The Legs of Mary Roberts

Much of this past weekend was spent rereading Horace Brown's 1947 Whispering City; this in preparing its return to print as the next Ricochet Book. Whispering City is unlike the series' seventeen previous titles in that it is a novelization of a film. The heroine of both versions, young Mary Roberts, works the crime beat at fictional Quebec City newspaper L'Information. Brown himself was a reporter for the all-too-real Ottawa Citizen. I dare say he knew something of how a woman in Mary's position might've been treated:

She got up, not very tall, and walked on good legs to a door marked “M. Durant, Redacteur.” Her grey tweed suit set off her trim figure. Her very carriage seemed to radiate vitality and poise. Two or three pairs of eyes raised to follow her wistfully, then bent back to their tasks. The owners of those eyes had learnt that Mary Roberts was not interested.

The film is perhaps not so realistic. Mary's fellow reporters display no interest in her legs or trim figure. Professionals each and every one, their focus is on copy and the rush to put the paper to bed.

Brown's references to Mary's lower limbs amuse because the film makes nothing of them. This scene, which takes place in Quebec's Palais de Justice, provides a brief, distant, modest glimpse:

Brown's description:

Mary shrugged her shoulders prettily, and tapped briskly along the marble floor, while masculine heads turned to watch her twinkling legs.

Trust me, no one turns to watch.

Key to the plot is a performance of 'Quebec Concerto' by suspected wife-killer Michel Lacoste.

(In reality, the concerto was composed by André Mathieu, who was himself a tragic figure.)

After hearing a rehearsal, Mary returns to “M. Durant, Redacteur.”

“The Concerto is good, yes.” Mary Roberts sat on the edge of the editor’s desk, one shapely leg swinging in fast time with her thoughts. “So’s the story onto which I think I’ve stumbled.”

The scene plays out differently onscreen. Mary doesn't sit on the edge of Durant's desk. She never swings a twinkling leg.

In the film, Durant reaches into a desk drawer to hand the reporter a pistol. Brown's Mary cut her teeth at a New York tabloid; she already carries a gun:

The editor shook his head after her in some bewilderment. So much feminine charm running around on such nice legs should not be so efficient and possessed of that pistol in the handbag.

The pistol features in a key scene. Though smart as a whip, Mary has made a mistake. Chasing the story, she ends up scaling Montmorency Falls with the suspected wife-killer:

Her shapely thighs bared, as she climbed to the ledge where he was waiting. She looked down at her legs ruefully. “Just as I thought,” she said. “My nylons are gone. Guess I should have been wearing slacks for a climb like this. I’ll have to fix my garter.”

The displaced garter is used as an excuse to transfer the pistol from handbag to coat pocket. Mary's shapely thighs are not bared in the film; its ninety-eight minute run time features not so much as a knee.

Horace Brown's final mention of Mary's gams comes in the final pages as she struggles with the story's villain:

Her slim legs kicked futilely at him, became entangled in the evening gown that was to have been her happiness and now would be her shroud. His hand was pulsing hard against her breasts.

The film features no kicking. Not one breast is pulsed.

I'm keen on Whispering City as a film, but not on its ending; Horace Brown's is much better.

A muddy copy of the celluloid Whispering City can be seen – gratis – through the Internet Archive. As of this writing, only one copy Horace Brown's novelization is listed for sale online. Price: $316.50.

Whispering City returns to print in October. Price: $15.95.

Update: Whispering City has made the Globe & Mail list of sixty-two books to read this fall.

Related posts:

Quebec City Noir

Horace Brown: Saturday Matinee

Quebec City Noir

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global Publishing, 1947
190 pages

Whispering City may be Canada's very first film noir. This 75-year-old paperback may be the very first novelization of a Canadian film. The heroine of both is Mary Roberts, a young crime reporter with Quebec City newspaper l'Information. Mary is preparing to leave work one day when she receives a call that a woman has been hit by a truck. The accident victim, faded vidette Renée Brancourt, was once a big deal in Quebec until her lover, Robert Marchand, plunged over Montmorency Falls. The struggle to accept his death led Renée to be institutionalized. In recent years, she'd been living in a squalid flat on rue Sous-le-Cap in Quebec's Lower Town.

La rue Sous-le-Cap. Quebec City, 1947

Renée has held firm to her belief that Robert's death was no accident. She tells Mary as much from her Hôtel-Dieu hospital bed, pointing an accusing finger at Albert Frédéric.

Surely not! The man is not only the most respected lawyer in Quebec, he's a patron of the arts!

Frédéric is currently supporting talented Michel Lacoste, whose Quebec Concerto will soon be making its debut at the Palais Montcalm. Unfortunately, the composer's work on final revisions s stymied by Blanche, his shrew of a wife. Just you try working on your concerto with big band music blaring in the background. Can't be done.

Michel breaks her 78. She slaps him. He storms out, ties one on, and shows up in the wee hours at Frédéric's palatial home. It isn't long before Michel passes out. When he does, Frédéric dons the composer's overcoat and sneaks off to the Lacoste flat. His intent is to murder Blanche, just as he had Robert Marchand all those years earlier, but he arrives to find she's committed suicide. A note is pinned to her pillow, which Frédéric quickly pockets.

The following morning, Frédéric convinces a hungover and confused Michel that he killed his wife in a fit of rage. The lawyer then offers the composer a deal: Frédéric will work to save Michel from the hangman if he kills Mary Roberts. The reporter's investigation of the old Marchand murder is getting too close to the truth.

The story and screenplay are straight out of Hollywood – Americans George Zuckerman and Michael Lennox wrote the former; Americans Rian James and Leonard Lee wrote the latter – but adapt well to Quebec City.

Brown sticks close to the script, though there are departures. He improves on the dialogue and wisely does away with the talkative sleigh driver who introduces the film. Brown gives Mary Roberts a backstory as an American who had begun her career writing for a New York tabloid. In one memorable scene not featured in the film, Mary and Frédéric discuss Canadian painters. If anything, Brown depicts the lawyer as a more sinister figure – clearly a psychopath – making the book all the more dark.

Whispering City is far from a great film – its current 6.2 rating on IMDb seems fair – though I must say it gets better with each viewing. See for yourself; the film is now in the public domain. Of the muddy prints available on YouTube, this appears to be the best:

Sadly, Brown's novelization is nowhere near so accessible. This is a shame because his Whispering City improves on the film. It's easily the best Horace Brown novel I've read.

I wouldn't be surprised that it gets better with each reading.

Dedication: 

Paul L'Anglais was the producer of Whispering City and its French-language version La Forteresse.

Fun fact: In 1952, the film Whispering City was rereleased under the title Crime City. Seems a bit unfair to Quebec, especially when one considers that there's only one criminal.

Object: A mass market paperback bound in thin glossy covers. Whispering City is one of a very few books published by Brown's Global Publishing Company. Curiously, the spine features the name of its distributor, Streamline Books. I purchased my copy a year ago from a Burlington, Ontario bookseller. Price: US$89.95.

The novel is preceded by an enthusiastic foreword by the author followed by a "CAMERA-QUIZZ" in which readers are challenged to place twelve stills from the film in the correct order.

Don't mean to brag, but I had no trouble.

Access: The University of Calgary has a copy.

Related posts:

Horace Brown: Saturday Matinee

Horace Brown: Fritzi in Flight or a Coincidence?

Horace Brown: From Penthouse to Pavement

No Whack on the Side of the Head

Gordon Pinsent's Gift

A Gift to Last
Gordon Pinsent and Grahame Woods
Toronto: Seal, 1978
215 pages

Gordon Pinsent celebrated his ninetieth birthday last summer. I recognized the day – July 12th – by raising a glass and downing its contents... and then I thought of this book.

A Gift to Last was a Salvation Army Thrift Store score. Did I pay fifty cents or a dollar? The sight of it brought back memories. A Gift to Last began in 1976 as a critically-acclaimed made-for-TV Christmas movie. Its popularity spawned a television series that ran for three seasons before Pinsent pulled the plug. 

In any other country, A Gift to Last would be aired annually as a Christmas classic. I saw it only once, in my adolescence, and so have to rely on this novelization. The early pages follow a familiar pattern. We begin with Harrison Sturgess – his very name suggests a stick-in-the-mud – the father of two children: sensible, strong-willed Jane, and "pale-skinned, fragile-looking" Clement. You might guess which child Harrison favours.

Clement is the novel's protagonist, though his Uncle Edgar is the hero. Portrayed by Pinsent, Edgar is larger than life and stronger than nature. He appears on Christmas Eve 1898, having made his way through a blinding snowstorm to his bother's expansive home in small town Ontario. Edgar is the black sheep of the family in that he joined the Royal Canadian Regiment, instead of following dour brothers Harrison and James into the Sturgess tannery business. A joker, a singer, a teller of tall tales, and heavy drinker, Edgar has an eye for the ladies. You might guess which brother this reader favours. 

I believe the novelization is faithful to its source material, but can't say to what degree because both movie and series haven't aired in over four decades. My memory is just not that good. I do remember that the movie was framed by Clement as an old man looking back on that Christmas of his youth. The novelization abandons all things 1976, instead presenting a linear story that begins in fin de siècle Tamarack (the series' fictitious small Ontario town) and ends just a few year later. Things happen, and as in the very best television, strength lies in the ways in which characters react and interact in the face of these events.

The first episode of the series – chapters four through six in the novelization – revolves around the illness and death of Harrison Sturgess (because Alan Scarfe, who'd played the character in the movie, was committed to the Stratford Festival). His unexpected demise changes the dynamic of the Sturgess family. In black silk weeds and weeping veil, the widowed Clara withdraws from her children, retreating into memories of her late husband. Cold and calculating James sees his chance to not only expand the tannery, which Harrison opposed, but control his later brother's finances. Eleven-year-old Clement, who is told he is now the man of the house, struggles with the distant relationship he had with his dead father. Edgar, who recognizes his surviving brother's conniving, is torn between duty to family and the Dominion.

Following the hot mess "shapeless jumble" that was The Whiteoaks of Jalna (1972), A Gift to Last is an all-too-rare example of Canadian television period drama. Like the programme, the novelization is rich in history. In her mourning, Clara recalls a trip to Montreal, where William Notman took her portrait, and she visited Savage, Lyman & Co on Notre-Dame Street.

Grahame Woods' novelization is unembellished, as one might expect from a former screenwriter. He understands pacing, story, and the use of dialogue, making for an entertaining adaptation of an entertaining show.

Novelizations of television programmes seem such quaint things today. Relics of a time before Betamax, next to the Fotonovel, they were the only way to revisit shows and movies on demand. Not that A Gift to Last made it to Betamax or VHS or Laserdisc or DVD. The series has never been offered by any streaming service. Hell, CBC Gem doesn't even offer The Beachcombers. 

How I wish I could see it again. Until then, I've got this.

A Christmas Miracle: I read A Gift to Last on Christmas Day, and wrote the above on Boxing Day.  The very next day, December 27, someone going by the name of Chance Wolf uploaded the movie to YouTube:

As it turns out, my memory wasn't so far off. The novelization pares down the script somewhat. Old man Clement appears more than I remember, and is much more sour. I didn't remember anything of the father's early morning drinking. Even more remarkable, my memory held nothing of actress Barbara Gordon's orange lounging attire.

Credits: The cover credits the novel to Gordon Pinsent and Graham Woods. The title page clarifies:

Trivia: Gordon Pinsent co-wrote and sang the theme song. It was released as a single by the CBC and on South Africa's Plum label.

His character is also given to singing. Lines several songs are found throughout the book, but for all my efforts I haven't been able to identify one. Could they be Pinsent's own?  Here's a example, from the family gathering to see Edgar off to the Second Boer War:

By eight o'clock, things had got quite serious and maudlin. Edgar decided that enough was enough, did a quick shuffle-step and started to sing. 

          In the middle of Auntie's petunias,

          Where I thought I'd rest for a spell,

          There along came a couple of lilies

          And their names were Virginia and Nell... 

"Not another word of that song, you old fool, Lizzy sniffed back a tear.

     "But you taught it to me."

     She slapped at him. "I did not. Have you ever heard anything quite so foolish.

Darn that Lizzy Sturgess for cutting him off.

More trivia: In 1978, the made-for-TV movie was adapted to the stage by Alden Nowlan and Walter Learning.

Object and Access: A mass market paperback. Eleven stills feature on the interior covers. Were this an American production they would've been interior plates. The novel itself is followed by the first two chapters of Charles Templeton's thriller An Act of God, "to be on sale August 23rd [1978], wherever paperbacks are sold."

As far as I've been able to tell, A Gift to Last enjoyed just one printing. I've not been able to find it in any library catalogue. A handful of used copies are listed for sale online, ranging in price from US$3.89 to US$34.97. Condition is a factor.

The Queer Queen Kong

Queen Kong
James Moffatt
London: Everest, 1977
172 pages

James Moffatt ranks as one of Canada's most prolific novelists – second only to romance writer W.E.D. Ross – but where Ross is pretty much forgotten, even amongst aficionados of the nurse novel (his speciality), Moffatt has developed a remarkably strong cult following. His greatest achievement – and biggest sellers – were commissioned works designed to exploit skinhead culture. The first, Skinhead (1970), written in his late forties, was followed by Suedehead (1971), Boot Boys (1972), Skinhead Escapades (1972), Skinhead Girls (1972), Top Gear Skin (1973), Trouble for Skinhead (1973), Skinhead Farewell (1974), and Dragon Skin (1975); while churning out dozens of other novels, my favourite being 1973's Glam.

All were published under the name "Richard Allen," one of Moffatt's forty-six pseudonyms. It's likely that there were others.

A paperback writer, Moffatt is thought to have written close to three hundred published novels. He shared the secret to his prolificity in a 1972 interview with the BBC:

JM: I like to sit down in front of a typewriter - start writing from the title. Play it by that. The title gives me the idea, it gives me the whole germ of the story, and I continue it right through.
BBC: How many words a day do you get through?
JM: On an average, I get through about ten thousand words a day, when I'm meeting a deadline. If I have a month to write a book in, I may get through five hundred, a thousand words a day, until the last week - then I shot up to the ten thousand.
BBC: Do you ever go back and rewrite stuff?
JM: I never go back and rewrite. I don't believe in editing. I don't believe in rereading more than two pages on the following day. I believe a professional writer should have the story in his head, even if he's doing two, three stories at the one time. He should keep all story threads in his head.

In the lengthy James Moffatt bibliography, Queen Kong stands out as an oddity. His lone movie novelization, it challenged the author's method. Here Moffatt was obliged to follow a plot laid down by screenwriters Frank Agrama and Ronald Dobrin.

Queen Kong was meant to exploit King Kong, the 1976 blockbuster starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lang. RKO and producer Dino De Laurentiis were not amused. Arguing before Justice Goulding, Their solicitor, Nicholas Brown-Wilkinson, the future Baron Brown-Wilkinson, expressed their distaste:"Our view is that it is an appalling script. It is a script which the plaintiffs feel cannot do anything but repercuss poorly on their reputation if it is thought that King Kong is associated with that."

The lawyer for Dexter Films, which had sunk US$635,000 into Queen Kong, countered that the film was a "light-hearted satire." In this, I think, they encountered an unexpected response from Justice Goulding: "I do not think that in any real sense the relationship of Queen Kong to King Kong can be saids to be that of La belle Hélène to The Iliad. King Kong was not a serious work. It was a film of pure, light-hearted entertainment spiced with horror."

And there you have it, Queen Kong cannot be considered a light-hearted satire of King Kong because King Kong itself is light-hearted; the two are just too similar.

I can't argue.

Queen Kong owes more to the Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack 1933 original, than the 1976 remake. As the title suggests, much of the humour derives from role reversal. It stars Rula Lenska as Luce Habit, a tough-as-nails director in search of a leading man for her next motion picture. She finds one in Ray Fay (Robin Askwith), a petty thief with no acting experience, whom she spots in a London market. Luce drugs Ray, carries him to an awaiting ship, The Liberated Lady, and sets sail for the African nation of Lazanga, Where They Do The Conga. Once there, its native population – primarily women, primarily white, almost invariably blonde – kidnap Ray as a human sacrifice to a gigantic female gorilla they call Kong.

However, Kong falls in love with the would-be actor, keeping him safe and healthy while Luce and her all-female crew plan a rescue. In the ensuing scenes, Kong is captured, is transported to London, and is put on display in chains, bra, and panties. At the event, Luce and Ray do the dance of Lazanga, Where They Do The Conga, upsetting the creature. Kong breaks her bonds and goes on a rampage through the city, destroying buildings and one low-flying 747. She manages to find Ray, and saves him from being molested by Luce in an upscale hotel room. Kong climbs Big Ben, and sets Ray down. He uses a helicopters loudspeaker to call off the attack:

"You cannot destroy her, for she represents all women everywhere; women forced into a mould to satisfy the images of male chauvinism. If you destroy this beautiful beast, you're destroying a lifetime of female struggle. Yes, she represents woman; woman struggling to find her identity in a society viewing her as a kitchen slave and sex object."

Ray's speech is lengthy, but effective. The women of London take to the streets, saving Kong, and transforming society forever. Kong is returned to Lazanga, Where They Do The Conga, with Ray, leaving sad, cast-off Luce tearily hoping that Ray would be interested in a threesome.

For the most part, Moffatt follows Agrama and Dobrin's script, making use of nearly all their dialogue, no matter how bad. These lines, from the novel, are virtually identical to those delivered by Lenska, as Luce, in the film:

"Through the genius of the Kodak laboratories I am able to make home movies that look like the professional films one sees during the second half of the bill in any local cinema. However, the fault with the majority of home movies is that people just smile and wave into the camera lens. In my award-winning pics nobody waves at the camera. That's what I'm famous for – not one wave!"
     Even as she finished speaking a gigantic wave hit the small boat, whooshed over the decks and drenched Luce.
     "Well," the Habit ruefully admitted, "maybe one wave!"

As might  be expected, there is padding, the most obvious being the inclusion of "SOHO", a 48-line prose poem by someone named Tomi Zauner. But the most interesting – and jarring –  difference between the film and the novelization concerns the depiction of Ray Fay. Where the film has him as as an asexual pot-head, who looks like a member of The Sweet...

...Moffatt portrays him as a homosexual hippie.

The Ray Fay of the film has no backstory. Moffatt adds a fumbled tumble with a teenage girl, which leaves him with a preference to men. Gay Ray Fay is a "fag" – the word appears dozens of times in the novel – and he's not the only one. The men of Lazanga, Where They Do The Conga are gay, and as Luce laments, "half the blokes you met in London are also queens."

Luce Habit pursues her leading man, dressing Ray in robes and feathered boas, while she wears pant-suits and tuxedos. This passage from the novel, which follows a spanking administered by the director, does not feature in the film:

Ray, unable to keep up his lung-torturing scream, felt himself go all limp – \wrists, too. Like a sad sack he tilted forward into Luce's welcoming arms.
     I'll protect you Ray, Luce whispered, hugging him to her gorgeous bosom.
     "Oh, God!" the star-in making moaned, feeling queer all over.

This scene does:

A man with the nicest, cleanest bone through his nose rushed from a hut – and called in a bush-telegram voice" "Oh, Mr Tarzan... Mr Tarzan – your wife Jane is on the vine!"
     Ray declined to accept the call although he trembled in an anticipation off a Tarzan-Fay link-up. What a Western Union that would be!
     He roamed deep into the village complex. The hits with bamboo supports fascinated him. Thatched roofs a la Dorset village cuteness appealed. Weren't they quaint! What looked to be a village queen's hut loomed large in his sights. He had a feeling about these things. He peered inside, found a villager scrubbing a toilet bowl. The old male "dear" swung, faced him, black teeth in an otherwise normal white set glistening.
     "Make your toilet as clean as your mouth," the native fag smiled, thrusting an Ajax bottle at Ray.

Moffatt's ending is different to that of the film in that suggestions of bisexuality and beastialty do not figure. The final chapter ends with Luce Habit going to bed with her female talent agent.

The agent's name is Ima Goodbody.

A thoroughly dislikable novelization to a terrible movie, it's not redeemed by a happy ending.

Trivia: Frank Agrama and Ronald Dobrin collaborated on just one other film: Dawn of the Mummy (1981). It concerns scantily dressed fashion models who disturb an ancient Egyptian tomb.

Dedication and Acknowledgement: 

Object: A mass market paperback featuring eight glossy pages of film stills. The author's name is misspelled on both the front cover and spine. The back cover gives indication that the book was sold in Canada, though I've yet to come across a copy. I purchased mine last year from a UK bookseller. Price: £4 (with a further £9 for shipping).

Access: WorldCat lists five libraries with copies, none of which are in Canada. The closest to me is held in the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library of Gustavus Adolphus College in St Paul, Minnesota.

Beware the British bookseller who entices by offering a Fair copy at one American dollar – and then charges US$24.95 for shipping.

Queen Kong – the Sensational Film – can be seen here on YouTube.

Related post:

Whither the Nurse Novel?

The Neverending Story without a Name

A follow-up to Monday's very long post on The Story without a Name. Was it the longest? I can't be sure. This one will be shorter. Promise.

Meet Laverne Caron, winner of the contest to give name to the story without a name… or is it that he renamed The Story without a Name? Anyway, he won with Without Warning.

Pauline Pogue of Ulvalde, Texas, placed second for Phantom Powers. Third prize went to Victor Carlyle Spies of Barrett, California. He suggested The Love Dial, which was easily the worst title of the lot. Yes, worse than The Courage of Alan Holt, The Secret of Alan Holt and The Adventures of Alan Holt, all of which made the short list and were awarded cash prizes.

Thomas M. Malloy of Quebec City was the lone Canadian winner. I regret to report that his suggested title, Rays of Death, wasn't terribly imaginative; after all, the story revolves around the invention of a death ray. The Death Beam was another finalist.

Laverne Caron deserved to win. Without Warning was by far the best title. It suggests immediacy, action, and – bonus – recycles a word from The Story without a Name.*

Photoplay, September 1926

The $2500 award allowed Caron to quit his job as a machinist and devote his life to writing. The January 1925 issue of Photoplay was most enthusiastic:

In spite of his youth, Mr. Caron has already won a prize in the Author's League contest. He used the money won in that contest to take a course with the Palmer Institute of Authorship.
     His ambition is to obtain a position as a staff scenariast and make picture-writing his life work.

And that's the last we've ever heard of Laverne Caron.

Russell Holman had a better time of it. An ad man, he had a steady gig at Paramount that lasted well into the 'fifties. The Story without a Name was his second and final collaboration with Arthur Stringer. As with the first, Manhandled, the Canadian provided the basic story and a few chapters; Holman did the rest.

Stringer's initial contributions, untouched by Holman's hand, ran August through November 1924 in the pages of Photoplay. Neglected American illustrator Douglas Duer provided the pictures. He did a good job in capturing the melodrama of it all, though I do wonder about that second October illustration. Could be that he saw the episode as just too silly. I know I did.

Enjoy!

August 1924

August 1924

September 1924

September 1924

October 1924

October 1924

November 1924

November 1924

A Bonus:

19181 Dunbury Ave, Detroit, home of the man who named The Story without a Name.

* Might Caron have been influenced by the conclusion to chapter eleven (of twenty-six)? Seems a stretch, but I'm putting it out there:

"Better grab some sleep now, buddy," he said grimly to Alan. "Because you're in for a big day. And no more monkey-shines or I'll blow your head off without giving you the warning I did the last time."

Related post:

Jazz Age Death Ray, Baby!

Jazz Age Death Ray, Baby!

The Story without a Name
Arthur Stringer and Russell Holman
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1924

The story without a name is not nearly as important as its title. Any old story would've done. It's pure product, born of Hollywood, conceived as a gimmick: release a film "without a name" and offer cash for title suggestions.

How closely the novel matches the product is anyone's guess; it's a lost film. And because it's a lost film, I'll be posting all eight stills featured in the book. And because you're unlikely to read the novel – there's no reason why you should – I'll be sketching out the plot from beginning to end.

This is the second Stringer I've read this year to feature a car crash. In the first, The Wine of Life (1921), a spurned lover sends his auto flying off an embankment into Lake Erie. The incident in this novel produces a much happier result, bringing about the meeting of Mary Walsworth and garage mechanic Alan Holt.

"Fresh and fragrant as apple-blossoms in cool summer white", Mary happens to be the daughter of Admiral Charles Pinckney Walsworth, head of the Naval Consulting Board in Washington, DC. Quite a coincidence this, as Alan is working on an invention he hopes to present before the selfsame board: "a device for triangulating radio rays, concentrating them into a single ray of such tremendous force that it would sink ships and set fire to cities."

Admiral Walsworth is unimpressed. "I've had exactly twenty 'death-ray' inventions offered me in the last seven months," he grumbles. "None of them is worth anything. The thing is simply impossible. And stay away from my daughter!"

That last bit in italics is mine; it doesn't appear in the book, though it could have.

Oh, Alan seems a nice enough fellow, and he has been awfully helpful, but Walsworth would remind Mary that he's "a garage-employee in a country ex-blacksmith shop". The admiral cares not one wit that the lad served in his Navy during the Great War, and ignores the fact that Alan's prototype actually works. The rest of the Consulting Board isn't so prejudiced, and offers the young inventor funds to perfect "the most important invention since wireless had been discovered".

Would that security had also been offered.

As Alan works on his death ray device, dark forces gather. Walsworth falls under the spell of a femme fatale, a mysterious tramp wanders outside the grounds and two thugs pose as government agents. All are in the employ of international criminal mastermind Mark Drakma, who intends to sell Alan's invention to a foreign power.

Mary is kidnapped, bound, and thrown into the tonneau of a touring car. Alan too is kidnapped, but as bondage plays a lesser part he's afforded numerous opportunities for escape. One involves an aeroplane!

Sadly, our hero fails at every turn. He and Mary are reunited on a ship somewhere in the Atlantic, where Drakma demands Alan make him a death ray device. If he refuses?

"I've some choice specimens in my working crews off the islands. You'd rather see her thrown into a cage of tigers, I fancy, than passed on to one of those gangs of rum-swilling cutthroats. But as sure as you're standing there I'll put her aboard the foulest schooner I own and leave her there until even you wouldn't want her!"

Drakma's words fire the inventor's imagination:

The helpless youth raised his stricken eyes to the face of the woman he loved. In that face he saw pride and purity. She impressed him as something flower-like and fragile, something to be sheltered and cherished and kept inviolate, something to die for, if need be, before gross hands should reach grossly for her.

Alan agrees to master criminal's terms, but is overturned by Mary, who gives a rousing speech about love of country. A real trooper, she displays great optimism in the face of grossly groping hands:

"It can't be for long, Alan," broke in the girl, her head poised high and her hands clenched hard as she was seized and thrust toward the rail-opening. "And we're doing it for the flag, dear, that men like this daren't even fly!"

Alan is dumped on a remote cay and is told that he'd better get to building that death ray device if he wants to keep Mary inviolate. The flaw in this plan will later be made evident when Alan builds the thing, then uses it to down one of Drakma's aeroplanes.

Now, to be fair to the criminal mastermind, it could be that he expected the cay's other two residents, Don Potter and his "spiggoty" lady friend Dolores to keep a watch on the young inventor.

Potter stands out as the lone character with a bit of flesh on his bones. A bitter and bloated Harvard man, he served valiantly during the Great War, only to be betrayed by his country. "Come back and found they'd taken my liquor away from me", he tells Alan. Short years later, Potter's in charge of Drakma's rum-running distribution centre. Just the occupation for a boozehound.

The shadow of the Great War hangs over this novel. Alan had secured his widowed Quaker mother's blessing to fight overseas by selling the conflict as the War to End All Wars. He couldn't have been more wrong, of course, which must have made dinner conversation about his death ray all the more difficult.

"Once I've got it into shape," he outlined his intentions to her, "I'll offer it to the Navy. If they take it, this country will be placed in a position where the rest of the world will be afraid of us. And the United States will be able to prevent wars between other nations simply by threatening to jump in with the death ray and burn the offenders off the face of the earth."

I wasn't at all convinced.

Being a drunk, Potter never notices the crashed plane, nor does he glom onto the fact that his prisoner is building a raft at the other end of the cay. Alan escapes, taking the death ray device with him. He makes for the foul schooner on which Mary is being held captive, and is quickly overpowered by rum-swilling cutthroats.

If only he'd thought to use his death ray device.

A fire breaks out, as fires do in adventure stories. In the ensuing confusion, Alan and Mary escape on the raft. Drakma's ship gives chase until the US Navy shows up and kills all the crooks.

Again, death rays do not figure.

This brings me to one of the most disappointing and mysterious aspects of the novel. For reasons perhaps known only to Stringer, Holman and Paramount Pictures, Alan never uses his death ray device when in danger. Only once, when downing the aeroplane, does he aim it at the enemy. Other than that it's used to pierce a hole in a small metal plate, destroy a fresh tub of ice cream and give an innocent, unsuspecting old man a series of heart attacks…

You know, maybe Alan isn't such so nice after all. What kind of guy wastes ice cream?

The book disappoints further in that not one of the images from the film shows Alan's death ray device. Tech geeks have to settle for actors staring at a radio.

Another novel that ends in a wedding, I'm afraid. Stringer and Holman forget about the Holts' Quakerism by holding the happy event in "the little elm-shaded church in Latham where Alan and his mother had always worshiped." One sentence begins, "As the old clergyman droned…" I nearly gave up at that point, but stuck it out.

There was less than a page to go.

A Bonus:

Mary, Alan and the death ray device (Photoplay, July 1924)

Bloomer:

"She nearly cost us your 'death-ray' machine and she tried to lead me to an ambush at Drakma's that might have cost me my honor, if not my life. She made love to me with one hand, so to speak, while she attempted to pick my pocket with the other."

Trivia I: The winning suggestion, Without Warning, was announced in the January 1925 issue of Photoplay. Both film and novel were rereleased under this title.

Trivia II: Unreliable and unstable science fiction author F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre claimed to have seen The Story without a Name. His captious review features in the film's IMDb entry.

Trivia III: Forgotten film stars Antonio Mareno and Agnes Ayres were cast as Alan and Mary. The villain Drakma was played by Tyrone Power, father of the more famous Tyrone Power. The senior Power died – quite literally in his son's arms – while filming the 1932 remake of The Miracle Man, based on the novel by Montrealer Frank L. Packard.

Object: A 312-page hardcover supplemented by eight plates depicting scenes from the Paramount Pictures picture. I purchased by copy in April from a bookseller in western New York. Price: US$15. Is it a first? One never really knows with Grosset & Dunlap. I've seen a red-boarded variant.

Access: Though not plentiful, copies of The Story without a Name begin at the low price of US$10. Copies with dust jackets – there are three – can be had for as little as US$60.

Copies of Without Warning are less common. That said, all four currently listed online have their dust jackets. Strange but true. Prices range from US$60 to US$85. Condition is a factor.

A warning about Without Warning: This edition features only four of the plates featured in The Story without a Name.

Twelve of our academic libraries hold copies, as do public libraries serving the residents of Toronto and London.

Related post:

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