There's a New Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street

Whenever I'm asked to talk about Ricochet Books, I make a point of mentioning Al Palmer's Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street. The title never fails to raise a smile, and often bemusement. Montrealers of a certain age – mine, for example – remember Dorchester as a boulevard, not a street. My daughter has known it only as boulevard René-Lévesque, as it was rechristened in November 1987, two years after the former premier's November 1985 death.

In November 1949, when the novel first appeared, Dorchester was a centre of Montreal's nightlife. Five years later, scores of building were razed under moralizing mayor Jean Drapeau. The street became an eight-lane boulevard with no curb appeal. I'm not sure this  Montrealer has walked so much as four or five blocks along its barren sidewalks.

The corner of René-Lévesque and Beaver Hill, November 2022

The heroine of Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street is Gisele Lepine, an eighteen-year-old farm girl "fresh as the cool clean air of her Laurentian village." She was first depicted by D. Rickard on the cover of the first edition.

Draw your eyes away from Gisele, if you can, and you'll see on the right a sign for The Breakers, which was modeled on Slitkin & Slotkin, a Dorchester bar and grill located between Drummond and Mountain.

When first published, Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was being sold as 'The Best Selling Novel of Montreal,' though it had yet to move a copy.

I expect it did better than the average average New Stand Library title because three months later it published an edition intended for the American market. For this cover, NSL turned to Sid Dyke, who would later do work for Harlequin. The title was unchanged, though the cover image relies on the reader to put it together. 

This scene, with Gisele and her newspaperman lover Jimmy Holden, does not feature in the novel. I should add that at no point is the Laurentian country girl shown to be a smoker.

What's most fascinating in the publisher's short-lived excursion into the American market was the decision to use dust jackets. They covered entirely different illustrations, some of which had been made exclusively for export to the United States. Such was the case with Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street.

This jacket illustration hid Dyke's Sugar-Puss:

Sadly, the illustrator is unknown. A clue as to who it might be is found in the bright lights of the big city. The Breakers is back – it doesn't feature in the Dyke illustration – but look to the left and you'll see The Gayety. When Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was published, it was the club in which Lili St. Cyr performed.

The Gayety is never mentioned in the novel, so how did the nightclub make it into this illustration? Was the artist a Montrealer, or just one of the thousands who visited Canada's sin city? What to make of the fact that the Gayety was on St Catherine not Dorchester?

This summer, as stock in the Ricochet's Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was reaching an end and reprint was imminent, I suggested replacing the cover. We'd been using a version of the original altered by J.W. Stewart.

Why not one of the two others? 

We settled on the dust jacket. Brian Morgan did some cleaning and punched up "ON DORCHESTER STREET."

This is all to say that Ricochet's new Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street has just been released.

Consider it the 75th anniversary edition. 

Related post:

'THE NEONS GO UP IN MONTREAL' 

Last Words of a Raconteur

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence [Divers]
Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé [trans Jane Brierley]
Montreal: Véhicule, 1990

159 pages

Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé follows Arthur Hailey, William C. Heine, Tom Alderman, Richard Rohmer, Bruce Powe, and Joy Carroll as the seventh Canadian novelist I ever read. Three things set him apart, the first being that he was Canadien, in the nineteenth-century definition of the word. The second is that he was from the nineteenth century. The third is that he is a different class of writer. The Last Canadian has nothing on Les Anciens Canadiens.

Set in and around the conquest of New France, Les Anciens Canadiens (1863) was a critical and commercial success in the years preceding Confederation. It is by turns a historical novel, a supernatural novel, a religious novel, a gothic novel, a horror novel, a war novel, a memoir, and a romance. It was also the first Canadien novel to be translated twice into English; by Georgians M. Pennée (1864) and Charles G.D. Roberts (1898). In 1996, it was translated a third time by Jane Brierley. Her Canadians of Old is the only complete translation.

Since my teenage years, when I first read the Roberts, I've been struck by the focus on Les Anciens Canadiens to the exclusion of Aubert de Gaspé's other writings. It wasn't until 1988, 122 years after the first French-language edition that there was an English translation of his Mémoires. That translation, A Man of Sentiment, was also by Jane Brierley.

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, was the second Brierley Aubert de Gaspé translation. In a sense, she was at the end, or rather after the end as the author died decades before Divers first appeared in bookstores. It presents four pieces composed late in life, discovered amongst family papers. Writes the 1893 editor in his avant-propos: "Je prie le lecteur bienveillant de prendre en considération que ce sont les derniers écrits d'un octogénaire, qui est décédé avant d'avoir eu l'avantage de pouvoir les repasser."

The note isn't entirely honest in that two of the four had appeared previously in 1866 numbers of Le Foyer Canadien. Brierley takes a small liberty in rearranging the order. And why not? It's not as if Aubert de Gaspé had a say in Divers, or whether it would be published in the first place.

So we begin with 'Yellow-Wolf, 'Le Loup-Jaune' in Divers. The longest of the four, it takes the form of a tale told the author as a very young man by a elderly Malecite chieftain. The supernatural figures, as does brutal reality in the form of torture he suffered in Iroquois captivity. In 'Woman of the Foxes' ('Femme de la tribu des Renards') the victim this time is a young Iroquois slave girl who is acquired by a forefather of the author's dear friend Antoine -Gaspard Couillard. 'Big Louis and the Legend of Indian Lorette' ('Le Village indien de la Jeune-Lorette'), the finest of all four, relates to an exchange between the author and Big Louis, a Huron known for his intelligence and repartee. The latter shares the story of the great serpent, which very nearly brought an end to his people, all the while recognizing that he is sharing the tale with a man whose own people, religion, and drink has brought even greater devastation.

The final piece, 'General Wolfe's Statue' ('La statue de général Wolfe') is something of a detective story in which the author shares his findings and theories as to the origin of a less-than-life-size wooden tribute that once stood at the corner of du Palais and Saint-Jean in Quebec City. Murder figures! The translator continues the research in her endnotes.

The statue in its current location at the Morrin Centre, Quebec City. 

Jane Brierley was awarded the 1990 Governor General's Award for English-language Translation for this book, but she brought so much more. She adds an  introduction and meticulous annotations. Each of the four pieces is preceded by a "translator's advice to the reader," providing context.

The tales themselves comprise just 84 pages, but Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is not a fast read. There is the richness of style, there is the weight of history and all that, and there is artifice to be recognized. Canadians of Old is most certainly the place to begin with Aubert de Gaspé... after that, A Man of Sentiment. But how wonderful that this exists! 

Object: A trade size paperback, Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is one of the the most attractive books in Véhicule's fifty-one year history. Credit goes to the translator who worked with J.W. Stewart on its design. The interior features thirteen illustrations, a map, and a photograph. The striking cover painting is a self-portrait by Huron chief Zacharie Vincent (1815-1886).

Access: Used copies listed online range between $9.76 and $131.12. I recommend the one going for $9.76. Better yet, pristine, unused copies can be purchased directly from the publisher at $14.95 through this link.

The original French, Divers, was first published in 1893 by Beauchemin. A Gatineau bookseller is offering a library discard of the first edition at $41.60. It has been rebound in just about the ugliest boards imaginable, but still seems a bargain.

Divers can be read online here courtesy of the University of Toronto and Internet Archive.

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André Louis Armand Hissink

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1 January 2024, Perth, Ontario, Canada

My grandfather.

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Mishandled by Hollywood?

An addendum to last week's post on "Woman-handled" by Arthur Stringer. 

Much of yesterday was spent reading 'The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929,' a 2013 study by historian and archivist David Pierce. It was a disturbing yet pleasant distraction from the mess that is the republic to the south.

I could hear it from my Canadian home. 

David Pierce's findings brought focus to the awful truth that the vast majority of silent films are likely gone forever. Seeing it all laid out with such accuracy chilled the bones. 

This year alone, I've written about lost silent film adaptations of Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks, Frank L. Packard's The White Moll, and no less than three Gilbert Parker novels (The Money Master, The Translation of a Savage, and You Never Know Your Luck), all the while struggling to get some sense of what they were like through century-old trade magazines, reviews, stills, and adverts.

Happily, the adaptation of Arthur Stringer's Womanhandled (1925), subject of last week's post, is readily available on YouTube. The same can be said – for now, at least – of Stringer's Manhandled (1924), which was reviewed here eleven years ago. By great coincidence, Manhandled is singled out in Pierce's study as an example of a film that has survived, but in a lesser format.

Manhandled began as a longish short story spread out over two issues of the Saturday Evening Post. Russell Holman expanded it to novel-length in a movie tie-in published by Readers Library (UK) and Grosset & Dunlap (USA).

Womanhandled had no movie tie-in, which is just as well as there are only the faintest traces of Stringer's story in Luther Reed's screenplay.

Stringer's story begins in New York's Waldorf Astoria, at which novelist Baran Bowerman has just given a talk. He is approached by young Glenna van Gelder, who warns that he's being made soft by fawning female fans. Baran tries to toughen himself at a ranch outside Calgary only to find that the cowboys he seeks to emulate have decamped for more lucrative jobs in Hollywood westerns. Coincidentally, Hollywood comes to Alberta to shoot a western. Baran is injured whilst saving the film's leading lady from certain death when a stunt goes wrong. Glenna, who just happens to have been vacationing with her father in Banff, visits our hero as he recovers. It's implied that their story doesn't end there. 

Like "Women-handled," Womanhandled opens in New York, but in Central Park, where well-dressed man of leisure Bill Dana is feeding squirrels. He rescues a small boy who has fallen into the lake. Molly Martin, the boy's, um... she can't be his sister, can she?

Anyway, Bill notices that Molly's carrying a copy of Emerson Hough's North of 36, and so pretends to be a Westerner in order to impress. This works to his advantage as Molly, herself a Westerner, came east as a child after daddy died. She has a thing against Easterners, especially the men:

Bill, like Baran, goes west to make a man of himself in order to win over the girl; and, like Baran, discovers that the true cowboys have decamped for Hollywood. He finds himself working with Bowery bums who round up cattle in flivvers.

Bill ends up spending more time on the links than the range, and is about to board a train east when he receives a letter from Molly saying she is on her way west.

I'll write no more because I don't want to spoil things entirely, except to say that a scene in which the African-American housemaid's family is pushed to pass themselves off as Native Americans has become the subject of some debate amongst those who've seen the film.

Is it racist or a comment on racism?

Wherever you land, keep in mind that it has nothing to do with Arthur Stringer.

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... or maybe not

Handled by the Saturday Evening Post

'Woman-handled'
Arthur Stringer
The Saturday Evening Post, volume  197, issue 44

May 2, 1925

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. 

The opening scene is urban. It's set in New York's Waldorf Astoria, where novelist Baran Bowerman, author of The Passionate Year, has just concluded the third of three talks to various ladies social groups. Amongst the rapt-eyed, fawning female readers he encounters sporty young horsewoman Glenna van Gelder, who ribs him for accepting these sorts of engagements with their pink carnations, hothouse violets, and macaroons.

"Why you're eating it up!" she says. "You love it! And if I don’t get out of the way of this adoring army they're going to trample me down.”

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.”
   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.”

She later warns Baran that he's being "effeminized without knowing it."

From this point on Stringer's story becomes rather silly. The next morning they meet in Central Park, where Baran seeks to demonstrate his non-existent equestrian skills. This in turn leads to fisticuffs – not with Glenna van Gelder, you understand, rather with her riding partner. The novelist next makes for the west in order to toughen himself up. Interestingly, it is the Canadian west, not the American. More interesting still, is the arrival of a "movin' picture outfit," making a western.

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.

Related post:

Gloria Gets Groped