MERCURY THEATER ON THE AIR: THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY (SEPTEMBER 5, 1938)

 Perhaps, G. K. Chesterton's most famous novel, The Man Who Was Thursday has been tagged as a "metaphysical thriller."  I suppose that's a good a description as any.  But it's also a classic mystery and a classic fantasy and a classic spy novel and a classic whatever you wish to call it.

First published in 1908, the book follows Gabriel Syme, who is recruited by an anti-anarchist squad from Scotland Yard.  Syme meets anarchist poet Lucien Gregory, who takes him to a local meeting of anarchists, whose leadership consists of seven men, each going by a day of the week.  The local group is about to elect a person top fill the role of Thursday and somehow the choice falls on Syme.  It turns out that at least five of the seven are in reality police informants out to expose each other and the group.

A surrealistic work, heavy on Christian allegory (Chesterton was a noted Christian apologist), but also embued with a great sense of pessimism; the novel has left many readers scratching their heads for well over a century.  Novelist and critic Kingsley Amis did not scratch his head; pointing to the book's many twists and turns, he called it "the most thrilling book I have ever read."

Orson Wells wrote and starred in the Mercury Theater on the Air adaptation. In abridging the book for the radio, Wells dropped most of the metaphysical references that appeared in Chapter 14 of the novel, to make the story more palatable for his audience.  The episode appeared toe month before the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.

A brilliant and influential novel and an equally brilliant adaptation.  

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH-32M_WoaY&t=5s

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: DRY SEPTEMBER

"Dry September" by William Faulkner (first published in Scribner's Magazine, January 1931; reprinted in Faulkner's collection These 13, 1931, and in The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 1950; reprinted many times, including in Squire:  A Man's Magazine, February 1955; Strange Barriers, edited by J. Vernon Shea, 1955; The Edge of the Chair, 1967, and The Graveyard Shift, 1970,  both edited by Joan Kahn; Fiction 100, 1974 [and Fiction 100:  Second Edition, 1978, Fourth Edition, 1985, Fifth Edition, 1988], edited by James H. Pickering; Twice-Told Tales:  An Anthology of Short Fiction, edited by Gerard A. Barker, 1979;  The Penguin Book of Horror Stories, edited by J. A. Cudden, 1984; Classic American Short Stories, edited by Douglas Grant, 1990; Stories, edited by Eric S. Rabjin, 1990; The Riverside Anthology of Short Fiction:  Convention and Innovation, unknown editors, 1997;  Short Fiction, edited by Charles H. Bohner & Dean Dougherty, 1999; now in the public domain and available in many places online, including at the link listed at the end of this post)   

The story opens:  "Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass:  the rumor, the story, whatever it was.  Something about Miss Minnie Cooper and a Negro.  Attacked, insulted, frightened, none of them, gathered in the barber shop that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the violated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of male pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what happened."

And that, with its exquisitely chosen words, tells you the entire story.  But don't stop reading after the first paragraph; you need to read the full story, especially in today's charged climate.

Told ambiguously, so the reader has to do the heavy lifting.

There are rumors, vague and unsubstantiated, that Miss Minnie Cooper, a white woman, has been attacked (or, perhaps, merely insulted) has been attacked by a Black man.  Something needs to be done to protect white women, and a group of men gather at the barber shop to discuss the matter.  they decide without any proof that the guilty man must be Will Mayes.  An objection to this logic was of the "will take the word of a Black man over a white woman" defense.  More people arrive at the barber shop, adding fuel to an already hot fire.  Something has to be done, if only to prove the white man's supremacy over the Black.  The mob heads out to find Will.

Miss Minnie was a pleasant enough woman, not very attractive and not of any importance to the townspeople.  a single woman taking care of her mother, many of the men in town assume that she could not attract a single man, so she must be guilty of adultery or of some other moral failure.  Minnie enters a movie theater and begins to laugh hysterically, the laughter soon turning to screams.  A doctor is called.  Minnie's friends begin to wonder if the story. has any truth at all to it.

The barber, Hawkshaw (who later appeared in Faulkner's story "Hair"), goes along with the mob in an attempt to dissuade them.  The mob finds Will, beats him, and pushed him into a car.  Hawkshaw wants nothing to do with this and is pushed out the car.  By the side of the road, he sees Will in the car...

The leader of the mob eventually returns home, yells at his wife for staying up, washes his hands, and goes to bed. 

Twenty-four years after the story was published, Emmett Till was murdered.  Thirty-two years after this story was published, four young girls were killed in a Sunday School bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama,  Thirty-three years after this story was published, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered.; while dragging a river in search of the bodies, authorities came across the beaten and tortured bodies of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both nineteen and both dropped in the Mississippi while still alive, as well as the body of 14-year-old Herbert Oarsby and five other unidentified African-Americans.   Sixty-seven years after this story was published, 21-year-old gay student Matthew Shepard was dragged behind a car and killed in Laramie, Wyoming, and James Byrd, an African-American man, was dragged behind a car and killed in Jasper, Texas.  In 2026, many Southern states are gleefully gerrymandering their districts to deny Black people representation with the blessing of corrupt government yahoos and an out of control Supreme Court.

I weep for my country.  I weep for the victims.  And Phil Och's 1964 protest song "Here's to the State of Mississippi" keeps ringing in my head.

Read "Dry September" here:

https://southinblackandwhite.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/william-faulkner-dry-september.pdf

OVERLOOKED FILM: ONE FRIGHTENED NIGHT (1935)

Elderly multimillionaire Jasper White (character actor Charlie Grapewin (The Wizard of Oz, The Grapes of Wrath, The Petrified Forest, and seven Ellery Queen mysteries as Inspector Richard Queen) has called his greedy relatives and associates to his mansion on (what else?) a dark and stormy night to announce that he is giving them each one million dollars in his will.  But wait.  What's this?    A long-lost granddaughter show up -- Doris Waverley (Evalyn Knapp, His Private Secretary, The Perils of Pauline, The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance) -- and white then decides to leave his entire fortune to her.  But wait.  What's this?  A second Doris Waverley appears (Mary Carlisle, one of the fifteen WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932, Grand Hotel, The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, Dance, Girl, Dance -- she died at the age of 104, the last surviving WAMPAS Baby).  Which one is the real Doiris?

A wealthy old man, a will about to be changed, greedy relatives, an imposter, and a lonely mansion on (what else?) a dark and stormy night.  What could go wrong?  Except murder, that is.  Add to this romance and a madcap mystery, and you  have the ingredients for an entertaining flick.

Also featuring Lucien Littlefield (The Cat and the Canary, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Ruggles of Red Gap), Regis Toomey (Meet John Doe, Guys and Dolls, The Night of the Grizzly, and featured  roles in television's Burke's Law and Petticoat Junction), Arthur Hohl (Island of Lost Souls, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Fred Kelsey (who directed 37 films from 1914 and 1920 and acted in more than 400 films from 1911 to 1958, including three "Lone Wolf" movies and uncredited roles in Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, and Auntie Mame), Wallace Ford (The Mysterious Mr. Wong, The Mummy's Hand, Shadow of a Doubt), and actress and budding gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Seven Keys to Baldpate, Harold Teen, Dracula's Daughter; she became one of them most powerful and feared gossip columnists of her age). 

Directed by Christy Carbanne (A Girl of the Limberlost, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Scattergood Baines).  The film was written by Wellyn Tolman (14 of the 15 episodes of the Tom Mix serial The Miracle Rider, The Man from Arizona, Ghost City), from a story by mystery novelist (the Hildegard Withers mysteries) and screenwriter Stuart Palmer (Bulldog Drummond's Peril, Seventeen, Passport to Suez)

This one is worth sixty-five minutes of your time.   enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y47A9bk4T-I

MEMORIAL DAY

 It's a day for reflection, so I'm reflecting.

Too often I hear people saying to veterans and service men and women, "I'm grateful for your service."  Not me.  I just can't.

Our servicemen have my solemn respect and admiration, but gratitude is taking things just too far -- especially on a day when we honor our war dead.  I will never be grateful that they died.

Thing is most of our service men and women are kids, many joining up because they have nowhere else to go, or because they are fired up because of gung-ho patriotism.  Those who are career military are a different kettle of fish; most of those have joined because of a sincere desire to serve.

I think my basic problem comes from war.  I don't like it.  It's started and run by career politicians who don't really give a damn about our soldiers.  Wars are about which politician has the biggest genitalia, or about how much profit can be made, or who can amass the largest amount of brownie points from their base.  If you think the politicians care about young schoolgirls being slaughter in Iran, or about the thirteen service members who have been killed there or the more than 380 that have been wounded (both  n umbers, I believe have been greatly underestimated), or about the families that have been displaced in Gaza, or about the Ukrainians bombed out of their homes, or about the more than 1.2 million Russian casualties tossed callously into the furnace of war by Vladimir Putin, or about the victims of Boko Haram, Al-Quida, ISIS, drug cartels, the KKK and other homegrown racist organizations, the Taliban, MS-13, or any of the hundreds of other organizations that derive their power by invoking misery upon the innocent.  All of these groups, and many of the countries of the world, are led by small-minded men whose only purpose is power, often who managed to gull a group of useful idiots to support them.  When I rule the world, all of these leaders, and the quislings who support them either actively or by their silence, will be given guns and sent lot the front lines with orders to "Have at 'em. boys!"

The people who serve, the ;people who fight -- and I don't give a damn      what country they are from or what their religion is or what their sexual preferences are -- almost always just want to live in peace and provide for their families in safety and harmony.

So I don't like war and I don't like the people who start them.  I think serving your country is a noble thing, but to serve your country you should be serving its people and too often our service men and women are asked to do the opposite.  Our standing army should be ready to defend the country, but it also should be ready to provide logistics and aid when the people need it.  War should not be fought by blowing the enemy off the face of the Earth because by doing that you are harming many, many innocent people.  Wars need to be settled by diplomacy and reasoning.  There are times admittedly, that that is not possible, but that should be the primary goal.

I grew up in a fairly small town.  Only one member in my class was killed in Vietnam.  His name was Kenny Hughes.  i never hung out with him and did not know him very well although we worked together on a summer job.  Kenny was bright, popular, funny, and had a great future ahead of him.  That all of this was taken away in a foreign country during a war that he could not understand was, to me, the ultimate in evil.  Add to that a bit of guilt on my part because I never served despite having a low draft number -- an accident when I was three damaged my vision and I damaged my right hand in an accident  when I was seventeen and from then on would drop things without warning were the two things that kept me from the Army.  Those I knew who did serve were not fighting for their country or for any noble purpose other than to protect their brother in arms who was fighting right next to them.

The people we honor today do not expect my gratitude.  They are dead and far beyond expecting a anything.  They certainly are not expecting a long and peaceful life, or a family, or a chance to make their way in the world -- all of that has been denied them.  The people we honor today  deserve and receive my admiration, my respect, my thanks, and == sadly -- my pity, because the life that should have been theirs is not.

One of my favorite songs is "The Green Fields of France," in which a wanderer comes across the grace of Willie McBride who died at the age of 19 in the battle fields of France during the Great War.  At one pint in the song, Willie is asked:

"Did you leave 'ere a wife or a sweetheart behind?

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?

Although  you died back in 1916

In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Enclosed in forever, behind a glass frame?

In an old photograph, torn, battered, and stained

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame."

And every year at this time, I am reminded of my namesake.  My legal name is Ralph Harold House.  The Ralph is for my father, who did not want a Big Ralph and a Little Ralph in the family.  the Harold is for Harold Speed, a friend of my parents who died in World War II at Guadalcanal.  Harold Speed was always called Jerry -- I don't know why,  but Jerry was not his middle name -- and since birth I have been called Jerry in honor of him.  My parents never talked about their childhood or their life before marriage, so I know absolutely nothing about Harold Speed.  It may sound corny, but in honor of him, I have always tried to be the very best Jerry I could be.  I hope that is enough for him because that is all that I can offer, that somehow his name lives on -- honorably -- through me.

So, Harold -- Jerry -- although we never met, I am not grateful for your service.  I not grateful that you died.  I am. however, honored to share your name and that, somehow, the better parts of you continue on through me.  It is a privilege to bear your name and I do so with honor, respect, pride, and sincerity.  I just wish that you and so many others had been allowed to live your own lives.

A POEM FOR MEMORIAL DAY: BREAK OF DAY

 BREAK OF DAY

There seemed a smell of autumn in the air

At the bleak end of  night; he shivered there

In a dank, musty dug out where he lay

Legs wrapped in sand bags, -- lumps of chalk and clay

Splattering his face.  Dry mouthed, he thought, "To-day

We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,

Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in

Under the freedom of that morning sky!"

And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell

Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,

That sent a happy dream to him in Hell? --

Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find

Some crater for their wretchedness; who he

In outcast immolation, doomed to die

Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,

Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brins

And roars into their heads, and they can hear

Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.

He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).

He's riding in a dusty Sussex lane

In quiet September; slowly night departs;

And he's a living soul, absolved from pain.

Beyond the brambled fences where he goes

Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,

And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;

Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;

And there's a wall of mist along the vale

Where willows shake their watery sounding leaves.

He gazes on it all, and scarce believes

That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;

He thanks the blessed world that he was born...

Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.

They're drawing the Big Wood!  Unlatch the gate,

And set Golumpus going on the grass:

He knows the corner where it's best to wait

And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;

The corner where old foxes make their track

To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.

The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,

And then a cub looks out; and "Tally-0-back!"

He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack, --

All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,

And hunting surging through him like a flood

In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;

While war drifts away, forgotten at last.

Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim

Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,

And the kind, simple country shines revealed

In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.

The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,

And stretches down his head to crop the green.

All things that he has loved are in his sight;

The places where his happiness has been

Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.

****

Hark!  there's the horn; they're drawing the Big Wood.

-- Siegfried Sassoon, from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

HYMN TIME

Rev. Dan Smith.

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

ACES HIGH #4 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1955)

For some reason, aviation war titles were a rare breed in comic books, unlike in the pulp fiction magazines.  The heyday of the aviation pulps was in the 30's and 40s with titles such as Aces, Air Action, Air Adventures, Air Stories, Air Trails, Air War, American Eagle, American Sky Devils, Army Navy Flying Stories, Battle Aces [G-8], Battle Birds [Dusty Ayres], Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, Dare-Devil Aces, Fighting Aces...and so on, all the way down to Zeppelin Stories, many of which features World War I adventure stories.  In the pulps, there seemed to be a paucity of other war titles, giving preference to aviation war titles, while in the comics, war titles flourished, while aviation was titles were few and far between.  (To be fair, war titles were a small niche in both markets, with the bulk of titles being in the mystery/crime/detective, science fiction, western, horror, and romance genres.)

In 1955, EC Comics were struggling due to the anti-comic book frenzy of the Frederick Wertham era; they shifted to a more realistic approach with their comic book titles, calling them their "New Directions" line;  by this time the company was down to just one science fiction title, while introducing six titles and renaming one: Impact, Valor, Extra!, Aces High, Psychoanalysis, M.D., and Incredible Science Fiction (the renamed title).  The New Directions line did not carry the newly established Comic code and newsstand dealers were reluctant to carry them.  With the second issues of the New Directions line, publisher William Gaines begrudgingly submitted the titles to the Comics Code.  Nevertheless, the new line was a commercial failure and the entire line was cancelled after the fifth issues.  EC then switched to a "Picto-Fiction" line in 1956, four titles illustrated with alternating blocks of typeset text.  This line failed even more spectacularly than the New Directions line, and all titles were cancelled after the second or third issue.  Gaines's distributor went bankrupt and Gaines cancelled all titles except for Mad.

The penultimate issue of Aces High carried four stories:

• :"The Green Kids" -- George Evans, artist
• "The Good Luck Piece" -- Bernard Krigstein, artist
• "The Novice and the Ace" -- Wally Wood, artist
• "Home Again" -- Jack Davis, artist

Probably the most interesting question with these stories was, how many bi-planes in battle action can fit into one comic panel?

Check it out.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RTviz2A6XaigNxu_dRvgcsMNru9xG885/view