Greene's Across the Bridge (1957).

Based on the short story (1938) by Graham Greene, Across the Bridge features Rod Steiger as an embezzling businessman who seeks to cover his tracks by assuming another man's identity. But as the other man is wanted himself, the businessman's situation becomes much more complicated.

Philby, Greene, and Our Man in Havana.

Ad for Our Man in Havana
(dir. Carol Reed, 1959)

Over at Lapham's Quarterly, Lawrence Osborne discusses the genesis of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, including Greene's time in MI6 and his relationship with Kim Philby of the Cambridge spy ring. There's a reference to Greene traveling with "an equally youthful Claud Cockburn"—that's the lefty father of mystery author Sarah Caudwell.

Results from Sept 10 Bloomsbury auction.

Graham Greene

Some results of interest from the Sept 10 bibliophile auction at Bloomsbury:

• Black Plumes (1940) by Margery Allingham, 1st ed., £260 (approx US$404).

• From Russia with Love (1957) by Ian Fleming, 1st ed., £200 (approx US$311).

• The Fallen Idol, Our Man in Havana, Stamboul Train, The Third Man, and 12 other 1st eds. by Graham Greene, £420 (approx US$652).

• Brighton Rock (1938) by Graham Greene,  1st ed., £300 (approx US$466).

• Unnatural Causes (1967) by P. D. James, 1st ed., £220 (approx US$342).

• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Looking-Glass War by John le Carre, 1st eds., £280 (approx $435).

Short Cut to Hell (dir. James Cagney, 1957).

For Graham Greene's birthday tomorrow, listen to this NPR piece on Greene's unfinished murder mystery The Empty Chair and look at this promotional clip from Short Cut to Hell (1957), an adaptation of

Short Cut to Hell's Robert Ivers, right,
with Claire Trevor in "Ma Barker and
Her Boys," The Untouchables

Greene's novel A Gun for Sale and a remake of the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake classic This Gun for Hire (1942). It was the only film directed by James Cagney. Although the film was not a success and Cagney indicated that directing bored him, he proved able at the job.

Went the Day Well? (1942).

In Went the Day Well? British citizens confront a Nazi invasion of their village. Newly restored by the British Film Institute, the film is based on the story "The Lieutenant Died Last" by Graham Greene and is directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. The cast includes Dame Thora Hird and David Farrar.

Spies in fiction on SpyCast.

William Le Queux,  NYPL

In this podcast, University of Toronto professor Wesley Wark and International Spy Museum historian Mark Stout discuss the history of spy fiction, including mention of William Le Queux, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Erskine Childers (author of The Riddle of the Sands, 1903), Graham Greene, Peter Cheyney, Ian Fleming, and John le Carre.

Tune up the zither: Third Man Museum.

In the Washington Post, David Stewart White writes about the devoted collector who has opened a Vienna museum dedicated to the Carol Reed film of Graham Greene's novella. Film costar Joseph Cotten talks about the production and remeeting some of his castmates years later in his autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere.

"Good eeev-ening."

The BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans follows up its profile of Graham Greene with one on Alfred Hitchcock (although listeners may be startled to hear the climatic scene on the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur attributed to Vertigo).

You also can go here to see Hitchcock's appearance on What's My Line.

Frances Fyfield on aging; Graham Greene.

Some pieces of interest from BBC Radio:

Writer Frances Fyfield

• Edgar nominee Frances Fyfield on the effects of aging on artists

• The series The New Elizabethans profiles Graham Greene.

Chesterton, Greene, et al: Bloomsbury auction results.

E. C. Bentley, from
The Bookman 37 (1913)

There was a mixed bag of results for the Jan 12th Bloomsbury bibliophile auction, although it seems that works by Graham Greene continue to do respectably at auction. The mystery-related items included the following:

• Strand magazine vols 1–16, 1891–98, which contain the Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (illust. Sidney Paget): £100 (approx. US$153).

• E. C. Bentley, Trent's Last Case (1913), with G. K. Chesterton's The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) and some Agatha Christie works, £110 (approx. US$168).

• Raymond Chandler, 1st English ed. of The Big Sleep (1939), £260 (approx. US$400).

• G. K. Chesterton, 1st ed. of The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), £60 (approx. US$92).

• Graham Greene, 1st ed. of The Third Man and The Fallen Idol (1950), £240 (approx. US$368).
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

Green for Greene: Book fetches $24K.

As PhiloBiblos noted, a first edition of Graham Greene's Rumour at Nightfall (1931) garnered £17,000 (about US$24,500) at Bloomsbury's Dec 14 auction. Greene viewed the Conrad-influenced Rumour, in which a journalist hunts for an outlaw in Spain, as a very bad novel and refused to reprint it after its 1932 US edition. (Factoid of the day: According to a NYT review of Greene's The Name of Action [1931], Greene was related to Robert Louis Stevenson.)

Modest mystery sales in Sept 15 Bloomsbury auction.

At the Sept 15 Bloomsbury auction the mystery-related offerings received relatively modest sums:

Vera Caspary, by Jane Rady
From The Secrets of Grown-ups

• Vera Caspary, Laura (1st ed., 1944), £70 (approx US$108)

• Agatha Christie, The Big Four (1st ed., 1927) with proof of Third Girl (1966), £60 (approx US$93)

• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1st ed., 1902), £460; His Last Bow (1st ed., 1917), £90 (approx US$139)

• Ian Fleming, Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1st ed., 1966), £100 (approx US$155)

• Graham Greene, signed Stamboul Train (2nd issue, 1932) and two other works, £50 (approx US$77)

• Lot of mysteries including Michael Dibdin, Cabal (1992); signed Ruth Rendell, The Keys to the Street (1996); signed P. D. James, Devices and Desires (1989), £280 (approx US$433)
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

Great Lives: Graham Greene.

The most recent episode of the BBC radio program Great Lives focuses on Graham Greene, including audio clips of Greene commenting on his preoccupation with "the hunted man" and his writing schedule, as well as some discussion of mental illness within Greene's family.

And check out the program for the Graham Greene Festival in September/October that seems to have a lot on Brighton Rock.

Greene-influenced journal Night and Day returns.

The ABC Book Show discusses the revival by two Random House UK employees of the journal Night and Day, which was originally edited by Graham Greene and was modeled on the New Yorker.  The first free issue can be found here, which includes a short history of the journal under Greene's aegis that mentions poet "Herbert Read [. . . who] revealed unexpected comic gifts as a reviewer of detective novels."

Unlikely Mystery Fan #4: Tallulah Bankhead.

Part of a series on unexpected individuals who enjoy or enjoyed mystery-related works and authors.

Tallulah Bankhead,
by Carl Van Vechten.
Jan 1934. Library of
Congress, Prints and
Photographs Div

I'm a sucker for a detective story.
—Tallulah Bankhead, My Autobiography 303

Husky-voiced actress Tallulah Bankhead was not only the daughter of Alabama Congressman William Brockman Bankhead but also quite fond of mysteries. In her autobiography she mentions Graham Greene as a particular favorite and states that Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone was the first mystery that she ever read. She appeared in the comedy thriller The Creaking Chair in 1924, the play version of Blackmail in London in 1928 (filmed by Hitchcock in 1929), and George Batson's play Design for Murder with later TV veteran Joseph Campanella in 1958.

Recent mystery acquisitions, UK National Portrait Gallery.

Edgar Wallace, from
The Biography of a
Phenomenon, by
Margaret Lane, NYPL.

Among recent acquisitions of the UK National Portrait Gallery:

• G. K. Chesterton
• Lady Antonia Fraser (additional photos here and here)
• Graham Greene
• J. B. Priestley
• Ian Rankin
• Edgar Wallace

A glimpse of the Brighton Rock remake.

Richard Attenborough as
gangster Pinkie Brown in
Brighton Rock (1947,
dir. John Boulting)

The Guardian offers a sneak peek at the remake of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, which stars Helen Mirren and John Hurt, and is expected to be released on February 4 in the United Kingdom.

Graham Greene's picks, neglected books.

The Neglected Books blog discusses Graham Greene's 1940s picks of neglected literary works, which include Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger adventure The Poison Belt; Roy Horniman's Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (aka the Alec Guinness film Kind Hearts and Coronets); Conan Doyle brother-in-law E. W. Hornung's Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman; William Babington Maxwell's The Case of Bevan Yorke (Maxwell was the son of Mary Elizabeth Braddon); Arthur Morrison's The Hole in the Wall (Morrison is best known for Martin Hewitt: Investigator and A Child of the Jago); and Anthony Hope's The King's Mirror (Hope is best known for The Prisoner of Zenda).

BFI Screenonline: Edward Woodward; Robert Siodmak; Our Man in Havana.

Recent additions to BFI Screenonline: A look at The Wicker Man (1973), a rather odd thriller featuring recently departed actor Edward Woodward as a police sergeant; the 1959 noirish adaptation of Robin Maugham's The Rough and the Smooth by The Killers and The Spiral Staircase director Robert Siodmak; and Carol Reed's 1959 adaptation of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana.

About the image: Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man (dir. Robin Hardy)

Spy novelists continue to attract interest at auction.

At Bloomsbury's December 10th auction, spy novelists continued to garner buyer interest. Below are pertinent mystery-related results.

• Agatha Christie, first editions of A Murder Is Announced (1950); Destination Unknown (1954); Hickory, Dickory Dock (1955); and four other unspecified novels, £480 (approx. US$781).

• Arthur Conan Doyle, 2nd ed. of The Sign of Four (1892), £120 (approx. US$195); 1st ed., The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), £110 (approx. US$179); 1st ed., The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), £320 (approx. US$520); 1st ed., The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), £460 (approx. US$748); 2nd issue, The Lost World (1914, which includes photos of Conan Doyle disguised as Professor Challenger), £260 (approx. US$423).
  

• Ian Fleming, first editions of You Only Live Twice (1964), The Man with the Golden Gun (1965), and Octopussy (1966), £380 (approx. US$618).
  

• Graham Greene, 2nd issue of Stamboul Train (1932), with two other works, £240 (approx. US$390); 1st ed., The Third Man and The Fallen Idol (1950), £190 (approx. US$309); 1st ed., The Spy's Bedside Book: An Anthology (1957, ed. Graham Greene and Hugh Greene), £10 (approx. US$16).
  

• John le Carre, 1st ed., The Looking Glass War (1965), with 13 other books, £140 (approx. US$228).
  

Sadly, Edgar Wallace's Captain Tatham of Tatham Island (1909), est. between £200–250, went unsold.

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos.)