Earle Kulp Bergey attended the Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia from 1921 to 1926. His first job was working in the art department at the Philadelphia Ledger, but he later went to the pulp-magazine. From 1939 until 1950, Bergey's pin-up girls clad in bras and breastplates appeared on the covers of the science-fiction pulps publisher Fiction House. In 1948 Bergey made the transition to the new, rapidly expanding paperback industry. His cover art, depicting sexy pin-up girls posed in perilous situations, helped to sell millions of paperback novels.