Phantom Lady (1944).

Ella Raines and
Thomas Gomez in
Phantom Lady

Directed by Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase, etc.), this adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's book features Ella Raines turning sleuth to exonerate her boss, who is accused of killing his wife.

Last day to RSVP for Foxwell presentation.

Adelia Chiswell,
member of the
Red Cross
Motor Corps

Tomorrow is the last day to RSVP for the March 16 luncheon of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of DC where I'll be speaking on "DC Women in World War I." They include Adelia "Tess" Chiswell, a member of the Red Cross Motor Corps who served in France with future U.S. minister to Norway Daisy Harriman. I'll also be signing my book In Their Own Words: American Women in World War I.

The luncheon, which is open to nonmembers, will be held at Capitol Skyline Hotel (Metro stop: Navy Yard) from 12–2 pm and is $35 per person. To RSVP, visit the AOI Web site.

"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.

Paretsky on Green and more.

The winter 2018 issue of the University of Chicago Magazine features "Criminal Mastermind," an article on alumnus Sara Paretsky, in which she talks about her role in the mystery world as "the aging diva," the work of Anna Katharine Green, and her experiences as a student at the university. Says Paretsky, "Crime fiction is the place in literature where law and justice in society come together."

Phantom of 42nd Street (1942).

In Phantom of 42nd Street, a drama critic turns sleuth when people connected to a former theatrical company begin dying one by one. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Milton Raison and Jack Harvey.

BYU's annotated bibliography of academic mysteries.

Florence Converse,
1921

As the Law & Humanities blog points out, Brigham Young University Library has produced "Murder at BYU: A Finding Guide to and Annotated Bibliography of Murder Mysteries in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU Involving Universities, Colleges, Professors and/or Students." It has expected entries (e.g., Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night, 1935) and lesser known ones (e.g., Florence Converse's Into the Void, 1926). There are drawbacks, however, in the bibliography's reliance on dated sources and absence of periodical references such as Clues and Journal of Popular Culture. Although the bibliography states, "No infor[mation] on author" regarding Converse, an ad for Into the Void in 11 Sept. 1926 issue of the Living Age reveals that Converse (1871–1967) was born in New Orleans, was an assistant editor at the Atlantic Monthly, and lived in Wellesley (the milieu of Into the Void is rumored to be Wellesley College). A graduate of Wellesley College (BS, 1893; MA, 1903) who wrote a history of her alma mater, she also was a poet and playwright who authored several novels such as the mystery Sphinx (1931).

The Riverside Murder (1935).

In The Riverside Murder, an inspector and an ambitious female journalist investigate when a financier is killed. The film is adapted from André Steeman's Les Six Hommes Morts by Selwyn Jepson (son of mystery author Edgar Jepson and uncle of writer Fay Weldon). The cast include Basil Sydney, Judy Gunn, and Alistair Sim.

Black pulp exhibition in Philadelphia.

Illustration from "Three Detective
Pards, or, Nobby Nick's Big Game"
by T. C. Harbaugh (1896)

"Black Pulp!" is a new exhibition on view until April 29 at Philadelphia's African American Museum, which features art from a century of works such as dime novels and Blaxploitation posters. The contributors include Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston as well as contemporary artists.

• WHYY on the exhibition

Foxwell Mar16 talk and signing, "DC Women in World War I."

Adelia Chiswell,
member of the Red Cross
Women's Motor Corps

As part of Women's History Month, I'll be speaking on "DC Women in World War I" at the March 16 luncheon of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of DC (AOI), the oldest civic organization in Washington, DC. I'll also be signing copies of my book In Their Own Words: American Women in World War I.

The luncheon, which is open to nonmembers, will be held at Capitol Skyline Hotel (Metro stop: Navy Yard) from 12–2 pm and is $35 per person. To RSVP, visit the AOI Web site.

The Secret Place (1957).

In The Secret Place, the young son of a policeman (Michael Brooke) becomes entangled with jewel thieves. Belinda Lee, Ronald Lewis, and David McCallum costar. This film was Clive Donner's debut as a director.

John D. MacDonald's "The Deep End" (1964).

A woman taking a swim ends up dead, and a PI (Clu Gulager) questions the conclusion of accidental drowning or suicide. The source for this 1964 episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre, although the credits merely state "based on a book by John P. [sic] MacDonald," is likely The Drowner by John D. MacDonald (Cosmopolitan Jan. 1963; novel 1963). Aldo Ray, Ellen Burstyn, Tina Louise, and Whit Bissell costar. The music for the episode is by John Williams.

Robert Lesser collection of pulp art, NBMAA.

The Robert Lesser Collection of 200 pieces of pulp art, housed at the New Britain Museum of American Art, can now be viewed online. Pieces include artworks for Amazing Stories, Argosy, Detective Short Stories, Detective Tales, Dime Mystery Magazine, Doc Savage, Mystery Tales, The Shadow, Spicy Mystery, Weird Tales, and Wonder Stories.

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."

Raymond Burr talks about Perry Mason (1959).

Raymond Burr as Perry Mason
with Barbara Hale as Della Street

In this 1959 interview with CBC Radio, Raymond Burr talks about the busy schedule of the Perry Mason TV series and his feelings about his character. "I think [Perry Mason] is a many-faceted individual," says Burr.

Praise for Cozzens's The Just and the Unjust (1942).

James Gould Cozzens

In "Children into Men: Lawyers and the Law in Three Novels" (The Catholic Lawyer, Oct 2017), New Jersey attorney Gregory J. Sullivan admires the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone novel The Just and the Unjust by Pulitzer Prize recipient James Gould Cozzens (1903–78): "Cozzens' affirmation of the judicial process depicted with a keen eye as to its flaws is compelling because the novel is not measuring the criminal trial—and by extension the law in general—against an impossible utopian ideal" (35).

Further reading: my positive take on The Just and the Unjust.

The Saint's Girl Friday (1953).

In The Saint's Girl Friday, Louis Hayward steps into the shoes of Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar (aka The Saint) as he takes on a gambling ring that caused the death of a socialite who had requested his help. Diana Dors costars.

Essays wanted for Longmire collection.

Clues editorial board member Rachel Schaffer seeks a few more essays for her edited collection on Walt Longmire (both the TV series and books by Craig Johnson) to be published by McFarland. Visit the MSU Billings English department Web site for Schaffer's email address.

Three Steps in the Dark (1953).

Greta Gynt, left, with the Duchess of Kent, ca. 1944

In Three Steps in the Dark, an elderly man announces to his relatives that he intends to change his will, but he is murdered before he can do so. His mystery-writer niece (Greta Gynt) investigates.

Exhibition on pulp illustrator Gloria Stoll Karn.

July 1945 Detective Tales.
Cover by Gloria Stoll Karn

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, is featuring the exhibition "Gloria Stoll Karn: Pulp Romance" from February 10 to June 10, 2018. Karn, now 94, was one of the few female illustrators for pulp magazines in the 1940s.

• About the artist
• View Karn's November 1943 cover for Dime Mystery Magazine
• View Karn's March 1945 cover for Black Mask 

Upcoming Newberry seminar on Christie.

Agatha Christie, Sept 1964.
Dutch National Archives

The seminar "Agatha Christie and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction" will be held at Chicago's Newberry Library on April 14, 2018. Taught by Northwestern University's Elzbieta Foeller-Pituch, it will "discuss representative works of the 1920s and '30s featuring [Christie's] major sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple" and ways that Christie handles the conventions of the mystery genre. The works listed for discussion are Murder on the Orient Express, Philomel Cottage, and The Thirteen Problems.