SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: ARREST

"Arrest" by Donald E. Westlake (from Manhunt, January 1958; reprinted in Giant Manhunt, 1958; in Opening Shots, edited by Lawrence Block, 2000; and in The Best of Manhunt 2, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer, 2020)

Let's face it, first published stories are not necessarily good stories; they are the ones, usually, that finally made it across and editor's desk and happened to fill a need that may or may not have required good writing.  As a rule, first stories are passable fiction.

Donald E. Westlake's "Arrest" was actually his third published story, but it was his first published crime story; it followed a brief six-page science fiction story published two years earlier and another brief sory in the early men's magazine Rogue in 1957.  At the time Westlake was working for famed (or, perhaps, infamous) literary agent Scott Meredith while at the same time submitting his own stories to Meredith.  One of the stories finally hit and was accepted for Manhunt, the hardboiled crime digest secretly edited by Meredith under another name; Manhunt, it turns out, was a virtual closed shop for Meredith's clients, although it would occasionally range further (and pay a bit  more more money) to get "big-name" writers to promote on its covers.  (Meredith was noted for being penny-pinching, the literary agent equivalent of Hugo Gernsback, perhaps.)

William Winthrop, 24, comes home to his apartment, gets a gun from the bureau drawer and puts it to his head.  He can't pull the trigger.  He throws the gun at a mirror, breaking it, has a few drinks, smokes a few cigarettes, then dresses in a conservative gray suit.  And waits.  Soon the police arrive.  He calls a friend -- a lawyer -- who says he wants nothing to do with him.  He offers the cop a drink, which is refused, and then they head off together to where he will be booked for his mother's murder.

A mood piece, nothing special, but fairly evocative.  Even with this rude beginning, there are hints of Westlake's future talent,

Westlake, of course, would go on to become one of the most honored and respected mystery writers of the last half of the twentieth century, the creator of violent thief Parker and of bumbling thief John Dortmunder -- both highly popular and influential characters.  He was a three-time Edgar winner, one of the few to win in three different categories -- best novel, best short story, and best motion picture screenplay.  He was named a MWA Grand Master in 1993.  All of his books are highly recommended.

OVERLOOKED FILM: THANK YOU, JEEVES! (1936)

If you are a P. G. Wodehouse purist you might not fully appreciate this adaptation of the master's 1934 novel -- actually, the very first full-length novel following a successful series of short stories.

Bertie Wooster is here and Jeeves is here and the book title is here, but that's about it.  The plot and characters have been changed almost unrecognizably.  In the  novel, Sir Roderick Glossip, the famous nerve specialist, hopes to marry the aunt of Bertie's friend Lord "Chuffy" Chuffnell, while Chuffy has fallen in love with one of Bertie's ex-fiances, Pauline Stoker, whose father Chuffy hopes to sell his falling-down manor.  Bertie, eager to please his old pal, plans to make Chuffy so jealous that he will propose to Pauline.  Things get out of hand, everyone displays their stupidity, and Jeeves is left to sort out the mess.

For the film, say goodbye to Chuffy, his aunt, Roderick Glossip, Pauline and her father.

From IMDb:  "Erudite manservant Jeeves hopes to keep his frivolous employer Bertie out of new harrowing adventures, but a damsel in distress, carrying half of some mysterious plans, intrudes on their London flat one rainy night.  Bertie follows her to the country hotel Mooring Manor, prepared to do slapstick battle with crooks posing as Scotland Yard men."  

Featuring David Niven as Bertie, Arthur Treacher as Jeeves, and Virginia Field as the mysterious woman.  Buried down in the cast is Willie Best as Drowsy, a hitchhiking saxophonist who helps them catch the crooks.  

Niven makes a good Bertie and Treacher made his bones playing Hollywood's idea of the perfect butler in the 1930s.  Treacher went on to lend his name to the fast food franchise Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, beginning in 1969; it had 826 stores in the 1970s, but has dwindled down to just four stand-alone stores in northeastern Ohio today.  Sic transit gloria mundi.  Wodehouse, BTW, did not care for Treacher's performance"  "Awful. The supercilious ,manner of his is all wrong for Jeeves."   Complaining about the film adaptation, Wodehouse said, "They didn't use a word of my story, substituting another written by some studio hack."

That studio hack was actually two people, Joseph Hoffman (The Officer and the Lady, Against All Flags, Has Anybody Seen My Gal) and Stephen Gross (his only screenplay).  Directed  by Arthur Greville Collins (Paradise Isle, Seven Little Australians, Strong Is the Seed).  

Despite the butchery to the source material, Thank You, Jeeves! can be a pleasant and amusing way to spend your 57 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yk3lSER9I&t=6s

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS, MRS. MILLER AND BILLY LEE RILEY!

October 5th was a monumental day in current culture.  On this day in 1921, the World Series (the New York Giants vs. the New York Yankees, with the Giants taking the series five games to three in a nest of nine contest)was broadcast on radio for the first time; in 1947, President Harry Truman made the first televised Oval Office address; in 1962, the first of the James Bond film series, Dr. No, had its premiere; on the same day in 1962, the Beatles released their first single, "Love Me Do"; and in 1982, Tylenol recalled products in Chicago after seven people who shown to have died from bottles tampered with cyanide, leading to stricter nation-wide safety packaging.

October 5 was also the birthday of both Larry Fine of The Three Stooges and Roy Kroc of McDonald's in 1902; Bil Keane of The Family Circus in 1922; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Steve Miller in 1943; and British authors Peter Ackroyd (1949) and Clive Barker (1952).

But a couple of musical Libras may have flown under your radar.  But, fear not, I am here to correct that possible oversight.

I hesitate to call Elva Ruby Miller (1907-1997) musical, but she did have an astonishing career as a novelty singer in the 1960s.  She was a poorly trained mezzo-soprano with a torturous vibrato and a willingness to ignore both standard pitch and tempo.  Think three stray cats, a lovesick peacock, and a dyspeptic screech owl being forced through a meat grinder at the same time.  At age twenty-seven, she began studying music and voice at Pomona College, eventually recording several self-financed projects, while describing singing as a hobby.  In 1960, radio disc jockey Gary Owens featured her on his program, which led to music arranger Fred Bock encouraging her to perform contemporary popular songs.  She was signed to Capitol Records in 1965, which promoted her amateurish style.  During recording sessions, she was often ahead of or behind the beat; she complained that the studio released the worst of her takes.  Her first album, Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits (1966) sold 250,000 copies ion its first three weeks.  She was a frequent guest on talk shows, inclulding The Merv Griffith Show, where I would occasionally watch her.

"Downtown"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw07CDid0JM

"Green Tambourine"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmR1skSQKg

"A Hard Day's Night"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2wheSpxL94

"These Boots Are Made for Walkin' "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgoGq6PTXZ4

"Strangers in the Night"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV0MtVWIN8Y

"A Lover's Concerto"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqlX88H4_Cg

Billy Lee Riley (1933-2009) was signed  by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in 1955, but was unhappy when Phillips kept diverting to promote Jerry Lee Lewis's career instead of his.  As with many other artists on Sun Records, chart success eluded him.  His talent far outshone his recording success, although he was a strong influence on following artists.  One of the great rockabilly artists

"Red Hot"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxt_7sD9znM

"Flyin' Saucer rock and Roll"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxt_7sD9znM

"Speed Lovers" the title song from a bottom of the barrel 1966 stock car racing flick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOP2WqNqD8c

"Rock with Me Baby"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhvbHH9ah58

"Baby Please Don't go"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btt6-naL9XU

"Trouble Bound"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv5ZJ8LP5M0

"Open the Door Richard"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-7cmbcRlHk&list=PLAA2DD72376EBE0EC&index=18

"I Hear You Knockin' "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQYo7QWQN0&list=PLAA2DD72376EBE0EC&index=21

"Mountain of Love"  NOT by Billy Lee Riley, but he and Roland James produced this hit on their Rita Records for Harold Dorman; Riley can be heard here on bass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y72SaV8al5k

HYMN TIME

The Carter Family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrIM9U4mfpY

MAXIMO THE AMAZING SUPERMAN (1940)

 "The hero of this story, Maximo Miller, is a new kind of superman.  He is gifted with a superbrain which he learns how to use to do things which no other man can do.  And that is what makes the tale."

Writer Russell R. Winterbotham (1904-1971), who also penned mysteries as "J. Harvey Bond", is perhaps best known for his western and science fiction stories, although for a period in the forties he wrote some sixty Big Little Books -- including three about Maximo.  Big Little Books were a popular juvenile series of cheaply made novels, measuring about 3 5/8 inches wide, 4 1/2 inches high, and were about one  inch thick, and featured text on the left hand page and a line drawing illustration on the right.  Issued by Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, they typically featured popular comic strip, radio, television, or movie heroes, and were sold for dime (later 15 cents) through such retail outlets as Woolworth's.  The first Big Little Book -- The Adventures of Dick Tracy -- went on sale in December 1932; the series. with a later name change to Better Little Books, continued into the 1960s; more than 1300 titles were published. with some 508 core titles issued between 1932 and 1949 by Whitman.  The Big Little Books were quick, easy reading, well-suited to their core audience.  Topday, they are very popular in the collector's market.

As Maximo watches a speeding roadster approach a railroad intersection, he knows the young female driver does not see the approaching train.  A fatal crash seems imminent, but then:

"Some powerful new force surged through his muscles, seeming to leap from his body toward the speeding motor car.

"The young man's nerves tingled as if some unseen magnetic force were whipping energy through the ir around him."

Then, by golly, the car rises through the air and avoids the on-rushing train.  The girl is saved, and Maximo is left wondering exactly what happened.  The girl, Ella Arvid, is the daughter of a professor at Curfman College.  she said, "He'd be greatly interested in what you did just now.  You see he's a physicist and he has always said that science has never been able to plumb the depths of human brain power."

So off they go to plumb the depths of Maximo's brain power.  Along the way they meet danger, a vicious gang, and spies out to do dirt to America.

Not great literature perhaps, but a serviceable story to entertain a young kid in the 1940s -- and perhaps to also entertain you.  Let's see.  All three Maximo books are available online at Comic Book Plus; here's the link to the first:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=102552

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE GAMECOCK MURDERS

The Gamecock Murders by Frank Gruber  (originally published as The Scarlet Feather, 1948; reprinted in paperback as The Gamecock Murders, 1949)

Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg, Frank Gruber's hapless detecting heroes, return in their eleventh full-length outing to join the dangerous world of cock-fighting.  The pair are con men -- glib, impetuous Fletcher and stolid mass of muscle Cragg -- whose main source of income is hawking a book on the secrets of Sampson (Sampson being Cragg, who displayed his strength by expanding his chest to break iron chains binding him during a medicine show-like spiel from Fletcher).  Because Johnny is so impetuous, the pair often lose what money they make and are currently scraping for rent and food money; somehow they often come across murders which Fletcher is forced to solve, while during every case they make (and lose) vast amounts of cash.  As a plot device, the formula is well-worn  but extremely workable, making the pair's adventures bright, easy reads.

This time they are in Chicago, broke and about to be kicked out of their rented room and having no money for their last two meals.  It's a cold November day, and the pair are walking despondently along the deserted lake front when a nearby car stops.  A young woman in a mink coat gets out and walks to the edge of the water.  She drops her coat and jumps into the lake, intending to drown herself.  Johnny dives in after her.  She fights him and Johnny has to knock her out to rescue her.  The papers in her care say that she is Lois Tancred and give her address as a tony neighborhood on Lake Shore Drive.  Sam bundles her into the car and Johnny drives them to her home, a large mansion.  They bring her to her door where she is received by her imperious mother, who ushers her in and slams the door in Johnny and Sam's faces.  In the glove compartment of Lois's Cadillac coupe, Johnny finds an envelope containing a cryptic message, Come Tomorrow, and a red feather...

This leads Johnny and Sam to the Midwest Poultry Breeders' Exhibition where prize gamefowl are on display and the body of one of the owners is found underneath his chicken coop.  The dead man is the one who sent the mysterious note to Lois, and she shows up, not realizing that he had been killed.

Suddenly Johnny and Sam are in the midst of a violent world of cockfighting where millionaires indulge in the blood sport, and where they come across a wealthy breeder of Jungle Shawls (a prize breed of fighting cocks), a respected doctor who breeds Whiteshackles (another type of fighting cock), a shady publisher of a cheap journal about game birds, an aw-shucks barber from a small town in Iowa who has great confidence in Big Red, his fighting bird, and has a habit of always winning at cards and dice, a big-time Chicago gambler, blackmail, a second murder, and a number of vicious thugs -- all while trying to avoid an arrogant homicide detective and their landlord who wants his rent.

The pace is fast and furious and ends with Johnny trapped with a pair of violent cocks with three-inches of sharp steel gaffs on their feet and a thirst for Johnny's blood...that's right, our hero has to face off against killer chickens in a harrowing climax.  Johnny survives and manages to wrap things up in the very last pages, nailing the killer and exposing a large money-making plot.

 Over on The Thrilling Detective Website, Kevin Burton Smith quotes one critic who said that Gruber used the plotting of Gardner and the humor of Latimer in his Johnny Fletcher books, especially the humor of Latimer.  A pretty good description.  Smith went on to write, "[E]very one [of the Fletcher books] one I've read has been a fast-paced, entertaining romp.  Not essential, maybe, but fun, fun, fun."

Just a few minor notes.  The dentist from Iowa is named Otto Bender; I can't help but wonder is that is a nod to Chicago-born Otto Binder, a fellow pulpster and a comic book writer (he created Supergirl, among many other accomplishments); just a thought I had with nothing to back it up.

The edition I read was the 1949 Signet paperback.  On chapter nineteen, the book dropped a complete lie, replacing it with one from three paragraphs later.  A  minor and confusing irritation, perhaps, but one that grated on me.  Publisher should do better.

The last page of the book had a three-quarter's page advertisement of Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury, which Signet had published in paperback a year before.  The book, which had modest sales in hardcover, had become a runaway best-seller in the Signet edition.  For some reason, this advertisement made me smile.

All of which has nothing to do with Gruber's book itself, which retains a spot very near the top of my "Books I Like" list.

THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM: FIRST EPISODE (MAY 2, 1932)

Jack Benny was the comedian's comedian with his impeccable timing and his dry self-deprecating humor.  Benny parlayed a minor career as a vaudeville violinist into a low-key comedy act which was featured in nightclubs and in Broadway revues.  A brief, unsuccessful stint in film in 1929 eventually brought him back to Broadway, where he began thinking about the new medium of radio.  He made his radio debut early in 1932 on The Ed Sullivan Show and attracted the attention of the NBC Commercial Program Department, which auditioned him that April and signed him to star in The Canada Dry Program on the NBC Blue Network on Mondays and Wednesdays; after six months the show moved to CBS on Mondays and Thursdays.  Canada Dry dropped its sponsorship in late January 1933, and  by mid-March the show was re-tooled to become The Chevrolet Program on the NBC Red Network, switching to NBC Blue, then NBC Red, the back to NBC Blue before landing on CBS for its final six years; at various times it was called The Jack Benny Program, The Jack Benny Show, The General Tire Review, The Jell-O Program, The Grape Nuts Flakes Program, and The Lucky Strike Program.  Whatever its name, it ran from May 2, 1932 to May 22, 1955.  At the same time, Benny made his television debut on a CBS affiliate in 1949, and made his full network debut on CBS on October 28, 1950.  Benny's television program ran for fifteen years -- fourteen years on CBS and one final year on NBC.   Between his radio and television shows, The Jack Benny Program was on the air for thirty-three years; along the way it defined and influenced comedy on a manner that lasts to this day.

Benny's original radio show was basically a musical program with Benny introducing acts and providing stand-up.  As the show found its footing, sketch comedy was included and Benny's on-stage persona was more firmly defined -- the stinginess, the ego, the Maxwell, the "feud" with Fred Allen, Jack's attempts at the violin, the back and forth between him and Rochester, the drunken orchestra, Benny's basement vault, the perpetual age of 39, the frustration with Mel Blanc...and so much more.  Benny's in-house gang, which included his wife Mary Livingstone, announcer Don Wilson, Phil Harris, and tenor Kenny Bake (later replaced  by Dennis Day), all contributed to the sophisticated madness that defined Benny's program.

Here is where it all started -- Jack Benny's first radio episode.  From small beginnings...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtxj_7bGhBI