06 November 2024
01 November 2024
Handled by the Saturday Evening Post
'Woman-handled'
Arthur Stringer
The Saturday Evening Post, volume 197, issue 44
A critic writes: "In your New Year's Day post you urged readers to start off 2024 with Arthur Stringer. It's now fall and you haven't reviewed any book by Stringer. Have you even read one?"
I haven't, but smarting from the comment I've since tackled this short story. I'd always meant to read "Woman-handled" because of "Manhandled," a longer Stringer story that appeared in the Post the previous year (11 March - 29 March, 1924). It was brought to the screen by Paramount. Gloria Swanson played the lead.
The James H. Crank illustration the Saturday Evening Post chose to introduce "Woman-handled" is an odd in that it depicts the climax.
Baran Bowerman is drawn to Glenna van Gelder. The attraction has nothing to do with alliteration, rather that she is so different than the delicate women who typically attend his talks. Later, whilst walking down Fifth Avenue, Glenna's ribbing turns to mockery:
"You’re smothered in women... You're drowned in them. You’re like that Duke of Clarence who tumbled right into his vat of wine. You're so tangled up with petticoats you can’t breathe.”She later warns Baran that he's being "effeminized without knowing it."
The handsome young author laughed, but his laugh was a defensive one. “Oh, I can still breathe,’’ he protested, with barricading lightness. ‘‘And there’s always safety, remember, in numbers.”
“Is there?” asked the solemn-eyed girl at his side. “Isn’t there danger of getting your soul clogged up with talcum powder?”
“I can’t see that it’s left any knock in the engine,” averred the pink-cheeked author. "I still have my two- hour work-out with my trainer every day.”
“I know stout ladies who do the same.”
My critic, a friend, will be pleased to learn that I've invested a further fifty-five minutes of life viewing Womanhandled, the Hollywood adaptation of "Woman-handled."
It was worth it.
More in next week's post.
31 October 2024
This Harlequin Halloween, a Dick in a Box
If the Coffin Fits Day Keen [Gunard Hjerstedt] Toronto: Harlequin, 1952 |
Central City specialized in vice, legal gambling and easy divorces.Teen-age "B" girls in low-cut evening gowns drank with the suckers. If the sucker's bank account was substantial enough, he would be drugged and "found" in a hotel room with a scantily clad bit of Jail Bait. This badger game served the dual purpose of enslaving the girl and exacting a considerable income from the victim. Free-lance crime was not tolerated in Central City; all such activities were conducted on a highly organized basis headed by the anonymous "Mr. Big".When Tom Doyle, Chicago Investigator, accepted a blind case in Central City, he ran head on into Mr. Big's organization. Doyle was greeted on his arrival by the Karney twins, who pistol-whipped him into a pulpy mass of bruised flesh and gently invited him to leave their fair city...Doyle soon learned that the solution depended on getting Mr. Big. Many people were murdered to prevent Doyle from accomplishing this, and before the case was over, Tom had cause to wonder - IF THE COFFIN FITS.
25 October 2024
Grant Allen: 125 Years
Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen departed this mortal coil 125 year ago today, rising a metre then stepping aside at his home in Hindhead, Haslemere, Surrey. He wrote many of the very best novels in nineteenth-century Canadian literature. Were I to make a list of the top ten titles, Allen would dominate. That he also wrote some of the very worst is a mystery easily solved. Like fellow Ontarian Arthur Stringer, Allen looked to make a good living from his writing. For every British Barbarians (1895) there is A Splendid Sin (1899).
If you've not seen Allen's Hindhead, Haslemere home, here it is:
Allen's early writing dealt primarily with with science and nature Physiological Esthetics (1877) was his first book. The Colour-Sense: Its Origin and Development (1879), Evolutionist at Large (1881), Vignettes from Nature (1881), The Colours of Flowers (1882), Colin Clout's Calendar (1883), and Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1883) followed. Credit goes to publisher Andrew Chatto for suggesting the author try his hand at novel writing. Allen's first attempt, Philistia (1884), is well worth a read, but I recommend beginning with The Devil's Die (1888). After that, move on to The Woman Who Did (1895), his most notorious novel. Those drawn to black comedy will enjoy For Maimie's Sake (1886) and Michael's Crag (1893).
Our fears for Grant Allen were too true. He is dead. He died on Wednesday, the 24th, after a long and painful and obscure illness, to which the doctors are still unable to give a name, England thus loses a rarer sprit than she had yet realized the possession of.
Le Gallienne continues:
England is apt to take some time in recognition of its rarer spirits, She throughly stones them first, to try their mettle, and then when they are happily beyond hearing of their funeral orations – usually spoken by respectable gentlemen fit to provoke the dead to disturb with kindly laughter their own obsequies – she grudgingly erects bad statues in their honour. It is comforting at least to think that it is a long while yet before a statue is erected to Grant Allen. It took nearly a hundred years for men to think of a statue to Shelley.
Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen 24 February 1848, Wolfe Island, Canada West - 25 October 1899, Hindhead, Haslemere, Surrey RIP |
19 October 2024
Darkness on the Edge of Town
Marilyn Ross [W.E.D. Ross]
New York: Paperback Library, 1970
157 pages
The back cover poses a question:
My childhood memories of Collinwood being in Collinsport Bay, Maine proved correct. It's the family home of the Collins family, Barnabas Collins being the oldest member. As a vampire, I suppose he might be considered one of the house's "EVIL FORCES," though he proves every bit the gentleman when accompanying pretty blonde Carolyn Stoddard. One of Barnabas's youngest relatives, Carolyn is keen on visiting the ruins of Frene Castle, located on the vast Collinwood estate bordering the town of Collinsport Bay.
Carolyn Stoddard (Nancy Barrett) and Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) in Dark Shadows episode #351, broadcast 30 October 1967. |
Betty is rescued by Quentin Collins of the Collinsport Bay Collinses. He's the novel's most physically attractive male, though as anyone familiar with the television series will tell you, Quentin is both a bad boy and a werewolf.
For reasons unknown, Quentin does his best to dissuade Betty from setting out for the New World and Collinsport Bay. Failing this, he books a passage on the very same ship, then begins terrorizing his fellow passengers.
She didn't refer to it again. But when she was back in her own cabin doing the last of her packing she did think of that bandaged hand. And an odd thought flashed through her mind. The sailor on deck claimed he had shot the werewolf in the front right paw. She stood frowning into space for a moment. And this morning Quentin appeared with a bandaged right hand? Could there be any connection between the two things?She at once decided there couldn't.
Betty Ward wasn't a character in the television series. She exists only in this novel, making the question posed on as the back cover a bit unfair.
JUST HOW LARGE IS THE COLLINWOOD ESTATE?
Condition is not a factor.
This collector, who suffered gouging in the purchase of the aforementioned lot of Dark Shadows paperbacks, notes:
- A California bookseller is charging US$50.00 to ship his US$13.41 copy to Canada.
- A Texas bookseller is charging US$13.01, then asks US$100.00 for shipping.
09 October 2024
Pearl White is The White Moll!
The Moving Picture World 2 October 1920 |
A follow-up to last week's post on Frank L. Packard's The White Moll.
TheWhite Moll was the fifth Frank L. Packard book to be adapted by Hollywood. It followed Tinseltown's take on his 1914 novel The Miracle Man by a matter of months. The Miracle Man is considered one of the great lost silent films. I first wrote about it thirteen years ago, sharing the two minutes and twenty seconds of known footage. Since then a further thirty-nine seconds has been found.
Huzzah!
Here's what we now have:
Of the eight Packard novels I've read, The Miracle Man is the best by far. It concerns a faith healer in Maine whose activities attract the attention of a criminal gang. Wanting in on what the grift, they leave the Big Apple for the Pine Tree State, only to find that there is no grift. The White Moll is something altogether different. It was published in 1920, when Packard was all in on thrillers; The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1917) and The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1919) had been his two biggest sellers.
As a novel, The White Moll has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, but the film was steeped in a baptismal font. I write with confidence, though I haven't seen Hollywood's adaptation. Like The Miracle Man, it's a lost silent. If anything, The White Moll is even more lost in that not so much as a frame has been found. Everything I know of the movie comes through reviews and descriptions found in one-hundred-and-four-year-old newspapers and magazines.
The screenplay is credited to E. Lloyd Sheldon (1886-1957), who is best remembered for Tess of the Storm County (1922). It starred Toronto girl Mary Pickford; The White Moll starred Pearl White. She'd made a name for herself as "Queen of the Serials," the 20-chapter Perils of Pauline (1914) being the most popular. The White Moll was intended as White's first step toward becoming the Queen of the Features.
Exhibitors Herald 4 August 1920 |
And thats just the start!
Critic Mae Tinée – real name: Frances Peck Grover – isn't completely down on the film. She praises the camera work and sets as "good," and describes Richard Travers, who played the Adventurer, as the only punk actor. It's the religious elements that offend:
Some things transpire in a church at the start of the picture that quite seriously offend one's good taste. The production will go better when the scenes utilizing the image of Christ crucified are omitted.
Christ crucified!
Reading through the reviews, I've managed to cobble together a plot that owes little to Packard's novel. William M Drew appears to have walked a wider trail, so I quote from his recent biography of Pearl White, The Woman Who Dared (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2023):
The White Moll cast Pearl as Rhoda, a thief from the underworld slums. Her life is transformed when she has a vision of Christ during a church robbery in which her father is killed. Becoming known as the "White Moll," she dedicates her life to reforming criminals. One of them, the "Sparrow," is a burglar who catches her fancy. Her activities as a settlement worker arouse the antagonism of the the "Dangler" (played by John Thornton Baston), the leader of a criminal band, who clashes with her throughout the film. Her idealism wins out as she succeeds in bringing the "Dangler" to justice and finds love with the "Pug" (Richard C Travers), another reformed crook. In the course of these adventures, Pearl disguises herself as Gypsy Nan, a toothless hag who not "one fan in a million could guess" was the beautiful actress.
The Rhoda of the novel is a young woman who has been raised in comfort by a loving father, a well-positioned, well-respected mining engineer. She dedicates herself to caring for the poor after witnessing their squalid living conditions. The "Sparrow" appears late in the novel in her time of need. He is not someone who has captured her fancy. In the novel the "Dangler" is gang leader Pierre Dangler. He has no idea Rhoda is working against him. The "Pug" is not a reformed crook, rather an upstanding young man who has infiltrated Dangler's gang so as to bring them to justice.
The 7 August 1920 Moving Picture World reports:
The story is considered by Frank L. Packard, its author, to be the most powerful novel he has ever written, truly reflecting underworld existence.What, one wonders, did the author make of such a radical departure from his story? As I've not had a chance to comb through the Frank L. Packard fonds at Library and Archives Canada, all I have to go on are these two paragraphs from a letter he wrote producer William Fox, as quoted in the 21 August 1920 edition of Moving Picture World:
I wonder whether Packard, a devout Anglican and congregant of Montreal's St James the Apostle, would have objected to the depiction of the crucified Christ (uncredited), or whether he would've embraced the religious elements, particularly after the success of The Miracle Man.
01 October 2024
A Feminine Jimmie Dale?
In an alternate universe, Disney managed to convince the network and Jimmie Dale, Alias the Gray Seal became a cathode-ray tube hit. The adventures of a millionaire masked crimefighter, it would've pre-dated and perhaps even inspired ABC's Batman and The Green Hornet. A Gold Key comic was pretty much guaranteed. In this alternate universe, it might've spawned spin-offs, some featuring the White Moll, which publisher George H. Doran positioned as "a Feminine Jimmie Dale."
The White Moll Frank L. Packard New York: Doran, 1920 |
The White Moll is not Jimmy Dale en femme, though the two share the talent of impersonation. Both move though a grotty New York beset by poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism, and crime. The Gray Seal, Jimmy Dale is heir to a great fortune, while the White Moll, Rhoda Gray – note the surname – is of the lowly upper middle class. Her mining engineer father had worked for an English concern in South America until ill-health forced him to New York for medical consultation. Papa required an operation, but before it could take place petty thief Pete "the Bussard" McGee broke into the Grays' flat. He was caught by father and daughter, spilled some sob story starring a sickly wife and hungry, unclothed kiddies, and was let go. The following morning, a curious Rhonda investigates to find Pete was telling the truth about his godawful life.
Sadly, Rhoda's father does not survive his operation. Left an orphan of modest means, she dedicates her young self to saving people like Pete from a life of poverty and crime. Rhoda comes to be known amongst the down and out as "The White Moll," the name coming from the Bussard, who'd introduced her to his invalid wife with these words:
“Meet de moll I was tellin’ youse about, Mag. She’s white – all de way up. She’s white, Mag; she’s a white moll – take it from me!”
Rhonda is about three years into her do-gooding when she visits a dying old hag known as Gypsy Nan. She soon learns that Nan is not the woman's true name, nor is she an old hag... but she is dying. In her final hours, the unnamed woman removes her disguise. As life slips away, the woman known as Gypsy Nan seeks salvation by telling the White Moll of a heist that will go down that very night. Rhonda tries to thwart the crooks, but is nabbed by Rough Rorke of the NYPD. She's saved by a seemingly drunken passerby who wrenches Rhonda from Rorke. Fleeing, she ends up in Gypsy Nan's hovel and adopts the role of the old hag.
The set-up, the only thing to add is that the seemingly drunken passerby was more than likely sober. The man who rescued Rhonda, referred to as "the Adventurer," weaves in and out of the novel, much like the Tocsin does in the adventures of Jimmie Dale.
I expect you know where that relationship will lead. Packard was a commercial writer and knew how to please his audience.
Disney take note.
Trivia (or not): In 1920, the Fox Film Corporation released a film adaptation that that owed very little to the novel. The subject of next week's post.
Access: First published in the pages of The Blue Book Magazine (August 1919 - January 1920), the novel's first edition is either the Copp, Clark (Canada) and Doran (United States). Both can be read online through the Internet Archive. My copy is one volume in the 1931 Gray Seal Edition set of Packard's works.
Two copies of Copp, Clark's Canadian first edition are currently listed for sale online, but no copies of the Doran.