OUR MISS BROOKS: THE SWEATER (SEPTEMBER 18, 1949)

Hard to believe, but Ever Arden was the third choice to portray the sarcastic high school teacher Connie Brooks in this classic radio comedy; when first choice Shirley Booth and second choice Lucille Ball fell through, CBS then-chairman persuaded Arden to audition for the role.  The show first aired on CBS Radio on July 19, 1948 and ran until 1957.  The characters and all but one of the regular actors moved to CBS television on October 3, 1952, running until May 11, 1956 -- ending one year before the radio show.

In addition to Eve Arden, the cast included Gale Gordon as Osgood Conklin, the gruff high school principal; Jeff Chandler (sometimes billed under his real name, Ira Grossel, as the absent-minded and clueless biology teacher Philip Boynton, who was the object of Connie Brooks' affections -- Chandler was the one cast member who did not transfer to the television program, leaving the show after five years to focus on his film commitments; Richard Crenna as the goofy, squeaky-voiced student Walter Denton; Gloria McMillan as Harriet Conklin, Osgood Conklin's daughter and Walter Denton's girlfriend; and Jane Morgan as Margaret Davis, Miss Brook's absent-minded landlady.  Others appearing over the run of the radio program included Virginia Gordon, Gale Gordon's wife, who played Osgood Conklin's wife Martha; Leonard Smith and Eddie Riley, who played high school athletes Stretch and Bones Snodgrass; and Mary Jane Croft who played scheming high school teacher -- and Connie's rival for Boynton's affections -- Daisy Enright.  Another member of the radio cast was Minerva, Mrs. Davis's cat, whose piano sleeping would result in perfectly timed piano riffs.

In 1956, after the television show was canceled, a theatrical film was made in which Connie Brooks and Philip Boynton were finally engaged.

In "The Sweater," Conklin decides to boost morale for the school's losing football team by having one of the teachers become a cheerleader, and he felt that Miss Brooks would be a fitting candidate.  Then he discovered that a rival high school principal was voted faculty cheerleader by the student body.  Not to be outdone, he began thinking about taking the role for himself...

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meSmsnAOH0g

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: DOWN SONORA WAY

 "Down Sonora Way" by Louis L'Amour  (first published in Five Western Novels Magazine, December 1951; reprinted in L'Amour's collection Bowdrie's Law, 1984; in Texas Rangers, edited  by Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg, 2004; and in The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour:  The Frontier Stories, Volume 2, 2004)

From 1946 through 1952, Louie L'Amour (1908-1988) published 18 short stories about Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie; a nineteenth story was published posthumously in 1998.  The first 18 stories were collected in two books:  Bowdrie (1983) and Bowdrie's Law (1984); the final story was published in the collection Monument Rock (1998).   Bowdrie could have been an outlaw, but he rode a different trail.  Texas-born Chick Bowdrie was raised by Comanches after his parents were killed; there he learned to hunt track, and survive.  At age twelve, the Comanches sent him back to live among the white population.  He soon went out on his own, working for various cattle ranches and cowboy outfits.  When he was twenty-one he was shot three times in a gunfight but managed to ride away and rancher Noah Whipple nursed him back to health and gave him a job.  Months later, Whipple was murdered and Bowdrie vowed to find the killer.  He read that the Texas Rangers were advertising for men, and Bowdrie felt that he would be better off hunting for the killer if he was on the right side of the law.  From that point on, he was a Texas Ranger and was responsible for many outlaws being killed or captured.  Over a period of four years (using the internal chronology of the short stories), Bowdrie was wounded ten times and had survived at least thirty-three gunfights.  Bowdrie is feared and respected by both outlaws and lawmen alike.  The Texas Rangers preferred having him on their side rather than against them.

Tensleep Mooney was "a sure hand with a six-shooter and an excellent rifle shot."  When Al Baggs -- one of the notorious feudal Baggs family -- stole Mooney's horse, Mooney went after him; Baggs was killed in the ensuing gunfire and Mooney recovered his horse.  That Baggs was killed did not set right with the clan and two of the family members came after Mooney;  Mooney took two Baggs  bullets and survived; the Baggs boys took three of Mooney's bullets and did not.  Other members of the family went after Mooney and lost.  Then Gene Baggs, the clan's most feared gunfighter, went after Moony and "died of acute indigestion caused by absorbing too much lead on an empty stomach."  When another Baggs  member and an itinerant gunslinger well felled, it brought the dead count up to eight.  The Texas Rangers figured enough was enough, so they sent Chick Bowdrie to arrest Mooney.   Bowdrie trailed Mooney to the Mexican border, then went further into Sonora and Apache country.

Now Mooney had Bowdrie pinned down, out of water, with a bullet having grazed his shoulder, and a dead horse.  Mooney felt he would be at a distinct disadvantage if brought back to El Paso, under arrest with no weapon and with countless numbers of the Baggs clan after his hide, so he was determined not to be taken.  Mooney held the high ground and Bowdrie could not move without being shot.

Suddenly, in the distance, Mooney saw people approaching from the desert.  It was not, as he feared, Apache; rather it was a wounded man, a woman, and two children.  Farther in the distance, a cloud of dust, indicating a group of Apache following the foursome.  Both Mooney and Bowdrie were well hidden from view and could well wait safely until both groups passed, but they what would eventually happen to the white settlers once the Indians caught up to them.  So a bargain was made between the two gunfighters -- they would call a truce and try to help the family; they would renew their hostilities once the crisis was passed, supposing they both survived.

Bowdrie and Mooney had two rifles, their six-shooters, and were down one horse.  They could not get a count on the Apache; there are lest ten of them, and perhaps double that.  Plus, if things got out of hand, the Apache could sent a man back to get more reinforcements.  Things do not look gook good.

And, if they did survive, would Bowdrie be able to bring Mooney in to face justice?

An interesting tale of enemies becoming friends and what might happen afterward, set against a backdrop of overwhelming odds.

L'Amour wrote one additional tale about Tensleep Mooney, which happened to published the same month that "Down Sonora Way" saw print ("Long Ride Home" in Best Western, December 1951; collected in The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour:  The Frontier Stories, Volume 7, 2009).

OVERLOOKED FILM: THE LAST OF MRS. CHENEY (1929)

A pre-Code early talkie with Norma Shearer her most glamorous and Basil Rathbone at his most dashing.

"[T]his witty and stylish caper follows a clever jewel thief posing as a wealthy widow to infiltrate London's upper crust.  Directed by Sidney Franklin and adapted from the hit stage play [by Frederick Lonsdale] features an all-star ensemble:  Basil Rathbone as the elegant Lord Dilling, George Burraud, Herbert Bunson, and a delightfully sharp Hedda Hopper.  Brimming with high society intrigue, snappy dialogue, and a dash of romantic suspense, this [...] is a must-watch for fans of vintage crime comedies and old Hollywood elegance."

The screenplay by Hanns Kraly, who received an Academy Award nomination for his script.  

The original play, directed  by Gerald du Maurier, opened on September 22, 1925 and ran for 385 performances.  The original cast included du Maurier, Gladys Cooper, and May Whitty.  a revival opened in June 1944 and subsequently toured the provinces until the following May.  It was adapted flour times for the screen:  first in 1929; again in 1937 with Joan Crawford, William POowell, and Robert Montgomery; a third time in 1951 as The Law and the Lady, starring Greer garson; and finally in a 1961 German production featuring Lilli Palmer.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RuXxoq31PY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JIMMY DEAN!

Jimmy Dean (1928-1210) was more than just sausage.

"Big Bad John"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnnHprUGKF0

"The Cajun Queen"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OHFTsIC664

"Little Bitty Big John"

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

"Steel Men"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gipzQr0k9zA

"I Won't Go Huntin' with You Jake"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9JE5SHQOrE

"Thumb Pick Pete"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntQeLBy3EQI

"Little Black Book"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW-x-jmZwYg&list=PL1oD03rdOxhkCTBk81lGVPda5jt8FX2lC&index=11

"To a Sleeping Beauty"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbAT7n_4ock

"This Old House"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ajQj7610PQ

"The Farmer and the Lord"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ajQj7610PQ

"Harvest of Sunshine"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ajQj7610PQ

"PT-109"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiSpUMH8QII

"The First Thing Ev'ry Morning"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lrNzIz4u98

"Shutters and Boards"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbgOR80t0nY

"Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKRHIuc20RE&list=RDSKRHIuc20RE&start_radio=1

"Under the Sun"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgC7FR7CAtI&list=RDSKRHIuc20RE&index=10

"Striker Bill"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kmj17Dap9s&list=RDSKRHIuc20RE&index=29

Making a regular appearance on The Jimmy Dean Show was Rowlf the Muppet.  (This was the first national exposure of the Muppets.)  Here, Jimmy and Rowlf sing "Side by Side":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-g33NHPnHY&list=PLVqy5UJS5ir07M6a6r1kPebEA5nQyK7qc

FORGOTTEN BOOK: DEAD AND GONE

Dead and Gone by Andrew Vachss  (2000)

In addition to being a child protection consultant and an attorney exclusively representing children and youths, Andrew Vachss was a crime author best known for his series of 18 novels about Burke, an urban vigilante.  I was a big fan of Vachss and of Burke back in the day, but stopped reading him in the late 90s -- no particular reason, just that other, newer authors were taking up my reading time --  but when I came across a copy of Dead and Gone I knew it was time to re-anew my acquaintance.

Burke is a one-named urban warrior, living off the grid in an abandoned building.  He has a group of friends -- a "family" -- of like-minded individuals who help support and protect each other and ignore many of the laws of society.  Burke can be a thug for hire, and he has killed, but he retains a strong ethical grounding.  Burke's main grievance -- something in common with the author -- is with child abusers and the society that allows the abuse to continue, which provides most of the themes for the novels.  Burke's closest friend is his dog, Pansy, a Neapolitan mastiff, 150 pounds of war dog, who has been his companion for nineteen year.

As we open, Burke has been hired to facilitate a trade of money for a kidnapped boy, the son of Russian immigrants.  The boy had vanished ten years before, with not trace, no body, and no ransom note.  Burke has been selected to make the deal because of his reputation in the underground.   He meets the boy and three men in a dark, isolated location.  The boy pulls a gun and shoots Burke, although Burke has enough time to release the latch on his trunk, releasing Pansy.  Pansy attacks the boy and rips out his throat, while Burke manages to shoot one of the other men.  But Burke is badly wounded and is about to pass out when one of the men shoots him in the head, while the other shoots and kills Pansy.

Burke wakes up in a hospital, badly injured and near death.  Slowly, recovers, but he has changed physically.  His injuries and his head wound (which grazed his brain) has altered his looks.  He knows now that the purpose of the meeting was not to free the boy, but to kill him specifically.  Why?  And who?  Add to the mystery is that an awful lot of money was involved in the setup.  Whoever wanted him dead would not stop until he was assuredly dead.

Perhaps Burke's greatest motivation here, in addition to his survival, would be echoed 14 years after in the film John Wick:  They killed his dog!  Someone's is going to die!  Can't blame him; after reading about ten of the Earlier Burke novels, I had grown to love Pansy.

Following a trail from New York to Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, Burke encounters pedophiles (naturally), neo-Nazis, abortion clinic bombers, and a sort of glorified Epstein Island -- a nation created to protect the worst of the worst of abusers.  Along the way, he is joined by his "family," as well as a Black gay pilot he had rescues in Biafra, a childhood friend who specializes in seeing patterns where others only see banks, and a Russian-speaking Cambodian named Gem, who becomes his "wife."

Dead and Gone marks a turning point for Burke.  In the end, he is forced to abandon New York and move west.  Where this journey will take him, I have no idea.  Or won't until I read the later books in the series.

This is a disturbing book, even more so than earlier entries in the series.  Through a series of flashbacks, we get to see Burke as a child, and the horrors that he endured to make him the warrior he has become.  Not an easy read, but an important one for any person who feels rage about the disgusting prevalence of child abuse.

In addition to his Burke novels, Andrew Vachss (1942-2021) has written the Cross series, the Aftershock trilogy, and ten standalone novels (including a tie-in in which Batman battles the child sex trade in Thailand), as well as three collections, ten comics and graphic novels, three plays, and to non-fiction books.  He has been an outspoken advocate for children's rights and has appeared on numerous television programs and has authored many articles, including many published in Parade magazine over a thirty-plus-year period.  He was tireless in his pursuit of juistice.

ADVENTURES BY MORSE: A COFFIN FOR THE LADY (JANUARY 4, 11, & 18, 1945)

Carlton E. Morse (1901-1993) was a popular radio writer who gave us such programs as One Man's Family and I Love a Mystery.  Shortly after NBC cancelled I Love a Mystery in 1944 (which would bounce back four years later under the title I Love Adventure), Morse created Adventures by Morse, a syndicated adventure series that ran for a year, from October 26, 1944 to October 18, 1945, consisting of eight serials of from three to ten half hour episodes each.  Morse produced, directed, and wrote each of the 52 episodes.  The series featured Captain Bart Friday, a globe-trotting San Francisco private eye, and his sidekick, Texan Skip Turner.  Murder, kidnapping, and espionage were run of the mill subjects for the pair, with the occasional secret Nazi base, snake worshipper, and voodoo thrown in.

In  the three-part "A Coffin for the Lady," Captain Friday's San Francisco office is contacted by an Army Intelligence officer who is "looking to hire a pair of operatives for a mysterious mission.  Transported to a small, isolated cove off the coast of Canada, Friday, Turner, and a Major Lawrence find a speedboat waiting for them, which they use to get to Marmaduke Island.  Warned by Lawrence that the duo will need to be 'ready for action' at any given moment, three hours pass, then, suddenly, an Amy GI appears out of the underbrush carrying a heavily bound and gagged woman in his arms.  Friday and Turner quickly observe that the man has been mortally wounded -- a knife sticking out of his back -- and his last words before dying are to instruct men to get the woman to shore immediately."

Over the course of the series, Bart Friday was played by Elliott Lewis, David Ellis, and Russell Thorson, while Jack Edwards and Barton Yarborough took the role of Skip Turner; "A Coffin for a Lady" most likely starred Lewis and Edwards.

Enjoy.

"A Coffin for The Lady" Part 1  ("The Adventure Begins"):

https://www.oldradioworld.com/media/Adventures%20By%20Morse%201945-01-04%20A%20Coffin%20For%20The%20Lady%20Part%201.mp3

"A Coffin for a Lady"  Part 2 ("The Conversation in a Casket"):

https://www.oldradioworld.com/media/Adventures%20By%20Morse%201945-01-11%20A%20Coffin%20For%20The%20Lady%20Part%202.mp3

"A Coffin for the Lady" Part 3 ("The Deepest Grave in the World"):

https://www.oldradioworld.com/media/Adventures%20By%20Morse%201945-01-18%20A%20Coffin%20For%20The%20Lady%20Part%203.mp3

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE MOST HATED MAN IN LONDON

"The Most Hated Man in London" by Patricia Moyes  (first published in The Evening Standard, March 16, 1963, as "Murder! -- With Five Bob's Worth of Human Misery"; reprinted thereafter under the present title in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 10, 1980; in London After Midnight, edited by Peter Haining, 1966; in Moyes' collection Who Killed Father Christmas?, 1996; and in Metropolitan Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards, 2024)

There was a time when many British newspapers published fiction, both original and reprinted, among them The Evening Standard of London.  Brief stories, to be sure, and many of those that were reprints were abridged.  The Evening Standard, a daily, began in 1859 as a sister publication to The Standard (which folded in 1916); it is still being published, but, alas, evidently with no fiction -- according to the FictionMags Index, the latest date the paper published fiction was in 1999.  The earliest piece of fiction published in the paper was the serial "Dear Acquaintance" by Rosemary Rees with installments six times a week through at least the entire month of January, 1929; daily offering of short fiction (at least according to the FMI) began in 1932 with reprints from Holloway Horn, Arthur Morrison, Barry Pain, Frank R. Stockton, James Stephens, H. G. Wells, H. E. Bates and Edgar Allan Poe, among others.  Original stories began appearing sporadically and increasing in 1933.  There were long periods of months, and even years, in which the paper published no fiction, possibly due to a change in editorial tastes or to perceived customer reaction,  but through the 40's 50's, and the early 60's, the fiction kept bouncing back.  The last piece of fiction mentioned in the FMI was "A Giant's Robe Upon a Dwarfish Thief" by Michael Innes (December 28, 1964).  It should be noted that the newspaper published at least four doorstop anthologies in the 1930s -- two of general short stories and two of "Strange Tales"; this was followed by two volumes of detective stories in the early 1950s.

Patricia Moyes (1923-2000) was a British mystery writer best known for her 19 novels about  C.I.D. Inspector Henry Tibbett and his beloved wife, Emmy.  She served as the personal assistant for actor Peter Ustinov for eight years, co-wrote the 1960 filmscript for School for Scandal, and translated the 1940 Jean Anouilh's play Leocadia as Time Remembered (which received several Tony Awards for is Broadway production with Richard Burton, Helen Hayes, and Susan Strasberg).  Over her career, Moyes wrote about twenty short stories, about half of them for the British newspapers in the early 1960s; by necessity most of them were very short.

"The Most Hated Man in London" is a brief puzzle story.  The title character is Max Scotland, a disreputable moneylender and blackmailer who enjoyed squeezing out every bob he could from his victims.  Max conducted all his business from his office, which was guarded by a gatekeeper -- a very reliable "old soldier" named Potts -- there was no way to go in or out of Max's office without being seen by him.  Max Scotland kept scrupulous records, as well as an appointment diary.  His diary for that recorded three appointments.  The last person with an appointment claimed that he went in to discover Max's body, his opened safe, and burned papers, and raised the alarm.  The second person claimed she also found the body, panicked, and left the scene immediately, leaving a blood-stained footprint.  That left the suspicion to fall on the first appointment.  But did he do it?  By paying attention to each of the statement from the three suspects and the guard, the unnamed Chief Inspector who was called to the case was able to immediately discover the culprit.

A minor story, five pages long, with a conclusion most readers should have worked out, but probably didn't.  Clever, but not earth-shattering.  Entertaining, but slight.  To read Moyes at her full powers, read any of the Henry Tibbett mysteries.  You will be glad you did.