It's been 20 years since his last assignment, and the job is a blur of cascading mahogany tresses. Gary McLaughlin can't remember the exact number of covers he would have painted for Harlequin. (Sample request: "her firefighting gear emphasizes her femininity.") A standard form "cover art information" sheet would provide instructions on everything from "backdrop elements," character descriptions, the scene's "level of sensuality," even makeup and jewelry and wardrobe. One former illustrator - American artist Frank Kalan - has published a selection of his paintings and production materials online, and if you skim through some of his correspondence with Harlequin, every assignment was outlined in detail. The concepts, however, would have been conjured by Harlequin staff. ( Canada Post honoured the latter in 2018, reproducing one of his romance covers as a collectors' stamp.) "Davies's painting had a very dreamlike quality to it," she says. Norm Eastman is one of her favourites, as is Will Davies.
my understanding, and from the work I did, the majority of artists were Canadian," says Semmelhack.
"For Brian's Sake." Cover art by Tony Meers. For the show, she focused on six of the publisher's go-to illustrators: five Canadians (Norm Eastman, Jack Harman, Paul Anna Soik, Bern Smith, Will Davies) and New Yorker Max Ginsberg. Curated by Semmelhack, who's now the creative director and senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, she was given access to thousands of paintings and other materials that had been stashed away by the publisher. According to this history, a "smattering of Canadians and Australians" were published in the '70s, but Harlequin authors of the era were "almost entirely British" (that is, white British). The cover designs, however, are another story.Įlizabeth Semmelhack became an expert on the subject in 2009. That year, Harlequin brought a special illustration exhibition to galleries in New York and Las Vegas: The Heart of a Woman: Harlequin Cover Art 1949-2009. Though published in Canada, the novels themselves weren't exactly a homegrown product. Ravenous readers could even subscribe for a regular fix of happily-ever-afters. They spilled beyond book sellers and into the supermarkets.
Harlequin romance novels published 1970 tv#
Equipped with a new marketing strategy - one that gave their branding bigger billing than the bylines - the books were everywhere: Harlequins were shilled on daytime TV and packed into boxes of maxi pads. And as the decade progressed, Harlequin, which was now headquartered in Toronto, redefined itself as the universal catch-all for romance novel. Like some blushing heroine tumbling into the bronzed embrace of her billionaire playboy, they leaned in hard by the '50s. At first, it was reprints of Mills & Boon yarns, a British brand they eventually bought in the early '70s. The company always had some stake in romance, though in their earliest days, they were printing all sorts of genre fiction, re-packaging American and British titles for a Canadian market.
Harlequin's history starts in Winnipeg a little more than 60 years ago. Meers's scenes are typical, as synonymous with romance as Harlequin itself. But for decades, that exaggerated look of love was being mass-produced in Toronto.Īs seen at The Beguiling: original Harlequin cover art by Tony Meers. Square-jawed heroes clutch swooning women in gazebos - and maximalist living rooms and unidentified tropical locales.
Harlequin romance novels published 1970 series#
(To this day, the publisher maintains a staggering output of fresh titles, releasing 66 books over their various romance series a month, and that's not including the ebooks.) The show's tongue-in-cheek title? Retromancer: Painted Lessons in Heteronormativity, and some 80 of Meers's oil paintings are available for sale - scenes he would have produced over the '80s and '90s, sometimes two or three at a time. They're the original covers for a slew of Harlequin romance novels, and through Valentine's Day, Toronto comic shop The Beguiling is showing a selection by local illustrator Tony Meers. The images have been seen by thousands, maybe even millions of people, though the titles probably won't be familiar: Night of Shame, Two-Timing Love, Making Magic.