Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Friday, March 14, 2025

WHEN HIT NOVELTY SONGS GO HORRIBLY WRONG, AUSTRALIA WILL MAKE A COMIC BOOK OUT OF IT

The Purple People Eater, devised by Terry Trowell for Modern Magazines, 1958.

Just to refresh your memory, here's the song by Sheb Wooley:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdv5mG9wpqM  The song topped the Billboard pop charts from June 9 to July 14, 1958, was Number 1 in Canada and in Australia, and peaked at Number 12 in the UK.

Wooley was better known before he released the song as an actor, playing a regular role on television's Rawhide.  He was also featured in such films as High Noon, The Outlaw Josie Wales, and Hoosiers.  Wooley was also the voice actor behind the "Wilhelm Scream," a stock piece of audio that has been used by sound effects teams in over 200 films.

But it is his "Purple People Eater" that caught the attention of the Australian comic book world in an issue that is as wacky as the song.

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=96363&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: SCAVENGER

 Scavenger by David Morrell  (2007)


David Morrell is considered the "father" of the modern action novel, at least in the mind of his publicist.  It all started with First Blood (Rambo) and moved to The Brotherhood of the Rose and other best-selling thrillers (he was a co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization).  He has written 28 novels and four books of non-fiction.  He has received Bram Stoker Wards for both Novel and Novella.  Morrell received the ThrillerMaster Award from the international Thriller Writers in 2009.

And yet his work tends to elude me, and I have a hard time figuring out why.

Scavenger  in a follow-up to his award-winning novel Creepers.  In that book, protagonist Frank Balenger. a former cop, who spends more than a year searching for his missing wife, kidnapped by a psychopath who later kidnapped Angela, a woman who could have been the mirror image of Frank's wife.  Frank's wife is dead, but he manages to save Angela, although it has left him damaged physically and emotionally, cast adrift and penniless.  As Scavenger begins, Fank and Angela cling to esch other, eventually falling in love.   In a convenient twist, Frank happens to have a gold coin he found while searching for his wife; the coin is valuable and, by page 8, it nets him  two million dollars.

By page 9, Frank and Amanda get an invitation to a lecture at the Manhattan History Club about time capsules.  And the novel is off and running.

Frank and Amanda attend the lecture and are drugged.  Frank waked up in a different section of New York.  Amanda wakes up in Montana with four other people who had been drugged in various parts of the country.  The Manhattan History Club never existed.  The expert who delivered the lecture never existed.  the building where the lecture was held is now an empty shell.  Frank has no idea what has been done to Angela.  For her part, Angela fears that Frank is dead.

It is all part of an elaborate game, engineered by someone calling himself the "Game Master."  Vague clues are left for Frank to following, each one leading him deeper into the game, and each none leading him deeper into danger.  A policeman aiding Frank is killed.

In a desolate area of Montana, Amanda and her fellow captives are outfitted in special overalls, boots, headphones, and a GPS device.  The five of them have forty hours to play a game, locating the "Sepulcher of Worldly Desires."  If they lose their lives are forfeit.  If they refuse to play, the suits contain explosives that can be set off by a radio signal from the Game Master.  Early on, the Game Master uses the explosives to execute one recalcitrant player.  The players musty work together to find hidden GPS coordinates that will led them to other hidden coordinates, and so on.  The desolate valley where they are located was once the sire of a mining town, whose people had disappeared under the spell of a religious fanatic (a la Jim Jones and the People's Temple, or Marxhall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate).  The Game Master has filled the valley with deadly electrified traps, poisons, hidden bombs, desperate and starving large hounds, and has stocked the lake with thousands of deadly moccasins.  Violent rain, snow, deadly cold, and a lack of shelter also challenge Amanda's group.

The Game Master has miscalculated on several fronts.  He fully expected to win the game and have all players die.  He counted on Frank's PTSD, not realizing that Frank's love for Amanda outweighed his PTSD.  He did not count on Amanda's determination and bravery.  Still, Frank and Amanda survive only because of flukes and because of the "coincidence theater" in the author's plotting.

We are treated with an overabundance of detail and history about time capsules, geocaching, video games, and game theory.  It all serves a purpose, but I have to say, "meh."  the exciting parts are truly exciting, the macabre parts are ultra-macabre, and Frank and Amanda are protagonists one can truly cheer for.  And the big bad villain and the entire set-up are overly "conic book-y."  The rationale behind the plot to me falls into a "I've got a great idea, now what do I do with it?" category of failed experiments.  Despite myself, though, the pages kept turning.

Your mileage may differ.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

THE CASEBOOK OF GREGORY HOOD: THE ELOQUENT CORPSE (OCTOBER 14, 1946)

 Once again it's time to open up The Casebook of Gregory Hood.  

Writers Anthony Boucher and Denis Green were writing The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes when the Mutual Broadcasting System asked them to create a summer replacement series for that show.  Then, when Mutual had problems reaching a new agreement with the Conan Doyle estate, the new show was extended beyond its original intended run.  The show had a tattered history, appearing with different stars on different networks in different years (over a period of five years, the show had six different stars in the title role -- Gale Gordon, Elliott Lewis, Jackson Beck, Paul McGrath, Martin Gabel, and George Petrie),  which did not help the program gain steady viewers.  The Casebook of Gregory Hood also appeared on ABC radio in 1949-1950, and "resurfaced periodically in summer slots.'

In this episode, a scheme to get an appraisal of ancient Korean coins leads Hood to being accused of murder.  Elliott Lewis takes the title role, with Howard McNear playing Hood's sidekick Sanderson Taylor.  Harry Bartell is the announcer.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7chsRerGqA

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE PRICE OF A DIME

 "The Price of a Dime" by Norbert Davis (first published in Black Mask, April 1934; reprinted in Pulp Fiction:  The Crimefighters, edited by Otto Penzler, 2006 -- which was included, in a slightly revised form, in Penzler's The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, 2007; and in Davis's collection The Price of a Dime, 2021).


Davis (1909-1949) earned a law degree from Stanford University in 1934 but never bothered to take the bar exam; he had begun selling short stories to Black Mask two years earlier and to Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories tow years before that; by the time he had graduated from law school he had already published eighteen stories in the pulps.  A typical Davis story was full of action and with a dose of humor.  Reportedly, Black Mask  editor Joseph Shaw did not appreciate humor in his magazine and only purchased five of Norbert's stories for the ;periodical.  Still, it seems that Davis could not help injecting a bit of whimsy into "The Price of a Dime," even if only a throwaway bit with the protagonist's ditzy secretary.

"The Price of a dime is the second of two stories Davis wrote about LA private investigator Ben Shaley, a man so down on his luck that he vowed to take on only clients who paid in advance.  That vow evaporated when he met Bennie Peterson's sister (we never do learn her bname0. a sincere and kindly woman who had raised Benny and could think no wrong of him.  Shaley knew Bennie and knew him for what he was -- a shyster and a rat and a small-time crook.  But Shaley felt bad for the sister and listened to her story.  Bennie it seems was in trouble, a big-time movie producer was threatening to throw Bennie in jail just because of a dime, and Bennie told his sister that the only person who could help him out of this mess was Ben Shaley.

According to what Ben told his sister, he had just received a dime tip from his job as a bellboy at the Grover Hotel and was a walking down a hotel corridor in a good mood, flipping the dime in the air and catching it, when he missed and dropped the dime on the floor.  as he bent to pick it up, this big time movie producer came out of a room and said he going to have Benny arrested.  But Bennie couldn't have done anything wrong, she told Shaley, "Bennie's a good boy.  Our folks died when we were young and I raised him, and I know."  Since then, Benny has been hiding out, afraid, in a cheap hotel under a false name.  Bennie told her that if Shaley went to the producer and explained to him that Bennie was his friend  and they could get together on the matter and fix it all up.  Bennie told her that Shaley would understand.

Shaley understood all right.  It was an old game.  Drop a dime in the floor and, while supposedly picking it up, take a peek through a keyhole to see if there was anything interesting on the other side if the door.  Bennie mist have seen something worthwhile -- something worth blackmailing the movie producer over.  Shaley decides he will go talk to Bennie and get him to drop the scheme.  Before he can do that, Shaley finds out that there has been a murder at the Grover Hotel.  A Chicago gun moll named Big Cee had gotten in trouble with the gangster back home and came to LA to hide out. and some of the gangsters had evidently found her.  Shaley spent a little bit of time checking out this story before he went over to talk to Bennie, only to find Bennie murdered.

What was so important that Bennie had to be killed?  And how had the murderer found where Bennie was hiding?  And was there any connection between Bennie's murder and the killing of Big Cee?  And was there a connection between a big movie producer and the Chicago mob?  the answers to some of these questions are not what one might think.


Pulp stories are often derided because of their purple prose, but the best of the pulp writers use minimal language to help propel their tales at a fast pace.  Sometimes a few words can speak volumes, as when Shaley discovers Bennie's body"

"He had been stabbed several times in his thin chest.  The bed was messy."

A brief tale, scapeled down to the essentials.

The American Magazine

Davis may best be remembered for the thoroughly entertaining Doan and Carstairs mysteries, The Mouse in the Mountain and Sally's in the Alley (both 1943), where Doan nis a private eye and Carstairs is a huge Great Dane).  After those novels were published, Davis moved from the pulps to the slicks, selling to The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Liberty, and The American Magazine.  Davis's other series detectives were Max Latin. "Bail Bond" Dodd, Jim Daniels, Doctor Flame, Jeffrey Scott, Benjamin Martin, Tom Band, and John Collins.  Davis dies at age 40, apparently by suicide after a diagnosis of cancer.

OVERLOOKED FILM: THE GREENE MURDER CASE (1929)

 Recently, on Steve Lewis's mysteryfile blog there was a brief discussion about S.S. van Dine and Philo Vance, which also included comments about character actor Eugene Pallett.  Pallett was always a joy to watch and he elevated almost every film he was in, notwithstanding that in private life he was a racist (which had much to do with his declining career; interestingly -- and completely off topic -- Pallett had a bit part in DeMille's Birth of a Nation in blackface).

Pallett appeared in five of the Philo Vance movies, more than any other actor, including the star.  Enjoy his work in this William Powell vehicle, also featuring Florence Eldridge and Jean Arthur.  (For the record, the literary Philo Vance needs a kick in the pants far more than the cinematic one does.)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTSY9WBUocE

Monday, March 10, 2025

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BIX BIEDERBECKE!

 Leon Bismark "Bix" Biedernecke, born this day in 1903, was a jazz cornet and piano player and composer whose influential style has echoed over the years since his all-too-early death age 28.  He was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame with three songs with a "qualitative or historical significance":  "Singin' the Blues" (1927), "In a Mist" (1927), and "Georgia on My Mind" (1930).


"Singin' the Blues":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9GxhyxV8DI


"In a Mist":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP5Zd4p87Jk


"Georgia (on My Mind)," with Hoagy Carmichael & His Orchestra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoKvT9VgCIQ


"I'm Coming Virginia":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8G7_uDS484


"Goin' Places," with Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfLu3rd1MLc


"San," with Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcXBzzf_MiA


"At the Jazz Band Ball" (Bix Biederbecke & his Gang):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i89CgxUsTiI


"Clarinet Marmalade":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RpE9TwGJCw


"Royal Garden Blues" (Bix Biederbecke & His Gang):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8HRrdAt7U


"Riverboat Shuffle":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4b5R-9_S4E


"Jazz Me Blues" (Bix Biederbecke & His Gang):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECrTilYxJ-s


"Tiger Rag" (Bix Biederbecke & The Wolverines):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoH7rJQ2Yy8


I hope that got your feet tappin' and your body swayin'.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

HYMN TIME

 Tennessee Ernie Ford.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxoNYsgWaa4