The Verse Inside

Newspaper editor John Stephen Willison was an admirer of James McIntyre, which may explain the position of the poet's name above those of Alexander Charles Stewart, Bliss Carman and Charles Sangster in the 23 December 1893 edition of the Globe. What follows is a brief overview of "real Canadian poets" by critic Thomas Conant. All is quite polite. Of McIntyre, Conant cautions:

The great majority of his fellow poets will, I suppose, be disposed to pass him over in silence because he is deficient in grammar and early elementary education. No doubt he has written some lines which would have been better never to have seen the light, and doggerel, I am afraid, they must be termed. Yes, and so have the best of his fellows of the muse done the same to some extent! Not that I mean to be at all ungenerous, but only just to Mr. McIntyre: for he has really the verse in him, and gives us some here and again quite worth while.

The critic is selective in quoting McIntyre's verse, drawing lines from "Prologue to South Ontario Sketches" and "Province of Ontario". I take the same liberty in presenting the first 28 of the latter:

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

"This is certainly from the pen of a man who loves Ontario," observes Conant.

Those in need will find an antidote in "The Flight" by McIntyre's contemporary Susie Frances Harrison, otherwise known as "Seranus":

S. Frances Harrison. Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart, 1891)

Pulp and Its Origins

Thomas P. Kelley, King of Canadian Pulps, as imagined by Henry van der Linde

The Globe & Mail, 9 January 1982.

A holiday from the working month of McIntyre today so that I can go on about No Tears for Goldie.

Apologies.

The most interesting thing about the novel is the story of Ginger Daniels, the young widow who turns up ready to work at the brothel. Hers stands out for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that she never actually becomes a prostitute. So, why include this character at all? She arrives, consumes close to a fifth of the novel with her story, then departs, never to be heard from or mentioned again.

What gives?

I think the answer has to do with the author's habit of recycling material. Plainly put, I believe Kelley was reusing material he'd penned for a romance magazine.

In No Tears for Goldie, the working girls encourage Ginger to tell her story. "You needn't tell much of the first part of your life," says Aunt Maggie, "just begin where you met that husband of yours..." And so she does, sweeping the omniscient narrator aside to speak of her love for a young lawyer named Rod, encounters with his shrew of a mother and the attempt to sabotage their wedding. The account, much more detailed than any other part of the novel, runs one full chapter, ending: "I now know that I would never have to worry about his mother again now that Rod was mine forever - and I was happy."

Happy? Happily ever after, it seems... but the narrator returns in the following chapter, and we discover that Rod died in a car accident ten days into the marriage.

Tragic.

On an unrelated matter, I was curious as to whether Kelley used "Jack C. Fleming" for any other works. True, he claimed to have employed thirty pseudonyms, but in a career that lasted nearly five decades, one might expect considerable repetition. Curiously, the only other works I've found attributed to Jack C. Fleming are mid-20th-century editions of another Canadian book, Musson's Improved Ready Reckoner, Form and Log Book, which was once used in calculating measurements for lumber and other products.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Related post: Heart of Goldie

Heart of Goldie

No Tears for Goldie

Jack C. Fleming [pseud. Thomas P. Kelley]

Toronto: Arrow, 1950

Cover copy paints No Tears for Goldie as "the story of poor, little Goldie Clarke who knew all about sex from first hand experience at an age when most girls were thinking about 'coming out' parties or their first prom." It's an odd piece of writing in that it reveals more about her past than is found in the novel. Odder still, Kelley spends much of No Tears for Goldie recounting the histories of the other girls at Goldie's place of employment, "Aunt Maggies [sic]", an early 20th-century San Francisco brothel. There's Tess, who had been "quick to pick up a knowledge of sex from the lowest sources"; Alma, who was seduced by a hobo at age thirteen; and Vera, who lost her looks and became a scrub woman.

The longest of these stories – twenty-one pages in a 123 page novel – belongs to Ginger, a young widow whom Aunt Maggie turns away. "You're a clean kid if ever I saw one," she says, "there's nothing of the whore in you." The working girls all chip in to help give Ginger a new start, but not Goldie. To quote Aunt Maggie a second time, her best girl has "a heart as hard as steel".

As if to prove the madam wrong, Goldie soon falls for Harvey Perry, a wealthy alderman who lives alone in a palatial mansion by the ocean. Within days they make plans to get marry and leave San Francisco. But then Perry dies. And Aunt Maggie dies. And Goldie finds she is pregnant. She gives birth to a boy, leaves him on the doorstep of a wealthy childless couple named Carson, and spends two years wandering the globe before ending up in a Denver brothel.

In the 8 July 1967 Star Weekly Magazine Kelley described his method, writing that when beginning a novel he had absolutely no idea what would happen, how the plot would unfold or how it would all end. I don't doubt there's truth in this – it explains much – but this ending would have been planned.

On the morning of 18 April 1906, Goldie returns to San Francisco with dreams of getting a job as the Carson's maid and so be close to the son she had given up. Before she can set her plan in motion Goldie happens upon Mrs Carson and the boy on the street:

The time was exactly 9.12 a.m. And then a terrific rumble sounded. THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE HAD BEGUN!!

In horror, she witnesses a disaster of biblical proportions:

The street before her was split wide open, in a long and angry gap. She saw humanity plunged into it, to disappear forever. The sky around her was suddenly aglow, with the glare of countless fires!

The din was indescribable!

Mrs Carson is crushed by a boulder. Goldie shelters her son, before both are buried under "a hundred tons of bricks and mortar". In time their bodies are found by a rescue party, who note that Goldie died with a smile on her face:

"...You'd think she almost welcomed death, with her baby in her arms", one remarks. I wonder who she was?"

The death car made its way up the street. The men returned to their work. And Goldie Clarke's tormented soul had found a certain peace!!

THE END

A "profound novel with a message and a purpose", the cover copy concludes. The message? The purpose? Damned if I know.

Trivia: The 1906 earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m., about one hour before Goldie's return to San Francisco... but, hey, No Tears for Goldie is fiction.

Object: A cheaply produced mass market paperback.

The copyright page informs the reader: "This book has been selected for reprint because of its popular appeal and its successful record of sale when originally printed." In fact, this is the first and only edition of the novel; Arrow Publishing placed this notice in all their books. I'm grateful to bowdler of Fly-by-night for confirming my hunch.

Access: No trace on Worldcat, nothing on AddAll, No Tears for Goldie holds the distinction of being the most elusive book yet featured in this blog. I was fortunate to find a copy two months ago for just five dollars.

Related post:

Pulp and its Origins

A Second 'To Jas. McIntyre'

from William Arthur Deacon's The Four Jameses (Ottawa: Graphic, 1927)

TO JAS. MCINTYRE

A man of mighty mark,

Who crossed the ocean dark

To win some glory;

Resolved to carve his name

High in Canadian fame,

And live in story.

And this methinks will be,

For friend and foe agree

Rare is his talent;

And as much diversified

As our world is wide.

Hail Scotia's gallant!

He racy is, and witty,

As shown by many a ditty

In humourous vein;

And some say wit's his forte,

His muse all turns to sport,

He eschews pain.

But we who know him best

'Gainst this view must protest

He's oft pathetic;

And with his pen so wise,

Can bring tears to the eyes

Of each ascetic.

Related post: Don't Answer the Door!

Don't Answer the Door!

Fort Frances Times, 8 February 1917.

The devoted daughter of James McIntyre, Kate Ruttan wrote several poems honouring her father, including at least two titled "To Jas. McIntyre". This, the superior, was written in happy times, before McIntyre's business was lost to Canada's River Thames. Late in life, she described the gothic scene in a letter to William Arthur Deacon:

Foundation of furniture factory fell & sailed down the River Thames. Coffins, caskets, cupboards, card tables, chairs, pianos, pianolas - all commingled in confusion worse confounded. Also he was previously burned out. He wrote me his true townsmen collected Six Hundred Dollars for him that mournful morn. He was the loveliest man on earth.

It seems Mrs Ruttan inherited her father's bad luck. Widowed at a young age, she struggled to support her small family by working as a schoolteacher, postmistress, newspaper columnist and, it seems, door-to-door salesperson for evangelist Billy Sunday. Her only volume of verse, Rhymes, Right or Wrong, of Rainy River, was published in 1926 by the Fort Frances Times. She died two years later.

Related post: A Second 'To Jas. McIntyre'

A Poetic Argument for Gun Control

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

Nablo in Paperback

Not much more to say about the elusive Nablo, though these paperback covers of The Long November are worthy of mention. The first, published by News Stand Library in 1948, juxtaposes a "Vigorous, lusty; a tale of passion and virile drive" with "AN R.C.A.F. VETERAN'S SENSATIONAL NEW NOVEL", as if to say: "Before you label this as smut, the publisher would like to point out that this novel was written by one of our heroic servicemen."

The artwork is a touch better than most News Stand Library covers, but makes the whole thing look like some light-hearted, mildly risqué romp. And where in Canada do leaves begin falling in November?

News Stand Library's second cover, from 1949, isn't a whole lot better. Does it not look like Steffie Gibson is drowning? Poor little rich girl, caught in a whirlpool with tiny autumnal leaves floating above her beautiful visage.

Predictably, the finest of the lot belongs to the 1952 Signet edition. "Too Many Women - Too Little Time" might not be the most original of pitches, but the cover captures the novel's dark mood and does depict an actual scene.

This last beat-up cover was rescued a couple of decades back from a store's 25¢ bin. It was being rained on and, I'm betting, was within an hour or two of being tossed. Appropriate then, that today's James McIntyre poem was inspired by a neglected book happened upon while out for a stroll, its pages "scattered o'er the ground".

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

The volume concerned is The Posthumous Works of the Late George Menzies, Being a Collection of Poems, Sonnets, &c., &c., Written at Various Times When the Author was Connected with the Provincial Press. Published in 1850 by his widow, Harriet, it can't be bought for under two hundred dollars.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Nablo in Hollywood

Nablo in Hollywood

The only image I've been able to find of the Hollywood James Benson Nablo – and don't it look like crap. Blame attendees of the 1936 American Library Association's annual meeting and their enthusiastic endorsement of microfilm.

Published in the 11 May 1946 edition of the Globe and Mail, it has no article attached, so I can't begin to speculate as to why The Long November was never filmed. That said, is it not odd that the project is described as "the first motion picture attempted by Doyle-Nablo productions [emphasis mine]"? And don't the Doyles seem such an unhappy couple? Mrs Doyle looks to be scanning the room for the exit.

But co-producer Nablo is all smiles, as are the others around the table:

Brooke Burwell, who fits Nablo's description of Steffie Gibson to a tee, is a bit of a mystery woman. It appears she never made a film, and has not, to use another's terminology, "been traced".

Kenneth Roberts was a prolific writer, who had a number of forgettable films adapted from his equally forgettable historical novels.

Norman Reilly Raine was really an American, though he did work as a Toronto newspaperman, and later served in the Canadian army during the First World War. At the time this photo was taken, the 51-year-old would have been enjoying success for his adaptation of John Hersey's A Bell for Adamo (1945).

Raine's longtime flame, "Hollywood dancing star" Nova Dale, had one uncredited role as a chorus girl in 1951's Showboat. She died the following year, at the age of 31, several days after smashing up her car.

All this leads to Drive a Crooked Road (1954), which would be the first film based on a Nablo story. These nice, clear images from the trailer, point to a movie that is nowhere near as interesting as what is promised; evidence that promotion hasn't really changed all that much in the past half-century.

Finally, as part of the National Poetry Month promise, another James McIntyre poem. "Niagara Dry" recounts the day – 30 March 1848 – when both the Canadian Falls and its bland cousin ran dry. Nablo grew up just over a kilometre from the falls, practically across the street from where the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum stands. Culture.

NIAGARA DRY

It happened once in early spring,

While there did float great thick ice cakes,

That then a gale did quickly bring

Them all down from the upper lakes.

And Buffalo to Lake Erie,

Across the entrance to river,

It was a scene of icebergs dreary,

Those who saw it will remember ever.

The gale blew up lake and river,

And left Niagara almost dry,

This a lady did discover

As above the Falls she cast her eye.

Such scene it had been witnessed never,

Since Israelites crossed the Red Sea,

When they had resolved forever

From Pharaoh's bondage to flee.

Lady she resolved to venture,

Proudly carrying British flag,

Erected it in river's centre

In crevice of a rocky crag.

It seems like a romance by Bulwer,

How she captured Niagara,

But it was seen by Bishop Fuller,

Who did at sight of flag hurrah.

Ten thousand years may die away

Before another dry can tread,

In bottom of Niagara,

For she doth jealous guard her bed.

But ice her entrance did blockade,

And wind it kept the waters back,

So that a child could almost wade

Across the brink of cataract.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Nablo in Paperback

The Last of James Benson Nablo?

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

The Long November

James Benson Nablo

New York: Dutton, 1946

I'm going to step out on a limb here and state, with confidence, that this was one of the most popular Canadian novels published after the Second World War. Evidence? I can offer nothing more than its publishing history, which over six years included three Dutton printings, two News Stand Library editions and a very attractive Signet paperback. And yet, we remember nothing of James Benson Nablo; The Long November, his only novel, has been out of print for over five decades.

Nablo's narrator is Joe Mack, a wounded, unarmed Canadian soldier hiding from Nazis in a half-destroyed Italian home. Don't be fooled, this is not a war novel, but Horatio Alger's nightmare. As Joe waits out the enemy, he looks back on his 34 years, playing particular attention to his efforts to make something of himself. It isn't that Joe cares so much about money, rather he sees it as a means of winning the love of his life, beautiful blonde Steffie Gibson. Like Duddy Kravitz, who would follow, Joe realizes his riches by "borrowing" the last bit of money he needs to achieve his dream – and, as with Duddy, he loses the girl as a result.

The Long November is a rough book, told in a style that resembles tough guy film noir narration; only Nablo uses words that would not pass the Hays Code. In a 1949 letter to Jack McClelland, Earle Birney provides a list: "Jesus Christ, Christ Almighty, By Jesus, for Christ's sake, goddamit, Bugger all, sonofabitch, suck-holing, stumblebum, crap, shacked up, quickie, a lay, shove it up your keister, tired of being screwed-without-being-kissed." May I add that in one of his many moments of self-recrimination Joe describes his work as "of much use as a tit on a spinster"? Writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, John D. Paulus complained: "If this is modern 'realistic writing,' this reviewer will take vanilla."

And I'll take Rocky Road.

Nearly everything that's been written about Nablo is found on the book's dust jacket. Other references to the author are precious and few. In Imagining Canadian Literature, editor Sam Solecki provides nothing more than a fleeting footnote, referring to "J.V. Nablo [sic] (b. 1910)", an author who has not "been traced". Nablo was indeed born in 1910, making him exactly the same age as his protagonist. Here the future author is recorded in the 1911 census, as the daughter of George and Margery Nablo of 8 Centre Street in Niagara Falls.

I've found little else, though I can say that he never published another book. It seems Nablo left the world of letters for a life in film. In 1954, his short story "The Wheel Man" was adapted by a young Blake Edwards as Drive a Crooked Road. The flick has Mickey Rooney as an honest auto mechanic who finds himself driving the getaway car in a bank robbery. Blame it on a dame.

The god-awful A Bullet for Joey (1955) followed. Of the films made from Nablo's stories, it's by far the most interesting. Why? Well, for one it stars Edward G. Robinson as a French Canadian RCMP detective named Raoul Leduc. Need more? It's a Cold War thriller set in Montreal, and features George Raft as an American mobster who is hired by the Reds to kidnap a nuclear scientist. Who can resist?

A Bullet for Joey was followed by a forgotten western, Raw Edge (1956), which starred Vancouver beauty Yvonne de Carlo (née Peggy Middleton). One wonders whether Nablo lived to see it; industry reports from the autumn of 1956 refer to "the late James Benson Nablo".

The writer's executor seems to have had a busy time of it, selling options for Nablo stories like "Morning Star", which was to have been James Cagney's directorial debut. In the end, there was only one more film: a Victor Mature vehicle entitled China Doll (1958). Its release coincided with a "novelization by Edgar Jean Bracco of a screenplay by Kitty Buhler". Published as a 35¢ Berkley paperback, it makes no mention of James Benson Nablo.

Object: A fairly slim hardcover in green cloth with light brown lettering. What makes the book interesting is that Dutton changed covers for the second and third printings – both in March 1946 – replacing the battlefield landscape with an image of Steffie Gibson looking like a well-covered streetwalker.

Access: Fourteen copies are held in Canadian public and university libraries. It seems that the uncommon first edition exists only in rotten condition. The best copy currently listed online is a bargain at C$30; others lack dust jackets or are ex-library. Decent copies of the News Stand and Signet editions can be had for under C$10. I've yet to come across the 1957 Double Flame paperback.

Related posts:

Nablo in Hollywood

Nablo in Paperback

Edward G. Robinson Gets His Man

The Long November in Late August
The Last of James Benson Nablo?

Shorter Shelley

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

Bit of an Edward Gorey feel to it, don't you think?

James McIntyre had such a hard time with names. For instance, there's that tribute to Susanna Moodie, in which he not only messes up her surname, but refers to William Lyon Mackenzie as "McKenzie". Here, of course, "Shelly" is Shelley. Perhaps a good thing that McIntyre didn't include the full name – Percy seems safe, but Bysshe is tricky.