Thomas P. Kelley's Elusive Gorilla's Daughter

The Gorilla's Daughter
Thomas P. Kelley
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950

160 pages 

Note: The Gorilla's Daughter is the most sought-after Canadian paperback. It is also the most notorious, though I would argue this has everything to do with the cover. Because copies are so scarce, and access so limited, I'll be relaying the story of the gorilla's daughter from beginning to end. There will be spoilers. Criticism will be kept to a minimum.

Blonde and beautiful Diana Lynn, nineteen-year-old daughter of archeologist and big game hunter Professor Theodore Lynn, is abducted by Bontu, a five-hundred-pound male gorilla, whist on safari in Equatorial Africa. She'd heard stories of native women who had been carried off by "the hairy men of the trees," but had dismissed them as products of "the wild imagination of the village natives, the witch doctors and the porters." Now, she knew different. Or was she having a nightmare?

But, no, it isn't a bad dream; rather a living nightmare.

Fortunately, the wild imagination of Thomas P. Kelley spares the reader the worst, instead skipping ahead a year to the point Diana gives birth to the "hideous offspring of their union!"

Do you think this impossible? I did, but was soon set straight:

"Oh, you fool. You blind fool. Do you not know history as you should? Can't you realize that the ancient Druids of England mated humans with animals? Don't you realize that the ancient Roman Emperor Caligula, chose a beautiful and snow-white mare for his mistress?"

Blade Runner being my favourite film, and Taffy's Snake Pit Bar being a favourite hangout, this particular example stood out: 

"If you know anything about Egyptian history, you will realize that the great Queen Hetshepsut, always employed an asp – yes, a slimy reptile, a snake – for her moments of love. History can't deny that."

Can't it? In my defence, I minored in Canadian history. For what its worth, I have read Marian Engel's Bear, and do not recall a pregnancy.

Bear
Marian Engel
Toronto: Seal, 1977

Returning to The Gorilla's Daughter, as the title suggests, the "OFFSPRING of MAID and MONSTER" is female, possessing a "shapely form like that of her mother," but with the face of her father. Diana names her Tara... "Tara, the gorilla's daughter!"

Fourteen years pass, during which mother and daughter cement the closest of bonds. Though Tara is unable to communicate verbally, except in the language of the gorillas, she is taught to write and proves herself every bit as intelligent as her English educated mother. Tara grows strong while her mother grows weak. No longer blonde or beautiful, Bontu's abuse has taken a great toll and her body is giving out.

Escape attempts are long in the past; Bontu was always quick to recapture and punish her. Diana will come to accept that she can never return to London society:

In Tara's fifteenth year, there occurs an event that changes everything. Bontu has been relocating his tribe ever eastward so as to avoid encroaching white trophy hunters. When one evening a safari comes uncomfortably close to Bontu's tribe, Diana sees an opportunity. She moves in on the camp late at night, has Tara kill a sentry, then awakens a member of the party. It is at this point that she learns that her dear father spent his remaining years searching for her, before dropping dead of a heart attack. Her fiancé, was similarly dedicated, until scandal arose. A blackmail attempt by bespectacled, ugly, fat Lancashire scullery maid led to his suicide.

The only positive thing Diana takes away from the meeting is a rifle, which she then uses to kill Bontu.

Ill health claims her shortly thereafter.

Tara inherits the rifle and remains with the tribe, which is taken over by a gorilla named Targash. He's neither better nor worse than her father. For three years, Tara stays out of his way until the day Targash kills Taka, the semi-lame gorilla who is her crush. The tribe leader had wanted her for his mate, but the grieving gorilla's daughter stabs Targash to death, thus becoming "Tara, Queen of the tribe of Tara!"

Two more years pass, during which the white men continue to encroach. Tara is running out of territory in which to relocate when Patak, the eldest member of the tribe, tells her of a land of gurgling streams and abundant fruit surrounded by a ring of mountains where the white hunters do not venture.

Here the narrative shifts abruptly to focus on handsome Bob Wickson. The son of American steel baron Andrew J. Wickson, he's "one of those fortunate young men who has too much money" and not much to do. Looking for adventure, he heads for Cape Town where he encounters an old drunk who tells him a story of Atlantis which has the survivors of that mythological sunken continent settling in the heart of Africa where they built a city of untold wealth encircled by "The Forbidden Mountains."

He has a map to sell.

Bob buys it for £2500 – roughly £138,000 today – telling himself that there's one chance in a hundred that the drunk is telling the truth.

I thought this wildly optimistic.

The gamble pays off quickly and the Forbidden Mountains are found in the very next paragraph. As they approach, there is unrest amongst Bob's native guides and porters. It's left to his chief gun-bearer to enlighten:

"The men are afraid, they do not want to go any further. We are approaching the land of the evil spirits, Bwana. Our ancestors have told it is a terrible place of death and destruction, where huge beasts ten times larger than the biggest elephant, fly through the air and devour everything they see!"
   To say that young Bob Wickson was annoyed, would be putting it mildly. 

Bob instructs his men to wait and continues alone. Coincidentally, this is very same instruction given by Tara to her tribe upon reaching the mountains that very same day. Once inside the ring, she finds a paradise as described by Patak... and then she spots Bob from her perch upon a tree:

Tara shoots the panther, saving Bob's life, and jumps to the ground.

Hey, she has a nice personality.

Tara finds Bob intriguing and attractive, despite his short narrow nose. She falls in love, and asks him to be her mate. Bob accepts the proposal, though his motivation is unclear. I suggest it has something to do with a recognizing that Tara will protect and keep him alive.

Soon enough, the pair are captured by the short-legged, long-armed, white-haired descendants of Atlantis, and it is only though Tara's strength that they are able to escape. In fleeing, Bob sprains his ankle and is carried to safety in the gorilla's daughter's arms. She will later save him from another panther and from being sacrificed at the Temple of the Flaming God.

For Tara, the Forbidden Mountains has everything she has desired, Bob most of all. And so, she leads her tribe in the slaughter of the Atlanteans, crushing skulls, and tearing off limbs:

The tribe of Tara made no discrimination as to sex – wives meeting the same fate as their husbands – while infants and children were raised upwards by shaggy paws which dashed their heads against the massive and towering pillars. Screams and shrieks arose, then frantic cries for mercy. But the beasts  of Tara could not understand the words, and mercy was a thing unknown to them.

Curiously, Bob expresses no reaction to the carnage. What's even more strange is that he uses the occasion of the victory to break his engagement to Tara:

"Well, Tara, the truth is that you are not a human. To be sure, you have the most glorious human body that ever trod the earth. But – but your face is that of a beast. Oh, don't you see – you're a freak, a grotesque freak – part human, part beast. If we were ever to go to my country, people would shudder at the sight of you!"

Tara is, of course, only able to write her response: "But your promise. You promised that you would be my mate and that we would have four children!"

She says nothing more, rather collapses on the alter upon which Bob was to have been sacrificed.

Eight days later, Bob's ankle has all but healed. He manages to climb the range and return to his camp, only to find that his guides and porters are gone. The fortunate young man with too much money has two hundred miles to traverse without arms, support or supplies. As the terrible truth sets in, Tara reappears to guides and protect him on a trek that would otherwise result in certain death.

They walk in silence for nearly a week, until they near a friendly native village. Tara turns but Bob can't bear to let her go:

Half-beast or not, he realized that in this strange creature he has found nothing but goodness – loyalty, unselfishness and honesty. Yes, perhaps she was some queer quirk of nature, but there was something in her that was fine, FINE!

He encircles Tara in his arms and holds her body to his, a motion that in her tribe signifies acceptance of a mate. Their embrace is broken by a charging lion. Tara whips out her knife and is killed saving her mate.

FIN 

I lie.

There's more to The Gorilla's Daughter. The novella continues a further three pages in which it is revealed that the narrator learned the story from Bob during a long night spent smoking ciggies atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. There's also a subplot concerning a failed campaign by Mrs C. Anthony Van Carlson of the Boston Carlsons to marry daughter Gloria into the Wickson family. 

This is not their story, it is the story of Tara, the gorilla's daughter.

Bonus: The Gorilla's Daughter ends on page 127, falling far short of the standard News Stand Library title. Padding is provided by a thirty-page science fiction story titled 'Awaken the Dead!' by Halls Wells.

Set in 1947, it concerns a wealthy Wall Street investor who, at age ninety-two, is doing his darnest to stave off death. To this end, he has himself refrigerated so that he might be thawed out when there are cures for his ailments.

Halls Wells that ends well, except for Harley D. Haworth.

About the cover: Is the woman meant to be Diana or Tara? Either way, the illustrator errs in that both are blonde. In fact, Tara is described as having platinum blonde hair.

Object and Access: A typical NSL mass market paperback.  The rear cover copy does indeed consist of excerpts, the lone difference being "blonde." Kelley uses "blond" throughout the novel. I prefer the former.

Library and Archives Canada, McMaster University, and the University of Calgary have copies, but that's it.

My three decade pursuit of The Gorilla's Daughter has failed to yield so much as a sighting. I have bowdler of Fly-by-Night to thank for sending me scans and photocopies.

As of this writing, no copies are listed for sale online.

Related post:

Exclamation Marks Abound!

The Dustiest Bookcase: K is for Kelley

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

They're in storage as we build our new home.

Patience, please.

I Found Cleopatra

Thomas P. Kelley

West Linn, OR: Fax Collector's Editions, [1977]

111 pages

Thomas P. Kelley was a regular in the early years of the Dusty Bookcase. From 2009 to 2012, his writing was the focus of a steady parade of posts, which included reviews of No Tears for Goldie (1949), Bad Men of Canada (1950), and two markedly different versions of The Fabulous Kelley (1968), a loving memoir about his snake oil-selling father.*

All this came to an end my review of 'The Soul Eater', a lost world story Kelley published in the May 1942 number of Uncanny Tales. Of all the things I've written on Kelley, it's my favourite. So what made me stop?

Something to do with the remaining Kelley titles in my collection, I suppose.

I wasn't much interested in taking time to separate truth from fiction in his books about the Donnellys, Simon Gunanoot, and the Mad Trapper of Rat River. Things would've been different if I'd found a copy of this:

After The Black Donnellys and Vengeance of the Black Donnellys, I Found Cleopatra is Kelley's most reprinted work. First published in the Weird Tales (November 1938) – and again in Uncanny Tales (July 1941) – the novel has appeared three times in book form, most recently  in 1980 by Borgo Press. I found and bought my Fax Collector's Editions copy last summer.

It's now in a storage locker just outside the town of Merrickville, Ontario.

Wish it wasn't.

* Here I ignore my growing suspicion that Kelley was the author of No Place in Heaven, a 1949 News Stand Library pulp published under the name "Laura Warren."

Note: Not to be confused with I Found Cléopâtre, the 1988 account of my discovery a Montreal drag bar with the longest and cheapest Happy Hour in the whole damn city.

Related posts:

Thomas P. Kelley: He Kept Finding Cleopatra

Heart of Goldie

Kelley Pulls a Fast One

The King of the Canadian Pulps Bowderized

Exclamation Marks Abound!

The Harlequin Horror That Just Won't Die

The Second Greatest Magazine Cover of All Time

Uncanny Tales, vol. 2, no. 13
January 1942
Illustrator: Bick

Related posts:
The Greatest Magazine Cover of All Time
The Ugliest Canadian Book Cover of All Time
Exclamation Marks Abound!

Exclamation Marks Abound!

The Soul Eater
Thomas P. Kelley
Uncanny Tales, vol. 2, no. 17 (May 1942)

Thomas P. Kelley bragged that when sitting down to write a novel he had "absolutely no idea what [would] happen, how the plot [would] unfold or how the yarn [would] end." I imagine the same was true when writing shorter pieces. Kelley claimed that he could produce three 4000-word stories a day with no rewrites or revisions.

"The Soul Eater" provides a good example of his galloping style. Anything that might slow the onward charge is brushed aside as "difficult to pen," a thing that "defies description". Elements that perhaps should have been mentioned earlier are treated thusly:

There was that one matter – that one important matter I have hitherto omitted – the wondrous flash and glitter that sparked the sky, and which we had plainly seen the previous evening – a glorious glitter of indescribable beauty, rising to the heavens and awe-inspiring – like the scintillating wonders of a thousand sunsets!

Typical Kelley, the plot is stereotypical pulp fiction. It's premise will be familiar to millions. The narrator, Prof John Carruthers, records his story while holed up in a New England mansion. Exactly ten years earlier, with the aid of a large inheritance and a map left by a Chinese mystic, he set out for the Gobi Desert in search of the Valley of Diamonds, "often discussed by the Ancients of China" and, I add, readers of Marvel comics.

Accompanying Carruthers' are a promising young archeologist, a disgraced sea captain and Ace Morgan, a boozing boxer who coulda been a contender. There is hardship to be endured, but things really go wrong when they near the valley and Carruthers has a wet dream. Or has he been visited by a succubus? Never mind. He awakens to find the sea captain missing!

"Captain Farley!" I ejaculated. "He's – he's gone!"

Convinced that the captain has been abducted by someone or something from the valley, the remaining members of the team race onward to find Farley dead. The archeologist is next to disappear, but he's soon discovered alive in an ancient temple:

   In the centre of that mighty hall was a raised, altar-like dais of stone, across which lay the bound body of young Reid. And standing over him, a wild joy of triumph lighting her features, was a naked, yellow-skinned woman, of such a weird, indescribable, barbaric beauty, as to be almost terrifying!
   A tall, nude yellow-skinned woman whose glorious body, in the glow of two nearby torches, seemed as living gold, that flowed and rippled in symmetrical motion with her every movement. A tumbling mass of wavy, jet black hair, fell almost to her ankles. Her shapely breasts, large and firm, seemed as living, yellow globes, and were adorned only with the two huge diamonds clasped to their high tips. And even as we made our silent entrance, she threw back her head in a wild, barbaric laugh, that revealed her white teeth; to gloat over the helpless man before her, then speak in the tongue of ancient China – a language I understood.
   "And so, now you know, rash intruder. Yes, I am Su-Ella, Queen of The Black Star, who comes from that distant world at irregular periods to seek my victims here, and fears only the sunlight. How I am able to pass through the dark, cold wastes of space is a secret known to me alone!"

Next thing you know, Su-Ella is hovering over the young man in bondage and, "her nude breasts rising and falling, her shapely body quivering with desire," sucks his soul from his mouth. Professor and pugilist both take flight. Of the two, Ace proves the faster runner – perhaps because Carruthers can't help but be distracted by Su-Ella's hot bod – and yet it's Ace who gets it: "With arms whipped tightly around him her naked body crushing his". Still running, Carruthers hears "a gurgling, moist and bubbling sound" and turns to see the former boxer "limp in her arms". Just when it looks like Carruthers himself will go flaccid, dawn breaks, the evening is over, and Su-Ella flies away.

Sue Ellen

A mistake in Kelley's story is that Su-Ella is really quite regular. One minute she's telling the men of her  "irregular periods", the next she's on about how she swings by every ten years. Gentlemen, set your watches. A decade having passed, the procrastinating professor scrambles to get down his story:

I must write faster – faster! The hands on the nearby clock are both well on to four o'clock in the morning, and I must finish my story. Already the first streaks of gray are beginning to creep up in the eastern sky. But that same gray not only heralds the approaching dawn – it – it heralds my death! It heralds my ending in a manner so utterly and unthinkably horrible as to be brain-reeling!

Students who have pulled all-nighters will recognize this panic.

     And as I write I wonder. Could it be that she can find me, even in this distant land? It is possible that even at this late hour her hellish power could bring her to me, or me to her? I wonder if – if –
     What – what's that I hear? It sounds like the flapping of wings! It – it is wings! Yes it is – and they are coming closer – closer to the open window. In the name of sanity – oh! oh, my God – what's coming through the wind—

FIN

There is one matter – one important matter I have hitherto omitted – the valley was indeed filled with diamonds. 

Personal note: Kelley's ending took me back to my student days, time served as a clerk in two Montreal video stores, and this image from Media Home Entertainment's packaging for Sleepaway Camp:

A second note: Following last year's post on The Queers of New York, this marks the second time that I've reviewed a work that is not in my collection. I have Wollamshram of Wollamshram's Blog to thank for sending "The Soul Eater" my way.

Thomas P. Kelley: He Kept Finding Cleopatra

Weird Tales
November 1938

Yarns
July 1941

Uncanny Tales
July 1941

I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelly [sic]
Toronto: Export, 1946

I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelley
Linn, OR: Fax Collector's Editions, 1977

Young Tom Kelley, King of the Canadian Pulps

A portrait of the artist as a young man. Here we have Thomas P. Kelley, a very dapper little boy who would grow up to write Bad Men of Canada, No Tears for Goldie , The Gorilla's Daughter and 'The Soul Eater':