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Having a "Million Pound Day"; or, the Case of the Breathless Blogger

Well, I was just trying to get into Hollywood Horror House (also known as Savage Intruder), an obscure, late 1960s Hagsploitation movie starring Miriam Hopkins, a video tape of which was sent to me (and is being reviewed here) by a connoisseur of camp, when I was seized by a violent coughing fit. Judging from the opening slasher scene, the film itself seems quite capable of irritating the throat muscles; but this was the oft-mentioned, nagging cold I have not been able to get off my chest ever since I caught it one rainy November night in New York City.

Being even more stubborn than the cough, I decided to tough it out once again—until I was entirely out of breath by about 2 AM. So, after a trip to the emergency room, I am loaded with steroids, sucking on my inhaler, and ready for another dose of murder and transmogrification.

As I remarked in the previous post, I have been following the adventures of the Saint in a series of RKO thrillers that aired on BBC 2 in early January (after having missed the movies when they were shown elsewhere a few months ago). The first film adaptation of a Saint story was the 1938 thriller The Saint in New York. Except for a bit of cross-dressing, it is very much a gangster movie fit for a Robin Hood of modern crime rather than one of those cosmopolished capers in which a smartly-suited man about town amuses himself, like a Nick without his Nora, by solving the odd case of murder between Martinis.

The Saint Strikes Back [my thanks to Saint expert Burl Barer, for editing here], the second Simon Templar story to be adapted for the screen, is somewhat closer to the Nick-and-Nora formula, with Simon being paired with a lovely—if preposterously coiffed—sidekick who actually kicks instead of just standing aside. Author Leslie Charteris disliked the film intensely—or at least its star, George Sanders.

As Barer shares in his book on the multimediated Saint (The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television), Charteris would have preferred a Cary Grant; but the studio was not in need of, nor willing to pay for, such star power to churn out a potentially long-lasting, low-budget franchise.

Shortly after striking back in San Francisco, Sander returned as The Saint in London, based on Charteris’s 1931 story “Black Face.” Retitled “The Million Pound Day,” it appeared in the first Saint omnibus, the 1951 paperback edition of which (pictured above) I found some years back at the Black Orchid, a mystery bookstore in Manhattan. So, I released my copy of Arrest the Saint from its wrapper at last, started to read and, inevitably, compare.

My intention was not to go in search of the real Simon Templar, but to find out what had been done to it, for better or worse. Most of the Saint adventure starring Vincent Price, one of the Templars of the airwaves, were written especially for the medium in which they played out. To my surprise, “The Million Pound Day” has all the makings of a terrific radio play.

Indeed, Charteris, (who, as I mentioned earlier, did write for radio), clearly acknowledges his interest in audio thrills: “Simon heard the juicy whuck! of his shoe making contact. . . . The wheezy phe-e-ew of electrically emptied lungs merged into the synchronised sound effects, and ended in in a little grunting cough.” The story, unlike the film, opens in “impenetrable” darkness. The first sound we hear (or are told about) is that most impressive of sirens—the scream of a human being in peril. Footsteps are approaching—a “wild tattoo” of running feet that spelled “stomach-sinking dread” and “stark terror.”

Rather than being pointed to a crook whose capture requires the Saint’s reckless, beyond-the-law approach to matters of turpitude, Simon finds himself in a dangerous situation of uncertain moral boundaries. Whereas the film shows a duel between two men, with the police more than halfway on the Saint’s side, the short story offers a free-for-all by twilight. “But the Queensberry Rules were strictly observed. There was no hitting below belts, which were worn loosely around the ankles,” Templar remarks nonchalantly after his first encounter with the criminal and his prey.

Whether the endangered one is a rogue, a gentleman, or both, matters little. Simon rescues the hunted, knocks out the “gorilla” in pursuit, and rushes the victim to a hotel near his own apartments in London. As a result of his selfless efforts to save the life of a stranger, the Saint is being suspected by the police of having committed the crime himself.

Hollywood movies tend to draw far clearer lines; and Charteris’s intriguing ambiguities were lost in the process.

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Original? Sin!: Romancing the Reproducers (Part Two)

Well, I did say “romancing,” didn’t I? It may have sounded more like “pooping on” in the entry I balderdashed off yesterday. The accompanying image, by the way, referred to the new television series Balderdash and Piffle (on BBC2 in the UK), which invites the public to challenge, edit and amend the Oxford English Dictionary. More about that in a few days, perhaps. So, why “romancing”?

For one thing, I am very much attracted to and fascinated by remakes and adaptations. I am not one of those clamoring for so-called original material in favor of a smart revision or charming homage. Let’s face it: “originality” is a downright prelapsarian concept. There are only so many juicy stories to tell. We should not expect to be handed another forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge; which does not mean that we should settle for any old lemon.

Reworking a so-called classic can be a questioning of its definitiveness, its very status. It can also mean a translation of a great idea or worthwhile thought into a context and language more accessible to present-day audiences, thus a way of keeping the original alive in spirit, rather than slaughtering it.

As diverting as both King Kong and The Producers might have been, I feel they have failed on both accounts. Yet even though I am not infrequently disappointed with remakes and sequels (which are often remakes in disguise), I seek them out again and again, embracing them—in concept, at least—as an alternative form of criticism.

Last night, for instance, I watched The Saint in London (1939), which aired during the first week of January 2006 on BBC 2 in a series of four Saint adventures. The movie is a reworking of Leslie Charteris’s mystery “The Million Pound Day.” So, I could not refrain from digging up that story from my library and will probably report my comparison in the near future, drawing on the 1940s Saint radio series as well.

I felt compelled to do the same after watching King Kong, of which I found an undated radio adaptation, with Captain Englehorn as narrator. And I might take the same multimedia approach to the Charlie Chan mystery, The Black Camel, having recently come across a first edition of the 1933 omnibus The Celebrated Cases of Charlie Chan at a local second-hand bookstore.

Tracing an adaptation to its source—not necessarily an original itself—often enhances my appreciation or understanding of a work and its workings. It does not follow that the older version is superior by virtue of its antecedents, even though our fondness for it may make us sceptical of any attempts at revision.

While in London, I saw two 1930s plays. One was the Kaufman and Hart comedy Once in a Lifetime, the other And Then There Were None. The latter is based on the 1939 Agatha Christie novel in which ten strangers find themselves on a remote island, murdered, one by one, by an unknown adversary among them. Rene Clair’s 1945 film adaptation is a marvel of both atmosphere and fidelity—right until the very end. One reviewer having his say on the internet movie database (IMDb) remarks that the novel’s ending “would never *ever* work in a dramatized setting, film or stage”—but Kevin Elyot’s new stage adaptation proved him wrong. I couldn’t wait for the play to be over. Not because it was so awful, not because I wanted to know the identity of the murderer (familiar to me from book and film)—but because I needed to see what was being done to the ending. A very satisfying counting down of corpses it turned out to be.

Once in a Lifetime—staged by the National Theatre, no less—was dead on arrival. Even the spirit of nostalgia, if I were possessed by it, could not assist in animating this propped up carcass. Period costumes, smart sets, and fidelity to the script—itself much in need of tightening and deserving of fresher jokes—are no substitute for a director’s knowing and assured handling of material that was still relevant and topical in 1930 (the advent of cinema’s sound era), but that now comes across as a quaint and pointless revisitation of Singin’ in the Rain—without the Singin’. A soggy muddle indeed.

The program for the show supplied a “Once in a Lifetime Glossary” to an audience confronted with a slew of 75-year-old in-jokes. What’s left is a dim farce of decidedly low wattage. Very few directors can work up and sustain the energy to prevent the potentially zany from being plain dull.

In short, rummaging through remakes and revivals can be a disenchanting exercise; but there are rewards in romancing the reproducers, especially if they take you to the occasional gem you might have otherwise overlooked.

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Original? Sin! Romancing the Reproducers (Part One)

Well, it seems that complimentary wireless internet access is not yet a standard feature of the average London hotel room. Jury’s Inn, Islington, for instance, charges £10 per day for a broadband connection. That’s about 20 to 25 percent of the cost for a room, and as such no piffling add-on to your bill. So I felt compelled to take a prolonged but not unwelcome break from blogging, taking the small fortune thus saved to the theater box office, the movies, and the temples of high art. Meanwhile, my lingering cold (the New York acquisition mentioned previously) was worsening into something well-nigh debilitating; a numb skull and eyeballs ablaze in their dried up sockets kept me from keeping up with the out-of-date—ever the broadcastellan motto—for another week.

Time healing (or hardening you into accepting) most anything eventually, I am returning at last with something approaching gusto and will try now to sum up my recent pop cultural experiences in a few lines that, it is hoped, add up to a composition fit for your perusal.

Even though I have used the phrase myself, I have always pitied those who, when asked “What’s new?” merely offer the wan reply of “Same old, same old.” There is an art to finding the new in the old—and those who don’t possess this life-skill are likely to be miserable, dissatisfied creatures. There is a difference, however, between making the old merely seem new—which is a form of deception—and making new what merely seemed old—which is a philosophy. Hollywood has always been great at deception; but either its powers or my willingness to be duped are beginning to fade with age.

Take The Producers and King Kong, for instance. In the theater, where revisiting old favorites generally means playing it safe, revivals can be corny or cozy, as Once in a Lifetime and And Then There Were None demonstrated to me. At the museum, people are forever flocking to see the oldest and most reproduced objects of visual culture, such as those on display in the exhibition Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape. And on the radio . . . ahh, now there’s a repository for the lost and found. Listen!

The Producers hoofed into UK theaters on what is celebrated here as Boxing Day, which is precisely when I saw it. Nothing screams indifference louder than rows of empty seats on opening night (make that “matinee”). I’m not sure whether the Bialystock and Bloom formula of making money by staging a flop will serve those involved in bringing back the original leads of the stage remake of the 1968 film.

I have seen the stage musical twice; back in September 2003 at the St. James Theater in New York City, with John Treacy Egan and Don Stephenson heading the cast; and again in January 2005 starring Lee Evans and Brad Oscar at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London. Watching a filmed musical is like clutching an opera glass—parts at the expense of the sum. As a motion picture, The Producers was all picture and little motion. Opportunities to flesh out the Little Old Lady Land routine as some suitably bizarre Technicolor spectacle or to go all Busby Berkley with the Swastika dance were squandered in this stagy hokum of hummable tunes and ho-hum jokes.

And King Kong? While hardly an abject failure, this Titanicized remake of Jurassic Park (or the 1925 film adaptation of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World) comes across like a momentarily diverting thrill ride rather than a definitive version of a cinematic classic, let alone anything worthy of a nook in a time capsule.

Like The Producers, which mainly serves to preserve the performances of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick for posterity, King Kong makes little effort to be of its time, to provide any commentary save the by now tiresome postmodernist winks of self-reflexivity. The 1933 film smartly commented on the Great Depression, on the big city dreams gone bust; Peter Jackson’s film recreates the era with all the passion of a miniature train collector (from the shantytowns in Central Park to the Amos ‘n’ Andy sign in Times Square), but has little to say about our times.

Even when referencing Conrad’s familiar and perennially relevant novella The Heart of Darkness, the flashy new King Kong, unlike Apocalypse Now, does this pointlessly. Nor were the sexual tensions in this love triangle played out any more overtly than in the Hollywood pre-code version dreamed up by Cooper and Schoedsack. Might not there be accommodation for a few comments on, say, America’s anxieties about the constitution of marriage, terrorism and its countermeasures, or the future of immigration in a melodrama about an abducted alien forced into slave labor and desperate enough to die for a dream the realization of which those professing to be civilized are prepared to prevent at all cost?

It was beauty killed the beast, all right; but it’s a lack of vision that’s killing the movies. As the considerable decline in revenues suggests, the traditional cinema is about to die out like vaudeville; interactive computer games for the sit-at-home folk are taking their place. No longer able, let alone content, to follow the storylines so carelessly strung together by today’s filmmakers, audiences will want to create their own stories with the narrative fragments tossed to them by the Xbox builders now axing box office profits . . .

Hold on, while I am applying a fresh coat of Vicks VapoRub. Better make that “See you tomorrow.” Promise!

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On This Day in 1945: Katharine Hepburn Acts Like It Is Nineteen Thirty-Three

Well, the past three weeks or so have been rather trying. My New York City souvenir proves to be one of the most adhesive colds I’ve ever had the misfortune to catch. I’ve slipped up on several occasions composing my blog entries—and am indebted to those who pointed it out to me. For weeks now I have not been able to enjoy my daily dose of classic Hollywood. You know there’s something amiss when you, an ardent movie buff, find yourself dozing off while watching some of the finest motion pictures of Hollywood’s golden age. Over the past few weeks I’ve been falling asleep during or failing to follow film classics including (in order of their disappearance before my eyes) the exotic Greta Garbo vehicle Mata Hari; Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People; Garson Kanin’s Bachelor Mother; the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Carousel; and The Milky Way starring my favorite comedian, Harold Lloyd. What will this cold deprive me of next!

Now, tonight I was determined to take in another holiday themed radio play—and, having selected an hourlong recording, I was anxious to put my attention to the test. Instead of nodding off, I found myself laughing and shedding tears as I listened to Erik Barnouw’s adaptation of Little Women, first heard on this day, 23 December, in 1945 on the Theatre Guild program.

Barnouw, who later became one of the first historians of American broadcasting (and who recalled one of his experiences adapting plays for the Theatre Guild program in Media Marathon, pictured above), chopped up Louisa May Alcott’s beloved story so expertly that it comes across as whole and rich and unhurried. The success of this production is in large part due to the passionate performance of Katharine Hepburn as Jo, a role she first took on back in 1933, when she appeared in George Cukor’s cinematic rendering of the 1868 original.

Now, Ms. Hepburn’s voice aged rather more rapidly than her exterior; or at least it proved more difficult to cover up the brittleness of her vocal chords than it is to apply fresh paint to pallid or freckled cheeks. Generally, radio served aging actors quite well; but Ms. Hepburn, then merely 38 years old, sounded considerably older, especially when heard among the youthful voices of the three women who played her sisters. Since she also told the story in retrospect, however, this did not create much of a problem; besides, Hepburn’s enthusiasm and vigor readily assist the listener in imagining her as the quick-tempered and sharp-tongued Jo March, whose “ambition was to do something very splendid.”

Hepburn did something splendid that night, as did Oskar Homolka in the role of the Professor who wins Jo’s heart. The wounds of war were still fresh that Christmas—so Professor Bhaer was turned into an Austrian, instead of being Alcott’s idea of a “regular German—rather stout, with brown hair tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes [Jo] ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one’s ears good, after our sharp or slipshod American gabble.” With the exception of a line from Goethe, this adaptation cuts most references to and expressions in German, which feature so prominently in Alcott’s novel.

Still, after those two previously discussed holiday plays on Suspense—the second of which I apparently forgot as soon as I had heard it—this intelligible and charming aural production of Little Women was a joy not behold. “‘I wish it was Christmas or New Year’s all the time. Wouldn’t it be fun?’ answered Jo, yawning dismally.” I am yawning, too, now; but I am glad to have stayed awake long enough to see Jo and the Professor happily united.

Now it is time to pack my suitcase once again. I’m off to the south of Wales and to London thereafter. So (as not to be forced into perpetuating the unfortunate “Happy Holidays”/”Merry Christmas” debate), I’ll say in my native German, “Frohe Weihnachten,” one and all!

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On This Day in 1937: Santa Claus Vows to Go on Strike

Well, it is high yuletide by now, but some of us are still not ready for the annual gift exchange. Finding the right presents for those we love or feel obligated to honor with more or less well-chosen stocking stuffers sure can be a challenge and a chore. It can also be a great joy—but that just doesn’t make for compelling drama or brisk comedy. On this day, 22 December, in 1937, US radio’s foremost satirist, Fred Allen, told listeners of Santa Claus’s own difficulties administering holiday cheer, experiences so disheartening that the man in the red suit threatened to go on strike.

Maybe sit-down Santa was a member of New York City’s Transit Workers’ Union. But that is just so 2005! The ever-topical Allen hardly requires any assistance from me, even though a few footnotes for his jokes might be in order after all these years. That December evening in 1937, Allen turned the gift-swapping season into an occasion for political commentary as he poked fun at the big government of the Roosevelt Administration. The play produced by the Mighty Allen Art Players, the comedian’s imaginary theatre company, was a “Christmas fable” titled “Santa Claus Sits Down; or, Jingle Bells Shall Not Ring Tonight.”

It dramatizes Santa’s misadventures in generosity, his life as a misunderstood and unappreciated, sack-carrying purveyor of joy. Some two thousand years ago, he presented Nero with a new lighter; you know what happened next. Even less fortunate was his encounter with young Bobby Burns, the aspiring Scottish poet, for whom Santa had a “rhyming dictionary” on his sleigh. While the young versifier was delighted to receive this highly useful tome, he simply could not accept it as a present. Instead, Santa was thrown in the “booby hatch” for the lunacy of giving away free stuff. Worse still was Santa’s meeting with Paul Revere, who fired shots at the jolly one for being a “Redcoat.”

All this lies in the past, however. Under the Roosevelt Administration, Santa’s woes are strictly of the bureaucratic kind. With charity and good will so thoroughly organized, he has become quite obsolete. Apparently working overtime, the head of the “Hummingbird Conservation Project” has just given away two million dollars for a “hummingbird community bird bath in Florida” when Santa drops in. The official doesn’t quite know what to make of the kind stranger with the bag: “Santa Claus? One of the Wagner Act Clauses?” No, Santa corrects him, “I’m a mystical creature.” The Hummingbird conservationist assumes him to be a “friend of Jim Farley,” one of Roosevelt’s closest political advisors, but insists that the old man’s services are no longer required.

So, why is there no use for good old Santa under Roosevelt? According to the one whose office is for the birds, “the government is Santa Claus today.” This slight sketch (which might have inspired Norman Corwin to pen “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas”) was Allen’s expression of public dismay at seemingly frivolous government spending during a time when most Americans were still recovering from the Great Depression. Big spending was suspicious to most—and hardly an option for the masses.

“Being Santa Claus is just one pain in the ermine after another,” the old man sighs. In the end, however, he decides to “giv[e] the world one more chance,” just as American voters would find it in their hearts to keep the forger of the New Deal in office until his death in 1945. Perhaps because many of them realized that, bureaucracy notwithstanding, they were at the receiving end after all.

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On This Day in 1950 and 1953: Suspense Pops Some Corn for the Holidays

After yesterday’s intriguing ghost story on Suspense, I went in search for a few more seasonal treats from the same series. Unfortunately, listening to the sentimental offerings that aired on this day, 21 December, in 1950 and 1953, respectively, is about as thrilling as finding yet another pair of socks under the tree.

In 1953, when most stars had already abandoned US radio, along with a television and Cinemascope crazy public, Greer Garson stepped up to the microphone for “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” No doubt, she had been pushed behind it by the producers of her upcoming picture, which was duly plugged. Never mind that the Academy Award-winning actress never appeared in the announced film, Knights of the Round Table.

Considering that “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” was written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin, experts in radio thrillers, and that it featured a stellar cast including radio stalwarts Howard McNear, Herb Butterfield, Irene Tedrow, Joseph Kearns, and Harry Bartell, the episode bears less resemblance to old-fashioned blood-and-thunder worthy of Suspense than to the melodramatic stardust sprinkled onto the airwaves by light-drama anthologies like The First Nighter or Grand Central Station.

“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” tells the story of a little girl (Anne Whitfield) who is faced with the possibility that her mother and father might not come home for the holidays—that they might never come home again. Her nanny (Garson) receives news that the child’s parents might have died in a plane crash. Only the most naïve listener—or those with faith enough to believe that a Christmas thriller might end unhappily—would assume for one moment that the parents are truly dead. And, sure enough, after much crying and praying, the two return home.

The only highlight of this murky mess of failed heartstrings manipulation is Ms. Garson’s passionate reading of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” the poem by Clement Clarke Moore from whose famous first line the play borrows its title. The reading, designed to console the child, is cut short by the arrival of her parents, just when Santa’s slay is ready to “dash away.” After a perfunctory reunion, the nanny is urged to continue her reading. What a pity Garson ever got interrupted, only to carry on with this dreadful piece of sentimental pulp.

Only slightly better is “A Christmas for Carol,” starring crooner-comedian Dennis Day. Day plays the husband of the eponymous Carol, who is about to give birth—but not without complications. Being a lowly bank clerk and unable to pay for a nurse, the desperate man decides to resort to crime.

After stealing the life savings of an elderly man, he becomes remorseful and quite incapable of escaping with the loot. His struggles are closely followed by one Mr. . . . wait for it . . . Wiseman, a police officer who, having stood by and observed the young man being put to the test of his own conscience, finds his faith in the anxious father-to-be entirely justfied. Virtue is duly rewarded; a twist of fate relieves the impecunious family from hardship and harm, as mother and child are well enough not to require any expensive care after all.

Now, I don’t think any of this is worse than the appalling “Wizard of Oz” pantomime I just glimpsed at (for as long as I could stand it) on ITV 1’s Paul O’Grady Show. Still, the allegedly “outstanding theater of thrills” (as Suspense was announced each week) certainly tossed audiences some awfully stale fruitcakes for the 1950 and 1953 holidays. Say, what is your favorite Yuletide yarn?

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On This Day in 1959: A Ghost of Crises Past Shares "A Korean Christmas Carol"

Yesterday, we took the train up and across the border to Birmingham, England, to see the exhibition Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. Deceptively saccharine, the title of this show (borrowed from Solomon’s fanciful dream narrative “A Vision of Love Revealed by Sleep”) also refers to the Victorian artist’s troubled life, to the disclosure of his secret and the end it meant for his career as a commercially viable painter.

There was nothing sensationalistic about this staged revelation; and even though Solomon’s paintings and drawings do not always stand up particularly well when placed alongside the works of his better known contemporaries, “Love Revealed” did not leave me with the impression that this rather obscure artist is being deemed due for a revival chiefly because certain academics with an agenda think his private life under public scrutiny, his outing and ousting, fascinatingly queer or historically significant enough to warrant such a tribute. The past may come back to haunt us—but it may also be revealed, at last, in a light that is different without being garish.

Christmas, of course, is just the time to conjure up haunting spirits; the telling of ghost stories during the season when days are darkest is a tradition in Britain, Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” being the most famous of them all. On US radio, updates of Ebenezer Scrooge were attempted on programs as diverse as Blondie (“Scrooge,” 15 Dec. 1939), The Six Shooter (“Britt Ponset’s Christmas Carol,” 20 Dec. 1953), and the syndicated propaganda series Treasury Star Parade (ca. 1942), in whose seasonal offering, “The Modern Scrooge ($18.75),” the reformed old miser becomes an air-warden.

The past was not always the exclusive domain of pastiche, however. On this day, 20 December, in 1959, a rather more gritty ghost story was presented by Suspense, an anthology of radio thrillers heard over the Columbia Broadcasting System in the United States between 1942 and 1962. Titled, “A Korean Christmas Carol,” the play tells the strange tale of an American soldier stationed in Korea, Christmas 1958.

On his way to Seoul, he picks up a hitchhiker, a fellow soldier who relates his own experience fighting in Korea some seven Christmases earlier. Insensitive to the icy weather and oblivious to the cigarette smoldering between and singeing his fingers, the stranger seems to be dwelling wholly in the past. When he steps out of the car and disappears into the darkness, he leaves behind his AWOL bag, forcing his listener to follow his path. But instead of taking him straight to some barracks or military installation, the path leads to a secluded orphanage. It is here that the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future crowd in on our haunted storyteller.

Featuring the non-traditional holiday sounds of fierce machine gunfire, the play opens and closes with a choir of Korean children—the orphans of the war to whom the mysterious hitchhiker, himself a casualty of war, sets out to deliver a bag of toys by turning the driver-narrator into his earthly messenger. Having died to save his comrades, he now returns to remind and guide his countrymen to look after the offspring of those whose lives he took.

“A Korean Christmas Carol” is a story of sacrifice and redemption, a story of making amends—a story of love revealed in a vision of death. Will the present war on terror produce or inspire any such ghost stories to be shared underneath the Christmas tree in the decades to come?

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On This Day in 1940: As War Is Waged Overseas, Stephen Vincent Benét Romances an "Undefended Border"

Just a little while ago, I was following Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone into a Beverly Hills department store, where, on this day, 18 December, in 1949, they found themselves in a stampede of bargain hunters. As the doors of the emporium opened, the valued customers were greeted with a whip and shouts of “mule train, mule train”—a regular muletide treat.

Accounts of penny-pinching Mr. Benny as a latter-day Scrooge tasked with the challenge of Christmas shopping were a seasonal feature on US network radio. Having had a few chuckles, but not enough material for this online journal, I continued to raid my library of scripts and recordings and came across a play I hadn’t read or heard in a while. It’s a play for all seasons, but one conveying a message particularly well received toward the end of the year: the promise—and the reality—of peace.

The play is “The Undefended Border” by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Vincent Benét. Written especially for radio, it was first heard on the Cavalcade of America program on 18 December 1940—about a year before the US entered into war with Japan and Germany. As I discuss it in Etherized Victorians, my doctoral study on old-time radio, both networks and sponsors were squeamish about any overt commentary on the war then being waged in Europe. Broadcasters were not permitted to play “advocate,” to endorse an anti-isolationist position, or any other political position, for that matter.

Engaged in a comprehensive campaign to adjust its corporate image in the wake of a report about the company’s profiteering during World War I, the DuPont company commissioned an advertising agency to design a series of historical dramas dedicated to telling American stories of peace and progress. A well-respected writer of historical and patriotic verse, an author whose death in 1943 was argued by one contemporary critic to be “an even greater loss to radio than to poetry,” Benét was just the man to deliver such a message—but not without indirectly signalling his support for Britain in the war against fascism.

“The Undefended Border” celebrates the peace between the United States and Canada. Both countries were at war in 1812; but there existed friendships between those living along the border. Benét tells of such a friendship and how it encouraged an American citizen to go on mission to Washington to urge the Acting Secretary of State, Richard Rush, and the representative of the British crown, Sir Charles Bagot, to create a border that would foster rather than endanger friendly relations between the neighboring countries.

“All over the world, there are borders between countries,” Benét begins his play, narrated by character actor Raymond Massey:

They may be rivers or mountains—they may be nothing more than lines on a map.  But, in time of war, they are ravaged land—No Man’s Land.  And, in time of peace, the guns still look at each other. Between the wars, the grass grows back again, but sometimes it doesn’t grow for long.  And there are always soldiers.

But from New Brunswick to Puget Sound there runs a border between two great nations of proud people, individual people, people with their own customs and beliefs and ways, and that border has not one fort, not one ship of battle, not one hidden or usable gun.  There is a lone cannon.  And they point it out to tourists as a memory of the past.

The Rush-Bagot Agreement was signed in April 1817, and the two countries went on to create a “great house of freedom.” Was it the doing of that one farmer who travelled on foot to Washington to have his say?

Can the spirit of Benét’s play endure? Or will it be the doing of today’s anxious politicians to tear down our freedoms by putting up new fences? Love Thy Neighbor, I say. Just don’t ask for assistance from stubbornly feuding misers like Mr. Benny.

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On This Day in 1949: My Favorite Husband Comments on “individual liberties” and Present-Day Politics

Government radio is a cross between a museum and a religious school, dispensing classics and credo, but not especially concerned with new works. Commercial radio is a department store, carrying in stock a few luxury items, a lot of supposedly essential commodities and perhaps too many cheap brands of goods. The radio [as imagined and desired by some who write for the medium] is an artist’s studio, dedicated to creation alone. As such, it is not yet able to stand on its own, and its product must be exhibited in the museum or the gallery of the department store.

That is how America’s foremost radio playwright, Norman Corwin, summed up the problems of writing for the theatre of the mind. While its sets are being created collaboratively by writers, actors, directors, sound effects artists, musicians, and audiences, radio plays must nonetheless be staged to be realized—and 1940s network radio was hardly a public access forum. 

After World War II, even Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish found it impossible to gain access to the broadcasting boards under the department store conditions of commercial US radio. He had to take his play “The Trojan Horse” to the “museum” of the BBC’s Broadcasting House (pictured above) to give it an airing. A hollow victory indeed.

Well, today I’ve been both to the museum and the department store, each time for some decidedly conventional fare. I gave Mike Walker’s 20-part adaptation of David Copperfield another try, after recording installments six to nine (the tenth having had its premiere this evening). I think that, as much as I like the quiet dignity of a museum, I’ve still got a department store ear.

Unlike Dickens, Walker does not seem to have a mind for either a dramatic or a proscenium arch. How anyone can manage to follow this adaptation while tuning in on a day-to-day basis is beyond me. It is all very pleasant, mind you, but I cannot quite piece it together, especially since Walker’s narrator makes little effort to help us make sense of it all. Instead, he suffers—and I along with him—from an identity crisis, now being an omniscient nobody, now a self-conscious author.

So, I took refuge again in the department store and listened to a Christmas-themed episode of My Favorite Husband, starring Lucille Ball. As much as I like Ms. Ball, this is only the second or third sample I took of this I Love Lucy precursor. The premise, as stated in the introduction of each episode, holds little promise. Where is the drama if a couple like Liz and George Cooper “live together and like it”? As is often the case in the realm of situation comedies, a stereotypical mother-in-law can be counted on to create the requisite domestic friction. And George’s busybody of a mother is downright Dickensian in her prissy hypocrisy—a match, to be sure, for Clara Copperfield’s sister-in-law, Jane Murdstone.

Making another visit on this day, 16 December, in 1949, Liz’s mother-in-law is at her belittling and bickering best, complaining about the lack of cleanliness in her son’s home and mocking Liz’s efforts to knit a sweater for George (“why are you holding that dirty old dust rag?”). After getting Liz all frazzled, she finally takes off, but not before unravelling her daughter-in-law’s handiwork. The last word on meddling, however, comes from the program’s announcer:

Ladies and gentlemen, the Christmas and New Year holiday season is a period of neighborly getting-together and renewing community ties. It’s a time when every American should be even more aware of the individual liberties he enjoys in the United States. And this freedom demands that each of us fulfils our duties as a citizen: to vote, to serve on juries, and to participate in community, state and national affairs. By making our form of government work better here, we strengthen democracy everywhere. We provide an example of a free government, which preserves the rights and the dignity of the individual. So, remember: freedom is everybody’s job.

Not quite the announcement you’d expect to emanate from a department store loudspeaker, is it?

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‘Tis the Season to Reappraise

Well, you know ‘tis the season when you are pleased to find the cardboard likeness of Ms. Claudette Colbert dangling from the branches of a chopped down evergreen. After all, ‘tis the season to revisit old favorites, living, dead, or imagined—the season when the prefix “re-“ becomes the hook on which to fasten our sentiments as we remember old tunes, reflect upon past times, and return unwanted presents. To be sure, it takes a bit of effort (and a want of respect for etymology) to respond to each wintry gale with the determination to regale; but as I am eager to rejoice even while battling a relentless cold with ever-diminishing resilience, I am applying any remedy I can get my hands, eyes, or ears on.

So, once I had finished decking the halls with belles of Hollywood, I caught up with the week’s worth of serialized Dickens I had recorded while still in London. I am referring to Mike Walker’s twenty-part radio adaptation of David Copperfield. Having given up on the BBC’s thrilling television series of Bleak House after missing a few installments, I was anxious to get my Victorian fix for the holidays.

The first five chapters of Walker’s serial faithfully dramatize David’s birth and childhood, bringing before us the acquaintances of his youth—shapeless Peggotty, little Em’ly, hopeful Micawber, and the ever-willing Barkis were all there. Only David was missing, or his point of view, at least. Instead of retaining the first-person narration, Walker decided to install Dickens as the teller of this tale, rather than David, whom the author appointed partly as a stand-in for himself.

The charming, well-remembered opening was chopped in favor of some well-nigh inarticulate blather: “When you care greatly about something or someone . . . well, this is a story about a lot of things and a lot of people. It is a story, . . . but is it my story?” A rather bumbling, awkward start, isn’t it, especially considering that the narrator was not only a first-rate storyteller, but a celebrated orator and performer of his own material.

This is how the real Mr. Dickens, who still wrote in complete, structurally sound sentences, had David introduce himself: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.” And these are pretty much the lines Richard Burton utters at the opening of the US Theatre Guild’s radio adaptation of the novel back on 24 December 1950. The BBC may be a refuge for radio drama—but it frequently blunders where US commercial broadcasting used to succeed.

Is anyone else tuning in? The last broadcastellan poll suggested that radio drama is not quite as doornail-dead as I may have made it out to be. I guess I ought not to infer from the silence of cyber-space that no one is familiar with the culture I chose to recover here. And yet, while researching for my dissertation, I realized just how many plays by noted American novelists, playwrights, and poets have been kept out of earshot by those who have us believe that radio drama is neither remarkable nor marketable. It is the act of refusal that turns art into refuse, and it takes some digging to resist it.

My latest poll is meant to draw further attention to this neglect. Few of these plays are still are heard on radio today, and fewer still are in print. Are these works really any worse than the television offerings that spawn glossy companions and trivia books?

But I am being prickly, aren’t I? And ‘tis the season to be otherwise . . .