Special Collections

Steamy Saturday

“… she found out she had to have special clearance from the White House and the State Department.”
“Why was her patient so hush-hush he could be referred to only as Mister X?”
“This was a man who had terrorized the White House, a man even the President was afraid of … .”

Nurse Lily and Mister X by Diane Frazer, published in New York by Pocket Books in 1961, has more intrigue than steam, but with its snappy noir dialogue and plot, you almost forget this is a nurse romance novel. There’s the brilliant and cantankerous British diplomat and master international negotiator Sir Edgar; the self-confident and stunningly gorgeous nurse Lily Sorenson; and the dashing young newspaper reporter Andrew Carlton who is smitten by Nurse Lily, and she with him, but as a professional journalist doggedly pursues the mystery of the secret patient at the Manhattan hospital – even if it means compromising his budding relationship with Lily.

Along the way, there is subterfuge and twists. Will Sir Edgar be found out and compromised before he is able to negotiate a major treaty that may affect global politics for generations? Will Andrew nail the scoop of his career? More importantly, can Lily and Andrew’s romance survive it all? This novel is such a decent read, that for once we will not reveal the outcome.

Diane Frazer is the pseudonym for Dorothy Fletcher who published numerous nurse romances under her pen name. We couldn’t find out much about Fletcher, but we do know that the cover art is by Jerry Allison, the prolific illustrator of pulp novel covers, especially hard-boiled detective novels.

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(Not So) Steamy Saturday

“The times had brought changes to Whitebridge. Could Jane Weaver, R.N., take up her old life and duties… ?”
“‘Jane, I’d like you to meet Dr. Boyd Daves… .’ It took all of Jane’s poise to cover her surprise. For the handsome man smiling politely at her from behind the wheel was black.”
“A new black doctor had introduced the racial question … and Jane found not the threads of her old life but a new challenge to her heart.”

Of the 500+ nurse romance novels from the 1940s to the early 1970s in our collection, it is rare to find one with African American main characters, let alone having them depicted on the cover, and even rarer are interracial relationships. In our collection, the nurse romances that do were all published after Civil Rights legislation of the mid-1960s. Such is the case this pulp novel, Homecoming Nurse by Rose Dana (one of the many pseudonyms for prolific pulp-fiction writer W.E.D. Ross, 1912-1995), published in New York by Lancer Books in 1968.

With the novel showcasing many of the social taboos of the time – divorce, a small New England town forced to come to terms with contemporary racial issues, racially-exclusive country clubs, interracial relationships, mental illness, the village ice queen chasing after a married man – we thought it would have the makings of a fairly steamy plot. But, alas, its narrative is plodding and pedestrian with barely a wisp of steam. Disappointing. To its credit, however, with the entire town fretting over the potential of miscegenation, the story does culminate in an interracial engagement (between the main character Jane’s friend Maggie and Dr. Boyd, not Jane herself). Getting there, however, is tedious and about as exciting as an ice cream parlor on a sleepy New England main street.

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Steamy Saturday

There is love, tender and tempestuous… .
Curt Wiley, a handsome Texas engineer, came to town… .
Judy hated Curt the moment she met him… .
Then, … Judy discovered that Curt was not the playboy he appeared to be … but a decent sensitive human being … who seemed to be falling in love with her.
Judy found herself head over heels in love!
Suddenly, Neal Bentley seemed dull and uninteresting to Judy.
By spring she had made a decision … a decision that was as much a surprise to Judy as it will be to you.

A surprise? Really? The promotional blurbs project the ending before we even get to the first chapter:

I told you … I wasn’t worth it. I’m not the steady sort – say, like your friend, Neal Bentley… . I won’t make any girl a very good husband. Bentley seems like the right sort for you… .

She had to choose between the rootlessness of a life as a construction man’s wife, or the steady, homespun love of her childhood sweetheart… .

A surprise? Neal Bentley, hint, hint. This is staid New England in the 1950s, after all, where:

“When the sap runs in the maple grove … that’s spring in New England. Spring always comes after the snow – after the storm.”. . Love like Neal’s could guarantee that, no matter what came, spring or storm, . . their love – would never change.

Indeed, there’s definitely more sap than steam in New England Nurse by the prolific nurse romance novelist Adelaide Humphries (a pseudonym for Adelaide Morris Rowe, 1898-1979), first published in pulp paperback by Avon Books in 1956. We do appreciate the cover art, however, with its chilly color palate, asymmetrical design, and the nurse who looks, as our intern Ana observed, “like she’s so over it, but at the same time still into it.” We wish we knew who the cover artist was. And then there’s that keen observation about regional differences: “I’m a Texan, not a New Englander. A roamer, not a rock.” And there you have it, in a nutshell.

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Steamy Saturday

Nurse Gwen Lansing is dating Dr. Craig Marlowe, but what about her childhood sweetheart Bill Grove, owner of a small-time farm management business, who still pines for her? Oh, the dilemma! On top of that, for reasons that are unclear, Nurse Lansing is despised by her supervisor, Dr. Viola Belsare, and when Gwen disobeys her once too often in aiding her beloved friend and mentor, the elderly and ailing nurse Roz Nordquist, Dr. Belsare loses it and threatens to have her dismissed:

She gave Gwen a cold look. “You’ve directly disobeyed my orders!”
“I’m not on duty now. I came as a friend, not as a nurse.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll see to it that you’re dismissed. As soon as possible. I will not have a disobedient nurse in this hospital. You’re through here, Lansing.”

Darn! We were hoping “Disobedient Nurse” referred to something else. Oh well, it looks like it’s curtains for Nurse Lansing. But wait! Drs. Marlowe and Belsare end up in a car accident, severely injuring Belsare. And why were they in a car together? Because Marlowe has been secretly dating Belsare for weeks! No wonder she was always pissed off at Nurse Lansing. Well, guess that’s it between Craig and Gwen. There’s only one avenue left: back into the loving arms of Mr. Farm Management. “… we’ve got the rest of our lives, Bill. Think of that – the rest of our lives – together!” The End.

There’s more sap than steam in The Disobedient Nurse by prolific nurse romance novelist Arlene Hale (1924-1982), published by Ace Books, a subsidiary of Charter Communications, in 1975. We have to admit, however, that Arlene Hale does have some facility with writing. We might be forgiven for thinking that “Disobedient Nurse” might have other connotations because of the cover art of a nurse draped languidly across a bed with her uniform still on but her shoes off while holding the hand of a young man by the noted romance cover artist Charles Gehm (1929-2015).

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Steamy Saturday

It’s almost the new year, and it has been a snowless December, which is very unusual for our area. Some of us are pretty passionate about the snow, so on this last Saturday in 2023, we thought we’d combine the two and bring you some romantic steam from the great white north in Arctic Nurse by Rose Dana, “A Unibook Romance” published in New York by Modern Promotions, A Unisystems Company, in 1966.

Aside from its gratuitously benevolent racism (e.g., “Grace had come to understand and love the amiable, broad-faced people in their colorful woolen and fur jackets.” “Konala was living proof that the natives could adapt themselves to the twentieth century.” “She’s really typical of her own race in every other way. And I find the Eskimos a wonderful people.”), its occasional flashes of self-awareness (“Civilization always brings drawbacks with its benefits.”), and its formulaic storyline (Nurse Grace has a choice between kindly Doctor Mark and curmudgeonly Reporter Richard; who do you think she chooses?), there’s a fair bit of authenticity in the descriptions of life in the eternal cold and snow.

This comes from an author who has lived knowledge of deep winter: Rose Dana is one of the many pseudonyms of the extraordinarily prolific Canadian writer W. E. D. Ross (1912-1995), who, with over 300 novels, may be the most prolific Canadian writer of all time. He wrote in a number of genres and is the author of the Barnabas Collins series of novels based on the American vampire TV series Dark Shadows (1966–71). The nurse romance, however, was a mainstay for him.

So, until we get some snow, we’ll just chill with this sappy little arctic romance.

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Steamy Saturday

“Flaring passions behind hospital doors.”
“… hospitals are sex-charged places full of the pressures of unfulfilled and unfulfillable yearnings… .”
“… soldiers return bedridden … and women … were all too eager to supply what they missed.”
“… there are some who will read this book furtively, looking for the lurid passages.”
“… revealing the seamy side of hospital experiences.”
“… a dozen intertwined tales of love among the limbless.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa!! What kind of steam is this?! Despite its lurid cover art with its inflammatory copy to entice readers, this pulp novel is not nearly as sordid as it is made out to be. But it is about the rehabilitation of soldiers disabled by war and the nurses who care for them. And, yes, there is some romance.

Ward 20 is by American military and Western writer James Warner Bellah (1899-1976). Despite writing for the pulps, a number of his stories were turned into films, such as John Ford’s “Cavalry Trilogy,” Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950), and with Willis Goldbeck, Bellah wrote the screenplays for Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Bellah himself was a veteran of both World Wars, leaving the service with the rank of Colonel. As a veteran, he wrote his military stories with authority, and Ward 20 was heralded for its stark authenticity.

Ward 20 was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1946. Our copy is the first pulp-fiction edition published in New York by Popular Library in 1953.

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Steamy Saturday

“A private nurse learns the truth about men!”
“A nurse’s job is to pamper and please men… . But Kay Taylor was too beautiful, too inflammable herself, to soothe any man… .”
“Kay needed pampering herself, and as a private nurse, she was able to find it, with the husband of one patient and the sweetheart of another… .”

The premise for Wayward Nurse, a Venus Books publication, “first with the best in original love fiction,” published by Star Guidance, Inc. in 1953, is about as steamy as it gets. Kay Taylor, a confused and love-hungry private nurse for wealthy clients, plows through one train-wreck romance after another until finally ending up with Mike, “for all her life,” on a boat that is apparently being followed by a shark (a metaphor, no doubt) – “And on creaked the mast, on gurgled the great, undulant, golden sea… .” (another suggestive metaphor).

Wayward Nurse, first published in 1952 by another pulp publisher Cameo Books, was written by Norman Bligh, one of the many the pseudonyms of the ultra-prolific pulp novelist William Arthur Neubauer (1916-1982). We think the cover art by noted American magazine and pulp-cover artist Rudolph Belarski (1900-1983) is perhaps the second most provocative cover in our nurse romance collection of over 500 titles. The most provocative will be presented in coming weeks, so stay tuned. And we are just tickled that the publisher made the effort to mention that the highly provocative (for the early 1950s) photograph on the back cover of a couple in their swimsuits (or is it their underwear!) was “Specially posed by professional models” – as if to say, no nurses were harmed in the making of this photograph. Delightful!

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Steamy Saturday

Steam swirls in tangled wisps of desire and uncertainty in this 1962 pulp edition of Luxury Nurse by noted American romance novelist Peggy Gaddis (1895-1966), published in New York by the Macfadden-Bartell Corporation. Originally published by Arcadia House as Magic in May in 1956, Luxury Nurse revolves abound a tangle of love interests. Nurse Sally Sinclair is dating Dr. Garry Linton, but does she love him? Sally is called out to care for the petulant 19-year-old Lisa Cannon at her affluent family’s Azalea Cottage on Sea Island, Georgia. Lisa, “the season’s most successful and most popular debutante,” is recuperating from a serious mental breakdown, but her “high-strung disposition and self-pity made her as unpleasant to be with as she was lovely to behold,” leading to strained relations between patient and nurse.

Local cad Thorne Cooper wants to marry Lisa, mostly for her money, and Lisa enjoys stringing him along. Soon, however, both Sally and Lisa begin to fall another local, the kindly Allen Blaisdell, who has built a miniature village on the island with the assistance of a community of disabled vets (seriously). This toy village imparts a kind of Lilliputian fantasy element to life on this exclusive island resort.

There’s more to the story, but why bother. In the end, Lisa recuperates along with an inexplicable change in personality, winning the heart of Allen Blaisdell (with good riddance to Thorne). Nurse Sally returns to Dr. Garry, falling “into his arms as naturally, as beautifully as a homecoming bird comes into its nest at sunset” – Gag!!

The last few paragraphs concerning the mutual affection of Lisa and Allen end with uncomfortable metaphors of cattle branding: Allen "put up a tough fight,” and Lisa “had to run him down and hog-tie him,” but she finally “got my brand on him at last… . he didn’t have a chance once I’d marked him as mine.” In response, Allen kisses her “golden head” and orders her to “Stop behaving like a bold little hussy.” Oh, just … really?! Please!

Peggy Gaddis Dern was a dedicated and highly successful writer of romance fiction, especially nurse romances. She loved writing, and Wikipedia quotes her as saying “It’s a sort of drug, for which I hope no one ever finds a cure.” The cover art is by the prolific American illustrator Robert Maguire (1921-2005), who illustrated many of our nurse romance covers, including Nora was a Nurse, also by Peggy Gaddis, which we posted about earlier in this series.

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Steamy Saturday

Filling in for her pregnant friend Jenny, nurse Sarah Bennett takes a temporary stint as a flight attendant on a small Alaskan airline and a break from her boorish doctor fiancé, who for reasons even she doesn’t understand, she thinks she’s in love with. It’s only her third day on the job, when – “Oh, God!” – the plane is hijacked by thuggish saboteurs and the passengers and crew are left stranded and ailing in the Alaskan wilds “with two dangerously ill passengers and one dangerously attractive pilot” (for a nurse, Sarah is a bit of a nervous Nelly and “Oh, God!” is her response to almost every situation that develops in the narrative). So begins Wings for Nurse Bennett by American romance-fiction writer Adeline McElfresh (1918-2015), published as a pulp paperback in New York by Dell Publishing Co. in 1960.

Despite her neurotic pessimism, Nurse Bennett manages to pull off some heroic medical feats, including delivering a baby (“Oh, God! Was the baby stillborn?“ It’s not.) and performing an emergency appendectomy ("Not appendicitis! Please, God, don’t let it be appendicitis.”) despite not being a doctor ("“What would they call it, practicing surgery without a license? Or—or criminal negligence?”). As one recent reviewer pleaded, "For crying out loud, someone get this woman a Xanax!”

All the while, she is assisted and swept off her feet by the attentive and “dangerously attractive” co-pilot Al Malcolm. In the end, everyone is saved, and I think we all know who Sarah Bennett ends up with, so much so that we don’t mind showing you the last lines, which offers another version of what we in Special Collections call the vampire-like “eating of the nurse” (see the end of our previous post for context).

The cover illustration is by prolific American illustrator Tommy Shoemaker. At very first glance, we all thought that Nurse Bennett was gazing at a miniature model of a jet airplane (the “Wings for Nurse Bennett”?), but then we realized it was just a thermometer with the curve of her hair forming what looked like a cockpit. But then we wondered, why is she holding a hotdog in left hand, or is it a hotdog? You decide:

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Steamy Saturday

Everyone knows that nurses marry doctors, right? Well, that seems to be common knowledge among readers of nurse romance novels in the mid-1950s. So much so that it serves as the title for Nurses Marry Doctors by romance novelist Maud McCurdy Welch, published in pulp paperback by Airmont Books in 1956.

The story is pretty corny and entirely predictable (you know almost from the opening lines that our protagonist, nurse Linda Stephens, will end up with the young, attractive, and brilliant surgeon Julian Paige, whom she has immediately sets her sights on), but it does produce some 1950s steam. Dr. Paige doesn’t believe doctors should get married (too much of a distraction, of course), and besides, nurse Stephens is being pursued by the rakish Dr. Phil Manley, who, much to her chagrin, drives too fast (a metaphor, no doubt). There are a few other narrative smoke bombs, like a 17-year-old jailbait socialite, an adorable, orphaned child, and a custody battle with some toothless, backwoods yokels. And, nurse Stephens could probably get to keep adorable-orphan if she would only my Dr. Manley (who is entirely convinced of such an arrangement). But in the end, there’s still good old, anti-marriage Dr. Paige, who finally succumbs to Linda Stephens’s tender charms.

It is such a predictable narrative, that we don’t mind spoiling it by showing you the novel’s last lines, where the lovebirds profess their mutual passion for each other, and the victorious doctor envelopes the nurse, vampire-like, in a love embrace. This is such a common ending for nurse romance novels of this period, where the enveloping embrace is more often accompanied by a passionate kiss, and sometimes with the expectation that the nurse will relinquish her professional pursuits to subsume herself to her doctor-vampire-husband, that here at UWM Special Collections we call it “the eating of the nurse.”

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