ROBERT ARTHUR, ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS

Back in the day, we Monster Kids had lots of other "literature" to occupy their minds besides having our brains rotted away reading monster magazines and comic books; boys had THE HARDY BOYS and TOM SWIFT and girls had NANCY DREW and both had THE HAPPY HOLLISTERS. While I plowed my way through a good share of the Hardy's (there's even a current book club for them HERE), it was always stories of the spooky kind that I gravitated toward and always delighted in that harmless little shiver they gave me.

Cover art by Rudy Nappi.

In grade school, the Scholastic Book Services supplied me with a few of their ghost story anthologies and other scary books that were "parent approved". One of my favorites was THE ARROW BOOK OF GHOST STORIES , edited by Nora Kramer* and illustrated by George Wilde, which I read multiple times.

Cover illustration by George Wilde.

When I latched onto a copy of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL (Random House, 1961) I was in spook heaven. I can't tell you how many times I pored over every one of the stories. By that time, I even began to recognize some of the authors; Walter R. Brooks' story, "Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons", for instance, was dramatized and narrated by John Allen on the LP, ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S GHOST STORIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE (Golden, 1960).

Cover illustration by Fred Banbery.

One of the authors that cropped up several times in the next collection, ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S GHOSTLY GALLERY (Random House, 1962), was named Robert Arthur. Even I could tell his tales were aimed at younger readers but that didn't diminish the fright factor, at least for this young reader!

Cover illustration by Fred Banbery.

I didn't know until later that Arthur was the man behind many of these "Alfred Hitchcock" projects (Hitchcock only licensed his name -- how's that for popular?), including editing and introducing (as Alfred Hitchcock) a number of the Random House/Dell Hitchcock mystery and horror paperback anthologies.

Cover illustration by Fred Banbery.

Robert Arthur, Jr. (November 10, 1909 – May 2, 1969) was born at Fort Mills, Corregidor Island, the Philippines, where his father was stationed in the military. He grew up an "Army brat" and when he was older, decided against following in his father's footsteps and instead enrolled at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1926. He later transferred to the University of Michigan where he graduated with a B.A. in English with Distinction. He was then hired as an editor for one of Frank Munsey's publications and went back to the University of Michigan to get his M.A. in Journalism in 1932.

After graduating, Arthur moved to Greenwich Village, New York. Like many other writers with good educations during that period, he had to make a living, and, for the next decade, wrote fiction detective, mystery and science-fiction for pulp magazines. While he didn't write any horror stories for WEIRD TALES, he did write for a long list of others, including AMAZING STORIES, THE SHADOW, THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE, ARGOSY, BLACK MASK and UNKNOWN WORLDS. During the same time, he was an editor and writer at Dell and worked on their true crime, western and movie magazines. He also founded the first pocket book-sized all-fiction publication, POCKET DETECTIVE MAGAZINE for Street & Smith.

In 1940 he formed a partnership with David Kogan and together they created THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER radio show that ran from 1944-1953 until they were blackballed by Senator McCarthy's notorious hunt for communist subversives -- Arthur and Kogan were guilty by association by being members of The Radio Writer's Guild. Before the fiasco ended it, Arthur had written over 500 scripts for his show as well as several others.

After a divorce and looking for a fresh start, Arthur moved to Hollywood in 1959 where he wrote scripts for THE TWILIGHT ZONE and was a writer and story editor for the ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS TV show. Three years later, he moved back east to New Jersey. Knowing that he worked for Hitchcock, Random House offered him a job editing a series of Alfred Hitchcock mystery/suspense/horror anthologies as well as the series for young readers.

Besides his work on the Alfred Hitchcock books, Arthur began another series for young readers called THE THREE INVESTIGATORS originally using Alfred Hitchcock's name, then later dropped. Arthur wrote ten of the first eleven books. After he passed away, the series continued to be written by other authors until the 1990's and a total of 42 books.

THE THREE INVESTIGATORS proved quite popular and recently Arthur's daughter and her husband reprinted her father's ten books as 60th Anniversary editions, privately-printed by Hollow Tree Press. They are the first editions in English published in 25 years.

Robert Arthur, Jr. passed away on 2 May 1969 at the age of 59. As shown here, he was a very prolific writer in numerous professions and more than likely made a better-than-average living for himself and his families (he was married three times). Like other pulp authors such as Carl Jacobi, Arthur is underrated, and if anybody deserves a book collection of stories, it's him.

For complete bio of Robert Arthur written by his daughter, click HERE.

In the first adventure of Robert Arthur’s classic mystery series, it's 1964 in the town of Rocky Beach, California. Working out of their newly established Headquarters – an old trailer hidden behind carefully arranged junk in the Jones Salvage Yard – and driven around southern California in a gold-plated vintage Rolls Royce they've won the use of in a contest, Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews decide to get publicity for their fledgling detective firm by finding a real haunted house for the renowned film director Reginald Clarke.

But although the highly rational Jupiter starts with the belief that there is no such thing as a ghost, a spook, a phantom, or a spirit, Terror Castle – the old mansion supposedly troubled by the ghost of the late Stephen Terrill, the silent horror film star called the Man with a Million Faces – may prove him wrong!

By turns exciting, spine-tingling, and humorous, The Secret of Terror Castle promises to please not only the existing fan base of The Three Investigators series but a whole new generation of readers who will find in its pages three very different boys whose imagination, courage, and intelligence can remind us that curiosity, perseverance, and rational inquiry are just as vital as friendship and cooperation.

At the end of each Three Investigators book published by Hollow Tree Press are notes written by Robert Arthur's daughter and son-in-law, exploring three subjects connected to the story – in this case, Silent Movies, Salvage Yards, and Rolls Royces – and young readers may want to use the notes as guidelines for further investigation. After all, the motto of The Three Investigators is "We Investigate Anything," and their trademark is “???” – three question marks, taken together.

On the 60th anniversary of the creation of The Three Investigators series, the first-ever English-language e-book editions of Robert Arthur’s novels, as well as the first new English-language print editions in over twenty-five years, stand ready to delight a whole new audience. Be sure to seek out all ten titles!

The newly published reprints of the Robert Arthur THE THREE INVESTIGATORS books are available from Hollow Tree Press at Amazon.

*A NOTE ON NORA KRAMER

This is her obit from THE NEW YORK TIMES, 6 July 1984:

Nora Kramer, author, editor and authority on juvenile books, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 88 years old.

Mrs. Kramer wrote and edited more than 30 books, including ''Nora Kramer's Storybook for Fives and Sixes'' and ''The Cozy Hours Storybook,'' in collaboration with Josette Frank. She was founder and director of the Book Plan, a personalized book selection service for young people, which she began under the name of Eleanor Brent.

Mrs. Kramer was a longtime member of the Children's Book Committee of the Child Study Association of America; she was editor in chief of the Book Woman, the publication of the Women's National Book Association, and she was chairman of Books Across the Sea of the English Speaking Union. She was also an award-winning sculptress.

This story by Robert Arthur was written in the 1950's an published in ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S 13 MORE STORIES THEY WOULDN'T LET ME DO ON TV:

THE ART OF FRED BANBERY: ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL

“Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.”

– Alfred Hitchcock

Boy, were these fun! For a while in the mid-60's, the name Alfred Hitchcock was ubiquitous in the media. Besides his hit TV show, he was producing and directing movies by the parcel and sidelines such as radio shows abounded. One of these was a series of children's "scary" books (or, at least, books intended for a young readership!) that carried his name. ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL (published on September 1, 1961) is subtitled on the cover, “NINE COOL STORIES ABOUT HAUNTED HOUSES AND  GHOSTS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS". The stories are all pretty harmless for a kid, but they provided plenty of nighttime reading shivers nonetheless. It was edited by Robert Arthur, a frequent writer for Hitchcock books (including the Three Investigator series), and who most probably wrote the introduction to this book even though it is signed by Hitch. The stories were further helped along immensely by the spooky visuals provided by illustrator Fred Banbery.

Frederick Ernest Banbery (1 September 1913 – 7 March 1999) is best known as the artist that brought Michael Bond's famous Paddington Bear to life in the character's second series of publication. Following is a short biography from the Chris Beetles Gallery website:

The versatile draughtsman Fred Banbery made an important contribution to the development of the immortal character of Paddington Bear. During the early 1970s, he drew on his wide range of experience as illustrator and cartoonist to produce images to accompany texts simplified by Michael Bond from his original ‘Paddington’ stories. These variants, published over a decade after the initial book, A Bear Called Paddington (1958), were aimed at the under fives and known collectively as the ‘Young Set’. Their picture-book format placed much greater emphasis on the visual element than had the original form of publication. So Banbery had much greater scope than his predecessor Peggy Fortnum, not only through the formal potential of size and colour, but through the need to delineate personality and narrative. Given a free hand by author and editor, Banbery was able to act as creator as well as interpreter, to the degree that his widow can detect strong elements of self-portraiture in his portrayal of the bear. Ultimately, he determined the quintessential look of Paddington.

Fred Banbery was born in Pimlico, London, on 1 September 1913, the son of a publican. He was educated at Westminster City School, where his artistic talents were encouraged by his art master; while there, he won a number of prizes for drawing, including a copy of W Outram Tristram’s Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, with illustrations by Hugh Thomson and Herbert Railton, a volume which would later prove an important influence on his career.

From 1930, Banbery worked as a commercial artist, while studying in evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1931-33). He received regular commissions from several companies, including J Weiner Ltd, Printers (1932-34) and Dorland Advertising Ltd (1934-37). Then, in 1938, he left England for Bombay in order to become a staff artist for The Times of India; his success was marked in the following year when the newspaper awarded him its Medal for Graphic Art. During the Second World War, he drew propaganda images for the Government of India at New Delhi (1939-41), even as he began to serve as a pilot in the Royal Air Force (in India and then in Europe between 1940-46). He also found enough spare time to produce sufficient cartoons to be collected in book form as Who Said Blitzkrieg?

Following the war, Banbery settled in the United States, and worked as a commercial artist and illustrator for H Watts Associates, New York (1946-50). His first commission was as a book illustrator for Simon & Schuster who, in 1949, used him again to illustrate a special, highly successful edition of the Pickwick Papers. (His drawings for the project, inspired in part by Tristram’s Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, were exhibited at the Arthur Newton Galleries, New York). In the same year, he began to contribute to numerous periodicals, including Collier’s Magazine and Holiday Magazine and won the Institute of American Engravers Prize. Moving to Philadelphia, he worked for N W Ayer & Son Advertising (195-53), and continued to develop a reputation, garnering a number of awards, from the American Institute of Graphic Art (1950), the New York Art Directors Club (1951) and the Philadelphia Art Directors Club (1953, 1954 and 1955).

From 1954, Banbery worked increasingly for London clients, and especially The Sunday Times (1954-57) and Murray & Phelan Advertising Ltd (1958-61). However, he retained his American contacts, with the result that he contributed to The New Yorker (from 1958), illustrated books for Random House, Simon & Schuster and Viking (1961-67), and received an award from the American Institute of Lithographers and Printers (1958).

The most lasting contribution made by Banbery to British illustration, before his death in London on 7 March 1999, also originated in an American connection. During regular stays at Aspen, Colorado, when it was as much a centre of culture as a ski resort, he had met and befriended the Olympic skier, Evie Chance. It was she who suggested to Adrian House at Collins Publishing that he would be an ideal choice of illustrator of the new picture-book variants of Michael Bond’s ‘Paddington’ stories (1972-75). So he succeeded Peggy Fortnum, the much admired original illustrator, and successfully emphasised the visual identity of the little bear from Darkest Peru.

Banbery evolved an ideal approach with which to present Paddington to small children. The line that he employed is tighter than that of Fortnum, yet just as sensitive, so establishing an image that registers easily and comfortably with young eyes and minds. The details of appearance that he included, such as Paddington’s hat and duffle coat, are defined and codified in order to aid recognition and memorability; thus he seems to have understood that the experience of looking, especially at an early age, should be at once educational and pleasurable. The positioning of Paddington within an image reveals his interest in affirming an immediate rapport between readers and character: the bear is often to the fore, looking out and gesturing, even waving. So he mediates between the reader and the large, if quiet and subdued, environment of Britain in the 1970s. Banbery almost transformed Paddington from an amusing outsider to the baby of a family. In the attempt he made Paddington the child within us all.

No mention of Banbery's work on the Hitchcock books here, so enough with cute little bears; let's talk about his great drawings for ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL! This was the first of several books aimed at a young readership and contained reprints of ghost stories that had appeared over the years in any number of collections. Introduced by Hitchcock, but more probably written by editor Robert Arthur, the contents provided a wide variety of frights for youngsters:

• Let’s Haunt a House by Manly Wade Wellman
• The Wastwych Secret by Constance Savery
• Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons by Walter R. Brooks
• The Mystery of Rabbit Run by Jack Bechdolt
• The Forgotten Island by Elizabeth Coatsworth
• The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall by John Kendrick Bangs
• The Red-Headed League by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Treasure in the Cave by Mark Twain
• The Mystery in Four-and-a-Half Street by Donald Peattie & Louise Peattie

Two of the stories in Hitchcock's HAUNTED HOUSEFUL had been previously published a year earlier in editor Nora Kramer's collection, ARROW BOOK OF GHOST STORIES (Scholastic Book Services). The first, "Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons" by Walter R. Brooks was also included in the children's LP ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S GHOST STORIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE (Golden Records, 1962). The other, "The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall" by John Kendrick Bangs, was simply titled, "The Water Ghost" in the Arrow book.

"The Red-Headed League" is of course, a Sherlock Holmes tale by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and "The Treasure in the Cave" is an excerpt from Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer".

Hitchcock was known for his gallows humor and this was not lost on Banbery -- he depicted the ghosts in his drawings with the unmistakable face of Hitchcock!

This and the other books in the series have been looked at fondly by readers who discovered them in the 1960's and 1970's, and are memorable in large part for the images by Fred Banbery that accompanied the stories.

Here are the complete illustrations from the book. So far as my research took me while writing this, I found many sites that recycled the same images, but none that I found had all of them.

Front cover of dust jacket.

Front cover "self-cover".

Inside front cover illustration.

Inside back cover illustration.

Back cover illustration.