Drunken Writer Exposes Hollywood Hush-Up

Catch a Fallen Starlet
Douglas Sanderson
New York: Avon, 1960

How's this for a set-up?

Three or so years ago, screenwriter Al Dufferin and his B-movie actress wife Clare were at a Hollywood party. Al got drunk, leaving Clare at the mercy of a mobster with busy hands. Clare killed the mobster, made the papers, and moved from B to B+. Her star was still rising when she got in a fight with Al and drove her car off a cliff. Was it suicide? Al was too boozed up to notice. Hollywood hated Al for his role in Clare's death. He left town, hit the bottle even more, and ended up going from drunk tank to bug house in New York City.

Catch a Fallen Starlet opens with the Al's return to Hollywood. He'll tell you he's back to see the son he left with his sister and her husband, but really he doesn't much care. Truth be told, Al's back to redeem his name. He knows that in this town a hit will take you from hated to hero, and everyone will forget about Clare. Before you know it he's approached by aging matinee idol Barry Kevin to write an epic that has studio backing. The money is good – too good, really – and Al comes away with the gig and a list of cast members. That evening, as he sets to work on the screenplay, Al takes a look at the cast list and finds that its in his dead wife's handwriting.

We're now at page 25, with 132 to go.

Fast-paced from beginning to end, it says much about Douglas Sanderson's talent that Catch a Fallen Starlet never seems rushed or lacking in atmosphere. Here Al drains a bottle of Scotch at bar while a group of baggy-sweatered beatniks talk in the nearby booth.

They were discussing without emotion last night's experience with last night's chick on last night's borrowed pad. A bunch of little Huysmans without the sophistication. The semiconscious fabricating a self-conscious world to live in. Two were calling one another sweet and darling. One said, "My little marrowbone." Without emotion. I envied them.

A cynical novel about Hollywood – go figure – but this is pretty good stuff:

The funeral was authentic Hollywood, a combination of internment, picnic and premiere. I arrived early. Ten thousand people had arrived earlier and waited in the atmosphere of sunshine, flowers and expectancy...
   The main attraction had yet to arrive. The crowd filled in the interim as best it could. Families sat on tombstones and finished box lunches. Those with less foresight paid inflation prices for nuts and popcorn from opportunists with trays. A Good Humor man arrived and was deluged by children. Three other men with mournful faces hawked black-edged photographs of Barry Kevin in period costume – hand raised in gay farewell – superimposed on pictures of the chapel. 

I gave up a bit of a spoiler there, so will cut this short before ruining things entirely. If by chance you spot this book, grab it; of the five Sandersons I've read, it's surpassed only by Hot Freeze.

Finally, to nonbelievers who see the influence of Messrs Waugh or West, I ask: Is it really possible to write a Hollywood novel that isn't cynical?

Mystery: Both the French and Italian translations give the original as The Stubborn Unlaid, but no edition exists under that title. Our man in Los Angeles Kevin Burton Smith suggests that Avon changed the title while the translations were at press... that or Sanderson was playing fast and loose with foreign language rights. Both translation were published under his "Martin Brett" pseudonym.

Object: A fairly fragile mass market paperback with ads for "SIX MORE FINE MYSTERY-SUSPENSE NOVELS FROM AVON YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS". The cover copy on the back misleads:

...they hung a phony murder rap on Al and he set out to blow that lid sky-high – no matter how many reputations went with it!

In fact, there is no murder rap, phony or otherwise.

Access: Five Very Good and Near Fine copies are currently listed online, ranging in price from US$10 to US$22. Ignore the bookseller offering a Near Fine US$50.

Out of print for more than four decades, in 2004 Stark House reissued Catch a Fallen Starlet with Sanderson's other 1960 novel Pure Sweet Hell. Not quite as pretty a package as the Avon first, but it is built to last and includes essays by the author's son and Kevin Burton Smith.

Library and Archives Canada aside, I can't find a single Canadian library that has either edition.

The French translation, Cinémaléfices, was published in 1960 by Gallimard as part of its Série noire. Canadian library patrons appear to be completely out of luck on this one.

One lonely copy of the Italian translation, Cast di Morte (Milan: Edizioni Giumar, n.d.) is listed for sale online. Price: €22. There's not a library copy in sight.

Author Photo of the Month: William Arthur Deacon

William Arthur Deacon, as pictured on the back cover of the 1953 Ryerson edition of The Four Jameses.

The LSD CanLit

Regrets? I've had a few. Just last week I passed on a fine Macmillan first edition of Bernard Epps' Pilgarlic the Death that was priced at two dollars. Why? Well, I already had the 1980 Quadrant Edition... and I wasn't thinking straight. Don't get me wrong, I pretty happy to have this:

But I could've also had this:

I don't know that Victor Moscoso or Stanley Mouse had anything to do with that early cover, but they certainly deserve some credit. From the Summer of Love through the first dozen seasons that followed, Macmillan and rival McClelland & Stewart look to have been caught up in a psychedelic grove that embraced the most unlikely of authors.
I'm thinking here of old folks like Stephen Leacock, social conservative and staunch Conservative, who died thirteen years before the word "psychedelic" was even coined. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the David John Shaw cover above looks like it might've graced Joe Rosenblatt's The LSD Leacock (Toronto: Coach House, 1966).

Even writings about Leacock bring the Merry Pranksters to mind.

I don't mean to suggest that our two big publishers were unique, rather that they were more hip than their American and British counterparts. Just cast your glazed gaze upon the McClelland and Stewart edition of Farley Mowat's 1969 The Boat Who Wouldn't Float

...and compare it to the first American edition from Little, Brown

...and the staid first British edition, published by Heinemann in swinging London.

Next to Pilgarlic the Death, my favourite cover of those heady times was drawn by an anonymous hand for Gérard Bessette's Incubation (Macmillan, 1967).

But I don't think there's a greater example of this short-lived trend than McClelland & Stewart's 1969 cover for Never Sleep Three in a Bed, Max Braithwaite's boyhood memoir. Here we see the author's father, George Braithwaite, driving the family car into Pepperland.

That sun on the cover is setting. The new day and new decade would be less colourful. Macmillan was still capable creativity, while M&S decended into what I refer to as "The Letraset Years"

1973

1974

1979

... about which, the less said the better.

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 39

Summertime and the living is busy... so busy that it wasn't until this past weekend that I finally got around to reading the annual Fall Preview issue of Quill & Quire, "Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews". Such riches! A new collection from Alice Munro, a memoir from Neil Young and – ahem – a selection of John Glassco's letters edited by yours truly.

Yes, riches, but I couldn't help but feel let down. Where, I wondered, was the prime minister's hockey book?

True, he's been promising the thing for years, but last December Mr Harper let it be known that it was finished and a 2012 pub date had been set. The news came courtesy of Jane Taber, who ended a Globe & Mail fluff piece about her invitation to 24 Sussex for "a Christmas drink" thusly: "Finally, there is a publishing date for the long-talked about and much-anticipated prime ministerial tome one [sic] hockey history. Mr. Harper said that after writing for 15 minutes every day for eight years, the book will hit the shelves next year."

Tonda MacCharles, who was also invited for a cup of Christmas cheer, reported something similar in the Toronto Star... and the rest chased the puck:

The Hockey Prime Minister

PM Harper's Hockey Book to Drop Next Year
 PM Stephen Harper's Hockey History Book Out in 2012
Harper Lands Publisher, Eyes 2012 Release for Hockey Book

In fact, there was no publication date, nor was there a publisher. What's more, the PMO soon revealed that the dedicated Mr Harper was still setting aside fifteen minutes each day to write his book.

And so, I sighed... and reminded myself that the prime minister first told us he'd finish the book in 2006.

Then, on 25 February, my rolling eyes were drawn to a Toronto Star story that the book had "sparked a bidding war among major Canadian publishers." What's more, Bruce Westwood of Westwood Creative Artists had confirmed that in just six days the prime minister would choose the winner.

Since then... crickets.

No publisher stepped forward in triumph, Westwood has issued no press releases, and the media appear wholly disinterested. Not one outlet, Quill & Quire included, has remarked on the fact that "the long-talked about and much-anticipated prime ministerial tome" was not on any publisher's fall list.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party website has it that our prime minister is still writing away:

One hopes that this year's Christmas tipple will yield more info. Until then, I leave you with these words from sportswriter Stephen Harper:

I meet with many world leaders and representatives of foreign governments and invariably the subject comes up. Many have observed to me that we Canadians are seen as generally a pretty modest, quiet, unassuming-type people – but they notice with Canadians that when the subject of hockey comes up we get very loud and start waving our arms around. It's a bit of a standing joke.*

* From the prime minister's Foreword to How Hockey Explains Canada by Paul Henderson and Jim Prime, published in 2011 by Triumph Books of Chicago, Illinois. There is no Canadian publisher. 

Related posts:

Ignatieff's Ink and Harper's Hockey Book
The Harper Hockey Book Watch (Updated!)
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Eight, Day 253
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 222
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 236
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 237

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 27
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 77
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Fin (et raison d'être)

Graphic Film, Graphic Novel

eXistenZ
David Cronenberg; illustrated by Sean Scoffield
Toronto: Key Porter, 1999

For nearly two decades, The Dead Zone stood as my favourite Cronenburg film – then along came Spider, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and A Dangerous Method. The Toronto filmmaker has been going from strength to strength this millennium, encouraging me to catch up on everything I'd missed.

Last week it was eXistenZ, Cronenberg's fin de siècle nightmare about gamers, the gaming industry and Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish. One of the director's body horror films, the title refers to a new game system contained in a disease-prone pod that is in fact "an animal grown from fertilized amphibian eggs stuffed with synthetic DNA." You play by inserting a 12-foot UmbyCord of "twisted, translucent, blue and red veiny vessels" into your spine through a permanent Metaflesh bioport.

Steve Jobs would've called this a "shit design".

Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Allegra Geller, the designer behind eXistenZ. A "game-pod goddess", she's just begun leading her fawning followers through a test when things appear to go very, very wrong. First, an assassin tries to kill her with a gun made of flesh and bone (she takes a tooth in the shoulder), then she's saddled with timid Ted Pikul (Jude Law), who is not only an ineffective bodyguard but an UmbyCord virgin.

I knew something of what to expect from eXistenZ through this odd book, which is as far as I'm aware the only graphic novel made from a Canadian film. Purchased back in April 1999, it did a disservice in  discouraging me from taking a trip to the cinema. Where on screen eXistenZ is disorienting in its depth, on thin paper it's just confusing.

Illustrator Scott Scoffield takes the film's murky look and renders it black, at times obscuring vital detail. His panels look like stills that have been manipulated with a paint-simulation filter. Who knows, maybe they were. The dialogue is all here, but the acting is absent. Faces float, washed-out and emotionless in the darkness.

There is no drama.

Don't get me wrong – as a film, eXistenZ is not a triumph – but it is worth seeing.

Warning: Not for the squeamish.

Better yet, see Cronenberg's A History of Violence, which – interestingly – was adapted from John Wagner and Vince Locke's graphic novel of the same name.

Warning: There will be violence.

Did that need saying?

Object: A slim paperback – 111 pp – containing the graphic novel, an uncredited interview with Cronenberg, an uncredited essay on his films and a Glossary (uncredited).

Access: My copy, signed by Messrs Cronenburg and Scoffield, was purchased new for $24.95 back in the spring of 1999 at Toronto's TheatreBooks. "Very scarce thus", claims an online bookseller (who offers two copies). I'm not so sure. I remember plucking mine from a teetering stack of signed copies. In fact, half of the fourteen currently listed online are signed by both men; prices range from US$40 to US$98 (condition is not a factor). Unsigned, "as new" copies begin at US$4.09.

Talking Montreal Noir with Nigel Beale

Audio of my recent interview with Nigel Beale can be found here. Lots of talk about Brian Moore, Ted Allan, News Stand Library, Véhicule's Ricochet Books series and more!

Northrup Northrop Frye Celebration Hangover

The National Post, 10 July 2012

From the same webpage: