Thomas P. Kelley: He Kept Finding Cleopatra

Weird Tales
November 1938

Yarns
July 1941

Uncanny Tales
July 1941

I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelly [sic]
Toronto: Export, 1946

I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelley
Linn, OR: Fax Collector's Editions, 1977

The King of the Canadian Pulps Bowdlerized

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1968

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Toronto: General, 1974

Thomas P. Kelley crowned himself "King of the Canadian Pulp Writers", so there should be no surprise that he considered his father a monarch amongst medicine men.

Who knows, maybe he was

From 1886 until his death forty-five years later, Kelley, père – a charismatic farm boy from Newboro, Ontario – operated the traveling Shamrock Concert Company. If Kelley, fis, is to be believed, their shows attracted crowds numbering 12,000 and more, bringing in many millions of dollars.

The Fabulous Kelley is typical of the author's non-fiction writing in that it contains nothing in the way of endnotes, references or bibliography. It's also atypical, standing out as the most polished of his many titles. Credit could go to the editors at Pocket Books, whom one might expect were more strict than those of previous publishers Harlequin, Arrow Publishing and News Stand Library, but I'm sentimental enough to believe that Kelley made an extra special effort here.

This is the story of a beloved father told by his son. Thomas P. Kelley, Sr., was indeed an extraordinary and unusual man. He was also a charlatan. In the 208 pages of the Pocket edition junior remains blind to this fact, all the while providing damning evidence. His greatest and only defence is that Dad never wavered in maintaining that he was superior to all others. Here papa medicine man is confronted by a disgruntled Oklahoma undertaker:

   "We had a medicine man pass through here about three years ago. He came with a horse and wagon and peddled some worthless fluid he advertised as 'Snake Oil'. He called himself Professor Logan."
   "I've heard of him,"was the other's answer. "Logan is a fraud, a cheap pitchman working solo. He's not a medicine man."
   "Oh, then there's a difference?" and there was a tinge of sarcasm in the other's quietly spoken words. "How interesting. Pray tell me, just how much difference is there between a pitch man and a medicine man?"
   Doc Kelley, one hand on the doorknob, turned and shot a glance at those pallid features and asked: "The woman who answered the door is your wife?"
   "She is."
   "Have you seen a photo of the famous beauty , Lily Langtry?"
   "I have."
   "There is that much difference..."

This exchange, my favourite, is not found in General Publishing's 1974 reprint. In fact, the latter publisher cut over 30,000 words, something approaching half of the original text. Here we have an odd instance in which a hardcover edition bowdlerizes a paperback original. What makes this even more unusual is the fact that the 1984 edition of The Fabulous Kelley marks the first and only time in which Thomas P. Kelley, Jr. was published in anything other format than paperback.

I've taken some swipes at Kelley in the past, but won't here. Sure, there's a good amount of exaggeration and embellishment in The Fabulous Kelley, but this is easily stripped away to reveal an all too rare glimpse of the medicine show by a man who grew up in its world. General's edition, which is much more common than any other, does a great disservice in ridding itself of things that are verifiable.

Thomas P. Kelley, Sr.

14 April 1865 - 31 April 1931

This is not to say that there isn't superfluous stuff – the junior Kelley does tend to run on, but here I'm happy to let him go. What follows is Thomas P. Kelley's comment on his father's death from a heart attack on 31 July 1931 in the Ontario town of Uxbridge:

So died Thomas P. Kelley, the King of the Medicine Men. Yes, and the medicine-show period died with him. The entertainment that had brought joy to millions throughout North America for more than a hundred years perished with its King.

So ends the General's bowdlerized edition. The Pocket Books edition continues:

Passed into oblivion, its distant glories forgotten, like the flame of a candle blown out with his final breath, Now it was all over; at long last modern times had triumphed and the medicine show days were no more. But it was a triumph which could only be gained by the death of the man with the golden tongue. A death that marked the end of an era.
   And even today the dwindling few old-time medicine show performers continue to tell: "Nature made only one Doc Kelley then threw away the mold." 

- FIN -

Objects: The Pocket Books first edition is an unexceptional mass market paperback, but looks much more attractive than any of the other editions. Credit should go to Peter Max, though I'm betting he had nothing to do with the design.

The oh-so-bland General Publishing edition features a lazy 400-word Introduction by Gordon Sinclair. Yep, he's had a quick look through the book, and is ready to repeat a few tidbits. Consider them spoilers.

General dropped all fifteen Bob White cartoons found in the Pocket first.

Curiously, General also got rid of nearly all photographs of the Pocket edition, replacing them with others that are neither better nor worse.

Access: Bowdlerized or not, The Fabulous Kelley is next to impossible to find in our public libraries and is a rare thing at our universities. The Pocket Books paperback is both uncommon and cheap – the few copies available online can be had for five dollars or less. The General Publishing hardcover is not only much more easy to find, but much more cheap. Good copies can be had online for as little as a dollar. The last edition, published by Paperjacks in 1975, uses General's shorter text (Gordon Sinclair's snoozy Intro included). It's easy to find and cheap... but really, it's the Pocket mass market you'll want.

A Timely Editorial Cartoon from 1875

L'Opinion publique, August 1875

The biggest thing that Elections Canada can wield in a case where a politician overspends is a thousand dollar fine. Now, theoretically you can also send somebody to jail for up to three months, but everyone knows that's not going to happen.

— Terry Milewski on Power & Politics, 17 October 2012

Minister Peter Penashue and Prime Minister Stephen Harper
24 January 2012

Young Tom Kelley, King of the Canadian Pulps

A portrait of the artist as a young man. Here we have Thomas P. Kelley, a very dapper little boy who would grow up to write Bad Men of Canada, No Tears for Goldie , The Gorilla's Daughter and 'The Soul Eater':

Isaac Brock: 200 Years

Sir Isaac Brock

6 October 1769 - 13 October 1812

'Brock: Valiant Leader' by J.D. Logan
Canadian Poets and Poetry
John W. Garvin, ed.
(Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1916)

from Brock Centenary, 1812-1912:
Account of the Celebration at Queenston Heights, Ontario, on the 12th of October, 1912
Alexander Fraser, ed.
(Toronto: William Briggs, 1913)

Crazy, But That's How It Goes

Crazy to Kill

Ann Cardwell [pseud. Jean Makins Pawley]

Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949

191 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

The Sudden Violent Deaths of Arthur Stringer and His Family (and Their Respective Resurrections)

One of the earliest Canadians to really make a killing in the writing game, Arthur Stringer led a pretty eventful life. More than sixty books bore his name and twenty-three movies were made from his work – no one has yet come up with an accurate count of his hundreds of magazine appearances. 

And then there was his marriage to exciting Amazonian Jobyna Howland, Gibson Girl, Broadway babe and minor Hollywood star.    

Yes, an eventful life, so much so that the drama detailed below – front page news in Montreal, Toronto and New York – doesn't rate so much as a footnote in Arthur Stringer: Son of the North, Victor Lauriston's 1941 biography: 

The Pittsburgh Press, 21 May 1912

In fact, Stringer had no home in Niagara Falls, New York. He and his family then divided their time between a flat in New York City and "Shadow-Lawn", their house in Cedar Springs, Ontario. Though described in the Canadian Bookman as a "summer home", it was at the northern address that the Stringers spent the better part of the year. 

The Canadian Bookman, August 1909

"Shadow-Lawn" figures in the curious correction that went out over the wires hours later:

The Regina Morning Leader, 21 May 1912

Caught off guard, The New York Times, which had somehow missed all the excitement, published a modest piece:

The New York Times, 21 May 1912

Stringer, Stockton... Cedar Springs, Niagara Falls... so easily confused.

Sadly, Stringer and the beautiful Jobyna eventually went their separate ways. In 1936, the actress was found dead of a heart attack on the kitchen floor of her Hollywood home. Stringer lived on until 1950, before being felled by same.

I've not been able to track down anything concerning their daughter.

Entertainment: Yes, I've posted this before, but after the horrors above isn't something a bit cheery in order? Here's Jobyna Howland with Wheeler and Wolsey in The Cuckoos. Oddly appropriate, I think.

Canadian Thanksgiving, 1912... plus ça change

The Vancouver Daily World, 12 October 1912

Scientology Comes North

Another proud publication of Galaxy Press ("publisher of the fiction works of L. Ron Hubbard"), owned by Author Services Inc. ("exclusive representatives for master storyteller L. Ron Hubbard"), which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Church of Spiritual Technology ("an autonomous church of the Scientology religion outside of the international Scientology ecclesiastical hierarchy").

Got that?

A Puppet of Passion in Boxing Trunks

Seconds to Go
Phil Strong [pseud. Danny Halperin]
Toronto: Arrow, 1950

Is anything to be made of the similarity between the name Danny Cannon, protagonist of Seconds to Go, and that of his creator Danny Halperin?

Hope not.

We first catch sight of Danny Cannon at age eleven as he's being beaten by his father Matt. A bat to the head, a fist in the face, whipping with a belt... and who knows what we've missed. But wait, there's more:

     Again and again the belt descended.
     At last Danny could bear it no longer. Like a caged beast suddenly freed, he turned on his father and wrestled with him for possession of the belt. Matt roared with rage; his meaty right hand clutched the boy's throat and he shook that twisting young body as if it were a rattling bag of coals.
     Exhausted, Danny went limp, Matt let him fall to the floor where he kicked him in the stomach. The boy writhed and screamed as the boot connected.
     "Now – now – what's yore answer?" said Matt, breathing heavily, laying down a fine mist of whisky breath close to Danny's face.
     "I – I'll go."

Where to?

Halperin maintains the mystery for a several more pages before having Danny walk through New York's East Side to Liffey's Canned Shrimp and Lobster. What follows is a Dickensian scene set in the Depression with the boy cutting off the heads and legs of shrimp in a dimly lit cellar. "They look like mama'" he tells his sister Gracie, "when she was lying in her coffin after she was dead."

A dance hall hustler, popular because she "did not wear a bras [sic]",  Gracie has taken to rolling drunken sailors in alleyways. Danny too will make good money through beatings.

The first half of Seconds to Go follows a familiar plot. Danny, a quiet boy with a drunken brute for a father, grows up to give is the old man his due. A tough but kindly old trainer provides guidance both in and out of the boxing ring, and the next thing you know Danny boy is a contender.

"Time passes quickly when we are doing something which concerns us passionately. So it was with Danny." The turbulent times he'd endured with Matt and Gracie – never mind shrimp-like mama – seem so long ago. Sadly, new troubles are on the horizon.

The first cracks appear when Danny beds Anne, Dave's floozy of a daughter. The trainer loves his daughter, but because he also loves Danny he feels the need to warn:

     "Look, Danny. This is as hard for me as it is for you –"
     "That's wrong," Danny interrupted. "This is easy for me. All I have to do is tell you to go to hell, Dave."

For a guy who lost his virginity mere hours earlier, Danny really seems to know what's what:

     "Listen to me, Dave. Sometimes you do things that even if they're bad you still have to do them and even if they'll hurt you they still have to be done. Do you know what I mean? I'm sure Anne feels the same way about it. She'll get over the novelty of me pretty soon."

"So you're just puppets of passion, eh?" responds Dave.

In the end, it's Danny who grows bored. As his star rises, he looks down on Dave and Anne, now so very small in his eyes. When big time boxing promoter Manny Easton makes an offer, Danny is only too happy to move on. Manny's wife Clara becomes the first of many women who take Anne's place. Melanie Jackson, Louise Ryrie, Gilda Channing and Mona Paulasohn try to use Danny, but are ultimately discarded leaving the fighter with a "conceited feeling of power over women combined with a monstrous contempt for everything female."

The climax of the novel takes place in the ring, and not in bed. Danny faces Dusty Rush in a championship bout at Madison Square Garden and is beaten to a pulp.

No pun intended.

Miraculously, misogyny vanishes, humility returns and a life with Anne seems a sure bet. I'd say that Danny had some sense beaten into him, but Anne has a different view:

     "That guy Dusty sure knocked something out of me," muttered Danny.
     "I know..." replied Anne slowly, "... and Danny... it's funny how everything turns out for the best!"
     "What d'ya mean?" he asked.
     "I think that guy knocked something bad out of you... and I'm glad!"

The magical, transformative power of the ring extends to the locker room, where Dave's blow to Manny's jaw ends their estrangement. And Clara? Despite her ellipses, Anne manages to fill in the blanks:

     "From what Dave told me... they're still in love with each other... always have been... it's just the way of life that's driven them apart."

So, is there anything to be made of the similarity between the names Danny Cannon and Danny Halperin?

Probably not – but what about Danny Cannon and Danny Fisher?

Worst sentence: The old wallpaper, a fanciful design of faded mermaids, was beginning to peel off the walls from the ceiling down, hanging in unsightly torn sheets like the frozen tears of a sentimental statrue [sic] in a wintry park.

Object: A particularly fragile early Canadian mass market paperback, the glue has dried to a point at which one cannot hope to read the thing without causing damage. Didn't stop me. Books are for reading.

Access: Not listed on Worldcat. The only copy currently offered online comes courtesy of a Toronto bookseller who provides no information as to condition. At C$45, it's probably worth the price.

A Second Body on Mount Royal

Snapped yesterday at the offices of Véhicule Press, the new edition of David Montrose's The Body on Mount Royal. How new? So new that it hasn't yet reached bookstore shelves.

It's been nearly six decades, since Harlequin published and abandoned private dick Russell Teed's final adventure. A scarce book, there's only one copy currently being offered online. And it ain't that pretty at all. And it costs $75.

But you'll soon be able to buy the new Véhicule Press edition for $13.95. Unlike Harlequin's, it's built to last. What's more, it has a new Foreword by Kevin Burton Smith.

My take on this, the most disturbing David Montrose title, can be found here:

The Unpleasant End of Russell Teed 

One-Upping Elizabeth Smart

Before I Even Got to Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

John Warren

London: Scorpion, 1979

Good, it's a Packard

The Four Stragglers
Frank L. Packard
London: Hodder & Stoughton, [n.d.]

The Locked Room
Frank L. Packard
London: Hodder & Stoughton, [n.d.]

Entering the Unknown with Frank L. Packard

The Four Stragglers
Frank L. Packard
Toronto: Copp Clark, 1923

It's hard to know just what to expect when picking up a Packard; reference books offer little or nothing, archived reviews are few, and with one or two or three exceptions book bloggers have given him a pass. Add to all this the sad fact that the dust jackets to his books are almost always missing, as is the case with this soiled, stained, beat-up copy I spotted last October in the "FREE" box at Montreal's Cheap Thrills.

A few pages into this free book, I was beginning to think that it might just end up being my favourite Packard novel. Although that first flush of excitement gave way to disappointment, I don't regret the read.

The Four Stragglers opens in the darkness of an unnamed battlefield during the Great War. Cut off from their respective units, three soldiers take refuge in a thicket; a fourth lies dead or unconscious a few metres away. Flares flying above reveal faces, and the cognizant come to recognize that they'd all played parts in a daring jewel heist not two years earlier.

It's a confusing, chaotic scene. Shouldn't it be? Shells rain down, a munitions dump explodes in the distance and somewhere out there march Germans with bayonets. Then there's that fourth straggler lying on the ground. The idea that he might be listening in on the reunion forces cryptic conversation. Eventually, one of the other three raises his rifle and fires:

     The first man screamed out:
     "Christ! What have you done?"
     "I think he was done in anyway... It was as well to make sure."

Dead. Dead. And yet the next flare that hangs in the heavens reveals that his body has disappeared.

We're transported suddenly to the Claremont, an exclusive gentleman's club in London's West End. The Armistice now more than three years in the past, the reader is listening in on a conversation between Sir Harris Graves and Captain Francis Newcombe. A man of obvious privilege, Sir Harris has the means and the time to pursue criminology as a sort of hobby. His current focus is the aforementioned theft and its connection with an elusive, infamous East End criminal known as Shadow Varne. The captain, transfixed, expresses concern:

"I fell impelled to say to you that, if this man is what you describe him to be, is so dangerous as you say he is, I would advise you, Sir Harris, in all seriousness to leave him – to Scotland Yard."

Sir Harris stands fast... and is murdered before morning. If it hasn't already, the reader's suspicion will fall on Newcombe, who is not only revealed to be the straggler who shot the injured soldier, but Shadow Varne himself.

I found the most interesting aspect of The Four Stragglers revolved around the idea of the T.G. – the Temporary Gentleman – a man who through obtaining commission would be permitted privileges heretofore enjoyed only by members of a certain class. For Varne, as Captain Francis Newcombe, lasting entry to a once closed-off world is made possible through wartime heroics. "I became a Permanent Gentleman", he tells doomed Sir Harris. "Democracy! Private Francis Newcombe – Captain Francis Newcombe – Francis Newcombe, Esquire."

Packard's novels are always peppered with the fantastic and improbable; for much of The Four Stragglers I took Newcombe's rise as another example. But then I thought of our own Sir Arthur Currie, GCMG, KCB, a man who himself rose from the lowest ranks. I don't mean for a second to suggest that Currie was a murderer – just an embezzler.

Object: The first Canadian edition, my copy appears to have been first owned by a man named Donald Shipley. A 1925 Christmas gift from "Claude", it bears the label of Wendell Holmes, a bookseller in London, Ontario.

Access: Canadians, look to your universities – of the public libraries, only Toronto's serves.

The Canadian first shares plates with the Doran American first and a later Burt reprint. It wasn't until 1934 that the Hodder & Stoughton British first appeared. Together, more than couple of dozen copies are listed for sale online. They begin at £4.00, but the one to buy is a $15 copy of the Canadian first with dust jacket by A.D. Rahn. The most expensive – forty dollars –  comes from an ill-informed bookseller  who writes: "THIS A 1923 HARDCOVER BOOK IT IS EXTREMLY [sic] RARE BOOK IT HAS A NAME INSIE [sic] THE COVER AND HAS BEEN READ THE BINDING IS SUNNED AND HAS NO JACKET THE CORNERS ARE BUMPED AND THE PAGES ARE TANNED EVENLY."

Čtyři zaběhlíci, a Czech edition, was published in 1928. Apparently the National Library of the Czech Republic has a copy.

The Hidden Robert Kroetsch

(cliquez pour agrandir)

Discovered last week in the little town of St Marys, Ontario, the key to understanding and properly recognizing the symbolism, messages and codes hidden within Robert Kroetsch's 1975 novel Badlands.

An unknown hand reveals the secrets, so many secrets, held by each and every paragraph – yes, each and every paragraph – of this 270-page novel.

I am now entertaining offers for this unique, invaluable volume.

Further images available upon request.

Serious enquiries only, please.

Beer, Broads and Blackmail Bring Confusion

Mark it for Murder
Douglas Sanderson
New York: Avon, [1959]

Douglas Sanderson had left Montreal behind as both a home and a setting when Mark it for Murder was published, but traces of the city remain. Just look at John Molson, the name of our hero. We're told next to nothing about this man, except that he once studied at the Sorbonne. Europeans take him for an American, but I wouldn't be so sure.

The opening pages of Mark it for Murder find Molson at a private club on the French Riviera. He gets plastered with a Swede, makes love on the beach with beautiful Julie Chirac and pummels her escort Roger Lascelles before being called away to attend to Joseph P. Craddock, his wealthy employer. On the way back the Mercedes Molson drives loses a wheel and careens off a cliff into the Mediterranean. He bails, rescuing Louise (another love interest) in the process.

Stripped to its bare bones, the beginning of the novel sounds rather silly, but it's actually very strong. Mark it for Murder features some of Sanderson's finest writing, particularly in its sketches of Spain:

So up and down they walk, making talk as adolescents make drawings on a lavatory wall. From the same motive and with the same innocence. I listened. Spaniards talk so loudly it is difficult not to listen. They were describing as true the things imagined before falling asleep the previous night. But their lies were gracious, interesting and enthusiastic. They enjoyed what they were saying and politely hid their disbelief in another man's story.

The change in location comes courtesy of Craddock. An aged blackmailing businessman who has found religion, he's by far the most realized and intelligent character in the novel. Craddock's violent death, depicted on the cover of Cry Wolfram, the Secker & Warwick edition, marks an unfortunate downturn.

Craddock really knew the ins and outs of the extortion business; now that he's no longer around to explain the novel becomes a confusing mess. Things get so bad that by the third to last chapter, Sanderson resorts to a sit-down with a chatty, campy, faux-English queen who happily answers any and all questions that Molson cares to pose. This is followed by a chapter in which all the key players gather in a room to hear out the accusations and theories of the local governor. And finally – in the final chapter – an attempt at a denouement as Molson and Louise take in a bullfight.

A frustrating book, it features a surprise ending with Molson losing Louise to a matador on the final page. I'm not sure why, but I'm sure Craddock could've explained it... or maybe the chatty, campy, faux-English queen.

Object: A fragile 160-page mass market paperback. Though labeled "An Avon Original", it looks to have been preceeded by Cry Wolfram, Secker & Warburg's UK first. Both editions enjoyed just a single printing each.

Access: Canadian library patrons will find Mark it for Murder at Concordia University and Library and Archives Canada. The University of Calgary and University of Victoria have Cry Wolfram.

Curiously, Cry Wolfram appears to be more common than Mark it for Murder. Seven copies of the former are listed online – all with dust jackets – at prices ranging from eight to thirty dollars. Very Good plus copies of Mark it for Murder can be had for between four and eighteen dollars. But hurry – only four copies are listed online.

A French translation using under Sanderson's Martin Brett pseudonym was published by Gallimard. Title: La semaine de bonté.

Not to be confused with Max Ernst's Une semaine de bonté.