{"id":3226,"date":"2015-10-19T06:57:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T06:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/?p=3226"},"modified":"2015-10-20T15:14:03","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T15:14:03","slug":"the-maltese-falcon-plus-assorted-rodents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/2015\/10\/19\/the-maltese-falcon-plus-assorted-rodents\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Maltese Falcon’ plus ….. assorted rodents!"},"content":{"rendered":"
While looking at the different book covers PAN produced for Dashell Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’ over several years I\u00a0was reminded that\u00a0the 1951 edition had a cover by Philip Mendoza. Surprisingly Mendoza was also the artist for the ‘Gulliver the Guinea Pig’ comic strip in the Playhour comic from the 50’s\/60’s. \"GG\"<\/a>This made me search out some original artwork I had from Playhour but mine features ‘Harry Hamster’ and is by either Peter Woolcock or Colin Wyatt who both drew Harry.\u00a0\"Playhour\"<\/a>This 1961 Annual\u00a0frontispiece above shows Harry with Sammy Stoat and Wally Weasel. The ability to turn ones hand to whatever pays is something I really admire about a lot of the artists\u00a0who painted\u00a0covers for\u00a0paperbacks\u00a0be it\u00a0coins, stamps,\u00a0corporate brochures\u00a0or even wine bottle labels!\"Image1\"<\/a><\/span>
\nI have found six different covers for ‘The Maltese Falcon’ <\/span><\/a>including the film edition and one as a Hammett omnibus from Picador. Other PAN titles with covers by Mendoza include<\/span> <\/span>‘The Great Impersonation’ <\/span><\/a>by Phillip Oppenheim, ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ <\/span><\/a>by H Ryder Haggard, ‘Valley of Fear’<\/span> <\/a>by Arthur Conan Doyle and ‘Towards Zero’<\/a> <\/span>by Agatha Christie.
\n.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Footnote\u00a0<\/strong> Unfortunately Peter Woolcock was knocked down and killed by a car in Bermuda last December but I’ve emailed Colin Wyatt so hopefully may have an answer to the burning question of the moment “Who painted Harry?”
\n.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span>Update <\/strong>Just had a fantastically fast and very informative response to my email from Colin in which he says;
\n.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span>Dear Tim,<\/span><\/em>
\nThanks for your interesting email.\u00a0 The artwork on the attachment you sent was done by Peter Woolcock. It was originally done as a black and white strip in Playhour sometime in the late 1950’s,\u00a0 but then coloured at a later date and reprinted.\u00a0 Peter did a lot of work for the young children’s comics for IPC at that time. This included\u00a0 Willow Wood, a two page strip in Playhour that featured\u00a0 Harry Hamster. . My first ‘Harry On His Own’ strip for Playhour was done in October 1960. I was member of the art staff on Playhour at the time, and\u00a0 I continued to do the strip on and off for several years. (I still have the original artwork for that first strip.)<\/span><\/em>
\nYou are right, Phil Mendoza was the original artist on Gulliver Guinea Pig, and he was superseded by an artist named Gordon Hutchings who did some truly marvelous artwork.<\/span><\/em>
\nYour website sounds really interesting so good luck with it.<\/span><\/em>
\nVery best wishes,<\/span><\/em>
\nColin.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
Update <\/strong>Just had an email from Colin, since reading this blog, to say Peter Woolcock also painted ‘Gulliver the Guinea Pig’ and in fact the example I used was one by Peter and not Philip but since then I’ve done a recheck on sources and found a site<\/span><\/a> that says it is by Gordon Hutchings!<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While looking at the different book covers PAN produced for Dashell Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’ over several years I\u00a0was reminded that\u00a0the 1951 edition had a cover by Philip Mendoza. Surprisingly Mendoza was also the artist for the ‘Gulliver the Guinea Pig’ comic strip in the Playhour comic from the 50’s\/60’s. This made me search out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}