A short note to those in the National Capital Region and others thereabouts. Later this month, I'll be speaking at the Royal Canadian Legion in Merrickville as part of the Merrickville Arts Guild's Conversations series.
Arts Guild members: free.
A brief addendum to last week's post on Basil King's 1912 novel The Street Called Straight.
Seven Basil King novels have made it to the silver screen thus far, the earliest being a 1915 adaptation of The Wild Olive (1910). The most recent, Tides of Passion, is based on King's 1903 novel In the Garden of Charity.
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| Moving Picture World, 21 February 1920 |
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| Moving Picture World, 6 March 1920 |
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| Moving Picture World, 11 December 1920 |
The Street Called Straight
By the author of The Inner Shrine [Basil King]
New York: Harper, 1912
415 pages
Olivia Guion seems a most dislikable character. As a young woman of eighteen she quite literally turned her back on a marriage proposal. Olivia had not said a word, rather she'd stood up and, "fanning herself languidly, walked away."
See what I mean?
The young man left seated awaiting her reply was Peter Davenant. His love for Olivia was such that he could not help himself, even though he expected rejection.
But silence?
After the final course, the ladies retire to another room leaving Davenant alone with Olivia's father Hector Guion and her much older cousin Rodney Temple, Director of the Department of Ceramics in the Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts. Davenant's evening becomes still more uncomfortable as unwitting and unwilling witness to Guion admission that he.... Well, what exactly?
Hector Guion is one of the most respected men in Boston. He heads an investment firm, established by his grandfather, which handles the old money of Old Money. Guion appears to have brought the business to new heights, as evidenced by his increasingly lavish lifestyle, when in fact Olivia's papa has been embezzling his clients' investments. Now, the jig is up. Guion expects the evening will be his last as a free man.
Peter Davenant is an entirely different sort. His entrée to the dining table shared by Guoins and Temples comes by way of adoption. Born Peter Hallett, "his parents according to the flesh" were missionaries in China. Both died young, leaving their church to care for their son. He spent several years in an orphanage before being taken in and given a new name by childless Bostonians Tom and Sarah Davenant. Thus was the boy elevated to a level that would, at age twenty-four, bring the humiliating marriage proposal.
As the narrator notes, "the years between twenty-four and thirty-three are long and varied." In those nine years, Davenant amassed a significant fortune through an investment in a copper mine somewhere in the region of Lake Superior. These newfound riches cut Davenant loose from all moorings, setting him adrift. He has indeed been twice around the world since leaving Boston. On his second tour du monde Davenant returns to the Chinese city of Hankou, his birthplace.
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| Hankou, China, c.1880, about the time Davenant would have been born. |
It was curious. If there was anything in heredity, he ought to have felt at least some faint impulse from their zeal; but he never had. He could not remember that he had ever done anything for any one. He could not remember that he had ever seen the need of it. It was curious. He mused on it – mused on the odd differences between one generation and another, and on the queer way in which what is light to the father will sometimes become darkness in the son.
It was then that he found the question raising itself within him, “Is that what’s wrong with me?”
The query took him by surprise. It was so out of keeping with his particular kind of self-respect that he found it almost droll. If he had never given himself to others, as his parents had, he had certainly paid the world all he owed it. He had nothing wherewith to reproach himself on that score.
Back in Boston, in the aftermath of the dinner party, he decides to rescue Hector Guion by giving him his riches. Olivia is another beneficiary in that the gift will enable the Guion family to dodge a scandal that might otherwise endanger her engagement to Rupert Ashley. Hector Guion is eager to accept the offer, but not so his daughter... until she realizes that several elderly women might be cast out on the street as a result of her father's transgression.
All looks to work out until Ashley arrives from the Old Country and thrusts a spanner into the works.
There is much to admire about Basil King's novels, intricate plots being foremost. The Street Called Straight is an exception. Though simple, it is no less enjoyable owing to the ways in which the story affects its characters. Hector Guion is the first to undergo transformation.
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| Harper's Magazine, February 1912 |
The years between twenty-four and thirty-three are indeed long and varied, but so too are the years between eighteen and twenty-seven. No one character is stronger and more attractive than the woman who at age eighteen walked away from a marriage proposal fanning herself.
Bloomer: This one is far longer than the norm. Bear with me.
We begin with Devenant being in "a position from which he could not withdraw," facing "a humiliation to be dislodged from." I'm probably making too much of his moments "face to face with Olivia Guion" and am really going out on a limb with "laying up the treasure," but the final two sentences most certainly qualify as a bloomer:
As he was apparently able to shoulder it, it would have been better to let him do it. In that case he, Peter Davenant, would not have found himself in a position from which he could not withdraw, while it was a humiliation to be dislodged from it. But, on the other hand, he would have missed his most wonderful experience. There was that side to it, too. He would not have had these moments face to face with Olivia Guion which were to be as food for his sustenance all the rest of his life. During these days of discussion, of argument, of conflict between his will and hers, he had the entirely conscious sense that he was laying up the treasure on which his heart would live as long as it continued to beat. The fact that she found intercourse with him more or less distasteful became a secondary matter. To be in her presence was the thing essential, whatever the grounds on which he was admitted there.Trivia: Published anonymously in May 1912, all that was known was that the same hand had penned The Inner Shrine, which had been biggest selling novel of 1909. There had been suggestions that Edith Wharton or Henry James had written that novel and its follow-up The Wild Olive (1910).
The book's healthy condition was no doubt aided by the notice that appears on its front flap (right).
As I write, just one copy of the first edition in jacket is listed online. Price: US$100. A jacketless copy in not so great condition is being offered by a Nova Scotia bookseller at C$5, which seems an incredible bargain.
The British first, published in 1912 by Methuen, is nowhere in sight, though later printings are available for purchase.
In 1920, Grosset & Dunlop issued a photoplay edition with plates from the film. Copies start at US$13.50.
The novel first appeared – or began appearing – as a serialization that ran in Harper's Monthly Magazine during the first seven months of 1912. The book landed in bookstores in the fifth month of that year.
The Street Called Straight is available online in both book form and serialization courtesy of the Internet Archive. Those who choose to read the novel in serialization will be rewarded with four Lowell illustrations that were not included in the finished product. I've included one of the February 1912 illustrations above, but this one from January 1912 is by far my favourite:
"When was the last time you saw a good movie about a kidnapping?"
"A good one?" I asked. "I can't remember any."– John Craig, If You Want to See Your Wife Again...
Broadcast that same evening, Your Money or Your Wife was based on the John Craig novel If You Want to See Your Wife Again..., a comic thriller in which a retired soap star is kidnapped by the writer, casting director, and producer of her old show. The screenplay for Your Money or Your Wife was written by J.P. Miller, who is best known for Days of Wine and Roses.
Your Money or Your Wife is a comedown... for Miller, for Bessell, and for Craig.
Miller shifts the setting from Toronto to New York – Canada has nothing to do with it – which most certainly made for savings. From the looks of it, more than half of the scenes were shot at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street.
Sardi's figures:
The one odd casting decision involves department store heir Richard Bannister. Described in the novel as an athletic blonde Adonis, he is portrayed by Torontonian Graham Jarvis wearing a bad rug.
Struggling writer Dan Cramer once had a good gig. He spent two years working on Women's Editor, a daytime soap starring "beautiful blonde Jill Mason." That good gig looked to be steady until department store scion and sponsor Richard Bannister came along, married Jill, and brought the soap to a sudden end.
No star, no show.
After cancellation, Dan devoted twelve months to a script that drew the attention of Hollywood – until it didn't. Casting director Laurel Plunkett went back to working on television commercials – until she assaulted an advertising executive with a box of Crunch 'n Crackle crackers. Women's Editor producer Josh Darwin did much better in landing the interview show Dialogue with Darwin, but he is not happy. A mover and shaker, ever eager for a new project, he shares his latest idea over drinks with Dan and Laurel. Josh wants to produce a movie – a really good movie (or maybe TV special) – about a kidnapping:
"For the sake of argument suppose the three of us kidnap Jill. Start from there and use your imagination. How would we do it? What would we do to throw the police off the track? What complications would arise?"
Josh suggests they meet the next week to hash out ideas over dinner, but Dan does one better in writing a complete screenplay. The producer is so impressed that he suggests the three act out the script for real.
Trivia (personal) I: If You Want to See Your Wife Again... follows Every Man for Himself (1920) and Die with Me Lady (1953) as the third novel I've read that takes place in part on the Toronto Islands.
Trivia (personal) II: After leaving university, my first writing job was for Time of Your Life, a cheap daytime soap aired on CTV. I was one of five writers. The most unbelievable thing about If You Want to See Your Wife Again... is the idea that Dan alone would write five episodes a week.
Trivia (impersonal) III: Adapted to the small screen in 1972 as Your Money or Your Life. a CBS Tuesday Night Movie starring Ted Bessell, Elizabeth Ashley, and Jack Cassidy. You can watch it here on YouTube. I haven't yet been able to make it past the first four minutes, but will not be defeated!
About the author: John Craig is credited with over a dozen books. The author bio for If You Want to See Your Wife Again... is one of the most unusual I've ever read.
Paul Craig competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, but as not awarded a medal. Younger brother John qualified for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but did not participate due to the boycott.
Object and Access: My first British edition appeared in stores two years after the true first, published in 1971 by Putnam. A Dell mass market paperback (above) followed in 1974, after which the novel fell out of print.
There have been four translations: French (La malle et la belle) German (Geschäft mit der Todesangst), Spanish (Quieres ver a tu mujer otra vez?), and Danish (Men i sm a sedler!), all published between 1972 and 1974. The French appears to have enjoyed at least two editions, one of which features this curious cover:
The only automobiles that figure in the novel are Laurel's beat-up MG (she's a horrible driver) and a VW Beetle. The artist seems to have been unfamiliar with North American pay phones.
