Remembering Peter Wyngarde: "Nightmare" (1961).

Janet Blair and Peter Wyngarde in
Burn, Witch, Burn (1962)

British actor Peter Wyngarde died on January 15 at age 90. Survivor of a Japanese internment camp in World War II and well remembered for his chilling portrayal of Quint in The Innocents (a 1961 Truman Capote/John Mortimer adaptation of Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw"), he was a familiar presence on 1960s TV in such programs as The Avengers, Department S, I Spy, The Prisoner, Rupert of Hentzau, and The Saint. He also appeared as an artist obsessed by an unknown woman in the One Step Beyond episode "Nightmare."

Carolyn Wells's "A Reader's Lament" (1899).

Carolyn Wells,
ca. 1923

Carolyn Wells's The Clue (1909) appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and she's also known for her Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In addition, she wrote poetry, such as the following "Reader's Lament" (The Bookman, Mar. 1899, p. 22):

I cannot read the old books
I read long years ago;
Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray,
Bulwer and Scott and Poe.
Marryat's yarns of sailor life,
And Hugo's tales of crime; —
I cannot read the old books,
Because I haven't time.

I love the dear old stories,
My thoughts to them will stray;
But still one must keep posted on
The writers of to-day.
My desk is piled with latest books
I'm striving to despatch;
But ere I've finished all of them,
There'll be another batch.

Hope's new one isn't opened yet,
I've not read James's last;
And Howells is so prolific now,
And Crawford writes so fast.
Evelyn Innes I must skim,
O'er Helbeck I must pore;
The Day's Work I'll enjoy, although
I've read the tales before.

And then there is The King's Jackal,
The Gadfly, Caleb West,
Silence, The Forest Lovers, and—
I can't name all the rest.
I'll try to keep up with the times,
But, oh, I hope that I
May read my David Copperfield
Once more before I die.

"The Turn of the Screw" (with Ingrid Bergman, 1959).

John Frankenheimer,
ca. 1962

One of the many adaptations of "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (whose 173rd birthday is April 15) was directed and produced by John Frankenheimer in 1959 for the Startime TV series. Ingrid Bergman played the governess who fears the effects of a malevolent influence on her young charges, and Paul Stevens was the servant Quint. Here are two clips from the program.

The Unseen (1945).

Publicity photo for
The Unseen

Ethel Lina White's Her Heart in Her Throat (1942) was adapted as The Unseen, with July 23rd birthday boy Raymond Chandler as a  screenwriter. In The Unseen, governess Gail Russell suspects that nefarious activities are going on in the neighborhood and wonders about the role of her employer, shipbuilder Joel McCrea, in his wife's death. Herbert Marshall and Norman Lloyd costar. The film, an attempt by director Lewis Allen to follow up The Uninvited (1944, also with Russell), has some echoes of Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw."

BBC Radio 3 discussion of The Innocents (1961).

The BBC Radio 3 program Night Waves has a fascinating discussion of the 1961 film The Innocents (adapted by Truman Capote and Rumpole's John Mortimer from Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw"). Panelists include Peter Wyngarde and Clytie Jessop, who appeared in the film as Peter Quint and Miss Jessel respectively.

Alcott royalty smackdown.

Louisa May Alcott, NYPL

The Houghton Library blog reveals that Louisa May Alcott, in an 18-year period, raked in more than $100,000 in royalties, in comparison to Henry James ($58,503) and Herman Melville ($10,444). An approximate comparison in today's dollars would be $2.5 million for Alcott, $1.4 million for James, and $257,000 for Melville.

The many sides of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson
at age 25. NYPL

The online exhibition "Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850–1894" from the University of South Carolina Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections includes this great cover from Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher" (1884), artwork from various editions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as some interesting material on the relationship between Stevenson and poet W. E. Henley. Also featured are two portraits of Stevenson (posted here and here) by John Singer Sargent, who told Henry James that Stevenson was "the most intense creature I had ever met."

Journal gems from JSTOR.

JSTOR announced on Sept. 6 that it would permit free access to issues of certain periodicals published before 1923 (list here). This means unfettered access to items such as the following:

• "The Modern Novel," by Amelia E. Barr, North American Review, Nov. 1894. "...[I]f people enjoy the game between criminals and detectives, the question is simply whether the exhibition is, or is not, a moral one—whether the details of crime, the telling of how it was done, how it was concealed, and how it was found out, may not be a kind of criminal school, for those whose inclinations lead them in that direction" (593–94).

William A. Pinkerton,
left, and Robert A.
Pinkerton, ca. 1855.
Library of Congress

• "Detective Surveillance of Anarchists," by Robert A. Pinkerton (son of Allan Pinkerton), North American Review Nov 1901. "The picture of the anarchist drawn by most people, a bearded, drunken, lazy creature, is not at all in line with the facts" (616).

•  "A Short-Story Reading List," by Raymond W. Pence, English Journal May 1920. Recommends the following for teaching students about effective writing:


--G. K. Chesterton.  The Innocence of Father Brown, The Wisdom of Father Brown.

--Arthur Conan Doyle. "The Adventure of the Dying Detective," "The Dancing Men,"  "The Final Problem," "The Norwood Builder," "A Scandal in Bohemia," "Silver Blaze," "The Speckled Band."

--Henry James. "The Turn of the Screw"

--Arthur Morrison. "On the Stairs"

--Edgar Allan Poe. "The Gold Bug,"  "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter."

--Melville Davisson Post. Stories from Uncle Abner: "The Doomdorf Mystery," "An Act of God," The Straw Man," "The Adopted Daughter."

--Robert Louis Stevenson. "Markheim," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

Ctr for Fiction: Peter Straub on writing.

This practical presentation by Peter Straub (Ghost Story, A Dark Matter, etc.) from April 2011 covers, among other topics, Straub's first attempt at writing a novel ("a mash-up of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry James"), point of view, process, and "Five Rules to Avoid Looking Like an Idiot." Along the way, he mentions Ed McBain and the film of Chandler's Lady in the Lake (1947) with Robert Montgomery. Says Straub re writing, "You have to get used to immense amounts of loneliness"; he also thinks outlines can be too constrictive.

Happy birthday, Christopher Morley.

Baker Street Irregulars founder, critic, writer, poet, and all-around bookman Christopher Morley was born today in Haverford, PA, in 1890. He died in 1957. Among his many notable works are Parnassus on Wheels (1917), The Haunted Bookshop (1919), and Kitty Foyle (1940). I particularly adore his spoof of Henry James (published in Travels in Philadelphia, 1920).

About the image: Christopher Morley. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Christopher Morley spoofs Henry James.

"Thorncliff was thinking, as he crossed the, to him, intolerably interwoven confusion of Market Street, that he had never--unless it was once in a dream which he strangely associated in memory with an overplus of antipasto--never consciously, that is, threaded his way through so baffling a predicament of traffic, and it was not until halted, somewhat summarily, though yet kindly, by a blue arm which he after some scrutiny assessed as belonging to a traffic patrolman, that he bethought himself sufficiently to inquire, in a manner a little breathless still, though understood at once by the kindly envoy of order as the natural mood of one inextricably tangled in mind and not yet wholly untangled in body, but still intact when the propulsive energy of the motortruck has been, by a rapid shift of gears and actuating machinery, transformed to a rearward movement, where he might be and how."

-- Christopher Morley, "Market Street, as Certain Eminent Travelers Might Have Described It," Travels in Philadelphia (1921), 125-26. Photos: Christopher Morley (top) and Henry James, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Happy birthday, Henry James.

Master of ambiguity Henry James was born today in 1843. He died in 1916.

In mysterydom, he is probably best known for the creepy The Turn of the Screw (1898), adapted into the film The Innocents starring Deborah Kerr and featuring a screenplay by Truman Capote and John Mortimer, and also adapted as a Benjamin Britten opera. The debate continues today as to whether the ghosts in the story are a figment of the governess's imagination or whether they really exist. Another James ghost story is The Sense of the Past (published posthumously, 1917), the basis of Berkeley Square, which starred Leslie Howard.