#Mary Roberts Rinehart

[keepcalmandwritefiction]

The mystery story is really two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.

– Mary Roberts Rinehart

[weirdlookindog]

Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood - The Bat Whispers, First Photoplay Edition (Grosset & Dunlap, 1926).

[cantsayidont]

Hateration holleration in the cinema:

THE BAT WHISPERS (1930): Creaky early talkie thriller, based on a Mary Roberts Rinehart/Avery Hopwood stage play, about a group of people terrorized by a mysterious masked criminal called The Bat. (Bob Kane later claimed that this was one of the inspirations for Batman.) There's a great opening shot and some cool model work in the first 10 minutes (like a sequence where The Bat descends by rope into his special car, which can generate a smokescreen to deter pursuers), but once it gets into the actual play, it becomes too static, and it's burdened with hammy acting and a truly painful level of mugging comic relief from the supporting players (with Maude Eburne the worst offender as the cowardly, superstitious maid). Star Chester Morris appears briefly out of character at the end to urge the audience not to reveal The Bat's true identity. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Promises FANTÔMAS or LES VAMPIRES, mostly delivers Scooby-Doo. Batman fans interested in the character's antecedents should check out the first 10 minutes, but you won't miss much if you stop there.

ONE WAY PASSAGE (1932): Charming pre-Code melodrama about the doomed shipboard romance between a dying rich girl (Kay Francis) and a suave escaped convict (William Powell), who's being escorted back to San Francisco to be hanged for murder. Despite its obvious contrivances, the compact script and brisk direction keep things from becoming maudlin or grim, and Powell and Francis have wonderful chemistry (the best of their many pairings at Warner Bros.), with good support from Warren Hymer as the thick-headed but not entirely unsympathetic cop, Frank McHugh as a drunken scam artist, and Aline MacMahon as a bogus countess. A surprisingly warm little story about people doing the best they can in the face of unsympathetic fate. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Touching, funnier than you'd think (though McHugh lays it on a little too thick), and even life-affirming.

THE BAD SLEEP WELL (1960): Overlong, overwrought, somewhat undercooked Akira Kurosawa corporate crime drama, a loose modern-dress variation on HAMLET, about a junior executive (Toshiro Mifune) who borrows someone else's name and identity to infiltrate a big corporation whose ruthless skulduggery is responsible for his father's suicide, even going so far as to marry the boss's disabled daughter (Kyoko Kagawa) to ingratiate himself with his foe (Masayuki Mori). It starts off well, with a punchy style Leonard Maltin aptly compares to a '40s Warner Bros movie, but Kurosawa lets the supporting cast go overboard while failing to provide Mifune with enough fireworks to sustain the film through its rather ponderous 150-minute running time, and the gloomy ending offers no real dramatic payoff. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Highly regarded by Kurosawa fans and film nerds, but casual viewers may wonder what all the fuss is about.

CROSSPLOT (1969): Labored action comedy starring Roger Moore as womanizing ad executive Gary Fenn, whose new discovery is a gorgeous Hungarian model named Marla Kogash (Claudie Lange), who's tied up in a convoluted assassination plot. Moore is game, but the script and direction are too clunky to ever whip up the requisite degree of froth, and the plot's awkward equivocation about student protests doesn't sit well. Martha Hyer is fun as Marla's flirtatious English aunt Jo, and fans of THE PRISONER will immediately recognize costar Alexis Kanner from "Living in Harmony" and "Fall-Out." (Moore's future Bond movie costar Bernard Lee also pops up in a small role.) CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Never as funny or as fun as it wants to be, and your attention will start to wander by the midpoint.

THE HOT ROCK (1972): Droll, lightweight caper film, adapted by William Goldman from a Donald Westlake novel, about a gang of thieves (Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, and Paul Sand) attempting to steal a rare diamond on behalf of a UN delegate from a fictional African country (Moses Gunn), only to have one brilliant plan after another go badly awry. Director Peter Yates wisely keeps things light even as the plot gets sillier, although he sometimes lets the energy level wane too much, and the ending feels a bit anticlimactic. Gunn steals the show as the gang's increasingly exasperated financier. CONTAINS LESBIANS? It really only has two female characters, and their roles are very small. VERDICT: Never laugh-out-loud funny, but a pleasantly relaxed amusement.

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (1995): Near-miss film adaptation of the first of Walter Mosley's popular Easy Rawlins detective novels, about a newly unemployed Black veteran in 1948 Los Angeles (Denzel Washington) who's hired to track down a mystery woman (Jennifer Beals) some people will kill to find. Adapted and directed by Carl Franklin, it has great atmosphere, a charismatic lead, and superb support by Don Cheadle as Easy's casually murderous friend Mouse. Unfortunately, the story lacks an emotional hook, and Beals' flat performance leaves a blank space at its heart; the mise-en-scène is ultimately more compelling than the plot. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Not in any substantive way. VERDICT: A movie good enough that you'll come away frustrated that it falls so short of greatness.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

1935 illustration by Tom Webb by totallymystified Via Flickr: For the story The Tall Tree by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[my-52-weeks-with-christie]

[mudwerks]

(via Pulp International - Front and rear covers for The Swimming Pool by Mary Roberts Rinehart)

cover by Victor Kalin

[movie-titlecards]

The Bat (1959)

My rating: 6/10

Rather a pleasant little whodunit somewhat reminiscent of the German Edgar Wallace movies that were released around the same time, I thought, though it could've used significantly more Vincent Price - although, is there a movie where this isn't the case?

[meinelesewelt]

Mary Roberts Rinehart: Die Wendeltreppe

Liddy und ich schafften es bis ins Kartenzimmer und knipsten alle Lampen an. Ich rüttelte and der kleinen Tür, die auf die Veranda führte, und überprüfte die Fenster. Alles war gesichert, und Liddy, die nicht mehr ganz so ängstlich war, hatte mich gerade auf den entsetztlich staubigen Zustand des Parkettbodens hingewiesen, als plötzlich das Licht ausging.

[famousborntoday]

Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart published her first mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 19...

Link: Mary Roberts Rinehart

[alexhorrorfilms]

The Bat Whispers (Шепот Летучей мыши)

Пригоди геніального злочинця у провінції.

Роланд Вест вдруге екранізував п'єсу Мері Робертс Райнхарт та Евері Хопвуда (у 1926 він екранізував п'єсу під назвою "Кажан"). Це напівготичний трилер, який часом забавний, часом лоскоче нерви. До жанру жахів має таке саме відношення, як і романи Едгара Уоллеса. Цікаво, що завдяки цьому фільму з'явився культовий герой – Бетмен. Боб Кейн написав в автобіографії, що саме "Шепіт Кажана" був одним із джерел натхнення при створенні Бетмена.

Чудова класика, досить кумедна, але все ще цікава.

Фільм довгий час вважав��я загубленим. Копія була знайдена в 1987 році в маєтку Мері Пікфорд (свого часу Мері Пікфорд набула права на фільм з метою зробити ремейк, в якому головні ролі мали зіграти Хемфрі Богарт і Ліліан Гіш).

[genderkoolaid]

I was more or less stunned by what had happened. I had been prepared for criticism and ridicule - I was accustomed to them. But it had never occurred to me that people might want to hound and persecute me for my change in role. I had lived as a woman because that was my social standing, and had been made fun of and called 'half-man', and now when I had faced the situation and righted the grotesquely false position in which I had lived so long, it seemed that the public would damn me because I had once, perforce [by force, by necessity], worn skirts. I tried to get other hospital work. I went to the men who had been my chiefs and told them the truth and asked their aid in securing another position; to a man they turned me down. I tried to get other sorts of work and failed tor the same reason as soon as I gave my name. Then my family employed counsel and instituted proceedings to have my name legally changed; and the medical school from which I had been graduated served notice on us that if we persisted they would rescind my diploma and have me disbarred from practice.

— excerpt from Letter from Alan Hart to Mary Roberts Rinehart, August 3, 1921, on the subject of his transition from female to male and the impact of being publicly outed by a woman who recognized him. Alan Hart was one of the first men to get a hysterectomy in the US, and pioneered the use of X-rays in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which ended up being crucial to treatment as the disease was asymptomatic early on.

[retrotariotr]

The Bat is a 1959 American crime-mystery thriller starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. It is the fourth film adaptation of the story, which began as a 1908 novel The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart, which she later adapted (with Avery Hopwood) into the 1920 play The Bat. The first film version of the play was the 1926 American silent film The Bat.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

1935 illustration by Tom Webb by totallymystified Via Flickr: For the story The Tall Tree by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

[byneddiedingo]

Joan Crawford and Lon Chaney in The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)

Cast: Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Norman Kerry, Nick De Ruiz, John George, Frank Lanning. Screenplay: Tod Browning, Waldemar Young, based on a novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart; titles: Joseph Farnham. Cinematography: Merritt B. Gerstad. Art direction: Richard Day, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Harry Reynolds, Errol Taggart. 

One of the kinkier movies in the Lon Chaney filmography, The Unknown betrays its pre-Code nature very early. It's set in a circus where we see women in the audience ogling a performance by the strong man, Malabar (Norman Kerry). But the mother of one of the oglers, sitting across the aisle, hisses at her son to "go home and take off that dress." Chaney plays Alonzo, whose knife-throwing act involves his lovely assistant, Nanon (Joan Crawford), the daughter of the money-grubbing Zanzi (Nick De Ruiz), owner of the circus. What makes Nanon's job more perilous is that Alonzo throws the knives with his feet, being armless. Eventually Alonzo's attraction to Nanon will involve murder, dismemberment, and a love triangle in which Alonzo almost tears his rival, Malabar, to pieces. Chaney's gift for physical transformation reaches a new peak in the movie, which requires him to do everything from throwing knives to drinking from a teacup with his toes. In fact, although Chaney learned to do many of these things, some of the actions were performed by his body double, Paul Desmuke, who was in fact armless. Careful camera manipulation kept Chaney's upper body in the frame as Desmuke actually lit cigarettes and threw knives with his feet. The Unknown was one of Crawford's earliest featured performances, in a role that MGM originally wanted Greta Garbo to play. She's still a little raw as an actress, but her presence outshines that of her leading man, Kerry, whose career fizzled as hers ignited. The Unknown, one of eight movies director Tod Browning made with Chaney, lacks the sympathy for the physically divergent of Browning's most notorious film, Freaks (1932), although Alonzo's dwarf assistant, Cojo (John George), sometimes serves as the moral corrective to Alonzo's schemes.  

[my-52-weeks-with-christie]