GANGBUSTERS: THE SCISSORS GANG (sometime in late 1952)

 "True Stories of Real Crimes!"

Gang Busters had several precedents, beginning with the 1935 movie starring Jimmy Cagney.  The success of that film led radio producer/director Phillips Lord, in association with J. Edgar Hoover, to produce G-Men. which produced dramatized FBI cases.  Hoover was particular about the types of programs he would approve:  the cases had to be closed ones, and could not feature much violence or gunfire, rather concentrating on the investigative skills of his department.  G-Men ran on NBC Radio from July 20 to October 12, 1935.

Gang Busters was Lord's "sequel" to G-Men.  The popular program ran for 21 years, beginning on January 15, 1936 and ending on November 27, 1957.  To add authenticity, Lord had Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr., the head of the New Jersey State Police, introduce the program.  (Schwarzkopf was the father of General "Stormin' Norman" of the Gulf War fame; Schwarzkopf was also one of the main figures who bungled the Lindbergh kidnapping case.)

The radio program ran variously on CBS, the Blue Network, back on CBS, and finally on the Mutual Broadcasting System.  Among the actors appearing on the radio program were Richard Widmark, Art Carney, Frank Lovejoy, Larry Haines, and Leon Janney.  The radio show spawned a DC comic book which ran from 1947 to 1958, as well as several Big Little Books.  A serial theatrical film featuring Kent Taylor, Ralph Morgan, and Robert Armstrong was released in 1942.

On March 20, 1952, the television series was born, appearing NBC and hosted by Chester Morris.  (It went off the air in 1953; it alternated its time spot with Dragnet, and when the Jack Webb show was able to produce weekly episodes, Gang Busters was jettisoned.

During its run, some 49 episodes were aired, a number of them lost to time.  The cast varied from episode to episode.

In this episode. the brutal Scissors Gang had committed at least fifty robberies in the Nutmeg State and it was up to the Connecticut State Police to stop them.  It was directed by W. Lee Wilder and scripted by Lord.  Featured actors were John Raven, Lyle Talbot, and Peter Davis.  Look closely and you'll see Robert Bice, who had a recurring role in The Untouchables.  Look even closer and you might recognize Michael Mark, who once played Joe Palooka's father and was in Son of Frankenstein and The Wasp Woman.

Enjoy this episode from the days when crime did not pay.

   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9xKBc3IUN8

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BILLIE HOLIDAY

  She was born Eleanora Fagan on this day in 1915, but Lady Day is best known as Billie Holiday, the divine voice which was ranked fourth in Rolling Stone's 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.  She was the lady "who changed jazz forever."  As is sometimes the case, life did not treat her as she deserved; she died of pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver at age 44, a victim of  alcohol and drug abuse.  At her death, her bank account totaled 70 cents, less than $7.50 in today's money, and was under house arrest in her hospital room for narcotics possession.  She deserved better.

If she had done nothing else in her entire life, she gave us this song:

"Strange Fruit"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9HvChXk

But she also gave us these, and many others.

"Blue Moon"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4bZu56EylA

"Riffin' the Scotch"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1oajFwui-Q

"Summertime"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THflqYOqm3A

"I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4AUuZ9TKk

"God Bless the Child"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp349H8G0XQ

"Trav'lin Light"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnYINIgIvH0

"Lover Man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soJwavwA-Os"

"Solitude"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiU-O8arVa8

"My Man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvo9oeRh2E

"Crazy He Calls Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-qY58CB00U

"Embraceable You"

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

"The Way You Look Tonight"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKa0ApHEtYA

"I'll Be Seeing You"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C5zYKIuoxg

"Gloomy Sunday"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ2AuLaClmk

"Easy Living"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ2AuLaClmk

We were lucky to have her for the brief time that we did.

HYMN TIME

 Rev. A. Johnson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLez2GOtSF4

MASK COMICS #1 (FEBRUARY-MARCH 1945)

I have no idea why this comic book is titled Mask Comics, but it surely does have a unique cover.  It's a catch-all anthology title with a mix of mystery, suspense, horror, humor, biography, and whatever fits.

In "Name Your Price for Slaughter," People thought Tim Dolan would not make a good cop -- too much book learning.  But then a government engraving expert is kidnapped and soon counterfeit money begins flooding the city.  Police know that shady, zoot-suit wearing Silver John Fallow is the brains behind the counterfeiting ring but cannot prove it.  It's up to Tim Dolan to use his book learning to nail silver john and to rescue the kidnapped engraver.

Bonnie Heather, a hapless Bettie Page lookalike, somehow never does anything right.  Bonnie gets a job as a cook for a rich family, the Von Nuysers, in "The Adventure of the Exploding Spaghetti."  Yes, Bonnie's spaghetti somehow explodes and fouls a robbery attempt.  bonnie is the hero and gets a bonus.  We, the readers, get to see Bonnie's well-formed legs.

"I Don't Want to Die" has a bored and despairing Ethan Cavendish, who thought his wife had died in a airplane crash, decide to pay a man to kill him.  But when the deed is supposed to be done, he finds that his wife survived and coming home to him.

"Count Boris Strikes Back."  A two-page text story.  Count Boris was 'the man they could not hang."  Martha was the lady sword-swallower at the same sideshow.  Jealous because Boris's act was upstaging hers, she decides to get rid of him.  But Cupid is lurking in the background.  (Boris, as illustrated, looks like a Chas Addams character.)

"Murder on Park Avenue" features millionaire playboy sleuth Calvin Colt, as he tries to solve the murder of Laura Deane, who died while playing a game of "Murder."  A lot of people wanted Laura dead, but who fired the poisoned African blow gun dart?

"There's One Born every Minute."  A three-page biography of P.T. Barnum.

"The Touch That Failed" covers an episode in the career of Harry Houdini.

"Heroes of Legend" explores the myth of Damon and Pythias.

And a one-pager covering the "Legend of the Gordian Knot."

"Escape Into Darkness."  Norman Price, novelist extraordinary with little or no scruples, was "born to be driftwood."  Price is now resorting to stealing plots from others.  Hoping to fond inspiration, he goes undercover as a Bowery bum, but gets caught up in a robbery attempt and arrested.  It's up to the man he cheated to save him...

"...Death of You" A fantastic World War II story that begins in the years before the was.  Jerry Todd and his pal Hal Sawyer are looking forward to college.  Jerry decides to sell his old jalopy -- which everyone was saying would be the death of him --  to a junk dealer, but not before scratching their initials on the motor.  Time passes.  Pearl Harbor is attacked and Jerry and Hal both enlist in the Marines.   The two are in a pacific jungle where the Japanese are laying a shrapnel barrage loaded with scrap iron.  Hal gets a premonition, which Jerry poo-poos, reminding him that back home they used to say the old jalopy would be the death of them but they were alive anyhow.  An explosion kills them both.  The shell fragment that killed them was made from scrap metal sold to the Japanese a long time ago; etched in the metal were the initials J.T. and H. S.   Two things to point out.  One, Jerry Todd was the main character in a series of sixteen juvenile books published between 1924 and 1940 under the house name "Leo Edwards"; he is not the Jerry Todd in this story,  Two, the Japanese are demeaned by being called "little brown monkeys," "scheming little Nipponese," and "squints" -- understandable because there was a war going on, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth of today's reader.

As I said a mixed bag.  It was if the publishers did not know (or care) what the comic book was.  Still, the cover art with its woodcut effect is great.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=96390&comicpage=&b=i

NO FFB TODAY

Even though I am a technophobe and a Luddite, I do not hate computers.  On the other hand, computers hate me.  More specifically, my computer hates me.  Big time.

So there I was.  Getting ready to write a Forgotten Book review in my usual urbane, literate, and pithy style when my computer suddenly went psycho ex-girlfriend on me.  Passages were deleted with o hope of getting them back, phrases and full sentences suddenly moved to the middle of the wrong paragraphs, the page would suddenly hopscotch back and forth to a 440% magnification, stopping at every magnification in between, sentences would mysteriously capitalize, my screen would refuse to continue down the draft I was writing , and it would take about five efforts to correct a typo or misspelling (and I do tend to make a lot of them), the computer kept switching over without warning to Netflix or Facebook or Kindle, and so on and so on and so on in a purely demonic fashion.  After four hours and three repeated tries to rewrite the post, I finally gave up.

So no post today.

The book I was going to review was The Birds of a Feather Affair, the second of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. paperback originals by Michael Avallone.  A shame, because Avo started it off with a kick-ass paragraph.

Oh, well.

For those interested, there's the link to the book from Luminist Archives:

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/EB/A/Avallone%20-%20The%20Birds-of-a-Feather%20Affair.pdf

Maybe I'll have better luck next week.  I'm thinking of bringing in an exorcist.

DRAGNET: ERIC KELBY -- BODY BURIED IN NURSERY (SEPTEMBER 3, 1949)

The story you about to hear is true.

Only the names have been changed to protect then innocent...

You're a detective sergeant.  You're assigned to homicide detail...

"My partner's Ben Romaro.  The boss is Ed Backstrand, chief of detectives.  My name's Friday."

Kelby called the police a couple of days ago.  His wife was missing.  He thinks she left him.  There's something strange going on here.  If she left him, why didn't she take her clothes, her handbag, her money?  Why did she leave without saying a thing to her son, whom she adored?  And why is Kelby so nonchalant about his missing wife?

Stick with Joe Friday to find out the truth of the matter.

Sit back.  Relax.  Enjoy this "documented drama."  And learn the story from beginning to end, from crime to punishment...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MThDxQd1qIc

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: BLACK STUFF

 "Black Stuff" by Ken Bruen (from Bruen's anthology Dublin Noir, 2006)

We lost one of the truly greats this last Saturday with the passing of Irish crime writer Ken Bruen at the age of 74.  Bruen, who held a doctorate in metaphysics, was a unique voice in the field -- wise, literate, compassionate, whose works were a skillful blend of tragedy, comedy, violence, horror, and humanity, told against a unflinching view of Irish society and economics.  His most popular character, Jack Teylor, an ex-Guarda, manages to maintain his dignity despite a lifetime of horrific happenings.  I first encountered Taylor and Bruen in the 2003 novel  The Magdalene Martyrs, and was stunned by the quality of his work.  Since then I have eagerly read as many of his novels and stories I could get my hands on, ending with last month's Galway's Edge, the 18th (and now last) novel in the Taylor series, which I inhaled just yesterday.  Still, I needed more Bruen, and I came across "Black Stuff" late kast night.

It's a brief story, merely twelve pages long, more of a character sketch embedded in a heist caper.  The protagonist, Phil, is Black Irish.  Not the Black Irish term which was once used to describe Irish refugees of the Great Famine, but the more modern usage describing people of Irish descent with dark colored hair and dark coloring -- more specifically, Irish of African descent.  When Phil, who had a white mother and a one-night-stand father, Dublin was essentially a small town before the wakening of the short-lived Celtic Tiger economy; Phil did not really realize he was Black until he was fourteen; previous to that, then other kids made fun of him because he was shit at hurling.  His mother, whom he loved, spent her life "broke, impoverished, sullen, ill;" but she had instilled one survival tip: "Never, and I mean never, let them know how smart you are."  (After she died, Phil had a mason carve on her gravestone

I

DIDN'T

LET

 THEM

KNOW

Phil has led a ow-level life of crime, keeping himself to himself.  He worked out and it shows.  He has two ruined fingers from an early encounter with a criminal gang from the north.  And he never lets them know how smart he is.

So, one day in a bar, this man enters, pretending somewhat effectively to be an American, calling himself Bowman.  He strikes up a conversation with Phil and, over the next month, meets with him a number of times.  Phil doesn't know what this man's game is but he plays along.  Bowman finally reveals that he is planning to steal a famous painting and wants Phil's assistance; they would split the money they get from it fifty-fifty.  The painting?  Arrangement in Gray and Black, more commonly known as Whistler's Mother, now on a six-month loan to a Dublin museum.  The theft will be timed when there is a window in the security -- "the patrol will be switched, the CCTV is to be revamped, there'll only be two guard on actual watch.  Can you ____ believe it?" 

The heist goes perfectly.  Bowman and Phil are dressed as maintenance men to help them blend in.  Especially in Phil's case: a "sign of the new Ireland, black guy riding am mop, no one blinked an eye.  We'd become America."  The guards are disarmed, the painting stolen, but as they were almost out of the building a soldier came out of nowhere with a gun.  Bowman shot him in the gut, then shot him twice more, just because.

That's when things got hot and Bowman and Phil had to stay below the radar for a month.  Finally, Bowman calls Phil to his apartment: he had received thirty thousand as a down payment on the painting.  Phil finally got a good look at the portrait of Whistler's mother.  'The old lady did indeed look...old.  She was nothing like my mother -- my mother had never sat down in her wretched life,"  Bowman, it turns out has a gun and is a member of an Irish branch of the Ku Klux Klan.

But Phil never let Bowman know how smart he was...

A great story.