Behind the scenes of Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.

Herbert Marshall in
Foreign Correspondent

The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research provides an online glimpse of its large file on the making of Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940). Apparently Hitchcock was unhappy with leading man Joel McCrea (he had wanted Gary Cooper). The photos include one of John Wayne visiting McCrea on set.

"Perry Mason: A TV Milestone" on From the Bookshelf.

Raymond Burr as
Erle Stanley Gardner's
master attorney

University of Delaware's Thomas Leitch, author of Perry Mason and long associated with Kirkus, discusses the 1957–66 TV program on KUSP's From the Bookshelf with Gary Shapiro, comparing it to The Defenders (with E. G. Marshall) and providing insights on its appeal.

Unlikely Mystery Fan #2: Winston Churchill.

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

Winston Churchill,
n.d. Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs
Division

Perhaps not surprisingly for someone who later broke out of a Boer prison camp, the future British prime minister was fond of the works of H. Rider Haggard, reading King Solomon's Mines several times. As Carlo D'Este reports in Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War 1874–1945 (10), Haggard met with Churchill in 1888, expressing apprehension about the prospect: "I hope he will not put me through a cross-examination about my unworthy productions." Apparently it was such a meeting, but Haggard sent Churchill a copy of Allan Quatermain afterward.

Another reported Churchill favorite: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

C. J. Box on Montana Public Radio.

Montana Public Radio's The Write Question program featured C. J. Box discussing his mystery Nowhere to Run.

G. K. Chesterton this week on BBC Radio 7.

Alec Guinness in
Father Brown (1954)

Short stories featuring G. K. Chesterton's wise priest Father Brown are on tap this week on BBC Radio 7, including "The Blue Cross," "The Queer Feet," "The Eye of Apollo," "The Invisible Man," and "The Honor of Israel Gow." Go here for the schedule or to listen; most episodes can be heard online for a week after broadcast.

Edgar Allan Poe's ill-fated career at West Point.

Edgar Allan Poe, 1848.
Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs
Division

Evoking Louis Bayard's Edgar-nominated The Pale Blue Eye, the National Archives' Prologue features documents from Edgar Allan Poe's short-lived military career, including his 1831 court-martial.

Friday's Forgotten Books: F. Tennyson Jesse's Murder and Its Motives (1924).

Most criminals are great egoists and inordinately vain, but these two qualities are found to excess in murderers.
—F. Tennyson Jesse, Murder and Its Motives 11

In Murder and Its Motives F. Tennyson Jesse classifies murders into six categories (murder for gain, murder for revenge, murder for elimination, murder for jealousy, murder for the lust of killing, and murder from conviction). She then provides case studies by type: William Palmer (murder for gain, some 15 murders, 1850s), Constance Kent (murder for revenge, 1860; most recently covered in Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher), the Querangals (murder for elimination, brother and sister disposal of spouses, 1881), Mary Eleanor Wheeler (murder for jealousy, killing of her lover's spouse and baby, 1890), Neill Cream (murder for lust of killing, numerous killings, 1892), and Orsini (murder for conviction, tried for an attempt on Emperor Napoleon III, 1858).

This lucid and perceptive book is a must for anyone who wishes to construct convincing criminals in their fiction. Sadly, it is out of print. The 1952 edition is dedicated to three people, one of whom is Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott.

F. Tennyson Jesse, from
the Bookman, June 1914

World War I correspondent, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist F. Tennyson Jesse (1888–1958), the great-niece of Alfred Lord Tennyson, is probably best known for her books in the Notable British Trials series such as that on Madeleine Smith (the subject of David Lean's film Madeleine, 1949) and A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934), which was based on the Thompson-Bywaters murder case. Her work and troubled life are discussed in A Portrait of Fryn: A Biography of F. Tennyson Jesse (1984) by Joanna Colenbrander, Jesse's secretary.

Museum of the City of NY: Sherlock Holmes.

William Gillette as
Sherlock Holmes (1899)
Museum of the City
of New York

Among the wealth of photographs available for online searching at the Museum of the City of New York Web site are several of the play Sherlock Holmes such as this 1899 photograph; note William Gillette in the center as the Great Detective.

New book on The Fugitive.

The recently released The Fugitive in Flight by Florida International University professor Stanley Fish examines moral elements in the 1963–68 TV series and protagonist Dr. Richard Kimble as a character that never changes, in Fish's view.

Unlikely Mystery Fan #1: Bill O'Reilly.

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

Who knew that Fox's Bill O'Reilly is so fond of thrillers? The list of Reilly's favorite books from his Web site includes the following mysteries or thrillers (none by women):

• The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
• Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
• Rising Sun by Michael Crichton
• L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
• Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
• The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins
• The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker (first Spenser novel)

Edmund Crispin this week on BBC Radio 7.

Biography of Crispin
available from Ashgate

Oxford don Gervase Fen looks into murder at a film studio this week on BBC Radio 7 in Edmund Crispin's Frequent Hearses (1950) with James Wilby; go here for the schedule or to listen online. Most episodes are available for a week after broadcast.

Six other Fen titles can be obtained from Felony & Mayhem Press.

Happy birthday, Charles Brockden Brown.

Charles Brockden Brown.
NYPL.

Gothic novelist Charles Brockden Brown, who may be the first professional writer in the United States, was born today in Philadelphia in 1771. His best-known novel, Wieland; or, The Transformation: An American Tale (1798), was praised by James Fenimore Cooper in 1827 as "a never-failing evidence of genius." He died in 1810.

Haggard spoof on National Radio Hall of Fame.

H. Rider Haggard

This month's audio highlights from the National Radio Hall of Fame and Museum include a spoof of King Solomon's Mines from Jack Benny's January 7, 1951, show with Deborah Kerr, and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" from Suspense, January 12, 1943.

Gothic triumphs: Valancourt's top sellers for 2010.

Sheridan Le Fanu,
from Seventy Years of
Irish Life (1893) by
William Richard Le Fanu

For those who enjoy seeing a different bestseller list, here are the Top 10 Sellers for Valancourt Books for 2010:

1.  Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1871–72); great-nephew of Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan

2.  The Blood of the Vampire by actress-author Florence Marryat (1897)

3.  Six Gothic Dramas by Scottish poet-playwright Joanna Baillie

4.  The Witch of Ravensworth by George Brewer (1808)

5.  The Necromancer by Karl Friedrich Kahlert (1794)

6.  Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater (1885)

7.  Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul by Marie Corelli (1897)

8.  Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons (1793)

9.  The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve (1778)

10. The Cenci by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819)

The man with multiple brains.

Harvey Cushing
NLM History of
Medicine Collection

Yale Alumni Magazine gives an up-close and personal view of Dr. Harvey Cushing's brain collection.

Curator, U-MN Sherlock Holmes collections.

Illustration from "The
Adventure of the Missing
Three-Quarter," by
Arthur Conan Doyle.
Strand Magazine,
Aug 1904.

The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles Timothy J. Johnson, the curator of the Sherlock Holmes collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries. (Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)  Updated

Faulkner on Gavin Stevens, "A Rose for Emily," and Spillane.

William Faulkner by Carl Van
Vechten, 1954. Library of
Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division

In both transcripts and audio from University of Virginia, William Faulkner talks about his lawyer character Gavin Stevens, his mystery-related story "A Rose for Emily," and the use of violence in his work, as well as takes a swipe at Mickey Spillane. He used to see James Joyce in Paris and tells of the role of Winesburg, Ohio's Sherwood Anderson in his first book.

Happy 85th birthday, Michael Bond.

Michael Bond, creator of hapless gastronomic sleuth Monsieur Pamplemousse and trusty canine sidekick Pommes Frites, as well as the beloved Paddington Bear, turns 85 today. His latest Monsieur Pamplemousse novel is Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Carbon Footprint (2010).

The Master's voice.

Noel Coward on
What's My Line?

Catch this Paley Center excerpt from "I Like America: Noel Coward in the USA" on the occasion of Coward's December birthday, which includes an excerpt from "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." The center also offers "Noel Coward on Television" by Barry Monush, which features a clip from a 1956 TV version of Blithe Spirit that starred Coward, Lauren Bacall, and Claudette Colbert.

PBS Pioneers of Television: Crime programs.

Robert Stack in
The Untouchables

The PBS program Pioneers of Television will feature crime dramas on February 1 and will look at important figures such as Desi Arnaz (The Untouchables), Stephen J. Cannell (The Rockford Files, The Greatest American Hero), Bruce Geller (Mission: Impossible, Mannix), and Jack Webb (Dragnet).

Hammond Innes this week on BBC Radio 7.

The Doomed Oasis (1960) by avid sailor Hammond Innes (best known for The Wreck of the "Mary Deare") is featured this week on BBC Radio 7, in which British lawyer George Grant searches for a client missing in Arabia. Go here for the schedule or to listen. Episodes can usually be heard online for a week after broadcast.

More Hildegarde Withers from Rue Morgue Press.

Edna May Oliver, who
played Hildegarde Withers
in three films, NYPL

Rue Morgue Press has just issued another volume in the series featuring Stuart Palmer's Hildegarde Withers, Murder on the Blackboard (1932), in which the inquisitive schoolteacher-sleuth goes on a hunt for a peripatetic corpse. This book joins other Rue Morgue reissues in the Withers series: The Penguin Pool Murder, Miss Withers Regrets, Nipped in the Bud, The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla, The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree, and The Puzzle of the Silver Persian.

50 years ago: Winnie Ille Pu, bestseller.

Veni, Vidi, Vici: A look at the PW bestseller list of 50 years ago (1961) reveals Winnie Ille Pu, the Latin translation of Milne's Winnie the Pooh by Alexander Lenard, in spot no. 7. It's still in print today. Read this interesting New York Times piece on its unexpected success.

Horace McCoy.

Charlton Heston and
Dianne Foster in Bad 
for Each Other (writ.
Horace McCoy, 1953)

On the occasion of the publication of Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935) by the British Serpent's Tail Classics, John Self looks at McCoy's "skinny and brutal account of existence at the edge of Depression America."

Hound of the Baskervilles, Valley of Fear this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week on BBC Radio 7, a sinister hound stalks the moors in The Hound of the Baskervilles (featuring Judi Dench), and Sherlock Holmes suspects Professor Moriarty is involved in a Sussex murder in The Valley of Fear (1914–15). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes usually can be heard online for a week after broadcast.

Happy birthday, Rufus King.

Michael Redgrave in
Secret beyond the Door
(1947, dir. Fritz Lang,
based on Rufus King's
Museum Piece No. 13)

Rufus King, playwright and author of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work Murder by the Clock (1929) that features the debut of his series character Lieutenant Valcour, was born today in New York in 1893. His plays include Murder at the Vanities (1933) and Invitation to a Murder (which starred Humphrey Bogart in 1934 and was filmed as The Hidden Hand with Craig Stevens in 1942). He died in 1966.

Happy birthday, Charles Beaumont.

Ida Lupino in
"Masquerade" (writ.
Charles Beaumont, Four
Star Playhouse, 1954)

Writer Charles Beaumont, best known for his scripts for Twilight Zone, was born today in Chicago in 1929. He also wrote for numerous other TV series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Naked City, One Step Beyond, Richard Diamond: Private Detective, and Wanted: Dead or Alive. He died in 1967.

The Avengers on location.

Patrick Macnee in
The Avengers

This 1966 clip from British Pathe shows Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg filming scenes in various vintage cars for The Avengers.

Norman Lloyd: 70 years in TV.

Norman Lloyd in
"Delusion" (1959)

The Archive of American Television marks actor-director-producer Norman Lloyd's 70 years in television with this interview from its archive and the following pieces from his long career:

• "The Jar," Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1964), dir. Norman Lloyd, based on a short story by Ray Bradbury (a mysterious jar attracts a lot of attention)

• "Delusion," One Step Beyond (1959), perf. Norman Lloyd and Suzanne Pleshette (man knows donating blood will result in unpleasant visions of the future)

During the interview, Lloyd discusses his role in Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), comments on Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), and talks about his directing work for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Georges Simenon in Hitler's Germany.

One selection in Oliver Lubrich's Travels in the Reich, 1933–1945 (2010) features Georges Simenon's account "Hitler in the Elevator" that describes the catastrophic events around the Reichstag in 1933.

In addition, Simenon unveils a Maigret statue in the Netherlands in this British Pathe clip from 1966.

Child prodigies: Thriller writer Horace Atkisson Wade, Barbara Newhall Follett.

Horace Atkisson Wade,
from Current Opinion
April 1920

In Lapham's Quarterly Portland State University's Paul Collins provides the fascinating but sad tale of Barbara Newhall Follett, who published The House without Windows (Knopf, 1927) at age twelve to wide acclaim.  In the piece Collins also mentions Horace Atkisson Wade, who published a 30,000-word thriller, In the Shadow of Great Peril (1920), at age eleven. Go here for an article on Wade, who apparently followed up the thriller with a few more books and became involved with horse racing. (Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

Ngaio Marsh this week on BBC Radio 7.

Ngaio Marsh's aristocratic Inspector Roderick Alleyn is featured this week on BBC Radio 7 in the country house mystery A Man Lay Dead and A Surfeit of Lampreys (body is found in an elevator). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard online a week after broadcast.

Mysteries among BFI's most wanted films.

Ivor Novello in
The Lodger (1926)

In considering the British Film Institute's "Most Wanted" list of films, it should be noted that about 35 percent are either mysteries or thrillers that trigger desire in the mystery fan/scholar for their presence on DVD. They include the following:

• A Study in Scarlet (1914); Sherlock Holmes, of course

• Murder at Monte Carlo (1935); Errol Flynn's first film

• The Scarab Murder Case (1936), with Wilfred Hyde-White as S. S. Van Dine's detective Philo Vance

• Murder Will Out (1939), with Jack Hawkins

• This Man Is Dangerous (1941), with James Mason as David Hume's detective Mick Cardby

• Double Confession (1950), with Peter Lorre in a blackmail tale

• Two adaptations featuring John Creasey's sleuth Richard Rollison, aka the Toff—Salute the Toff and Hammer the Toff (both 1952)

• Films from the early career of director Michael Powell such as Two Crowded Hours (1931)

BFI also has launched an effort to preserve films from Alfred Hitchcock's silent film oeuvre, including his 1926 adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes's The Lodger with Ivor Novello.

Jonathan Eig's Get Capone.

In this interesting podcast from the Society of Midland Authors, Jonathan Eig, author of Get Capone: The Secret Plot that Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster, discusses his belief that Al Capone was not behind the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (positing an alternate culprit based on an FBI document), the central role of US attorney George Johnson rather than Eliot Ness in convicting Capone of tax evasion, and other facets of his book.

Freddy the Pig brings pork at auction.

At the Dec 8 Bloomsbury auction, a 26-volume set of Walter R. Brooks's Freddy the Pig series went for $2000. A separate set of pulp novels, however, failed to sell.

Another auction on Dec 9 featured various Edward Gorey-related items.

Bah, humbug: Wilkie Collins at Xmas.

Wilkie Collins, bet. 1880
and 1890. Library of
Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division.

Paul Lewis provides these insights into Wilkie Collins's various works aimed for a holiday market and the author's cranky reactions to the season such as "This awful Christmas time! I am using up my cheque-book—and am in daily expectation of fresh demands on it." Perhaps he took a leaf from his friend Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

View classic holiday programs online via MBC.

Art Carney in TZ's "Night
of the Meek" (1960)

The Museum of Broadcast Communications offers various well-known holiday programs online, such as Twilight Zone's "Night of the Meek" with Art Carney, A Bozo Christmas (with everyone's favorite clown), and the Dick Van Dyke Show's "The Alan Brady Show Presents."

BBC Archive: Fleming and Chandler on thrillers.

Ian Fleming, NYPL

A new BBC Archive on James Bond features a 1958 conversation between Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler on the differences between British and U.S. thrillers, among other topics.

Thomas Hardy's holiday cards.

Thomas Hardy, 1923.
NYPL

Anthony Gardner in the Royal Society of Literature Review discusses the stories behind the holiday cards sent out by author Thomas Hardy.

D. A. Miller on "the French Hitchcock."

In Film Quarterly, UC-Berkeley professor
D. A. Miller offers an appreciation of the late Claude Chabrol, director of Merci pour le chocolat (adaptation of Charlotte Armstrong's The Chocolate Cobweb) and other thrillers. More here on Chabrol.

JPC: Nurse-sleuth Cherry Ames.

Cover of Cherry Ames,
Chief Nurse (1944), from
Series Books for Girls

In the most recent issue of the Journal of Popular Culture Adrianne Finlay looks at the portrayal of nurse-sleuth Cherry Ames during and after World War II as "an ambulatory recruiting poster and asexual pinup girl" (1200). Although Finlay identifies only Helen Wells as the author of the series, another writer who contributed to the series was Julie Campbell Tatham, creator of Trixie Belden.

A Hart to Hart retrospective.

The Paley Center for Media offers a clip from its November 2010 program "One from the Hart: A Hart to Hart Reunion" with Stefanie Powers and Robert Wagner discussing their TV detective series that ran from 1979 to 1984.

Robert Altman, Elliott Gould, and The Long Goodbye.

The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research features the early career of director Robert Altman, including his 1973 interpretation of Chandler's The Long Goodbye, an interview with star Elliott Gould, and this script by Leigh Brackett.

Happy birthday, Dalton Trumbo.

Peggy Cummins in Gun
Crazy (1950; dir. Joseph
H. Lewis)

Screenwriter and author Dalton Trumbo, a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist, was born today in Montrose, CO, in 1905. He won Oscars for Roman Holiday and The Brave One, and the National Book Award for the war protest novel Johnny Got His Gun. He was the screenwriter on such notable films as Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Exodus, and Spartacus. His crime-related work includes Fugitives for a Night (1938; studio employee is accused of murder), Half a Sinner (1940; schoolteacher gets mixed up in murder), Jealousy (1945; wife is suspected in husband's murder), and Gun Crazy (1950, cowritten with MacKinlay Kantor; a couple embarks on a robbery spree). He died in 1976.

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

Mr. Ed, mystery fan.

The well-read Mr. Ed

The collection Readers & Writers, one CD from the radio program Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story, features Walter R. Brooks's "Ed Has His Mind Improved" (1939), in which our equine hero Mr. Ed widens his literary horizons through reading adventure and murder tales, displaying a particular fondness for Edgar Wallace.

Listen to the story (performed by Tony Roberts) here. Those looking for a print version of the story can find it in In the Stacks: Short Stories about Libraries and Librarians.

James Sallis, Simon Brett this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week on BBC Radio 7: James Sallis's Eye of the Cricket with African American private eye Lew Griffin and Simon Brett's Murder Unprompted with alcoholic actor-sleuth Charles Paris. Go here for the schedule or to listen online; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

National Archives: Dillinger, Nelson, Hoover.

J. Edgar Hoover, 1940.
Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs
Division

The National Archives' Text Message blog features a 1934 Department of Justice press release offering a reward for the capture of John Dillinger and "Baby Face" Nelson, and a 1972 press release announcing the death of J. Edgar Hoover.

Boss Tweed goes on the lam, Dec 2, 1875.

Cartoon of Boss Tweed
Harper's Weekly, Oct 21,
1871. Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Div

As the House of Representatives historical highlights notes, New York's Boss Tweed (a one-time congressman) escaped from incarceration 135 years ago today. Infamous for running Tammany Hall, he was convicted of embezzlement in 1874 and received a 12-year sentence. After he escaped, he went first to Cuba, then to Spain, where the authorities caught up to him. Tweed died in 1878.

Valancourt reissues Marsh's The Second Coming (1900); Joseph Payne Brennan.

Illustration by Sydney Cowell
for Richard Marsh's
"Exchange is Robbery"
The Idler, 4 (1893–94)

Valancourt Books continues its reissues of the work of Richard Marsh (aka Richard Bernard Hellmann, 1857-1915, best known for The Beetle, 1897) with The Second Coming (1900), a daring work that posited the effect of the Second Coming of Christ on London society and brought an avalanche of criticism onto Marsh's head.

Also note that the spring 2010 issue of Wormwood includes an essay on Marsh by Callum James (also see this post on James's blog on Marsh) as well as a piece by Mike Barrett on supernatural sleuth Lucius Leffing, who was created by Joseph Payne Brennan (1918–90).