"She had hair of gold and a heart of brass"
Good-Time Girl is 'a modern novel' by Conrad Maine, published 'complete and unabridged' in 1955 by Popular Library, 'the World's leading publisher of pocket sized books'. Known for their uniformly identifiable jacket designs, featuring salacious moments or women in states of undress to catch the eye and the 25cent cover charge, Popular Library often disguised classics or novels of the time within a lurid wrapping. I love the covers, they attract and intrigue me, but the well written stories mostly don't live up to the anticipated smut.
"A biting, realistic tale of a young hucksters struggle for fame in the viciously competitive world of department store advertising."
This story is actually about Jerry Lang as he graduates College, a time when he was dating a blonde nicknamed Boots. Pretty but naive, she refuses to wear his school pin. He works on the school newspaper with his friend Dick Hausler and Jerry is broadsided when she accepts a proposal from Dick! He is moving off to Hollywood which attracts her eye for glamour.
By page 20, Jerry has a job in the advertising agency of a San Fransisco department store, slowly working his way up to manager, with good ideas about making store television commercials. He befriends Toni, a buyer in the basement dress department and helps her get a job in his office. One mistake is thinking he has permission to proceed with the TV campaign, endangering his job, and the second is helping Boots when she looks him up after leaving Dick, who is not happy with the perceived relationship between Jerry and his wife. However things work out, why not put Jerry on the cover of the paperback?
This was an interesting read from the Fifties, think Mad Men on a very small scale. Competing against the low-tier discount store across the street raises issues of how to attract customers without losing cache or quality. The ad department features both young new secretaries and older seasoned ones, raising the issue that they might have been overlooked for promotion, but balanced with independent Toni whose career rises at the store. Interesting and entertaining all the way - it's only 144 pages - and a nice slice of a career in the 1950's.
Don't let the cover distract you.
1955 / Paperback / 144 pages
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