Earle K. Bergey (August 26, 1901 – September 30, 1952) was an American artist and illustrator who painted cover art for thousands of pulp fiction magazines and paperback books. One of the most prolific pulp fiction artists of the 20th century, Bergey is recognized for creating, at the height of his career in 1948, the iconic cover of Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) for Popular Library. Bergey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to A. Frank and Ella Kulp Bergey. He attended Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1921 to 1926. He initially went to work in the art departments of Philadelphia newspapers including Public Ledger, and he drew the comic strip Deb Days in 1927 for the Public Ledger Syndicate. Early in his career, Bergey contributed many covers to the pulp magazines of publisher Fiction House. By the mid-1930s, Bergey made a home and studio in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and he married in 1935. In the late 1940s, he also started to sell cover illustrations to the rapidly expanding paperback book industry. Bergey died suddenly and unexpectedly on September 30, 1952 in New Hope, Pennsylvania with family at his side. Cause of death according to his death certificate was acute coronary thrombosis due to coronary artery disease. Pulp magazines Throughout the 1930s, Bergey worked freelance for a number of publishing houses. His eye-catching paintings were predominantly featured as covers on a wide array of pulp magazines, including romance (Thrilling Love, Popular Love, Love Romances) as well as detective, adventure, aviation, and Westerns. Bergey also illustrated mainstream publications during this time, such as The Saturday Evening Post, and produced cover art for fitness magazines. Along with pin-up painting peers such as Enoch Bolles and H. J. Ward, Bergey was one of the first prominent American pin-up artists, contributing hundreds of covers to influential magazines including Gay Book Magazine, Pep Stories, and Snappy. During the 1940s, Bergey continued to paint covers for romance, sports, and detective pulp magazines, and he began working on a number of science fiction magazines, including Standard Magazines's Strange Stories, Startling Stories, and Captain Future, and later for Fantastic Story Magazine. Bergey's fine art training and salient gift for depicting anatomy made him a go-to artist across a diversity of genres that required scenes with dramatic movement, from photo-realistic sports portraits of famous athletes including Mickey Cochrane, Lou Gehrig, and Jim Thorpe to his signature Bergey