Meyer Levin’s Compulsion
Meyer Levin described Compulsion (1956), his fictionalisation of the Leopold and Loeb murder trial, as a ‘contemporary historical novel or a documentary novel’. Today, the novel reads more like what Truman Capote dubbed, and by his own account invented with In Cold Blood (1966), a non-fiction novel. Although largely forgotten by literary critics, Compulsion is a superior book to In Cold Blood and to the many imitators in the true crime genre which followed Capote’s celebrated work.
Compulsion is based on the murder of Robert ‘Bobby’ Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Leopold and Loeb were two University of Chicago law students from wealthy families. In May 1924 the two students kidnapped and murdered Franks in an attempt to prove their intellectual superiority by committing the perfect crime. If such a thing as the perfect crime does exist, this was not it. Within a week the two men were arrested and charged: their elaborate plan fell apart when Leopold’s eyeglasses were found near the corpse. The subsequent trial gripped the nation. Although it was an open and shut case, there was a deeper mystery to events: why had two such privileged and intelligent young men committed such a barbaric crime and would they be executed for it? Famed attorney Clarence Darrow defended Leopold and Loeb at the trial, which ultimately resulted in both men escaping capital punishment but being sentenced to life imprisonment. Loeb was killed by fellow prisoner James E. Day in 1936. Day alleged that Loeb was attempting to rape him, although this claim seems dubious. Leopold was eventually paroled in 1958 and spent his remaining days doing medical research in Puerto Rico.
Meyer Levin was also a University of Chicago student when the story of Leopold and Loeb first broke and was well-placed to factually recreate the case in novel form. In Compulsion, Leopold and Loeb are portrayed as Judd Steiner and Artie Straus. Clarence Darrow is renamed Jonathan Wilk. The name changes are important as in this detail the novel differs from later non-fiction novels. The novel is narrated in the first person by a ‘cub’ reporter Sid Silver who covers the case. The novel begins with the murder itself, and then Levin shows the immediate aftermath: the widespread fear of a serial killer being on the loose is supplanted by disbelief as suspicion slowly falls on Straus and Steiner who in their arrogant belief that they can outwit the police inadvertently reveal their guilt. Much of the novel reads as a discourse on philosophy and psychology. Straus and Steiner are fascinated by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and model themselves on the Nietzschean Ubermensch, ‘Supermen’ who create their own values and live above conventional morality. Despite, or perhaps because of, their formidable intellect, the two killers have practically no emotional intelligence. They are easily outwitted by investigators who are even able to demonstrate how they have misunderstood Nietzsche’s philosophy. Psychology is the other key theme of the novel, and much effort is given to explaining the crime in terms of Freudian theories which were just beginning to have an impact in the U.S. in the mid-1920s. On both these themes, Levin artfully displays the fallibility of knowledge. At the time of the novel’s publication, Freud still held great sway in academe, but his influence has become more cultural than scientific, and the Freudian analysis of Straus and Steiner seems particularly contrived. The 1924 setting is skilfully evoked. This was an age when people were still recovering from the horrors of the Great War. There is a degree of optimism regarding humanity’s future and the pursuit of knowledge, but as Silver is narrating the novel after the Second World War, both reader and narrator know that even more unspeakable horrors await mankind. Thus, a single murder motivated by Nietzschean philosophy acts as a microcosm of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by a Nazi ideology which was itself inspired by Nietzsche.
Compulsion is divided into two parts: Book One is titled ‘The Crime of Our Century’ and deals with the murder and aftermath. Straus and Steiner’s trial is covered in Book Two: ‘The Trial of the Century’. Note the difference between ‘Our’ and ‘The’. For Levin, the murder of Bobby Franks represented the murder of a little part of humanity. In an age when religion had lost its authority and empires were crumbling, new humanist ideals were emerging, but these had been corrupted to the extent that Straus and Steiner regard murder not as a moral abomination but as an abstract concept. Sid Silver ruminates on their motive in prose which is both moving and thrilling to read:
We could, in that night, only grasp their claim of an experiment, an intellectual experiment, as Judd put it, in creating a perfect crime. They would avow no other motive: their act sought to isolate the pure essence of murder
Before, we had thought the boys could only have committed the murder under some sudden dreadful impulse. But now we learned how the deed had been marked by a long design developed in full detail. What was new to us was this entry in the dark, vast area of death as an abstraction. Much later, we were to seek the deeper cause that compelled these two individuals to commit this particular murder under the guise, even the illusion, that it was an experiment.
Just as there is no absolute vacuum, there is no absolute abstraction. But one approaches a vacuum by removing atmosphere, and so, in the pretentious excuse offered by Judd, it seemed that by removing the common atmospheres of lust, hatred, greed, one could approach the perfect essence of crime.
Thus one might come down to an isolated killing impulse in humanity. To kill, as we put it in the headlines, for a thrill! For an excitation that had no emotional base. I think the boys themselves believed that this was what they had done.
At first their recital sounded much like an account of daydreams that all could recognize. They had been playing with the idea of the “perfect murder.” Is not the whole of detective-story literature built on the common fantasy? True, in such stories we always supply a conventional motive. We accept that a man may kill for a legacy or for jealously or for revenge, though inwardly we may make the reservation – that’s foolish, the butler wouldn’t go so far. We accept that a dictator may unleash a war out of “economic needs” or “lust for power” but inwardly we keep saying, “Why? Why? Why?”
Sadly, Meyer Levin never got the recognition he deserved. He will be remembered perhaps as one of American literature’s great nearly men. He undertook exhausting research to adapting Anne Frank’s diary into a Broadway play, but his version was never produced as he was replaced with other writers. It was a loss that was to haunt him for the rest of his life. Compulsion is now often overlooked in the True Crime field for Capote’s In Cold Blood, but the Leopold and Loeb case was a more complex and significant event in American history than the Clutter family murders which Capote novelised. In Cold Blood is remembered less for being a great book than it is for the ethical issues raised by Capote’s relationship with the two killers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith and the tragedy which befall Capote due to the books phenomenal success.
My advice – read Compulsion, it’s a better book.
The Project of a Lifetime
I have a piece on The Rap Sheet in which I discuss the challenges of editing my new book 100 American Crime Writers. Here’s an extract:
I began working on 100 American Crime Writers as a contributor. Chris Routledge, the editor of the book at the time, asked me to write three biographical entries: James Ellroy, James M. Cain, and Mickey Spillane. I considered this to be an exciting and daunting task in itself, between uncovering new biographical details through researching and re-reading each man’s considerable collection. Despite this, when Chris asked me to take over as editor so that he could focus on other projects, I didn’t hesitate to say “yes.” As although it required researching and writing many more entries, communicating with 14 contributors, and dealing with the details of proofreading, bibliographies, editing proofs, and what-not, I was enthusiastic about the great wealth of interesting and engaging material and the opportunity to ensure it reached a broad audience.
You can read the whole thing here.
100 American Crime Writers
I am now settled in to my new apartment. I have a room with a view which is very conducive to writing. This is good because my latest book, 100 American Crime Writers, has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan, and over the next few weeks, I’m going to write several posts on this site to publicise it. As editor of this anthology, I had several wonderful contributors who wrote the biographical entries which comprise the volume. Editing the book was an often arduous, sometimes glorious and ultimately rewarding experience. I often felt like a crime writer, or better still a private detective, piecing together the mystery of these great crime writers’ lives. Several of the contributors have made similar comments to me about the experience. The lives of American crime writers are as fascinating, if not more so, than the work they produced, and the entries balance the discussion between their life and work. If you are a student, scholar of just fan of crime fiction then this is a book for you.
Here is the jacket cover, description and list of entries:
From Edgar Allan Poe to James Ellroy, crime writers have provided some of the most popular, controversial, acclaimed and disturbing works in American literature. 100 American Crime Writers provides critical biographies of some of the greatest and most important crime writers in American history. Both an important scholarly work and an enjoyable read accessible to a wider audience, this addition in Palgrave’s Crime Files series includes discussion of the lives of key crime writers, as well as analysis of the full breadth and scope of the genre – from John Dickson Carr’s Golden Age detective stories to Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled Philip Marlowe novels, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct police procedurals to Megan Abbott’s modern day reimagining of the femme fatale. Drawing on some of the best and most recent scholarship in the field, all of the key writers and themes of the genre are discussed in this comprehensive study of one of the most fascinating and popular of literary genres.
‘Out of the Venetian Vase’: From Golden Age to Hard-boiled
‘After These Mean Streets’: Crime Fiction and the Chandler Inheritance
Megan Abbott
Paul Auster
W.T. Ballard
Ann Bannon
Robert Bloch
Lawrence Block
Leigh Brackett
Gil Brewer
Fredric Brown
Howard Browne
Edward Bunker
James Lee Burke
W.R. Burnett
James M. Cain
Paul Cain
Truman Capote
John Dickson Carr
Vera Caspary
Raymond Chandler
Harlan Coben
Max Allan Collins
Richard Condon
Michael Connelly
Patricia Cornwell
Robert Crais
James Crumley
Carroll John Daly
Norbert Davis
Mignon G. Eberhart
James Ellroy
Janet Evanovich
William Faulkner
Kenneth Fearing
Rudolph Fisher
Kinky Friedman
Jacques Futrelle
Erle Stanley Gardner
William Campbell Gault
David Goodis
Sue Grafton
Davis Grubb
Frank Gruber
Dashiell Hammett
Thomas Harris
Carl Hiaasen
Patricia Highsmith
George V. Higgins
Tony Hillerman
Chester Himes
Dorothy B. Hughes
Roy Huggins
Day Keene
Jonathan Kellerman
C. Daly King
Jonathan Latimer
Dennis Lehane
Elmore Leonard
Ira Levin
Elizabeth Linington
Eleazar Lipsky
John Lutz
Ed McBain
Horace McCoy
William P. McGivern
John D. MacDonald
Ross Macdonald
Dan J. Marlowe
Margaret Millar
Walter Mosley
Marcia Muller
Frederick Nebel
Barbara Neely
William F. Nolan
Sara Paretsky
Robert B. Parker
George Pelecanos
Edgar Allan Poe
Melville Davisson Post
Richard S. Prather
Bill Pronzini
Ellery Queen (aka Dannay and Lee)
Arthur B. Reeve
Mary Roberts Rinehart
James Sallis
George S. Schuyler
Viola Brothers Shore
Iceberg Slim
Mickey Spillane
Rex Stout
Jim Thompson
Ernest Tidyman
Lawrence Treat
S.S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright)
Joseph Wambaugh
Carolyn Wells
Donald E Westlake
Raoul Whitfield
Charles Willeford
Charles Williams
Cornell Woolrich
Here’s the page on the publisher’s website, and here is the link for Amazon.
Radio Silence
Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I’m moving apartments this weekend and it’s proving to be every bit as stressful as I feared. Normal service will resume shortly.
Jo Nesbo at Theakston’s
Mark Billingham introduced the closing event at Theakston’s, and what an event to go out on– Jo Nesbo being interviewed by Mark Lawson. When Billingham mentioned Nesbo’s achievements in life thus far, it was hard not to feel a slight twinge of jealously. A freelance journalist, rock star, stockbroker, footballer and extreme sports enthusiast, it’s difficult to believe when you see him that this man is 52. He looks in great shape, but in his own words he is ‘slowly falling to bits’. Nesbo revealed how he came to novel writing quite late. On a trip to Sydney he started sketching out a story at the airport and was thoroughly hooked on writing it by the time he finally arrived at his hotel. The setting provided the story, with Nesbo writing of how his now legendary Norwegian detective Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of a Norwegian celebrity, his investigation leads him to explore the Aboriginal myth of The Bat-Man. When he finished the manuscript, Nesbo expected it to be politely rejected by publishers, but he had hoped they would have some words of encouragement for him to continue writing. To his surprise, The Bat (as it is known in the UK) was published, and Harry Hole is now one of the most famous fictional detectives of our time. Interestingly, Nesbo now regards airports as one of his favourite places to do some writing. Although he claimed to be quite a formal writer, working from a synopsis, writing in airports sometimes gives him the energy and productivity that every writer craves. He also mentioned how Headhunters had been a work in which he felt completely unemcumbered by convention, and he was determined to push the lead character to the limits of human endurance. If you have read the novel or seen the film of Headhunters, you will be left feeling exhilarated by its style.
Jo Nesbo at Theakston’s
Nesbo talked more about his life, divulging lots of fascinating information which I had not known before. His mother’s family had fought with the Norwegian Resistance during the Second World War, but it was only when he was 15 that Nesbo discovered his father had fought with the Germans on the Eastern Front and had spent two years in prison upon returning to Norway at the end of the war. Nesbo spoke movingly of how as a child he had always thought of the German soldier as evil-looking in their imposing black uniforms and steel helmets, a view that was perpetuated in post-war Norwegian culture. Now he had to come to terms with the fact that his father had fought with them. But he grew to love his father again when he explained to Jo why he had done it: his father had grown up in the US in a staunchly anti-communist family. Thus, when the Germans invaded and occupied Norway, he leapt at the chance to fight the Russians. His experiences on the front, particularly during the Siege of Leningrad were horrific, and he admitted that his time in prison was a fairly light punishment for the crime of betraying his country. Nesbo worked this material into his Harry Hole novel The Redbreast. His father had planned to write a novel about his wartime experiences but died of cancer the year he retired.
The Theakston’s festival closed on the first year anniversary of the Oslo bombing and Utoya massacre. Nesbo discussed the effect that this tragedy had left on his country. He had noted previously that as a young country, (Norway became independent in 1905) Norwegian culture had looked for heroes, firstly in the Arctic explorers and then in Resistance fighters, while overlooking the level of collaboration with the Germans that had taken place. Utoya was as shocking to the national psyche as the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was to Sweden in 1986. Lawson asked if the massacre was like a Kennedy moment, will everyone remember where they were when it happened? Nesbo said that the explosion was felt quite far throughout Oslo, and he was dangling from a rope inside a local gym when it happened. However, he played down the Kennedy comparison. Norway is still a peaceful and prosperous country, and people want to continue their lives in much the same way as they always have. He talked of the concerted effort by Norwegians not to give mass murderer Anders Breivik more attention than he deserves.
All in all, this was a thrilling and engaging interview that was the perfect event to close what has been a brilliant Theakston’s crime writing festival. For more information on this interview, Mrs Peabody Investigates has an excellent write-up on her blog.
Camilla Lackberg and Deon Meyer
As the author of Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Barry Forshaw was the perfect moderator for a panel on translation which featured two of the most successful Swedish crime writers working today, Camilla Läckberg and Liza Marklund, and also the South African crime writer Deon Meyer and Spain’s Antonio Hill. Actually, very little of the conversation focused on translation. Läckberg and Marklund both stated they were very happy with the job translators and editors do with their work. Antonio Hill said he has barely been consulted with the translation into English of his debut novel El Verano de los Juguetes Muertos, aka The Summer of Dead Toys. Meyer’s work has been translated into twenty languages, but as he writes his crime novels in Afrikaans, he lamented that some things are just impossible to translate as they are specific to the language. However, he stated that Britain’s long held fascination with South Africa mitigated this problem to an extent, where more social explanation was needed when he transitioned to other markets. Marklund discussed how different social attitudes can be the most difficult to convey through translation, but when done successfully, the results are personally satisfying. In socially conservative Italy, her liberated Annika Bengtzon character is very popular with Italian women, who are fascinated by the idea of a man staying at home to take care of the children. Both Läckberg and Marklund noted that since their novels are not published in chronological order, it leads to contention with German publishers who prefer a more straightforward rendering, a comment which led to a rather tetchy response from a German member of the audience.
Liza Marklund
The conversation broadened into other crime fiction related topics. Marklund argued that the best crime fiction is produced in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and the United States because crime writing can only thrive in established democracies. People want to read about ‘the black spots on the white canvas’. She stated that on a visit to Kenya, people were baffled that she wrote crime fiction. In a country with quite a few problems, it is just not part of their culture. Hill and Meyer commented that crime fiction only emerged in their countries after the end of the Franco regime and apartheid respectively. The creative expression and dissident thinking necessary for writing crime novels is not possible in dictatorships. Forshaw commented that the success of writers like Läckberg and Marklund had robbed us of the belief that Scandinavia was a social democratic paradise. Marklund said that where she was born in northern Sweden people can be quite insular in their beliefs. She joked that Scandinavians believed that the problem with other nationalities is that ‘there not Scandinavians’. Hill said there were still lingering problems leftover from the Franco regime, and the ongoing Eurozone crisis is particularly harsh in Spain. Forshaw tried to conjure a dystopic reverse scenario; in light of recent scandals, has freedom of the press gone too far in Britain? Has it spawned a whole new level of corruption? Meyer responded that this overlooked the fact that Britain still produced some of the best journalism in the world. Läckberg said that sleazy tabloid journalism does not exist to the same extent in Sweden. She herself had been the subject of some unwanted media scrutiny in her home country, but the tabloids were nowhere near as intrusive as their British counterparts. The German woman, who I mentioned earlier, made a eloquent comment during the Q and A session. She said she lives in the US where the social problems should not be underestimated, and in Germany where democracy is still a relatively recent introduction, crime fiction had become a phenomenon. She finished by saying we needed to look at each societies fascination, or lack thereof, with crime fiction on a case by case basis. Meyer had the last word: poverty and corruption exists everywhere, only in different areas of life and society from one country to the next.
Judging from this insightful comment, and the fascinating topics all four writers discussed, it seems that crime writers will not be running out of material any time soon.
America’s Got Talent: Four US Crime Writers
Friday at Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Festival, John Connolly artfully guided a discussion titled ‘America’s Got Talent’ with four writers outwardly tied by nationality; however, as was discovered in the discussion, they share more than a home country as similar influences, methods and interests in the genre emerged.
Megan Abbott’s very early yet enduring love of film noir (she wanted to marry James Cagney as a child) was complimented by stories from Gillian Flynn, whose film professor father took her to watch Alien and Bonnie and Clyde at the tender age of seven. Chris Mooney spoke of his ‘cool grandmother’ who allowed him to watch the Creature Double Features and The Shining, while Ryan David Jahn, who worked as a screen writer after leaving the Army, explained that he wrote visually, preferring to show a character through his actions rather than through internal monologue or dialogue.
As I usually attend academic conferences, one of the most refreshing moments was when the authors were candid about their struggles. Gillian Flynn called herself a ‘slow writer’ who doesn’t know where the book’s going when she begins and who spend a lot of time editing and redrafting. Megan Abbott said that she did not have a ‘logical mind’ and that puzzles, or the traditional whodunnit form, did not suit her. Ryan David Jahn admitted to missing deadlines and slacking off eight months of the year, only to be driven to finishing a book in four months, sometimes writing 12,000 words a day. Chris Mooney, who came across as a great guy to have a drink with as he always had a funny line, explained that he used to be a perfectionist with his work, but now he forces himself to give a rough edit to his publisher and do the editing afterward.
Megan Abbott
I was surprised by a few things. One was the importance Megan Abbott placed on true crime, and how the idea of what people do when they’re backed into a corner fascinates her. Secondly was how difficult the editing process is for Gillian Flynn: she spoke of writing the story then having to write backwards, as her final product led to different emphases being needed in the body of the work. Her complexity came off as a laborious layering of ideas. Ryan David Jahn talked of his novel The Dispatcher (which he’s currently writing the screenplay for), and its likeness to Jim Thompson’s The Getaway, and Chris Mooney explained where he got the basis for Sacred Ash, a concept in his novels that has to do with the storing of cremated ashes. Apparently, he based it on an actual company, Holy Smoke, which makes ammunition out of people’s ashes, so that, as Chris noted, loved ones can fire their dearly departed into a Thanksgiving turkey.
Only in America… the country from which these four talented and compelling writers hail.
Dare Me: Megan Abbott’s Indirect Challenge?
I read Megan Abbott’s new novel Dare Me with considerable apprehension. First, it’s about cheerleaders, and secondly, unlike her previous novels it’s set in the unromantic, technological present world of Facebook, texting and tweeting. To me, that seemed a vacuous combination.
Abbott, however, does not give us dumb cheerleaders, and Dare Me owes a debt to other examinations of the dark side of High School such as Heathers. The story opens with the cheerleading squad anticipating the arrival of their new coach. Beth, the captain of the squad, expects to rule over her in the same way she controlled the last coach. But this new coach is hardly a push-over, and her training regimen is both modern (smoothies and yoga) and incredibly tough. Addy, Beth’s best friend and the protagonist of the story, is drawn to the new coach, whilst Beth schemes to bring her down.
Yet what Abbott does so thrillingly in The End of Everything, namely believably maintain her protagonist’s sometimes-wonder-sometimes-surprise-sometimes-facination with the situation wherein she finds herself, seems forced in Dare Me. This flaw led to a lack of sympathy for Addy, who although more naive than Beth, seems complicitly involved in a hard-boiled world. Strangely, it is the mostly absent, almost-a-cipher, work-a-holic husband of the coach that I felt closest to. Like Nick Papadakis in James M.Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, he is the hardworking man who has done little wrong besides make the mistake of marrying a woman who is selfish and self-obsessed. When Coach embarks on an affair with an Army recruiter, she tries to explain her relationship to her ingenue Addy, who has earlier with Beth witnessed them in flagrante. But Coach’s explaination feels as hollow and self-obsessed as the cheerleaders she coaches:
People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into wanting things you can’t help wanting. You can’t be afraid.
Just as frustrating was the almost pure evilness of Beth, Addy’s best friend and the captain of the team. Perhaps this is because I was an athlete: I played elementary, middle, high school and even university sports, but I never heard a woman talk like Beth nor scheme like Beth. Aside from being a prime manipulator, Beth talks to her squad like the expletive-laden Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket:
Let’s get started, kitties, Beth says. The Celts wait for no sad-ass chicken hearts […]
Whip your heads, she says, and we do.
Make your clasps sharp, she says and we do.
Make your faces like you’re wired for pleasure, she says and we gleam ecstatic.
Give ’em the best blow-job smiles you got.
And
Hella bitches, she bellows, rocking her feet on the bench so that is shudders. Our scout, I can feel her out there, waiting. And, bitches, she is so ready to be f****d.
All this to say that I found the social vision too bleak and too unbelievable. In comparison, the TV show The Wire, whose troubling yet superbly executed season 4 confronts the harsh realities of inner-city Baltimore’s school system, still retains amidst its bleakness the hope of compassion, of justice, even of morality, that Dare Me lacks. Dare Me presents a dystopic society, wherein Coach corrupts her charges with wine and boys whilst hypocritically claiming the upper moral hand to their own fumbling high school experiments with the same. Even deaths or near-deaths, which James M. Cain used as a kind of reckoning, mean very little in this confused world, and relationships, forged out of feelings of possession, self-hatred or selfish desires are difficult to find sympathy with.
Abbott’s impressive back catalogue, her skill and her vision all ‘dared me’ not to like this book. But I will, in this one instance, prove her wrong.
As it is Jubilee year, I thought I might share with you a charming anecdote by the American comedian Dan Rowan about his meeting with Queen Elizabeth II in 1972. I only discovered who Dan Rowan was when I was doing some research on the American crime writer John D. MacDonald and found that the two men were friends and a book of their correspondence, A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald 1967-1974, was published in 1986. I acquired a copy, and it quickly became one of my favourite books. I’ve blogged about it before here and here. Dan Rowan was a nightclub comedian who with his friend and professional partner, Dick Martin, hit the big time with the success of their television sketch show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. At the advice of mutual friend Virginia Caldwell (wife of writer Erskine Caldwell) Rowan and MacDonald became pen pals, despite having never met before. The two men quickly become close friends, and their letters are thrilling, funny and moving to read. In some ways their friendship is unequal, with MacDonald being the more senior figure, and Rowan is somewhat deferential to the writer whose Travis McGee novels he had admired for years. They discuss many subjects, but the bulk of the correspondence concerns the pressures Rowan experiences of being involved at every level in a hugely successful television show. At the height of their fame in 1972, Rowan and Dick Martin were invited to host the Royal Gala Variety Performance. After the show, when Rowan met the Queen and Prince Philip he was surprised at how much they seemed to know about him.
Now there was pandemonium backstage as we were all lined up according to someone’s sense of importance. Well, not all, since the acrobats and several others were on the back line craning necks, to be introduced to ER II. Until then I was not nervous but all of a sudden noticed a certain clamminess in the palms. Dick and I were first in line and he was standing on the wrong side of me so that when Sir Lew Grade, who had arranged the entire affair, came along just ahead of H.M. he mistakenly introduced Dick as “Dan Martin” and I am astounded to report that H.M. smiled at Dick, looked at me as she took my hand and said to Sir Lew, “No, this is Dan. That’s Dick Martin.” She held my hand for a time, released it and instead of moving on as I expected, stopped and stared at me for a moment and then said, “And you have come all this way to do this for Us?” “A pleasure, Ma’am,” I gallantly replied. “Do you do this sort of thing often?” “No, Ma’am.” She waited. “We are usually too busy.” I waited. “All this way,” she murmured. “It certainly was very kind of you.” She hesitated and then moved down the line and shook hands with others, stopping again further down when she spoke to Richard Attenborough. A fine actor. He had made a cameo appearance with the Comedians.
Next was Prince Philip who also held my hand a long time, and then clapped his other hand over it and said, “What is this hideous nonsense I hear your show is going off the air?” I was again very surprised and stumbled in answering, “Not at all, Your Highness. We start again this year for the sixth season.” He dropped my hand and said, “Jolly good. That show keeps me home.” And from all I heard rumored around London, the Queen would be glad of anything which kept this playboy home. Well, there’s more but it just occurred to me that you’re both commoners and couldn’t understand it. Ho hum, must buzz off now and polish my tiara. More later if you’re good.
Dan
This story seems to capture everything that still fascinates us about monarchy forty years later. The Queen is disarming, Prince Philip unguarded in his remarks, and Dan Rowan’s fascinated but irreverent tone seems to be just right. MacDonald wrote back:
You know, that was one fine letter too about the Queen and all. […] I want to hear more about the dandy little Queen. When are you coming to tell us. We wait impatiently here (we commoners). I hope you haven’t been such a fool as to wash your hand.
Three months after the Gala Performance, Rowan and Martin were a guest of President Nixon at his La Casa Pacifica home ‘the Western White House’ in San Clemente. Nixon had guest starred on Laugh-In during the 1968 presidential campaign. Nixon must have held the two comedians in high regard as they performed a sketch for him as part of his private birthday celebrations in 1973. In fact, it was only when I began researching this post that I discovered that the Royal Gala Variety Performance that Rowan writes about is different from the annual Royal Variety Performance. The distinction is that in a Gala performance the artists are picked at the specific invitation of the Monarch, thus explaining why the Queen and Prince Philip knew so much about Rowan. Sadly, Dan Rowan’s career went into decline after Laugh-In ended in 1973, but it is remarkable to discover that while the show was still on the air, just how many fans in high places Rowan had.
Orson Welles as Klingsor in Where is Parsifal?
At the beginning of the year I wrote a piece for this blog titled Terence Young: The Man Who Would be Bond. Young was a British film director best known for directing three of the first four James Bond films. He served his country with distinction in the Second World War and later went on to direct some impressive films. After the 1960s his career declined, and he had the dubious distinction of directing what is generally regarded as one of the worst films ever made – Inchon (1981). This critically panned film portrayed the titular Korean War battle and was financed by Unification Church founder Sun Myong Moon. Odd, dubious sounding projects marred Young in his last years. He is rumoured to have directed or edited a propaganda film for Saddam Hussein titled The Long Days (1980). The rumour has never been proven, but I explored the possibility of it being true in the original post.
Recently, quite by chance, I came across Young’s name again. I was on the British Film Institute’s website reading about their list of 75 most wanted lost films. The most recent film on the list is Where is Parsifal? (1984). This bizarre film was screened at the Cannes film festival and then seems to have disappeared. It features a stellar cast including Orson Welles, Tony Curtis, Peter Lawford and Donald Pleasance but was savaged by the few critics who saw it. From what I can discover of the plot, it appears that Tony Curtis plays Parsifal, an eccentric hyponchrondriac who has invented a laser skywriter and is trying to sell the patent. A cast of oddballs descends on Parsifal’s castle, and a series of frenetic comic episodes ensue. The BFI has scanned an original programme of the film screening which lists the production team, and when I saw it one named jumped out at me. The executive producer of Where is Parsifal? was one Terence Young. There is no mention of the film on Young’s imdb page, but the BFI site indicates the film was produced by Young and Slenderline productions, who only appear to have one credit, so I assume it was Young’s own shortlived production company. Intriguingly, one of the cast members of Where is Parsifal? was the wonderfully intense Polish character actor Vladek Sheybal. Sheybal appeared in many spy films including, most memorably, From Russia With Love (1963) directed by Young himself. In an article about Sheybal, David Del Valle claims the producers of Where is Parsifal? lied to the then morbidly obese and dying Orson Welles about his role in the film:
It was the second feature with Sheybal and Orson Welles, who was, by then, huge and still trying to raise money to direct again. Welles had taken the role because the (lying) producers had promised to back his planned version of King Lear.
It’s sad to think that Welles was exploited in the making of this film and Young may have been complicit in it. The BFI webpage on Where is Parsifal? appears to be down right now so I can’t link to it, but needless to say if you happen to know about a copy of the film the BFI would like you to get in touch.
UPDATE: A copy of the film has now been found! Read more here.
The Venetian Vase 