Sat 6 Jan 2018
Pulp Stories I’m Reading, by David Vineyard: DONALD BARR CHIDSEY “Flight to Singapore.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[12] Comments
DONALD BARR CHIDSEY “Flight to Singapore.” Short novel. Argosy, 3 August 1940. Available online here.
Pick up any issue of the major pulps like Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, Popular, or the like and you could be guaranteed to find at least one stem winder of a story inside, that would at least have made a first rate B-film and maybe more.
The names that graced those pages include the famous of course like Burroughs, Brand, Merritt, Woolrich, Mundy, Lamb, and such, but also half-forgotten names that once guaranteed a headlong tale well told and usually much more, names like Robert Carse, Georges Surdez, H. Bedford-Jones, George F. Worts, Gordon Young, and the prolific and popular Donald Barr Chidsey.
Some, like Chidsey, Carse, and Surdez even had post-pulp careers in hardcover for a time, but it is their pulp work that resonates today.
The story “Flight to Singapore†by Donald Barr Chidsey, is one of those tales, one in a series about Prince Mike of Kammorirri and his bodyguard/pal George Marlin, who finds himself a beat cop and insurance tec now Captain of the Guard, Chief of Police, and head of the Army of the small principality of Kammorirri in Southeast Asia, where Prince Mike’s father, the Sultan, fights to keep his little nation free of being “protected†by the Western powers by keeping almost all contact with the outside world at bay.
Not an easy task when his heir and pride is Prince Mikuud, Phni Luangha, late of Princeton, a most modern young man who flies his own plane and fights his own fights with the help of his friend George Marlin, who struggles to call him Your Highness when they visit the outside world.
It starts as George is escorting a rare wanted visitor out of the country and encounters an eager missionary, a type the Sultan especially loathes, but in the pulp world these things can move fast and soon the “Missionary†has drawn a gun and had it shot out of his hand by George and the jungle is hot with gunfire.
Three men, Langford (the phony Missionary), Kelt (the pilot), and a brutal Australian named Claessens, have found rubies in Kammorirri, the last thing the Sultan needs as the palace drips of them and such treasure would inevitably be an invitation by some Western nation to protect the hell out of the small principality.
How Prince Mike, with George Marlin’s fast gun and fists, outwits the bad guys, avoids the crisis in treasure by convincing the outside world the rubies are worthless, and cleans up the mess is the crux of a fast moving and entertainingly told tale that encompasses pitched jungle battles, fancy flying, lost temples, well meaning Europeans who have to be protected and held at bay, and just about everything but a romantic interest.
I don’t know how many of these Chidsey wrote. I do know of at least one other, that being “Run, Tiger!” which appeared in the August 9, 1941 issue of Argosy, and there may be more. “Flight to Singapore” is an entertaining take on the Westernized modern Asian trope that had begun appearing alongside the Yellow Peril several decades earlier, where Number 1 Son and Mr. Moto are both the lead and the brains of the operation, and the plot and action move along at a pace and in high style.
It’s a shame Prince Mike and George Marlin never got a full length novel adventure. One was well deserved.
January 6th, 2018 at 1:17 am
In spite of having seen his name bylined on tons of stories in old pulp magazines I’ve accumulated over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever read a single one of them. Sounds as though I’ve missed something.
Here’s a link to his Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barr_Chidsey
He wrote a whole lot more than pulp fiction!
January 6th, 2018 at 9:34 am
I haven’t read this particular story, but I really like Chidsey’s work.
January 6th, 2018 at 9:49 am
Chidsey is an author i’m happy to find in those 30s Argosy issues. Wrote many genres competently.
I have what looks like the first appearance of Mike in the August 21, 1937 issue of Argosy – he’s on the cover. That issue also has a L. Ron Hubbard story in it, which makes it more collectible.
January 6th, 2018 at 3:37 pm
Thanks, Sai. The title of the story is “Call Me Mike,” and here’s what the cover looks like:
January 6th, 2018 at 12:11 pm
This sounds like a delightful story.
Thank you for telling us about it!’
I’d never heard of Chidsey.
The series premise sounds a bit like the slightly earlier O’Reilly stories by Lawrence G. Blochman (of Dr. Coffee fame). They began with “O’Reilly Sahib” in Argosy, Oct 24, 1936. O’Reilly was a New York cop recruited as the bodyguard of a US-educated Indian Maharajah. O’Reilly is not trying to keep the Maharajah’s realm secret though. This tale is an excellent mix of detection and adventure.
It was reprinted as “The Zarapore Beat” in the anthology Four-&-Twenty Bloodhounds (1950) edited by Anthony Boucher.
January 7th, 2018 at 12:19 am
Without having read any of either series, I can see the similarities, too, Mike.
One other thought I’ve had is that there are now three Prince Mike stories that have been identified. If Chidsey never wrote a full length novel about him, I’d say there’s enough to make a collection of the shorter ones he did wrote.
January 7th, 2018 at 1:05 pm
I’ve found another two stories in the series. Listing all the stories we’ve found so far:
Call Me Mike (nv) Argosy Aug 21 1937
For the Love of Mike (nv) Argosy Sep 4 1937
Mike the Magnificent (nv) Argosy Sep 18 1937
Flight to Singapore (nv) Argosy Aug 3 1940
Run, Tiger! (nv) Argosy Aug 9 1941
Definitely enough material for a collection.
January 7th, 2018 at 1:28 pm
Great work, Sai. Thanks! I think it’s time to send this review to Matt Moring at Altus Press and see what he thinks about it.
January 7th, 2018 at 4:15 pm
I wonder if it’s too late to have my name legally changed to “Mike the Magnificent”.
January 8th, 2018 at 6:45 pm
Only if you’re over 21.
January 8th, 2018 at 7:04 am
Biographical information on Chidsey:
https://ask.metafilter.com/165058/Who-Was-Donald-Barr-Chidsey
January 8th, 2018 at 6:46 pm
Thanks, Mike. He really had quite a life. I think it’s OK to copy and paste a couple of paragraphs:
“Donald Barr Chidsey has covered a good part of the earth in tramp steamers or tramp schooners, pearl shell boats or copra boats, or private yachts. He owned a plantation in the Punaauia district of [Tahiti,] visited or lived in most of the South Sea Islands: the Society Islands, American and Western Samoa, the Australs, the Cooks, the Fiji Islands, the Gambiers, the Tuamotus, New Guinea, Papua, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and many others; Central and South America, China, Indo-China, Japan, Malaya, the Near East.
“Mr. Chidsey has been a newspaperman, Broadway actor, farmer, road gang foreman, mountaineer, bartender, boxer, and fencer with foil, épée, saber, schlaeger and broadsword. He was an ambulance driver with the British 8th Army in North Africa, has served also with the 9th Army in Syria, the New Zealanders, the United States army, the Free French in Tunisia, and the 51st Highland Division. Throughout his own adventures, he has always been a writer. Many previous works include the bestselling novels Panama Passage and Stronghold.”