Cover Cavalcade

 

JULY IS GOLD KEY HORROR MONTH!

A George Wilson cover from 1964.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Richard Diamond: "Rifle Case" 6/28/53

Someone is trying to steal a new rifle from the gunmaker who designed it. Diamond is hired to protect the man until the gun can be tested. Not surprisingly, the job turns out to be less than straightforward.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

This episode was remade in 1959 as an episode of the TV show Peter Gunn, which was also created by Blake Edwards. Peter Gunn is currently streaming on a number of services--it's worthwhile to watch that episode and compare it to the original radio version.

Make Your Own Bed

 

Make Your Own Bed, released in 1944, is a ton of fun. I love the premise. Alan Hale, Sr. is an eccentric rich guy named Walter Whirtle. He and his wife have trouble keeping servants. After Whirtle (who is also the world's worst driver) insults a police officer over a traffic ticket, he meets a down-on-his-luck private eye named Jerry Curtis, who is in jail because he mistakenly arrested the distric attorney while on his last job.

The P.I is played by Jack Carson, who gives the character the same fast-talking huckster vibe that he gave nearly every other character he ever played. This is fine, because Carson was born to play such roles.

Whirtle comes up with a brilliant plan. Well, if not brilliant, at least its unique. He convinces Curtis that he's beset by Nazi spies (his factory is producing war supplies). He hires Curtis to pose as his butler to catch the spies. Of course, there are no spies, but Whirtle gets a butler out of it. That the butler is a detective who thinks he's looking for spies doesn't matter. He's still a butler.

Determined to make good and catch the spies, Carson brings his girlfriend Susan (Jane Wyman) along to pose as a cook, though she's notable incompetent in the kitchen. So Whirtle gets two servants for the price of one. And to keep these servants on the job, he hires a quartet of radio actors to his home to u pose as suspects. Whirtle also sends some threatening letters to himself. 

Before long, Jerry has heard the actors rehearsing a scene from a radio play, in which they play Nazi spies planning to blow up a factory. Jerry now "knows" they are planning on blowing up Whirtle's factory. 

Misunderstandings and slapstick rapidly ensue, in which Susan "finds out" that Jerry is playing around with the two female actors and Jerry "finds out" Whirtle's wife is having an affair with a neighbor. In addition to demonstrating his obliviousness as a detective, healso doesn't contribute much to Susan's inept attempts to cook meals. There's a scene in which the two are trying to cook dinner that's about 80% as good at the classic Kathern Hepburn tries-to-cook-breakfast scene from Woman of the Year. And that's pretty darn good. 

Oh, and those radio actors pretending to be Nazi spies?  They might not be what they seem to be.

Make Your Own Bed is funny, with Carson, Wyman and Hale lifting an average script to a higher level. Perhaps not on the same level as a Hepburn-Tracy movie, but it'll still make you laugh.

Willy Schultz, Part 8

cover artist uncredited

Fightin' Army #84 (March 1969) picks up right where the last issue left off, with writer Will Franz and artist Sam Glanzman putting Willy Schultz in front of a German firing squad. 

He's soon joined by the surviving British commandoes, who have been forced to surrender. What follows is a very dialogue-heavy scene. This can be a detriment in a medium that is a platform for visual storytelling. But, as I've mentioned before, Franz' scripts can make this work. The British commander gives us a powerful and thought-provoking speech on the nature of war--how it drives men to commit increasingly brutal acts. It's a speech that sets aside larger issues (such as the clear lack of choice in fightng the Nazis), but that's okay. This is commentary on what war forces men to do--what it forces them to become--which is an important point beyond the larger issues of when it may be right to go to war. 

This issue depends on Franz' skill as a writer to make his points clearly and dramatically. It is, after all, a little unlikely that soldiers about to get shot will take the time to give philosophical dissertations. But Franz succeeds in fitting this in to the natural flow of the story he's telling.

Anyway, Ilse, the German nurse Willy met two issues earlier, sees him. That she recognizes him might be a bit of a stretch, since she was recovering from temporary blindness and only sees a blurry image of his face in their earlier meeting. But that's a minor point. It turns out her dad is a general, so she has some pull. She has Willy pulled out from in front of the firing squad and send to a POW camp in Italy. 

Willy feels bad about leaving the commandos to die, but the commander points out it would do no good for Willy to die with them. The issue ends with Willy on a transport plane to Italy.

It's another great issue. Franz, backed by Glanzman's great art, continues to explore important aspects of the effect of war on people and the inherent tragedy of war. It also tells a slambang story and moves Willy out of North Africa and into an important new phase of his lonely war. We'll return to him soon.

Next week, we'll travel back to the Wild West and see how a blind woman helped catch some evil twins.
 

Willy Schultz, part 7

 

cover art by Sam Glanzman

In regards to Willy Schultz's wartime career, there's a time jump between the last issue of Fightin' Army and this one (#83--January 1969). When we left him at the end of the last issue, he was still wandering in the Sahara and wanted for murder by the U.S. Army. This one picks up in the middle of a commando raid on a German supply base. The commandos are British, but Willy, dressed again in a German uniform, is helping them.

At first, it seems like there's a missing chapter. The change in story direction is pretty abrupt and I  am tempted to argue that there SHOULD have been a chapter detailing how Willy hooked up with the commandos. But writer Will Franz explains in a sentence that Willy met them by chance and joined with them pretty much because he has nowhere else to go. And, to be fair, that is enough to tell us what is going on.

Sam Glanzman's art, as always, looks great. As I said, we join the action in the middle of the raid. Willy is in a German uniform, presumably, because they were making use of his knowledge of German to gain access to the base. But everything is out in the open now. Guns are blazing, stuff is blowing up and the commandos are outnumbered & in trouble.

Willy has accepted his role as a soldier, though he still regrets having to shoot Germans in the back to save a few commandos. The British are trying to regroup and retreat when disaster strikes. One of the commandos, mortally wounded, throughs an explosive charge into a nearby tent before he dies. He doesn't realize its a hospital tent. 

Both the art and the narration don't stint on the ensuing horror, as wounded men and medical personnel die in the spreading flames. One dying man stumbles into Willy's arms. He realizes its one of his friends from his time with the German army. There's nothing he can do but watch him die. Willy is then captured and discovered to be one of the commandos.

This chapter ends with Willy about to be executed by a firing squad.

What makes this story work so well is the simple touch of the hospital tent being destroyed by accident. Willy seems to have accepted that his role as a soldier can't be ignored. But we see that no matter what a soldier's intentions, innocent people are going to die in a war. You might be the good guys (and there's no question about the Allies being the good guys during World War II), but war itself is always going to be dirty and horrific. 

Also, the cliffhanger ending is a good one. Altogether, we have yet another strong chapter in this superb series. 

Next week, I think we'll visit with one of Marvel's classic What If tales.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #34: The Mucker

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #34: The Mucker:   Jess, Scott and Tim discuss "The Mucker," a novel from 1914 that mixes adventure together with themes of redemption. Click HERE ...

Cover Cavalcade

 

JULY IS GOLD KEY HORROR MONTH!

This 1972 cover is by George Wilson. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Casey, Crime Photographer: "Loaded Dice" 9/4/47

A friend of Casey is accused of murder. The one clue that might point to the real killer is a pair of crooked dice found in a dead man's pocket.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Soldiers of Misfortune

 

 

cover artist for both issues is Rudolph Belarski. 

For the last two weeks, I've been reviewing stories that appeared in a particular issue of Astounding. I've had a PDF of that issue saved on my tablet for sometime with the intention of reviewing a specific story in it. I'd actually forgotten about it for a time, but finally got around to reviewing not one, but two tales waiting between its covers.

This reminded me that I had several other pulp magazines saved on my tablet for the exact same reason--there's a story in each one I want to review. But the trouble with electronic copies of either books or magazines is that its easy to forget you have them. Well, by golly, I won't forget again! Too much is at stake!

Actually, not much of anything is at stake. But I want to get those stories reviewed before I forget about them once again. So, I'll be catching up on story reviews from the Golden days of the pulp magazines over the course of the next month or so, mixing in occasional other subjects as well.

"Soldiers of Misfortune," by J.D. Newsom, first appeared in the June 1, 1935 issue of Argosy. In fact, it was the cover story. It was reprinted in the October 1940 issue of Foreign Legion Adventures with the same interior illustrations. I've reviewed Newsom's excellent Foreign Legion tales several times before. They are uniformily excellent, but this time Newsom really hits it out of the park.

Kirby Norton is an American sailor on a merchant ship who, during a stopover at Marseille, got really drunk and enlisted in the Legion. He ends up in North Africa. Norton doesn't want to be in the Legion. He wants to go home to New York City. But his enlistement is for five years.

The first half of the novella is a sort of dark comedy, as Norton comes up with a plan to get kicked out of the Legion by pretending not to understand French at all. He actually does, but that's beside the point. He acts as if he can't learn a single word of French, no matter how often that word is screamed at him or how obviously the intent of the order is acted out for him. He ends up getting punished, but he figures he can endure this if the end result is being discharged.

But the Legion refuses to give up on him. He befriends a clerk named Cordelier, who promises to hook him up with a man that can provide him with a false passport and arrangements to get back to the U.S.  This, of course, will cost money. Cordelier takes Norton for every cent the American has, then forgets about him.

This leads to a wonderfully described, knock-down, drag-em-out fist fight. That, in turn, leads to Norton spending 18 months in prison before being assigned to a unit helping put down a rebellion in Southeast Asia. 

At this point, the story shifts in tone. The heat, the leaches, the fear, the bloody death of fellow soldiers, the exhausting effort to carve through even a few yards of foliage... all of this is brought to life by Newsom in just a few paragraphs. 

During the confusion of a battle, with a large part of Norton's unit accidentally cut down by one of its own machine guns, Norton once again meets Cordelier. He's tempted to shoot, but can't bring himself to do so. Cordelier doesn't feel the same way. Now a sergeant, he sends Norton out into no-man's-land to deliver a message to another unit. Then Cordelier tries to pot his old enemy with a rifle.

All this leads to Norton finally deserting, befriending the leader of the resistance and joining that cause. Here, Newsom deals with the evils of colonialism in very straightforward terms. But he also gives us a very cynical take on freedom fighters, the politics of resistance and human nature in general. As the story builds to a climax, Newsom learns that he can't trust anyone and that even the people he's been fighting for--the "good guys"--might be willing to sell him out if they can benefit from doing so.

Newsom, of course, wasn't trying to predict the future of Southeast Asia. But it fits in well with the theme of this story that, in real life, resistance against colonialism eventually led to the establishment of a ruthless dictatorship by people who started as freedom fighters. I'm writing this post on the day before July 4 and I have to say that reading "Soldiers of Misfortune" really makes me appreciate our Founding Fathers. Flawed as they were, they really strived to create a free society. That doesn't happen very often. 

You can read "Soldiers of Misfortune" online HERE. 

Eva the Imp

 

cover artist unknown

I love stumbling across obscure and forgotten comic book characters. Little Eva ran for 31 issues during the early and mid-1950s. Two issues of reprints by another publisher appeared in 1957, titled Eva the Imp. I kind of like the latter title better. 

Little Eva #7 (April 1953) includes the story "Watch Dog"--writer and artist both unknown. Eva has done what she sees as a favor for the boys of the neighborhood, but they are busy playing war and won't listen to her.

Well, the boys soon find out what she's done. She's fixed up their playhouse with curtains and flowers! She's even cleaned the floor!  And, well... THIS ABOMINATION WILL NOT STAND! 

Boys will be boys and they've soon declared the curtains to be bandages for their "war wounds" and the flowers become medals. Then a really big stray dog wanders in and they make him a watch dog to keep Eva out while they go back on patrol.

Eva brings some more flowers into the clubhouse while they are gone. When she sees the curtains and flowers she brought earlier are gone, she assumes the big dog ate them and, therefore, must be hungry. So she gets some bones from the local butcher. When the boys come back, she sneaks out a window, but leaves the bones behind.

The boys think the bones belong to Eva. Obviously, the girl has been eaten by the dog!

They begin to cry, but Eva soon appears at the window. Their grief turns to anger and they chase the poor girl. But it turns out that the big dog LIKES girls:

The story is sincerely funny--especially the gag about the dog having supposedly eaten Little Eva. The art is clean, effective in both telling the story well and adding to the humor. Little Eva's superpower may have been nothing more than being adorable,but, by golly, that's not a bad superpower at all.

You can read this one online HERE.

Next week, we return to the Lonely War of Willy Schultz.