FILM REVIEW

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957)

This film is my contribution to Tuesday’s Overlooked/Forgotten films and television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to check out the other fascinating entries over there.

Passionate love and scintillating verse dominated the twenty-month courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett that eventually culminated in marriage on September 12, 1846, at Marylebone Church in London. The renowned English poets, described as the “most romantic literary couple from the Victorian era,” exchanged hundreds of letters affirming and reaffirming their mutual love and friendship.

 
“I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett — I do, as I say, love these verses with all my heart,” Robert, the more expressive of the two, wrote after he read Elizabeth’s poems for the first time.

It wasn’t long before he fell in love with Elizabeth and expressed his feelings for her in nearly all his letters.

In one letter, written on December 27, 1845, Robert declares, “For ever and for ever I do love you, dearest — love you with my whole heart — in life, in death.”

Then, on February 23, 1846, a few months before they were married, he gushes, “Bless you, my sweetest. I love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.” 

Elizabeth, the eldest of the nine Barrett children, reciprocated his love both during their affair and after their marriage. In August 1851, five years after they tied the knot, Elizabeth wrote to her old friend Mrs. Martin:

“So far from regretting my marriage, it has made the happiness and honour of my life; and every unkindness received from my own house makes me press nearer to the tenderest and noblest of human hearts proved by the uninterrupted devotion of nearly five years. Husband, lover, nurse — not one of these, has Robert been to me, but all three together. I neither regret my marriage, therefore, nor the manner of it, because the manner of it was a necessity of the act. I thought so at the time, I think so now; and I believe that the world in general will decide (if the world is to be really appealed to) that my opinion upon this subject (after five years) is worth more.”

Her words “every unkindness received from my own house…” are particularly significant for Elizabeth is alluding to a long life of tyranny under her widowed father, whose possessiveness of his eldest daughter bordered on incest. Elizabeth, therefore, felt deeply indebted to Robert for saving her life — by marrying her when she was ill and whisking her off to Italy where they lived for fifteen years before she died in his arms on June 29, 1861.

It is the tyranny of her father on one hand and the devotion of her lover on the other that is at the core of The Barretts of Wimpole Street made by Sidney Franklin in 1957. This colour film is apparently a scene-by-scene replica of the black-and-white version directed by Franklin in 1934.

John Gielgud and Jennifer Jones in a tense scene.

In the original edition, Charles Laughton plays Edward Moulton-Barrett, the father, a role that is tailor-made for John Gielgud in the latter version. While Norma Shearer and Fredric March act as Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning in the 1934 film, they are replaced by Jennifer Jones and Bill Travers in the 1957 offering.

I cannot compare the two versions as I haven’t seen the first.

Had there been a 2012 version, however, I’d have liked to see either Colin Firth or Johnny Depp as Robert Browning, Winona Ryder as Elizabeth Barrett, and Gene Hackman, provided he is still acting at the age of eighty, as Barrett Senior (I can picture him gritting his teeth, grabbing Elizabeth by her arm and pulling her roughly to him). But this is neither here nor there. 

Bill Travers and Jennifer Jones take their vows.

The wonderful John Gielgud is terrific as Edward Moulton-Barrett, the widower, as he goes around the Wimpole household terrorising his adult children who are not allowed to have affairs or marry without his consent.

Elizabeth (Jennifer Jones), known by her nickname Ba, gets the brunt of her father’s insane behaviour — he is more possessive of her than his other children and confines her to a room most of the time, with only her beloved dog Flush and her maid Wilson (Jean Anderson) as her faithful companions. Elizabeth loves her father and does what he says, partly out of fear and partly because she thinks he knows best. After all, he is her “Papah” and she is quite ill, with rheumatic fever, it would seem; a fact Barrett keeps reminding her if only to ensure she does not move out of his sight.

Enter Robert Browning (Bill Travers), the dashing poet with long sideburns, and Father Barrett’s questionable conduct is at once exposed. Having prohibited his other daughter Henrietta Barrett (Virginia McKenna) from seeing Captain Surtees Cook (Vernon Gray), he turns his amorous attention to Elizabeth. In one scene — in fact, the scene of the movie — he grabs hold of his daughter, pulls her towards him and tries to embrace her in a very non-parental way, and castigates her for bringing another man into her life. 

Elizabeth is shocked beyond belief and agrees to marry Robert and elope with him to Italy with her dog, Flush, and maid Wilson. The film ends on a happy note, though, in real life Edward Moulton-Barrett disowned his daughter while her brothers refused to accept Robert because he was from a lower class.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street, originally based on a play written by Rudolf Besier in 1930, is more about the Robert Browning-Elizabeth Barrett romance and the fight for one’s happiness and less about a widowed father who is almost insane with jealousy over his daughter.

BOOK REVIEW

The Payoff by Don Smith

This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at well-known writer Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Don’t forget to check out the wide range of reviews at her blog.

I have a simple formula for deciding whether or not to read a book I have never heard of — I check out the picture on the front cover and the blurb on the back cover and if I like one or the other, or both, I go ahead and read the novel. So far it has worked for me.

It happened with The Payoff by Don Smith which I found under a pile of secondhand paperbacks. I knew I was going to read the book as soon as I pulled it out. As you can see, the cover is striking and the illustration smacks of corporate crime while the blurb on the back cover only hastened my decision to pick up the novel. It read...

"I've hit you three times and I'll go on hitting you unless you pay me two million dollars. If you discuss this with the police or the FBI you lose another plane..."

In addition, The Payoff was a Fawcett publication and Fawcett books rarely disappoint.

Now, you could write your own story with a blurb like that, but before you do, let's hear Don Smith's story first — it's his book.

Tim Parnell is trying to catch "trout" from a garbage can lying bottom side up in his office in Amsterdam airport when Bill Stanford, executive vice-president of Pan World Airways, hires him to investigate the mysterious bombing of three PWA planes followed by a two-million dollar ransom note.

The American detective's appearance doesn't inspire Standford's confidence — big frame, no tie, unbuttoned shirt, tousled hair, and fly casting at three o'clock in the afternoon. The former CIA agent is the best investigator of airline crimes and that's what a desperate Stanford needs to save his airline company.

"There was only one man in the world who had a prayer of doing that, and he was in Amsterdam. Tim Parnell. International private eye. If anyone could put a crimp in the Mafia's new sky-jack extortion game, it was Parnell..."

Parnell takes up the case, for a tidy fee and an all-expense account, because he provides good value for good money and because he knows where and how to find the hoods who are bombing planes with no passengers in them. The sleuth wastes no time in getting on the trail of the blackmailers whose tentacles are spread across America and Europe. He does so by accompanying Stanford on his first "drop" of ransom money somewhere between Zurich and Brussels.

The story then moves back and forth between Monte Carlo, Geneva, Marseilles, New York, Paris and Amsterdam as the hard-nosed detective with a predilection for taking risks discovers a caboodle of gangsters — American mafia led by the mastermind, the son of an NY don, and a big-time Italian drug runner — are behind the ransom caper. 

Even as Parnell gathers clinching evidence against the hoods, with help from a French private detective and an ex-cop, Standford, who has hired him on the sly, takes him off the case. The ransom has been paid and no more PWA planes have been bombed.

But the American detective continues his investigations, with what's left of the unaccounted fee from Stanford, because he realises that the people who bombed Pan World Airways planes will soon pick another target. They pick Lufthansa...and Parnell closes in. In the end Parnell, with a bit of smart thinking, is richer by the millions and a broad he has grown fond of.

The Payoff is a racy novel in the mould of a James Hadley Chase. There is never a dull moment in the 191-page turner which was published in 1973. It’s a predictable storyline but Don Smith tells it well. I recommend it if you have nothing better to read. 

There is very little about Don Smith and his other works on the internet, though I found something else. Private Eyes 101 Knights: A Survey of American detective Fiction 1922-1984 by Robert A. Baker and Michael T. Nietzel (1985), among other interesting things, briefly discusses the number of American detectives like Tim Parnell who have moved abroad to practice their investigative work. Don Smith has written books featuring Parnell — The Man Who Played Thief (1971), The Padrone (1971) and Corsican Takeover (1973) — as well as about a secret agent, Phil Sherman, who has featured in 16 secret missions.

Libraries of India Series #2

University Library of North Bengal

In November 2011, I started the Libraries of India series with the over a century old National Library of Kolkata in the East Indian state of West Bengal. For some inexplicable reason, I didn't continue the series. I have now decided to revive it with a brief look at the University Library of the University of North Bengal located near Siliguri in the picturesque district of Darjeeling in West Bengal. Darjeeling is famous for its tea.

 
Founded in 1962, the University Library has a vast and an impressive collection of books, reports and periodicals from all branches of Science, Arts, Commerce, and Management. The 2.35-lakh odd literary works include more than 1.80-lakh academic books, 36,000 bound periodicals, and over 600 rare books apart from reference books, theses, census, manuscripts, and gazettes.

 
Most university libraries in India owe their existence to the British who were mainly responsible for introducing and imparting English education as well as building grand edifices of learning that are heritage structures today.

Photos: University of North Bengal

Arnie writes his autobiography

Poor immigrant, bodybuilder, Mister Universe, mega film star, millionaire businessman, Governor of California… You can actually picture Arnold Schwarzenegger climbing the rags-to-riches ladder. The “Austrian Oak” would probably have climbed all the way into the Oval Office if the American constitution allowed him to.

But Schwarzenegger has achieved more than enough in his 64 years and he doesn’t have to run for US president to write his autobiography which Simon & Schuster will publish globally in October this year.

The book jacket art for Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story was unveiled by the big man himself a fortnight ago, via Twitter and Facebook, so that his legion of fans could have a say in plans for the book — in terms of their choice of favourite photographs from different stages of his life. The book's back cover will showcase his years as an athlete, movie star, and governor.

“One of the most anticipated autobiographies of this generation, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall is the candid story by one of the world’s most remarkable actors, businessmen, and world leaders,” Simon & Schuster said in a media release.

“Total Recall covers Schwarzenegger’s high stakes journey to the United States, from creating the international bodybuilding industry out of the sands of Venice Beach, to breathing life into cinema’s most iconic characters, and becoming one of the leading political figures of our time. Proud of his accomplishments and honest about his regrets, Schwarzenegger spares nothing in sharing his amazing story,” the release noted. 

Yet, a lot of people believe Arnie won't reveal much in his widely-awaited literary self-flagellation. He is expected to leave the juicier portions of his private life out of the public domain.

Good thing, too. I, for one, would like a Schwarzenegger autobiography to focus entirely on his movies starting with his first film Hercules in New York (1969) to the nearly fifty movies in his forty-three year acting career. He is one of the most entertaining and successful actors of our time and I’d like to know how he got there.

A post on Arnold “one liner” Schwarzenegger can never be complete without a list of sorts.

Which are your 5 favourite Arnie movies? Mine are: Conan the Barbarian (or Destroyer if you like), The Terminator, Commando, Raw Deal, and Predator.

Schwarzenegger may not be the ‘last action hero’ but he is the ultimate action hero...in a comic role.

BOOK REVIEW 

Beyond the Black Stump by Nevil Shute

This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at noted writer Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Don’t forget to check out the wide range of reviews at her blog.

“You don't mean that your uncle swapped your mother for an old Mauser pistol?”

That is exactly what Stanton Laird, the young American geologist, asks red-haired Mollie Regan incredulously.

Stanton, who comes from the small quiet town of Hazel, Oregon, in distant America, has been sent by his company to the Australian outback — known as the Black Stump — to hunt for oil.

The “black stump” is an Australian term that refers to “an imaginary point beyond which the country is considered remote or uncivilised.”

He gets a huge culture shock no sooner he meets up with Mollie’s family, the Regans, a large and wealthy Irish family of farmers whose ranch, Laragh Station, is spread over a million acres in a remote and inhospitable part of Western Australia, known as the Lunatic.

As Stanton grows close to the Regans, he falls in love with Mollie and discovers she is illegitimate, one of a dozen-odd children who consist of real and half-caste brothers and sisters, sired by her father Pat and his younger brother, Tom, and two women, her own white mother and an aborigine. There are no divorces and remarriages in the legal sense as the men have never really been married to the women. They live together as one big family, the many siblings close to each other. 

The absence of social mores is more than made up for by the Regans healthy view of life and generous attitude toward others. They are a helpful and friendly clan and in spite of the initial apprehension of having Stanton and his gentlemanly crew explore oil on their land (on lease from the government), they welcome him and his men into their midst. The Regans, in turn, are fascinated by the professional manner in which the Americans set up camp and rig as well as the many gadgets and machinery, precision instruments, electric ice cream freezer, and glossy magazines they bring with them and share with the Regans.

The glossies provide Mollie with her first exposure to America, a modern and civilised world she dreams about and starts to yearn for.

Over a period of time, when the oil exploration attempt fails to yield results, Stanton's company tells him to pack up and return home. By now, he and Mollie are very much in love and the two decide to marry but the girl's mother, the wise and formidable Mrs. Regan, advises her daughter to put of marriage till she has lived with the Lairds in Hazel and adjusted to the American way of life. In the end it proves to be a very wise suggestion.

This is where the real story, tragic in many ways, begins. Mollie accompanies Stanton to Hazel, Oregon, where she is welcomed warmly by his parents, a kindly couple. She lives with the Lairds, helps with the chores around the house, goes about town, and grows fond of her prospective in-laws who are proud of their values and integrity. Mollie finds this a trifle unsettling considering her own upbringing.

One day, Mollie, who is portrayed as sensitive and intelligent, decides to come clean: she confronts Mrs. Laird, affectionately called "Mom" by all, and discloses everything about her past and where she comes from. The revelation sends shock waves through the Laird household, especially Mom’s sister Aunt Claudia who has a loose tongue. 

"If we get married, Stan, your people must know everything about me," a determined Mollie tells Stanton, who has long accepted her for what she is.

Mollie wants his parents and the small and conservative Frontier town of Hazel to accept her past and present as well but she is also aware that, in their hearts, the god-fearing and church-going townspeople won't, even if they pretend to; not when her own father and brother were prominent members of the IRA who fought against the British government before fleeing to Australia — it's just one of many instances of the non-conformist Regan clan that Hazel may find unpalatable.

"It'ld hurt your mother much more to learn I'm illegitimate after we're married than if she learns it now," she tells Stanton.

"It wouldn't work," Mollie concludes. "There's too much between us..."

In the end Mollie Regan, who dreamt of a new life in America, breaks her engagement and returns to the Lunatic, hopefully to David Cope, a struggling English immigrant who rears sheep on his three-hundred-thousand acre farm called Lucinda Station, not far from the Regans spread. He has been hopelessly in love with her much before Stanton arrived.

The story behind the story
Beyond the Black Stump, written in Nevil Shute’s trademark easy and laidback style, is primarily about race relations though the author handles the subject of racism with utmost sensitivity. In his opinion, people are the same wherever you go, only their lives vary according to greater or lesser degree. For instance, Mollie Regan, who is unashamed of her background, yearns to be accepted for who she is, especially when those who might not have accepted her in Hazel had ancestors who did exactly what her folks in the Lunatic did.

She compares the Lunatic to the Frontier town of Hazel a hundred years ago when “your people married Indian girls when there weren’t any white women, just like us… If you could meet one of those people now, if one of them could come to Hazel, you wouldn’t want to have him in your house, or introduce him to your friends. And if it was a girl you wouldn’t want to marry her.” So why is my family being singled out, she wants to know.

I particularly liked the part where young Mollie Regan says, “I’m a kind of Rip van Winkle, Stan, that’s come here from the Hazel of a hundred years ago, out of the past.”

Mollie comes across as more liberal and broadminded than the Lairds, for instance, when she learns of Stanton’s secret past: as a reckless youth he and best friend Chuck Sheraton had raced with their girls resulting in an accident that killed one of them. The other was found to be pregnant with either Stanton’s or Chuck’s baby. The local community ordered Chuck to marry the girl and all was forgotten and forgiven but the boy grew up to look like Stanton. When the geologist confides his bitter past to Mollie, she laughs out loud and takes it in her stride, because she, herself, is illegitimate as nearly all her siblings are. His own mother is in denial.

The author
Beyond the Black Stump (1956) is one of ten novels about Australia written by prolific British writer Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960). In fact, he wrote this book while carrying out research for another novel, On the Beach (1957), which is also about Australia. 

© Nevil Shute Norway Foundation

Shute, who was an aeronautical engineer and took part in both the world wars, spent weeks in Western Australia and lived with a family in Oregon to research material for both these novels.

“For the first time in my life I saw how people live in an English-speaking country outside England,” he is believed to have said at the time. The overseas trips firmed up his resolve to migrate to Australia with his family.

Nevil Shute wrote 24 novels and an autobiography.

Next Friday's Forgotten Book: The Payoff by Don Smith

Stamp of a Writer: Edgar Allan Poe

The cost of publishing the work, in a style equal to any of our American publications, will at the extent be $100. This then, of course, must be the limit of any loss supposing not a single copy of the work to be sold. It is more than probable that the work will be profitable and that I may gain instead of lose, even in a pecuniary way.

— To John Allan, his foster father, May 29, 1829

At the request of Mr. T.W. White, I take the liberty of addressing you and of soliciting some little contribution to our Southern Literary Messenger. I am aware that you are continually pestered with such applications, and am ready to believe that I have very little chance of success in this attempt to engage you in our interest, yet I owe it to the magazine to make the effort.

— To James Fenimore Cooper, June 7, 1836

Could I obtain the most unimportant Clerkship in your gift — any thing, by sea or land — to relieve me from the miserable life of literary drudgery to which I now, with a breaking heart, submit, and for which neither my temper nor my abilities have fitted me, I would never again repine at any dispensation of God. I feel that I could then, (having something beyond mere literature as a profession) quickly elevate myself to the station in society which is my due. It is needless to say how fervent, how unbounded would be my gratitude to the one who should thus rescue me from ruin, and put me in possession of happiness. I leave my fate in your hands.

— To James Paulding, American writer and US Secretary of the Navy, July 19, 1838.

I feel, however, that I am, in regard to yourself an utter stranger — and that I have no claim whatever upon your good offices. Yet I could not feel that I had done all which could be justly done, towards ensuring success, until I had made this request of you. I have a strong hope that you will be inclined to grant it, for you will reflect that what will be an act of little moment in respect to yourself — will be life itself to me.

My request now, therefore, is that, if you approve of William Wilson, you will express so much in your own terms in a letter to myself and permit Mess: Lea & Blanchard to publish it, as I mentioned.

— To Washington Irving, October 12, 1839 

I wish to publish a new collection of my prose tales with some such title as this — “The Prose Tales of Edgar A. Poe including “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the “Descent into The Maelstrom”, and all later pieces, with a second edition of the “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”.

The “later pieces” will be eight in number, making the entire collection thirty-three — which would occupy two thick novel volumes.

I am anxious that your firm should continue to be my publishers, and, if you would be willing to bring out the book, I should be glad to accept the terms which you allowed me before — that is — you receive all profits, and allow me twenty copies for distribution to friends.

— To Lea and Blanchard, August 13, 1841

I need not call your attention to the signs of the times in respect to magazine literature. You will admit that the tendency of the age lies in this way — so far at least as regards the lighter lepers. The brief, the terse, the condensed, and the easily circulated will take place of the diffuse, the ponderous, and the inaccessible. Even our reviews (lucus a non lucendo) are found too massive for the taste of the day: I do not mean for the taste of the tasteless, but for that of the few. In the meantime the finest minds of Europe are beginning to lend their spirit to magazines. 

— To H.W. Longfellow, June 22, 1841

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path. I shall be a litterateur, at least, all my life.

— To Frederick W. Thomas, an old friend, February 14, 1849 

Material Source: © The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

First Day Cover: © Postal History Store

Vintage Weekend

War Cartoons by John Francis Knott

Title: War Cartoons

Author: Knott, John Francis, 1878-1963

Subject: World War I, 1914-1918

Publisher: South Western Printing Co., Dallas

Book contributor: The Library of Congress

Source: www.archive.org

John Francis Knott (1878-1963), artist and illustrator, drew more than 15,000 cartoons in his 52-year long artistic career spent almost entirely at Dallas Morning News in Texas.

Born in Pilsen, Austria (now Plzen, Czech Republic), in 1878, Knott came to America with his widowed mother at the age of five. Mother and son settled in Sioux City, Iowa, where he gained admission to the public school. When he was sixteen years old, Knott published his first drawing, in the Sioux City Journal. After a brief, albeit a not too successful, stint in Chicago, Knott went to Dallas where he illustrated harness and saddle catalogs for an engraving company.

But, Dallas changed Knott’s life completely for it was in this city, the third largest in Texas, that he found work at Dallas Morning News as a full-time cartoonist. Knott started by drawing general illustrations and satirical cartoons on the American way of life, and soon made it to the front page. His work, however, received universal acclaim with his daily cartoons during Woodrow Wilson’s first presidential campaign and during World War I.

Knott soon became famous and his cartoons were reprinted in other publications. In 1918, he published his most acclaimed work, War Cartoons, a series of telling black-and-white illustrations that dealt with a wide range of issues and nearly every aspect of World War I — the stark and the sensitive — that are too many to mention here.

Take a look at some of his cartoons below…

Note: The material for this photo essay has been sourced from Texas State Historical Association and the University of Texas at Austin.