" will be the one. The English chanteuse maintained that the words were her own, but credit really belongs to Lionel Shapiro, ghostwriter.

A Star Danced was not the war correspondent's first book. The previous year saw They Left the Back Door Open, a rushed, but worthwhile piece of reportage on the Allies in Italy.

Shapiro turned next to fiction with The Sealed Verdict (Doubleday, 1947), "the tale of Major Lashley, whose reward for his brilliant and successful prosecution of a German war criminal was an official commendation... and an unexplainable feeling of guilt." One 1948 wire service story puts the first printing at 250,000, while another reports that Paramount had paid as much as US$200,000 for the rights. Though Walter Winchell thought The Sealed Verdict had the makings of an important film, no one was particularly taken by the results. The Bantam movie tie-in, which was never reprinted, marks the last time the novel saw print.

For Winchell, Torch for a Dark Journey (Doubleday, 1950) was "better than his first click The Sealed Verdict," but this time Hollywood didn't come calling. However, the novel did make it to the small screen in a 1950 Philco Television Playhouse broadcast. A California bookseller currently lists a souvenir of the effort, an inscribed copy of the first edition:

Signed for Delbert Mann - to whom I am greatly indebted for an incisive job of direction in the first dramatization of this book - and for whom I confidently predict an immense future in the world of dramatic arts. Lionel Shapiro, Nov. 24, 1950.

Mann was director of the television adaptation. His future in the world of dramatic arts wasn't exactly immense, but he did win the 1955 Best Director Oscar for Marty. And the further dramatizations? Still we wait.

Published in 1951, the Bantam edition enjoyed no second printing, though the uncredited cover image was recycled for by Corgi three years later.

Seen here through the fog of war in 1958, what Doubleday peddled as "a truly tender love story", Fontana pitches as a blood and guts war novel. In fact, The Sixth of June has just one battle scene, and it barely covers ten pages. Did I mention there are 351 pages in all? I read them all.

The Gazette, 6 August 1955

Six Sixth of Junes (Two Astonishingly Bad)

Reporting Lionel Shapiro's death, an anonymous journalist for The Canadian Jewish Review wrote that the late author's books had sold more than two million copies. I don't doubt the figure for a second. The Sixth of June continued to hit bookstore shelves for two decades, the last edition being a cheap 1975 paperback from New York's Pinnacle Books.

The Americans seemed particularly taken by the novel – it's very much an American story – but the Finns showed even greater dedication. As Kahdet jäähyväiset, the 1956 first Finnish edition (above) was followed by a string of unattractive books that continued into the 1990s.

With Brad Parker cast as a doughboy and John Wynter as a voyeur, one might assume this 1985 cover is the worst.

Nope.

Blame Gummerus, the original publisher of the translation, which issued this five years later.

The 1956 Dutch edition is much more accomplished, gracing the work with a multipurpose illustration suitable for a use on thrillers, political tracts and almost anything featuring Sherlock Holmes.

Au sixième Jour, the Presses de la Cité translation, was the one that appeared in Montreal's French bookstores. Published in 1956, it features the illustration Len Oehman provided Doubleday.

The Spanish edition, also published in 1956, presents a curious reworking of the Oehman painting in which it appears that Wynter gets the girl. Actually, the Lt Col is killed when he steps on a mine.

There, I've spoiled it for you.

A Fabulous Bachelor's Final Novel

The Sixth of June

Lionel Shapiro

New York: Doubleday, 1955

351 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Global Warming as Nationalist Dream

Erres boréales

Florent Laurin [pseud. Armand Grenier]

[Montreal]: [Ducharme], 1944

221 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Six Pyxides for Sunday

Six editions of The Pyx, beginning with the very first paperback edition from Fawcett's Crest Books imprint. Published in 1960, its cover – the best of the lot – cautions:

A mystery this – the first edition has no such section.

The first English edition, published in 1960 by Secker & Warburg, with Elizabeth Lucy falling to her death.

Published in 1973, the first Popular Library edition draws on the movie poster. Karen Black makes a phone call, yes, but it's hardly crucial to the plot.

"The 'eerie' novel of a beautiful call girl and her deadly secret", says Best Sellers? Well, not really. Look closely and you'll see that what's quoted is nothing more than the word "eerie".

This later Popular Library edition holds keeps the one-word Best Sellers quote, while discarding Karen Black. What do we have instead? A semi-reptilian eye and a wholly-naked body, neither of which feature in the novel. By the way, Elizabeth Lucy is a redhead.

Quartet's 1974 edition introduces a cat – again, not in the novel – and replaces the pyx with a tiny locket containing a girl's photo and what appears to be an aspirin.

The only Canadian edition, published in 1991 by HarperCollins Canada. The novel has been out of print ever since.

Related post: A Penthouse Killing in Montreal