OIVERLOOKED FILM: AGGIE APPLEBY, MAKER OF MEN (1933)

Aggie Appleby (Wynne Gibson, Night After Night, The Crosby Case, Double Cross) is a waitress at Nick's Restaurant.  She lives with Red Branahan (William Gargan, The Story of Temple Blake, Rain, Cheers for Miss Bishop; Gargan has also played fictional detectives Ellery Queen, Martin Kane, and Barrie Craig), but money is tight and Branahan gets arrested and thrown in jail.  Unable to pay her rent, Aggie goes to her friend, a housecleaner named Sybby (Zasu Pitts, No, No, Nanette, Ruggles of Red Gap, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and about a zillion others).  Sybby sneaks Aggie into a room belonging to prissy Adoniram "Schlumpy" Schlump (Charles Farrell, 7th Heaven, Old Ironsides, Street Angel) Schlumpy is out of town so Aggie at least can= get some sleep.  Of course, Sch=lumpy comes home early and finds Aggie, but he's taken by her story and allows her to stay (he takes the sofa).  Schlumpy, despite his elevated social upbringing, is out of work; he is also in love with Evelyn (Betty Furness, Midshipman Jack, Dangerous Corner, They Wanted to Marry, later know as a spokesperson for Ge, a consumer affairs advocate, and the consumer affairs expert of NBC's Today show).  Aggie is kind at heart and decides to help Schlumpy.  As often happens in these films, Schlumpy falls in love with Aggie.  For her part, Aggie is worried about the class difference between the two...

Is lasting love in the cards for these two?  Watch the film and find out.

Directed by Mark Sandrich (The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Buck Benny Rides Again) and written by Humphrey Pearson (Bright Lights, Bride of the Regiment, On with the Show!) and Edward Kaufman (Hips, Hips, Hooray! Romance in Manhattan, McFadden's Flats).

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysk7nUuSx7s+

THE DOG DAYS OF MARCH

Today is National Puppy Day!  In honor of our canine friends, here's a few musical doggie treats!

"Hound Dog" - Big Mama Thornton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmpwvxW0gW0

"Old Shep" - Red Foley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yppc3rk9ET8

"How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" - Patti Page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqwq4AgMiik

"Walking the Dog" - Rufus Thomas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1KAlQSYjw

"The Puppy Song" - Harry Nilsson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdJj8Bay5vk

"My Dog and Me" - John Hiatt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrigtEd8jAs

"Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" - Stonewall Jackson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5es7VYrRC64

"Who Let the Dogs Out" - Baha Men

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

"Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog" - Johnny Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYNK8A_bXwA

"Story 'Bout a Dog" - Louis Prima

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exbjdR-njk8

"Hellhound on My Trail" - Robert Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHAIgpih86E

"Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" - The Royal Guardsmen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtJ1Gnh9wPU&list=PLVMMoXln1rEQdQOIWlrX-K_kscVsW40WP&index=30

"Don't Pat That Dog" - Jim Stafford

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21JeM_jDtDo

"Salty Dog" - Lead Belly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dFLlPgM3S8

"Girl and Her Dog" - Mary Chapin Carpenter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkuUeI7nQXA&list=PLVMMoXln1rEQdQOIWlrX-K_kscVsW40WP&index=50

"Ol' Red" - George Jones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAvJ1IDwmuw&list=PLVMMoXln1rEQdQOIWlrX-K_kscVsW40WP&index=41

"He's a Tramp" - Peggy Lee

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

"Lassie Opening Theme" - from 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcN3Inbykx4

"The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin Theme Song"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlUgjYYrp-U

And, a word of warning for those who might want to pet THAT dog...

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

LONG WEEKEND

No blogging for a while.  I have a dolphin watch cruise scheduled for Friday, our annual Engligh high tea in honor of Kitty's birthday on Saturday, and a delayed corned beef and cabbage feast followed by the March meeting of Erin's Family Book Club on Sunday.  Busy, busy,  busy,,,

HALLMARK PLAYHOUSE: WYATT EARP, FRONTIER MARSHAL (MARCH 24, 1949)

Today marks Wyatt Earp's 178th birthday!  A legendary lawman and entrepreneur, Earp's reputation has become murky with the passage of time and he has generally been seen as a positive force in Western  history due to his portrayal in mass media, while in truth he could rightly deserve detractors as well as admirers.

Stuart Lake's bestselling 1931 biography, Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshall, had much to do with the popularized perception of Earp as a dedicated lawman, and it is this work that forms the basis of the Hallmark Playhouse episode linked below.  That book, later to be revealed as highly fictionized and glossing over or ignoring major aspects of Earp's life, was the basis of at least three films (Frontier Marshal, 1934, Frontier Marshal, 1939, My Darling Clementine, 1946), as well as the popular television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955-1961).

So here's Wyatt, without warts, as the fierce and courageous lawman we all want him to be.  Richard Conte stars.  Also featured were Gerald Mohr and Lurene Tuttle.  Noted author James Hilton served the host; Hilton was also the person who selected which stories would be featured on the show.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DE8xAefp2c

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE DEATH CRY

 "The Death Cry" by Arthur B. Reeve  (first published in Weird Tales, May, 1935; reprinted in The Television Detectives' Omnibus [also published as Great Tales of Crime and Detection], edited by Peter Haining*, 1994; and in Dead Men Tell Tales, a collection of seven Craig Kennedy stories, Black Dog Books, 2008)

Craig Kennedy, "The Scientific Detective" first appeared in "The Case of Hilda Bond" in Cosmopolitan, December 1910, the first of a long series of 81 stories for that magazine through July 1915.  At one time, Kennedy rivaled -- and perhaps out-passed -- Sherlock Holmes in popularity.  Kennedy appear in about 171 stories (an accurate count is beyond my ken) and in 30 books,  both novels and collections.  In addition, there were eight films about the character (three of which featured Harry Houdini), an unknown number of radio programs, two comic strips, and a 1951 television series.  Many of the Craig Kennedy stories bordered on science fiction with the use of scientific devices.  It is possible that a number of tales about the character were ghost-written.

The man behind this was prolific author Arthur B. Reeve (1880-1936), who also created detective characters Constance Dunlap and Guy Garrick.  Reeve was also a screenwriter, and would also adapt a number of films written by others for newspaper syndication (one of these was for the "lost" 1928 film Tarzan the Mighty; Reeves adaptation was published in book form in 2005 from ERBville Press); he also wrote a number of scenarios about fake spiritualists for millionaire-murderer Harry K. Thaw (the guy who killed Stanford White over Evelyn Nesbit, the "Girl in the Red Velvet Swing"); Thaw refused to pay and a lawsuit resulted which Thaw eventually lost.

Kennedy began as a scientist who would solve crimes using both chemistry and psychology, with his repertoire eventually widening.  Kennedy was also a man of action, carrying two pistols and not afraid to use them.  As the series progress, the character became more of a hardboiled detective and faced both racketeers and spies.  By 1930 the author became an anti-racketeering crusader, hosting a  national radio program on the subject.  During World War II Reeve would help establish a spy and crime detection laboratory in Washington, D.C.

"The Death Cry" may have been the last Craig Kennedy story the Reeve published.

Kennedy has been called to the Three Pines Hotel in the Catskills to investigate a mysterious murder.  The victim was found in a locked room, killed while in bed, blood covering his throat.  When the blood was wiped away, two small puncture holes were discovered over the jugular vein.  Previous to the body being discovered, a terrifying and inhuman cry was heard,  but no one could ay where exactly it came from.  The hotel itself had been in business for ten years; most of the guests had fled after the murder,  but eight remained in residence, including a self-proclaimed psychic, a nervous old lady, a professor claiming to be a great scientist, a smug New York broker, a young married couple with a secret (she would later try to commit suicide), and a man who appeared strangely amused by the whole affair.  Also at the hotel were the manager, the hotel clerk, and Old Peter, a queer duck of a handyman who kept disappearing.  Soon after Kennedy arrived, that mysterious, fearsome "death cry" was heard again, signaling another impossible murder.  Add to the mix a ten-year-dead hermit, a hidden cave, a missing grave marker, a British inheritance, and a strange black figure seen in the distance, and lyou hav+e all the ingredients for an atmospheric melodrama:

"A gust of dark musty air came from the yawning hole.  There was something fetid, mephitic, bestial in it.  Black as jet, the yawning cavern opened in front of Kennedy and Blount."

And:

"Then came the second scream, this time the weird, inhuman scream that started in a low wail and increased until it echoed and re-echoed in the night,  It was the scream of death -- inhuman, terrifying, unearthly."

The story is good fun, despite plot holes you could drive a truck through.  And, frankly, Reeve is not a good writer, but he is able to pull the reader along breathlessly without stopping to consider how the sausage was made.  And, really, stories like this are not meant to be examined, but are to be read uncritically and hastily.

Recommended for what it is.

The May 1935 issue of Weird Tales is available to be read online from the usual suspects.

* Haining (1940-2007) was a prolific and oft-times sloppy anthologist who should rightly be credited for bringing to light a number of forgotten and overlooked works, although his research could be very flawed, and bibliographical details can be both confusing and irritating.  The volume listed above first appeared in 1992 as Great Tales of Crime and Detection as an instant remainder, but carries a 1988 copyright notice; it appeared in 1994 as The Television Detectives' Omnibus; the book contains 32 stories about fictional detectives who have been portrayed on television (Perry Mason, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Father Brown, Sherlock Holmes, Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, as well as a number of characters less familiar to American readers), and the book's back cover and inside front cover flap both proclaim a story about Mike Hammer which does not appear and likely was wishful thinking.  the book also at one point states Antonia Fraser's detective Jemima Shore as "Jemima Shaw."  I prefer to think both of these flaws belong with the publisher rather than the anthologist. 

OVERLOOKED FILM: THE LUCK OF THE IRISH (1948)

What is St. Patrick's Day without a leprechaun and a little bit of Irish whimsey?

Here's Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, and Cecil Kellaway -- perfectly cast as Horace, the leprechaun; Kellaway was nominated as Best supporting actor for this role.

Directed by Harry Koster (The Bishop's Wife, Harvey, My Man Godfrey), and scripted by Philip Dunne (How Green Was My Valley, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Forever Amber), from the novel There Was a Little Man by Guy Pearce Jones and Constance Bridges Jones (who also penned Peabody's Mermaid, filmed as Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, 1948).

Enjoy.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jyXxv5aHQg

TOMORROW? WELL, TOMORROW 'TIS A GREAT DAY FOR THE IRISH

St. Patrick's Day -- March 17th -- honors the patron saint of Ireland and is celebrated on the reputed anniversary of his death.  It takes less of a religious aspect in America where we honor St. Patrick and all things Irish with corned beef and cabbage, soda bread, the wearing of the green, parades, and green beer.  And, of course, music, both traditional and modern -- some of which was never traditionally Irish but has been coopted over the years.

I can proudly claim a smidgeon of Irish blood from my maternal grandfather, a red-headed Irisher named Bernard Francis Ford.  (The rest of my family was boringly Yankee, with a dash of French f rom my paternal grandmother, Corrine Fecteau.)  Kitty's family, however, was blazingly Irish on her father's side.  Her grandfather, John Keane (please get the pronunciation right; it's KANE, not KEENE), was one of three brothers, all of whom secretly absconded from County Cork on the same evening for reasons best not explained; one went to Canada, one went to Australia, and the third -- Kitty's grandfather -- to America.  (A  number of years ago I actually met one of the Australian cousins, a charming priest who pronounced the family name KINE (Australian-style).

Needless to say, I have been inundated with Irish music all my life, and even more so after marrying Kitty.  Some of it is rousing, some of it outrageous, some heart-breakingly poetic, some fiercely patriotic, and some just plain maudlin...and I love it all.  Note that much of Irish music is about fighting and drinking, which is probably as it should be; romance often seems to come in a distant third.  **sigh**

"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" -- Kate Smith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiG9cfsHQjE

"My Wild Irish Rose" -- Chauncey Olcott

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q63NgVClfkA

"Danny Boy" -- The Leprechaun Brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q63NgVClfkA

"The Wild Rover" -- The Dubliners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_4KboYi40I

"Gentle Annie" -- Tommy Makem (few have combined poetry with music as well as Makem)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrIXPQ-Vspk

"Red Is the Rose" -- Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem (one of my absolute favorite songs, perhaps because it reminds me so much of Kitty)

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

"Four New Fields" -- Tommy Makem & Liam Clancy (perhaps THE Irish patriotic song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d30rpdvtiA

"The Rising of the Moon"  -- Nia Casaidigh (a classic Irish rebellion song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0zBlHlnR4Y

"Kevin Barry" -- Sean Brady (about an Irish martyr)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN7FxDNxRXo

"The Rose of Tralee" -- John McCormack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjhVYn_Y9M

"Galway Bay" -- Bing Crosby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt7NdiFeYJA

"Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?" -- Gracie Fields

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtoR6D9W124

"Sweet Rosie O'Grady" -- Maude Nugent (who wrote the song in 1896)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv99NelFj7o

"Harrigan" -- George M. Cohen (who was American as can be, but never forgot his Irish roots)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmPBl-XbM-8

"McNamara's Band" -- The Irish Rovers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=101Y0sh2Lfg

"Who Threw the Overalls in M0rs. Murphy's Chowder?" -- The Maxwell Girls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES_Mb43WCUg

"Black Velvet Band" -- Celtic Thunder

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

"I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" -- The Irish Tenors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvC1zaxRM8o

"The Wild Colonial Boy" -- Barley Bree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6lcdFqz-Xw

"Dirty Old Town" -- The Pogues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11BuatTuXk

"Off to Dublin in the Green" -- The Dubliners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8uiHsk2asw

"When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich -- Ella Logan (from Finian's Rainbow)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRoA3AIm1RI&list=PLm2VYZ13BllCE6afI-8vw366_0NwCn1K3&index=11

May your thoughts be as glad as the shamrocks, may your heart be as light as a song, may each day bring you bright, happy hours, that stay with you all the year long...

HYMN TIME

The Petersens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmYCLK19wKU

PEP COMICS #1 (JANUARY 1940)

Pep Comics was the third anthology comic book published by MLJ Publications.  In issue #42 (December 1941) it introduced the character of Archie Andrews.  Archie was a major hit and by issue #57 the company changed its name to Archie Comics; Pep Comics continued under that imprint until issue #411 (March 1987)

The lead story in Pep Comics #1 featured The Shield. the first superhero to wear a costume based on the American flag -- predating Captain America by a year.  The Shield is Joe Higgins, "G-Man Extraordinary."  The only person who is aware of The Shield's true identity is the head of the F.B.I., old J. Edgar himself.  The Shield's costume is made of a secret construction which not only renders him bullet-proof and flame-proof but gives Joe "the speed of a bullet and the strength of Hercules."  The four white stars on his costume signify what Joe has dedicated his life to: Truth, Justice, Patriotism, and Courage.  In this adventure, The shield is sent to stop a Stokian spy ring (Stokians evidently come from Stokia and are not followers of  the author of Dracula).  Art  by Irv Novick, who would illustrate stories for Pep through issue #66; story by Harry Shorten, probably best known today for his syndicated cartoon There Oughta Be a Law!  The Shielkd was featured in the first 65 issues of Pep Comics.

Comic legend Jack Cole wrote and illustrated "The Coming of the Comet."  "After injecting himself with a gas fifty times lighter than hydrogen, John Dickering discovers he can now take leaps that are more like flying.  Beams now shoot from his eyes and when the rays cross whatever he is looking at disintegrates."  A pretty nifty trick for killing three associates of a typhoid racketeer before The Comet finally meets up with the villainous Dr. Archer.  The Comet was rather blase about killing his enemies.  He was the first comic book superhero to die, which happened in issue # 17 (July 1941), when he was cut down by gangster bullets; his death inspired his brother to become a similarly brutal hero, he Hangman.

Charles Biro (who created the original 1940's Daredevil) is most likely the artist behind "Sergeant Boyle/"  Hank Boyle, an American student in London, headed for home when war broke out, but his ship was torpedoed by a German U-Boat.  A non-superhero hero, he was featured in mildly comical action adventures through 1943.

Now we come to the first of three stories penned by one of my favorite authors, Manly Wade Wellman (Wellman also scripted the very first Captain Marvel story).  "The Queen of Diamonds" is a one-off story, to be followed in  the next issue with a spin-off "The Rocket and the Queen of Diamonds."  Behind impassable barriers lay the Diamond Empire, the hidden wonder of the world.  All the men her have yellow skin; the Queen (and evidently all other females) has white skin.  A villain tries to overthrow the queen but is stopped by our he-man hero who had crash-landed in the Diamond Empire.  Art by Lin Streeter.  (Evidently the Diamond empire is on an alien planet; in later issues of Pep, a winged character named Falkar of the Hawkmen is introduced to have adventures alongside the Rocket and the Queen of Diamonds.)

The next Wellman story (also illustrated by Streeter) featured Fu Chang, an American-educated Chinese living in San Francisco who uses both a set of magic chessmen and the powers of Aladdin's Lamp to solve international crime.  Here he rescues his girlfriend, Tay Ming, from the villain known as the Dragon.  Fu Chang and Tay Ming appeared in the first eleven issues of Pep Comics.

The final Wellman story features Bentley of Scotland Yard.  "In London the night was clear and calm -- and nobody was prepared for the Mayfair Monster."  The  monster happens to be a werewolf who% attacks Brenda Joyce, the wealthy ward of Sir Robert Napier.  Luckily, Bentley was on hand to stop the attack and save the girl,  but the  monster got away.  Three guesses who the monster actually is.  This one was illustrated by Maurice Gutwirth.  Bentley appeared in 41 stories between 1940 and 1945.

The Press Guardian, a.k.a. the Falcon (could he be city editor Jim Boyd? -- Nope.  See below.), appeared kin this first issue with a winged costume; beginning with the second issue, he became more sedate, wearing a  business suit, fedora, and mask. When newspaper reporter Flash Calvert goes up against Slug Wickum and his gang things go south until the Falcon shows up to rescue Flash.  Art by Jack Binder, who never met a face he could draw.  By Pep #2, the Falcon no longer exists and reporter Perry Chase takes over the role of the Press Guardian, who apparently ended his run with issue #11.

"The Midshipman" is Lee Sampson, who goes through Navy college to graduation in sixteen issues. When a small plane crashes into the river, Lee dives in to save the pilot, the lovely Mae Dennis.  Don Lewis, from a rival college and jealous of Lee talking to his "girlfriend," attacks Lee.  Mae breaks up the fight and says she will go to the dance with whoever wins the boat race that afternoon.  Both Lee and Don are the champion oarsmen for their respective schools.  As they near the finish line, neck and neck, Don smashes Lee's prow with his oar, causing Lee's boat to take on water.  With a superhuman effort, Lee manages to bring his boat over the line to win the race, but the physical strain causes him to collapse in the water.  Mother of mercy, is the end of the Midshipman?  Of course not; he goes on for another fifteen issues.  Lee is pulled out of the water just in time.  Don is pissed and later attacks Lee.  Lee defends Don in front of the brass and they become good friends, and Lee goes to the dance with Mae.  Script by Will Harr, with art by Edd Ashe.

Lastly, Eddie "Kayo" Ward is a boxer who has to fight both inside and outside of the ring as a crooked manager and his fighter try to make a "sap" out of him.  But Kayo is a clean cut powerhouse who is not easily taken.  Script by Phil Sturm; art by Bob Wood.  Kayo ;punched his way through the first 28 issues of Pep Comics.

A pretty good deal for your 1940 dime.

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=70623

FORGOTTEN BOOK: MY BROTHER MICHAEL

My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart (1959; reprinted in omnibus volume Three Novels of Suspense, undated,  but 1960)

This was the March selection of Erin's Family Book Club.  How it works:  Every month we each suggest two  books; the winner is chosen randomly by computer.  Because March was Kitty's birthdate, this was one of my two selections.  It was one of Kitty's favorite books and one that she re-read often.  Despite the fact that Kitty married me, she had remarkably good taste.

It is fourteen years after World War II and Camilla Haven has recently broken off a six-year engagement; she new realizes that she was unhealthily dependent on her former fiance.  Camilla is on a solo extended vacation in Greece; circumstances prevented the woman she had planned to go with from accompanying her.  He has read extensively in Greece, its landmarks, and its history and is enjoying the quiet beauty of the country, even though nothing exciting has actually happened.  Her funds are low and she hopes to make a brief trip to Delphi before having to return to England.

While having a cup of coffee in an Athens cafe, she is approached by a man who had been told to ,look for a single woman in that cafe at that time.  He told Camilla that the car was outside and ready to be delivered to Mister Simon in Delphi and that it was "a matter of life and death."  He then pushed the car key across the table at her before quickly leaving, and before Camilla had an chance to tell him that he had mistaken her for someone else.  Obviously the woman he had been intended to meet had been delayed.   Camilla waited for over an hour but the mysterious woman never appeared.  At last, she decided that she would drive the car to Delphi herself and deliver it this Mister Simon, whoever he was -- surely there could not be that  many Mr. Simons in Delphi...and it was "a matter of life and death."  (Also, it would save the money for bus fare, and Camilla's funds were getting desperately low.)  Camilla was not an expert driver, but how hard could it be anyway?

It turns out it was not easy.  She got stuck along the way after having several minor accidents.  (Local villagers told her not to be concerned; the donkey that she hit was not damaged -- it would most likely run for a kilometer or so, then calm down and return on its own.)  she was rescued by an Englishman who happened to on his way to Delphi himself and he volunteered to drive her.  His name was Simon Lester but he was evidently not her "Mr. Simon" -- he had no idea about the mysterious woman, the car, or the matter of life and death.  Simon volunteered to help her find her "Mr. Simon" once the arrived in Delphi.

Simon arranged for her to stay in a small hotel; he himself was staying at a large dormitory intended for students and artists.  (Simon was a teacher in England, but managed to talk his way into the dormitory; the only other person staying at the dormitory was a young, talented, and insecure artist named Nigel.)  Delphi was a small community,  but Camilla and Simon could not locate her "Mr. Simon."

Simon Lester was in Delphi to pay homage to his  brother Michael, who was murdered there, presumably by Germans, shortly before the war ended.  Michael was sent  by British Intelligence to work with Greek resistance group against the German occupiers.  Simon's father had recently died and, among his effects, was a final letter from Michael that Simon had never seen before, along with items taken from Michael's  body -- including three gold coins.  The British had sent a large supply of guns and gold to the Greeks to help in their fight against the Nazis; somehow the guns and money had gone  missing.  Simon  believed that Michael had found the hidden cache of gold before he was killed.

I turned out that Michael had not been killed by Germans, although he had been wounded in  the shoulder.  Michael had been hiding lout in one of the many caves in the area, which is where he probably found the gold.  The gold and guns had  been stolen by a murderous sadist named Angelos, who had hoped to use the loot to help finance an overthrow of the Greek government once the war was over.   Before that could happen, though, he was seen murdering Michael and had to flee the country to Switzerland, where he vanished completely and was presumed dead.

But there were others besides Simon who were searching for the hidden cache.  And when Michael and Camilla finally found the gold, they also found another treasure -- one that would have a greater impact on the future.

My Brother Michael is an atmospheric romantic suspense novel that delays its action until the final pages, where murder and danger become paramount.  This is as much a love  novel ab out% Greece itself -- its beauty, history, its legends, its people -- as it is about anything else.   The vivid colors, the sounds, and the smells of the area was wonderfully described, as if one were in the actual setting.  The romance is present, but not overt, allowing the reader to bath in the novel's other romance, that of the countryside itself.  It is an effective, well-told tale.  In 1990, Britain's Crime Writer's Association named the top 100 crime novels of all time -- My Brother Michael made the list at number 55. 

As I said at the outset, Kitty had good taste.

Mary Stewart was a pioneer in the romantic suspense subgenre, penning many best-selling novels with "skillful story-telling and elegant prose" and "well-crafted settings."  Along with fellow writers Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney, she helped pave the way for an immensely popular that began with Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.  Among Stewart's better-known novels are Madam, Will You Talk?, Wildfire at Midnight, Thunder on the Right, Nine Coaches Waiting, The Ivy Tree, The Moon-Spinners, This Rough Magic, and Airs Above the Ground.  Later in her career she began a best-selling series of five Arthurian romances, beginning with The Hollow Hills.  Stewart has received an Agatha Lifetime Achievement Award.  My Brother Michael was nominated for a CWA Gold Dagger Award in 1961, losing to Lionel Davidson's The Night of Wenceslas (no shame in that!)

BOX 13: THE BITER BITTEN (JULY 17, 1949)

Box 13 was a syndicated radio show which ran for fifty-two episodes in 1948-49.  It followed the adventures of reporter turned mystery novelist Dan Holiday (Alan Ladd) who explored new ideas for his soties by placing an advertisement in the Star-Times:  "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything -- write Box 13, Star-Times.  

Sylvia Picker played Holiday's scatterbrained secretary, Suzy; Edmund MacDonald was his police foil, Lt. Kling.  The show was created by Ladd's own company, Mayfair Productions.  Produced  by Richard Sanville, the show was both announced and directed by Vern Carstensen.  It was written by Russell Hughes (who had hired Ladd as a radio actor for $19 a Week back in 1935); Ladd would sometimes collaborate on scripts.  Despite four different attempts, the show never made the transition to television.  At the time of his death, Ladd was attempting to make a never-realized feature film based on the series.  Box 13 did briefly make it into comic book form in 2010, although highly reimagined.

"The Biter Bitten" posed a unique challenge for Holiday, who received a letter sending him to a hotel where a deadly King Cobra was on the loose.  As one one viewer commented: "Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?"

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVomSUaU-94

SHORT-SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: PLEASE HELP ME

"Please Help Me" by Richard Christian Matheson (first published in Robert Bloch's Psychos, edited by Robert Bloch for the Horror Writers Association [and completed by Martin H. Greenberg, following Bloch's death], 1997; reprinted in the author's Dystopia:  Collected Stories, 2000)

Richard Christian Matheson (b. 1953) is the author of over 100 short stories, the Stoker-nominated novel Created By, and numerous teleplays and filmscripts.  Most of his fiction consist of short-short stories of psychological horror and magic realism, effectively delivering short, sharp shocks.

"Please Help Me," as with a number of his short tales, is written in partial sentences, providing an immediacy that amplifies the story's horror.  The story begins:

"So hot.

"Smells.  Exhaust.

"Memorize the road.  Curves, dips.  Ruts.  Draw a map in your mind.  A way to trace everything for the cops.  Take them wherever the hell I'm going.

"Five left turns since the Shop 'N Go.

"Three rights.  Over metal grating.  A bridge?  The tires buzzed for nine seconds.  Maybe the  bridge that links Canoga Park with Chatsworth.  that narrow one.  Remember?  Used to fish off it with Dad."

The beauty of this approach is is that there is as much unsaid as there is said.

We learn that the narrator is bound, gagged, and blindfolded in the trunk of a car, kidnapped because he witness a grocery store robbery.  The three robbers shot the store owner.  We don't know why they did not shoot the narrator, who is a married man with a wife and daughter.  He has seen the robbers' faces and can identify them.  They are young; one of them is a girl.  He hears metal clanking in the trunk as they speed along.  A jack?  A gun?  They stop.  Take him out of the trunk.  The girl kicks him sharply in the groin, twice.  She enjoys it.  The others laugh.  There is a scratching sound, digging.  He is thrown into a hole in the ground, a grave.  He feels the dirt as it lands on him...

And that's the story...a vignette with the effect of a punch in the gut.  The story is less than four pages long, yet it says more than stories ten times the length.

Not a pleasant story and certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but a vivid exercise in the power of economy of words.

The author is the son of writer and screenwriter Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man. Hell House, What Dreams May Come, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok, Kolchak:  The Night Stalker).  He is also the older brother of screenwriter Chris Matheson (the Bill and Ted franchise, Mom & Dad Save the World, A Goofy Movie), as well as writer Ali Marie Matheson.  Talent runs deep in that family.

OVERLOOKED CRIME DRAMA: MR. DISTRICT ATTORNEY (1941)

This is the first of four films based on the popular radio series which ran from 1939 to 1952; the series moved to television twice, first on ABC from October 1, 1951 to June 23, 1952, then in syndication from 1954 to 1955.

The radio show was created by Ed Byron, who based the character on then New York Governor Thomas B. Dewey; Dewey's earlier campaign against racketeering had led to his election.  Producer Philips Lord, the creator of Gang Busters, helped develop the concept and created the title.  For many years the main character was known only as Mister District Attorney, and was later called Paul Garrett, which was also the name given the character in the syndicated television version.  In the first three films, his name was P. Cadwaller Jones; in the final film the name was Steve Bennett.  Over the years, many actors portrayed the title character: on radio -- Dwight Weist, Raymond Edward Johnson, Jay Jostyn, tony Randall, and David Bryon; in film --Dennis O'Keefe, James Ellison, and John Hubbard; and on television -- Jay Jostyn and David Brian.

The 1942 film of Mr. District Attorney took a screwball approach to the series; although it remains a crime drama, you really have to squint to call it  noir.  P. (for Prince) Cadwaller Jones (Dennis O'Keefe), is a newly appointed Assistant District Attorney who teams up with eager young reporter Terry Parker (Florence Rice) to track down missing crook Paul Hyde (Peter Lorre), whose hidden cache of embezzled loot suddenly turns up at a race track.  There's a few dead bodies, more than a few wisecracks, and some action -- all of which adds up to a very enjoyable time waster.  Also featured are Stanley Ridges as District Attorney Tom Winton and Minor Watson as Arthur Barret, the man eager to take over Winton's job, as well as a slew of Republic Pictures' most accomplished character actors.

Directed  by William Morgan, a former cinematographer whose directing career never matched his talent.  Written by Karl Brown and Malcolm Stuart Boylan; of the two, Boylan had the more noted career, penning three Boston Blackie films, one Lone Wolf film, as well as Trent's Last Case, A Yank at Oxford, and Dr. Cyclops.

O'Keefe also starred in the fourth film, also titled Mr. District Attorney (1947), a much more serious take, and this time the character was named Steve Bennett.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfX4YqeF2w8

MINI VAY-CAY

 See you next week!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KURT WEILL!

Kurt Weill (1900-1959), the German-American composer who% collaborated with Bertold Brecht to produce The Threepenny Opera, was born on this day 126 years ago.  The World of Kurt Weill in Song premiered off-Broadway on June 6, 1963, featuring Martha Schlamme and will Holt; it was revised as A Kurt Weill Cabaret for Broadway with Schlamme and Alvin  Epstein in 1979.

MGM Records released a cast recording of the 0ff-Broadway performance in 1963, featuring songs from The Threepenny Opera, Marie Gallante, Der Silbersee, Lady in the Dark, Knickerbocker Holiday, Happy End, and Lost in the Stars.  I literally wore out my copy of the record, it was so perfect  The link takes you to all fourteen songs; unfortunately, there are a number of irritating ads between each song -- fell free to skip over them.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNkkXfgsscE&list=PLbsqz0QMw2y7oVag4GOAx5pr_IrX7MMFR&index=1

HYMN TIME

Gryphon Hall (Hal Guerrero).  

Happy Women's History Month:  Words and music by Clara H. Scott (1841-1897), noted 19th century woman gospel poet and the first woman to published a book of anthems.  This hymn was inspired by Psalm 119, verse 18.  Sadly she died after being thrown from a carriage when her horse was spoked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFjo6E6KU4c

BUSTER CRABBE #3 (MARCH 1952)

 Clarence Linden "Buster" Crabbe (1908-1983) was a 1932 gold medial Olympian swimmer in the 400-meter freestyle who parlayed his win into a film and television career, playing at various times Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers.  He appeared in more than 100 films, often playing a "jungle man;"  he also starred as a good-guy version of Billy the Kid in thirteen movies and cowboy hero Billy Carson in twenty-three movies.  On television, footage from his films were shown on The Gabby Hayes show, and later on his own The Buster Crabbe Show, a New-York City-based series; from 1955 to 1957 he starred in Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, with his real-life son Cullen playing the child role of Cuffy Sanders.

Two comic books series were named after him:  the twelve-issue Buster Crabbe Comics ("Your Television All-American Cowboy") from 1953 to 1955, and four issues of The amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe in 1954.

In "Buster Crabbe and the Mankiller," Treasury Agent Jim Winters is sent to investigate a bank robbery that netted the crooks nearly half a million dollars.  There he meets his old friend Buster, who happens to have roamed into town with his sidekick whiskers (picture Al "Fuzzy" St. John).  Buster and Whiskers are deputized  to help Winters.  Meanwhile, a wild animal show has come to town -- that's "wild animal" singular; the only animal is a caged, very gentle tiger.  Walton, the tiger's owner, wakes up the next morning to discover the cage door open and the tiger missing.  Then Jim Winters' mangle and clawed body is discovered.  While the sheriff and the rest of the town go on a hunt for the tiger, Buster and Whiskers stay behind to investigate the robbery.  you know and I know -- and Buster suspects -- that the bank president and the sheriff are in cahoots for the robbery.  buster and Whiskers confront the gang and thew four outlaws are no match for Buster's lightning fast draw and accurate aim.  Later that day, the tiger wanders back into town and goes into his cage on his own.  Good artwork from Allen Ulmer.

Al Williamson drew the next story, "The Ogre," as well as providing the superb and interesting cover at fo=r the comic.  A couple of hunters are camping out getting ready for the opening  of the season, when a large, ugly, man-like, furred monster comes out of the woods and confronts them.  Could this be the ancient Indian legend of "Kagagak" come to life?  The hunters run into town to warn the townspeople,  but are no believed (the hunters are Easterners, so who would believe them?),  but white /wing, an ancient Indian, tells of the equally ancient myth of Kagagak.  Buster decides that he and Whiskers would go investigate.   At the abandoned campsite, Buster finds a large footprint that could not have been made by either man or animal.  It leads them to an extinct volcano and a cave at the bottom of the crater where they are attacked by the creatures.  Buster frightens them off with gunfire -- the noise scares them..  He figure these primitive monsters mean no harm and decides to keep their existence a secret, later telling the hunters that what they saw was a hermit dressed up to scare them.

Whiskers takes the stage in the next story, "Whiskers and the Ghoul Gang."  Whiskers is spinning tall tales of his brave exploits against outlaws, when the sheriff and his friends decide to pull a joke on him, telling him about the murderous "Ghoul Gang."  Before the sheriff leaves town on an errand, he deputizes Whiskers "in case" the Ghoul Gang show up (he also manages to swap the bullets in Whiskers' gun with blanks).  Suddenly the Ghoul Gang -- six men in ghostly sheets -- "rob" the bank.  whiskers shoots at them to no effect and they ride off, supposedly  to the cemetery.  in the end, the last laugh is Whiskers'.  The artwork by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand has the desired comic effect.

The rest of the issue is taken up by various fillers:  a two-page text story about Black Bart, a one-page humor story in which homer on the Range is frightened of cactus at night, a one-page telling of the history of Rawhide in the West, a five-page story in which Buster narrates the true story of the 1887 "Showdown" between Sheriff Commodore R. Owens and the notorious Blevins Brothers, and a wordless one-page humor story about "Whiskers' Nag."  The back cover carries ads for items that might appeal to a youngster in 1952:  saddlebags for your bicycle ($2.69 a pair),  western ensemble for your bicycle (a bar blanket with two holsters, a saddle skirt, a tail streamer and two handlebar streamers -- all for just #3.25),  an 18-inch brown and yellow plush stuffed "Jackie Rabbit" ($3.95), a giant piggy bank that can hold over $2,000 in silver ($3.95), two pounds of hard candy (Black Walnut Flakes and Chicken Bones -- just $1.50), and a two-way electronic walkie-talkie telephone ($3.00 each)  -- what kid wouldn't want all of these? 

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=97663&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: ALPHA CENTAURI -- OR DIE!

Alpha Centauri -- Or Die!   by Leigh Brackett  (first published in paperback as half of an Ace Double with Legend of Lost Earth by G. McDonald Wallis [perhaps better known as actress and romance writer "Hope Campbell"], 1963; published separately in 1976; included in Brackett's e-Book omnibus The Solar System, 2008; the book was a fix-up of two previously published stories:  "The Ark of Mars C" [Planet Stories, Winter 1954-1955] and "Teleportress of Alpha C" [Planet Stories, September 1953] )

More straight science fiction than the lyrical space opera/adventure fantasy Bracket is more noted for, Alpha Centauri -- Or Die! begins on Mars.  Robots have taken over all space flight an6d mankind is not allowed to pilot rocket ships any more; in fact, mankind lives in a rigidly proscribe utopia where  most wants are met but freedom of movement is limited.  Kirby, who had traveled the solar system, was one of the last human space pilots before automation took over space flight.  Now he lives in a compound on Mars with his second wife, the Martian Shari, a mild telepath.  He is a number of men who are resentful of the limitations played on them by the government.  A few years ago, the government sent a robotic ship outside the solar system, where it discovered a habitable world in Alpha Centauri.  Now Kirby and other have built a spaceship capable of taking families to that planet -- a journey that would last five years.  Fearful of losing their hold on the populace, the government sends deadly robotic ships -- faster and much better armed than Kirby's ship -- after the would-be colonists.  That's perhaps the most exciting part of the story.

After years of hardship, danger, and near revolt, the ship finally arrives at their new home in Alpha Centauri= -- only to find it occupied by a race of creatures with teleporting powers.  Can the two races learn to get together?  And can they fend off the deadly robotic ships that have followed Kirby all the way from Mars?

In reviewing this book, Rich Horton wrote, "Mediocre stuff, really, though Bracket is never unreadable, and I did enjoy the book."  As did I.

Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) was a pioneering science fiction writer who also worked in other fields, including crime and western fiction.  Her  novel Follow the Free Wind won a Spur Award.  She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2014, received a Retro Hugo for The Nemesis from Terra,  and was the recipient of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.  She was also noted for her screen writing (The Big Sleep -- with William Faulkner; The Long Goodbye; Rio Bravo; Hatari, and others, including an early treatment for The Empire Strikes Back -- she passes away while working on the draft).  She was married to science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton; Ray Bradbury was their best man.

THE GREEN HORNET: THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN (MAY 24, 1938)

Here's all the buzz:

From Old Time Radio Downloads:  "The daughter of a crusading reformer is kidnapped to silence him...James Conway meets Brit Reid on a plane home from Chicago.  He promises Brit a scoop on his expose of a gambling ring and a crooked sheriff and his deputies providing Brit gives him all he knows on the Green Hornet.  Meanwhile Conway's daughter Polly who is meeting him at the airport receives a phoney message that her father has missed his plane and is arriving by rail.  As she leaves the airport she is kidnapped.  James Conway is forced not to expose what he knows and asks Brit if he can forget everything he told him on the plane.  Looks like a job for the Green Hornet!"

Featuring Al Hodge as Brit Reid/the Green Hornet and Raymond Toyo (Tokutaro Hayashi) as Kato.  (At the time this episode aired, Kato was Brit Read's "Japanese valet;" by 1941, he became a Filipino valet"; in the movie serials he became Korean.)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0wT6u2R_hg

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE THREE DRUGS

 "The Three Drugs"  by E. (Edith) Nesbit  (originally published as "the Third Drug" by Edith Bland, The Strand Magazine, February 1908, and in The Strand Magazine (US), March 1908, as  b y E. Bland; reprinted as "The Three Drugs" as by E. Nesbit in her collection Fear, 1910;  the story has also been reprinted under one title mor the other in Before Armageddon, edited by Michael Moorcock, 1975; in Stories of the Occult, edited by Denys Val Baker, 1978; in E. Nesbit's Tales of Terror, 1983; in her collection In the Dark, 1988, and in an expanded edition, 2000; in Great Tales of Terror, edited by S. T. Joshi, 2002; in Edith Nesbit:  The Power of Darkness -- Tales of Terror, 2006; and in her collection Horror Stories, 2016; in From the Dead:  The Complete Weird Stories of E. Nesbit, 2018; in The Darker Sex:  Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre by Victorian Woman Writers, edited by Mike Ashley, 2009; in The Feminine Future:  Early Science Fiction by Women Writers [as by Edith Nesbit], edited by Mike Ashley, 2015; in Man-Size in Marble and Other Horrors:  The Best Horror & Ghost Stories of Edith Nesbit, 2015; in Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Women Writers, 1852-1923, edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Lisa Moton, 2020; in More Voices from the Radium Age, edited by Joshua Glenn, 2023; and in Trapped!, edited by Charles G. Waugh, Ph.D. & M. Grant Kellermeyer, M.A., 2023)

Edith Nesbit Bland (1858-1924) was, among other things, a prolific writer of children's books and has been described as the first modern writer for children and credited with inventing the children's adventure story.  Many of her works remain in print, including volumes of her popular children's series about the Bastable children (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, et al.), and the Five Children (The Five Children and It, et al.); among her standalones were The Railway Children and Wet Magic.  During her lifetime she published 109 books, plus 6 plays, and edited a further 10 volumes.   An active Socialist, she was a political activist and a co-founder of the Fabian Society.  (Interestingly, she opposed women's suffrage because she feared that, had women gotten the vote, they more likely support the Tories rather than the Socialists.  She dies at age 65, most like from lung cancer because she "smoked excessively."

To many modern readers, she also known for her more than twenty stories of the weird, many of which have gone on to become classics of the genre, including "Man-Size in Marble," "John Charrington's Wedding," "Uncle Abraham's Romance," "The Ebony Frame," "The Haunted House," "The Head," "In9 the Dark," "The Mystery of the Semi-Detached," and "The Three Drugs."

Roger Wroxham was despondent -- the reason or reasons do not matter,  but he could not find a way out.  One evening he started walking through the deserted Paris streets, where he found himself headed toward the Seine with a vague idea of throwing himself in.  Suddenly he was accosted by three thugs -- Apaches armed with knives.  They fell on him and, when they wounded him severely on the arm, he decided that what he most wanted to do was live.  He managed to get away but they chased him through the dark, lonely streets until he found a large old house with an unlocked door. He rushed into the house and closed and bolted the door; eventually he heard the Apaches move away.  His wound left him weak.  The large house was silent and seemed empty until he heard footsteps coming from a distance.  The sole occupant of the house turned out to be a doctor who took him into another room,  but before the doctor was ab le to begin to treat the wound, Roger passed out.

When he awoke with his arm bandaged, Roger felt remarkably well and invigorated.  The doctor insisted that Roger needed to rest and could spend the night in the house.  Placing Roger on a bed, he left wile keeping the door to the room open.  But Roger felt too alert to rest.  And there was this odd odor permeating the room, something of flowers and camphor.  A second door in the room was locked and the odor seemed to come from there -- an odor that reminded him of death.  Suddenly roger's vigor faded and he felt very weak.  The doctor brought him to his laboratory and mixed a strange concoction and told him to drink it, otherwise he would soon be dead.  Roger drank it and again passed out.  When he woke, the doctor told him a strange story.

The doctor had been experimenting with creating a sort of super life, taking one beyond the normal limits of humanity.  His experiments seemed to work well with lower life forms -- animals -- but not with humans, probably because the humans he could find were degenerates, criminals, and Apaches.  All had dies and were stored in the locked room.  Roger, however, was a superb specimen, far superior to his previous experiments.  For his part, Roger seemed complacent and willing to follow whatever the doctor said.  Then he suddenly became weaker, which indicate that it was time to go to the third part of the experiment...to issue the third drug.  The doctor bound Roger hand and foot, then carved a wound on his temple, which he then sealed with a bandage covered with some sort of unguent.  Again Roger passed out.

When Roger awoken, he found he had strange powers and a memory of all that happened in the world in the past.  He could evince a memory of an ancient pharaoh, for example, and he knew that the doctor's one true love was a woman  named Constansia, whom the doctor had buried under the lilacs in the back yard.  The doctor refused to unbind Roger because Roger in his present condition was far more powerful than he.  It was now time for the doctor to experiment on himself:  "You know -- all things.  It was not a dream, this, the dream of my life.  It is true.  It is a fact accomplished.  Now I, too, will know all things.  I will be as the gods."   with that he wounded himself and applied the first drug, an unguent like the one he had smeared over the bandages when he first treated Roger.

The euphoria hit the doctor, then slowly died off, bringing the doctor almost to the point of death, when it time to drink the elixir he had prepared -- the second drug.  The doctor collapsed after taking the second drug and appeared to be dead.  Roger feared the doctor would not wake up.  Eventually he did but after a while he became weak and appeared to be approaching actual death, which meant it was time to administer the third drug --  but to do that, Roger had to help him and Roger was still bound and the doctor was too weak to unloose Roger.  Slowly, the doctor faded into death while Roger remained in that silent house, completely unable to move.  In the meantime the amazing effects of the third drug began to abate...

How was Roger able to escape from his solitary prison?  Or was he?

A strange, fantastical tale of the quest for knowledge gone horribly wrong, a tale as old as Frankenstein, as old as Faust...

THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE AND HARRIET: THE FALL GUY (OCTOBER 24, 1952)

Ozzie Nelson formed the Ozzie Nelson Band in 1930.  It had limited success until the New York Daily Mirror polled tis readers to determine their favorite band.  Reportedly, Nelson had band members stuff the ballot box and his band came out the winner, beating Paul Whiteman's band.  Over the next two decades the band --  now Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra -- recorded for a number of labels and had several hits.  Around 1932 Harriet Hilliard joined the band as its primary vocalist; she and Nelson were married in 1935.  The pair began appearing regularly on radio, first on The Baker's Broadcast, then on The Red Skelton Show.  When Skelton was drafted in 1944, Nelson crated his own family radio comedy show, using his own family as the characters, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.  Child actors played the Nelson's real-life children, David and Ricky, until 1949, when the real-life Nelson kids -- now aged 12 and 8 -- took over the roles.  The show moved to television on October 10, 1952, and lasted until April 23, 1966 -- making it the longest lasting live-action television sitcom at the time.  Exterior shots of the Nelson's actual house were used in the television show; interior shots were filmed in a studio  but were designed to look like the actual interior rooms of the Nelson home.  In total, 435 episodes were filmed over the show's fourteen seasons.

Understand that what follows is my personal opinion; your mileage may vary.  The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet set the standard for television family sitcoms in the fifties -- bland, innocuous, and un challenging.  I liken it to the television equivalent of mashed potatoes.  Even Father Knows Best was edgier, and at least Leave It to Beaver had its Eddie Haskell.  But Ozzie, with his laid-back personality and his gee-whiz conversations with his neighbor Thorny, could not be more monotonous or more like milk toast.  I'm sure there were some family misunderstandings and minor crises over the fourteen seasons,  but none stick out in my mind.   Indeed, the most exciting action that I remember was Harriet searching for the last evening's newspaper to give to a neighborhood paper drive.  **sigh**  I also do not remember either Ozzie of Harriet singing in any of the episodes.

What we do have is Ricky singing, beginning in 1957, marking the start of a successful singing career, which lasted until his death in a plane crash in 1985.  Ricky -- later, Rick -- also had a successful film and television career. Older brother David went on to  career in acting, directing, and producing. 

From the show's first season, "The Fall Guy," Ozzie tells David not to allow people to take advantage of his good nature, then regrets it.  Directed by Ozzie and written by Bill Davenport, Ben Gershman, and Don Nelson (Ozzie's brother), the episode also features Don DeFore as Thorny and Carl Greyson as the show's announcer.

As I said, your  mileage may be different from mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hylGndkt4mE

INCOMING

New books are beginning to overwhelm me.  Abibliophobia -- the fear of running out of books to read -- will never be a part of my life.  

Incoming:

• Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged.  Epic Fantasy; Book Two of The First Law.   Superior Glokta has a problem.  How do you defend a city surrounded by enemies an8d riddled with traitors when your allies can by no means be trusted and your predecessor vanished without a trace?  It's enough to make a torturer want to run -- if he could even walk without a stick.  Northmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country.  Crown Prince Ladisla is poised to drive them back and win undying glory.  There is only one problem -- he commands the worst-armed, worst-led army in the world.  And Bayaz, the Frist of the Magi, is leading a party of bold adventurers on a perilous mission through the ruins of the past.  The most hated woman in the South, the most feared man in the North, and the most selfish  boy in the Union make a strange alliance, bit a deadly one.  They might even stand a chance of saving mankind from the Eaters.  If they didn't hate each other quite so much."
• Joseph Chadwick, A Town to Tame.  Western.  "Palisade /city was a wide open town when Madigan= took over as the law.  He had been on=e of the toughest of a tough crew -- the Texas Rangers, and their reputation had rubbed off on him.  But had the magic of his gunhand left him?  It was only a matter of time until some hardcase took it on himself to find out..."
• Joan Aiken, Bridle the Wind.  Young adult fantasy, the second book in the Felix trilogy.  "Shipwrecked, knocked unconscious, and imprisoned!  To some this may seem like a streak of mighty bad luck, but Felix Brooke can't help but believe there is a reason for all his suffering.  When Felix finds an injured boy on the grounds of the remote monastery where he is being held captive, it seems his premonition may be right.  Felix rescues the strange boy, Juan, from certain death, and together they escape the monastery and head for Spain.  In their hazardous journey across the Pyrenees, Felix and Juan share many adventures.  But there is a shadow over their happy times:  Someone -- or something -- utterly terrifying is following their every move.  Will they escape the evil that pursue them?"  Aiken, who died in 2004, is rapidly becoming a "forgotten" author; in a just world that would never happen.
• Piers Anthony, Double Exposure.   Omnibus volume of the first three volumes in the "Apprentice Adept" series:  Split Infinity, Blue Adept, and Juxtaposition.   Stile and his beautiful robot protector escape an unknown assailant and enter the fantastical world of Phaze, where magic works and science is powerless.  Also, Triple Detente.  Science fiction.  "Conqueror Richard Henrys leads the human forces controlling the planet Kazo.  Overlord Bitool is the chief Kazo managing the occupation of earth [sic].  Henrys' son, Richard. Jr., is involved in a plot to overthrow Bitool.  Fomina, Bitool's beloved mate, is conqueror Henrys' trusted house-servant.  And nothing is really complicated until humans and Kazo discover a third intelligent race in the galaxy, and try to  bring them into the newly developing peace."
• Piers Anthony & Robert E. Margroff, The Adventures of Kelvin of Rud:  Final Magic.  Omnibus of the final two volumes in the series:  Orc's Opal and Mouvar's Magic.  Though Kelvin Knig6ht Hackleberry had gone far toward fulfilling the Prophecy of Mouvar, he and his allies had yet to face the gratest threat fo the peace of all the worlds."
• S. A. Cosby, King of Ashes.  Crime novel.  "Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind him in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia,  He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial advisor in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Nevaeh, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident.  When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems.  His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals.  And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family.  Anything.  A financial whiz with a head for  numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years:  the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers.  It's a  mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all.  As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash.  Because, as their father counseled them from birth, nothing lasts forever.  Everything burns."
• John Creasey writing as Kyle Hunt,  The Man Who Not Himself.  Mystery.  "He awoke in a strange bed and made love to a wife he had never seen before.   She responded warmly, made him breakfast, and sent him off to catch the 9:27 to town where he found he was employed as a minor civil servant.  Not so surprising -- except that yesterday Hugh Buckingh8am had been a globe-trotting millionaire with a mistress in every city he visited regularly.  Why did he suddenly find himself/ in the shoes of a man named Neil Powell?   The answer came with a bullet that narrowly missed Buckingham's head:  somebody wanted Neil Powell dead.  It was suddenly much more than a case of mistaken identity."
• Jere Cunningham, Hunter's Blood.  Suspense.  "They were excited, filled with the anticipation of the hunt.  Shooting the prized white-tail deer would be no simple task.  It would take all their skill and cunning.  But something else was waiting for them deep in that Arkansas wilderness.  Strange, savage men, primitive and brutal creatures who seemed to come from the past.  The sheriff's men called them poachers.  They hid themselves in the dark forest shadows and waited until the five men made their camp.   Then in the dead of night they struck..."  A first novel, filmed in 1986 featuring Sam Bottoms, Joey Travolta, and Kim Delany; co-star Clu Gulager received a Saturn nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
• Mignon G. Eberhart, Escape the Night.  Suspense novel.  "Before she came home, Serena had been warned to expect surprises.  Something strange had happened to the people she had k own so well, something monstrous was haunting their lives.  Firs the feeling was vague, then it was definite -- as definite as a woman thrown from a cliff, and a brutally strangle\d corpse.  But the most grisly surprise was yet to come, as Serena turned in terror to the one person she thought she could trust..."  Eberhart was the author of 59 mystery novels and three story collections; she was a MWA Grand Master and also received an Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award-
• Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad.  Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.  "Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive.  Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs.  Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs.  With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption."
• Loren D. Estleman, The Branch and the Scaffold.  Western historical novel about Judge Parker.  "When Judge Isaac Parker arrived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the town had thirty saloons and one bank.  As the sole law on the untamed frontier, Parker's severe judgments scandalized Washington and the Eastern press.  Never flinching from his duty, Parker, along with his marshals, dubbed 'Parker's Men,' ran up against some of the most colorful and dangerous outlaws the West had to offer, including the notorious Dalton Gang, Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, the murderous Cherokee Bill, and Ned Christie, who carried on a private was against the U.S. government for seven years."
• John Farris, Catacombs.  Horror novel.  "Blood red diamonds.  The world's rarest gemstones...worth countless millions on the market and far more to those who can decipher the message etched on their flaming surface...a message that offers the key to global mastery and bears witness to a vanished civilization far superior to -- and more technicologically advanced than -- our own.  They come to the catacombs -- crystaline burial caves of unparalleled splendor hidden in the volcanic depths of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Their discovery sets the stage for a duel of superpowers that will be fought with a terrible vengeance...a race against time -- and morality -- for a terrifying, earth-shattering prize."
• Alan Dean Foster, Flinx in Flux.  Science fiction, the sixth in the Pip & Flinx series, a sunset of Foster's Humanx Commonwealth Universe series.  "Flinx and his amazing minidrag Pip were always finding themselves in the middle of danger and galactic intrigue, so when they found an unconscious young woman on a riverbank deep in the jungles of Alaspin, Flinx wasn't surprised.  nor was he shocked to learn that the woman, Clarity Held, was a brilliant scientist, abducted from a remote outpost on inhospitable Longtunnel by a group of fanatic assassins.  Flinx could see no harm in returning Clarity to her home base before continuing on his way, but he was tired of solving other people's problems.  He had his own life to get back to.  So he was unprepared for the emotional effect the beautiful Clarity had on him.  But while Flinx fought to del with his unexpected dilemma, the assassins were still at work.  They would do anything to stop the research on Longtunnel and would kill anyone or anything that got in their way..."  Also, Greenthieves.  A futuristic whodunnit.  "The Grandest Theft in the Galaxy!  No one could get in.  The shipments of high-tech pharmaceuticals were locked inside an impenetrable metal shed -- guarded by three security teams and dozens of alarms.  No one could stay in.  Cameras and motion detectors monitored the shed around the clock.  And an airtight vacuum sealed off the room.  No one could get lout.  Anyone leaving the area was scanned for stolen goods.  Automatic doors ensured that no one could escape without notice.  But someone did.  Not just once,  bug three times.  And they had to be brought to justice.  That's why the case was turned lover to Detective Manz.  And his two robot assistants..."  And, Mad Amos.  A collection of ten folk fantasy tales with dragons, jackalopes, snake-oil salesmen, iron horses, and more.  "Strange things lurk up in the  mountains and out in the plains and deserts of the West, but few are as strange as the giant mountain man named Amos Malone, the man some call Mad Amos, though not to his face.  But when the world gets weird, there's no one better to have on your side.  Is a renegade dragon harassing the men laying the =rails of the great railroad?  Are heartless Indian spirits driving you from your land?  Is that volcano threatening to destroy your settlement?  Then Mad Amos is the man for you."  Not to be confused with the much later Mad Amos Malone:  The Complete Stories, which added a further eight stories.
• Craig Shaw Gardner, The Wanderings of Wuntvor.  Fantasy, an omnibus of the three novels in the series, a subset of the Ebenezum series:  A Difficulty with Dwarves, An Excess of Enchantment, and A Disagreement with Death.  Wuntvor, an apprentice to the magician Ebenezum, is sent by his master to seek an alliance with Mother Duck to forestall the demons of the Netherhells and their new tactic, Conquest by Committee.  Along the way he encounters Death (who tries to reach for him), an army of devoted pet ferrets, a relentlessly cheerful Brownie, Brax the Salesdemon, the rhyming demon Guxx Unfufadoo, the vaudeville tem of Damsel and Dragon and Henrix the warrior with the enchanted club, and the Seven Other Dwarves (Nasty, Touchy, Snooty, Spacey, Dumpy, Noisy, Sickly and Smarmy -- yeah, I know that's right).Perhaps things will work out in the end.  Perhaps.
• Simon R. Green, Agents of Light and Darkness.  Urban fantasy, the second book in the Nightside series.  "I'm John Tyler.  I work in the Nightside -- the gaudy, neon noir, secret heart of London, where it's always three in the morning, where gods and monsters make deals and seek pleasures they won't find anywhere else.  I have a gift for finding things.  And sometimes what I'm hired to locate can be very, very dangerous indeed.  Right now, for example, I'm searching for the Unholy Grail, the cup that Judas drank from at the Last Supper.  It corrupts all who touch it --  but it also gives enormous power.  So I'm not the only one hunting.  Angels, devils, sinners and saints -- they're all out there, tearing apart the Nightside, seeking the dark goblet.  And it's only a matter of time until they realize that the famous John Taylor, the man with the gift for finding things, can lead them straight to it..."  Also, The Man with the Golden Torc.  The first book in the Eddie Drood/Secret Histories series.  "The name's Bond.  Shaman Bond.  Actually, that's just my cover.  I'm Eddie Drood.  But when your job includes a license to kick supernatural arse on a regular basis, you find your laughs where you can.  For centuries, my family has been the secret guardian of humanity, all that  stands between all of you and all of the many really nasty things that go bump in the night.  As a Drood field agent I wore the golden torc.  I killed monsters, and I protected the world.  I loved my job.  Right up to the point when my own family declared me rogue for no reason, and I was forced to go on my own.  Now the only people who can help me prove my innocence are the people I used to consider my enemies.  I'm Shaman bond, very secret agent.  And I'm going to prove to everyone that no one does it better than me."
• Elly Griffiths, The House at Sea's End.  A Ruth Galloway mystery.  "Just back from maternity leave, forensic pathologist Ruth Galloway is struggling to juggle motherhood and work when she is called in to investigate human  bones that have surfaced on a remote Norfolk beach.  The presence of DCI Harry Nelson, th9e married father of her daughter, does not help.  The bones, six men with their arms bound, date back to World War II, a desperate time in this stretch of coastline.  As Ruth and Nelson investigate, Home Guard veteran Archie Whitcliffe reveals a secret the old soldiers had vowed to protect with their lives.  But then Archie is killed and a German journalist arrives, asking questions about Operation Lucifer, a plan to stop a German invasion, and a possible British war crime.  What was Operation Lucifer?  And who is prepared to kill to keep its secret?"  
• "Cyril Hare" (Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark), Death Is No Sportsman.   A Golden Age mystery featuring Inspector Mallett.  "The setting:  a small resort hotel in rural England.  The cast:  a group of dedicated fly fishermen.  The crime:  murder.  Inspector Mallett's shrewd resolution of the case includes the clever use of fishing lure and practice.  Vintage detection from a master."  Gordon Clark was an English barrister and County Court judge who published several classic mysteries, including Tragedy-at-Law, Suicide Excepted, and Untimely Death.
• L. Ron Hubbard, The Headhunters.  Adventure novelette first published in Five-Novels Monthly, August 1936; packaged here with the typical Hubbard fluff to pad out this Galaxy Press book; Galaxy Press is an arm of the Church of Scientology.
• Shari Lapena, The Couple Next Door.  Suspense.   "Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all -- a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora.  But one  night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed.  suspicion immediately falls on the parents.  But the truth is much more complicated.  what follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family.  Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something inside their curtained house.  Anna and Marco both soon discover that thee other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.  The shocking truth will leave you breathless."
• Richard Laymon, four horror novels.  The Beast House.  The second in the Beast House Chronicles.  "The Beast House has become a museum of the  most twisted and macabre kind.  On display inside are the wax figures of the victims, their bodies mangled and chewed, mutilated beyond recognition.  The tourists who come to Beast House can only wonder what sort of terrifying creature could be responsible for such atrocities.  But some people are convinced Beast House is a hoax.  Nora and her friends are determined to learn the truth for themselves.  They will dare to enter the house at night.  When the tourists have gone.  When the beast is rumored to come out.  They will learn, all right."  The Midnight Tour.  The third novel in the Beast House chronicles.  "For years  morbid tourists have flocked to the Beast Hose, eager to see the infamous site of so many unspeakable atrocities, to hear tales of the beast said to prowl the hallways.  they can listen to the audio tour on their headphones as they stroll from room to room, looking= at the realistic recreations of the blood-drenched corpses...  But the audio tour only gives the sanitized version of the horrors of the Beast House.  there are some facts too gruesome for the average thrill seekers.  If you want the full story, you have to take the Midnight Tour, a very special event strictly limited to =]thirteen brave visitors.  It begins at the stroke of midnight.  You may never live to see the end..."  Friday Night in Beast House.  The forth and final book in the series.  "The legendary Beast House, once home to unspeakable acts of agony and murder, is now a decrepit tourist attraction where the curious go for cheap thrills and daily tours.  These days few actually believe the stories of slaughter and sexual torture are true, or that the beast rally exists.  But in the silence of the night, the cellar door of the Beast House opens once again... Mark and Alison snuck into Beast House after the tours were over for a midnight rendezvous.  Mark hopes to get lucky but Alison seems more interested in the gruesome legends.  But if the beast is only a legend, who's responsible for the mutilated carcass of a dog outside?  And why is the padlock missing from the cellar door?  Will this be the date of a lifetime or a date with death?"  Midnight's Lair.  Originally published as by "Richard Kelly."  "Murdock's Cave is one of the spectacular wonders of the world, a place where thousands of sightseers every year take an awe-inspiring boat trip on a lake beneath the earth's surfaces to marvel at Nature's handiwork.  Bu the darkness is also the home of things Nature never intended -- things violent, bestial, and obscenely evil.  When a sudden power failure incapacitates the elevator to the surface, a group of tourists is tapped in the underground depths.  Cold and scared, without lights or food, their only hope is to find an escape route through the sealed-off end of the cavern.  But their explorations uncover a nest of horrors that has lain hidden for generations, and their idyllic underground journey becomes a nightmare trip through hell, as the find themselves banding for survival against the creatures of the abyss..."  The Midnight Tour.
• Iain McIntyre & Andrew Nette, editors, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats:  Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980.  For those who just couldn't get enough of the popular juvenile delinquent paperback novels of that era, stretching back to the The Amboy Dukes and The Blackboard Jungle to the novels of Hall Ellson and Edward DeRoo and beyond.  "Girl Gangs features approximately 400 full-color covers, many of them never reprinted before.  With 70 in-depth author interviews, illustrated biographies, and previously unpublished articles from more than 20 popular culture critics and scholars from the US, UK, and Australia, the book goes behind the scenes to look a the authors and publishers, how they worked, where they drew their inspirations and -- often overlooked -- the actual words they wrote.  Books by well-known authors such as Harlan Ellison and Lawrence Block are discussed alongside neglected obscurities and former bestsellers ripe for rediscovery.  It is a must read for anyone interested in pulp fiction, lost literary history, retro and subcultural style, and the history of postwar youth culture."  It's as if they heard me salivating among the shelves of second-hand bookstores and created this volume just for me.
• John James Minster, The Undertaker's Daughter.  YA horror novel.  "Anna Dingel is an introverted, socially inept 18-year-old raised in the family funeral home.  And for some reason, her classmate Timmy -- the one with the band -- likes her too.  After a makeover from her best friend Naomi, Anna breaks away to see him perform live,  but a leader of a bad school clique attempts to assault Anna in the parking lot.  Once the leader is released from jail, so begins an ever-widening maelstrom of cruel retribution, turning Anna and Timmy's summer of love into a nightmare.  In an attempt to frighten the bullies into peace, Anna and Nami experiment with recently revealed old Jewish magic.  But this ancient Abrahamic ritual doesn't go as planned=.  The eldritch power Anna has unleashed takes dark and unexpected turns, endangering those she love and forcing her to decide who% she is and who she wants to be."
• Andre Norton, The Gate of the Cat.  A Witch World novel.  "Come.  Step through an ancient arch in the Scottish highlands -- and into a world beyond all earthly possibilities...Where fearsome creatures abound and witches reign supreme.  Where a sparkling jewel carries a strange and awesome poser.  Where the terrifying forces of the Dark ravage the countryside.  And where a young earth woman named Kelsie McBlair holds the key to Witch World's future.  Trapped in a bizarre web of science and sorcery, she alone can pierce the savage heart of evil...by confronting the lord of the Dark himself!"
• Andre Norton & Martin H. Greenberg, editors, Catfantastic IV.  This penultimate volume in the fantasy series of anthologies has eighteen stories by authors such as Norton, Mercedes Lackey, Jayge Carr, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, and Charles L. Fontenay.  For the feline lover in all of us.
• Seabury Quinn, Black,White and Ivory.  Collection of seventeen adventure stories about Hiji (Captain Sir Haddingway Ingraham Jameson Ingraham) of His Majesty's Royal Frontier Houssa Police, the enforcer of law and justice in the Congo.  The tales appeared in Short Stories, a companion magazine to Weird Tales (where Quinn published his better-known Jules de Grandin stories) from 1940 to 1947, and contain some off-putting racial and social stereotypes typical of the period.  Hiji himself began as an occasional supporting character in the de Grandin stories beginning in 1932 before graduating to his own series.
• Kathy Reichs, Fatal Voyage.  The fourth (of thus far twenty-five) novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan; the character was the basis of the television series Bones.  "A commercial airline disaster has  brought Tempe Brennan to the North Carolina mountians as a member of the investigating agency DMORT.  As bomb theories abound, Tempe soon discovers a jarring piece of evidence that raises dangerous questions -- and gets her thrown from the DMORT team.  Relentless in her pursuit of its significance, Tempe uncovers a shocking, mutlilayered tale of deceit and depravity as she probes her way into frightening territory -- where someone wants her stopped in her tracks."  
• Jack Ritchie, Cardula and the Locked Rooms.  Collection of 15 mystery stories, nine featuring Ritchie's vampire private detective Cardula, plus six locked room mysteries.  For my money, Ritchie was one of the greatest writer of crime and mystery stories, second only to Edward D. Hoch.  It's estimated that Ritchie wrote about 500 short stories; this is only the fifth collection of Ritchie short stories ever published -- there's plenty of worthwhile material out there for additional collections.
• James Sallis, Salt River.  A John Turner mystery.  John Turner is an ex-policeman, ex-con, war veteran, and former therapist, now serving as a deputy sheriff in a small town somewhere near Memphis.  "Two years have passed since Turner's amour, Val Bjorn, was shot as they sat together on the porch of his cabin. 'Sometimes you just have to see how much music you can make with what you have left,' Val had told him, and that becomes Turner's mantra.  Then the sheriff's long-lost son comes plowing down Main street into City Hall in what appears to be a stolen car.  And waiting at Turner's cabin is his good friend, Eldon Brown, Val's banjo on the back of his motorcycle. 'They think I killed someone,' he says.  Turner asks, 'Did you?'  And Eldon responds, 'I don't know.' "  Sallis, who died last month at age 81, was one of the great writers of our time.
• Olaf Stapledon, Odd John and Sirius.  Omnibus of two classic science fiction novels.  "Odd John is the definitive fictionalization of the mutated superman.  After a strange birth and childhood, John  is suddenly compelled to accept the fact that he is different.  What is more, he has to decide what to do with his gifts.  Sirius, although the logical successor to Odd John, deals with quite another being -- an alien intelligence, artificially produced, a dog with superhuman mentality, who is not only superior to his own kind, but rejected by those with whom he has the most in common.  Stapledon uses his powers -- intellectual, imaginative, and observant -- to detail the conflict in its very 'human' form."
• Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time.  Science fiction, the first book in his eponymous continuing series.  "The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home.  Following  their ancestors' star maps, they discovered the greatest treasure of the past age -- a world terraformed and prepared for human life.  But all is not right in this new Eden.  The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied.  New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.  Now two civilizations are on a collision course and must fight to survive.  As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?"  Winner of the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
• Anthony Trollope, Marion Fay.  A lesser-known novel from Trollip[e, published six months before his death.  "[O]ne of Trollope's most cynical novels, making a biting attack on% the snobbery  of the titled class and the immorality of the church.  Lord Hampstead and his sister Frances both intend to marry beneath their rank.  Frances is betrothed to a Post Office clerk, George Roden, and her brother has fallen in love with% Marion, a Quaker.  As their stepmother, the Marchioness, schemes with the Reverend Mr. Greenwood to remove Lord Hampstead from his father's affections -- even if it means his death -- Trollope depicts a ruthless aristocracy and a hypocritical clergy."
• Robert van Gulik, Murder in Canton.  A Judge Dee mystery.  "At the height of his professional career, the master detective of ancient China is called to Canton to secretly investigate a mysterious disappearance, and finds himself entangled in a baffling web of political intrigue and vicious murder."  
• "Barbara Vine"  (Ruth Rendell), The House of Stairs.  Mystery.  "The beautiful, elusive Christobel Sanger is a murderer just released from prison.  But whom has she killed?  Elizabeth Vetch will never forget what happened fourteen years ago in the grand old house on Notting Hill called the House of Stairs,  in that large, oddly built residence, Elizabeth was living with her recently widowed cousin, Cosette, and with a long, unending party of fascinating people and hangers-on who came in and out of their lives.  And in that dwelling, a terrible, cruel plot would unfold and climax in betrayal and murder.  But who was killed...and what is the mystery in this  chilling novel of psychological suspense -- which twists and turns with the deadly desires of the human heart...?"  For some reason I prefer Rendell's work under her own name over her Barbara Vine novels.  Time will tell if that holds true for this book also.

HYMN TIME, CAJUN STYLE

 Jo-El Sonnier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y9H3kKWkeM

SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE #2 (CANADIAN EDITION) (MAY 1938; BUT DON'T BELIEVE IT)

This one gets a bit confusing, and not just because the contents description at the link is for an entirely different comic book.  And, although the link says the issue is from May 1938, this actually seems to b=e a reprint of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #6 from Spring 1950.

Sheena was basically a female version of Tarzan.  Sheena is the young daughter of Cardwell Rivington, an African explorer who died after accidentally drinking a magic potion.  she was then raised by the witch doctor Kobo, who taught her the ways of the jungle and several African languages.  Sheena is skilled with knives, bows, and spears, and is able to communicate with animals.  As an adult, she becomes the Queen of the Jungle and acquires a pet monkey named Chim.  Sheena's "mate" is white safari guide Bob Reynolds (his last name changes over the years).  According to comics historian Jess Nevins, over the years Sheena has battled "hostile natives, hostile animals, giants, a super-ape, the 
Green Terror, saber-tooth tigers, voodoo cultists, gorilla-men, devil-apes,  blood cults, devil queens, dinosaurs, army ants, lion men, lost races, leopard-birds, cavemen, serpent gods, vampire-apes, etc."  Suffice it to say, Sheena is one tough lady.

Sheena is modeled in part on Rima, the Jungle Girl, from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions.  According to Will Einsner, who has been credited with creating the character with Jerry Iger, Sheen=a's name was derived in part from H. Rider Haggard's novel She; Iger disputed this, saying that Eisner was not involved in the character's and that he got the idea from the word "sheenie," a derogatory term for Jews.  (Eisner and Iger had a sometimes contentious relationship.)  Iger's Universal Phoenix Features, which created various comics for syndication, came up with the character (drawn by Mort Mesklin) for Editors Press Service, which sold the first Sheena story to the British comic book Wags, where it appeared in issue #46, January 1938.  To disguise the fact that Universal Phoenix Features consisted only of Iger and Eisner, the pseudonym "W. Morgan Thomas."

In America, Sheena first appeared in Jumbo Comics #1, September 1938, from Fiction House.  the feature appeared in every issue of Jumbo Comics, ending with the April 1953 issue.  She gained her own title in 1941 with the first issue (of eighteen) of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, dated Spring 1942 -- making her the first female comic book character with her own title -- edging out Wonder Woman, who first appeared in a Summer 1942 issue.

Later on, Sheena would be rebooted and reimagined and given supernatural powers, as well as the iconic two-piece leopard outfit many associated with her.  But, for now, she is still wearing the one-piece skimpy leopard skin dress that has served her well for many adventures (I should note that in  the original story, the character wore a red dress, but a red dress does not a jungle queen make).

This issue gives us three adventures of Sheena, two apparently original and one reprinted from Jumbo Comics #63.  In the first, Sheena rescues Kazembe, the chief of the peaceful Basuto tribe.  An evil white man, Kessler, and the fierce Dango tribe have overpowered the Basuto.  Kessler is not afraid of sheena because his magic fire spear (rifle) never  misses.  silly man.

In the second episode, Bobtail, the king of f6ang and claw and a tawny terror, has been terrorizing the territory so Sheena has set a trap for the killer lion.  In the meantime, an Egyptian prince has started a hunt for a lion, unaware that several of his servants plan to kill him so a rival can come to power.  Sheena puts a halt to that plan -- actually bobtail does, by killing the man bad guy who was about to kill Sheena.  Then, simply because there are more pages to go in the story, Sheena stumbles upon a safari under attack by normally peaceful Cheetahs.  Turns out the great white hunter of the safari had killed a cheetah just for fun and that peeved off the other cheetahs.  Turns out the bad hunter is in search of a pygmy tribe that can magically change the size of animals, either larger or smaller -- power like that could be worth a fortune in the right unscrupulous hands.  Sheena and Bob are captured, left to die, escape, fight a giant warthog, chase the bad guys down the river, capture all but the bad hunter, who escapes and then is caught in a bear trap that Bob set for Bobtail.  Bobtail lives to fight another day.  this is the story that was a reprint.

In a two-page text story, Lady Beddington-Smythe, a noted sports huntress tries to shoot Chim.  Sheena warns the huntress off, but as an Englishwoman, Lady Beddington-Smythe does not take orders from a...a savage!  Sheena has to call in Simba the lion to convince her otherwise.

The final story sheen=a comes across a wounded man who is under attack by a pack of gorillas.  The man, who had been shot, mutters something about the lost city of the Portuguese before he slips into unconsciousness.  The evil Taluki has captured Bob and will kill him unless Sheena leads him through the swamps to the lost city.  The lost city is actually an ancient castle with a treasure room of gold along with the long-dead bodies of ancient Portuguese soldiers.  Bob reappears and he and Sheena defeat Taluki's men.  Taluki escapes with some gold, but without Sheena to lead him back through the swamp, he falls into quicksand and gets sucked up.  Once again there is peace in the jungle.

Better than many of the other comic books of its time.  BTW, the cover has absolutely nothing to do with any of the stories within,

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=97636&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE MOUSE ON THE MOON

The Mouse on the Moon by Leonard Wibberly (1962; filmed in 1963 and directed  by Richard Lester)

I seldom re-read books, but, by coincidence, I recently read several science fiction books about the early days of the Space Race and I felt an overwhelming urge to revisit one of my favorites.

If you ask me what country, aside from my own, I most respect, the answer, hands down, would be thee Duchy of Grand Fenwick.  I say this merely because I am a rational man and have a great love for humanity,

For over six centuries, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick lay nestled in the northern Alps, snugly located between France and Switzerland.  It is the smallest country in the world with a population of  just over five thousand people.  Proud of its ancient heritage, Grand Fenwick disdains almost all modern appurtenances -- there no phones, no cars, no telegraph, and -- to the ire of the Count of Mountjoy, the country's prime minister -- no indoor plumbing.  (The count really wished he could take a warm bath.)  It's army carries only longbows as weapons, through both tradition and inclination; the only other weapon in its arsenal is a dusty, unused Q-bomb -- a powerful device invited by the Grand Fenwick's sole scientist, the absent-minded Dr. Kokintz, whose experiments are often interrupted by bird watching excursions   Grand Fenwick's feeble economy is supplied by sheep and wine (specifically, Pinot Grand Fenwick, a superb wine).  The country is ruled by the regnant Duchess, Gloriana XII, "a somewhat young willful lady of twenty-three," but nonetheless truly loved by all.

The trouble began when Gloriana decided she wanted a full-length Russian ermine coat, one more suitable for her position than her regular cloth coat.  The coat Gloriana wanted would cost $50,000, equal to or perhaps more than the country's entire budget.  She tasked Mountejoy with the problem of getting her the coat.  Mountejoy had for years been unable to convince the Council to provide funds for indoor plumbing; how can he convince them the spring for such an expensive coat?  At the same time, two bobolinks were spotted in the Duchy's national forest, which was about twenty acres smaller than Winnie-the-Pooh's hundred acre wood...

In the first book in the series, The Mouse That Roared, Mountejpy had devised a plan to increase the Duchy's coffers.  He declared war on America and invaded the country with Grand Fenwick's standing army (all twelve of them, armed with long bows).  The plan:  invade on Monday, lose on Tuesday, and America will provide funding to rebuild Grand Fenwick's war-torn economy by Friday.  That plan did not work out because Grand Fenwick somehow won the war.  Still, Mountjoy -- who had been hearing of th space race between America and Russia to be the first to reach the moon -- decided to try again.  He wrote a letter to the Secretary of State requesting a loan of $5,050,000 -- five  million for the Duchy's non-existent space program and $50,000 for a fur coat.  The State Department rightly believed that the five million would actually be spent on plumbing (and were a little confused on the fur coat part), but decided a gesture would make for good publicity over the Russians.  But five million was an embarrassing sum, so they upped to fifty million for the supposed space program, and made the entire amount a gift, rather than a loan.

Mounntejoy was a politician and believed in deception rather than honesty.  The people of Gran Fenwick, however, were not politicians and believed in honesty.  If the money was not used for a rocket to the moon, they would return it.  After much haggling it was agreed that the original five million would be spent on plumbing and the rest on the as yet non-existent space program.  

About those bobolinks, which are native to northeastern North America and have never been seen in Europe...  Dr. Kokintz went out and took some photographs to show to the Audubon Society  but, when developed, the photographs were blurred, which led to the discovery of the startling properties of Pinot Grand Fenwick.  In short, the wine was the key to atomic rocket power.  There was now no reason Gran Fenwick could not start its own moon landing project.

The problem was the rest of the world did not believe Grand Fenwick was serious.  Not, that is, until the rocket launched carrying Dr. Kokintz and Vincent Mountjoy to the moon at a leisurely pace of a thousand miles an hour.  Russia and American scramble to launch their own rockets to get to the moon first and declare it in the name of their own countries...

A truly funny, truly biting satire on world politics.  Like me, you'll be rooting for little Grand Fenwick.  And, yes, the bobolinks filled their nest with four eggs, and four tiny bobolinks were added to the world at the book's end.  Yay!

Here's a clip from the 1963 film.  (Sorry, the full movie is behind a paywall.)  The film stars Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbins, David Kossof, Terry-Thomas, and June Ritchie. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yqZzPV5V7k