Ed Gorman's Blog, page 191

Forgotten TV Shows: Dobie Gillis

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The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-1963)



"Teen Dobie wanted hot girls, money and to do as little work as possible, egged on by equally work-adverse beatnik pal Maynard (Bob Denver). But Dobie's modest background made that difficult, as did nemeses like golddigger Thalia (Tuesday Weld), the girl Dobie wanted, and handsome rich kid Milton (Warren Beatty), Dobie's rival for Thalia's affections." Best TV

Shows of the 50s.



Ed here: I was a big Max Shulman fan so I was happy to see one of his best books turned into a TV series. The casting was spot on. Dobie was the kind of earnest kid who couldn't get laid with a bag of cash and a Maserati and Maynard the kind who turned shiftlessness into a protest movement. Perfect. Tuesday Weld was not only radiant and beautiful she obviously had a great time playing heartbreaker Thalia. And Warren Beatty was perfect then too--a pain in the ass then and a pain in the ass still.



The whole cast was rich and deep. Frank Faylen and Flordia Freibus as Dobie's parents, Sheila James as Zelda Gilroy (the "sensible" choice for Dobie to hook up with but whoever wanted "sensible," right?) and of course the great Steve Franken's Chatsworth Osborne Jr. nearly stole every episode he was in. He showed Beatty how to play an obnoxious rich kid.



I still watch these on DVD. The first three seasons are the best. Few things satisfy me as much as hearing Dobie's old man say "I gotta kill that kid someday." Now THAT's my kind of "family" show.

Gold Medal sales figures. Can these be right?

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Ed here: I was researching a piece and stumbled on this post by Edie Dykeman on Bellaonline. BTW House of Flesh is a truly disturbing novel, a little gem--gothic noir.)



Edie Dykeman::



"The noir genre exploded when Fawcett Publications created Gold Medal Books toward the end of 1949. The new line began publishing original stories that tackled the darker cynical side of the genre; and they were not inhibited as to sexual content. Gold Medal soon began publishing eight original paperbacks a month. Although the line started out slowly, in 1951 Richard Carroll, who had worked as a story editor in Hollywood, became editor, and the line quickly established itself as a leader in the field.



"Other popular paperback publishers that followed Gold Medals lead during the 1950's were Dell, Lion, Ace, and Popular Library, among others. The decade became known for its paperback originals. Gold Medal discovered a number of authors during that time including Charles Williams, Bruno Fischer, and Gil Brewer. Lion Books was instrumental in publishing many of the early works of Jim Thompson.



"House of Flesh (1950) by Fischer sold over 18 million copies, Hill Girl by Williams sold almost 13 million, and 13 French Street (1951) by Brewer sold over 12 million. Although millions of paperbacks were sold during the decade, by the end of the 1950's the advent of television brought a slowing of sales of paperbacks into the 1960's."



for the rest go here:http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/a...

Canceling The Lone Ranger -Budget Insanity; Galleys

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Ed here: I bet those old Lone Ranger TV episodes didn't cost more than six or seven million apiece. :)



Shutting Down The Lone Ranger



By Lee Pfeiffer of Cinema Retro



"Studios are cracking down on pet projects of big name directors by canceling some high profile productions because of budget costs. Ron Howard and Guillermo Del Toro are among the recent "victims". Now Disney has informed producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Johnny Depp that their long-planned Lone Ranger film is being shut down. Filming was to start in October- but Disney execs got cold feet when the estimated budget hit $232 million. The studio is insisting that the film cost no more than $200. This is how insane Hollywood has become: $200 million for a movie about a guy on horse and it's considered to be too paltry of a sum. The question remains whether Bruckheimer and Depp will have their egos bruised and scale down the budget in order to make the movie. As of right now, it's officially off Disney's schedule. The underwhelming performance of Cowboys & Aliens has the studio nervous- and there are other factors as well. Disney is sinking a jaw-dropping $250 million into next year's John Carter sci-fi epic and there is also the $200 million Oz: The Great and Powerful in the pipeline. Saying "no" to Johnny Depp is almost unheard of in the industry, especially when he has brought billions into Disney's coffers through the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. However, his track record outside of that series is spotty at best and the suits at Disney aren't about to invest a king's ransom just to please him."



Then Lee links to: Hitflix.com and writer Gregory Ellwood



"Starring Depp as Tonto and "The Social Network's" Armie Hammer as the masked Western hero, "Ranger" was expected to be one of the studio's major tentpoles for December 2012. The film's budget, however, was said to be hovering at around $232 million and that was just too rich for Disney's tastes. Especially considering the dubious prospects for next year's "John Carter" (a stunning $250 million plus budget) and their $200 million investment in Sam Raimi's "Oz: The Great and Powerful." And yet, this is still bizarre considering Bruckheimer and Depp's billion dollar track record on the "Pirates" series and the $1 billion dollar gross for Depp's "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010. The fact Depp could even help the audience-unfriendly "The Tourist" hit $278 million worldwide can't be disputed either. With Will Smith still on his personal sabbatical Depp is absolutely the biggest draw in the world. So, why would Disney get so skittish about a Johnny Depp adventure movie? Perhaps "Cowboys & Aliens" contributed to their thinking.



for the rest go here:

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/shocke...



------------------------GALLEYS



Last night I ran a review of my new novel (Oct) Bad Moon Rising. If you don't regularly review my books, have a blog and will review the book I have eighteen galleys I can send. ejgorman99@aol.com is my e address. Please put GALLEYS in the subject line (don't want to get spammed) and include your snail mail address. Thanks, Ed



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Bad Moon Rising

*Starred Review



Ed Gorman. Pegasus (Norton, dist.), $25 (208p) ISBN 978-1-60598-260-1



Social turmoil overshadows the sleuthing in Gorman's excellent ninth Sam McCain mystery (after 2009's A Ticket to Ride). In 1968, a hippie commune near Black River Falls, Iowa, both horrifies and entices the townsfolk with its uninhibited lifestyle. Sardonic lawyer and investigator McCain becomes involved after the discovery of the body of Vanessa Mainwaring, the teenage daughter of a well-to-do local, at the commune, and a Vietnam vet who's one of its members flees. Interference by a bigoted sheriff, an opportunistic preacher, and a hysterical father makes matters even worse as Sam tries not just to solve the murder but to help the people around him caught in an intensely stressful situation. The real crime, as Sam eventually realizes, is how one generation exploits the next—while the younger generation devours itself. In turn mellow and melancholy, this book grapples with problems that are too complex for any detective to untangle. (Oct.)

29. William Holden on Humphrey Bogart: "I hated the bastard

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Ed here: There's a long list of these on Movie Morlocks today - here are some highlights. For the rest go here:



3. Joan Crawford on Bette Davis: "She has a cult, and what the hell is a cult except a gang of rebels without a cause. I have fans. There's a big difference."

4. Bette Davis on Joan Crawford: "I wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire."

5. Sterling Hayden on Joan Crawford: "There's is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford. And I like money."

"

7. Carol Lombard on Vivien Leigh: "That f–king English bitch."



19. Walter Mattheu to Barbra Streisand during an on set argument while making HELLO DOLLY!: "I have more talent in my farts than you have in your whole body."



25. Richard Harris on Michael Caine: "An over-fat, flatulent, 62-year-old windbag. A master of inconsequence masquerading as a guru, passing off his vast limitations as pious virtues."

26. Frank Sinatra on Shelley Winters: "A bowlegged bitch of a Brooklyn blonde."

27. Shelley Winters on Frank Sinatra: "A skinny, no-talent, stupid, Hoboken bastard."



28. John Gielgud on Ingrid Bergman: "Ingrid Bergman speaks five languages and can't act in any of them."

29. William Holden on Humphrey Bogart: "I hated the bastard."

30. Humphrey Bogart on William Holden: "A dumb prick."



These insults were compiled from various books, magazines, newspapers and IMDB.com.

Feel free to share some of your own favorite insults from classic actors below. I'm sure there are plenty more that I haven't mentioned.

Badfellas Who's nastier: Jimmy Cagney or Joe Pesci?

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Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta in a still from the film Goodfellas. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive



Ed here: David Thomson lists his ten favorite gangster movies in this Guardian (UK) piece from June 2009. Here's one of his selections:



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Kiss Me Deadly (1955)



Delinquency in the 50s was often teenage territory - think of Rebel Without a Cause. But Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly is grown-up and very sick. On the surface, it's a story about Mickey Spillane's pulp hero, Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), who picks up a girl one night on the Pacific coast highway and gets into a heap of trouble. But the case that develops is a confrontation with a crime organisation that has its hands on the ultimate deterrent: a box that holds nothing less than nuclear heat. The gangsters Hammer meets along the way are weird and effete (Jack Elam, Paul Stewart, Albert Dekker). But Hammer himself makes up for their defects and lives up to his name. He's a private eye (if you dare to hire him), a smug womaniser and a fascist who walks like Mussolini on his day off. The women are all mad in some way. Los Angeles is a hell on earth, and gangsters have taken over the whole operation. Still a shattering film. Meeker's strut is the stuff of nightmares.



for the rest go here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/j...

LEVINE, LASSITER BACK FOR CHARITY

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LEVINE, LASSITER BACK FOR CHARITY

by Oline Cogdill

Wednesday, 10 August 2011 05:04

Last year, Paul Levine celebrated the 20th anniversary of his first novel, To Speak for the Dead, by re-issuing that novel as an e-book. The twist was that Levine wasn't just joining hundreds of other authors who are finding new audiences for their work.



Levine gave ALL proceeds of the To Speak for the Dead e-book to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports treatment and research at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.



The book reached number one on Amazon's Hardboiled Mystery Bestseller List and raised thousands of dollars for cancer treatment at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.



And if something works once, try it again.



Levine has put up his second novel Flesh & Bones as an e-book with all the royalties going to the Fund.



Flesh & Bones continued Levine's series about Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter, a Miami Dolphins linebacker turned hard-nosed lawyer.



Levine helped launch the current wave of Florida mysteries through these novels that gave the world a new view of what really goes on in South Florida.



Before Lassiter went on hiatus in 1997, the series earned Levine the John D. MacDonald Florida Fiction Award. To Speak for the Dead was named one of the 10 best mysteries of the year by the Los Angeles Times.



For those of us who missed the wise-cracking Lassiter, Levine is returning to the series with the aptly named Lassiter, due out in September from Bantam.

Rating the Coen Brothers movies

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Ed here: I've watched The Big Lebowksi probably ten times, Raising Arizona seven or eight, Fargo probably six or seven and Barton Fink four or five. And most of the others at least two or three times. Here's a piece from Slate that rates the Coen Bros. movies.



Ranking the Coen Brothers' Movies

The Ladykillers always comes in last.

By David Haglund

Updated Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011, at 10:05 AM ET



Ranking the films of Joel and Ethan Coen is something of an online pastime. Christopher Orr of the Atlantic submitted his order last December, the same month Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post offered her more eccentric take (check out Nos. 11-14), and just after Andrew Osborne did the same for Nerve. Salon outsourced the question of "best Coens movie" to several writers and film folk a year before that, while AMC let visitors to their website decide the question. Rotten Tomatoes has compiled a list of the 10 best-reviewed Coen movies.

Averaging all of the rankings, you get a list that looks something like this:

1. Fargo

2. Raising Arizona

3. Miller's Crossing

4. No Country for Old Men

5. The Big Lebowski

6. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

7. True Grit

8. Barton Fink

9. Blood Simple

10. Burn After Reading

11. A Serious Man

12. The Hudsucker Proxy

13. The Man Who Wasn't There

14. Intolerable Cruelty

15. The Ladykillers



for the rest go herte: http://www.slate.com/id/2300656/

Guild - from Cullen Gallagher Pulp Serenade

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"Guild" by Ed Gorman (M. Evans and Company, 1987)



Guild is one of Ed Gorman's most haunting and enduring protagonists, a somber guide through the umbra and penumbra of the Old West. A former lawman haunted by memories of a little girl he killed while on duty, he's become a bounty hunter with no clear allegiance to the law or the lawless. Guild appeared in four novels and one short story, and together they articulate Gorman's anti-classical vision of the West, a profound and original take on the genre.



Gorman doesn't celebrate celestial skies and wide-open plains, upstanding lawmen and quick-draw gunfighters, or any of the other iconic themes of the genre. Instead of a clear division between heaven and earth, Gorman sees a morally ambiguous purgatory populated by characters of equally uncertain morals. Nobody is entirely good or all bad; everybody's guilty of something, and they always have their reasons. Whereas for many authors the land represented the possibility of redemption and renewal, for Gorman the land represents lingering ghosts and painful memories.



Guild, the first novel in the series, was first published by M. Evans and Company in 1987. It is now available as an eBook for Kindle. The story begins with Guild delivering a prisoner to the town of Danton. Before Guild can move on, trouble rears its ugly head when an accountant at the local bank is murdered during an attempted robbery. Frank Cord, the bank manager, is quick to point his finger at a traveling magician named Hammond. As the town turns into a lynch mob, Guild takes it upon himself to try and save Hammond, keep law and order, and figure out what Frank Cord is hiding from everyone.



From start to finish, Guild is a terrific novel and exemplifies some of Gorman's strongest traits as a writer: not only his lean plotting, deft display of action, and masterful command of language that wastes not a word, but also his intuitive feeling for character and emotion. One of Gorman's hallmarks is his deep sympathy for humans at their weakest, most desperate moments. He understands all too well why people make bad decisions, and hurt others or themselves. When the Sheriff refuses to take a stand against Frank Cord, Gorman allows him this dignified justification: "It just means I'm old and afraid of getting turned out in the winter like some animal." It doesn't excuse his cowardice, but it explains it. Much of Gorman's bitter poetry stems from all-too-human rationalizations such as these.



One of the aspects of Gorman's writing that I greatly admire is how reluctant he is to presume to understand the extent of human suffering. A perfect example is Annie, a young woman that Hammond saved from a brothel and who travels with him as companion and assistant. Their relationship is neither as lover nor parent-child, but something deeper, more uncertain, and more sacred. Theirs is a bond based on love, support, and need. Something so natural it defies words, and which the townsfolk of Danton can't comprehend. When Guild learns of her troubled past, Gorman doesn't give needless, lurid explication. Instead, he offers a humble, subtle description of Guild's reaction: "Guild made a face. He thought about her and her eyes and her grief." Not only is there power in such understatement, but also dignity. Gorman gives Annie, and women who have suffered as she has, a respectful distance. By not going into excessive detail, Gorman conveys that real pain is sometimes beyond words.



Another quality of Guild that I like is his political commentary on the times. "There was a sense in the Territory that civilization was not only inevitable but good–yet most people still enjoyed the blood-quickening thrill that only violence brought." Like Gorman's later character, the political strategist Dev Conrad, Guild sees beyond party and class lines. His observations of a social gathering make his cynicism and skepticism very clear:

"Women in pink gowns and white gowns and blue gowns that cost as much as a working man's wages floated around the three floors of the restaurant on the arms of men who talked in loud, important voices about finance and politics and local matters as if their opinions alone could change the course of things."



"Finally, predictably, he got tired of looking at and listening to the walruslike men around him with their air of money and malice."

In later Guild novels, Gorman would further explore the deep-seated moral, economic and political corruption of The West, but already in this first book his worldview is made clear. He has no tolerance for hypocrisy, elitism, or human exploitation.



In traditional Western lore, Manifest Destiny promised people freedom, opportunity, and a prosperous future. In reality, the land offered no such easy rewards. Gorman's view of the harsh landscape reflects the hardships and torments that everyday people had to endure in order to survive: "This was the Territory, and all it asked for purchase was that you be able to tolerate cholera and influenza and ague and typhoid and scurvy, and that you be able to endure the fact that many of your young ones would die before they reached age five." Gorman is a Realist, not a Romanticist, and Guild is a poetic lament rather than a patriotic celebration.



Guild is a man of principals, but he's not morally righteous. He's a man of rare humility and humanity. If he sees the worst in others, it is only because he has already seen it deep within himself. He uses his own troubled past—the killing of the young girl—as a measure for others. Guild is at once burdened and humbled by his own guilt. As he tells Annie, "I'm not sure I'm worth forgiving." Whereas in a more Classical Western, characters could find redemption in the natural landscape, no such easy release from the past is possible in Gorman's world. This is one of the novel's most noir-inspired touches: the past stays with the characters, the bad deeds never go away, the ghosts never disappear.



One of the most heartfelt, and heartbreaking, moments of the book was between Annie and Guild. The two are full of anger and guilt, much of which stems from their own failure to make things right in the world, and the way the let down those they love. They fought with each other, but eventually they realized that all they have left is each other. "So you try not to hate me, mister, and I'll try not to hate you," Annie tells Guild. This is the only love that is possible in Gorman's world. Imperfect and wounded, there's nothing ideal about their bond, but it is sincere and honest. No relationship in any of Gorman's novels is perfect—they're all full of aching and loneliness, but they're also completely believable, and all too relatable.



As a Western-Suspense novel, Guild is top-notch. The plot hooks you right away, the cast is well-rounded and compelling, and the novel builds momentum until its dark, sobering conclusion. Like in his noir novels, Gorman doesn't soften the blows: life in the West has seldom been more bleak or blistering than in Gorman's novels. Don't expect a happy ending, but what you'll get instead is a richer and more emotionally powerful experience.



Buy Guild on Kindle.



Ed here: I've always wanted to thank Bob Randisi for helping me learn how to write a western. I would never have written Guild without his teaching and encouragement.

New Books:DERANGED by Lonni Lees; more Robert Ryan

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"Lonni Lees sends chills down my spine!"

Terrill Lee Lankford, Novelist and Filmmaker



DERANGED

By Lonni Lees



Being a writer as well as an artist, I've always been torn between the two. I'd dabbled in non-fiction, writing magazine articles and working for a small newspaper, but a few years ago I dove head first into short story writing and published several in Hardboiled Magazine and on some ezines.

I wondered why I hadn't started years ago. I discovered noir and crime and dark stories. This was where I belonged!



A collection of my short stories, titled CRAWLSPACE, will be released shortly from Wildside Books as a double. The other side, COLD BULLETS AND HOT BABES, is by my sister, Arlette Lees. I'm working on my second novel and more short stories.



I knew it was time to dust off and finish a story I'd started awhile back. It began with a dream. Literally. One of those dreams so vivid that upon my awakening still felt very real. It was a story I had to tell. That dream plus a real life event were the catalysts. We all read about murders but few of us are personally touched by the violence. I was twice. The one that left the deepest impact on me was a young friend who was abducted, raped and murdered, her body buried in a shallow grave in the California desert. Her killer was never found. I wanted to give her short life a different ending. DERANGED is the result.



Some monsters are born that way, others are created as a result of their own victimization. But the result is the same. Ultimately, one is no less dangerous than the other. The madman we fear doesn't wear a warning sign. He is likely cloaked in a facade of normalcy, wearing a mask that makes him look like the rest of us. He could be the man standing behind you at the check-out line at the grocery store, the quiet neighbor who borrows your tools, the teenage boy who mows your lawn with a smile, or the stranger who stops along the highway to offer a hitchhiker a ride. He moves among us, invisible, leaving death and destruction in his wake.



Charlie Blackhawk is such a man. Twisted fantasies lure him to the neon-splashed alleys of Hollywood to feed his hunger. He's a cold-blooded killer who likes to use a knife. When his path crosses that of Meg Stinson and her 12-year-old daughter, Sabrina, their lives are changed forever. What's the connection between the Stinsons and a girl named Amy? Do Amy's nightmares hold the key to Sabrina's survival?



DERANGED is a journey into the darkest corners of the human psyche, but it is also a tale of survival, redemption, forgiveness and hope. It's a chilling, thrilling exercise in unrelenting horror and suspense.



"DERANGED is a hell of a good read by a bright new talent. It's a harrowing ride, a first novel mixing crime with horror and horror with crime in a way you won't soon forget. Bravo!"

Gary Lovisi, HARDBOILED MAGAZINE and GRYPHON BOOKS



"Lonni Lees sends chills down my spine!"

Terrill Lee Lankford, Novelist and Filmmaker

DERANGED is available at $14.99 from Wildside Press

9710 Traville Gateway Dr. #234

Rockville MD 20850-7408

301-762-1305 wildsidepress.com



Also available at amazon.com bn.com or may be ordered from your local bookstore.



------------------------------------------------MORE ROBERT RYAN

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The Quiet Furies of Robert Ryan by MANOHLA DARGIS from the New York Times



Ryan made "The Set-Up," one of his favorites and most indelible films, two years later. Directed by Robert Wise (who had edited "Citizen Kane"), "The Set-Up" is a tight, intensely moving, pocket-size masterwork about Stoker Thompson, a washed-up, 35-year-old heavyweight who believes he's just "one punch away" from changing his lousy luck. Part redemption story, part romance (his wife is played by Audrey Totter), the film unfolds in close to real time and takes place in the cruelly named Paradise City. Ryan, all muscle, sinew and heart-rending longing, slugs through one punishing round after another — look for the photographer Weegee hitting the bell as the timekeeper — creating a portrait of a man who endures ghastly physical punishment on his way to redemption.



"The Set-Up" almost didn't happen, having been canceled by Howard Hughes, who had bought a controlling interest in RKO in 1948. Oddly, that same year Ryan starred in "Caught," a non-RKO thriller directed by Max Ophuls about a naïf (Barbara Bel Geddes) who dreams of money and is punished for her yearning with a marriage to a millionaire psychopath (Ryan), modeled on Hughes, and rewarded with the love of a kind doctor (James Mason). Though based on a novel, the movie turned into a veiled story of Hughes because, as its screenwriter, Arthur Laurents, claimed in his memoir, Ophuls hated Hughes. "Make him an idiot," Ophuls demanded of Laurents. "Kill him off." While melodramatic, the movie is a fascinating dark look at desire and power as is Ryan's sexually charged take on a man whose savagery wounds himself as much as everyone else.



for the rest go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/mov...

An answer to the Shell Scott question-Randy Johnson

http://randall120.wordpress.com/2008/...