... or maybe not
06 November 2024
01 November 2024
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.
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:
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.”
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.
31 October 2024
This Harlequin Halloween, a Dick in a Box
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| 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.
So,be careful this Halloween fellas. Sure, those teen-age "B" girls are now in their eighties and nineties, but who's to say they aren't still on the lookout for suckers.
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).
Allen died at age fifty-one. His thirty-three novels were written in his last fifteen years. Hilda Wade, novel number thirty-four, was being serialized in The Strand at the time of his death, It was completed by friend Arthur Conan Doyle, who followed Allen's outline of the final two chapters. The last is titled 'The Episode of the Dead Man Who Spoke' (February 1900).
Allen's death inspired tributes, Richard Le Gallienne's being the longest. It begins:
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 is off by a day in that Allen died on the 25th. The "long and painful and obscure illness" was determined to have been liver cancer.
Le Gallienne continues:
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.
Well over a century later, there is no statue to Allen, but there is something better. Erected in 2008, it takes the form of a metal arch designed by Lucy Quinnell spanning Allen Court in Dorking, the closest town to the author's Surrey home. Look closely at its base and you'll see the author in the midst of composition.
I have fellow plaque enthusiast Nick Harrison to thank for these images:
England may be apt to take some time in recognition of its rarer sprits, but here in Canada they are seldom recognized at all. This country has no statue, no arch, no court to the memory of Grant Allen; there is not so much as a plaque. In this one way, Grant Allen, the most remarkable Canadian writer of the nineteenth century, is anything but unique.
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Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen 24 February 1848, Wolfe Island, Canada West - 25 October 1899, Hindhead, Haslemere, Surrey RIP |
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