Ed Gorman's Blog, page 170

Carolyn Hart; Max Allan Collins

Dear Ed,

I had the great good fortune to be interviewed on OK public tv this week. It is always fun to talk about mysteries and writing. Here is the link if you think there are any who might be interested.

http://ra.okstate.edu/Tul_Campus/Writ...

DEATH COMES SILENTLY, the 22nd Death on Demand title, will be published by Berkley Prime Crime in April. Coming in October will be WHAT THE CAT SAW, a novel of suspense.

Love - C
----------------------------------MAX COLLINS

Max (Al) Collins, along with Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime, is responsible for bringing Donald Westlake's last novel into print. Westlake sent the manuscript to Al many years ago to see what he thought of it and to see if Al might collaborate with him on revising it. But ultimately Westlake scrapped it when Martin Scorcese's King of Comedy appeared. Don thought there were too many similarities.

Al recounted this on his blog recently and then talked about how good the novel's reviews have been. But then he cited a curious and to me clueless piece of one of the good reviews.

"Another good review began oddly, stating that there might be something fishy about this discovery if it hadn't come from me, because after all I can be trusted. You see, the reviewer (Steve Donoghue) says "a more honest thousand-word-a-day hack isn't living.

"Here's the thing. I resent the word hack. Any writer would. It is the "n" word of the writing world. Further, if Steve Donoghue thinks that a "hack" is anybody who can turn out a thousand words a day, he is (in my case at least) 1500 words short. And trust me, Donald E. Westlake never had a thousand-word writing day in his life. Ed McBain probably never had a day under 5000 words.

"Anyway, speed or lack of it has no bearing on the quality of writing, which should and does speak for itself. I rewrite heavily, but my practice is not to rewrite the life and spontaneity out of a work. Barb considers herself slow – 1000 words would be a good day – but the result is terrific and has an off-handed feel as if she just threw it off quickly. That's an art in itself.

"I understand that – like Don – I am a prolific writer. This does not mean that I don't work hard at writing. In fact, I work very hard at it, and if I write 2500 words of a Nate Heller or Jack Starr or some other historical novel, many hours of research have gone into it. And it's not just research. One thing that Barb and I share in our approach is a propensity for thinking about what we're going to write for at least as long as it will take to write it.

"For me writing is an art, yes, but first and foremost it is a craft, and selling what I've crafted is my business – you know, like trouble was Phillip Marlowe's. When a reviewer – whether in the New York Times or on a blog – dismisses a writer as a "hack," or talks about a writer "churning out" or "grinding out" a book, that reviewer is indulging in a lazy, prejudiced, sloppy way of thinking…and writing. Those of us who do this for a living – and are not lawyers or doctors or teachers who write on the side, and are not blockbuster writers who can afford to write a thousand words a day, or less – deserve more consideration if not respect than being called the "h" word."

* * *

Bravo! Al speaks for many of us who get treated to the "grind `em out" accusation. Sometimes these are made by snobs who think most popular fiction is trash. But I wonder if, sometimes at least, these accusations are leveled because of stupidity. How could this Steve Donoghue not know how insulting his words were? It's easy for me to imagine that he thinks that anybody not producing work at the level of Proust is writing trash--so therefore it must be easy to "crank `em out."

Bill Pronzini told me that at a signing once a woman came up and told him that she enjoyed his books "But when are you going to write something serious?" Lady, you may not think these books are serious but they are to us.

My own personal favorite came from a wealthy girl I dated awhile. She was always amused by my choices in books and movies. She feigned great interest in finer expressions of literature and music. She amused me as much as I amused her. We broke off on what I thought were good terms. Several years later I got a letter from her (by now she'd married a neuro-surgeon and lived in Georgetown). She had, she said, read one of my books. "It's the sort of novel anybody could write if they just had the time." Whoa baby. I guess those good terms weren't as good as I'd thought, eh?

I posted a letter from Carolyn Hart above. Excellent writer and very nice woman. Carolyn slaves over her work as Al does as I do as every single writer I know does. It's hard work. I know there's supposed to be some mysterious "formula" but if there is none of us have found it yet. I always joke that my full name is "Prolific Ed Gorman." I was for the first half of my career but I don't think writing two short stories and two sixty thousand word novels a year for a writer of popular fiction is going to get me an invite to the Prolific Olympics. I try to write 1500-2000 words a day. I am a professional writer. It's my job to do so.

And as Al said, speed is irrelevant. One of my favorite writers is Georges Simenon. More than five hundred novels before they planted him--and that's not counting the three hundred or so magazine length pulp novels he wrote before being published under his own name and in book form. My friend Bob Randisi is another example. He has made lasting contributions to both the crime and western genres, books I've read and re-read with pleasure and admiration. And look at Al. Nate Heller? Quarry? Road To Perdition? Ms. Tree? Etc.

I'm sure I sound defensive here but I don't mean to. I'm so used to being Prolific Ed Gorman that I kinda like it actually. Seriously. It's the "grind `em out" and "crank `em out" stuff that gets to me. My work may be junk but I work hard at producing it. At least give me credit for putting in long hours at the machine. And as for Steve Donoghue I don't know if he was just trying to be glib but he owes Al an apology.

FOR THE REST OF MAX'S PIECE GO HERE:
http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/

James Mason by David Thomson

Director Sidney Lumet said of James Mason: "I always thought he was one of the best actors who ever lived. Whatever you gave him to do he would take it, assimilate it and then make it his own. The technique was rock solid, and I fell in love with him as an actor, so every time I came across a script I wanted to direct I would start to read it thinking is there anything here for James? He had no sense of stardom at all. He wanted good billing and the best money he could get, but then all he ever thought about was how to play the part. In that sense he reminded me more of an actor in a theatre repertory ensemble than a movie star, and it was what made him so good." Lumet also directed Mason in The Sea Gull (1968), Child's Play (1972) and The Verdict (1982).[]

Every word a poison dart
James Mason - career villain, smooth talker, creative powerhouse - would have been 100 today. David Thomson looks back on an unforgettable actor who never settled for the easy option

David Thomson
The Guardian, Thursday 14 May 2009

Breakthrough role ... James Mason in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out. Photograph: Kobal Collection
James Mason had good friends, and sometimes that is the measure of a man, especially in the picture business, where it's all too easy to lose contact as golden opportunities fade away. Consider his situation in the late 1940s. After giving his youth and his early beauty to British pictures and theatre, he decided to go to Hollywood. There must have been people who told him he was too patrician, too intelligent, as well as too old to break through in America. But he made wonderful contacts. There was a chance of doing the Svengali-Trilby story (with Jane Wyman), and Mason longed to have Jean Renoir as its director because he could see that the Frenchman loved actors. Alas, that project fell through, but then Renoir offered Mason the role of the wounded veteran in his Indian picture, The River. I can't do it, sighed Mason; I'm set to play the male lead in La Duchesse de Langeais - which was to be the comeback picture for Greta Garbo.

... Advancing into his 40s, Mason had reason to think of bad luck as he played Erwin Rommel in a couple of movies, Rupert of Hentzau in a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda and "Hendrik van der Zee" in the dotty but deliriously beautiful romance, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. In Britain, there were already superior figures in acting who marvelled over what was happening to "poor Jimmy Mason". But as we come to celebrate today what would have been his 100th birthday, there are those who only wish there was more of Pandora, more Rommel and an entire picture about Rupert of Hentzau, the only interesting person in that whole Zenda nonsense.

In every decade, from the 1930s to the 80s, James Mason did some poor work in disappointing pictures, just as he missed out on mouth-watering opportunities. So, yes, it's lamentable that he was to have been Prospero for Michael Powell, only for that Tempest to blow out. But don't forget that their long friendship did lead somewhere: to Australia, for the quirky but vivid Age of Consent, where Mason was the film's co-producer and he and Powell managed to discover the 18-year-old Helen Mirren to be the muse for the beachcomber painter Mason plays.

Yes, I know you can see Mason in these parts, but it's just as evident that you hear him and, before we go any further, it's vital to consider the unique and languid but impassioned voice of this man. Is it enough to say that he was a lad born in Huddersfield (the son of a wool merchant) who was sent to Cambridge to speak properly? Should we consider also his years on the Dublin stage as a prelude to his tragic figure in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out - the film above all that promoted him from British pictures to a Hollywood player? Or is there not still something in Mason's voice - aristocratic, but full of connoisseurship, too - that allowed the actor to become his true self just once, as the voice of Humbert Humbert in the film of Lolita? Humbert is not American. He is a scholar of comparative literature, as well as a judge of nymphets. He is a very bad man (if you like, or if you don't like), but he may be the purest-spoken scoundrel in all the movies. For he has to deliver Nabokovian prose as if to say it was the most normal and sensible way of speaking the English language yet invented.

FOR THE REST GO HERE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/m...

Forgotten Books: The Procane Chronicle by Ross Thomas

Ross Thomas, The Procane Chronicle

One of life's true pleasures is reading a Ross Thomas novel. He never lets you down when you re-read him, either.

I've now read The Procane Chronicle for the third or fourth time, and even though I now know all the amazing surprises Thomas blesses his readers with, the prose alone is as much fun as the story. The only writer living today who can even come close to the grace and nimbleness of Thomas is Lawrence Block. Block knows from sentences.

In this one, Phillip St. Ives is dragooned by poverty as usual to act as a go-between when a blackmailer sets a price. St. Ives is hired to make sure that both sides keep their promise. The stake this time is a possible Mafia war.

As always, Thomas gives us a radiantly cynical take on Washington, D. C. and all who do business there. Though thirty years have passe since the original publication, Procane depicts a nation's capitol no different from the one we know today. St. Ives is lied to and betrayed by everything on two legs, even – or especially – those with fine looking female legs.

For me, Thomas was one of the finest crime writers of the last century. He brought to each book a witty and brutal intelligence that exposed all of us as less than we'd want to be. He was a romantic of course.

You'll have to get on to ABE or one of the other web sites to buy it, but it'll be well worth the trouble. If you've never read Ross Thomas, this is good place to start.

THE COMEDY IS FINISHED by Donald E. Westlake

"The rediscovered Donald E. Westlake novel, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, is getting some great reviews. Regular readers of these updates know that I had the manuscript for the novel in my basement (actually a drawer in a cabinet in my basement, with other Westlake materials). Don and I had explored revising the novel for publication under both our names (or possibly a joint pseudonym) after he had difficulty finding a publisher for an unfunny Westlake novel about a Bob Hope-style comedian. The book didn't really need any work, but he was sick of looking at it, and I had some ideas about streamlining, and addressing some complaints editors had expressed about the political content. But when the similarly plotted film "King of Comedy" came out, Don called me and scrapped the project." Max Allan Collins from http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/

Yes, thanks to Max and Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime we're now able to read what may well be the last original Donald Westlake to see print.

Comedy deals with the comedian Koo Davis (think Bob Hope) being kidnapped just after taping another one of his uninspired and frequently self-congratulatory TV shows by a small group of mismatched hippie would-be revolutionaries.

The novel cuts back and forth between Koo using his captivity to relive his life and his captors arguing among themselves about how to best use the comedian as a bargaining chip with the powers that be. Westlake (and the readers) have a good time with Koo. Westlake avoids caricature and gives us a man who no longer understands the entertainment world--not even hanging out with generals and sports stars gives him much cache anymore--and must now face what a lousy father and husband he's been. He even wonders if he's "worth" kidnapping.

The captors are headed up by a secretive young man named Peter who is constantly being prodded by Mark, a sociopath who is dangerous even to the group itself. The others include a wistful theorist named Larry and two women, Liz, deeply troubled and confused and Joyce who held the studio job that secured the kidnapping.

Westlake makes all the charactersindividuals and it is their sniping, arguing even fighting that make the novel a real page turner.

These are the children of the faux Revolution as well as the Revolution of hippie Los Angeles with all the bravado and naivete that marked their fury. It's interesting to contrast their portraits here with an earlier novel Westlake wrote, Murder Among Children as by Tucker Coe. This appeared at the start of the Flower Power days and his take on hippies was much more benign.

Westlake was frequently a social critic in his novels and he is no less so here. He captures the late 70s perfectly, the waning times of Up Against The Wall Motherfucker as disco music played in the background. The kidnappers here are stranded in time--the cops were now killing Black Panthers in cold blood and getting away with it. The Revolution, such as it was, was long over.

While there are similarities between The Comedy is Finished and King of Comedy, King is entertaining and admirable but cold; Westlake's book is hot with fear, remorse, lust and violence. The reader is constantly speculating on how it'll end and who'll still be alive on the last page. The tight structure--we basically have the house the hippies are ensconced in and the scenes with the lawmen--embellishes the suspense and heightens the twists.

A fine novel in all respects. And all thanks to Max Collins and Charles Ardai for giving it to us.

Lee Goldberg; Black Wings Has My Angel

Ed here: I'm about halfway through McGrave and it's dazzling. I'm running out of brfeath just reading it. Congratulations to Lee on this Bookgasm review.

McGrave

by BRUCE GROSSMAN on FEBRUARY 14, 2012 · 1 COMMENT
It's e-books like MCGRAVE that are great for tablet reading. Lee Goldberg's novella is just 70 pages of awesomeness. Think of it as some sort of lost '80s action film — or both a love letter to and parody of the genre, hitting every beat you would see in those bygone films.

The title refers to John "Tidal Wave" McGrave, a cop who plays by his own set of rules. (Like there were any other kind back in the halcyon days of action cinema.) The story follows our hero as he stumbles upon a house robbery gone wrong, then goes to Berlin, where he's a full-on fish out of water.

All the while, McGrave — who calls himself a living weapon — just barrels through the plot while having no regard that he is not even a cop anymore, due to earlier actions. The story is literally just one giant action piece from page one, with no let-up, so you don't stop reading until it's done. You're never sure how more over-the-top it can get.

Goldberg seems to have his tongue planted firmly in cheek throughout, with the added bonus that there is no budget to worry about while you write. MCGRAVE is a super-breezy and easy read which will delight those who miss the men's adventure series of old. Hopefully, Goldberg can continue in this vein since this work alone has me rethinking my anti-Kindle position. —Bruce Grossman



THANKS TO JACK O'CONNELL FOR THIS LINK
Elijah Wood, Anna Paquin and Tom Hiddleston join noir crime thriller BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL!
Published at: Feb 13, 2012 10:01:19 AM CST

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Now this sounds good. Screen Daily is reporting that Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood and Tom Hiddleston has joined a crime flick called BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL, based on a pulp novel by Elliott Chaze.

Adapted by Barry Gifford and to be directed by Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, this story is about an ex-con who robs an armored car with the help of a call-girl. There's apparently a whole lot of darkness in this project, with nobody being devil-free if you catch my drift.

The novel has been described as Jim Thompson-esque, which means this could be friggin' awesome-sauce.

Not sure who is playing what in this adaptation, other than it's a pretty good guess that Paquin will be the prostitute unless Elijah Wood is really wanting to go against type. Hiddleston is proving to be a very welcome screen presence and I think this one has all the makings of a quality project. Can't wait to see how it turns out!

For Movie Fans: Republic Pictures

Ed here: Having grown up on Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Rocky Lane, etc. I saw two or three Republic Pictures every Saturday afternoon at the dime theater. Here's an excellent overview of the company's horror output from TCM Movie Morlocks.


Proud Republican
Posted by Richard Harland Smith on February 10, 2012


Yes, I am a proud Republican… and by that I mean I am a proud fan of Republic Pictures, the little studio that could. And by could, I mean could produce low budget genre movies that stood toe to toe and title to title (if not in grandeur, then at times in mass appeal) with the offerings of the big Hollywood studios. Founded in 1934 by Herbert J. Yates, owner of a film processing laboratory to whom several "Poverty Row" production companies were in debt, Republic came into being by consolidating the assets of six cash-strapped outfits (Monogram, Liberty, Mascot, Majestic, Chesterfield and the unfortunately named Invincible) to become something like a B-movie supergroup. Over the years, Yates' s conscripts would break away from the Republic stranglehold, either re-establishing their brand (as did Monogram) or splintering off to be absorbed elsewhere within the industry. Known for its westerns and movie serials, Republic Pictures gave cowboy actors John Wayne and Roy Rogers career leg-ups while auteurs such as John Ford and Fritz Lang also put in their time there. I noticed recently that Netflix was offering streaming options for a number of Republic horror titles that had long eluded me, so I made a date with myself to see if these films could repay over 40 years of curiosity.

I first read about THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST (1945) in Alain Silver and James Ursini's The Vampire Film. The oft-updated overview was published originally in 1975 and, along with David Pirie's The Vampire Cinema and Barrie Pattison's The Seal of Dracula, it proved invaluable for turning me on to scads of vampire movies that had not then crossed my path, like Roger Vadim's ET MOURIR DE PLAISIR (BLOOD AND ROSES, 1960), Robert Hossein's LE VAMPIRE DE DUSSELDORF (THE VAMPIRE OF DUSSELDORF, 1965), Jess Franco's VAMPYROS LESBOS (1970) and this little number from director Leslie Selander. Known best for his westerns, Selander was prolific and flexible during his long career, tackling various genres with a consistent level of professionalism. (Selander's output ran apace with Lambert Hillyer, who helmed DRACULA'S DAUGHTER.) THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST has a great look, set as it is in an African port town where the locals are dying off, their corpses discovered drained of blood and marked by curious punctures in the throat. Following as it does Universal's many sequels to DRACULA (1931), which culminated with HOUSE OF DRACULA that same year, the script for THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST by former pulp novelist John K. Butler and Leigh Brackett (whom John Carpenter thought so highly of that he named the sheriff in HALLOWEEN after her) dispenses with all mystery from the jump, kicking things off with a confessional opening narration ("I cannot die! I cannot rest!") spoken by vampire-at-large Webb Fallon (John Abbott). Lots of genre critics have fallen down hard on Abbott's performance, wishing a more dynamic actor had played the tormented Fallon, but I'd counter that perhaps Fallon wasn't meant to be Count Dracula but just your average 16th Century dude cursed with immortality for killing a chick and chilling out in equatorial Africa where nobody cares how many villagers you tap. Silver and Ursini note that the character bears more of a resemblance to John Polidori's The Vampyre or James Malcolm Rymer's Varney the Vampire than Stoker's immortal creation and if history has taught us nothing else it has proven that ineffectual little men can do a world of damage when right-minded folk aren't paying attention. If Abbott strikes some viewers as second string, he walks tall among a dull supporting cast (Grant Withers is a near non-entity as the local priest) while the jungle setting and use of native bearers (among them I WALK WITH A ZOMBIE's Martin Wilkins) as the first to realize there's something unearthly about Webb Fallon (and take proactive steps to do something about it) give THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST novelty. If anything, the film suffers from a lack of ambition; though Fallon claims his victims will rise from their graves, we never see that happen, which makes the film feel like a bit of a cheat, especially when you consider what a dishy vampira Adele Mara (SANDS OF IWO JIMA, CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN) would have been.

FOR THE REST GO HERE:
http://moviemorlocks.com/2012/02/10/p...

Long-lost Donald Westlake tape: Redford, Godard, Hammett and more

FEBRUARY 7, 2012 7:00 AM1 COMMENT
FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Long-lost Donald Westlake tape: Redford, Godard, Hammett and more
Rear Window: A series that looks at interesting books and movies from the past.

BY VINCE COSGROVE

Here's another recent discovery from the dark recesses of my garage: a 60-minute Sony audiotape of an interview with the great Donald E. Westlake conducted on November 2, 1973.

Donald Westlake (1933-2008) wrote more than 100 books, numerous short stories and screenplays over a 50-year career in which he won three Edgars, the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America, and a 1990 Oscar nomination for his superb adaptation of "The Grifters."

At the time of the interview, I was in grad school in Boston studying journalism, although "studying" is a stretch. I'd been assigned to interview a celebrated person, and I immediately thought of Donald Westlake, a writer I'd admired for his humorous thrillers ("Adios, Scheherazade," "The Hot Rock") and his hardboiled caper novels about a professional thief named Parker, written under the aptly chosen pen name Richard Stark (the character's latest movie incarnation opens in October with Jason Statham in "Parker").

Mr. Westlake seemed surprised when he opened his Manhattan apartment door—he'd been expecting me the following week. Despite the confusion, he welcomed me warmly. For the next hour or so, he patiently—and most entertainingly—answered my many questions.

For space reasons, I've condensed some of his responses.

On his beginnings
"I started writing when I was 11. In my late teens, I was writing short stories of every conceivable type, and sent them to everything from Future Science Fiction to The Sewanee Review. First story I ever sold [at 19] was science fiction, second was a comedy to a men's magazine, third was a mystery story. Mysteries were what I got a good response on. I spent years saying I was a writer disguised as a mystery writer, and after 30 books and several movies, I thought maybe I'm a mystery writer disguised as a writer."

On his favorite writer
"My admirations are not necessarily my influences. My favorite living novelist is Anthony Powell [author of the 12-volume "A Dance to the Music of Time"]. If I ever took an influence from him it would destroy me because he writes such a controlled but leisurely way that if I put anything of that into my stuff, it would break the springs. I love those books."

On his influences
"When I was a kid and first writing I was completely in love with the Cornell Woolrich/William Irish books. I think he's dated rapidly. I didn't exactly borrow from him, but I had much of his sense of heightened expectations of people always being slightly off balance.

"I love Hammett, never liked Chandler—I'm one of the few. In 'Red Harvest,' there's my favorite chapter title of any book: 'The Seventeenth Murder.' Some of Parker comes out of that.

"A guy named Peter Rabe wrote a batch of books for Gold Medal in the 50s, and he was absolutely the single largest influence on writing style. I was completely in love with the way the man wrote. Everything is a little bit oblique, but with this sense of terrific tension underneath. I read that he had [advanced degrees] in psychology, and that his dissertation was on frustration--and that was the key to the man's writing: how to behave like a normal human being under the stress of frustration. Throughout the 50s, he was doing beautiful work . . . with awful Gold Medal titles like 'Murder Me for Nickels.'"

FOR THE REST GO HERE:
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/page...

FALSE DAWN (The Jake Lassiter Series) eBook: Paul Levine FREE

(Lifted from Bill Crider)
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Interesting Books to Your Attention
Free, for the moment, and highly recommended!

Amazon.com: FALSE DAWN (The Jake Lassiter Series) eBook: Paul Levine: Kindle Store

Shemp Forever!

Ed here: I always quote my friend Max Collins whenever I talk about Shemp Howard. Shemp was the only one of the Stooges who seemed to be dimly aware that life should't be like this--he just didn't know what to do about it. Even when I was eight I sensed a certain melancholy in Shemp. He seemed overwhelmed by everything, the way a lot of the vets in our neighborhood just back from the big war did. Mo and Larry just punched it out like machines; hilarious machines but machines nonethless. Shemp is my favorite Stooge; he was also the only one who had an independent successful movie career. Here's a great website: Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict.


THE LITTLE STOOGE WHO COULD


The third of five Howard brothers, Shemp was born Samuel Horwitz in Brooklyn, New York in 1895. His unusual moniker "Shemp" came when his mother couldn't yell "Sam" in her thick Lithuanian accent, and instead it came out as "Shemp," so that's just what everybody called him. Now during his early days Shemp had no ambitions to be in show business. However, that wasn't true for his younger brother Moe, who wanted nothing more then to enter vaudeville. As a result of his desire, Moe was continuously coming up with new dance hall acts and recruiting Shemp as his partner. Moe was a natural on stage, but Shemp was just along for the ride in an attempt not to let his younger brother down. However, after dropping out of both high school and failing at being a plumber, not to mention a discharge from the army after it was discovered that he was a bed wetter, which saved him from the trenches of WWI, Shemp really had nothing else left to do. As a result, by 1917 Shemp and Moe were working the vaudeville circuit as part of a blackface act but by 1921 the act broke up when Moe joined comedian Ted Healey as part of his roughhouse act. As Ted Healy and his Stooge, Ted and Moe became a popular vaudeville act, and the foundations of The Three Stooges began.


Ted Healy and his Stooges - Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Shemp Howard and Ted Healey

It was in 1922, when Shemp went to one of Ted and Moe's performances that Moe saw his older brother sitting in the audience and started to yell insults at him from the stage. Shemp, in total sync to his brother's sense of humor, got out of the audience and jumped on stage and he, Moe and Ted improvised the rest of the act together. The result was a roaring success and after the performance Ted Healey asked Shemp to join the act. At first Shemp was reluctant to join Healey and Moe, especially as a result of the protests of his mother. Jennie Howard was against any of her sons being in show business, and having already lost Moe to vaudeville and with youngest brother Jerome (aka Curly) following in Moe's footsteps, she didn't want to lose Shemp to show business as well. She had far bigger aspirations for her boys then to just be Stooges. However, when Ted Healey, who was always a con man, gave a hundred dollars to the synagogue the Howard's attended, Jennie reluctantly agreed. Thus Shemp became the second Stooge. Three years later, in 1925, a third Stooge, violinist Larry Fine, joined the act and the four were finally christened Ted Healy and his Three Stooges.

for the rest go here: http://popcultureaddict.com/movies-2/...

Forgotten Books: Savages by Bill Pronzini

SAVAGES by Bill Pronzini

F. Paul Wilson once noted that private eye fiction offers the reader a snapshot of a certain time and place. We read Raymond Chandler not only for his fine prose but also for his portraits of Hollywood in the Thirties and Forties. Ross Macdonald showed us a very different Los Angeles due to the differences in time and temperment. And if you want to know what it was like on the angry lower-class streets of Depression Hollywoodland, you could do worse than read a lesser writer named John K. Butler, whose hardboiled cab driver functioned as a private eye without a license.

Today the definitive takes on San Francisco and environs are the Nameless novels and stories by Bill Pronzini. The influence here, if there is a singuar one, would be Hammett and not Chandler. Nameless is working class, competent and only occasionally up for doing the kind of favors that the more romantic Marlowe did so often. Nameless, like the Contintental Op, is a professional not a dashing knight.

A few decades from now the Nameless books will give readers a fascinating look at the past thirty-forty years of life in San Francisco. The social upheavels, the econmically and culturally stratified society, the endless experiments in modern living.

And you can find all this and much more in the Nameless novel SAVAGES. Pronzini tells three stories here. He goes back to work for a wealthy client he never much liked only after she convinces him that there's at least a possibility that her sister was murdered by her husband, a man Nameless couldn't turn anything sinister about when he first investigated him. Nameless not only comes to suspect the husband but several other people who were in the life of the dead woman. He draws these characters with clear and deserved contempt.

The second story deals with an arsonist pursued by Jake Runyon, the partner in Nameless' agency. The trail leads him to a small town where the feel is that of a western town of a hundred years ago. Pronzini, writer of many fine westerns, seems especially at home here with the good lawman and the bad lawman and the townspeople eager to get stampeded into believing any piece of gossip they hear. Interesting that he mixes this sensibility with that of young people into drugs, violence and MTV ennui.

The third story concerns Nameless' woman Kerry and the aftermath of her surgery for breast cancer. She's been pronounced all right but nobody who's had cancer ever quite believes that. Pronzini is especially adept at dealing realistically and unsentimentally with the subject.

Thus we encounter three kinds of savages here--those of the city elite--those of rural blue collar life--and those of the human body, the cancer cells that destroy without fear or favor.

Another excellent entry in one of the most consistently excellent series of the past forty years.