OVERLOOKED FILM: ONE FRIGHTENED NIGHT (1935)

Elderly multimillionaire Jasper White (character actor Charlie Grapewin (The Wizard of Oz, The Grapes of Wrath, The Petrified Forest, and seven Ellery Queen mysteries as Inspector Richard Queen) has called his greedy relatives and associates to his mansion on (what else?) a dark and stormy night to announce that he is giving them each one million dollars in his will.  But wait.  What's this?    A long-lost granddaughter show up -- Doris Waverley (Evalyn Knapp, His Private Secretary, The Perils of Pauline, The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance) -- and white then decides to leave his entire fortune to her.  But wait.  What's this?  A second Doris Waverley appears (Mary Carlisle, one of the fifteen WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932, Grand Hotel, The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, Dance, Girl, Dance -- she died at the age of 104, the last surviving WAMPAS Baby).  Which one is the real Doiris?

A wealthy old man, a will about to be changed, greedy relatives, an imposter, and a lonely mansion on (what else?) a dark and stormy night.  What could go wrong?  Except murder, that is.  Add to this romance and a madcap mystery, and you  have the ingredients for an entertaining flick.

Also featuring Lucien Littlefield (The Cat and the Canary, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Ruggles of Red Gap), Regis Toomey (Meet John Doe, Guys and Dolls, The Night of the Grizzly, and featured  roles in television's Burke's Law and Petticoat Junction), Arthur Hohl (Island of Lost Souls, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Fred Kelsey (who directed 37 films from 1914 and 1920 and acted in more than 400 films from 1911 to 1958, including three "Lone Wolf" movies and uncredited roles in Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, and Auntie Mame), Wallace Ford (The Mysterious Mr. Wong, The Mummy's Hand, Shadow of a Doubt), and actress and budding gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Seven Keys to Baldpate, Harold Teen, Dracula's Daughter; she became one of them most powerful and feared gossip columnists of her age). 

Directed by Christy Carbanne (A Girl of the Limberlost, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Scattergood Baines).  The film was written by Wellyn Tolman (14 of the 15 episodes of the Tom Mix serial The Miracle Rider, The Man from Arizona, Ghost City), from a story by mystery novelist (the Hildegard Withers mysteries) and screenwriter Stuart Palmer (Bulldog Drummond's Peril, Seventeen, Passport to Suez)

This one is worth sixty-five minutes of your time.   enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y47A9bk4T-I

MEMORIAL DAY

 It's a day for reflection, so I'm reflecting.

Too often I hear people saying to veterans and service men and women, "I'm grateful for your service."  Not me.  I just can't.

Our servicemen have my solemn respect and admiration, but gratitude is taking things just too far -- especially on a day when we honor our war dead.  I will never be grateful that they died.

Thing is most of our service men and women are kids, many joining up because they have nowhere else to go, or because they are fired up because of gung-ho patriotism.  Those who are career military are a different kettle of fish; most of those have joined because of a sincere desire to serve.

I think my basic problem comes from war.  I don't like it.  It's started and run by career politicians who don't really give a damn about our soldiers.  Wars are about which politician has the biggest genitalia, or about how much profit can be made, or who can amass the largest amount of brownie points from their base.  If you think the politicians care about young schoolgirls being slaughter in Iran, or about the thirteen service members who have been killed there or the more than 380 that have been wounded (both  n umbers, I believe have been greatly underestimated), or about the families that have been displaced in Gaza, or about the Ukrainians bombed out of their homes, or about the more than 1.2 million Russian casualties tossed callously into the furnace of war by Vladimir Putin, or about the victims of Boko Haram, Al-Quida, ISIS, drug cartels, the KKK and other homegrown racist organizations, the Taliban, MS-13, or any of the hundreds of other organizations that derive their power by invoking misery upon the innocent.  All of these groups, and many of the countries of the world, are led by small-minded men whose only purpose is power, often who managed to gull a group of useful idiots to support them.  When I rule the world, all of these leaders, and the quislings who support them either actively or by their silence, will be given guns and sent lot the front lines with orders to "Have at 'em. boys!"

The people who serve, the ;people who fight -- and I don't give a damn      what country they are from or what their religion is or what their sexual preferences are -- almost always just want to live in peace and provide for their families in safety and harmony.

So I don't like war and I don't like the people who start them.  I think serving your country is a noble thing, but to serve your country you should be serving its people and too often our service men and women are asked to do the opposite.  Our standing army should be ready to defend the country, but it also should be ready to provide logistics and aid when the people need it.  War should not be fought by blowing the enemy off the face of the Earth because by doing that you are harming many, many innocent people.  Wars need to be settled by diplomacy and reasoning.  There are times admittedly, that that is not possible, but that should be the primary goal.

I grew up in a fairly small town.  Only one member in my class was killed in Vietnam.  His name was Kenny Hughes.  i never hung out with him and did not know him very well although we worked together on a summer job.  Kenny was bright, popular, funny, and had a great future ahead of him.  That all of this was taken away in a foreign country during a war that he could not understand was, to me, the ultimate in evil.  Add to that a bit of guilt on my part because I never served despite having a low draft number -- an accident when I was three damaged my vision and I damaged my right hand in an accident  when I was seventeen and from then on would drop things without warning were the two things that kept me from the Army.  Those I knew who did serve were not fighting for their country or for any noble purpose other than to protect their brother in arms who was fighting right next to them.

The people we honor today do not expect my gratitude.  They are dead and far beyond expecting a anything.  They certainly are not expecting a long and peaceful life, or a family, or a chance to make their way in the world -- all of that has been denied them.  The people we honor today  deserve and receive my admiration, my respect, my thanks, and == sadly -- my pity, because the life that should have been theirs is not.

One of my favorite songs is "The Green Fields of France," in which a wanderer comes across the grace of Willie McBride who died at the age of 19 in the battle fields of France during the Great War.  At one pint in the song, Willie is asked:

"Did you leave 'ere a wife or a sweetheart behind?

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?

Although  you died back in 1916

In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Enclosed in forever, behind a glass frame?

In an old photograph, torn, battered, and stained

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame."

And every year at this time, I am reminded of my namesake.  My legal name is Ralph Harold House.  The Ralph is for my father, who did not want a Big Ralph and a Little Ralph in the family.  the Harold is for Harold Speed, a friend of my parents who died in World War II at Guadalcanal.  Harold Speed was always called Jerry -- I don't know why,  but Jerry was not his middle name -- and since birth I have been called Jerry in honor of him.  My parents never talked about their childhood or their life before marriage, so I know absolutely nothing about Harold Speed.  It may sound corny, but in honor of him, I have always tried to be the very best Jerry I could be.  I hope that is enough for him because that is all that I can offer, that somehow his name lives on -- honorably -- through me.

So, Harold -- Jerry -- although we never met, I am not grateful for your service.  I not grateful that you died.  I am. however, honored to share your name and that, somehow, the better parts of you continue on through me.  It is a privilege to bear your name and I do so with honor, respect, pride, and sincerity.  I just wish that you and so many others had been allowed to live your own lives.

A POEM FOR MEMORIAL DAY: BREAK OF DAY

 BREAK OF DAY

There seemed a smell of autumn in the air

At the bleak end of  night; he shivered there

In a dank, musty dug out where he lay

Legs wrapped in sand bags, -- lumps of chalk and clay

Splattering his face.  Dry mouthed, he thought, "To-day

We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,

Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in

Under the freedom of that morning sky!"

And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell

Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,

That sent a happy dream to him in Hell? --

Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find

Some crater for their wretchedness; who he

In outcast immolation, doomed to die

Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,

Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brins

And roars into their heads, and they can hear

Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.

He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).

He's riding in a dusty Sussex lane

In quiet September; slowly night departs;

And he's a living soul, absolved from pain.

Beyond the brambled fences where he goes

Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,

And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;

Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;

And there's a wall of mist along the vale

Where willows shake their watery sounding leaves.

He gazes on it all, and scarce believes

That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;

He thanks the blessed world that he was born...

Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.

They're drawing the Big Wood!  Unlatch the gate,

And set Golumpus going on the grass:

He knows the corner where it's best to wait

And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;

The corner where old foxes make their track

To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.

The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,

And then a cub looks out; and "Tally-0-back!"

He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack, --

All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,

And hunting surging through him like a flood

In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;

While war drifts away, forgotten at last.

Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim

Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,

And the kind, simple country shines revealed

In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.

The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,

And stretches down his head to crop the green.

All things that he has loved are in his sight;

The places where his happiness has been

Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.

****

Hark!  there's the horn; they're drawing the Big Wood.

-- Siegfried Sassoon, from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

HYMN TIME

Rev. Dan Smith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOygfr_bkk

ACES HIGH #4 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1955)

For some reason, aviation war titles were a rare breed in comic books, unlike in the pulp fiction magazines.  The heyday of the aviation pulps was in the 30's and 40s with titles such as Aces, Air Action, Air Adventures, Air Stories, Air Trails, Air War, American Eagle, American Sky Devils, Army Navy Flying Stories, Battle Aces [G-8], Battle Birds [Dusty Ayres], Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, Dare-Devil Aces, Fighting Aces...and so on, all the way down to Zeppelin Stories, many of which features World War I adventure stories.  In the pulps, there seemed to be a paucity of other war titles, giving preference to aviation war titles, while in the comics, war titles flourished, while aviation was titles were few and far between.  (To be fair, war titles were a small niche in both markets, with the bulk of titles being in the mystery/crime/detective, science fiction, western, horror, and romance genres.)

In 1955, EC Comics were struggling due to the anti-comic book frenzy of the Frederick Wertham era; they shifted to a more realistic approach with their comic book titles, calling them their "New Directions" line;  by this time the company was down to just one science fiction title, while introducing six titles and renaming one: Impact, Valor, Extra!, Aces High, Psychoanalysis, M.D., and Incredible Science Fiction (the renamed title).  The New Directions line did not carry the newly established Comic code and newsstand dealers were reluctant to carry them.  With the second issues of the New Directions line, publisher William Gaines begrudgingly submitted the titles to the Comics Code.  Nevertheless, the new line was a commercial failure and the entire line was cancelled after the fifth issues.  EC then switched to a "Picto-Fiction" line in 1956, four titles illustrated with alternating blocks of typeset text.  This line failed even more spectacularly than the New Directions line, and all titles were cancelled after the second or third issue.  Gaines's distributor went bankrupt and Gaines cancelled all titles except for Mad.

The penultimate issue of Aces High carried four stories:

• :"The Green Kids" -- George Evans, artist
• "The Good Luck Piece" -- Bernard Krigstein, artist
• "The Novice and the Ace" -- Wally Wood, artist
• "Home Again" -- Jack Davis, artist

Probably the most interesting question with these stories was, how many bi-planes in battle action can fit into one comic panel?

Check it out.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RTviz2A6XaigNxu_dRvgcsMNru9xG885/view

FORGOTTEN BOOK: FULLY DRESSED AND IN HIS RIGHT MIND

Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind by Michael Fessier  (first published n 1935, and based on the short story "The Man in the Black Hat [Esquire, February1934]. which was later reprinted in Philip Stong's noted anthology The Other Worlds, 1941; paperback edition [Lion Books #214], with a cover featuring a fully dressed Trelia in the lake, published in 1954; paperback edition published by Staccato Crime in 2022, including an additional three short stories)

A brief note by Anthony Boucher in his Recommended Reading column in the November 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction noted the Lipon paperback reprint:  "a captivating 1935 fantasy long out of print and overdue for revival."  It has been sixty-eight years since that reprint but now the good folks at Staccato Crime -- an imprint from Stark House Press specializing in "Jazz Age Noir Classics," both fiction and nonfiction -- have brought this strange, wondrous, and quirky novel back to life.

Two things should be noted.  First, I truly do not know what to make of this book.  Second, it is fitting that this was published by Staccato because that describes the pacing of the novel.  As David Rachels explains in his introduction, "Michael Fessier launches Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind like a hardboiled rocket with 12 sentences totaling 269 words and only lone comma while the word and appears 25 times so the prose flies and flies with an occasional period allowing a quick breath but real rest not coming until clipped dialogue begins with sentence 13."  You are not sure if you are reading something from a drug-addled junkie or from an overly excited eight-year-old explaining something tremendously exciting that happened to him.  No matter.  What you know is that you are in for a wild ride.

Johnny Price is a man with little ambition.  He has enough family money so  the he does not have to work and spends his days reading, drinking and roaming San Francisco.  While standing in front of the Herald building he hears a shot and was one of a crowd who saw publisher Albert E. Bagley shot and killed.  As he makes his way away from the crowd he is joined by an innocuous little old man who informs him the he -- the old man -- is the one who killed Bagley.  No reason is given.  johnny feels the old man is a looney and heads home.  When he gets there, the old man is in his apartment with  no explanation of how he entered through the locked door.  The old man is cryptic but seemingly friendly, although non-talkative.  Over the coming days, the man keeps appearing without warning or explanation.  There is something very disturbing about him.  At times he seems to have some sort of mental control over Johnny; his eyes mysteriusly turn green and begin flashing.

The old man begins to appear with some of Johnny's friends:  Dorgan, a painter who destroys what he paints, George, a bartender who feels threatened simply because the old man looks at him, and Pete, the superintendent at Johnny's apartment building; when one of Pete's children becomes deathly sick, the old man enters the boy's room and simply stares at the boy until he passes away.  Whoever -- whatever -- the old man is, there is not question that he is evil.

One evening Johnny wanders into Golden Gate Park where there is a small lake.  He hears splashing and sees a naked woman swimming in the lake.  She is beautiful and unabashed.  He keeps returning to the lake and often sees her.  Her name is Trelia and she appears to ne a nymph, but, of course, that is not possible.  Eventually she comes closer and they talk.  When he reaches out to touch her she swims away under the water and is not seen again.  Johnny does not want to frighten her and slowly realizes that he is in love with her.  He admires her beauty but somehow her nakedness does not excite him.  Eventually she returns to him.  He asks her for a kiss, and it is a chaste, dispassionate kiss.  Johnny realizes that under the womanly beauty is just an innocent child.  He still loves her  but cannot desire her.  H also learns that recently the strange old man has been coming to the lake and watching Trelia and occasionally talking with her; in her innocence she believes he is harmless.

The old man is in Johnny's apartment etching Pete wash windows, hanging on the pane from the outside.  Johnny and Dorgan are in the kitchen getting a drink when Pete falls to his death.  The old man was on the opposite side of the room but both are convinced that he was responsible for the fall.

Dorgan wants to paint Trelia's portrait and Johnny convinces her to come to his apartment.  She arrives wearing a soft green dress -- the first time he had seen her clothed.  Over several days, Dorgan tries to capture on canvas but fails miserably.  He also has an unreasoning need to paint the old man's portrait, which comes out much better -- it captures the old man's innocent physical appearance, but, underneath, there appears to be an essence of pure evil.

Johnny confesses his love to Trelia, something she is unable to reciprocate.  she like him but does not love him; her love is limited to  the lake and the natural world of the park.  Johnny and Brogan decided to leave town to escape the old man,  but Johnny changes his mind.  Just then, two cops come in with a warrant for Johnny for the murder of George the bartender, who had been shot in the back.  the old man has made a reliable claim that he saw Johnny shoot George; he also said that Johnny had told George that he had shot Bagley, the publisher.  Johnny is beaten, arrested, and thrown in jail, and the entire city and the press are crucifying him.  Considering the police and civic corruption of the time, it appears to be a given that Johnny will be convicted and hung.  The old man -- still unnamed -- visited Johnny in his cell and indicates that Trelia will be his next victim.

Also visiting Johnny in his cell is a very excited Dorgan.  Trelia had come to the apartment worried about Johnny, but this was a very different Trelia, a Trelia who realized that she was in love with Johnny.  Suddenly Trelia was no longer a child in a  woman's body, but was a complete woman in love.  She is determined to save Johnny, but is it too late?  And how?

A wild and surrealistic ride.  A short novel, with 43 rapid-fire chapters crammed into 120 pages of text.  i am not the only one who did not know what to make of this book.  Reviewers at the time were at a loss to describe or to categorize it.  So let's just leave it by saying that it is sui generis, a thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly unpredicable literary masterpiece.

One other thing that should be mentioned, and one that I would not have noticed had not Rachels pointed it out in his introduction.  the use of the color green in the novel dates back to the Middle Ages, where green had two opposing natures:  vert gai and vert perdu, one positive (the color of Trelia's dress that seemed to reflect the water of her lake) and one negative (the flashing green of the old man's eyes when he was irritated or angry) -- both of which add a bit of a mythic quality to the tale'

Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind had been on my "Want to Read If I Ever Came Across a Copy " list for over fifty years.  I'm glad I finally got a chance.  The Staccato Crime edition adds the three short stories Fessier wrote that were published in 1953 in the crime magazine Manhunt, and which I refuse at present to read because I am afraid it would lessen the impact of the novel.  I'll get to them later.

Michael Fessier (1905-1988) was a film and television writer who also churned out some remarkable stories between assignments.  Among his films were You'll Never Get Rich, You Were Never Lovelier, Wings Over the Navy, and several Fred Astaire/Rita Hayworth musicals; his television credits included Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  He published one other novel, Clovis (1948), about a highly educated and highly opinionated parrot; I'd be interested in reading that one, as well.

SUSPENSE: SUSPICION (AUGUST 12, 1942)

"Suspicion" is one of the most reprinted short stories by author and   scholar Dorothy L. Sayers, who was perhaps best known for the Lor Peter Wimsey mysteries.  It was first published in the premiere issue of Mystery League magazine (October 1933), edited by Ellery Queen and an ill-fated precursor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and was reprinted in Sayers' 1939 collection In the Teeth of Evidence.  Since then, it has been reprinted at least thirty times, including in anthologies edited by the likes of Queen, Will Cuppy, Herbert A. Wise & Phyllis Fraser, Bennett Cerf, Raymond T. Bond, Lee Wright, John Welcome, Mary Danby, and Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini -- more than any other story penned by Sayers.  The story has been adapted at least four time for television, and aired twice on the Suspense, first in 1949 featuring Charles Ruggles, and again on April 3, 1948 with Sam Jaffee in the lead role; in 1949 the story also transitioned to the Suspense television program as the second ever offering in that series.

Real estate agent Harold Mummery (Ruggles) fears for his ailing wife as police are searching for a cook suspected of poisoning several of her employers.  It happened that, as the suspected poisoner disappear, Mummery had hired a new cook...and now Mummery himself has been suffering from stomach problems and begins to suspect their cook of plotting to do them in.  He then discovered that someone has been tampering with a bottle of arsenic-based weed killer in his shed.  He managed to get a sample of some hot chocolate the cook had prepared and brought it to be analyzed.  When the results came back that the sample contained arsenic, he hurried home in a panic...

A tale of misdirection with a not-so-ambiguous ending as the poisoner appears to be revealed.

Enjoy this tale calculated to keep you in...SUSPENSE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXNUqfEf5vI