Thu 5 Jan 2012
Miscellaneous: An Inquiry, A New OTR Website, a Still Active Pulp Author, and a Headline.
Posted by Steve under General , Inquiries , Old Time Radio , Pulp Fiction[10] Comments
1. INQUIRY: From Bill Pronzini: Just for the heck of it, here’s a quiz question for you and M*F readers: Can you name at least one mystery novel narrated by a chauffeur, or in which a chauffeur is the investigating detective? I can supply the title and author of one and am wondering if there are others.
2. A New OTR Website. It might not be correct to call the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER “Old Time Radio,” but given that the program ran for eight years beginning in 1974, it means that it’s been nearly 30 years since its last broadcast. There is a website that not only lists all 1399 episodes, but it also includes cross-listings for all of the performers and writers. And not only that, you can download or listen to each and every one. How many months would that take, if you did it non-stop? Pull out your calculators! Check it out at http://www.cbsrmt.com/
3. Pulp fiction writer Charles Boeckman is 91 and no longer writing, but his jazz band is still going strong. Check out a photo gallery of his latest gig here.
4. Headline in a local paper: Police were called to a day care center where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
UPDATE. 01-06-12. My description of Charles Boeckman as a pulp fiction writer was challenged on a Yahoo group where I also posted the link to the photo gallery above. I was advised that Boeckman was a writer of hard-boiled fiction but not published in pulp magazines.
I shouldn’t have been so short and brief in my post there, nor in the one above. I should (and could) have supplied more of a résumé for Boeckman, and I’m sorry I didn’t.
It was Walker Martin who came to my rescue on that Yahoo list, and I hope he doesn’t mind my repeating some of the credentials for Boeckman I should have provided:
“Charles Boeckman under the name Charles A. Beckman started writing for the Popular Publication line of pulps in the late 1940’s and continued until the pulps bit the dust. Such titles as Fifteen Western Tales and Detective Tales carried much of his short fiction. He also made the switch to the digests. I recently noticed his name in Manhunt.”
Boeckman is one of the very few authors who wrote for the pulps still living — a survivor — and he should be recognized as such. I’m wondering whether he might be a suitable guest for one of the two annual pulp conventions sometime soon. Playing in a jazz band at the age of 91 seems to suggest that his health may be good enough to attend.
January 5th, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Munseys.com recently posted two books that feature chauffeurs:
Trapped by Richard Hayward, where a college professor flees his job and takes a job as a chauffeur and gets involved in a web of crime. He narrates the story in the first person.
Private Chauffeur by N.R. DeMexico. I haven’t read this one yet, but a quick glance at the opening shows it isn’t narrated by the chauffeur. Not sure if he has to investigate or not.
January 5th, 2012 at 10:18 pm
Another note for mystery TV fans who like clues with their TV mystery.
USA network is promoting the January 17th return of WHITE COLLAR by posting a clue each day to help viewers solve the mystery of one of the character’s kidnapping. You can read more about the series and see the clues (it started a couple of days ago) at the following website:
http://whereiselizabethburke.usanetwork.com
January 6th, 2012 at 12:18 am
D.A.
Thanks for the pair of possibles. I don’t know if either is the one Bill knows about. I imagine he’ll let us know eventually.
(And the pair of possibilities is two more than I came up with!)
January 6th, 2012 at 12:19 am
Michael
For some reason WHITE COLLAR is flown completely below my radar. And this is the fourth season? Where have I been?
January 6th, 2012 at 7:17 am
W.R. Burnett’s UNDERDOG (Knopf, 1957) features an ex-con turned chauffeur turned unwilling detective–I highly recommend it. And I seem to recall that the hero of Sherwood King’s 1938 novel IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE also worked as a chauffeur. This was filmed by Orson Welles as LADY FROM SHANGHAI.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:33 am
Both sound to me like good replies to Bill’s question, especially the first one…!
January 8th, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Dan’s response mentions the book I was thinking of, Sherwood King’s IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE. I’ve not read Burnett’s UNDERDOG, but have read TRAPPED (Richard Hayward was a pseudonym of Baynard Kendrick, as I’m sure you know), though it was so long ago I’d forgotten the protagonist narrator was a chauffeur. After looking through my collection last night I can add another title to the list : THE FIRES AT FITCH’S FOLLY by Kenneth Whipple (Crowell 1935), in which the chauffeur narrator functions as a kind of Watson for the sleuthing of a rural New Hampshire police chief.
January 10th, 2012 at 12:52 pm
And one more, thanks to Mauro Boncompagni: THE ROOM UPSTAIRS by Mildred Davis (Simon & Schuster, 1948), an MWA Best First Novel Edgar winner.
January 15th, 2012 at 12:08 am
The Count’s Chauffeur, by William leQueux. Only he’s a crook, not a detective.
January 3rd, 2021 at 12:10 am
Multi-pronged response:
A chauffeur-narrated mystery (or rather, thriller). I believe AJ Quinnell’s “Man on Fire” fits this bill. Good writer; though I think it was wrong for Denzel Washington to be cast for the movie adaptation. That role should have gone to someone like Scott Glenn.
“CBS Radio Mystery Theater”: a competent, if somewhat an unflairful, lackluster radio series. Flawed by materializing at too modern a date.
In retrospect, it was a fine thing for CBS to keep the old OTRR format going; (twenty years after it’s demise) and kind of touching and sweet. Imagine. This was back when there were still American families who might “sit still” and “let’s all do something together” like “listen to radio” …without a dozen hi-tech media devices commanding individual attention. Such is the world today where imagery resoundingly triumphs over narrative and our national fiber has basically collapsed.
I digress. “Good” production qualities are present in “CBS Radio Mystery Theater”, certainly –but in this case “good” doesn’t necessarily mean “better”. Certainly no match for true OTRR which boasted individual orchestras (just one point of criteria). By the time “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” came along, program music was generic and automated.
The writing is also pallid. Similar to stuff like “Mysterious Traveler” and “Weird Circle” and all that kind of thing. Episodic and un-gripping.
What’s far more fun in this case (as opposed to OTRR) are the show intro’s. “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” was introduced by the wonderful EG Marshall and later by…um, PD James or someone like that.
But with EG Marshall at the helm, for sure there’s more verve in the program sidebars (accompanying every commercial break) than the shows themselves, which usually had nobody-actors.
On “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” even the commercial breaks had Lloyd Bridges touting Contact or Excedrin cold medicine. When a show features actors not even better than it’s commercials, what can one say?
Compared to (“true”) OTRR which was populated by Hollywood’s biggest names: no comparison. CBS Radio Mystery Theater is childish alongside the real thing. I guess what I am *really* asserting here is that OTRR is the one medium which sits between film and novel and is the best of both world. [Audiobooks? No effin’ way. Fuggedabout it.]
Now. All the above being stated by way of preface: “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” actually did a sterling job with a run of 6-7 episodes of Conan Doyles’ “Adventure of Sherlock Holmes”. Worth seeking out! It is the only set of installments I’ve downloaded for re-listening; because it stars Kevin McCarthy as Sherlock Holmes and it’s wonderful listening. McCarthy has superb line-delivery.