BROADWAY BILL. Columbia Pictures, 1934. Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Walter Connolly, Helen Vinson, Douglass Dumbrille, Raymond Walburn, Lynne Overman, Clarence Muse, Margaret Hamilton, Frankie Darro. Director: Frank Capra. Shown at Cinevent 22, Columbus OH, May 1990.

   What a wonderful cast. A racetrack comedy/drama, not a genre I am particularly fond of, but easy to take here. The climax astonished us and broke our hearts. Even the upbeat ending didn’t do much to improve the mood of the audience that quietly filed out.

   [PLOT WARNING.] I don’t want to tease you, so I am going to reveal the climax. The film is about a race horse that is trained by Baxter to win the big race against all odds. The horse, running valiantly wins, and then drops dead; its generous heart, weakened by an earlier bout with a virus, burst.

MAN BAIT. Hammer Films-UK / Lippert Pictures-US, 1952. George Brent, Marguerite Chapman, Diana Dors, Raymond Huntley. Peter Reynolds, and Meredith Edwards. Screenplay by Frederick Knott, based on The Last Page, a play by James Hadley Chase. Directed by Terence Fisher.

   A Pleasant surprise with the unlikely title Man Bait showed up on the bottom half of a double bill DVD billed as “Hammer Noir,” one of a series of co-productions between Hammer Studios and producer Robert Lippert.

BORING BACKGROUND – SKIP THIS PART: Robert Lippert was a producer of legendary cheapness and dubious ethics who churned out a slew of low-budget movies in the 1950s & 60s, mostly aimed at rural audiences and double bills. His favorite actors were Sid Melton, who didn’t need a script, and Margia Dean, whom he was sleeping with. When he hired bigger “name” actors (heavyweights like Cesar Romero or Rod Cameron) it was usually on a profit-sharing deal where the profits never materialized. As far as I can tell, the only ones who ever got a fair shake from Lippert were Sam Fuller, who carried a gun, and George Raft, who had Mob connections.

   In the early 50s, Lippert discovered that the British government was subsidizing film production in England, and he could actually make movies cheaper there in partnership with a British studio. He hit upon the ploy of casting fading second-rank Hollywood “stars” (Raft, Romero, Scott Brady, Zachary Scott, and the like) for dubious box office power in the states, and a whole new sub-genre was born: the Anglo-American B-movie, which flourished, after a fashion, until the moguls at Hammer got a grasp on Lippert’s slippery bookkeeping.

AND NOW BACK TO THE MOVIE: This one stars audience-magnet George Brent and a very capable cast of Brits, including Raymond Huntley, playing his usual nasty martinet, Diana Dors as a sensuous not-quite-innocent, and Peter Reynolds, perfectly slimy as the small-time spiv who tempts our Diana into blackmail and murder — in a bookstore.

   The plot has some surprising twists in it, but the strength of Man Bait is in the characterizations and atmosphere. Director Terence Fisher perfectly evokes the feel of a little book shop — all nooks and crannies and crowded shelves — and the writers people it with real bookstore-types if you know what I mean.

   Which leads me to speculate on where they came from. I have read some of James Hadley Chase’s novels, and I’ll be charitable by saying characterization is not his strong suit. Man Bait is based on a stage play apparently by Chase, The Last Page. I can find no more about it, but the presence of Frederick Knott, just before he hit it big with Dial M for Murder leads me to suspect he played a strong hand in fashioning this film, and perhaps the play as well.

   Whatever the case, Man Bait zips along suspensefully, with Brent framed for murder and the police oh-so-slowly figuring things out as another killing looms just ahead. Terence Fisher makes an impressive directorial debut, and even George Brent, never terribly exciting, lends a surprising inner strength to his quiet role. This one’s a winner.

KIERAN ABBEY – Beyond the Dark. Dell #93, mapback edition, no date stated [1945]. First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1944.

   This one begins at Inspiration Point, overlooking the Hudson River at the uppermost tip of the island of Manhattan. A man and a woman, strangers to each other, are watching the boats on the water below. He offers her a cigarette. She accepts. Three men come walking up from the parkway below, deep in conversation. When they see the pair of them at the top, they stop talking and pull out their guns. Shots ring out.

   The couple, still strangers, flee together, making their way downtown by means of a police car they steal, having found it left unmanned nearby. Thus begins one of the most Woolrichian tale of constant capture. escape and chase — up and down and across the entire city — that I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a good long while. Not only are the police after them, but the FBI, and of course the gang of conspirators the men who shot at them are a part of.

   Both of them has a reason, not revealed, for not wanting to go to the police. Neither has anyone in the entire city they can turn to for help. Worse, when they return to the apartment the girl has borrowed for the duration of her stay, they find the body of one of then men who shot at them, recently and definitely deceased.

   If you could stop reading at this point, you’re a better person than I. Of course the explanation of how these two people got into a fix like this is not nearly as interesting as the story of how they find their way out of it. No matter. This one was a pleasure to read.

   Kieran Abbey was a pseudonym for Helen Reilly, who was, as you may already know, the author of several dozen Inspector McKee police procedural novels. This is the third of only three she wrote under this name, all during the 40s. It’s a book filled with the sights and sounds of late wartime New York City, showing another side of the author I wasn’t aware of before.

SPY TRAIN. Monogram, 1943. Richard Travis, Catherine Craig, Chick Chandler, Thelma White, Evelyn Brent. Director: Harold Young.

   An overall (and honest) assessment of this dopey low-budget anti-Nazi film from the 1940s is that it’s just another dopey low-budget anti-Nazi film from the 1940s. And yet, once past the opening premise — that thanks to a boneheaded error by one of the bad guys — there’s a bomb in a suitcase on a train and it’s set to go off at 10 PM or if anyone tries to open it — it’s actually a lot of fun to watch.

   The setting — mostly confined to two or three cars on a speeding train — and the name recognition of the various players — are modest. Richard Travis plays an author who’s trying to visit his rclsive newspaper publisher to find out why his articles on Nazis hard at work in this country have such an become suppressed. Luckily the man’s daughter (Catherine Craig) is on board the train, and he does his best to cozy up to her.

   And here are a couple of lines that I thought funny that I hadn’t heard before. She discovers who he is from seeing his photo on the back cover of his latest book:

   Bruce’s companion. a photographer played by Chick Chandler, also has some funny lines as he constantly complains about being stuck with Jane’s maid (Thelma White).

   In the end the Nazis get their just desserts. That plus a speeding train. What more could you want?

FRANK PARRISH – Snare in the Dark. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1982. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1981. Perennial, US, paperback, 1983.

   Dan Mallett is a poacher by profession — he once was a banker and didn’t like it — so he went back to the way of his father — to his now aged mother’s dismay.

   Caught in the open while setting up snares for a forest filled with plump pheasants, a shot rings out (in all honesty, not quite — it’s an arrow from a crossbow) and his gamekeeper nemesis is dead. Mallett has to spend the rest of the book with the police on his trail. The only way to clear himself is to find the real killer.

   It doesn’t seem like a lot to base a full length novel on, but Parrish somehow finds a way to fill the pages and keep them turning at the same time. What’s amusing about this case is how women are attracted to Mallett, a short and not very handsome man. But obviously not one without some charm, and in its own quiet bucolic way, so is this, his third of eight adventures. If you like books about the rustic side of English life as it was in the 1970s and 80s, don’t miss this one.

      The Dan Mallett series —

Fire in the Barley. Constable, 1977.
Sting of the Honeybee. Constable, 1978.
Snare in the Dark. Constable, 1982.
Bait on the Hook. Constable, 1983.
Face at the Window. Constable, 1984.
Fly in the Cobweb. Constable, 1986.
Caught in the Birdlime. Constable, 1987.
Voices from the Dark. Constable, 1993.

MARGARET YORKE – Dead in the Morning. Dr. Patrick Grant #1. Bantam, paperback; 1st US printing, October 1982. First published in the UK by Geoffrey Bles, hardcover, 1970.

   I read and reviewed Cast for Death, the fifth and last of Margaret Yorke’s Patrick Grant books, earlier this year and found it somewhat of a muddle as a detective novel, but I did find Dr. Grant’s struggle with love and romance quite enjoyable.

   Dead in the Morning, the first of the series, is a total opposite: no romance in sight for Dr. Grant, and the detective story is both engaging and fun to read. He is not a medical doctor, by the way, but an Oxford don with a (very) inquisitive mind.

   As a twist to what we come to expect in stories like one — an aged, invalid matriarch of a dysfunctional family who also keeps a close tight watch on her pursestrings — it is not she who is the murder victim, but surprisingly enough, it is the cook instead. Could she have known more about someone in the family than she should have? Someone who did not want that something known?

   I liked this one, and it only goes to show that when you read the books in a series out of order — or in this case, last one first — you ought not to give up on the earlier ones as well.

NOTE:   A previous review by me was posted here last year, but my comments themselves were written in 1980.

MAURICE LEBLANC – Countess Cagliosto. Arsène Lupin #12. First published in France as La Comtesse de Cagliostro (1924). First translated into English in 2010 and included in Arsene Lupin vs Countess Cagliostro, edited by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier (Black Coast Press, trade paperback). Also included in this latter edition are the 1935 novel Countess Cagliostro’s Revenge, also never before translated. The book also includes the short story “The Queen’s Necklace,” and the all-new The Death of Countess Cagliostro, written by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Film: Arsène Lupin (2004).

   Maurice Leblanc, a forty-one year old journalist, created the French rival to Sherlock Holmes in 1905 in the short “l’aresstation de Arsene Lupin”. It was a bright and clever tale (foreshadowing Agatha Christie’s Roger Ackroyd) introducing the world to the gentleman thief and romantic adventurer whose lust for life was almost as great as his lust for other people’s things.

   Not unnaturally over time Lupin evolved, showing as great a skill at solving crime as committing it, taking on Sherlock Holmes (Holmlock Shears) in two adventures, and appearing in classics of the genre like 813 and The Hollow Needle.

   And like Sherlock Holmes, Lupin’s creator grew tired of his hero, and with the end of the Great War increasingly sidelined Lupin under various guises, in short appearances, and as a deus ex machina when a complex plot needed one. Individual stories were worthwhile, but nothing as great as his heyday. Readers must have wondered if Lupin would ever see his great days again

   But again as with Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles, Leblanc had one last trick up his sleeve — one last great adventure to recount. That adventure would be nothing less that the origin of Arsene Lupin, and of his greatest foe and implacable enemy, Josephine Balsamo, the possibly immortal daughter of Joseph Balsamo, Count Cagliostro, in the 1924 novel that bore her name.

   Lupin fans must have celebrated, Leblanc and his hero were back in fine form.

   After a brief forward explaining Lupin had forbid him to tell the story of the Countess for twenty-five years, Leblanc plunges right in as young Raoul d’Andrésy breaks into the home of the Baron d’Etigues, father of Clarisse, the young woman he loves, and finds among his papers an order to execute a mysterious unnamed woman.

   Being French, he of course wakes and seduces Clarisse and then reveals to her that her father and his cronies “…Marquis de Rolleville, Mathieu de la Vaupalière, Comte Oscar de Bennetot, Roux d’Estiers… All these noblemen from the beautiful Pays de Caux are involved in some kind of fantastic conspiracy!” D’Andrésy soon reveals he is really Arsene Lupin, the son of a footman and fencing and boxing instructor, something that her father would never accept as a son-in-law. But as he assures her with typical bravado, he has a bright future:

   Fate has a different kind of fame in store for him though.

   Intercepting the would-be executioners, Lupin is present when they bring in their victim and reveal her face:

   Of course Lupin will save her, become her lover and student, be drawn into and obsessed with the conspiracy surrounding the treasures of the Kings of France she and the conspirators all covet, he will learn her incredible claim to be the immortal daughter of the infamous Joseph Balsamo. Count Cagliostro.

   Lupin doesn’t buy that for a moment:

   Lupin goes one for several paragraphs before recognizing he has overplayed his hand:

   Lupin will eventually become her rival (“…what is impossible is that I could continue to see you under that fog of mystery in which you’ve deliberately wrapped yourself; for now, I see you for what you truly are: a murderess and a criminal.”), learn secrets of his own family, marry Clarisse (like James Bond, Lupin’s lovers don’t last long) and have his son kidnapped by Josephine to take revenge on him twenty five years later (recounted in Countess Cagliostro’s Revenge published here for the first time in English).

   This particular Black Coat Press edition includes a short by editors Jean-Marc and Randy Loffcier recounting the final days of the Countess, and a short story, “The Queen’s Necklace” telling of Lupin’s first crime. It also comes with an informative introduction for anyone not already familiar with Lupin’s exploits.

   I grant I am a sucker for any tale in which the hero meets his Moriarty, his true nemesis, and this one lives up to both its hero and its epic theme, full of bravado, style, action, and lively twists as well as a fairly melancholy ending. It’s a good introduction to Lupin for those new to his adventures, and a grand addition to them for fans already familiar with him.

   American readers may find it hard to take the very French brio of Lupin at first, but staying with it will reveal some of the cleverest mysteries and adventures of any classic hero done in high style.

   A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Charles Dickens is one of my favorite novels and starts off with the famous passage, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”. It continues later, “…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…” This just about sums up my feeling after Pulpfest 2018.

   So what happened? On the drive back home, what made me attack a vending machine which tried to keep my dollar bill? The thing was seven feet tall but somehow I was so energized and angry that I shook the small bag of pretzels loose. What made me walk away from arguing with a bunch of fellow collectors, muttering curses, and angry?

   People that have known me for a long time know that the love of my life is Pulpcon/Pulpfest. I’ve been attending them since the first one in 1972. My vacation plans are always scheduled around the convention, I’ve attended them with severe back problems, once against the advice of both my chiropractor and physician. I’ve even gone to the show when my employer said I could not go. Like my good pal Harry Noble, I’d probably attend even knowing I had a terminal illness.

   I see Pulpfest as a big event, a big party or picnic. I go to have a good time, not to argue with other collectors and finally walk away grumbling. I had heard rumors of a big announcement which was to be made at the business meeting. It still surprised me to hear the news that Pulpfest might go back to Columbus, Ohio next year and what’s more might be connected in some way with a comic book convention.

   The committee mentioned that assistance would be provided by an unnamed comic book dealer and convention organizer. As far as I know only very few collectors questioned this plan. I was one plus one committee member said he agreed with me and a couple other collectors were also doubtful.

   But most seemed to accept this news. You may notice I dedicated this report to Rusty Hevelin who was responsible for continuing Pulpcon for over 25 years. With Rusty I knew I could walk into the dealer’s room and not see piles of comic books, it would not be another science fiction convention, it would not be full of new pulp books written mainly by non-collectors and amateur writers. It would not be a nostalgia convention. By god, it would be a convention for pulp and book collectors even if only 100 to 200 showed up. They at least would be serious collectors often bringing boxes of pulps, books, vintage paperbacks, slicks, digest, and original art.

   Everybody seemed to be moaning about how the attendance was not growing but was stuck at about 375. Still, this was far more than the old Pulpcon ever achieved in 37 years. There may be a thousand or so pulp collectors in the US. But most of them won’t ever come to Pulpfest because of health problems, financial problems, or they can’t get away from their job or family responsibilities. 400 and something is about the maximum that we can expect, though the Windy City Convention has claimed to break the 500 mark. I really don’t see any big increase in attendance being possible unless we want to import a ton of comic collectors, new pulp people and walk ins that seldom buy anything.

   But I’m a pulp collector and I want to talk and deal with other pulp collectors. Many comic book collectors seem to like slabbing the books. I’m completely against this because I want to read the things. I don’t want them in a sealed plastic case. But comics are big money and pulps are not. I don’t see us co-existing at all. True, the committee has some personnel problems. Ed Hulse left a few years ago which I saw as a big blow. Bill Lampkin could not make it this year due to family responsibilities, Chuck Welch will soon be moving to Canada, Jack Cullers and Barry Traylor are my age which means they are getting older, to put it kindly.

   It’s time for me to talk about the convention and stop with my complaints, especially since I seem to have few supporters. Nothing has been decided yet by the committee and we will have to see what happens. I really like the Double Tree Hotel however and hope we return next year.

   First, the programming was outstanding as usual. I skipped the new pulp presentations because I don’t care about new pulp. They mainly strike me as non-collectors and as I have said many times, collectors are my favorite type of people. But Thursday the best thing on the program was Sai Shankar talking about the great WW I author, Leonard Nason. I’ve often wondered why people travel to Pulpfest and then miss the programming due to the fact they are stuffing their face.

   Well, I’ll be damned if I didn’t miss Sai Shankar, who is one of my friends, talking about one of my favorite ADVENTURE writers, Leonard Nason! His talk was scheduled for 8:40 and we sat down to eat in the hotel restaurant at 7:00 or perhaps even before 7:00. But the service was so slow that we were there forever and as a result we all missed Sai’s talk. Laurie Powers complained to the manager that due to the slow service we missed the program.

   Friday, there were three panels I enjoyed mainly because I have problems with the subjects. I love the art of the men’s adventure magazines and have collected it in the past. I mean what is there not to love about Nazis turning girls into gold ingots? No wonder they lost the war! Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle talked about the art and the fiction. I often have problems with the fiction but I love the magazines anyway. I know the WW II vets loved them also! They had a table full of their latest books including POLLEN’S WOMEN: The Art of Samson Pollen. I hope they can publish a reference book listing and discussing the many men’s adventure titles. We need such a guide book.

   Then I liked the panel on the air war pulps hosted by Don Hutchison. Bill Mann, Chris Kalb and company are doing a great job reprinting many authors of the aviation magazines. I have problem reading these stories but I’m working on it and hope to someday be able to appreciate the fiction. Finally the son of John Fleming Gould talked about his father’s art.

   Saturday, started off with the dreaded business meeting which just about ruined my evening but the announcement that Bill Lampkin had been awarded the Munsey Award cheered me up. Bill edits the excellent PULPSTER magazine and is also on the committee. Then the guest of honor, Joe Lansdale, was interviewed. David Saunders gave an excellent talk on the Art of the War Pulps. David discusses art at each Pulpfest and I hope this tradition continues.

   For just about the first time the auction was scheduled for two evenings at Pulpfest. Usually the auction is only one night but there was so many lots, over 400 total! Both nights the auction lasted from 10 pm to past 1 am. Some collectors griped that there was nothing at the auction. I disagree. Friday night saw a run of ARGOSY from the thirties, almost 600 issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY from 1927 through 1943, a set of PLANET STORIES, and many miscellaneous lots. The highest priced item by far was the five boxes of Al Tonik’s research papers. It went for $2000.00.

   Saturday night saw many lots of WESTERN STORY, many sport titles, and the best conditioned set of SF digests that I have ever seen, and I’ve been collecting for over 60 years. The entire run of these magazines were in astonishing beautiful condition. Nice paper, new looking covers, that great scent of new magazines. I had them all but I was tempted to buy them all just for the beautiful condition. Seeing these lovely magazines reminded me once again about why I am a collector. They are beautiful. Sets of AMAZING, FANTASTIC, GALAXY, ASIMOV’S, ANALOG, F&SF, IF, NEW WORLDS, SCIENCE FANTASY, NEBULA, and IMAGINATION. The IMAGINATION set may be the prettiest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Though I had them all already, I bought the 5 lots making up the over 200 digest issues of AMAZING because the condition was just so much better than my own set.

   THE PULPSTER, number 27, was the usual excellent issue. 48 large size pages discussing Arthur Sullivant Hoffman’s ADVENTURE, the American Legion in ADVENTURE, artist George Evans and the aviation pulps, Philip Jose Farmer, and a great letter from a college student talking about her the summers she worked for Popular Publications.

   I was told that attendance was around the 375 mark which I think was great. The dealer’s room was always buzzing with a lot of activity. The hospitality room was well stocked with craft beer and one night about a dozen pizzas were delivered.

   Hopefully soon we will see two new magnificent books about pulp titles we seldom talk about. Laurie Powers book on the romance pulps and the life of Daisy Bacon, the excellent editor of LOVE STORY and DETECTIVE STORY. Michelle Nolan’s book on the sport pulp titles should also be a groundbreaking book on a seldom discussed topic. We desperately need books like these two because I’m tired of the same old hero pulp discussion. I know, I know, everyone loves the hero pulps but after all they were aimed at the teenage boy market and are not really adult fiction. Let’s talk about something new like love and sports!

   So, you may be wondering what did I buy? Actually this was one of the better Pulpfests for me finding unusual items. As I mention already above, I bought at the auction a lovely set of AMAZING, 1953-1980’s. Simply stunning condition. Here is a listing of what else I found of great interest:

1–Lot of 54 of the 71 isssues of AMRA. AMRA was a SF fanzine published between 1959 and 1982. Edited by George Scithers, it was famous mainly for the articles on Swords and Sorcery. The famous artists and authors that appeared in the magazine are too numerous to name but include Roy Krenkel, Poul Anderson, L. Sprague de Camp, Avram Davidson, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and many more. AMRA won the Hugo for best fanzine in 1964 and 1968.

   I bought these from Chet Williamson who also sold an interesting Hammett item to someone else and some rare ALL STORY issues. I was a subscriber to AMRA but I sold my issues a long time ago and now I’m rebuilding the set, something I done so many times, with so many magazines.

2–THE AGE OF THE STORYTELLERS: British Popular Fiction Magazines, 1880-1950 by Mike Ashley. This book was published at a hundred dollars but at only $25 I had to get this second copy to add to my first copy. That’s right, the book is so great that you must buy two copies!

3–A framed, signed drawing by the great Edd Cartier. This was only $225 so I had to add it to my Cartier collection which now numbers over 15 drawings. You can never have too many Cartier drawings.

4–A framed painting by pulp collector Lester Belcher showing Sonny Tabor riding on a horse. I knew Lester and he was not an artist but he loved WILD WEST WEEKLY, so he attempted to paint one of the characters from the magazine. I consider it a great piece of “outsider” art done by one of my former friends that I miss. Price at the auction was only $10. Everyone thought it poorly done but to me, knowing Lester, it is priceless.

5–A Richard Powers painting for the Ballantine 1964 paperback, TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD. Done in a different style than usual with Powers. After I bought it the art dealer told me two other collectors stopped by and were disappointed to learn that it had been sold.

6–Two Guest of Honor plaques from Pulpcon. I already have the one given to Walter Baumhofer but I couldn’t pass up these two. One was from 1994 and given to artist R. G. Harris in Tucson. It shows four cover paintings that he did for the pulps. The second is a real treasure since Elmer Kelton was one of the great western writers. It was given to him when he was the guest at the Pulpcon in 1998. It shows four covers from RANCH ROMANCES containing four of his early stories. I hunted for these plaques for decades, now I have three of them!

7–Now the most unusual story of them all. I now have three cover paintings of the paperback western BADLANDS BOSS by Bradford Scott. All by the same artist, Rudy Nappi. It’s possible that there is no other cover painting that was painted three times by the same artist. Back in the early 1980’s I bought the original cover painting at Pulpcon for $100.

   Then several years later I was at Al Tonik’s house for a Tonikcon and there was the same cover by Rudy Nappi also. Al explained that he was not aware the the original cover had survived and so he commissioned Rudy Nappi to paint an exact recreation of the cover. Price he paid was also $100. But the painting was damaged in the mail when the board was bent in order to stick in Al’s mailbox. So he contacted Nappi and told him the sad story and Nappi agreed to paint the painting again for no charge. So now Al had two paintings.

   He gave me the damaged one and kept the good one. Actually you can’t see the damage until you look closely and see the board has been bent. Then after Al Tonik’s death what comes up for auction? The third Rudy Nappi cover painting of the same paperback. Since I had two I had to buy the third one also and got it for only $30 at the auction. You can’t make up such an insane story.

   So ends my report. Despite my complaints, I truly appreciate the hard work of the committee. Thanks Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers, Sally Cullers, Bill Lampkin, Chuck Welch, and Barry Traylor. Plus the many helpers, and of course thanks to for Sai Shankar for the use of some of the photos he took during the convention. Stay tuned to pulpfest.com for news of next yea’s show.

THE GREAT MERLINI “The Transparent Man.” Syndicated by United Artist Television, 1951. G&W Television Production Inc. Cast: Jerome Thor as the Great Merlini, Barbara Cook as Julie, Robert Noe as Inspector Gavigan, Howard Smith as Belmont, E.G. Marshall as Comell and Michaele Myers as Josephine. Original Story and Adapted by Clayton Rawson. Produced by Felix Greenfield and Robert Whiteman. Filmed at Fletcher Smith Studio, New York. Directed by Ted Post.

   Question, who was the first Fictional Magician Detective to appear on television? Really, if you know tell me.

   It may be the Great Merlini who made his TV debut in the episode “The Great Merlini” for the NBC-TV series CAMEO THEATRE (May 23, 1950). The thirty-minute anthology series featured plays performed live in the round. Chester Morris (film’s Boston Blackie) was the Great Merlini. From the plot as described and with author Clayton Rawson credited as one of the writers, the episode was probably an adaption of Rawson’s book FOOTPRINTS ON THE CEILING.

   As far as I know, no copy of this episode of CAMEO THEATRE exists. However the second and maybe the last TV appearance of the Great Merlini is available to watch. A pilot film for a proposed TV series THE GREAT MERLINI, the episode was entitled “The Transparent Man” and was written by Clayton Rawson.

   Created by Rawson for a series of books and short stories, the first, DEATH FROM A TOP HAT, was published in 1938. Two movies were adapted from the books, MIRACLES FOR SALE (1939; directed by Tod Browning, based on DEATH FROM A TOP HAT) and Michael Shayne film THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE (1942) starring Lloyd Nolan based on the book NO COFFIN FOR THE CORPSE.

   Clayton Rawson is considered one of the greatest writers of locked room mysteries and includes John Dickson Carr and Fred Dannay among his greatest fans. He would help found the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and served for many year as managing editor for the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (1963-71).

“The Transparent Man.” When a famous thief announces his plans to steal a priceless necklace, it is a crime for the police, but when the thief has been dead since 1798 it becomes a job for The Great Merlini. He must solve how an invisible thief opened a locked door and stole the necklace from a room full of people.

   For TV viewers “The Transparent Man” is an entertaining but flawed TV show, however fans of the books may find this TV episode disappointing. It is more an “impossible crime” story than a locked room mystery.

   Rawson’s books and short stories even today are considered among the best of the locked mystery genre. Arguably the greatest flaw in Rawson’s books is the slow pace and the enormous amount of pages it takes to develop the locked room mystery. With time limited the TV version settled on a weak solution, faster pace, and more attention to the character Great Merlini.

   Jerome Thor (FOREIGN INTRIGUE) played the Great Merlini with the confident flare one expects from a stage magician. The eccentric Merlini enjoys the challenge of solving impossible mysteries, and he is amused that his talent to deal with crime is in more demand than his stage act as a magician. There is no mention of owning a magic store.

   Ross Harte, the Watson to the Great Merlini, was not in the TV pilot. Replacing him was Julie, Merlini’s talented Magician’s Assistant girlfriend with a wry wit. Barbara Cook played the role well, so it is a surprise that the IMDb claim this was her only role in television or film.

   Director Ted Post would go on to a long successful career directing a variety of TV series including PERRY MASON, GUNSMOKE, TWILIGHT ZONE, and COLUMBO. He also directed films such as BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES and MAGNUM FORCE.

   But this was one of his first attempts at directing television and it shows. The direction here is awkward, a clumsy mix of close-ups and medium shots with a missed shot or so. But much of the awkwardness could have been covered with a background soundtrack.

   Robert Noe captured the essence of Inspector Gavigan. The suspects included two actors still remembered today. Howard Smith, who had a successful career from vaudeville to films and may be best remembered for his TV work (HAZEL), looked uncomfortable and lost. E. G. Marshall, a successful actor on Broadway and film (12 ANGRY MEN) is also best remembered for his work in TV (THE DEFENDERS), did only an adequate job with his small role.

   Felix Greenfield and Robert Whiteman produced this pilot for a GREAT MERLINI TV series. I can find nothing about Robert Whiteman, but Felix Greenfield was best remembered as a publicist for Warner Brothers for over 30 years.

   Greenfield was also a stage magician (mentalist) who starred in his own radio shows in New York during the 40s. His only other TV producer credit in IMDb was for the “Great Merlini” episode of CAMEO THEATRE, but according to his obit in the New York Times, he also was a technical consultant on magic for several TV series including THE DEFENDERS.

   This show was filmed in 1951 and near the end of the wild days of television. The networks were still young. NBC and DuMont began in 1946 and CBS and ABC would join in 1948. Independent TV stations many doing their own programming were growing all over the country and everyone needed programs to fill the time.

   How crazy and forgotten was that time for television? Wikipedia does not even mention United Artist Television existed between 1948 and 1952 instead claiming it began in 1958.

   From Broadcast (March 19, 1951) UA’s TV Director John Mitchell announced, “United Artist Television, New York has been appointed national distributer of the GREAT MERLINI, new half-hour TV film series produced by G&W Productions and filmed at Fletcher Smith Studios, New York. Ted Post of CBS is director of the show. The program is to be distributed on the basis of local and regional sponsorships.”

   John Mitchell was an early pioneer of television in how companies marketed TV programs to early television stations and networks. In 1952 he became one of the first three employees of Screen Gems.

   Among the joys of watching old television shows are the many stories and questions behind the making of the program. Is the Great Merlini TV’s first Magician/Detective? Where did this attempt for a GREAT MERLINI TV series air? Why couldn’t I find an American TV series to feature a Magician/Detective before THE MAGICIAN (CBS, 1973-74)? And was “Transparent Man” the last TV appearance of the Great Merlini?

BONUS FROM YOUTUBE:

Clayton Rawson as the Great Merlini performing the “Floating Lady” trick with family and friends.

   Suppose all the readers of this column were gathered together in one room. At the front, standing before the lectern or podium or whatever the hell you call it, I pose a question: Any of you know something about Tom Everitt? Almost everyone in the room would probably answer: “Tom Whoveritt?” Perhaps one or two who had read my book THE ART OF DETECTION and were blessed with a photographic memory might say: “Wasn’t he the guy who provided the plots for Manny Lee to turn into Ellery Queen radio scripts after Fred Dannay dropped out and before Anthony Boucher came aboard?”

   Indeed he was. But aside from that fact, and the titles of more than thirty EQ scripts that were based on Everitt plot synopses, virtually nothing is known of him. While working on THE ART OF DETECTION I had ransacked the Web looking for a little more information about this mystery man but with no luck. Then out of the blue not long ago I received an email from a total stranger who, in the course of researching something else entirely, had unearthed more information about Everitt than I could have used even had I known of it in time to put it in the book. But there’s no reason I can’t summarize it here. Thank you, Jonathan Guss, for making this month’s column possible.

   John Thompson Everitt, whom I’ll call JT just to make things simple, was born in Yonkers, New York on December 11, 1908. His ancestors had arrived in Massachusetts by 1643 and had settled in the New York City area near Jamaica by 1650. JT’s father, Charles Percy Everitt (1873-1951), was a well-known rare book dealer, and Charles’ brother Samuel Alexander Everitt (1871-1953) was a partner in the Doubleday publishing house until his retirement in 1930. JT’s older brother Charles Raymond Everitt (1901-1947) also went into the publishing business, working at Harcourt Brace and later, until his early death, at Little Brown, the publisher of a volume of memoirs by his and JT’s father (THE ADVENTURES OF A TREASURE HUNTER: A RARE BOOKMAN IN SEARCH OF AMERICAN HISTORY, 1951).

   In 1930 JT graduated from Yale, where he was known as a soccer player. A year later he was hired by the CBS radio network to write for its March of Time program. By 1940 he had moved into the advertising side of radio at the Young & Rubicam agency where, among many other jobs, he was tasked with handling a prospectus from the NBC radio network on The Green Hornet, for which NBC was seeking a sponsor. Apparently he was still working at that agency when he became involved with the Ellery Queen series.

   Since its debut in June of 1939, every one of the scripts for the series had been written by Manfred B. Lee based on plot synopses prepared by his cousin and EQ collaborator Fred Dannay. (More precisely, every one except “The Dauphin’s Doll,” first broadcast around Christmastime 1943 and written by Manny alone.) Early in 1944 Fred’s wife was diagnosed with cancer. The burdens of taking care of two young children, plus editing a large annual anthology of short mystery fiction and running Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM), which had been launched in the fall of 1941, soon made it impossible for Fred to continue coming up with a plot a week for the radio series.

   He was several synopses ahead when he dropped out, and Manny squirreled these away for use in emergencies, relying most of the time on recycling earlier scripts under new titles and condensing 60-minute scripts from the show’s first season (1939-40) into its current half-hour format. But these ploys couldn’t go on indefinitely. Somebody had to be found to take over Fred’s function.

   How TJ came into the picture remains unknown. Possibly it was through his older brother Charles, who was working at Little Brown, publisher of the Queen novels and anthologies since 1942. Perhaps it was due to the connections Fred and Manny had retained with the advertising and publicity businesses where they’d gotten their start. Whether he was the first man brought in to assume Fred’s function as plot provider remains unclear.

   We don’t know exactly how many Dannay synopses Manny had in reserve, but several of the episodes dating from late 1944 strike me as too outrageous to have stemmed from Fred. Take, for example, “Cleopatra’s Snake” (October 12 & 14, 1944). As backstage observer of a live production of Antony and Cleopatra for experimental TV, Ellery becomes a key witness when the genuine poisonous snake being used in the death scene (yeah, right) bites to death the actress playing Cleopatra.

   Now let’s consider “The Glass Sword” (November 30 & December 2, 1944), in which Ellery tackles the case of the circus sword swallower who died when the sword in his stomach broke while the lights were out. Was it Everitt who cranked out the synopses that Manny turned into these scripts? Was it another Dannay substitute? Or, wacko though they are, could they have originated with Fred after all? For more information, keep reading.

   The earliest EQ script that we know came from a synopsis by Everitt was “The Diamond Fence” (January 24, 1945), which involves the murder of a middleman for stolen gems and the disappearance of five diamond rings from the scene of the crime under impossible circumstances. A substantial excerpt from this episode survives on audio as a “sneak preview” from the Armed Forces Radio Service.

   From that point at least through the end of March, every script Manny wrote was based on Everitt material. It was during these early months of the last full year of World War II that Manny enlisted Anthony Boucher (1911-1968) to take over Everitt’s function. It was an ideal choice. Boucher had already published seven novels in the Queen vein and had had short stories published in EQMM. Also, as we know from comments in various of his mystery reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle, he was an enthusiastic fan of the radio series.

   Since Tony lived in Berkeley, California and Manny on the east coast, collaboration on EQ radio scripts required vast correspondence between the two. This correspondence, archived at Indiana University’s Lilly Library, documents their work together in microscopic detail. The only aspect of it that concerns us here is Manny’s continual snarky remarks about Everitt, of which I’ll quote a few.

   On May 3, 1945, about six weeks before the broadcast of the first Boucher-Lee collaboration, Manny tells Tony that he’s “washed up” with Everitt, who “will do four more for us, and then he’s through. This by mutual agreement.” On the 17th of the same month, he says: “We want to avoid some of the weaknesses resulting from our present man’s so-called efforts….” And on the 24th he lets Tony know how he really feels about Everitt: “….At the end of our association with our ‘man,’ as I like to call him—hating his smug, treacherous guts as I do!—we’re finding more trouble…and sloppier submissions on his part even than usual….”

   On January 24, 1946, he describes one of the Everitt synopses he had to deal with as “a bad outline which I bought only because I was desperate …and bought and paid for it with the mental reservation that I’d probably have to do a thorough re-working job on it. I was a noble prophet.”

   But, simply because the EQ radio formula was so complex and demanding and Boucher with all his other commitments couldn’t conjure up a new plot synopsis on a weekly basis, Manny was forced to make further commitments to Everitt. “This was a desperation move,” he tells Boucher on October 30, 1946, “as his stuff always gives me headaches, but good….I had to do something in self-protection. I heartily wish now I hadn’t made that commitment…. But it can’t be undone and I can only hope that he doesn’t come through, so that I can order more from you.”

   Almost a year later Manny is still reluctantly dealing with Everitt now and then and, in a letter to Fred Dannay dated November 4, 1947, griping about it just as loudly. Discussing the possibility of repeating some of the scripts based on Everitt synopses, he describes Everitt as “such a son-of-a-bitch that, even though our rights to repeat the material without payment are clear, he would raise a considerable stink in the business if we didn’t pay him an extra fee….[F]or the most part he got tremendously overpaid in the original payment—the bulk of the creative work was done by me, out of sheer necessity.”

   If Manny were to offer a token fee of perhaps $50 per episode recycled, Everitt “would start haggling and chiseling and his tongue would wag plenty in the business….” What business Manny is referring to becomes clear later in the same letter. “[Y]ou don’t know…what that bastard has been saying and is still saying in the advertising business about his ‘part’ in the Queen show. There is no protection against his kind of conscienceless and unscrupulously shrewd self-propaganda….”

   As his correspondence with both Fred and Boucher demonstrates, at least during the radio years Manny was a Type A personality with a genius for getting hot under the collar, and the insane pressure of putting out a program every week probably shortened his life.

   Whether he was being too harsh on JT is hard to judge. One of the few living persons to have seen any of the Everitt material Manny turned into scripts is Ted Hertel, who helped choose the scripts included in THE ADVENTURE OF THE MURDERED MOTHS (2005). In connection with that project he was erroneously sent the synopses for “The Right End” and “The Glass Sword,” both with Everitt’s name on them.

   To judge by Ted’s comments, what Everitt gave Manny to work with was just as bad as Manny said it was. In an email to me he described the synopses as “so poorly written, so amateurish, that they could not possibly have been the work of Manny in any form.” (The scripts Manny based on these synopses were broadcast respectively on November 16 and 30, 1944.)

   Only one episode Manny based on an Everitt synopsis is available on audio. In “Number 31″ (September 7, 1947) Ellery tries to crack the secret of international mystery man George Arcaris’s success at smuggling diamonds into the Port of New York and to comfort a wonderfully dignified black woman by solving the murder of her son, the servant for a wealthy man-about-town. The cases seem unconnected until Ellery discovers the number 31 popping up in both.

   It’s an excellent episode, but how much credit should go to Everitt remains a mystery since no one in the last 70 years has seen his synopsis. I wouldn’t be surprised if the black woman was entirely the creation of the staunchly liberal Manny Lee.

   To the best of my knowledge the only Everitt radio work besides his EQ plots was a single script for The Shadow. In “The Creature That Kills” (January 6, 1946) Lamont Cranston, alias The Shadow, investigates the theft of priceless papers from the 20th-floor laboratory of a brilliant young scientist under impossible circumstances.

   It turns out that the thief, a master criminal with a Sydney Greenstreet voice, had an accomplice in the form of a trained 27-foot python which slid down the side of the building from the window directly above the scientist’s lab, got hold of the papers, then slid back up the wall to its master. What a snake! Do I detect here the same kind of wackiosity that pervades the EQ scripts about Cleopatra and the glass sword?

   In 1947 Everitt returned to radio full-time as Eastern program manager for the ABC network. We don’t know if he wrote any more for the medium, but Jonathan Guss mentions one script he contributed to the golden age of live TV drama, “Revenge by Proxy” (Colgate Theatre, May 14, 1950). The cast included Nancy Coleman, Phil Arthur, Bernard Kates and Victor Sutherland. As chance would have it, the following week’s drama, “Change of Murder,” was based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich.

   Everitt died on November 2, 1954, at age 45. Today he seems to be totally forgotten, perhaps deservedly so. The most that can be claimed for him is that he figures as a footnote in the Ellery Queen story. But at least now that footnote has been written.