Laura Enright's Blog, page 7

Dracula: The Silver Screen

Entry four in my would-be chapter for my book Vampires' Most Wanted:
4. The Movie
.The story of Dracula’s arrival on the silver screen is as involved as the novel itself due in large part to an uncertainty of adapting it to the screen; and the vast amount of adaptations floating around. In this tale, however, timing was everything for there was an even greater nemesis approaching that would ultimately impact the entire world. 
There were at this point two incarnations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (well, three if you count the unfortunate Morrell piece). The Hamilton Deane play was a slightly different version from the book. The Liveright production was a different version of the Deane play. Florence Stoker had managed to iron out rights over both productions, and a few in between (including that other movie to be discussed later), but she realized that should a film version be produced it would very likely rely heavily on the plays, not on her husband’s novel, leaving her rights further back in the dust. She had spent the past several years fighting for her rightful piece of the Dracula pie and was not about to let Hollywood take a taste without paying for it.
Universal studios was an early contender for the film rights, but was dragging its feet perhaps due partly to the amount of people involved. Along with Stoker there was Deane, Balderston and Liveright and it seemed that one was always threatening to sue the others, or Universal itself if an agreement was signed without their name on it. There was also the hesitation on the part of Carl Leammle, Sr. the man who started the movie studio. Horror just wasn’t his thing even though it had proven lucrative for him in the past. He had to be convinced by his son, Carl Leammle, Jr. to take on the project. At last, however, the principle players, rather than see the chance for a film slip away, agreed to a deal and the movie was green-lighted.
Conrad VeidtThe first choice to play Dracula was Conrad Veidt, a German actor whose heavy accent led him to return to Europe rather than face making a go of it in talkies. It was a concern of many a silent film star when sound came to the movies. The next choice was the “man of a thousand faces” himself, Lon Chaney who would ultimately play a vampire in the lost “London After Midnight,” but would lose his battle with throat cancer before getting the chance to play Dracula (in the 1943 movie “Son of Dracula,” his son, Lon Chaney, Jr., star of “The Wolfman,” would play the role his father had to pass up). Lon Chaney as the vampire from "Vampire at Midnight"Finally, with deal in hand, Universal hired Louis Bromfield to write the screenplay. A Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist, he was also a Broadway dramatist and was fascinated by the new style of the talking picture. What he was given to work with were two vastly different versions of the same story, each with strengths in their own right. Three stage plays (including the Morrell play) and the book. He favored the novel’s construct which would be easier filmed than it would have been staged. He also favored the idea of massive sets for Dracula’s castle and Carfax Abbey and even fancied a storyline that would meld the old, decrepit Count of the novel with the youthful Count of the New York production. Dracula would revert back to the old man during fits of hunger.
There was only one problem with putting Bromfield’s vision to print: The Great Depression, which was affecting everything nationwide including the magic of Tinseltown. It would dog every aspect of production for “Dracula” and it’s a wonder what might have been had the movie been awarded a budget larger than $355,000.
Tod BrowningSlated to direct the feature was Tod Browning, Lon Chaney’s director at Metro Goldwyn Mayer and a man who shared Chaney’s curious fascination with the grotesque (one of his most famous pictures would be the 1932 movie “Freaks” starring real side-show performers solving a murder). In his book Hollywood Gothic David J. Skal terms Browning “…a maddeningly difficult director to asses.” He had the talent, but lacked the execution of it. Browning’s drinking was legendary among his contemporaries in the industry and undoubtedly affected his work. For a man who seemed to favor the controversial, his direction of "Dracula" at times seems remarkably afraid to take chances. The movie is filled with long, static scenes that would have been better served by being interspersed with reaction shots or different angles. One shot runs nearly three minutes without a break or reaction shot that would have made it that much stronger. Dracula’s entrance is suitably spooky but his exit at the end of the film is anything less than climactic as we see Van Helsing leaning over Dracula’s coffin, the audience merely hearing the vampire’s groan as the Professor stakes him. The action cuts to Jonathan Harker helping Mina come out of the trance she was in from Dracula.
Was it Browning’s inability to get a handle on the movie that led to poor directing decisions, or rather Universal breathing down his neck to save money? It’s possible it was a bit of both. It was this cost cutting that turned Bromfield’s vision into something the much more closely resembled the plays. While the trip to Transylvania remained, the chasing of Dracula back to Transylvania was cut. Perhaps in a desire to make Renfield’s connection to the Count easier to understand, it was his character that journeyed to Castle Dracula where the Count put him under his spell. Dracula’s sea voyage to England which was supposed to show the vampire one by one wiping out the crew was reduced to stock footage of a ship sailing on the churning sea and Renfield tending the vampire’s coffin in the hold. Eventually, Dracula does come on deck, but we’re left with Lugosi gazing off camera at what must have been meant to be the crew he was about to attack. Still, this rendition did give us one of the creepiest scenes ever shot as the hold of the wrecked ship is opened the next day and Dwight Frye’s mad Renfield smiles ominously up at the camera. 
The mad Renfield guards his master's resting placeDracula insinuates himself in the lives of Dr. Seward, his daughter Mina, her fiancé John Harker and Mina’s friend Lucy in a rather bland fashion and for no apparent reason. As in the plays, he becomes a welcomed visitor to Seward’s sanitarium until they figure out that Lucy’s death and Mina’s wasting condition can be tied to him. And Lucy as the "woman in white" was wasted as only one poorly lit scene alludes to her attacks on the young girls.
And yet, the influence this, the first talking supernatural thriller in film history had on cinema in general and the vampire genre in particular can not be discounted. Principal photography on the film was finished $14,000 under budget, which must have made the Leammles’ hearts jump for joy, as did, no doubt, eventual response to the film. The premiere was scheduled for Feb. 13, 1931 at the Roxy Theatre in New York to take advantage of Friday the 13th. When it was realized that this was the day before Valentine’s Day, they opened it Feb. 12. While not an instant smash, (it was pulled from the Roxy after eight days, grossing $112,000) the film picked up speed as it traveled across the country, eventually becoming the studio’s top money making picture of the year and vindicating Carl Leammle, Jr.’s faith in the financial potential of the horror genre and creating a few monsters all its own.

Dracula: The Man Who Would Be Dracula

My editor actually wanted me to cut this entry from the book (I did manage to put it in the chapters on Scary Vampires. It was a request I couldn't honor (it's freakin' Bela Lugosi, for crying out loud). Though in some respects, the request is in keeping with the life that was Bela Lugosi's. He would touch the tiniest corner of fame, and then have it pulled away from him whether through his actions, through timing, or through circumstances.
5. The Star The iconic lookWhat was it about Lugosi? Was it the regal bearing every bit the bearing of a count? Was it the strange cadence to his speech as he wrestled with words so foreign to him? Whatever it was, Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula left an indelible imprint on the film going psyche and remains the archetype for the vampire decades after his performance. It seems amazing that the studio considered several other actors for the role before at last giving it to Lugosi, the man who played it so successfully on Broadway. He wore the role like a well tailored suit though in the end, the suit would be in tatters.    A young Bela LugosiBorn Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko Oct. 20, 1882 in Hungary (not far from Transylvania) he would eventually take as a stage name a version of his home town’s name Lugos. His father was a banker and the Blasko children were expected to enter respectable careers as well. His siblings did. He couldn’t. Perhaps he had too much of the adventurer about him. Eventually he ran away to escape his father’s ruling ways. In 1913, he joined the National Theatre Company, after finding work in the back of a chorus with the Szeged theater and plenty of manual labor before that.   He was not a timid man. In 1914 he enlisted in the army to fight in the Great War. Once, while under fire from Russians, he left the tree he was using as cover to help a wounded comrade and then returned only to find that the tree had been blown away by a mortar in his absence. After his discharge he went back to the National Theatre Company and was eventually talked into Hungarian cinema by a friend. It was around this time that he became very political, trying to create a National Trade Union of Actors among theater and cinema actors; as well as writing politically orientated articles for trade journals. Decades later, he would be instrumental in forming such a union in Hollywood, though then, he did so anonymously perhaps remembering the turbulent time in Hungary. He backed the wrong horse politically and when Bela Kun’s communist regime fell, Lugosi was one of the many people fleeing from the wrath of the new government. He fled to Vienna and eventually to Germany where he found work in cinema there. In a curious coincidence, one of the people he found work with was F.W. Murnau, director of that other movie. Eventually, however, he found himself drawn to the United States and landed in New Orleans after an uncertain voyage across the ocean on a ship where the crew wasn’t exactly fond of his politics. He found his way to New York, immersed himself in the Hungarian community, and eventually found his way on the stage.    Aspiring starHis uncertainty with the English language has been given as one reason for his inability to find work. And it’s true that in the beginning he had to learn his part phonetically. But while he wasn’t a formally educated man, he was self-educated; a voracious reader who craved knowledge, perusing several periodicals daily, Hungarian and English. And he even sculpted the likeness of his own head that would appear in the 1932 play “Murdered Alive” that he starred in.   It’s possible that he would have had a more successful career had he stayed and made films in Germany. In Europe, as he explained once, an actor was expected to play a variety of rolls and play them well. In the U.S., the audience wanted to see the same thing over and over. He often bemoaned his reputation as a bogeyman, but it paid the bills. Dracula's hungryDracula was a part that he lobbied for hard when the movie was being planned, even going so far as to contact Florence Stoker to help obtain the rights (his lobbying would eventually work against him with Universal executives who smelled his desperation and weren’t afraid to play off it). One can understand; he did after all perfect it on Broadway. The very traits that made him perfect for the role of Dracula, however, may have spoiled for him others. The distinct features, the mesmerizing stare, the thick accent; once that was associated with Dracula it was hard for audiences to see him for anything other than Dracula, or the characters of horror he would be compelled by financial need to return to throughout his life. Perhaps if the follow up movie he made to Dracula had been better, he might have been able to deter the typecasting. “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” based loosely on the Edgar Allen Poe tale, was given to director Robert Florey who had been scheduled to direct “Frankenstein” before it was given to James Whale. Lugosi played Dr. Mirakle, a mad scientist using virgins in an attempt to create a creature that he could breed with his ape Erik. While Lugosi’s performance was suitably unnerving, the movie itself left much to be desired thanks to some injudicious cutting.   After that he would be plagued by having to compromise, as he did when having to take $500 a week to star in Dracula. Money did not sit comfortably in Lugosi’s pocket. He was very much a man who lived for today and was also guilty of giving away money to people who needed it. Yet, fortune seemed always against him. He worked for a studio that changed hands in 1936 and the new owners were only interested in what they could get from his decreasing king of horror image. As his money troubles deepened, Universal would continue to take advantage of him and he would often work in outside, low budget productions that cemented his image further. When given something to sink his teeth into, he was perfectly up to the task as he did in the small budget “White Zombies.”   (L to R) Boris Karloff and Bela LugosiIn his movies with Boris Karloff he was more than capable of holding his own and the common belief is that he stole the movie from him when he appeared as Ygor in “Son of Frankenstein” a role that was originally much smaller but grew as filming went on. Later he would play a notable yet small role in the Greta Garbo film “Ninotchka” which the actor hoped would prove that he could play something other than horror.   His worsening finances though left him taking whatever roles that he could. He was an actor after all, this was his craft. But he had been a star, and that’s what people were seeing; a fading star, taking whatever roles would pay the bills. And very often, they didn’t. In 1936 a ban on horror movies in Britain encouraged Universal to take them off their shooting schedule, leaving even less productions that would be open to Lugosi. When Bela Lugosi, Jr. was born in 1938, with no work coming in, Lugosi was left turning to Actor’s Relief to help pay the hospital bills. When a re-issuing to theaters of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” resuscitated the horror market, the five-year deal he inked with Universal allowed him to buy back his beloved dogs after poor finances forced him to give them away. It brought him films, like “Ninotchka” but horror crept back in “Ghost of Frankenstein” where he reprised his role of Ygor to Lon Chaney, Jr.’s monster (Karloff had give up the role by this time); and in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” he donned the make-up he refused over a decade before and at last played the Monster.    Abbott and Costello meet Universal Studio's big three monstersThroughout his career, he spoke hopefully of making the transition to other roles but that reality seemed to slip further away from him. Back on the stage he saw some success replacing Karloff in the play “Arsenic and Old Lace” (many say his performance was better than Karloff’s). He reprised the role of Dracula in the film “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” a film and his performance that was well received with critics and audiences. As the years went by, however, his body of work seemed heavy with forgettable movies like “Scared to Death,” “Mother Riley Meets the Vampire” (a film he agreed to do to collect passage fare back from England) and “Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.” It was in the 1950s that he met Ed Wood, a huge fan of Lugosi’s who tried to help him launch his career in earnest but poorly made films that Wood directed. It didn’t help.   In 1955, Lugosi entered rehab for a drug addiction that started during his days with Universal. Divorced from his fourth wife, he was living in an apartment and relying on the charity of friends to get him through. Upon leaving rehab three months later, he spoke glowingly of his plans to star in “The Ghoul Goes West” to be directed by Ed Wood. And in an effort to help people appreciate the danger of drug addiction, he starred in “The Devil’s Paradise,” a show that ran in a little theater in Hollywood. The “Ghoul” film never saw the light of day and on Aug. 16, 1956, he was found dead by his fifth wife. Lugosi made what he could with his career and the chances he was given. In the end, that might be all that anyone can say about their life.

Dracula: The Tangled Web Woven

Entry three in the sample chapter I used to propose my Vampires' Most Wanted book to Potomac Publishers. In this, Florence Stoker lends a hand to propel the character of Dracula from character in a gothic novel to horror icon. You have to kind of feel for poor Florence suddenly propelled in the weird world of rights trying to keep this legacy safe.
3. The Play

Florence StokerWith her husband dead, Florence Stoker was left to safeguard his most famous creation, not only for his memory, but for her livelihood. It was, after all, the only real legacy that he’d been able to leave her and as more and more interest began to be shown in Dracula, especially when it came to the stage, Florence began to realize the true worth of that legacy. It had always been Stoker’s hope to bring his creation from the pages of a novel to the stage of the Lyceum Theatre. After publication, and to protect the copyright of a stage version, he arranged a reading of his play “Dracula: or The Undead A Play in a Prologue and Five Acts” at the Lyceum, in front of a small contingent of actors and friends. Irving, who Stoker had hoped would play the vampire, was hardly impressed and after the reading simply pronounced it “Dreadful!” Irving was more than likely thinking not of the success of the play as a whole, but rather of the small amount of stage time he as Dracula would end up having were he to agree to the role. This might have been when the first cracks of the rift between Stoker and Irving would begin to form. To be fair to Irving, however, the reading did take four hours, quite possibly because the author, too close to the material, would have a hard time making the edits needed to trim the novel down.

That would be the key problem with adapting Dracula to the stage. There are three major sections: Harker’s travels to Transylvania; the count’s arrival, and introduction of the characters in England; than a trip back to Transylvania as Dracula tries to escape from the very people he’d hoped to destroy. It is a huge novel with a lot of exposition told from the points of view of the many and various characters. For novel form, the pacing was fine. For a play, it could prove to be a weeklong production. Without intermissions.

Hamilton Deane had a curious connection with Stoker. His family owned the estate next to the Stoker’s familial home and as a former actor, he had made his debut with the Henry Irving Vacation Company in 1899. During the 1920s he established The Hamilton Deane Company and found his eye turning toward producing an adaptation of Dracula, which he wrote while bedridden with a severe cold. Of course the first thing that would have to go would be Transylvania scenes in the beginning and the end, which would be far too expensive to stage. Cost consciousness would be something plaguing future adaptations as in the Deane play when the character of Dracula would raise a vase to smash a mirror only to lower it because the production couldn’t afford to replace mirrors for every performance. The play would be a basic drawing-room melodrama with the characters changed or merged to cut down the amount of characters in the story. Seward owned a sanitarium but was Lucy’s father, not beau; Harker was Lucy’s fiancé; and Mina was no where to be seen it having been established in the dialogue that she had already succumbed to a strange wasting illness that Lucy was suffering from in the opening of the play. Count Dracula has already purchased Carfax Abbey, sold to him by Harker, and apparently insinuated himself in the lives of the Sewards during Harker’s absence giving the impression that he is a good, if rather strange neighbor.


The drawing room production that would influence the movie.It is with this production that the archetypal image of Dracula emerges. Hardly the uncouth, old man that Harker first meets in the novel; the Dracula of the stage looks dapper in evening dress and opera cape. This of course serves the medium better since the Dracula of the play is better able to interact in scenes with the other players as opposed to existing on the boundaries of the story as he does in the novel. The treatment apparently satisfied Florence Stoker who gave Deane license to produce the play. Edmund Blake was the first actor to play Dracula while Deane himself chose the role of Van Helsing. Staged in Wimbledon in 1925 the play was an instant success and soon Deane was besieged with offers to bring it to London, though he preferred to take it on the road, the role of Count Dracula now played by Raymond Huntley who, at the time, was 22 but made up to look much older. The cape was part of the company property, but the actor was expected to provide his own evening clothes. The stand-up collar which has become so associated with the character originated as a way to camouflage the actor’s head as he stood with his back to the audience. In this position, he was able to appear to disappear by slipping out of the cape and down a trapdoor. 



Eventually, Deane did answer London’s call and the play opened at the Little Theatre on Feb. 14, 1927, with a uniformed nurse in the theater ready to administer first aid to fainting audience members. A stunt used later by other producers of horror. “Dracula” was savaged by the critics but was boffo at the box office. Soon, the production had to be moved to Duke of York’s Theatre, a larger playhouse. This, however, was news to Deane who by this time had decided to take the play back on the road with his touring company. His backer, Harry Warburton, concerned at losing a London success, approached Florence Stoker with the suggestion that they continue producing the play in London and cut Deane out altogether. Understandably perturbed, Deane filed a complaint with the Society of Authors regarding the infringement of his rights and eventually Deane’s touring rights were extended. Not to be outdone, however, Florence Stoker commissioned Charles Morrell to create a new stage adaptation that she would own completely. Deane would ultimately be vindicated, however, in the failure of Morrell’s adaptation to run more than a few weeks. It was the Deane play that Horace Liveright would attend in 1927 and decide to bring to New York.


Horace LiverightLiveright was a New York theatrical entrepreneur famous as much for the eccentricities of his personal life as for his productions. He lived large, took risks and was willing to take a risk on this curious phenomenon of the English stage if it could be adapted to better suit American audiences. The structure was good, but Deane’s dialogue left much to be desired. He turned to John L. Balderston not only to write the American adaptation, but to convince the widow Stoker to part with the rights for an American production. Having met Liveright once, the proper Florence Stoker was decidedly put off by the air of scandal that he wore so casually but she was becoming an old hand at this copyright nonsense and the sort of money they spoke of, thousands of American dollars, would definitely keep her comfortable in her old age. Balderston would streamline the play even further, cleaning up awkward or heavy lines. Raymond Huntley was offered the part in the Broadway version but turned it down when Liveright wouldn’t meet his salary demands. The part then went to an unknown Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi who brought to the role a charismatic sensuality that was missing in the English productions. 


Bela Lugosi displaying the immortal image of Dracula

The Broadway production boasted a better budget for elaborate effects and sets and in this production the vampire could actually smash the mirror with the vase. The play opened Oct. 5, 1927 at the Fulton Theatre a success to critics and audiences alike. Unlike Deane, who preferred touring with his play, Liveright was nervous about touring with his production. When the receipts began to slow for the New York production, Liveright at last agreed to subcontract the West Coast rights to O.D. Woodward and after the play closed in New York after 33 weeks, Lugosi headed west with that company. Playing ten weeks in LA and San Francisco, it proved to be as lucrative a property as it was in the east. Soon, Liveright, along with Louis Cline, mounted a tour of the eastern seaboard and the Midwest which starred Raymond Huntley who had obviously reconsidered his decision not to join the New York production. It would seem Dracula fever had swept the nation. The only place to go now was the silver-screen.

Dracula the King Part II

Continuing the chapter I submitted in my proposal for my book Vampires' Most Wanted years ago, I offer an entry on the author himself, Bram Stoker. 


2.  The Author

Bram StokerHe seemed a perfectly respectable man. A pillar of society, one might even say. Unlike masters of horror such as Edgar Allan Poe whose personal demons were evident in his photographs and his deeds; Bram Stoker’s demons, if he had any, were hidden in the cloak of Victorian respectability. That there may have been demons seems apparent at least in Stoker’s writings which were full of any number of horrors from blood sucking vampires, to demonic cats, to psychopathic children. That last example was from a book of fairy tales actually published for children called Under the Sunset.
Stoker was born Nov. 8, 1847 in Dublin, Ireland and was no doubt subjected to a number of superstitious tales concocted by the Celtic heart. In fact, he was probably influenced heavily by stories of the terrible cholera epidemic that gripped the country in 1832 where whole families were wiped out by the plague. His mother Charlotte told a story of a traveler who fell to the plague on the road outside of town. Digging a pit, the townspeople pushed the still living man into it feeling that it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to the disease. This was a tale of cold reality that must have stayed with him and perhaps flavored the character of Van Helsing who could so methodically stake, then decapitate the corpse of a young woman to save her soul. Stoker suffered from a strange affliction the first eight years of his life that left him bedridden. His sudden recovery leads one to suspect that this invalidism could have been more psychological than physical. If that were the case, then perhaps his demons were capable of manifesting themselves.
By the time he entered university, any lingering illness had long since gone. He was described as a “red haired giant” excelling in football and track and eventually becoming the athletics champion of Trinity College. So physically fit was he that later in life he would be awarded the Bronze Medal of the Royal Humane Society when he jumped into the Thames to save, in vain, the life of a suicidal man. He also began to exhibit the type A personality and passion for history that would serve him well in later years, becoming president of the Philosophical Society and “auditor” of the Historical Society. With honors in science Stoker graduated from Trinity in 1871. His father Abraham was a civil servant in Dublin Castle and after graduation, Stoker found himself working as a clerk at the Castle as well.
Henry Irving performsIt was shortly after this that Stoker would meet Dracula; or more to the point, the man who was very likely the true inspiration for Dracula. Seeing Henry Irving perform in “The Rivals” and three years later, “Two Roses” sparked a passion that Stoker may have always had for the theater and began to spark his writing career as well. After Irving’s performance of “Two Roses” prompted no notices in the paper, Stoker contacted the Evening Mail demanding to know why. He was told, quite simply, that they couldn’t afford a critic. So in 1871 he became the paper’s unpaid critic. It was a busy time for the aspiring writer who, along with his civil service job, attended theater performances and wrote reviews at night, and worked on a master’s degree in mathematics at Trinity. Then there were the stories. “The Crystal Cup” his first story, a fantasy, was sold to the magazine London Society. His imagination sparked yet still chained to his desk job, in 1878 he published The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland a book detailing his experiences and thoughts on the rather dull life of a civil servant. In 1876, pleased with Stoker’s review of his performance as Hamlet, Irving arranged to have dinner with the aspiring writer and a deep friendship was formed. Over the years, they would visit each other, Stoker traveling to London, Irving to Dublin until 1878 when Irving invited Stoker to join his venture to take over The Lyceum Theatre.
The Lyceum TheatreThe theater had been around for over a hundred years prior to that, had burned down in 1830 and was rebuilt to be even larger, capable of holding 1,500 theater goers. The history of such an establishment must have called to Stoker as much as the chance to work with his great friend Henry. Yet, it would be risky. After 13 years of civil service, Stoker would be giving up a dependable job and a pension to join the uncertain world of the arts. He also had a responsibility to the beautiful Florence Anne Lemon Baclombe, whose life as the future Mrs. Stoker would also be affected by his decision. There had been a rival—somewhat—for Florence’s affections in the form of one Oscar Wilde. Seven years Wilde’s senior, Stoker had had some past acquaintance with the future writer, evening dining with Oscar’s parents occasionally who undoubtedly found more in common with the staid Stoker than they did with their own son. Florence did have some feelings for Wilde who was closer to her age but his future at the time seemed too uncertain for a woman craving stability. Eleven years her senior, Bram Stoker seemed to possess the stability that would see her safely and comfortably into old age.
If she resented Stoker’s ultimate decision to take Irving’s offer, it didn’t stop him. The couple married Dec. 4, 1878 and traveled on to Birmingham, joining Irving less than a week later. As acting manager of the Lyceum, Stoker had his hands full, especially since the fledgling company had no real capital, a personal overdraft of 12,000 pounds and Irving’s desire to have everything new, costing in excess of 10,000 pounds. The theater was beneficial to Stoker both financially and spiritually offering him a chance to put not only his mathematical mind to good use, but also his imagination. Promotion was a big part of his duties and he publicized upcoming productions with vast advertising. He worked incessantly, writing hundreds of letters a day in Irving’s name, along with the speeches the great actor was deliver to outside organizations.
In 1878 Irving Noel Thornley Stoker was born to the couple, but as absent a husband he was, he also turned out to be equally as absent a father. A day’s work at the Lyceum could last well into dawn the next morning. Some blame for this has been said to rest on the lovely shoulders of Florence Stoker, who it was claimed was a very frigid woman unable to even scrape up much maternal interest in her son. Still, one has to wonder if Florence simply found it far too difficult to compete with the likes of Henry Irving and the Lyceum Theatre crowd for her husband’s affections. For over two decades, Irving had a hold over Stoker that couldn’t be broken. One which even Stoker himself might have realized and acknowledged in the character of Dracula. 
In 1882, Under the Sunset was published and well received by critics. Kept busy with a few annual Lyceum Theatre company tours of the United States (where he was also able to meet some of the top names in theater and literary circles of the time such as Ethel Barrymore, Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain), Stoker at last published his first novel, Snake’s Pass in 1890. Stoker’s drive and passion helped him with the incredible work schedule he insisted on keeping, but did cause his writing to suffer since it left him little time for rewriting. Later novels, written in desperate need of cash, would suffer from this as well. With Dracula, he took his time and got it right. The majority of his research for the novel was done at the British Museum. Having holidayed with his family in Whitby, a fishing village and seaside resort on the North Sea of England, he was heavily influenced by the stone abbey found there. Whitby must appear in the novel, but the source of the evil would emanate from Transylvania where vampire folktales and superstitions ran rampant.

Dracula was published in 1897 to mixed reviews, some, perhaps put off by what has ultimately made it so unique—the story told in letters and journals—for making it seem somehow disjointed. It was not an immediate hit, its success building slowly over time until by 1901 it was translated into a number of languages such as French and German. There were bright spots: accompanying the Lyceum Company on yet another tour to the U.S. in 1899, the American press quickly acknowledged their amazement that the author of Dracula was a business manager.
The business manager, however, was finding life becoming increasingly difficult. To keep up with Florence’s desire for middle class respectability, there was no way they could afford to live on his royalties as a writer, so he was forced to remain with the Lyceum Theatre. Things were beginning to sour, however, as Irving’s grand style and expensive tastes began to catch up with the theater’s coffers and Stoker was left fending off the creditors. After a serious bout of pleurisy and pneumonia left him unable to perform for several weeks, Irving sold the Lyceum Theatre agreeing to stay on as actor-manager. Not being consulted first, Stoker felt betrayed and while he stayed on with the theater, this drove a stake in what had been the closest of friendships.
Later novels would follow into the 20th century, some horror, some romance. He wrote often of young women defying convention, as Mina Harker did in her small way in Dracula. He wrote about mummies, werewolves, giant white worms, and revisited the vampiric theme in Dracula’s Daughter, Dracula’s Guest and other Weird Stories and The Lady in the Shroud, but none would gain the success or the influence that Dracula did. In 1905, after a performance of Becket at a London Theater, Henry Irving collapsed and died in the lobby of his hotel. Stricken by the loss, it was up to Stoker to send out the missives that the great actor was dead. Mourned by the country, Irving’s ashes were buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Marker in Westminster AbbeyThe name of Bram Stoker was noticeably absent from the actor’s will. 
For decades, the hearty “red haired giant” had worked himself incessantly, enjoying the highest of opportunities and suffering the lowest of disappointments. In his 57th year, it seemed as if his constitution had finally begun to wane. A year after Irving’s death, the man who would take long rambling walks was left partially crippled by a stroke that also affected his eyesight. This did not stop him from writing Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, a memoir of his time with the great actor that was published in 1906. Perhaps unable to express his own misgivings of the negative side of Irving (though those misgivings could have already been expressed in Dracula), Stoker’s work was more a star-struck salute than a deep insight into the complicated relationship between the two men. Curiously, in 1908, in articles he wrote for Nineteenth Century Magazine, Stoker wrote out against the raciness of many novels then being published, perhaps truly never realizing the sexual subtext that ran like blood through the veins of his greatest work. It seemed, with the work load he shouldered, so much of his creativity was almost instinctual, flowing from imagination to paper without a second thought.
On April 20, 1912 Bram Stoker, living off the largess of friends and a grant from the Royal Literary Fund a year before, threw off this mortal coil, dying in the small London apartment that he and Florence were forced to move. He published several books, but would be remembered not for the other novels or for his prolific output, but rather for the one character that perhaps haunted him in his final years. Dracula.
The ashes of Stoker and his son in an urn on display at Golders Green Crematorium

Dracula: The King of the Vampires

When I proposed the topic of vampires for Potomac Publishing's Most Wanted series years ago, I was asked to come up with some sample chapters. One of the chapters I proposed had a very definite plan to it. There is no doubt that Dracula, even to this day, is the most famous vampire in literature or media. It's amazing, actually, that one character has had that much of a hold on popular culture as this guy has. And all from a novel that didn't really do all that well on its first printing.

My plan had been to do a chapter devoted entirely to Dracula in which I would discuss the book, the author, the play, the movie, the movie studio, the actor responsible for giving us the iconic "look" we think of when we think Dracula, etc. For all these factors are key in the continuing popularity of the character. 
The editor of Vampires' Most Wanted saw it differently, however, and requested that I put the entry on the book in the chapter on Vampire Literature, the movie in the chapter on Vampire Movies, the play...well, you get the idea. Maybe that was a better way, I don't know. But I still like the idea of a chapter exclusively examining the popularity of Dracula. 
So, just for fun, I thought I'd offer the next several days the chapter I had originally planned, cut up for easier blog digestion. The entries are also larger than what you'd see in the book because at the time I submitted them I wasn't sure what word count they'd give me, so I just let the info fly! :)
So let's start at the beginning with the novel itself.
Dracula Timing is everything, or so it’s said, and timing played a crucial part in so much of the Dracula saga for it was over time that it gained its true success. And as time went on, the story would find its way to the stage and onto the silver screen. It was a long and complicated road that took a lot of detours and affected a lot of lives (not all for the better). But then who worries about time when one is immortal.
1.  The Novel Other stories and books on vampires had come before Dracula, Bram Stoker himself having been influenced by Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. For some reason, however, it’s Stoker’s story that’s been able to capture the imagination of generations of readers. Of course, timing is everything and nothing proves this more than the affect timing has had in Dracula’s many incarnations. Stoker researched the novel extensively for several years before it was finally published in 1897, on the cusp of the new century which the author himself seems to acknowledge the wonder of by mentioning fabulous devices such as the Kodak camera, the Graphophone (the precursor to the dictaphone), the “type-writer”. Even Mina Harker is given a more modern strength of character than other women of the day were thought to have possessed. The story is told through a series of journal entries and correspondence by its principle players. The style known as the epistolary form had been used before but never to such amazing success. It must be remembered however, that the success of a Dracula was a gradual thing. Over time, the character of Dracula would find his way into other novels, stage plays, movies, television, even comic books and would be the seed for an entire genre. But early on, the novel’s royalties never enabled its author to quit his day job, nor would he live to see just how successful his creation would become.
That the character has become so influential is a curious thing considering that Dracula is a menace observed by the reader from afar, vicariously through the characters writing about him. Outside of a few scenes where conversations with him are recorded by the journal authors, he is a figure on the outskirts of the novel, alluded to, physically described but never really mentally or emotionally assessed. It could very well be this vagueness that is the secret to Dracula’s endurance throughout the decades. By leaving him enigmatic, Stoker has allowed him to be refashioned with time, soulful or soulless depending on what the script calls for.
Bela Lugosi Christoper Lee Frank Langella Jonathan Rhys MeyersGary Oldman The 1992 version “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” the version many feel is most faithful to the book, none the less tries to give Dracula a soul by giving him reason to travel to England. There, he is sure he will be reunited with the soul of his beloved wife that now resides in the body of Mina Harker. Blood will be spilled (or rather, ingested) liberally along the way but it’s all in the name of love and romance. Yet there is very little really romantic in the Stoker novel. [note: I understand that my opinion on this is not popular, but I was not as struck by the erotic elements as some and I found very little romance surrounding the character of Dracula himself] Much has been written about the erotic subtext lodged within the pages of Dracula; and perhaps if one puts themselves into the Victorian mindset it becomes obvious. The Victorian mind was always to be controlled; never to succumb to animal instincts such as lust, desire, even love may have seemed risky if it ran too deeply. Words were carefully crafted, deeds carefully done. Passion of any sort strictly muted. So the actions that occur in the novel may have seemed dangerously close to forbidden heights of excitement (when to a modern reader they would seem bland at best) and thus the legend was born. Dracula’s main drive, however, his passion, is not for sex or love but rather for simple survival. It’s what, along with his history, rules him. His history has taught him that to survive one must conquer before being conquered; destroy before being destroyed. A philosophy present in the human animal long before the Romans took it to such insane extremes. It isn’t love or lust that draws him to Mina Harker but rather the need to survive and seeing in her one more tool to achieve his aim. It’s only as Van Helsing’s group begins to pose a threat that Dracula speaks of destroying them. Even then, after the caskets of home soil he has stashed around London have been made unlivable, any human desire to destroy these people is overruled by the animal instinct to survive by returning to his native land. Even one of the most provocative scenes, where Mina is forced to drink blood from a wound in Dracula’s chest, is more a perversion of the image of a babe gaining sustenance from its mother’s breast than anything sensual between a man and a woman, though psychologists, both amateur and professional have had a field day with it for years.

For years it was believed that Vlad the Impaler was the inspiration for the character of Dracula though now that belief has been dispelled. Still, based on Dracula’s own words to Jonathan Harker regarding his past, it seems obvious that while Vlad himself wasn’t the inspiration, his history was. It’s a brutal history; full of battles, conquest and cruelty and used to patch in the holes in Dracula’s own past. There was a more likely candidate for the personality of Dracula in Stoker’s boss Henry Irving, a larger than life actor who the author struck up a friendship with years before agreeing to become his acting manager at the Lyceum Theatre. 
Indeed to see a photo of Irving it’s easy to match him to the description of Dracula in the novel. Irving, the first actor to be knighted, was beloved by audiences and had an almost mesmerizing effect on the people around him. Stoker, in particular, seemed to be trapped by the actor’s charisma (though a genuine friendship does seem to have existed between them). If Irving was the inspiration for Dracula, then Stoker was indeed his Renfield, devoting his time and energy to the survival of his master (or his master’s ego) to the exclusion even of his own family. Indeed, as Stoker seemed on the verge of a successful career of his own, his good friend seemed to turn on him, mocking the stage play he’d written for Dracula, selling the Lyceum Theatre without even consulting Stoker. As loyal and generous as Irving could be, he could be just as petty and egotistical. Perhaps, as seemed to be the case with so much, it was a subconscious thought that led Bram to take his friend’s negative side and apply it to the character of Dracula.
There is something about this novel that opens the imagination of the reader. Dracula’s description in the novel, while perhaps unattractive, is not as awful as some people have described it to be. Nor, however, as he regains his youth over the course of the novel, is Dracula the dashing, alluring character that later retellings would fashion him to be. (This sexiness would reach the heights with Frank Langella’s portrayal of him in the 1979 version). Again, perhaps Stoker’s true genius was being able to write a story that people could plug their own interpretation into. For his part, Stoker claimed never to understand where these theories came from. He wrote a horror story—plain and simple.

Things that Go Bump in the Imagination of Kids

Somewhere it's written in the official book of sibling-hood that it's the duty of the older brother to scare the little sister. My brother Dennis took his duty seriously so I thought that with Halloween bearing down upon us, I'd share a few examples.

Dennis never went for shock factor: The bloody finger in the box or the rubber snake on the pillow. He did have a rubber snake called Mrs. Murphy but that didn't work cause I thought she was cute.

No, Denny's attempts to scare me were more psychological in scope. The meme planted in the mind and allowed to fester. Like the time he drove my younger brother Robert and I somewhere...I can't remember where we were going, though with my family's occasional thumbing of our nose at punctuality, I'm sure, wherever we were headed, we were running late. Dennis was nine years older than me so he was probably about sixteen (though helping my dad with his electrical contracting business, his driving started years before he was a legal driver). I'm guessing I was probably seven or eight. We drove past a park in which stood a rather large copse of trees. From it could be heard the striking sound of cicadas as they sang their song loud and proud. For those who've never heard cicadas when they let it blast, it can sound otherworldly. The sound of some species of cicada can reach 100 decibels. When mating or sounding warnings, the male cicada contracts the tymbal muscles on each side of the first segment of their bodies. The sound is amplified by air sacs in the abdominal cavity. I had one cicada loitering on my window one night this year and it was like the thing was right next to me where ever I went in the house. When you get enough cicadas singing at once, it can sound a bit like this:



You wouldn't think muscle contractions could be so loud. Some species come out every 13 years, some ever 17 years. Some are yearly visitors. I think the loudest are probably the 13 and 17 year cicadas and I may have never have heard them or been conscious of the noise they make prior to the day in question. For whatever reason, I was transfixed by the overwhelming sound on this overcast and eerie day as we drove.

So when I shot a concerned look out the window toward the copse of trees from which the sound emanated, what did my brother tell me was the cause of that disturbing noise? He told me, with perfect sincerity, that it was a flying saucer. Aliens had landed on the earth and were hiding in that copse of trees just waiting to invade.

This was the mid-70s. Every other book out there was reporting the latest Bigfoot sightings or Bermuda Triangle stories or alien visitation. And I ate all those books up. I was always reading some book on UFOs or watching some alien movie. To think they were real and preparing to launch their invasion from our local forest preserve...well that was pretty creepy especially since Denny warned me that if we didn't get past the forest preserve quick enough, the ship would come out and grab us. I mean, heck, it was just a few weeks prior to that, that I saw a movie from the early 1960s on "Svengoolie", a local late-night scare-fest, that had a Martian invasion in it where the Martians had needles in their fingers and when they poked someone with them, the victim was put to sleep and at the mercy of their alien captors.



Oh sure, there was probably some hidden message in the movie from the producers about the emerging drug culture of the time but what did I know? I was only eight and the only drug being abused at my house was alcohol and they used tumblers and shot glasses for that.

Perhaps I've shared too much.

Suffice to say Denny's claim freaked me out for a few days till Mom explained that the noise was produced by bugs, not aliens, coming up from the ground in preparation to invade. Somehow, that didn't really calm my fears.

Another incident happened when my brother was driving as the family made its way back home from the resort in mid-Wisconsin that we stayed at every summer. It took about eight hours and we drove the back roads, desolate and lonely. Since my family was preternaturally late, every year we usually arrived at the resort (and two weeks later back home) around midnight. This was often due to my father who knew every bar along the route and made it his mission to stop at every one. One year, my mother drove the kids up to the resort and dad came up a few days later because he had some business he had to take care before he could leave. So, on the way home, my parents drove in one car and Dennis drove in the other. And of course me and my little brother had to drive with Dennis.

As we traveled along the dark country roads, the surrounding farmland barely visible in the night, a mist began to form in the headlights. It thickened, creeping across the road ahead of us as if we were driving into some Universal monster movie. Now bear in mind, along with those books on Bigfoot and aliens, I loved to read books on ghosts. The Lively Ghosts of Ireland, a book I acquired from my sister, was a particular favorite. And also bear in mind that Creature Features, the other late night local scare-fests, was a show I watched every week, and it had one of the creepiest openings of a television show EVER!



AND, because I had a tendency to let my imagination get the better of me, there were nights that I was certain that in the middle of the night, if I went out of my room and looked down the hallway I would see a guy standing there who I wasn't sure would do me harm, but I was also not sure he wouldn't, which was why when the feeling gripped me, I hightailed it into my parents room across the hall and snuggled up with them for protection.

The point being that I could be a very impressionable and imaginative kid. So when the mist began to thicken to the point that it seemed as if the car was slicing through it, my brother thought it would be hilariously funny to tell his younger sister and brother that the mist rolling along the road wasn't fog, but rather the ghosts of dead relatives coming to get us.

Apparently the thought of the car being surrounded by ghosts wasn't bad enough, he had the possibility that all my dead relatives, past and present, now haunted the road before us.

Funny how the mind squirms at so young an age when faced with possibilities that seem plausible. Needless to say we made it home, all safe and sound and the spirits of the dead were left behind in Wisconsin. Bratty as these stories may have been, I still cherish the memories because they're memories that connect me with my brother Dennis.

This is why I know ghosts don't really exist. My brother Dennis died in 1997 at the age of 42. It wasn't aliens or ghosts or Bigfoot that took him. It was cancer. A much scarier thing. It would take my mother a little over a year later. A relentless and evil thing.

I know one thing, however: If ghosts did actually exist, I have no doubt that my brother Dennis would figure out some way to make his presence known. The timing would undoubtedly be highly inappropriate and his spirit would be doing his best to scare me. But so far there's been no cold spots, no ghostly whispering, nor anything moved out of place.

Although...now that I look, I thought I straightened that photo of the family on the wall hanging so crookedly. That couldn't possibly be...do you think?

A Day at the Movies

The government shut down has inspired the AMC movie chain to come up with a smart bit of marketing. From now until the chain decides to pull the deal (or, as they claim, "until common sense returns to Washington"), all those federal employees suffering through unpaid furloughs can enjoy a free small popcorn when they go to see movies at AMC theaters.




AMC of course will claim to be doing it out of the kindness of their collective corporate hearts when in fact, let's be honest, they've simply found the lucrative bright spot in a bad situation.

More than 800,000 employees of the federal government have been furloughed since Oct. 1. That's 800,000 people not getting paychecks, and thus not being able to grease the economy by going out to dinner, buying clothes or...well yes, going to the movies. Instead they're liable to guard what little money they have saved up in the hope that it's enough to tide them over until the government opens up again. However long that may take.

But that's a big chunk of change gone from the theaters if the people who would normally go to the movies turn to Red Box or their local library instead.

What is a movie chain to do?

Why, entice the furloughed employees back in with the promise of free popcorn. We all like free stuff. And of course these people without jobs now will have more time on their hands to go see the movies (and perhaps offering popcorn will help them forget the high cost of admission, though AMC claims they won't need to buy a ticket to get the free popcorn). And it's not like these people have any place else to go.

This story led me to think about the recession/near depression this country has been suffering since 2001 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. When I conduct talks for my book Chicago's Most Wanted , touching on historical topics will inevitably encourage some older person to tell a story about what 50 cents could get you back in the day. You had 50 cents, you could take the train downtown, buy a ticket to a movie that included a short or serial, a cartoon and maybe a newsreel, buy some refreshments at the candy counter, then after, you could go for a soda, maybe even lunch, enjoy a trolley ride and still have enough left over for a couple of pints in the local bar once you got home.

Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but back then and even a few decades after, you could get quite a bang for your buck. And it was good too since during the depression, not a lot of people had many bucks to get bangs out of. More than ever, people needed a diversion from their every day worries so people turned to entertainment to take their minds off their concerns over looking for work and trying to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. If for a few hours they could lose themselves in a movie that might take their minds off their problems at least for a short time, it might be worth the money.

How times have changed. Tickets to a movie cost around thirty cents (with refreshments) in 1933. Today, the average price of admission alone costs $10 ($12 if you choose or are stuck into having to see 3D).

Those free popcorns now being offered: AMC normally charges an average of $6. Factoring in kernels, butter, and manpower, to make one bag it probably cost AMC $2. Now THAT'S a markup. But free popcorn or not, a person has to lay down a 10 spot just to see a movie.

People, of course, are making more then they did in the '30s, but the cost of living has risen dramatically as well.

Now in 2013 we have something that very few people had in 1933: TV. And even if you can't afford cable or "on demand" (and many can't) there is still free network TV (which seems to consist mostly of reality shows and shows trying to ape CSI). There are also devices such as DVD and Blu-ray players for people to enjoy a movie in the comfort of their own homes.

Still, there's nothing like going to the theaters to see a movie. The days of the grand cinemas with wide screens and classy surroundings are long gone, but even in the multiplexes, it's so much easier to lose oneself when sitting in a theater seat in the dark, staring up at images on the flickering screen.

The 1930s was a time of tough transition for the still new industry of cinema. By the time the Depression hit, the movie studios (who owned most of the theaters where the movies were shown) were already deep in hock from purchasing new cinemas and making the costly transition from silents to sound (a move that would prove lucrative and necessary). Add to that the fact that a public still reeling from the start of the Depression wasn't going to the movies as much. The studios turned to austerity to help them through it, cutting salaries, closing theaters and lowering production costs (the Universal movie "Dracula" which had the misfortune of being in early production stages as the Depression hit, was an example of this. And I believe the costs were cut to its detriment. But that's for another post).


But they also did something very smart. They appreciated the financial pain the average movie-goer was going through. Oh, it wasn't altruism that led the studios to consider this. Pure pragmatism. But they considered it none the less and they realized that the only way they were going to survive was to get the bodies in the seats. 

So they tried marketing ideas much more radical than free popcorn. They lowered the cost of admission. They offered more value for the hard earned money by offering a short movie, a serial, a cartoon, or maybe all three before the main movie. Sometimes there were live acts. Sometimes you got two movies for the price of one (one of them a cheaper B-movie. Lower production values, stars not so well known, but sometimes just as good as the main feature). There were also give-aways and events. They were asking the Depression-era public to give up the cost of admission for a few hours of dreaming. It would require a little bit of effort on their parts to entice these people do so.

Eighty years later, what do the movie chains offer? Well, one of them offers free popcorn (and if all AMCs are like the one I've been to, the popcorn has been pre-bagged and made stale by sitting out in a self-serve warmer for hours). If you don't get a free popcorn it costs you $6. Drinks can cost $4 for the smallest which holds about five gallons of liquid comfortably). Paying the $10 admission, you then sit through a half hour of coming attractions (and commercials) before the movie even starts. Rather than cutting prices, they're often raising prices, crying over the low attendance. Yet they do very little to encourage people to pay the high cost of going to see a movie. 

A form of escapism for the many people still hurting with a touchy economy is growing increasingly out of reach of the average person when they could use it the most. 

So AMC's free popcorn move is part of a long tradition of movie theaters trying to boost their attendance during tough times with special offers. The difference is that back in the 30s, the theaters knew how to treat those people they were trying to draw in. 

A Taste of Trouble

I thought for fun I'd post the first chapter of my book Trouble (that's the cover off to the left. It's available now Kindle at Amazon). Humorous science fiction with a western flair. It was a lot of fun to write. I love the characters and hope to write a sequel eventually. If you like this, check out the rest at Amazon.

Chapter 1The Past Comes Calling
Kate dashed down the stairs, two at a time, hoping to stop the pounding before it woke up the entire house. The carillon had been set to sound only in her room, but whoever was outside had given up on that, instead resorting to an insistent banging that thundered throughout the building. The desperate customer must have been out on the plains a long, lonely time.“Hold on, hold on.” Punching on the foyer light, she pressed a few buttons to fine tune the peep screen. The rain, however, was coming down fast and the men were too saturated and disheveled for identification. Were they Liberty Weekend revelers arriving early? “Hey, listen,” she called through the door, “the kids are sleeping. They need their beauty rest. Come back tomorrow and they’ll be all nice and fresh.”“Kate, open up!”That voice...like the rumble of a slow tanker on take-off. It was unmistakable.“Kate, it’s Bear! Open up! It’s an emergency!”Tapping in the code, she heard the bolts clang open. “Bear?” Throwing open the door she was greeted by the massive hulk of a man she gave up six years ago. Soaking wet, he tumbled into the foyer, dragging something along with him bundled in a cloak. It was a man, by the looks of things, dripping wet as well, but slighter and half dead. Supported by the larger man, the bundle groaned in a half conscious delirium. Stoic as ever, the huge man flatly asked, “Kate, you have a bed free?”“Sure. Sure we do.” Noting drops of blood staining the water puddles on the floor, she said, “But he needs to go to the clinic.”“A doctor, yes, but a clinic is out of the question.”“Bear, he could die.”“Kate, please.”From the stairs behind them, a sleepy, curious voice called out, “Kate, what’s going on?”“Renny.” She turned and motioned for the young man to join them downstairs. At the sight of the travelers, the young man’s pale eyes widened, but he remained calm. “Renny, listen to me. I want you to run to the clinic and fetch Dr. Naulish. If he’s not there, track him down at his house.” Sensing the need for discretion, she told him, “Tell him that I accidentally shot myself. With a slug, not a tazer. There’s a lot of blood.”The boy glanced at the two strangers. “But, Kate...” “Tell him also that I’d like the accident kept quiet. Remind him that he’s run up quite a tab here.”The boy nodded and, with a last look at the strangers, sprang upstairs to find his rain gear.Then Kate took hold of the injured man’s free arm and placed it around her shoulders. As they inched up the stairs, more of her charges peeked over the third floor railing. To their gasped questions, she said, “Never mind. All of you back to bed. Tomorrow’s a big day.”Bear didn’t like the sound of that. She could tell from his grunt.They struggled down the east hall, the injured man fighting off waves of pain evident by the way he groaned and squeezed her shoulder. She was right in her guess. This was no tazer attack, judging by the blood trailing after them. It was either a blade or a slug wound, neither boding much promise. She wondered how much of his dampness was rain and how much was fever sweat.She steered them to a room at the end of the hall that hadn’t been used since her aunt died four years before. It was spacious and bright, done in the healing tones of pink that had helped comfort the woman in her aunt’s painful battle with Paler’s disease. A losing battle. Since the last day, Kate had changed the bed linen regularly, adding fresh shuraiblossoms daily. But she never had the heart to let anyone use the room. Customers and personnel were not allowed. There’d be no games played in that room. Too many memories.Now, watching Bear ease his companion onto the bed, she hoped that the room wouldn’t see another soul pass.  “Kate, can you help me?”Bear was trying to undress the man without moving him too much. The wound on his left side oozed red. Hurrying over, an ironic thought struck her. She had certainly undressed many an unconscious man in her time, but they were usually intoxicated and saved her a night’s work, only too ready to believe the convincing lie she gave them the next day. This night was going to be an all-nighter.As she undid the man’s weapon belt and started on his pants, a door creaking caught her attention. Looking up, she saw pretty little Deeta staring at the scene. The girl’s pale, young eyes, which had already seen so much, still registered shock at the unaccustomed sight of lingering death. “Kate,” the girl started softly, “can I help?” “Yes, honey. Go to the kitchen. Fetch hot water, some towels, some perox soap and...” “Some yskatol,” Bear grumbled.Kate looked at him. “We don’t need liquor, we have anesthesia.”“The yskatol is for me.”She nodded at the girl, who shot out of the room. “I guess I shouldn’t bother with anesthesia till the doctor gets here. Though from what I remember about your constitution, the anesthesia would have more effect on you than the yskatol.”“The drinking is half the fun.”Going into the bathroom, she gathered a few towels and returned to press one on the wound, discarding a makeshift bandage soaked with blood. “Here, hold this,” she told him, using the other towel to gently wipe the dirt and sweat from the squirming man’s face. “So, who is he, Bear?” A million questions ran through her mind, but for some reason this seemed most important. “He’s my brother.”“Brother? You told me you were an only child.” He stared at his brother, and for a moment his face softened. “Guess now it looks like I might get my wish.”Before Kate could reply, Deeta brought in the first-aid and stood over Kate’s shoulder while it was applied.“Is he gonna die?” the girl asked breathlessly, almost fearful.Bear shot her a hard look but Kate told her, “We can’t be sure. The doctor should be here soon.” To Bear, she said, “I don’t see an exit wound. That slug in there has to come out. I’m assuming it’s a slug.”He frowned, nodding.Deeta seemed at once fascinated and frightened. Fascinated, no doubt, by the looks of this handsome young stranger, Kate figured. At one point, the patient stopped writhing and opened his eyes. The stunning purple gaze grew even brighter with fever and landed upon Deeta. For the first time, he grew peaceful and calm as if looking upon some angelic vision sent to soothe him. He smiled. Then his eyes closed, his smile fading, and he fell into deep unconsciousness.“I don’t believe it.” Bear looked up at Deeta with a grin. “The shape he’s in and he still has the energy to flirt.”The young girl turned a color she hadn’t blushed in a long time. At that moment, the carillon rang through the house signaling another visitor. Kate locked eyes with Bear. “That’s the front door.”“The doctor?” he asked.“Unless your friends followed to finish the job.”Standing, Bear positioned himself behind the door, tazerat the ready. “Those friends ain’t the kind to come in through the front door.”Kate knew what to do. She’d been through the drill many times. Play it cool till whoever was coming, came. She only hoped it was the doctor. Deeta followed her lead and together they waited.“Katie.” It was the doctor, voice as strong and clipped as normal. “Katie, this better be a matter of life or death to roust me out of bed this hour.”He entered the room and paused at the sight before him. Then he turned at the sound of Bear’s footsteps.“It’s life or death, all right, Doc.” Bear held the weapon to his mouth. “Yours, if you don’t save my brother.”“Oh, for Zalla’s sake, Bear.” Pushing the gun aside, Kate led the doctor to his patient, telling him, “I can’t stop the bleeding.”“Slug still in him?”“Seems to be.”A disgusted sigh escaped the doctor’s lips. “Then, damn it! Why isn’t he at the clinic? Though, I s’pose that question’s as off limits as any others I might have.”“You s’pose right,” Bear growled.The doctor prepared the tools from his bag and studied the prone man. “I’ll do what I can, but gun or no gun, I’m not a miracle worker. Deeta, you stay and assist. Kate, you take that massive mautekout of here. He’s making me nervous. If I have to operate, you don’t want me nervous.”Kate thought of the blood soaking into the linen and wondered if fate would be kinder this time than it had been to the last occupant of the bed. Taking Bear’s arm, she dragged him from the room, noting that his movements seemed both worried and weary. Who knew how far they had ridden? Last she heard of him, he was in Tullik Par, a full week’s ride by express.“We didn’t go by tech,” he told her, taking a seat on the over-stuffed couch once in the privacy of her room. “We rode in on chiitorahs.”Face quizzical, she handed him a glass of her smoothest, strongest mox, then returned to the liquor cart for her own. He was an extremely accomplished rider, but... “You hate riding chiitorahs.”“They’re not as clean and easy as tech travel, but on some terrain, they’re perfect for...”“Get-aways?”He gulped at the mox. “For a lot of things.”“Riding chiitorahs in a major down-pour with an injured man. What terrain did you head in from?”Bear sighed, rubbing his face, reluctant as ever. “Jeffers City. Rode out about five hours ago.”“Jeffers City is a twelve hour leisure trot on chiitorahs. What made you cover the distance in nearly half that?”“As you said, I had an injured man with me.”Kate settled beside him. “Jeffers has a good clinic. Would have to for all the mining accidents they have.”“You ain’t gonna let this go, are you?”Smiling, she licked her lips and stared at him. “Bear, who do you think you’re talking to? I was there when you weren’t just riding chiitorahs, you were stealing them. I’ve seen you outgun a man during a game of chips.” “He accused me of cheating.” “You were.” This brought a deep chuckle from him that tickled her as well. She grew serious though. “Why’d you leave Jeffers in such a hurry? Why is your brother bleeding to death?”Rising stiffly, Bear went to pour more mox. Studying the glass, he scratched at his beard, which seemed as full and coppery as his hair. “You know, they say that when my mom was four months along with him, she was struck by lightning. A normal baby still in the stomach might have called it quits and aborted right then. But not that stubborn little...” “What’s his name?” “Trouble and with good reason.” “It’s hard to believe that you’re even related.” “Pa worked pirating off planet. Trouble was the product of one of Ma’s many marital indiscretions. We got a sister somewhere, too. Pa was never much good with math, so he just figured that he was the proud father of two sons and a daughter. Ma swore us to secrecy years ago.” Bringing the bottle over to the couch, he filled her glass then topped off his, hissing, “Little son of a Sherber.” “Really?” “Yep. That’s where he gets all his wiriness from.” “It doesn’t seem like you’re all that fond of him.” “Good, cause I’m not.”She ignored this. “Then again, things aren’t always what they seem.”“Well, they are in this case.”“Oh really?”He grunted. He growled. He made a variety of noises that he always made during denial. “Okay. I’ll admit, time was when we were kids that a shadow for a younger brother had potential. But that potential never panned out. He’s been a rock in my shoe since the day he was born.  Like that fiasco he pulled me into recently.”“Oh yeah, that fiasco you were just about to tell me about.”Sighing, he said, “Okay, first understand something. I’ve gone straight. Been clean for the past six years.”“I knew that you would.”“Huh?”She smiled. “Bear, you were remarkable at criminal skills, but there was one thing holding you back. That was your conscience. A person can’t mug someone then worry about how the victim will pay for dinner later that night.”“I s’pose it don’t surprise you to learn that I was sheriff in Jeffers City.”“Not really. You had to put that energy and talent to some use. Who better to handle criminals than someone like yourself?”          Bear conceded this, taking another gulp of mox. “Well, it turns out that Trouble got a bit of 

that conscience as well, only I didn’t know it at the time. He’d been making a name for himself 

on Landrus, outdrawing slowpokes who never should have called him out in the first place. Hadn’t 

seen him in eight years, which was fine by me. Like I said, he’s a problem. When I saw him riding 

in that first day, I had a feeling he’d come looking to join me in the action I’d already given up. 

Either that, or to try to convince me to dive back into my old ways. This time I made a promise to 

myself that I wasn’t going to let him yank me into any of the trouble that traveled with him.”

And Now the Fun Begins

This year I've ramped up my efforts in promoting that thing I laughingly call my writing career. That is a bit of a problem. Part of having a writing career is self promotion. In fact, self promotion is probably about 85 percent of the game. For me, self promotion has never been easy. It's about as natural to me as flying is to a penguin. We have the wings, they're just not very useful.

  


I remember when Chicago's Most Wanted  came out. I was working in circulation at the Park Ridge Library and when my book...the book I'd put so much effort into producing, was checked out by patrons, coworkers pointed out the connection between it and me more than I did. I was thrilled someone was reading it, proud of what I had produced, but I just sort of shrank away from making my relation to it known. You can't do that when you're trying to make a career out of writing.

On this blog and now my website, I bill myself as "the greatest writer that has ever lived" oh sure, partly cause it just may very well be true. But mainly because of the sheer absurdity of the statement. I like to have fun. I love to laugh. Often the more stressful a situation the more my urge to spout a highly inappropriate observation or just plain laughter (and actually, sometimes I'm told my "inappropriate" comment was far from it). I can't help it. It's a condition. Like my tendency to break into song. I've had people comment, "Well you're in a good mood." To which I reply, "Not necessarily. It could be either."




The fact is that, re: my status as "the greatest writer that ever lived", I've never been someone who bought my own publicity. Or anyone's publicity about me. If the celestial ringmaster came down from up high and told me point blank that, indeed, I was the greatest writer that ever lived, I'd still question its judgement (or its sanity).

I've spent most of my youth trying to avoid attention and now I'm in a position where I must court it. I have to convince people that I have something to offer and the problem is that I'm not completely convinced of it myself.

Some people have no difficulty selling themselves, even when they have precious little to sell. Of course, confidence, misplaced or not, is a key element in that talent. It helps project the sincerity needed to close the sale. Confidence has always alluded me for a number of reasons of which I won't bore you with now (though you can read it in my autobiography, What the Hell Just Happened! The Laura Enright Story to be published in the near future or far distant past, depending on how fast we get the whole "time travel" thing going).

Then you have the other side of the coin. People with incredible talent who fly way below the radar because, whether out of shyness or because they simply don't desire it, they don't make their presence known. Kind of like when Obi Wan Kenobi gave up his Jedi past and became a simple hermit in the hills. 

Or not.

The point is that I'm not sure where I belong really. Am I an extrovert by necessity not by design? Or do I really like to be worshipped and adored? I mean, if that worship and adoration were to ever occur. 

I suspect I'm somewhere in the middle when it comes to the goods. I have more than I think, and less than I'd like to have.

Or perhaps it goes back to that penguin. The penguin looks up into the sky and sees a graceful eagle, swooping and soaring. Then he flaps his wings wildly but no amount of wing-flapping will lift him off the ground. So, he waddles along on the ice.

Until he reaches the ocean. Then, he slips in and moves just as gracefully in the water as the eagle did in the sky. He can, in some respects fly, he just needs to be in the right element. 

Just like the rest of us.

Sci Fi And Sitcoms Pt. II

While comedy can be a fun mix with science fiction, not every comedy using it involved a friendly alien visiting earth. Some had fun with the future. The pilot for "Quark," interestingly enough, was broadcast May 7, 1977 a few weeks before "Star Wars" came out in the theaters in what would seem was a spate of growing interest in science fiction space opera (the original "Battlestar Galactica" first premiered in 1978 and "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" a year later). Richard Benjamin played Adam Quark, a dashing and intrepid space captain who none the less commanded a garbage scow. His team, including Betty I and II (a woman and her clone played by Cyb and Tricia Barnstable), Gene/Jean (a humanoid with both sets of gender hormones played by Tim Thomerson) and Ficus Pandorata (a life form from a sentient plant race played by Richard Kelton) picked up the refuse left behind by ships on more important missions. Yet somehow, Quark managed to get into situations where the fate of the universe rested on his shoulders. The show, created by Buck Henry, lasted only eight episodes, the blending of science fiction and comedy at times awkward and the effects a little dicey. Who knows what might have been if the show had been given more of a chance to find an audience and hit its stride. But it seems that that while audiences at the time were willing to watch their space opera spectaculars on the big screen, they were not so willing to do so on the small screen.



A much better version of comedy in space is "Red Dwarf", originally airing on the BBC. Dave Lister, played by Craig Charles, a lowly worker on the Red Dwarf mining ship who was in stasis when a radiation leak courses through the ship and kills everyone else. When he awakes, three million years later, the crew is dead and he's left alone to figure it all out. Well, he's not completely alone. He does have company in the hologram of Arnold Rimmer, immediate superior whose memories were stored on the computer. Trouble is that he never got along with Rimmer when he had a body. Rimmer's digital self isn't exactly an improvement. There is one more unexpected passenger roaring through the halls of the ship. The descendant of the pregnant cat that Rimmer smuggled on board three million years ago. Only this is no little kitty. Rather he's a humanoid (Danny John-Jules) evolved from the cat with a human's body and the crazy vanity and predatory reactions of a cat. The British seem to have a better handle on the sort of absurdity needed to do this right and "Red Dwarf" premiered in 1988 at a time when alternative comedy in Britain had taken on some of the anarchy of the recently emerged punk scene. At the heart of the show is Lister's attempts to beat loneliness while holding tight to his hope of returning to Earth. Like Lister, the show has spanned the decades, with series running from 1988-93, 97-99 and 2009 and 2012. It has a very loyal cult following who often discuss the merits of each "set" of series (and consequently, which is the better set of series).



In the animated, "Futurama," the main character Philip J. Fry, mild mannered pizza delivery boy, winds up being cryogenically frozen and waking up a thousand years later. He finds himself trying to make the best of life as an alien in his own land (of course he wasn't exactly at home in his own time), making friends, making enemies, traveling the galaxy as a delivery boy for an intergalactic shipping firm. Created by "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, the series premiered in 1999 and had a shaky run on FOX until 2003 when it was finally axed. Like Fry himself, the show was resurrected and ran on Adult Swim from 2003-07 and from there the show jumped around from direct to video to Comedy Central until it's final show which aired recently on Sept. 4, 2013 thus making it one of the longest running, shows continually flirting with cancellation in the history of television. Not a bad record really. And considering its legion of die-hard fans, it just might make another try for it somewhere, sometime.



Another, older, animated sitcom that mined the possibilities of the future for its material eventually became a classic despite a very short run. Meet George Jetson. His boy Elroy...well you probably know the rest. While it's counterpart "The Flintstones" made the most of prehistory, "The Jetsons" found its comedy in the space age future (albeit the space age future to be found in 2026, the possibilities of which must have seemed very space age in 1962). George Jetson has a wife named Jane, A daughter, Judy, his son Elroy and a lovable mutt named Astro who smothers him with kisses when he gets home from his job at Spacely Sprockets (where his four-hour work week was killing him). Looking for a new take on sitcoms featuring the average "American" family, producers Hanna-Barbera decided to set this tale of the average Joe and his family in the future when people flew in cars, lived in houses in the sky, and worked four-hour work weeks. Little did they know that their dream technology, when it came about, would not be quite so fantastic, not quite so helpful, and would actually put many George Jetsons out of their forty-hour work week.



Space Ghost Coast to Coast, which premiered on Cartoon Network in 1994, is particularly off beat (even considering the genre mash-up), using the actual animation from the old 1960s Space Ghost series and re-editing to fit the format. The show takes the celestial crime fighter Space Ghost from the Hannah-Barbera cartoon superhero series of the same name, ditches his odd, teen-supertwin companions and their pet monkey and puts SG on the set of his own talk show. His arch nemesis and sidekick/bandleader Zoltar provides banter and music (when he's not being blown up by Space's wristband after saying something out of turn). Real live celebrities visit, via a monitor effect, that comes down on the cartoon set (the interviews of the celebrities were filmed separately then superimposed on the monitor. Snippets of the interviews were then collected and patched together to fit the segment of the show). Half the fun of this imaginative and bizarre show was seeing how well the celebrities rolled with the questions being fed to them during their taping. The other half was just the notion that the galaxial crimefighter Space Ghost would have a talk show at all, let alone one featuring three of his fiercest enemies as sidekicks.



Coming back down to earth (so to speak) a favorite animated comedy of mine premiered in 1994 on FOX Kids Saturday morning block of cartoon nonsense that I none the less got up early for just to watch. "The Tick" (based a spoof of comic book superheroes from New England Comics, a Boston area comic book store) chronicled the adventures of the mighty superhero The Tick and his side kick Arthur (dressed as a moth). Together, they patrolled The City looking for chances to fight crime. The problem was that The City was filled with superheroes looking for chances to fight crime (Die Fledermaus, American Maid, Sewer Urchin). The place was swollen with them. So competition was high on the list of things for our interpret heroes to prepare for when coming up against such villains as The Breadmaster, Chairface Chippendale and Dinosaur Neil.



Honorable mentions go to two specials that starred one of my favorite comic actors: Rowan Atksinson. "Blackadder" ran for four series ("The Blackadder", "Blackadder II", "Blackadder the Third" and "Blackadder Goes Forth") and was one of the sharpest comedies ever produced especially considering that each series took place in a different time period. The two constants were Rowan Atkinson, starring as some branch of the Blackadder tree (depending on the time period), and Tony Robinson portraying his faithful, much abused servant Baldrick. Curiously, as the centuries pass, the Edmund Blackadders actually mentally evolved with each series while his standing in society lowered. In the meantime, the intelligence of Baldrick devolved (his social standing pretty much moving laterally). As we hit the Millennium, it was decided that another installment of the Blackadder sage needed to be told so a special was filmed to be shown near the Millennium Dome in the SkyScape Cinema in South London. "Blackadder: Back and Forth" tells the story of the late 20th century answer to Edmund Blackadder who in this incarnation is Lord Blackadder. In a scheme to swindle his friends, Blackadder tells them at a New Year's Eve dinner party that he's managed to build a time machine and betting them that he can bring back proof of his travels through time. The machine is basically a facade but unbeknownst to him, during construction, somehow Baldrick has built a time machine that actually works. As he realizes that he's traveled back in time, Blackadder's plan to swindle his friends becomes a quest to get back to his own time. Guest starring many of the folks who appeared in the previous series, it's a fitting installment in the series.



Also in 1999, Atkinson appeared in a parody of "Doctor Who" that was filmed to be shown at Comic Relief's Red Nose Day in Britian. In "Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death," Atkinson as the Doctor has asked for a meeting with his arch nemesis The Master played by Jonathan Pryce because he plans to retire and wed his companion, Emma (Julia Sawalha). The Master has his own plans, however and a deadly game of chronological cat and mouse ensues as each goes back in time to one up the other. At some point however, in a showdown with a Dalek, the Doctor is mortally wounded and begins the regeneration process. Continually cut down, he regenerates into a number of surprising (guest star) incarnations lastly Joanna Lumly who is a particularly fun female Doctor (and who proves that the right female actress could indeed play the Doctor). The special has lots of good natured fun with the trappings and tropes of the classic "Doctor Who" universe and actually illustrates that Atkinson himself could have made a good Doctor.



So, the bottom line is, even in the future, there'll always be time for a little laughter.