Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Walter Baumhofer
Walter Martin Baumhofer “The King of Pulp” was born in Brooklyn in 1904 to working class German immigrants. At the age of 14, while playing with a supposedly dud artillery shell brought back from the Great War, he blew off three fingers of his left hand, effectively ending the world of manual labor open to First Generation American lads in New York City in the early 1900s. Graduating high school he garnered a scholarship to the Pratt Institute for Art and by 1921 was selling his first art, for an American Legion publication.
By 1926 he was good enough that he was selling pulp fiction covers for Westerns and adventure novels and mens’s magazines that were being churned out in New York by the truckload.
Adventure March 1935
Seen this guy somewhere else….
Liberty, Hell in the Holy Land (1936) Baumhofer
While he did covers for Spider, American magazine, Gangland Stories, Dime Mystery, Danger Trail, Western Story and Adventure, it was his work on Doc Savage “80 Page Novels!” that made him famous, to include his iconic Red Skull character illustrations.
Dr. Clark Savage Jr, the forerunner of Indiana Jones, appeared in 1933 with Baumhofer pulling all of the artwork load.
First issue of Doc Savage, March 1933. Hitler just took power, so you needed the good Doctor.
Savage was “The Man of Bronze”
Hail Hydra….
The Doc will fight you with mittens on if he has too.
Does it get any more Indiana Jones?
Its not pulp unless you have underwater action
By the late 1930s he was cranking out regular work for Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, McCalls, Redbook and Woman’s Day and after the war moved to Argosy, Outdoor Life and True and switched to selective oil on canvas gallery work late in his career.
“Police are your friends”Walter Baumhofer
While he produced over 600 covers in his five decades of active work, few were true martial works. However, it should be remembered that thousands of Joes and Marines headed off to Europe and the Pacific with a beaten Doc Savage stuffed in their duffel, which in a way helped win the war.
He died in New York September 23, 1987 peacefully at age 83.
There are numerous galleries that highlight the portfolio of Mr. Baumhofer as well as more extensive biographies.
Thank you for your work, sir.
