Simon Greco (1917-2005)

Simon Greco was born on April 9, 1917, in Italy to an Italian-American father and an Italian mother. Greco arrived in the United States near the end of 1921. The passenger manifest for his ship (propitiously named S.S. Providence) gave his birthplace as "Spesano." I suspect that he came from Spezzano, located in the southern part of the country. The Greco family settled in St. Louis where his father, Giuseppe Greco, worked for a gas company. Greco's mother was named Maria. By the 1940s, Simon Greco had relocated to New York and Connecticut, haven for artists. He was married to Eleen Williams (1920-2008).

You can read the high points of Simon Greco's life in the book jacket biography I have posted here. It's from a  large paperbound book called The Art of Perspective Drawing, published by M. Grumbacher, Inc., in 1968. Grumbacher put out a lot of really fine instruction books in art, but this one is especially good. The highlights of course are Mr. Greco's illustrations. He was an artist hard to categorize, but that makes him that much more interesting. His work is partly realistic, almost in a photographic way. (He painted a number of trompe l'oeil pictures.) He can also be considered a surrealist and a magical realist in a style that was very common at mid-century, especially in advertising and other commercial art. Simon Greco also painted covers for magazines, including men's magazines of the 1950s and '60s.

Simon Greco was an extraordinary artist. His work is mesmerizing. Fortunately for us, he lived a long life. He died on January 20, 2005, in Westborough, Massachusetts, at age eighty-seven.

Text copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

A.E. Hotchner (1917-2020)

We have heard this week about the anniversary of the beginning of a dictatorship. It's better to hear about one's ending. That ending--rather the ending of the dictator himself--is the background of A.E. Hotchner's novel Treasure, from 1970. Treasure is set in Italy twenty years after the war has ended. The protagonist it turns out is something of an autobiographical character. Treasure is a sort of hybrid--part caper novel, part murder mystery, part thriller, and part serious novel. It even approaches weird fiction or pulp fiction in its conclusion. The novel came at the end of a decade when men's magazines were king and near the end of what I have heard called "The Golden Age of Heterosexuality." It fits in with both.

A.E. Hotchner was born on June 28, 1920, in St. Louis, Missouri. He chronicled his youth in an autobiographical novel called King of the Hill (1973). That book was adapted to a very enjoyable movie by Steven Soderbergh in 1993. Mr. Hotchner is still with us and even has a book published this year. He has written plays, biographies, novels, and memoirs. Mr. Hotchner was also friends with Ernest Hemingway (the subject of Papa Hemingway, a book by Hotchner from 1966) and Paul Newman (the subject of Paul and Me: 53 Years of Adventures and Misadventures with My Pal Paul Newman, from 2010). Hotchner's friendship with Paul Newman brings up a very strange coincidence for my posting today. In my research, I came upon this image from 1970:

That's Paul Newman clowning around after having caught a marlin somewhere in the Caribbean. This image evokes nothing so much as that of Mussolini and his lover, Claretta Petacci, strung up by their heels in Milano at the end of war--the background of the book Treasure.

The cover of Treasure is classic 1970s design: a wraparound photo cover missing only the figure of a woman. The designer is uncredited. The photograph of Mr. Hotchner on the inside of the back cover is by Jack Mitchell.

Update (October 19, 2023): The actual birthdate of Aaron Edward Hotchner was June 28, 1917. Mr. Hotchner died on February 15, 2020, at age 102.

Text copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Gino D'Achille & Betty Millsaps Jones

Hello and welcome to Book Jacket Bios. Every now and then I will post biographies, images, and other information taken directly from books on the shelf. As always, this blog is for informational and educational purposes only. Copyrights remain with their respective holders.

I'll start with book jacket biographies of Betty Millsaps Jones and Gino D'Achille. They come from Ms. Jones' adaptation of King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard, published by Random House and its Step-Up Adventures line in 1982. Readers of fantasy will recognize the work of Gino D'Achille. Born in 1935, Mr. D'Achille has been working as a professional illustrator and fine artist for decades. In the 1970s he created the covers for the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, issued by Ballantine Books. His eleven wraparound covers for the series are striking, evocative, and dream-like. Some are quite eerie, even frightening, perhaps none more so than the cover of The Chessmen of Mars.

Mr. D'Achille is still living and has a website of his own, the self-titled Gino D'Achille. You can see images of his original paintings there. You can see the book covers themselves on any number of websites, including that of Scott Dutton, here.

Gino D'Achille is a world treasure. I wish him continued health, happiness, and success.

Text copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley