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...