Fulton Oursler in Mystery Magazine.

Fulton Oursler, ca. 1928

I was browsing the Nickel Weeklies digital collection at BGSU's Browne Popular Culture Library and found a familiar name in the pages of Mystery Magazine: Charles Fulton Oursler (1893–1952). We might know him better as Fulton Oursler (the editor of Liberty magazine and Reader's Digest as well as the author of The Greatest Story Ever Told) or mystery author Anthony Abbot.

His Mystery Magazine contributions: 

"The Sign of the Seven Sharks," MM no. 12, 1 May 1918 

"Shadowing the Blue Triangle," MM no 16, 1 Jul 1918 

"The Magician Detective," MM no. 20, 1 Sept 1918 

"The Evil Eye," MM no. 28, 1 Jan. 1919 

Cover of Mystery Magazine no 81

"The Mystery of the Seven Shadows," MM no. 43, 15 Aug 1919 ("Unraveler of mysteries" Gordon Keene comes to the aid of a young woman whose life is in danger.)

"The Whispering Head," MM no 50, 1 Feb 1920 

"The Clue of the Red Lamp," MM no 63, 15 Jun 1920 

"The Spirit Bell," MM no 69, 15 Dec 1920 

"The Jeweled Pipe of Persia," MM vol 3, no 75, 15 Dec 1920 (An inspector and a magician attempt to thwart the theft of a priceless object.)

"The Spirit Witness," MM no 76, 1 Jan 1921 

"Professor Satan," MM no 81, 15 Mar 1921. (Professor Satan is a daring jewel thief)

"The Man in Room No. 7," MM no 87, 15 Jun 1921 

"The Trance Detective," MM no 91. Aug 1921 

"Counterfeit Clues," MM no 98, 1 Dec 1921 

"A Man from Siam," MM no 105, 15 Mar 1922 (A detective tangles with a mysterious figure from the East.)

"A Whispering Mummy," MM no. 110, 1 Jun 1922 

"The District Attorney's Secret," MM no 114, 1 Aug 1922 

"A Master of Millions," MM no 123, 1 Jan 1923 

"The Hand in the Dark," MM no 130, 15 Apr 1923 (A man seeks to clear his former love of a charge of murdering her husband.)

"One Clue Missing," MM no 135, 1 Jul 1923 

"The Footprints on the Ceiling," MM no 150, 15 Feb 1924 

Houdini's mystery tale.

Harry Houdini. NYPL.

Over on the Harry Houdini Circumstantial Evidence blog, Joe Notaro reproduces parts of the serial The Zanetti Mystery (1925), featuring the "genius faker and arch-rogue" Zanetti (future blog posts will have additional chapters). The tale was published under Houdini's name, but Notaro believes it was ghostwritten by Fulton Oursler (aka mystery author Anthony Abbot).

"Novel Appeal" (1957).

Mary Roberts Rinehart.
NYPL

Claudette Colbert plays author Mary Roberts Rinehart in "Novel Appeal," a 3Dec 1957 episode of Telephone Time that dramatizes Rinehart's part in exonerating a man convicted of murder. Directed by Arthur Hiller, the episode costars John Carradine.

The real-life case involves the 1896 murders on the Herbert Fuller of Captain Charles Nash; his wife, Laura Nash; and August Blomberg, the second mate. Thomas M. C. Bram, the first mate, was convicted of the crimes in a second trial held in 1899 and originally was sentenced to death; his sentence was changed to life imprisonment after a Supreme Court appeal.

According to Rinehart (see "Mary Roberts Rinehart Shows How Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction" and her autobiography My Story), a Pittsburgh lawyer told her about the case, and she subsequently read about it in a magazine for lawyers. Her choice for the perpetrator was the ship's Scandinavian wheel-man, Justus Leopold Westerberg, who was nicknamed Charley Brown. Westerberg had tried to kill his nurse while he was a patient in a mental hospital. A fictionalized version of Brown, Charlie Jones, appears in Rinehart's novel The After House (1913). The After House began serialization in McClure's in June 1913, attracting further interest to the case, and Bram was paroled in August 1913. 

As Reader's Digest editor Fulton Oursler (aka mystery writer Anthony Abbot) relates in The Mystery Bedside Book (ed. John Creasey, 1960), Theodore Roosevelt read The After House and called on Rinehart. Oursler states that Roosevelt concurred with Rinehart's view of the case and wrote President Woodrow Wilson, asking for a pardon for Bram. Wilson granted the pardon in June 1919. Bram went on to captain the ship Alvena and to own a restaurant in Florida.

The President's Mystery (1936).

Betty Furness, ca. 1936

FDR, an honorary member of the Baker Street Irregulars, proposed an idea for a mystery novel in a conversation with editor Fulton Oursler: "How can a man disappear with $5 million of his own money in negotiable form and not be traced?" As B. V. Lawson discusses, authors teamed up to write the tale for Liberty magazine: S. S. Van Dine, John Erskine, Rupert Hughes, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Rita Weiman, and Anthony Abbot (the mystery alter ego of Oursler). It was subsequently turned into a book and this 1936 film, with proceeds going to the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. Henry Wilcoxen and Betty Furness costar.

Arthur Conan Doyle and Fulton Oursler.

Ad for Fulton Oursler's Behold This Dreamer (1924)
Note blurb from Conan Doyle

This Forbes article on "Imponderable"—a new exhibition of work by artist Tony Oursler at LUMA Westbau (Zurich)—notes one source: a debate on spiritualism between Oursler's grandfather, Charles Fulton Oursler (Reader's Digest editor, author of The Greatest Story Ever Told, and mystery writer Anthony Abbot, 1893–1952), and fellow writer Arthur Conan Doyle.