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Back > Print Culture and Urban Visuality:

The Canadian True Crime Magazine of the 1940s and 1950s (Gallery)

In 1940, to halt the flow of Canadian currency to the United States, the Canadian government banned the importation of certain classes of magazines from the U.S. (See trade press coverage, reproduced below.) In the wake of these moves, Toronto-based publishers moved in to replace imported titles with magazines of their own. The Norman Book Company, Classic Publishing Company and, most notably, Superior Publishers, published dozens of  humour, romance, adventure and true crime magazines from the early 1940s through the mid 1950s.

This site includes the covers of several dozen Canadian true crime magazines from the 1940s and 1950s. These magazines are part of one history of Canadian cultural production, of those moments in which Canadian producers have moved to fill the gaps created by legislation or trade restrictions.

As these covers change, over a 10-year period, we see the posed theatrics of the pulp magazine give way to portraits, typically of solitary women. Then, in the early 1950s, headlines, datelines and other conventions of tabloid publishing will become more prominent, as the  visual languages of the exposé newspaper and magazine displace those inherited from the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s.

For a book-length treatment of the American true crime magazine, see my Cyanide and Sin:  Visualizing Crime in 50s America (New York: PPP Editions, Andrew Roth Gallery, 2006). 

 

 

From Canadian Printer and Publisher, December, 1940:

Import Prohibitions Helpful to Greeting Card Printers

Detective, Sex and Western Stories on List of Restricted Publications Announced by Minister of Finance -- Pictorial Postcards, Christmas Seals, etc. Also Banned-- Conserve Foreign Exchange

Certain branches of the printing industry stand to benefit as a result of the measures announced in the House of Commons on Dec. 2 by Hon. J. L. Ilsley, Minister of Finance. Included in long list of prohibited imports from non-sterling countries, principally the United States, are certain kinds of periodical publications such as those classified as detective, sex, western and confession stories; playing cards; paper envelopes; correspondence and printed letterheads; Christmas seals, stickers, tags, and enclosure cards.

Following are the items in detail ( . . . ) Periodical publications, unbound or paper bound, consisting largely of fiction of printed matter of a similar character, including detective, sex, western and alleged true or confession stories, and publications, unbound or paper bound, commonly known as comics, but not including bona-fide supplements used with newspapers.