Jutting Breasts and Willing Hips

I prowl by night James Reasoner has posted a terrific article by Brian Ritt about pulp author Orrie Hitt. Here's an excerpt: 

His women were too hot to handle, ex-virgins, frigid wives, sin dolls, wayward girls, torrid cheats, easy women, frustrated females, inflamed dames and, most often, trapped. Their names were Sheba, Sherry, Honey, Candy, Cherry, Betty French, and Lola Champ. They used what they had to use to make a buck–limited opportunities left them few other choices. They were duped and deceived, approached and abandoned.

Meet one of Hitt's women: "Jutting breasts, a flat stomach, willing hips, anxious thighs and legs that demanded all of the man in me, bringing to both of us an ancient pleasure which never grew old."
Man-Hungry Female, Novel Books, 1962, pg. 127

Hitt wrote two novels a month (a pace James Reasoner could certainly appreciate, if not match), writing from 7 a.m until the late afternoon, stopping only twenty minutes for lunch. He wrote 145 books from 1953-1964. Most of his books were "sleazy" paperback originals, written under a variety of pseudonyms.  

His research allowed him to write convincingly enough so that author Susan Stryker, in her book Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback, says, "Only one actual lesbian, Kay Addams, writing as Orrie Hitt, is known to have churned out semipornographic sleaze novels for a predominantly male audience." Stryker actually thinks "Orrie Hitt" is a pseudonym, and "Kay Addams" is a real lesbian author! I'm sure Orrie'd be laughing his ass off about that one.

I really enjoy reading about hard-working pulp authors like Harry Whittington and Orrie Hitt — both of whom were far better writers than they were given credit for because of the genres they toiled in and their astonishing productivity.

2 thoughts on “Jutting Breasts and Willing Hips”

  1. “Novel Books”? Isn’t that like naming a production company “Cinema Movies”?
    And I always get depressed when I read about these guys who could write two novels a month, or one in three days, or whatever.

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  2. I’ve written two books in a month on occasion, but I couldn’t begin to keep that pace up for years and years like Orrie did.

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