Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Haunted and Haunting

Unlike the power wielded by art directors in the ’70s and ’80s publishing world, the cover artist’s lot was not a happy one. Not only were their signatures cropped off covers, but they were rarely credited inside the book; their art was flipped, reused, and rephotographed. Publishers resisted crediting cover artists to avoid creating stars who could demand better terms. Cover artists were destined for obscurity.

Until recently, one of the most obscure was Jerzy Zielezinski, aka George Ziel. With more than three hundred covers to his name, Ziel was a machine, capable of turning out three paintings a month for romances, crime stories, and celebrity biographies. He was responsible for plenty of horror novels but was most famous for his distinctive gothics. From the ’60s through the ’70s, gothic romances were the bread and butter of publishers like Ace, Lancer, and Avon. The covers were formulaic in excelsis, inevitably featuring a woman running from a house with one lit window. Variations: maybe she was running from a chateau, fleeing a keep, or evacuating a shack.

Within these constraints, Ziel stood out. He painted more than forty covers for Paperback Library gothics alone, featuring intrepid brunettes and terrified blondes, lit by the silver light of the moon, their windblown hair dissolving into the ebony sky, their diaphanous gowns disappearing into mysterious mists, their wide eyes staring back over a shoulder at the dismal real estate they were escaping.

Born in Poland in 1914, Ziel was twenty-five years old when the Nazis invaded. He was a Polish Catholic married to a Jew, and he and his wife were sent to concentration camps. His wife was forced into labor in Germany, where she died in an Allied bombing raid, while Ziel was sent to Auschwitz, then Flossenbürg, and finally Dachau during the last days of the war. Beaten so badly that he went deaf in one ear, Ziel was fortunate to have his artistic abilities discovered by the camp doctor who treated him. Risking his job, the doctor smuggled paper and charcoal to Ziel, and as word of his talent spread, the guards started using him to illustrate their Christmas and birthday cards. Ziel also drew 24 stark, haunting sketches while interned in the camps. They were published in two books in Munich immediately after the war. Today a rare copy of 24 Drawings from the Concentration Camps in Germany resides in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

After the war, Ziel wound up in New York City, working as a waiter before finding jobs as a commercial artist. His first covers appeared around 1954. Because of his limited understanding of English, Ziel’s second wife, Elsie, read him the manuscripts he was hired to paint. Eventually, the couple retired to Connecticut, where Elsie died in 1981. A few months later, in February 1982, George passed away at age sixty-seven. Art director and friend Rolf Erikson had drinks with Ziel on the last night of his life. “I really think he just gave up after Elsie died,” he said. “He was tired and he made the decision he had lived long enough.”