WILD WEST WEEKLY 1936

Wild West Weekly - September 19th 1936 issue. This pulp was a gift from a very special friend and you should have seen my little eyes light up when I saw it. Wild West Weekly is highly regarded among western pulps fans - the quality of writers it attracted were usually high and the magazine was put together well with just the right amount of features amongst the fiction. The letters page, known as Wranglers Corner was also a hoot.

The lead story in this issue is a Oklahoma Kid novel - Gun Loot by Lee Bond. There was a movie made in 1939 starring James Cagney as The Oklahoma Kid but I'm not sure if that movie is any relation to the character from Wild West Weekly - it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere on the wild west web, so I guess not. The movie kid and the pulp character seem to have been two distinct entities but if I'm wrong on this, someone out there is bound to know. The character was popular enough and the men behind the Cagney picture must have been aware of the pulp character's existence.

As you can see from the scan left the usual range of AD's are present and correct - and like the Range Romance (1944) I reviewed recently the train for a job in radio courses are numerous - man, there must have been a lot of people training to be radio technicians. And then TV comes along and they have to start all over again Mind you by the time the idiot box started to dominate the original pulps had mostly died a death.




Other AD's in this issue include a super duper modern typewriter for only $49.50 and you don't have to pay until after your 10 day free trial - I wonder if this things is compatible with Microsoft Word? Another home training course but nothing to do with radio - instead this dynamic easy to study programme will enable you to become a music teacher. There's also a revolutionary new belt, THE WEIL BELT, which when worn will make you appear inches slimmer. It claims to be able to reduce your waist by three inches in ten days. There are also a liberal sprinkling od promotions for the treatment if piles and spots.

You know I wouldn't mind betting that back in the day most people skipped these AD's, eager to get to the next thrilling story, but these days they have a unique historical worth and can tell a lot about the way life was in those dim distant days. The AD's would have been geared to the readership and typewriters, bulging bellies, pile treatments, and a fascination with working in radio must have prevailed.

And look at that handsome chap with the Half and Half pipe tobacco which, claims to give no bite at all to the smoker. I've never heard of that brand but I live in hope of trying it one day. You know old tins of pipe tobacco often pop up on Ebay and they can be revitalised with a little steam. I recently bought a tin of Three Nuns tobacco that was thirty five years old and it was the sweetest thing I've ever smoked.

This issue contains there complete western novels - Gun Loot by Lee Bond, Pete Rice Pays with Powder by Austin Gridley and Senor Red Mask's Six Gun Trail by Guy L. Maynard. There are also four complete western short stories, several non fiction old west historical pieces and the legendary letter's page, The Wranglers Corner in which reader's letters were answered by characters from the magazine. Issues talked about this time include, girls shouldn't be in the stories as they get in the way of a good action adventure and reader, Joe Scott takes exception with the stories about the Texas Rangers not having their characters armed with the correct equipment. Of course The Oklahoma Kid has an explanation for this.


And all this for 10c
Ahh, those were the days.

Later today on The Tainted Archive
Pattie's forgotten films - Riders of Destiny
The final part of the review of the pulp collection, Desert Justice.