Fri 16 Sep 2022
VERA CASPARY – Laura. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1943. Previously serialized in Colliers from October 17 to November 28, 1942 in seven parts as “Ring Twice for Laura.” Popular Library #284, paperback, 1950. Dell, paperback, 1957. Reprnted many times. Film: Twentieth Century Fox, 1944, starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews.
This was by far the best of my vacation reads. It’s astoundingly good. There’s a good afterward in the “Femmes Fatales†series edition that I read written by A. B. Emrys. Emrys notes that Laura, like Caspary, worked in advertising as a copy writer. Emrys adds that “Caspary applied what she called ‘the Wilkie Collins method’ of multiple narrators, each of whom tells us about the others as well as revealing their own selves.â€
What’s interesting about the storytelling method is that each of the three narrators makes a written account. And each of the accounts is stylistically distinct. The novel reads like it was written by three different authors.
The first ‘writer’ is Laura’s mentor, Waldo Lydecker. Lydecker is a prissy and affected pseudo-intellectual who writes a syndicated prissy, pseudo-intellectual column in the paper for prissy pseudo-intellectuals. He’s quite popular. And, of course, his section of the novel is written in a particularly prissy and affected manner.
The next sections alternate between Laura and police detective Mark McPherson. McPherson writes his account in the terse manner of a police report. Laura writes her sections as diary — the diary of an advertising copy writer from the 40’s.
Of course, all this stylistic mastery would be for naught if the story sucked. But the story is captivating. As the story begins, Lydecker and Laura’s fiancé, Shelby, are both stricken as Laura is found dead: shot in the face with a shotgun.
As Detective McPherson investigates the case, he too falls in love with Laura. So much so that he purchases Laura’s painted portrait from the estate. McPherson is a very human detective — not at all hard boiled. Caspary later admitted that she shared Laura’s contempt for fictional detectives, who Laura claims invariably fall into two types: “the hard-boiled ones who are always drunk and talk out of the corners of their mouths and do it all by instinct; and the scientific kind who split hairs under a microscopeâ€. Caspary wrote an article about McPherson as a different type of detective in Otto Penzler’s book The Great Detectives.
And then the unthinkable: Laura turns up alive! But not until after her substitute’s body has been cremated. And without a body it’s nearly impossible to prosecute a murder!
But McPherson isn’t going to give up that easily. He’s going to find the killer. He only hopes that the killer isn’t the dead woman he fell in love with.
September 17th, 2022 at 10:01 pm
It occurs to me to wonder what percentage of people who have seen the movie have also read the book. Not many, I suspect.
September 17th, 2022 at 10:20 pm
The Collins comparison is interesting in that Lydecker is very much in the tradition of the comically sinister Count Fosco while McPherson with his silver shin is very much the wounded romantic hero {Lydecker even comments on it) of the early Romantic movement that helped give birth to Collins.
It’s rare example of a book that offers more than the fine movie if only because there are moments and effects in the book that simply can’t be recreated on the screen even with that near perfect casting of the film.
Caspary wrote several other good books, but wisely never tried to mine the same gold vein LAURA hits again. One of it’s strengths is that it really is a one time wonder.
LAURA really is unique. There is nothing else like it, and nothing to compare to it.
September 17th, 2022 at 11:13 pm
I thought the film of interest, but the lead cast, other than Dana Andrews who was fascinating, to be obvious and dull; Gene Tierney did not light up the screen and Clifton Webb so obviously mannered and fruity was less than required, despite his success. meanwhile Price, Judith Anderson, hit it out of the park, right up there with Dana, as was Dorothy Adams.
Webb pulled it off because of the period, mid-forties filmgoers either could not or did not wish to realize the obvious. That he was ridiculous, which was what Darryl Zanuck thought as well.
Me? i like Mr. Belvedere, but not much else.
September 18th, 2022 at 2:09 am
Barry,
The thing is that Waldo Lydecker (like everyone else) is trying to get in Laura’s pants. He’s affected and mannered like a dapper Harold Bloom trying to seduce Laura with his brilliant lectures on manners and culture. (SPOILER ALERT) To the extent he comes off in the film as gay, the killer’s motive is lost. Waldo covets Laura with all the obsession of a psychopath. He covets consummation of her beauty which he feels he’s had a hand in constructing: a lustful, jealous Henry Higgins. If Waldo can’t have Laura, no one can.
September 18th, 2022 at 10:55 am
Tony,
Nicely expressed and I have no problem with that. It isn’t just Webb coming off as gay, but the definition of it. This guy flies down the street advertising. That he is also a controlling bastard, goes without saying. Webb gets in no one’s pants.
There was an hour-long film version produced for the 20th Century Fox Hour on television. George Sanders played Webb or Waldo, imperfectly but better.
September 18th, 2022 at 11:26 am
Waldo’s that might have been t imeless and not homosexual; Joseph Cotten and (off the wall) Victor Mature.
September 18th, 2022 at 1:32 pm
Add Orson Welles.
September 19th, 2022 at 10:19 am
An earlier Mystery*File Review:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=52543
October 6th, 2022 at 3:26 pm
Belatedly:
I read somewhere that Darryl Zanuck’s first choice for Waldo Lydecker was Laird Cregar, whose premature passing sent Laura looking in another direction.
It’s been pointed out to me that in the Caspary book (which I haven’t read – sorry), Waldo is supposed to be a fat man (correction welcome if needed).
Laura‘s pre-production coincided with Cregar’s Hangover Square crash diet, but 20th Century Fox was tweaking the script to take that into account – not in time, as it turned out – or so the story goes …
January 12th, 2023 at 2:18 pm
Nice to see this literary source get some ink. I haven’t read it in some years (whereas I revisit the film, one of my favorites, periodically), and when I did, I had to disagree with some of the others, opining that the film was “closer to the spirit than the letter of, and decidedly superior to, Vera Caspary’s novel.” But hey, without the book, there would have been no film, and page-to-screen comparisons are always illuminating.