1 Return of The Thin Man(ARC) – Dashiell Hammett: two never before published novellas Hammett wrote for the second and third in the Thin Man film series.
2: Snuff Tag 9(ARC) – Jude Hardin: the third Nicholas Colt thriller.
I also have twelve hardcover westerns picked up at a literacy yard sale. The woman that teaches adult education has one every year to rasie money to help. My seventy year old brother-in-law has been taking classes for years nw and my sister and he help out on the sale. I always donate the last year’s William Johnstone books(hate to lose them, but it’s for a good cause) and these were picked up for me by my sister.
I couldn’t always find a good cover image on the ‘net. A few don’t match the books I have and two I couldn’t find at all. My printer/scanner, already in a slow decline, picked this past week to go belly up. May go and look for one this week at Walmart.
Matt “Hud” Hudson is the rumrunner to the stars. He brings it in from the ships outside legal limits and distributes it himself with his own trucking company. He is also one who deals only in the good stuff and doesn’t water it down like other rumrunners. He knows Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks and other movie stars.
He even has aspirations of his own in that line. It’s in the early days of sound on film and most of the studios think talking pictures are a fad that will fade. What they’re really worried about is the costs of converting to one of the new sound systems. Most own their own string of theaters and the cost to wire them all would cut into their profits. Not to mention the backlog of silents already in the can that might prove useless. And no longer profitable.
But Hud knew talkies were the next big thing. Just convincing some studio to make one, let him make one, is the tough sell.
That’s the backdrop of this new novel, first in a series, by Jeffrey Stone.
The main story starts when Hud’s best and oldest friend, Danny Kincaid, dies in an accidental drowning when he drives his car off the pier. That’s the police’s conclusion.
But Hud knows that BS. It’s easy for him to see. A bottle of rye whiskey lay on the seat beside him. Danny couldn’t stand rye for a reason that went back to the pair’s childhood. They’d stolen a bottle of Hud’s dad’s rye and got sick. Worse, when dad found out, he made them drink shot after shot until they were completely sick.
The second reason Hud knew Danny’s death wasn’t accidental was even easier. Every finger had been broken, one shoulder was dislocated, and both kneecaps had been shattered.
His oldest friend, Hud knew what had killed Danny. His friend was a grifter, something Hud had gotten away from early in his life. he had too much of a conscious. It had to be one of Danny’s cons that got him killed.
All Hud had to do was find out what, who the mark was, and then it was just a matter of retribution.
I liked this look at prohibition from Hud’s point of view, the early days of sound in films. I had no idea the studios were so reluctant to embrace something new. I should have because, even today, the movie world is driven strictly by the profit motive.
Jeffrey Stone has a delicious style of writing, believable characters, and a unique story line. I look forward to more from the author. It can be ordered HERE or HERE.
It was with great delight that I sat down to read this Mysterious Press edition. A long time Hammett fan, the idea of two new, never before published, Thin Man novellas was just to good a deal to pass up.
What we have here is Hammett’s stories developed for the second and third films in the series, AFTER THE THIN MAN and ANOTHER THIN MAN. Not exactly as one would read them in a magazine, but the crisp dialogue, the by-play between Nick and Nora Charles is all there in a nicely done pair of novellas. The introduction says they were the last pieces of fiction he wrote.
Before and after each story are essays that discuss the process of development for each story and the differences between Hammett’s tale and the filmed product.
There’s also an undeveloped story that was to be the first sequel, but was dropped.
All quite satisfying and available HERE. Release date is November 6th.
Luke Short was the pen name for Frederick Dilley Glidden(1908-1975). Following graduation from college, he worked for a number of newspapers, was a trapper, and an archeologist’s assistant for a time. His first western stories was published in 1935. His pen name was, of course, that of a famous gunfighter in old west days. Seems to much of a coincidence to me, but his Wikipedia [age says no one is sure he knew that at the time he started using it.
His apprenticeship in the pulps was fairly short. He sold a short story to Colliers in 1938 and the novel, GUNMAN’S CHANCE was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941. Another western was serialized in Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post. Colliers ceased publication after the first two parts.
The movie followed the book pretty close, down to many lines of dialogue, but for an entirely different ending. No surprise because Short was working in Hollywood and worked on the script.
I think I liked the novel best with it’s more movie like ending. Strange that, eh? The ending was right out of Hollywood’s idea of a western showdown.
I first became aware of Gary Wright’s music when he released the album THE DREAM WEAVER, his third solo effort, in 1875. He was also part of the band Spooky Tooth before that and I love their 1974 album for just the title alone, You Broke My Heart, So… I Busted Your Jaw. It was a bit different from the type of music I generally listened to, what with the lush keyboards and production values. I liked it for some reason though.
Saw him live once in Greensboro where he strutted the stage with a portable keyboard type instrument hanging from around his neck. He was a bit younger then.
These are his two best known songs from that album. He did more albums, but nothing that hit like this release.
I seem to get a run on a post every so often. Not sure why. The first was one on a Paul Newman marathon of films on Turner Classic films. That one was no good a few days later. But I suddenly starting getting hits on it, anywhere from a couple of hundred a day to one memorable day where it got 1200 hits. It stands at 20,102 hits to date. That faded away then, though it still gets hits evey now and again.
Next it was a several years old post on a true crime book, BITTER BLOOD, by Jerry Bledsoe. It was a story that happened in my county and played out one afternoon that ended with a bloody end. That post has risen twice with large amounts of hits daily for a while. It now stands at 1,727.
The post piling up hits more recently, is my review of the film JOHN CARTER. For the last couple of weeks, it’s been getting a hundred + hits a day. As of this writing, it has piled up 1,447 hits.
Robert Wise directed thid western three years before his seminal THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and many years before his pedestrian STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. The script was by Lilly Hayward from an adaptation by Luke Short of his novel Gunman’s Chance. Shot in black and white, cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca, it had much the fell of noir films of the same period. Robert Mitchum, a mere stripling of thirty-one, is Jim Garry, a man come in response for help from an old friend, Tate Riling(Robert Preston).
Wet from the storm he’s riding through, he camps under a tree and just barely shinnies up a tree when a herd of cattle stampede through. Most of his outfit is ruined, he salvaging only one boot and his rifle. He’s accosted and taken back to a camp where he meets John Lufton(Tom Tully), a man suspicious, but nice enough, even willing to replace his outfit. They’d caught his horse mixed with the herd. Offered a job, he claims to be passing through. He’s advised to keep passing through. He likes Lufton in spite of that and agrees to deliver a note to his daughters.
There, as he’s about to cross the river, someone takes a shot at him from cover. A warning shot with several more delivered every time he tries to cross the river. Words seem to have no effect, so he turns and rides off, swiftly circling to find another crossing, sneaks up to learn a young woman was the one firing off at him. Her name is Amy Lufton(Barbara Bel Geddes of much later Dallas fame), though he doesn’t learn her name at the time. He amuses himself by returning the favor, spraying bullets to each side, driving her back until she falls in the river.
It’s at the house he learns the young woman’s identity when he delivers the message to the other daughter, Carol Lufton(Phyllis Thaxton, who later played Martha Kent in the first Superman movie). She wants to kill, but is stopped by a ranch hand, Frank Reardon(Tom Tyler, who’s last film role was in Plan 9 From Outer Space).
In town, he finds his friend, Tate, after being accosted by a group of men in the saloon. He learns why he’s been brought to town. Tate has a scheme, hatched with the new Indian agent, the new, crooked Indian agent, Jake Pindalest(Frank Faylen, father of Dobie Gillis, “and a good conduct medal!”). Lufton had been supplying beef to the army for the reservation. His 2500 head had been denied by Pindalest and he had a week to get them off the reservation. The plan was for Riling’s gunmen to harass him and keep him from getting them across the river. The army would seize them and Jim Garry was to be a stranger with money that comes along to help Lufton to cut his losses. Four dollars a head, then they would sell them to the army at regular contract price. Garry’s cut was to be twenty thousand.
Tate is goading homesteaders to help him, claiming Lufton will force them off their land for grazing land for his herd. Kris Barden(Walter Brennan) and his son, Fred(George Cooper) are two of them. Kris had once worked for Lufton before striking out on his own.
It takes only one stampede in which young Fred is shot by someone, with Garry right beside him, for him to get disgusted with his friend. He has a conscious and quits after telling Kris his son was killed.
You know how it goes from here. Garry ends up switching sides, after hard headed Amy persists in nagging him as he tries to ride away, following him for miles up until he camps for the night. She refuses to leave unless he returns with her.
And a bloody showdown follows.
For more overlooked movies, drop in on Todd Mason every Tuesday at his blog SWEET FREEDOM.
At my advanced age, I’ll always prefer paper books to ebooks. But I have embraced this new method of delivery because there is just so much good stuff available in no other format. THE GUNS OF VEDAUWOO is such an example. A short, exciting western, one that I can indulge in the early morning hours, when I rise, reading over coffee.
Edward A. Grainger, otherwise known as David Cranmer, created the Outlaw Marshall, Cash Laramie and his partner Gideon Miles, in a series of short stories that he continues to write. But he also allows other writers into his playground. THE GUNS OF VEDAUWOO is author Wayne D. Dundee’s second trip into the world of Cash Laramie.
Cash is sent into the Vedauwoo region of south-eastern Wyoming in search of a cache of rifles. He’s looking for a half breed named Vilo Creed, a man part of a prison break with the man first reputed to have stolen the rifles, but never having proved so. The man was found dying by the posse, sliced to ribbons by Creed. It was he who gave the clue with his last breath where he’d hidden the guns.
Cash’s boss was afraid, rightly so, that Creed would use the current Ghost Dance among the tribes on reservation to create an uprising. One faction had taken to wearing the Ghost Shirts, reputed to repel the white man’s bullet.
Cash was there in Vedauwoo hoping to catch Creed unawares when he showed up. Unfortunately he was not alone in the mass of rocky outcrops. An outlaw gang, a group of innocents, even someone from Cash’s youth.
Another winner from author Dundee and Beat To A Pulp and available HERE.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 