Tue 18 Jan 2022
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: CORNELL WOOLRICH “Dipped in Bloodâ€.
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[14] Comments
CORNELL WOOLRICH. “Dipped in Blood.†Novelette. First published in Detective Story Magazine, April 1945. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1964, as “Adventures of a Fountain Pen.†Collected in The Ten Faces of Cornell Woolrich (Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1965) also as “Adventures of a Fountain Pen.†Film: US title, Oh, Bomb! (Japan, 1964, directed by Kihachi Okamoto).
There is a small but significant subgenre of both fiction and the movies in which the story follows an object of some importance is followed through its lifetime as it’s passed from hand to hand in small vignettes. It may be a gun, an automobile, almost anything, including a similar chain connecting people in all walks of lives. (If there’s a name to such a subgenre, I don’t know what it is. Maybe someone reading this can help.)
The object in this richly ironic story by Woolrich is a fountain pen, manufactured to order as a means of assassination by one gangster meant for another. Things go awry, however, as they always do in a Woolrich story, with one final twist at the end, about which I will tell you only that it’s there but nothing more. There are things best to be discovered on one’s own.
I don’t believe this is one of Woolrich’s better known stories, but what it has is both an ending worth waiting for and people in it who are described to perfection in just a few words or lines. This is why, when back in the 1970s when I first started to seriously read mysteries, if I was asked who my favorite mystery writer was, it was always a tossup between Erle Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout, or Cornell Woolrich, in alphabetical order. That still holds true today.
January 18th, 2022 at 10:21 pm
oh ‘brother’
d’ja ever hear ’bout
the little ink dot
who was blue
‘cuz his father
was in the ‘pen
for a long sentence
January 18th, 2022 at 10:32 pm
the case is still on the blotter
he’d stole a second hand
wristwatch
so they gave him the works
he hadda do time
he was all run down
before he got sprung
January 19th, 2022 at 11:58 am
At a certain point in 1970s, I binged on Cornell Woolrich stories and novels. I was pretty much convinced at that time that Woolrich was the best suspense writer ever. Although I have a few authors I would rank ahead of Woolrich now, his work is still top-notch.
January 19th, 2022 at 12:49 pm
As much as I enjoyed Woolrich’s work back in the 1970s, I don’t think I could have read more than two in a row, and they’d have to be short stories. And thinking about it now, I can’t remember any author I’ve ever binged on. I can understand those who can and do, but I’m just not built that way.
And speaking of the story structure of “Dipped in Blood,” this old movie based on a 1897 play seems to come close. Quoting from Wikipedia:
“La Ronde is a 1950 French film directed by Max Ophüls and based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play La Ronde.
“Set in Vienna in 1900, it shows ten amorous encounters across the social spectrum, from a street prostitute to a nobleman, with each scene involving one character from the previous episode. The French term ‘La Ronde’ can mean any of the following: circling around, doing the rounds, a round of drinks, a circular dance.”
January 19th, 2022 at 4:10 pm
Max Ophuls is one of the greatest directors. Everyone who loves film should become familiar with his work. His greatest film is his last, LOLA MONTES.
Some of Ophuls’ films actually have objects that get passed around, like the fountain pen in teh Woolrich story:
the fur coat in CAUGHT,
the earrings in MADAME De…
Ophuls influenced Hollywood director Vincente Minnelli.
See the curtains that keep showing up in Minnelli’s THE COBWEB.
Before either, recurring objects were part of the structure in films by the great comedy director Ernst Lubitsch:
the purse in Trouble in Paradise (1932),
Horton’s remark about “three square meals a day” in Design for Living (1933),
the jewels in Ninotchka (1939).
See also the check in THE GRAND BOUNCE (Jacques Tourneur, 1937).
January 19th, 2022 at 4:35 pm
Ophuls has been enthusiastically discussed here before:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1038
Since that discussion, I certainly have seen (and liked) Ophuls’ THE RECKLESS MOMENT.
January 19th, 2022 at 8:42 pm
Jan Potaki’s SARAGOSA MANUSCRIPT is cast as a ‘ronde’ with each story introducing a character or characters who appear in the next story and work back to the original. James Hilton used that form for ILL WIND (CONTANGO).
January 20th, 2022 at 12:16 am
The (auto)biography of an object has a long history. At English schools in the 1960s it was a standard exercise for children.
It’s rather different to “frame stories” like The Saragossa Manuscript (also a fine film) or
“rondes”, though it can incorporate them. It’s usually or ODTAA or OFTAA (depending on when the term was used).
January 20th, 2022 at 7:18 am
My mind can never process acronyms.
Please, what do “ODTAA or OFTAA” stand for?
In the film of “La Ronde”, the ronde is also literalized as a merry-go-round. As well as being the dance of life.
A favorite scene from the start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECr1aLZH7lo
I watch Ophuls’ camera, as it moves and moves and moves.
January 20th, 2022 at 9:01 am
I assumed ODTAA = One Damned Thing After Another, and OFTAA a slight variation on that, but maybe I’m wrong. Roger?
January 20th, 2022 at 10:06 am
Another example of ‘following an object’ can be found as early as 1932.
“LOVE ME TONIGHT”. Paramount, 1932. Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charlie Ruggles, Charles Butterworth, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Elizabeth Patterson. Music: Rodgers & Hart. Director: Rouben Mamoulian.
“… The opening of the movie takes place on a quiet Parisian street at dawn. Then a worker comes out with a hammer to work on the pavement, then a woman comes out of her house to sweep the sidewalk, two other women open their windows to flap rugs against the railings, two shoemakers begin hammering nails into boots in a syncopated counterpoint harmony, and soon there’s a entire cacophony of sounds (and music) showing off life in a big city. …”
“…the song “Isn’t It Romantic?†begins by being sung by Maurice Chevalier in his tailor’s shop, is then picked up by a man taking a cab to the train station; on the train a band of soldiers overhear it, and continue to sing it while marching through a forest, where a gypsy hears it and takes it back to his camp, from which the sound is heard by the princess in a balcony of her palace…”
January 20th, 2022 at 10:18 am
Reviewed here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=49690
My opinion? “… this is one of the best romantic comedy musicals of all time.”
January 20th, 2022 at 10:36 am
I had a feeling that I had originally encountered this info, here on this site
I’ve recommended the flick to Francophiles in my circle, based on the above review
January 20th, 2022 at 1:35 pm
That’s right, Steve. ODTAA is the title of a novel by John Masefield, OFTAA is the definition of history in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys.
I think I know the reason why
Producers tend to make him cry
They invariably demand
Some stationary set-ups, and
A shot that does not call for tracks
Is agony for poor old Max
Who, separated from his dolly,
Is wrapped in deepest melancholy.
Once, when they took away his crane,
I thought he’d never smile again.
– James Mason on Ophuls.
Orson Welles described a film studio as “the greatest electric train set a boy ever had”, but Ophuls was the man who knew how to work it. The camera is another character in his films.