Artist Unknown

In 1938, writer A.I. Bezzerides sold his first novel.  It was called Long Haul and it was about the dangerous lives of truckers.  In 1940, it was turned into a movie called They Drive By Night and, when the original novel was republished, it was renamed so that the book’s title matched the movie’s title.  Then, for some reason, in 1953, the book’s title was again changed.  When Lion Books republished Long Haul, they changed the title to Tough Guy.

The cover for Tough Guy features someone doing something that no one should ever do — wear a fedora with jeans!  It also features a woman hitchhiking in high heels, which is something else you should never do.  A trucker should know better than to pick up a hitchhiker but, in this case, he was probably more busy thinking about the cleavage than the potential danger of letting a stranger into his cab.  I do like the beret.

Unfortunately, the identity of this cover’s artist is unknown.