INCOMING

By the time you read this, I'll be Albuquerque visiting my grandson Mark who has promised not only to reintroduce us to all his penguin friends but also to introduce us to Big boy, the 500-pound tortoise.

For today, all I have is a very brief Incoming.  See you next week!

• George Axelrod, Blackmailer.  A New York publisher will risk almost anything to get his hands on a Nobel Prize-winning author's unpublished manuscript.  A Hard Case Crime selection.
• "Marion Babson" (Ruth Stenstreem), Untimely Guest.  A grim matriarch disapproves of her children and her daughter-in-law -- is there enough motive here for murder?  I went on an extreme Marion Babson kick several years ago, devouring almost three dozen of her mysteries.  This is one I missed.
• "George Bellairs" (Harold Blundell), The Body in the Dumb River.  A Superintendent Tom Littlejohn mystery.  Jim was a decent chap without an enemy anywhere, so why was he stabbed in the back and his body dumped in a river?  A British Library Crime Classic..  
• Peter Blauner, Casino Moon.  Anthony, raised in Atlantic City, had tried to avoid the mob his entire life, but one night he gets sucked in and finds himself an accomplice to murder.  A Hard Case Crime selection.
• Jon L. Breen & Martin H. Greenberg, editors, Murder Off the Rack:  Critical Studies of Ten Paperback Masters.  The authors and their subjects include Marvin Lachman (Ed Lacy), Max Allan Collins (Jim Thompson), Loren D. Estleman (Donald Hamilton), Donald E. Westlake (Peter Rabe), Bill Crider (Harry Whittington), Jon L. Breen (Vin Packer), Ed Gorman (Charles Willeford), Will Murray (the Executioner series), Dick Lochte (Warren Murphy), and some dude named George Kelley (Marvin H. Albert).
• P. Djeli Clark, Abeni's Song.  Middle grade fantasy, the first in a series.  Abeni's people have been captured while she has been wisked away by an old woman to begin her magical apprenticeship..  Can she escape the witch and bring her people home?
• Clive Cussler, with Paul Kemprecos, Blue Gold.  A Kirk Austin adventure from the NUMA Files.  Apod of dead whales, a mysterious Mexican tribe who live like ghosts, a mythical white goddess, and bio-pirates intent omn stealing medical discoveries worht millions...O my!
• "Nick Cutter"  (Craig Davidson),  The Deep.  Apocalyptic horror novel.  Humanity is being decimated on a global scale by a strange plague, but a cure may have been found eight miless below the surface of the Pacific, but the research lab built to reach it has gone silent.
• Gordon R. Dickson, The Dragon Knight, The Dragon on the Border, The Dragon at War, and The Dragon and the Djinn.  The second, third, fourth, and sixth volumes Dickson's "The Dragon and the George" series featuring Sir James Eckert, the Dragon Knight.  Great fun!
• Roger Elwood, Children of the Furor.  (Yeah, the spelling on the title is correct.)  chjristian novel about skinheads and neo-Nazis -- can faith overcome them?  Published 35 years ago, I pick this one up because 1) Nazis seem to be making a comeback, and 2) I was curious about how the author reinvented himself as a Christian writer after nearly single-handedly destroying the science fiction anthology market as an editor in the 60s and 70s.
• Alan Dean Foster, Flionx's Folly.  A Pip and Flinx adventure about a twenty-four year old redhead with growing powers and his loyal, flying mini-dragon sidekick.  This time, Flinx has been enlisted against a monstrous extra-galactic threat that is pure evil.  Also, To the Vanishing Point.  Science fantasy.  Driving to Las Vegas with his family, Frank Sonderberg picks up a hitchhiker, who happened to be a millenia-old being trying to save the very fabric of existennce --n  which is on a vanishing point on the cosmic road...and which also happens to be US Interstate 40.
• "Brian Fox" (Todhunter Ballard), Return of Sabata,  Spaghetti western film tie-in.  "Sabata returns as judge...jury...executioner!"  Lee Van Cleef played Sabata.  
• Steve Frazee, Ghost Mine.  Western.  Everyone thought Rigdon Sadar's grandfather had stolen twenty-seven sacks of high grade ore forty-five years ago.  now Sadar has one week to clear his grandfather's name but he is being stalked by desperate men determined to get the gold.
• Andrew Grant, Even.  The first David Trevellyan spy-guy novel about a Royal Naval intelligence officer.  This time he has been wrongly suspected of murdering a federal agent in New York, and has been disavowed by his superiors.  Grant, the younger brother of Lee Child, has recently been collaborating with him as Andrew Child, and will soon take over the reikns of teh Jack Reacher series. 
• "Romer Zane Grey,"  Zane Grey's Laramie Nelson:  The Lawless Land.  Collection of four  wesrtern novellas, three (all ghosted by Clayton Matthews) about Laramie Nelson, seasoned Indian fighter, incomparable tracker, and one of the fastest gunhands in the West, first encountered in Zane Grey's Raiders of Spanish Peaks; the fourth novella [uncredited, but I doubt Romer Zane Grey actually wrote this one] features Judkins, a character from Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage.
• Donald Hamilton, The Big Country.  Western.  In texas, land and water belonged to the man who could hold it with a gun.  Jim McKay was the new owner of the Big Muddy, and both the Terrills and the Hanneseys wanted his land and water and were willing to kill to get it.  The basis of the 1958 film with Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Caroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Charles Bickford, Burl Ives, and Chuck Connnors.
• Mick Herron, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street, and London Rules.  The second, third, fourth, and fifth novel in the Slow Horses/Slough House series;  Slough House, a home for demoted British spies, is where they go after they have royally screwed up.  the basis of an AppleTV+ series.
• Lee Hoffman, Nothing But a Drifter.  Western.  Brian, after helping some cowhands rescue an onery longhorn out of quicksand, is offered a job as a ranch foreman, but the threat of a Cheyenne attack and a mysterious rustler may cut his employment short.
• L. Ron Hubbard, Destiny's Drum.  Indonesian adventure novelette (from Five Novels, March 1935).  This is one over over 150 overpriced volumes issued by Galaxy Press, a publishing arm of the Church of Scientology to keep Hubbard's pulp stories in print.  Hubbard was a decent (and, sometimes, very good) pulp writer, but this publishing venture seems intent on deifying him.  The stories are worth picking up whenerver they show up at thrift stores, though.  
• Alan Hyden, Vampires Overhead.  From 1935.  Vampires come riding in on a comet of doom in numbers to mammoth to conceive.
• Maxim Jakubowski, editor, The Best New British Mysteries (also published as The Best British Mysteries 2005) and The Best New British Mysteries, Volume II.  Year's best collections with 28 and 29 stories, respectively.  A great line-up.
• Stuart M. Kaminsky, The Man Who Walked Like a Bear.  An Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov novel.  Supposedly a devil is invading a Moscow shoe factory, while a young man is about commit a felony against the politburo, a Moscow bus and its driver vanish, a body is found brutally murdered, and an assassin arrives in Moscow...there are many threads and they all appear to be winding their way to the KGB.
• Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Catacombs.  Science fiction/fantasy, the second novel about the Barque Cats, spacefaring felines who serve aboard starships as full-fledged members of the crew.  The cats are beginning to share a telepathic bond with their humans.  this not only causes cat intrigue, but also awakens something powerful that hungers to devour all light and life.
• Adrian McKinty, Fifty Grand.  Crime thriller.  A young Cuban detective's quest for vengeance against her father's killer in a Colorado mountain town.
• "Riley Sager" (Todd Ritter), The Only One Left. Thriller.  In 1929, the Hope family was brutally murdered  Everyone assumed 17-year-old Lonora was responsible but could never prove it.  Now, in 1983, Leonora, crippled by a stroke, is ready to tell what happened and it is far more devasting than had been thought.
• Dylan Struzan, A Bloody Business.  On the 100th anniversary of Prohibition, learn what really happend, based on more than 50 hours of recorded testimony from a 91-year-old mobster and publ;ished after he dies, peacefull, two months short of his 97th birthday.  Dylan Struzan spent more than twenty years researching and writing this book.  A Hard Case Crime selection.
• Richard Vine, Soho Sins.  Amanda and Philip Oliver were the golden couple of the new York art scene.  When Amanda was found murdered, Philip confessed to shooting her, but he might have been a thousand miles away when the trigger was pulled.  Vine is the managing editor of Art in America, one of the most influential art magazines; thiss was his first novel.  A Hard Case Crime selection
• Arthur Leo Zagat, The Complete Episodes of Doc Turner in nine volumes. 70 stories from the back pages of the pulp magazine The Spider, Doc Turner is a little old pharmacist in the slums of New York who deals with werewolves and vampires and extortionists and gangsters, oh my!

HYMN TIME

Jim Nabors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8zuyjdQ7VI

KID KOALA #4 (1948)

I don't know much about this Australian comic book except that Kid Koala seems like a perfect name for an Australian comic book.

The character was perhaps created in 1943 by Reg Hicks, most likely for an unknown newsspaper strip.  He appeared in at least four issues of the comic book from Wollumbin Press, and the four issues might have been reprinted in 1960.  Kid koala is an anthromorphic koala interacting in an otherwise human world.  He is lazy, incompetent, and "unclever" -- not exactly a role model for little kids.  On the plus side, he is described as a "dinkum Aussie."

The market for koala-based kids comics in Australia was limited.  The major competition for Kid Koala was "Kokey Koala," who had a magic button that could take him anywhere in the world; Kokey's comic book outlasted Kid Koala's, going from 1948 to 1953.

Reg Hicks was best known for popularizing the adventure comic strip in Australia, beginning with a 1934 adaptation of Earl Cox's Out of the Silence, the first Australian science fiction novel.  among his other strips were Kitty's Kapers, Robinson Crusoe, The Deerslayer, Willy and Wally, Betty and Bob, The King's Treasure, The Space Patrol, and The Adventures of Larry Steele.

The Kid Koala comic books has the appearance of collections of newspaper comic strips, which was mst likely the original intended market for the character.

By the way, koalas can be a little grumpy.  At least this one is,

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=96834&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE TERMINAL MAN

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton  (1972; an abbreviated verson was first serialized in Playboy, March-May, 1972)

Harry Benson was a seemingly healthy person until he was involved in an automobile accident on the Santa Monica Freeway two years ago.  Unconscious for an uncertain amount of time, he was taken to a hospital, then released the following day.  Six months later he began to experience blackouts.  Tests showed seizure activity in the right temporal lobe of his brain, with a preliminary diagnosis of pychomotor epilepsy.  Harry was having "thought seizures," seizures of the mind and not the body, which led to violent acts, acts that Harry could not remember.  These seizures could theoretically be controlled with drugs and Harry began a series of drug trials.  But there appeared to be no improvement with the drug treatments and Harry's epilepsy was declared drug-resistant.  Several months ago, Harry severely assaulted a topless dancer while in a fugue sstate.  Doctors decided that Harry was eligible for a new, never-before-attempted surgical treatment -- implanting electrodes directly onto his brain that would short circuit his violent tendencies whenever they occurred.  Arrangements were made for the operation, although Harry was still technically awaiting arrangemnt on charges of assault and bettery.

One person who was leery about this plan was the hospital psychologist Janet Ross.  She found Harry to be a highly intelligent, sensitive man who worked as a computer scientist and was divorced with real friends. She learned that Harry was convinced that machines were conspiring to take over the world.  In Harry's private life he avoided many advanced machines, a strange behavioor for a computer scientist.  This should have raised a red flag, but the attending doctors paid no attention to Harry's private beliefs.

The operation was a success and the electrodes planted in his brain were monitored and controlled by a sophisticated computer.  The electrode themselves were charged by an implnated battery pack of nuclear material, carefully shield and impanted -- it was about the size of a cigarette pack -- under Harry's armpit.  If the nuclear pack were damaged it would not explode, but it would release lethal amounts of radiation.  When the computer indicated that Harry was about to have a seizure, it would trigger one of 42 electrodes to nullify the thought.  It felt pleasant to Harry whenever this happened -- perhaps too pleasant.  Indications were that Harry's seizures were happening about once every two hours.  Then they began happening more frequently.  In some way, Harry was able to trigger these seizure thoughts solely for the electrode rush of having them cancelled...

Then Harry escaped from his hospital room that was under police guard.  (Here. Crichton has devasting things to say about hospital security and staff.)  Harry's brain activity was increasing to the point where it would soon overload.  And Harry's violence was also increasing.  He murdered a woman and mutilated her body.  Police were unable to locate him, but soon learned that he planned a massive strike against technology, and a race against time began...

The Terminal Man is a cautionary tale about the unthinking and unintended use of cybernetics -- the merging of man and machine.  It is rooted in the world of medicine and technolgy of more than fifty years ago.  When published it read as more of a dire warning for its audience than for the modern reader of today.  Yet the novel's points are just as salient now as they were then -- with technology comes dangers and these danger should be acknowledged and reduced as much as possible.

The Terminal Man was Crichton's twelfth published novel and the second to appear under his own name, following the runaway success of The Andromeda Straic in 1969.

The book reads quickly despite the abundance of technical detail, yet underneath it all is a shallow plot, a sophomoric philosophy, and underdeveloped characters.  Whatever The Terminal Man was 53 years ago, it is a mnor entertainment today.  It just has not held up as well as many of Crichton's other works.

CELEBRATE JUNETEENTH! SONGS OF FREEDOM, FIRE AND UPLIFT

Despite the current administration, Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion are American traditions to be cherished, and there are few things that are more DEI than Juneteenth,  We don't need to come out in force in over 2100 American communities but we do need to stand up for history in the hopes that it will not repeat itself.

Here are a few things to listen to today, as suggested by WRTI, a classical and jazz radio station:

Donald Byrd, "Elijah," which evokes the sound of spirituals heard in Black churches across the country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPchdtfP0Q

Charles Mingus, "Fables of Faubus," a satiric composition directed at Governor Orville Faubus, who called on the National guard in 1957 to prevent integration at Little Rock Central High School.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT2-iobVcdw

John Coltrane, "Alabama," composed in response to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saN1BwlxJxA

Ursula Rucker, "L.O.V.E." -- a powerful poem.

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

Lionel Loueke, "Freedom Dance" 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=308425543469590

Max Roach's "We Insist!  Freedom Now Suite," with Abby Lincoln, Coleman Hawkins, and Michael Olatunji.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAzTCfZod4c

and, "We Insist! 2025," with Terri Lynn Carrington & Cjhristie Dasheill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwKS4r_geg8

And the Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OkMUdi06bg&t=1s

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE

 "The Passing of Black Eagle" by "O. Henry" (Willliam Sydney Porter) (first published in Ainslee's Magazine; reprinted many times, including in the author's collection Roads of Destiny, 1909;  Short Story Magazine [Australia] #11, 1945; The Second Reel West, edited by Bill Pronzinwith& Martin H. Greenberg. 1985; The Railroaders, edited by Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg, 1986; Best of the West II, edited by Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg, 1990; Sagebrush and Spurs:  Classic Western Stories, edited by Eric Tripp, 1992; and Stories of the Old West, edited by John Seelye, 2000, and is available to be read at numerous sites on the internet.  The story has also been filmed at least twice, first with the 1920 silent short The Passing of Black Eagle, directed by and starring Joe Ryan, then with 1948's Black Eagle, directed by Robert Gordon and starring William Bishop [the 1948 film disposed of most of the story's plot, changed the character's name, and added a murder mystery and a love interest]; the story was also adapted for the radio at least once -- for CBS Radio Mystery Theater, January 11, 1977)

Black Eagle..."For some months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas border along the Rio Grande."  His frightening visage and his rough, loud voice terrorized the locals to the point that parents would warn their children to behave, else the Black Eagle would scoop them up with his horrible beak.  Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he vanished -- even his gang had no idea what had happened to him.

To understand the story, you would have to go back some months to St. louis and to an alcoholic hobo named Chicken Ruggles, so named because of his large bird-like nose and his fondness for chicken (whenever he could get it for free).  One cold afternoon, as winter was approaching, Chicken Ruggles spotted a young boy looking longingly at the window of a candy shop.  He also spotted the silver dollar that the lad held tightly in his fist.  The boy had been given the money by his mother to  buy some paragoric at the druggist (cost ten cents; the change was to be wrapped in papar, secured in the boy's pocket, and returned to the mother).  Chicken Ruggles had just one nickle to his name, as well as a gift for scamming.  He used the nickle he had to buy candy for the boy (chocolate creams were his favorite), and offered to accompany the lad to the pharmacy.  There, while the boy was gorging on candy, he used the silver dollar to buy the medicine, wrapped an overcoat button in paper, which he put in the boy's pocket, and saw him home, then left with the ninety cents change, which he converted to a bottle of very cheap liquor and a paper bag of bread and cheese.  Chicken Ruggles then hopped on an empty rail car, and made himself comfortable while the car began its travels south to Texas, where Chicken Ruggles expected to spend a warm winter season in San Antonio.

The journey took several days and Chicken Ruggles relaxed to enjoy the ride.  Perhaps he relaxed a bit too much, becasue when the train stopped in San Antonio, he was fast asleep, and remained so when the train pulled out and headed further south to Laredo.  When Chicken Ruggles woke up he found that his railroad car, along with two others, had been shunted to a lonely siding near a cattle pen and a chute, about one hundred miles from any town.  Chicken Ruggles had read a bit about Texas and he knew there were many dangerous and terrifying things therein -- "snakes, rats, brigands, centipedes, mirages, cowboys, fandangoes, tarantualas, tamales -- "  But then he heard the one thing he was not afraid of because he had been raised on a farm:  the whicker of a horse.  So he saddled up the horse and headed across the lonely prairie in search of a town, a farm, a house, a friendly face, shelter, or perhaps liquor, and failing that, food.

Eventually, he came across a small homestead. No one was about, but inside he found a goodly cache of liquor and some clean clothes...

Bud King ran a gang of cattle and horse thieves.  They weren't the worse gang to plague the area but they were active, often plundering small towns when there were no cattle or horses to steal.  One evening, up rode this strange fellow with a large beak, demanding loudly that he be fed.  The gang wasn't sure what to do about him, but in this part of the country, you always fed a stranger, even if you were going to shoot him later.  This stranger was loud and friendly and ate a lot and told all sorts of stories about his adventures and Bud King's gang took a liking to this bragging person.  They asked him to join them, which he did.  Chicken Ruggles was not a vicious person but his appearance was formidable.  With his roaring voice, he cowed his victims, and he soon became a legend.  The gang nicknamed hinm "Piggy," but the Mexicans in the area gave him a much beetter name -- Black Eagle.  After three months, the reputation of Bud King's gang (Bud was still the head of the gang, although the Black Eagle was the most feared member) was so great that the army was sent in to track them down.

Bud King decided that rather than risk a battle with the troops and certain injuries to his gang, they would cease operations temporarily.  This did not sit well with the gang, who wanted to continue their hell-raising ways.  Black Eagle began telling them that they were wasting their time stealing cattle and horses -- a labor and time-intensive activity -- when they could make far more money quicker by robbing trains.  The gang liked this idea and approached Bud King.  King agreed to stand aside and let Black Eagle take over the gang temporarily to see if the train robbing gambit would work.  Somehow a drunk Black Eagle devised a workable plan to rob a train.

But when it came time to rob the train, Chicken Ruggles noted it had an empty boxcar with ecelsior ("dry, springy, curly, soft, enticing") lining its floor.  Outside, a drizzle had turned to rain.  He made himself comfortable with his ever-present bottle as the train started up again, St. Louis bound, where the cold winter months were now over.  Meanwhile, the gang of would-be train robbers waited in vain for Black Eagle's signal to attack...

O. Henry, one of the most popular authors of the twentueth century, wrote over hundreds of  short stories, many of which -- "The Gift of the Magi," "The Ransom of Red Chief," "The Cop and the Anthem," "A Retrieced Reformation," The Duplicity of Hargreaves," and "The Caballero's Way" among them  --  are considered modern classics.  Along the way he gave us such enduring characteers as The Cisco Kid and Jimmy Valentine.  O. Henry's stories are noted for their deft characterization, witty narration, and surprise endings.

O. Henry died in 1910 and was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina.  According to cemetery officials, since at least 1993, people had been leavin $1.87 in change on his grave -- $1.87 being the amnount of Delia's savings at the beginning of "The Gift of the Magi."  The money collected is then given to local libaries 

While not in the top tier of O. Henry stories, "The Passing of Black Eagle" is a charming, witty, and altogether engaging tale.

It would not be stetching things to say that all of  O. Henry's stories are worth reading.

OVERLOOKED OATER: THE PHANTOM EMPIRE (MOVIE SERIAL, 1935; FEATURE FILM, 1940)

Being of a certain age, it's hard for me to imagine that there are a lot of people who never enjoyed the wonders of the Mascot Pictures 1935 science fiction/western/musical serial The Phantom Empire, which featured Gene Autry's in his first starring role.  I can't claim to have seen this epic in the movie theaters (I'm not that old), Ibut I do remember watching it over and over anagain on our old black-and-white television.  Even then, I was not deterred from realizing how cheesy it was, but at the same time it sparked my imagination far more than, say, 1936's Flash Gordon.

It was directed by Otto Brower (The Santa Fe Trail, The Devil Horse, Dixie Dugan, and the army training film Sexual Hygiene) and B. Reeves "Breezy" Eason (King of the Wild, The Vanishing Legion, The Galloping Ghost).  The idea of the plot came from writer Wallace MacDonald (better known as an actor and producer; his writing credits include In Old Santa Fe, The Fighting Marines, and Hitch Hike Lady) when  he was under gas having a tooth extracted.  Other writers employed in the scripts included Gerald Geraghty, Hy Freedman, and Maurice Geraghty.

Gene Autry plays himself, running a dude "radio" ranch where produces a regular daily program.  His sidekicks are the youngsters Frankie Baxter (played by Franie Darro, at one time considered the best juvenile actor in Hollywood, but at 5 foot 3 inches, his ability as a leading actor was limited, and he switched to voice-over work) and his sister Betsy Baxter (14-year-old Betsy King Ross, a champion trick rider who in adult life became an anthropologist and author); both Darro and Ross did their own riding stunts for the serial.  Comic relief was provided by Smiley Burnette.

It just so happens that 25,000 under Autry's Radio Ranch was the hidden city of Murania, popuolated by the desendants of the lost tribe of Mu, who went undergoound 100,000 years before during the ice age.  Murania is an advanced city with towering futuristic buildings, advanced weapons (including ray-guns), an extensive elevated transportation system, television, and the cheesiest robots ever filmed.  Muranians have live underground for so long that they cannot breath surface air and must wear strange-looking helmets.  They regularly leave the city through a tunnel with a sliding door to the outside world -- I'm not sure why -- and ride their horses through the prairie, making a sound like thunder.  They are called Thunder Riders -- go figure.  Murania is run by the evil queen Tika (Dorothy Christie, (Sons of the Desert, Bright Eyes, The Affairs of Jimmy Valentine; most of her 109 IMDb credits were uncredited).  The bad guys on the surface are led by Professor Beetson (Frank Glendon, (The Texas Tornado, Sagebrush Troubadour, King of the Pecos).  Wheeler Oakman (Brenda Starr, Reporter, Hop Harrigan America's Ace of the Airways, Jack Armstrong) plays Lord Argo, who is plotting to overthrow Queen Tika.

This is one of those shows where you dang well better suspend your disbelief.

The first episode is thirty minutes,, while the remaining eleven episodes clock in at about twenty:

• Episode 1:  The Singing Clowboy
• Episode 2:  TheThunder Riders
• Episode 3:  The Lightning Chamber
• Episode 4:  Phantom Broadcast
• Episode 5:  Beneath the Earth
• Episode 6:  Disaster from the Skies
• Episode 7:  From Death to Life
• Episode 8:  Jaws of Jeopardy
• Episode 9:  Prisoners of the Ray
• Episode 10:  The Rebellion
• Episode 11:  A Queen in Chains
• Episode 12:  The End of Murania  

Needless to say, from the screening of the first episode, The Phantom Empire was a hit/

The link takes you to all twelve chapters:

https://archive.org/details/10PhantomEmpireChap10GeneAutry/1+Phantom+Empire+Chap+1+Gene+Autry.mp4

Then, in 1940, a feature film version of the serial, edited down to 69 minnutes was released.  It was pretty good, but did not have the cheesy fascination of the original.  Here's the link;

https://archive.org/details/The_Phantom_Empire_1935

 

NO BITS & NO PIECES

It happened again, dammit.  After spending more than eight hours composing today's post, Word decided to erase the whole damn thing and ask me if I needed help in writing.  No, I do not need any help in writing, thank you vert much.  Whoever included this function in Word deserves every torture of the damned.  Of course I was unable to recover what I had written, including a heart-felt homage to my father for Fathers Day, a mega-list of Incoming, a look at the writings of Philip Jose Farmer, some nasty jabs at Taco Don, a praise for Pensacola's Graffiti Bridge,  a cute Disney cartoon from 1956, and some old-fashioned country fiddling; I had not yet gotten to the antics of Florida Man or this week's poem.

**sigh**

Maybe next week.

HYMN TIME

 For Father's Day I thought I would focus on my father's favorite singer, Jim Reeves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhuAXAJCpA0

LIFE OF AUNT JEMIMA: THE MOST FAMOUS COLORED WOMAN IN THE WORLD (circa 1895)

Times were different back then and it may be well to check your modern sensitivities at the door.  

Our story begins before the Civil War, when happy, docile, uneducateed "P" words lived throughout the South in small cabins on plantations.  One such "P" word was Jemima.  "As a little ["P" word] she chased the butterflies in the field, and found a new happiness in the dawn of each coming day...[She] soon grew to be a bright young girl, untutored in the ways of worldly knowledge, buyt wise in the laws and limitations of Nature.  Health was her guide.  None knew its value better.  To her, happiness meant perfect health, and perfect cooking and infallible prescription that cured all ills."

According to this ;promotional booklet about the life of a fictional corporate mascot. at an early age Aunt Jemima was noted as a cook -- unsurpassed in the preparation of certain dishes which she prepared in a manner that showed a surprising knowledge of the properties and possiblities of their wholesome ingredients.  This resulted in the discopvry that "the three great cereals -- wheat, corn and rice -- could be so combined in pancakes that the beneficial propertiees and flavor of each could be retained."  Soon, Aunt Jemima's pancales "became a celebrity in that neighborhood."  Soon she brought her culinary skills to the Governor's Mansion, as the main house on the plantation was known, and cooked "for the most famous people of this continent and Europe."  Evidently they liked her pancakes.

Soon came the Civil War, and Aunt Jemima returned to her lowly cabin, and, "at the close of the war., when those gallant men, harassed and pursued, surrounded on all sides by the Union troops, deprived of almost the necessitiees of life, found in Aunt Jemima -- an ex-slave -- a friend indeed."  I remain amazed that her pancakes did not turn the tide of the war and that "Dixie" is not our national anthem.

Following the war, when the steamship "Robert E. Lee" passed near her canbin, ome of the passengers -- a noted ex-Confederate general, extolled Jemima's pancakes to such an extent that a group of people travelled to her cabin, where "they were welcomed with all the courtesy of the ante-bellam ["D' word]."  One of those people was a representative of the R. T. Davis Mill Co. of St. Louis, Missouri, who wentt away with a solid appreciation of Aunt Jemima's pancakes.  Aunt Jemima began selling her ancake mix locally until, in 1866, Aunt Jemima's Pancake Flour recipe was solt to the R. T. Davis Mill Company for a surprisingly large amount of money.  One of thee stipul;ations of the sale was that "the money should be paid in Gold, as Aunt Jemima and her father and mother...could not understand why united States bank notes were any better than Confedrate money, which they knew, to their sorrow, was worth very little after the war was over."  Ah, the innocence of those uneducated "P" words and "D" words!  Another stipoulation was that the R. T. Davis company employ Aunt Jemima sho that she could ensure the high quality of her flour could be maintained.  "She is now considered the most valued employee of the firm."

In 1890, the firm produced fives cases of flour a day; in 1895, that amount rose to ten carloads a day, with 36 packages to a case and 300 cases to a car.  With the equivalent of 60 pancakes to a package, that amounts to 6,480,000 pancakes, or a breakfast for 2,160,000 people!

A pretty nifty success story for a wholly imaginary and racially-inspired "P' word!

You've comea long way, baby!

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=96827&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: BRAINQUAKE

Brainquake by Samuel Fuller (2014)

"There are rules, Paul.  Break one, you're dead. ..No girls.  No wife.  Not now, not ever.  No friends. No ambition.  No hobbies.  No alcohil.  No dope.  No gsambling.  No debts.  No talk when delivering the mail.  No borrowing from the bag.  No quitting.  No telling your experiences after you retire.  Never tell anyone you're a bagman."

Paul Page is a bagman for the mob.  The work suits him, perhaps because he was born different.  Paul has a rare brain disfunction, one so rare it does not even have a name.  At random times, he spaces out and enters a world of pink hallucination.  The only person who knows about this is the Boss -- the woman who runs the million dollar bagman operation for the New York.  She uses her position to protect Paul because she owes a great debt to Paul's late father.  If anyone else knew of Paul's condition, he would be dead.

Paul lives his quiet life blandly and without curiosity.  What is in those bags he delivers he picks up and delivers does not concern him.  He knows it's money, but it could one, two, ten thousand dollars or one, five, or fifteen million -- he doesn't know.  He doesn't care.  He doesn't look.  His one concern is avoiding pirates.  They could come out of anywhere and at any time, determined to get the bag from Paul.  In the past, Paul has had to use violence against the pirates, killing several.  This does not bother Paul; his concern is merely delivering the "mail," the bag, as he has been told to do.  Then Paul gors home to the three-room shack where he was traised., in a now abandoned part of the city.  and he waits until his next delivery.

Paul likes to spend time just sitting on a bench in the park.  There, a few weeks ago, he first noticed Ivory Face, an attractive young mother with a baby in a carriage.  Somehow, for reasons he cannot explain, he is drawn to this woman.  He watches her, the goes home each evening to write a poem about her.  Her knows where she lives and would drop a poem, along with a single rose, on her doorstep without her ever seeing him.

Which brings us to the first sentence in the book:

And

The baby carriage was rigged, and when the infant pulled on a stuffed toy hanging over its head, the gun went off, killing its father.  The father, a low level mobster, had recently reappeared on the scene, inserting himself back into the life of Ivory Face, who had fled him shortly after the baby had been born.  He had owed someone twenty thousand dollars.  And had been warned.

The worst was yet to come.  There was also a pressure bomb in the baby carriage, placed under the baby.  Should the child be picked up the bomb would explode.  There were tense moments as the police and the bomb squad worked to save the child, and Paul was watching all of it.

Ivory Eyes was in danger.  Whomever her husband had owed the twenty thousand to still wanted the money, and they would try to get it from her.  Paul could not allow that, so he inserted himself into her life to protect her.  And it just so happened that the bag he was carrying held fifteen million dollars -- more than enough to take them from danger, at least in theory.

Now Paul and Ivory Eyes are on the run from the mob, from those who killed her husband, from the police, and from a sadistic assassin who dressed up as a priest and whose preferred method of execution was cruxifiction...

Fuller has given us a fantasy world of violence and lawlessness, a wrold where the strings of eveil are pulled by a philanthropic madman with political ambitions.  A world where almost every dies, and dies horribly.  A fast-pace, hauntingly effective world with no one to root for.  And a world where Paul's "brainquakes" are becoming more frequent and more intense.

Samuel Fuller (1912-1997) was a noted film directer specializing in low-budget genre films with controversial themes, among them Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss, The Big Red, Pickup on South Street, and The Steel Helmet.  He has been credited as a major influence on many directors, including Jean-Luc Godard, Luc Moullet, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Jim Jarmusch.  In addition, Fuller penned twelve novels, including Brainquake, a "lost" novel that had nevr ben published before in English, an oversight remedied by Charles Ardai and Hard Case Crime -- something for which fans of Fuller and of crime fiction should be eternally grateful.

MISS MARPLE: A POCKET FULL OF RYE (FEBRUARY 11, 1995)

This is the second of a series of Miss Marple episodes produced for BBC Radio4 in 1995, starring June Whitfield as everyone's favorite elderly detective.  Directed by Enyd Williams,And what has /gladys Mrtin, the parlour maid trained by Miss Marple from a script by Michael Bakewell based on Christie's famous novel.  

Who killed wealthy finacier  Rex Fortescue at Yewtree Lodge?  And what part does Gladys Martin, the parlour maid trained by Miss Marple, have in the affair?  The one clue to Fortescue's agonizing death lay in a children's nursery rhyme, and it is up to Jane Marple to put the pieces together.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4Jr-q0c8jI

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE WHITE HORSE OF DROWNING FORD

 "The White Horse of Drowning Ford" by B. M. Bower  (from The Popular Magazine, August 1907)

"A very, very creepy ghost episode -- with a white horse as the central figure -- that comes as a sequel to an armingly dramatic narrtive told by one of the blithe spirits of the 'Flying U' Ranch."  [editor's original blurb]

B, M. Bower (1871-1940) was one of the most popular writer of westerns in the first half of the twentieth century, publishing some 65 novels (plus a couple of posthumous novels ghost-written by Oscar Friend), some two hundred short stories, and penning at least ten screenplays.  Bower's books sold more than 2 million copies, altjhough -- according to Elemer Kelton -- sales dropped off when the author was revealed to be a woman.

Bertha Muzzy Bower was born in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, and moved with her parents to a homestead near Great Falls, Montana, when she was seventeen.  In 1809, she eloped with her first husband, Clayton J. Bower; the marriage, which lasted fifteen years, was not a happy one.  Bower had moved his family to Big Sandy, Wyoming, in 1898, to a lonely cabin which Bertha dubbed "Bleak Cabin."  It was while living in Big Sandy that Bertha gained the intimate knowledge of the life of a cowboy on the open range.  While at Big Sandy, she began writing "to save my sanity," and sending her stories out to publishers, hoping to gain some financial independence from her husband.  Her first story was publu8shed locally in 1901; her first to be published nationally was in 1903.  In 1904 she published Chip of the Flying U in The Popular Magazine, which later that year becme her first published book.  Her stories of the "Flying U" Ranch met with great success and she wrote eight books in th series published over her lifetime, with another four published posthumously, as well as over fifty short stories (the first forty-five of which published in The Popular Magazine).

Bower's stories are known for their accurate portryal of cowboy life, often told w ith a quiet, whimsical humor.  The day-to-day activities od a cowboy are related with a sure and knowledgeable hand.  More often than not, her tales are character-driven -- there is little violence in Bower's stories.  From a 1922 New York Times review:  "[T]here ws always been an authenticity about them, a genuine smell of sagevrush and saddle leather, which many of her pretentious rivals lack.  Her humor, too, is native and unforced, and lingers in the mind."

"The White Horse of Drowning Ford" opens with three of the Flying U hands -- Pink, Weary, and Happy Jack (who was never sweet-tempered at best) -- camping out on a cold, wind-driven night, as they journey to a distant ranch to pick up some horses.  Happy Jack complains about the wind, wishing they had been able to find shelter from the cold.  Pink, who is familiar with the territory, tells him that there is a deserted cabin about four miles distant and that he would prefer not to go there, hinting that there is something supernatural about the place.  Then Pink tells the tale, adding that he does not believe in ghosts or hauntings, but....  

A few years back, when Pink was working for a different outfit, he would come across a "no-account feller" named Conroy.  Pink and everyone he knew tried to avoid Conroy.  One day, while Pink waas working on the range, the sheriff and a deputy rode up and asked him if he had seen Conroy.  Well, Pink had seen a man who might have been Conroy riding in the direction of the abandoned cabin at Frowning Ford.  Pink gave the sheriff directions to the cabin and rode off with him to ensure that he could find it.  The cabin was deserted.  In the corral, though, was a large white horse, "a big snaky devil they called the Fern Outlaw," known to be one of the meanest creatures in the territory.  The horse had a saddle on it, with one stirrup hooked over the horn, as if someone had been trying to cinch the saddle.  the gorse was restless and agitated.  The sheriff  figured that Conroy had heard them coming and was hiding nearby.  He decided they would stake the corral out and wait for him to returned.   They waited the most of the night and, just before dawn, Pink stood by the corral and watched the white horse moving about angrily.  There, in the shadows of the corral, Pink saw Conroy's body; it had been tramked until it was almost unrecognizable.  The Fern Outlaw then tried to attack Pink, who was standing by the corral fence.  It came at him like a fury. something Pink equalled to evil incarnate.  Pink pulled out his gun and shot the horse in the head.  He kept shooting until he ran out of bullets and the sheriff had pulled him back.  They got Conroy's body, or what was left of it, out of the corral.  There were no ghosts or haunting in Pink's story; what haunting there was was the memory of the affair and of how terrified Pink had been.

The next day, Pink, Weary, and Happy Jack stopped by the cabin on Drowning Ford.  The place was still deserted, bugt there was an unpleasant, eerie atmosphere but the place.  The gate to the corral wa shuttered and locked with a rusty chain.  The trio continued on their way and picked up the gorses they were assigned to get.

Heaading back to the Flying U, they neared Drowning Ford and Pink rode aheaad for one final look at the location that had dwelled on hi mind for such a long time.  But the corral gate was open and the chain that had held it was not there.  Suddenly, something large and white rushed past him and Pink saw it had a saddle with one stirrup hooked over the horn.  Pink rushed back to his comrades, only to find them busy trying to gather the horses which had stampeded when something lage and white had rushed toward them.  Gathering the horse, they rushed out of there.  But something followed them...something that kept spooking the horses, something that they heard in the distance, something white on their trail...

Yes, there was an explantion.  That's what they kept telling themselves.

A story that appeared to take a right turn from the typical tales of the men of the Flying U.

The August 1907 issue of The Popular Magazine is available on the internet.  Check it ut.

JUSTLY OVERLOOKED FILM: WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST (1958)

 First off, this one came from American International Pictures (AIP), which was to Fifties horror flicks that Republic Pictures was to Forties B-westerns.  Second, it was produced, directed, and and with a story by Bert I. Gordon (who also did the special effects), the king of the giant monster films, which is not really and Oscar-worthy sobriquet.  Third, it was a sequel to Gordon's first AIP flick, The Amazing Collosal Man -- even though it was not marketed as a sequel and had a different cast (but the storyline does pick up where the previous film left off.  And, although it was filmed in black-and-white, the fim;s last shocking (he-he-he) thiorty seconds or so was filmed in color.

The Colossal Man is Lt. Colonel Glenn Manning (Dean Parkin; his only other acting credit was the previous year's The Cyclops).  The eye candy in this flick was Manning's sister, Joyce (Sally Fraser; It Conquered the World, Giant from the Unknown, The Spider -- she screamed a lot during this phase of her career), and her beau was Major Mark Baird (Roger Pace; 10 credits on IMDb, including one episode of The Real McCoys, one episode of Steve Canyon, and three episodes of My Little Margie [playing deferent characters] )  And, because we need a scientist, the role of Dr. Carmichael was taken by Russ Bender (The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, Space Probe Taurus, the Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow).

The actual screenplay was by George Worthington Yates (It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Earth vs. the Spider).

The film, also known as Revenge of the Colossal Man, The Colossal Beast, and Terror Strikes, was released theatrically as the bottom half of a dopuble feature, with Attack of the Puppet People, another George Worthington Yates scripted flick.

The plot?  Yes, there is a plot.  Manning gets dosed by radiation.  Manning grows big.  Manning goes smash.  Manning shakes a buisload of teenagers.  Big colorized fianle.

Cheesiness, thy name is War of the Colossal Beast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8S0M3R39Ug

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SKIP JAMES!

Delta blues guitarist and singer Skip James (1902-1969) was born Nehemiah Curtis James in a segregated hospital near Betonia, Mississippi.  "Coupling an oddball guitar tuning set against eerie, falsetto vocals, James' early recordings could make your hair stand up on the back of your neck."  And his guitar playing was phenominal.

Give a listen:

"Devil Got My Woman"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05ypnm_Wcls

"Crow Jane"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVww5r4Nk0

"Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cyGmLF8FpE

"I'm So Glad"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0mANtSMLy8

"Special Rider Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kwLG0F6EeU

"Cypress Grove Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6vEDxP45CQ

"Look Down the Road"

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

"My Black Mama, Part 1"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiinYF1xWZc

"Sick Bed Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02IkbJkazLs

And here's a great clip of Bukka White, Skip James, and Son House at the Nrewport Folk Festival;

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

"Mountain Jack"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-XOO6XeM8Q

"Catfish Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlvaHEXP7NU

"Illinois Blues"  (lines from this song were quoted three times in August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson) 

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

HYMN TIME

 The Plantation Siongers.

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

SINISTER TALES #17 (UNDATED, PROBABLY SOMETIME IN 1965)

Here's a quickie.  Sinister Tales was one of several titles of black-and-white reprint comics from the British publisher Alan Class.  The Class comics reprinted material from Atlas, Marvel. ACG, Charleton, Archie and other U.S. comic book lines.  Sinister Tales ran from January 1964 to January 1989 for a total of 227 issues.  In addition to Sinister Tales, Class also published such titles as Creepy Worlds, Secrets of the Unknown, Suspense, Outer Space, Tales of the Underworld, and Uncanny Tales.  I have no idea where the stories in this issue originally came from, but five of the twelve stories were signed by Steve Ditko, which should count for something.  Joe Gill wrote at least one of the stories, but I don't know which one.

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=78003

FORGOTTEN BOOK: EASY GO

Easy Go by "John Lange" (Michael Crichton)  (!968; also republished 1984 as The Last Tomb)

Early in his career, beginning when he ws a medical student, Michael Crichton published eight thrillers under the pseudonym John Lange, "for furniture and groceries."  Crichton considered these books the literary equivalent of an in-flight movie:  "I write them fast and the reader reads them fast."   Easy Go was the third novel to be published as Lange, although sources say it was actually the first book that Crichton wrote -- it took him a week.

Harold Barnaby is an Egyptologist with a singular knack for accurately translating hieroglyphics, many of which had previously been only hasitly translated in situ.  One particular papyrus he had come across puzzled him; it made no sense, and clearly ikt was writenn in code.  Barnaby eventually deciphered the code and learned of a hidden tomb of an unnamed pharaoh, which had been unknown for millenia.  The papyrus also gsve detailed instructions (well, detailed for the time; things shift over the centuries) of the tomb's location.  The thought of finding this tomb -- perhaps the last undioscovered tomb in Egypt -- and the possible riched it contained excited Barnanby.

He recruits Robert Pierce, a freelance writer, who has the contacts that Barnaby doesn't -- those who have the knowledge and the wherewithal to loot the tomb without alerting the Egyptian authories.  Pierce goes to Lord Grover, a wealthy and dissolate earl to bankroll the project.  Grover insists on bringing along at least two of his mistresses and his private secretary, Lisa Barrett.  (Lisa is young, attractive, and -- after a somewhat rocky start -- falls for Pierce, and he for her).  Pierce also recruits archaeologist and smuggler Alan Conway and international thief Nikos Karagannis.  The team gets permission from the Egyptian government for an expedition to a remote area of the desert to photograph and translate hieroglyphics from minor tombs, using this as a cover for their actual search for the last tomb.

It is painstaking and weary work, maintaining their cover while trying to locate the hidden tomb, made more difficult by the unannounced appearances of Hamid Iskander, a representaitve of the government's Antiquities Services; Iskander's demeanor as an eager to please official hides a brilliant brain and a watchful, suspicious eye.

The desert is cruel and unforgiving.  Heat, insects, dysentary, the occasional invasion of cobras, and sand blowing everywhere become normal occurances.   After months of false starts, the  tomb's location is found, its entrnce through a small cleft on the side of a cliff 500 feet above the ground.  The cleft is so small that only one man could work it at a time, digging down seven feet before finding the first step that led to the tomb.

Now that they have found the tomb, can they get the to the riches within?  Can they get the loot out of Egypt and safely dispose of it?  Can they outwit and avoid the overly suspicious Egyptian authorities?  Can they even survive the tomb itself, with its deadly traps?

A fast, light read, with the reader's credbility somewhat overcome by the wealth of detail and atmosphere throughout the novel.  This is Gamal Nassar's Egypt, the Egypt that was building the Aswan Dam, the Egypt of extreme wealth and even more extreme poverty, an Egypt of unrelenting peril...A nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

Crichton went on to become an international phenominon, writing The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, and Timeline, among others.  He wrote the screenplays for Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, Runaway, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, and Twister, among others.  For Television, he created the hit series ER.  Thirteen of his novels have been filmed and these films have spawned seven sequels.  Two television series have been based on his films.  During his lifetime, Crichton published twenty-five novels and four works of nonfiction; an additional four novels have been published posthumously, two of which were completed by other authors.  Crichton has received two Edgar awards, the Seiun Award, a Golden Plate Award, a Technical Achievement Oscar, a Writers Guild Award, a Peabody Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, an Audie Award, a BILBY Older Readers Award, and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Journalism Award.  In 1991 he was named one of People magazine's Fifty Most Beautiful People.  Crichton is the 20th highest grossing story creator of all time.

A very private man, Crichton kept his final illness a secret, dying of leukemia on Novembner 4, 200b at age 66.

 

THE CHASE AND SANBORN HOUR, WITH EDGAR BERGAN AND CHARLIE McCARTHY (APRIL 18, 1943)

Called "the quintessential ventriloquist of the twetieth century," Edgar Bergan (1903-1978) more than anyone else pioneered modern day ventriloquism.  At age eleven he taught himself ventriloquisim; when he sixteen he received daily lessons from famed ventriloquist Harry lest; and later that year he paid 436 to have a dummy carved for him in the likeness of a red-haird newspeper boy he knew -- and thus was Charlie McCarthy born.  Two other major creations were added as his career progressed -- Mortimer Snerd and Effie Klinker.

Beginning in vaudeville, Bergen soon appeared at the famous Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center; there he was seen by two rppoducers who booked Bergan (and mcCathy) for an appearance on Rudy Valee's radio show in December 1936.  The pair were so popular that the following year they became part of the cast of The Chase and Sanborn Hour, a gig that lasted from 1937 to 1956.  (Part of the so-called War of the Worlds Panic from Orson Welles' infamous 1938 broadcast was due to the fact that many of Welles' listeners tuned in halfway through the show because they had been listening to Bergan and McCarthy and did not ealize the program was emtirely fictional.)   Bergen also had a CBS radio program, The Charlie McCarthy Hour (later The Edgar Bergen Hour) from 1949 to 1956. 

The fact that Bergen was a star ventriloquist on radio, where no one could see the act was part of itss charm.  (In fact, some listeners thought the McCathy was real person and not a dummy.)  
the other part of Bergen's popularity was due to his comedic timing and the personality he gave to his puppets.

Truth to tell, Bergan was not a very good ventriloquist.  Filmed appeatances clearly showed Bergan's move moving, but few people cared.  Bergen even had Charlie McCarthy occasionally mention how his mouth was moving.  Above all, bergen brought a certain innocence and good-tempered humor to his act.

On this episode of The Chase and Sanborn Hour, Ronald Colman, Dale Evans, Victor Moore, and Billy Gaxton.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h--kfyx8Mtc&t=2s

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: A BAR CALLED CHARLIE'S

 "A Bar Called Charlie's" by Charles Ardai (firsr published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November 1990; republished in The Year's Best Horror Stories:  XIX, edited by Karl Edward Wagner, 1991; and in Ardai's coolection Death Comes Too Late, 2024)

Marty Jenson is part of a dying breed, and, because of inertia, has been one for fity years.  Most poeple in his trade had left long ago, to offices where the job cn be done online, to other more lucrative fields, and some to early graves due to drink and/or suicide.  Some of those who worked with Marty during the early years were focused and lucky, like Mack Davis, who saved every penny he made and dropped out of the game after six yearss to buy a self-sustaining farm in South Dakota, or like Louie DelBianco, who quir and started a successful chain of stores which 'started sprouting up around the country like pimple's on a teenager's face."  But Marty, morose and self-pitying, stayed with it simply because he did not know how to do anything else.  Yeah, Marty was married and had a couple of kids, now grown, but even their pleas to find something else were ignored.

And sometimes Marty thought of suicide.  When those thoughts approached, he would pull his call over to a nearby bar, rather than to drive on where there mjight be a bridge abutment.   And this one night, it was a bar called Charlie's.  It was a dead night.  Just one other customer and Charlie, the bartender.  The other customer was pretty drunk and drunk people make up stories, and Charlie had been around long enough to know that for you pretend to to believe any story a drunk might tell you, and this drunk started telling Marty that he was a professional assassin -- he even pulled a small gun out of a pocket as proof of his drunken claim.  Gun back in his pocket, he began to tell Marty a story about a traveling salesman.

Charlie, the bartender, stopped him there, saying that there was a house rule against Traveling saleman stories in his bar.  Charlie, it turns out had also been a traveling salesman.  It also turned out that Charlie was Charlie DelBianco, the father of Marty's old partner Louie DelBianco.  Charlie and Louie did not get along; Louie was ashamed of his father for a number of reasons.

Then, two other men entered the bar and pulled out guns.  They made Charlie emoty the cash register -- only a couple of hundred nbucks (it was a slow day).  They dmanded the watches and wallets from the three.  The drunk customer started checking his pockets for his wallet and pulled out his gun and gut shot one of the robbers.  The other robber turned to the drunk.  Now both were ointing guns at the other, but the drunk was so far gone he didn't really know what he was doing.  The ronbber blew his face off, then he shot Charlie.  He was about to shoot Marty also but Marty began the sales pitch of his life.. to save his life.

The robber had Marty help him carry his friend's body to his vehiclle and then drove off, leaving Marty lone outside the bar.  Without checking to see whether Charlie was dead or merely wounded, Marty got in his car and headed out of state, while musing on fate and his life.  He thought of calling the police and of going back to check on Charlie, but he just kept driving on to whatever fate awaited him.

An early story by Ardai, readable despite the many faults in its plot, more readable as a character study.

Ardai, of course, is best known today as the co-founder and editor of Hard Case CCrime, the line of pul--style paperback novels.  While in high school, Ardai worke as an intern for Isaac Asimov's Scince Fiction Magazine.  He graduated from Columbia summa cum laude, and was hired by the hedge fund  D. E. Shaw.  Also in the early 1990s, he edited a number of anthologies (some with Cynthia Masonor Sheila Williams) that mined IASFM and its companion magazines for much of their content.  While at Shaw, he and fellow employee Jeff Bezos were tasked with coming uop with potential online business ideas.  Ardai came up with the internet company Juno, which became very big in those early days; Bezos started something called Amazon, which I understand is doing okay.  Ardai sold his interest in Juno in 2001. and he and Max Phillips decided to start a publishing company.   The first Hard Case Crime novel was published in September 2004; the following month, Hard Case Crime published Little Girl Lost, written by Ardai and published as by "Richard Aleas"; The bookm was nominated for both the Edgar and the Shamus Awards.  His second novel, Songs of Innocence, also by "Aleas," won the 2008 Shamus Award.  The fiftieth novel published by Hard Case, Fifty-to-One. was the fisrt to appear under Ardai's own name.  Ardai also started a brief line of Indiana Jones-type adventure novels about Gariel Hunt, each written by a different author; Ardia's contribution was Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear.  Also for Hard Case, Ardai wrote the novelization of the comic crime novel The Good Guys.  In 2001, Titan Comics became publishing a series of Hard Case Crime graphic novels, begining with Ardai's Gun Honey; several sequels have since been published.  Last year to celebrate the 20th anniversay of Hard Case Crime, he publlished the collection Death Comes Too late, containing twenty of his short stories.  Several of Ardai's nearly forty shorty stories have been honored:  "Nobody wins" was nominated for a 1994 Shamus Award, while "the Home Front" won the 2004 Edgar Award.  Ardai also won the 2015 Ellery Queen Award for his work on Hard Case Crime, and a 2024 Inkpot Award.  Arfdai was also a writer and producer on the SyFy series Haven, based on Stephen King's Hard Case Crime novel The Colorado Kid.   By my count, Hardcase Crime has published 162 books by a disytionguished lineup, including Lawrence Block, Erle Stanley Gardner, Max Allan Collins, Day Keene, Donald E. Westlake, David Dodge, Wade Miller, Stephen King, Ed McBain, Donald Hamilton, Charles Williams, Ken Bruen, Pete Hamill, Michael Crichton, Richard S. Prather, Gil Brewer, David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich, Mickey Spillane, Robert Bloch, John Farris, Roger Zelazny, E. Howard Hunt, Jason Starr, Peter Rabe, Lester Dent, Arthur Conan Doyle, Brett Halliday, Robert Silverberg, James M. Cain, Harlan Ellison, Samuel Fuller, Ray Bradbury, Gore Vidal, Gregory Mcdonald, Charles Willeford, Joyce Carol Oates, Brian de Palma, Rex Stout, and Christa Faust; many of these titles had been out of print for decades, while at least 55 titles had never been published before.  At least 34 graphic novels have been released by Hard Case Comics, including a trilogy based on the Stieg Larrson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, plus titles by Alison Gaylin and Megan Abbott, Walter Hill, Max Allan Collins, Duane Swierczynski, and Will Eisner.

CHARLIE WILD, PRIVATE DETECTIVE: THE CASE OF THE DOUBLE TROUBLE (MARCH 20, 1952)

A perhaps justly forgotten television show was Charlie Wild, Private Detective, which ran on three of the four major networks un the early 1950s.  We can thank the Red Scare of the 1950s for the existence of this program.  The Adventures of Sam Spade, starring Howard Duff, was an extremely popular radio show, but Dashiell Hammett, the creator of Sam Spade, was a Communist, and Duff himself, though not a Communist, had some leftist leanings.  The show's sposor, Wildroot Crram Oil, panicked and immediately cancelled the show, replacing it the very next week with Charlie Wild, Private Eye; Wild was a tough New Yotk City private detective.  This program ran on NBC Radio for 13 episodes (September 24-December 17, 1950) before moving over to CBS Radio, retitled Charlie Wild, Private Detective, and replacing star George Petrie with Kevin Morrison (later Kevin O'Morrison and John MacQuade) for a further 26 episodes (January 7-July 1, 1951).  On December 22, 1950, the show also appeared omn CBS Television, running for seven episode with Kevin Morrison as Wild, before Morrison was replaced with John McQuade fpr a final 14 episodes, ending on June 27, 1951.  The program moved to ABC on September 11, 1951, and stayed there for 19 episodes, until February 26, 1952.  The final move of the short-lived show took it to the Dumont Network, from March 13-July 3, 1952.  The television program was also known as The Affairs of Charlie Wild and Charlie Wild, Private Eye.  The show was known to recycle plots from the radio series, and some of the CBS programs were simulcasts of the radio show.  Charlie Wild's secretary was named Effie Perrine, the same name of Sam Spade's secretary -- if she were the same character, she moved from California to New Yorrk in the space of a week.  Confused yet?

Charlie Wild, like Spade, "chased beautiful dames, hated chiselerss, and got involved in a slugfest every episode."  The show was apparently known for its trite, worn plots and stilted dialog.

In "The Case of the Double Trouble," Charlie is given $500 to guard a valuable parchment.  The shnow features Philip Truex as identical twins Terrence and Thomas Tillinghast (the "Double Trouble" of the title).  Also featured in the cast are John  Shellie, Phillipa Bevins, and and Yale Wexler.  This is one of the very episodes not to feture Chloris Leachman as Effie Perine.

The episode was written by Palmer Thompson, who had a career in episodic television from 1952 to 1969, including five episodes of Charlie Wild, Private Detective and 43 episode of Lamp Unto My Feet.  The episode was one of only two directed by Charles Adams, who has no further directorial credits on IMDb.  Herbert Brodkin began his producing career with eight episodes of Charlie wildm Private Detective; he went on to produce 18 eoisodes of The Doctors and the Nurses, 71 eoisodes ofThe Defenders, and a nunber of television movies.

Decide for yourself whether Charlie Wild was fit to fill Sam Spade's shoes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49RdvH0PFAw&t=8s

HYMN TIME

 Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH2WyVRKP0A