I was pleased to hear from John Mott who told me his uncle, the actor Frank Ellement, was used by Sam Peffer as the face of James Lessiter on the cover of G122 ‘Miss Silver Comes to Stay’ John wrote “Frank was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1928 and died in London, England in 1998. He moved to the UK in his early 20’s. He was an aspiring opera singer and did quite a bit of modelling and bit part acting to make ends meet. There is an entry for him at IMDB. He eventually settled into life as a school teacher. He was also for some time the lover of journalist Patrick Thursfield (1923-2003) His younger sister (my aunt) passed away in Ottawa a few years ago, and I inherited Frank’s portfolio scrap books. These had been sent to my aunt by Patrick Thursfield, in his capacity as Frank’s executor. A small advertisement for the Patricia Wentworth paperback was clipped and pasted into the scrapbook, along with many other magazine and newspaper clippings featuring my uncle. This small clipping is very likely the only piece of surviving evidence that links my uncle to Sam Peffer. I am attaching a professional headshot of my uncle from that time, that most closely approximates the art. Until visiting your website, I had always imagined that my uncle had posed for the painting. It now seems quite possible that Sam never actually met my uncle, but simply painted the face from a headshot” At one time Frank was considered for the role of James Bond. I contacted Kathy, Sam’s great niece, to see if she knew the name but she emailed back to say “Just a quick one to let you know that I have never heard Frank Ellement’s name mentioned or seen it written as a contact in an address book, but so pleased to have received your link as I don’t remember seeing that cover before. I see it is 1958, the year I was born. Definitely uncle Sam modelling in the photos, it is in the sitting room of 13 Stonenest Street, Finsbury Park (my childhood home with Kit and Sam). The curtains are claret red and the carpet is black with yellow scrolls. The desk furniture is their dressing table, and the chair is from their dining room suite which had a mustard/grey mottled vinyl seat. The black telephone on the desk was their home phone and the number was ‘Archway 6040’ The green phone in ‘Please Don’t Eat the Daisies’ with Doris Day/David Niven, was also their home phone from 1964 to the 1980s in Finchley was ‘Hillside 9989’!“
While sorting out my Picador titles I found I had two copies of ‘Roots’ by Alex Haley, neither of which are firsts. I thought it would be easy to find a copy but I was wrong. This is probably because it wasn’t the success it became after the TV series so later copies are the ones ‘flashed’ in some way. I was interested to find in one of my copies a lot of faded newspaper clippings purporting to say a lot of the book was plagerised and fabricated, this being discovered in Haley’s private papers after his death. Click HERE to see one of the articles from ‘The Times’
This weeks short lived cover is for X375 ‘Claudelle’ by Erskine Caldwell. The 1960 cover by Hans Helweg, for which he got paid £42, was replaced in 1961 by a Sam ‘PEFF’ Peffer cover as a film tie-in. The 1960 cover mentions a film coming shortly so probably prophesising is own demise. While the original artwork from Sam correctly names the film released as ‘Claudelle Inglish’ the printed cover has it as ‘Jilted’, the name used for the film in Australia amongst other countries. I much prefer Hans version and my copy of the book looks and feels as though it has never been read.