The Lively Corpse [Rose's Last Summer]
Margaret Millar
New York: Dell, [1956]
224 pages
Margaret Millar's
The Iron Gates was sold to Warner Brothers. Barbara Stanwyck was signed to play the lead. The film never happened, but I haven't give up hope. David Cronenberg, if you're reading this,
The Iron Gates is for you.
One of the odd things about Millar's career is that she was courted by Hollywood, and worked for Hollywood, yet nothing came of it. The only adaptations of her twenty-five novels appeared on the small screen.
Beast in View, which was moulded into a 1964 episode of
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, is the best. A later adaptation of the same novel, shot as part of the series' 1980s reboot, can't be considered an adaptation at all.
Anyone who has read the novel will agree.
I wrote here about Beast in View on television six years ago. Right after I did, I made the mistake of watching the 1960
Thriller broadcast of
Rose's Last Summer, the only other Millar novel to have been adapted. It's not so memorable as either
Alfred Hitchcock Presents Beast in View, but it did stay with me... and, as a result, it ruined my enjoyment in reading the book. I place
Rose's Last Summer near the bottom of the Millars I've read, but can't say whether I'm being fair. That this mystery held no mystery is probably explained by the fact I'd watched that old
Thriller adaptation.
Random House sold the 1952 first edition as "A MYSTERY TOLD WITH MURDEROUS WIT." It's an accurate description, though I would argue that "MURDEROUS" is intended to deceive.
Rose's Last Summer is lighter than than
Do Evil in Return (1950) and
Vanish in an Instant (1952), the two novels that come before and after.
Much of the wit is supplied by its main character, Rose French, a once wealthy former film star, who now lives in a rooming house many miles north of Hollywood.
Rose is given to drink, though Frank Clyde, her greatest champion doesn't think she's "true alcoholic," nor does he consider her a "mental case." A social worker, Frank has all sorts of time for Rose, and is in every way her greatest defender and champion. He knows the actress better than anyone – all five ex-husband's included – and so is surprised when Rose calls him to say that she's taken a job as a housekeeper in San Francisco.
The next day, news of Rose's death makes the afternoon papers.
Reports have it that she was found face down beside a lily pond on the grounds of a large house rented by Willett and Ethel Goodfield. Their gardener, Ortega, made the discovery. Willett dealt with it in an practical manner:
"A dead woman you say? Well." Willett cleared his throat. "Well, I'll tend to the matter immediately."
One of three heirs to the Horace M. Goldfield Doll Corporation, makers of the Sweetheart doll, Willett Goodfield appears to have more pressing concerns, one of which is the health of his ailing mother, who rests in a bedroom overlooking the lily pond.
The
Thriller adaptation spoiled things for me. I'm assuming you haven't seen it. Even if you have, I recommend the novel. See if you don't agree with me on this point: Rose's Hollywood career wasn't destroyed by drink, but by age.
Margaret Millar knew Hollywood.
Dedication:
"TO THE MEMORY OF M.M. MUSSELMAN"
A humorist and minor Hollywood screenwriter, Morris McNeil Musselman (1899-1952) is best remembered for the 1939 version of
The Three Musketeers, starring the Ritz Brothers. A friend of Margaret and Kenneth Millar, he was the author of a half-dozen of books, including
Wheels in His Head (1945), a biography his inventor father. M.M. Musselman died of pancreatic cancer seven months before
Rose's Last Summer was published.
Object: A squat mass market paperback, this edition marks the only time the novel appeared under the title
The Lively Corpse. The cover painting is by the brilliant Victor Kalin, a man who I most associate with John Coltrane. I purchased my copy three years ago from a New York bookseller. Price: US$4.50.
Access: Held in one edition or another by Kitchener Public Library, four academic libraries, and Library and Archives Canada.
Rose's Last Summer returned to print last year as one of the six novels included in Volume Two of the
Collected Millar. It was last published on its own in 1993 by Allison & Busby (again, no relation). As far as I've been able to determine that edition marked the first and only UK edition.
Lancer published the novel 1965, followed by International Polygonics Ltd in 1985. Unlike most IPL Millars, the cover (left), ain't half bad (though, like the Random House first, the cover caption misleads).
Used copies of the novel are easily found online with prices ranging from US$3.15 (a Very Good IPL) to US$250 (a Near Fine first edition).
A French translation,
Son dernier rôle, was published in 1961 and 1986 by Librairie des Champs-Elysées.
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