View allAll Photos Tagged whodunnit
Jordan Voudouris, a father and stepfather of four, moved to Paeroa from Auckland in 2004 to set up "Mykonos Pizza and Pasta" on Belmont Rd.
He was shot dead at the back of his pizza shop, 18 June 2012.
To date, the case remains unsolved [www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/104788781/killer-of-pizza-...].
As is typical in any small community, theories abound...as is evidenced by this building in Corbett St.
==========
On 15 July 2019, Jordan's shop - renamed "Pizza Box" - was gutted by fire. Police said initial enquiries indicated no connection to the murder of Jordan Voudouris.
[Leo Frank Museum and Gallery Curator:
Henry Dalton's highlights on the reasons why he believes Leo Frank was proven guilty would have been better if it was more balanced with reasons why Leo Frank might have also been innocent.
Following the fervent news and revisionist scholarship in academia on the Leo Frank case for over a decade has been an enthralling experience in learning about group self-interest and social activism. Social studies on how members of self-aware groups will forgo ideals of universal justice for protecting group public image is a topic that comes up about how the Leo Frank affair is retold.
I have seen the question arise among Georgians with greater frequency about a curiosity as to whether or not Leo Frank's pardon could ever be "unpardoned". It is a novel question because I have never heard of or seen it come up before in any other controversial criminal case, especially one from a century ago. The attempts by activist members of our greater Atlanta Jewish community to get Leo Frank's 1913 conviction removed by the state of Georgia have been strong and steady so far since the 2015 centennial of his lynching.
Many including myself wonder if this renewed rehabilitation movement has inspired many residents of the state to begin thinking about creating some kind of grassroots movement for petitioning the Georgia legislative assembly to pass a resolution about Leo Frank's guilt and get his pardon revoked. This extraordinary motion is something in my opinion to be unlikely to ever happen, but the desire for which among a growing segment of Georgia has been gaining more interest.
My gut instinct tells me that pardons can not be undone, but I don't have a law degree, nor familiarity in how the pardoning process in Georgia works behind the scenes in Committee. It's a question which comes to the forefront now to ask:
Could the pardon of Leo Frank be revoked expost facto, and if so how would it be done?
-end of curator commentary. ]
Quora Question (demoted): Did Leo Frank Really Kill Mary Phagan?
www.quora.com/Did-Leo-Frank-really-kill-Mary-Phagan
Answer:
Mary Phagan was sexually abused and murdered on April 26, 1913, which fell on a Saturday in that year. The state medical examiner put the time of her death at approximately noon to fifteen minutes passed noon (11:59 a.m. - 12:15 pm), by examining the digestive condition of the food contents in her stomach. When a person dies, their digestion is arrested. This time wedge of 15 minutes was at best estimated because Francis Coleman, the biological mother of the girl, stated she gave her daughter a sandwich made of wheaten biscuits and finely diced cabbage at 11:30 a.m. A convenience store operator situated in front of the trolley stop in Bellwood, Atlanta, gave a deposition he had seen the girl at 11:50 a.m. board the car (AJA*).
A century later, professional criminologists and amateur crime sleuths who reinvestigate the Leo Frank trial and his state/federal appellate papers, continue to debate the intricacies of Leo Frank’s obvious guilt. The murder of Mary Phagan by Leo Frank was the dictionary definition of an “open and shut case”. There can be no honest doubt about his guilt, it was proven with statistical confidence by his own self-implicating statements and the chain of evidence.
He was a sloppy criminal who concocted oodles of foolish mistakes and incriminating bloopers during the discovery phase of the murder mystery. The circumstantial and crime scene evidence, combined with eyewitness accounts entered into the record about his sexually profligate behavior were so damning, that the presiding superior court judge Leonard Roan, supervising the trial, rejected Leo Frank’s request for a new trial on 107 issues.
Judge Roan had been a law partner with Leo Frank’s lead defense lawyer Luther Rosser in 1896, so he gave oral statements from the bench to energize an appeal for the convict to the Ga. Supreme Court. Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold were allegedly paid low 5-figure retainers in 1913, what would be 6-figure retainers by 2022 currency values.
The Ga. Supreme Court papers tell the full tale of how dirty this case became. The subornation of perjury by Leo Frank’s well-subsidized goonsquad was so brazen and slobby that it circumscribed any chance of his criminal legal team convincing the Georgia Supreme Court that he deserved a second trial. When you read in the Ga supreme court papers about all the factory personnel that Leo Frank’s minions tried to bribe, cheat or dupe into repudiating what they testified to at trial, it deserves condemnation. Reading the criminal antics of Frank’s defense organization, it’s understandable why the prior governor Joseph Brown, government functionaries, a sitting judge, state senators, and members of the Georgia congress executed the homicidal lecher by hanging on August 17, 1915, at a former Sheriff’s ranch. It was not a mob that lynched Leo Frank in the traditional sense, it was tantamount to state-sanctioned capital punishment done with chilling effect.
The centurial injustice of the Mary Phagan case at the moment is the scheming efforts being made by Jewish agitation groups working inside the government of Georgia to have Leo Frank’s conviction vacated. The most recent effort was to get a law passed in the Georgia assembly during the 2021–2022 sessions to pave the way for Leo Frank’s eventual absolution. The plan was to construct a new government council with the authority to make the homicidal lecher’s conviction a legal nullity. It’s the next step up from the seventy-one year post-mortem pardon in 1986 that didn’t “address his innocence or guilt”.
In 2019, corrupt and embattled Fulton County district attorney Paul Howard Jr. tried creating a similar government body under a different name to nullify Leo Frank’s conviction, which resulted in him losing his incumbency to remain D.A. for a second term, by a landslide. The people of Atlanta called him Howard the Coward for caving in to the demands of perfidious Jewish groups who wanted Leo Frank’s conviction erased. Even with an incumbent advantage, Howard paid dearly on election day that ended his political career The people of Georgia saw Howard as a budding attorney-politician cut from similar cloth as corrupt attorney-politician John Slaton a century prior. Both of these men seemingly put special interest groups above the people who seek justice.
In 2015, Rabbi Lebow recruited several corrupt judges and judicial functionaries to join him in a public campaign to overturn the conviction of Leo Frank at the state congressional level by getting the 180-member state congress to pass a resolution declaring Leo Frank innocent. The governor and state assembly of that era demurred. Lebow and the ADL refused to give up no matter how many setbacks they got. Every August 17, powerful special interest groups protest what happened to the strangler-rapist Leo Frank.
The insidious rehabilitation cult of Leo Frank continues to refine its political maneuvering with complete disregard for the escalating anger in Georgia and the rest of the world against the Jewish community. It is shameful how some of my coreligionists have no empathy for the sweatshop girl and the centurial struggle for justice her family became accustomed to. Instead of enjoying their lives, the Phagan descendants are stuck with the Sisyphean calamity of having to constantly battle renewed efforts by the Leo Frank rehabilitation cult to get the newest political regimes in the capital to remove his guilt.
The majority of Georgia criminology students who study the 1913 molestation homicide of child sweatshop worker Mary Phagan by Leo Frank in downtown Atlanta Ga., believe it was rightly one of the easiest crime mysteries to solve once the circumstantial and physical evidence was gathered. Police detectives intuitively solved the puzzle in a few short weeks of investigation, decidedly at a time in Southern history, when most homicides “ran cold” and remain unsolved. The testimony of factory staff eye witnessing their superintendent's libidinous and predatory sexual behavior toward the National Pencil Company’s child laborers was sufficient to retrospectively demonstrate he was oversexed, lewd, licentious, and lascivious.
Allegedly Albert Lasker, one of Leo Frank’s appellate financiers, visited the homicidal lecher in the Atlanta jailhouse and afterward described him non-publicly as a disdainful pervert with a massive power-mad ego.
Leo Frank’s unknown sexual predation toward the young factory assemblers working for him during his promotion to the superintendent, beginning in 1908, became a matter of public record in the state of Georgia when newspapers published the testimony of the factory girls at the Coroner’s inquest in May of 1913. He had gotten away with molesting his child laborers for 5 years.
The American Jewish Archive (AJA) also has a never before published affidavit of a girl who went to the factory to pick up the wages of her family member who worked at the plant. When she entered Leo Frank’s office he tried to touch her lower limbs (the polite way of saying private parts). Depositions were transcribed in May 1913 by an investigator of Pinkerton’s national detective agency and they provide clear evidence of Frank’s bawdy character. This example of testimony was not made public at the time of the inquest or trial because it would have contaminated the forthcoming jury pool. I recently received a copy of the transcript from the AJA in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Leo Frank was apparently an uncontrollable liar who would give conflicting accounts of his whereabouts referring to the day of the murder. His lawyers advised him to keep quiet because he was giving too many newspaper interviews that were collecting and printing details that were deemed to be detrimental to his defense. He had changed the time of his last and final meeting with the Phagan child at least four occasions, creating asymmetries in his alibi. He had also directed suspicion toward three other male factory employees (1 white, 2 black) in such a manner that it was discerned by police to not be the behavior of a man who was wholly innocent.
In retrospect, it is believed Frank fired his employee, the factory payman James Gantt who was in charge of distributing the weekly wages to the 170 employees of the National Pencil company—in an effort to remove the only familial obstacle that prevented Frank from molesting Mary Phagan. Frank had tried to direct suspicion toward Gantt, because as a close and trusted friend of the Coleman-Phagan family, he looked after Mary Phagan. Sexual harassment was common in sweatshops and parents asked trusted men working in such manufacturing facilities to keep an eye on their children. Gantt was in charge of giving employees their correct earnings on the weekly payment day of Saturday at noontime. Pay envelopes were released when the half-day ended at the plant. Employees worked fifty-five hours, six days a week, five full days, and 1 half day. With Gantt removed from his accounting position two weeks prior to the murder, the Phagan girl had to get her owed money directly from Frank in a factory closed down for the Confederate memorial holiday.
Payment day was supposed to be a day of elation for the kids who toiled 55 hours the prior week, but it became a day of anxiety for some of the child laborers at the National Pencil Company. Children who worked at the factory testified at the inquest and trial that Frank would momentarily withhold their earned income to use the pause as an opportunity to pressure them into prostitution. Frank was playing a lot of salacious games with peoples’ livelihood in the seat of power as a factory boss and took a number of offensive liberties when he walked around the plant, inappropriately touching the workers as he passed by. He was seen taking a factory girl, Rebecca Carson—whom he had recently promoted to forelady—into the girl’s dressing room a few times a week (for 15 to 30 minute trysts). He was admonished by factory girls for peaking into their dressing room when they were changing clothes. He was bringing prostitutes into the factory's packing room and had been "walked in on" during a shift change. These events were portrayed at his trial as circumstantial evidence of him being an unscrupulous character that might be the type of person who would force himself on a young girl if the opportunity presented itself. This was the supposition.
Leo Frank made a variety of bloopers when he was questioned by the police, which led them early on to presume he was the prime suspect of the whodunnit.
Leo Frank was the last known person known to have seen Mary Phagan alive based on his own admission to Pinkerton detective Harry Scott. Leo Frank often changed the time Mary Phagan visited him at his office on the day of her disappearance depending on how new gathered evidence affected his case. The increasing time change was to make it look like the Phagan girl had been visiting Leo Frank in his office after Monteen Stover visited the factory where she unexpectedly found his office vacant. Frank had slipped up early on by making a statement to police that Mary Phagan had been to his office before the arrival time reported by Monteen Stover. When the importance of Monteen Stover’s evidence created asymmetries in his alibi he had to change the Phagan girl’s arrival time to a later period. This put Frank in a quandary of having to admit he was lying. When Frank was questioned by the Coroner he changed his story about the time Mary Phagan visited his office so that he could later claim to be in the men’s toilet when testifying at the trial. This was to justify why Monteen Stover found his office vacant. This was another stupid mistake because the police concluded Mary Phagan was probably killed near the men’s toilet in the metal room resulting from the physical evidence recovered there.
Immediately after the disposal of Mary Phagan’s body in the basement, Leo Frank allegedly had a half illiterate janitor write notes in black dialect attempting to frame an old man who worked as a nightguard, Newt Lee. Leo Frank displayed to the Atlanta police Newt Lee’s original time card with no missing half-hour time stamps, but then later gave the police a modified time card with removed time stamps. It was too obvious Leo Frank had intentionally mismatched the clock records to direct suspicion on Newt Lee. This is the racist dimension of the case my Afrophobic coreligionists never speak of.
Leo Frank changed his alibi at his trial in a blooper that supported the prosecution's theory of exactly where the sodomy and lynching of Mary Phagan took place. Leo Frank refused to confront Jim Conley who confessed after several conflicting affidavits during interrogation, to his role in the post-mortem cover-up.
Magnolia Minola McKnight: The black cook of the Selig family overheard Lucille S. Frank lamenting the weird events that she went through in their bedroom on the night of the murder. From State Exhibit J, we learn the possibility that Leo Frank was distraught over what he had done earlier that day and asked Lucille Selig that evening to get his revolver so he could commit suicide. He was allegedly inebriated on that infamous day and admitted that he had murdered the Phagan girl to his wife Lucille. On that dark night of the soul, he allegedly forced Lucille to sleep on the cold floor on a bedside rug. Something she would probably never forget if true. Something which might have motivated her to not accept the grave reserved for her next to him in the Mount Carmel Cemetery of Queens New York and choose cremation to obscure the truth of that restless night.
Today with new sight we can clearly understand why the circumstantial, physical, and testimony made then, and make today, Leo Frank’s guilt a statistical certitude. Yet there is a rehabilitation cult that is still fighting for his innocence and pressuring every session, the congress of Georgia, to vacate his conviction. This is why many people think a movement should be started to have his pardon reversed by the same government that is being pestered to exonerate him. A common question being asked is “What would need to be done in the government of Georgia to reverse the pardon of Leo Frank?”
The proportion of financial resources that are being driven into creating a dominant portrayal in the halls of the academy and media studios that Leo Frank’s conviction was antisemitic is bewildering. The Leo Frank case is exemplary of the commonplace notion that false accusations of antisemitism have become epidemic. False accusations of antisemitism are a lucrative criminal enterprise reaching the status of an all-encompassing mountain range in historical magnitude. There is a growing belief that the martyrdom cult of Leo Frank is one of the strongest magnets in the Western world for Jewish supremacists, White supremacist Jews, Antigentiles and the hasbara disinformation movement. When you delve into the archives of the case and read what has been written by his rehabilitation cult and the academic agitators who have nurtured the narrative of his martyrdom, it is not hard to understand why growing multitudes of Jews and Gentiles believe false accusations of antisemitism should be criminally prosecuted as harassment. I’m beginning to agree.
Annotations:
American Jewish Archives, Cinci, Ohio, affidavit of convenience store owner Mr. Smith gathered by Pinkerton Detectives.
The 68-year-old woman namesake of the victim, Mary Francis Kean has built a website about her family’s struggle to get justice for their ancestor Mary Phagan (1899 - 1913). Little Mary Phagan, Leo Frank, Jim Conley, 1913 Murder www.littlemaryphagan.com
The Leo Frank Papers website Leo Frank Papers www.leofrank.com
The American Mercury website Founded by H.L. Mencken in 1924 has a collection of deep research articles on the trial. www.theamericanmercury.org
The Leo Frank Archival Library website Leo Frank Case Archive
The Leo Frank Research Library website The Leo Frank Case Research Library - Information on the 1913 bludgeoning, rape, strangulation and mutilation of Mary Phagan and the subsequent trial, appeals and mob lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. www.leofrank.info
Crime Fiction class with NMH teacher and author John Corrigan at Northfield Mount Hermon, April 24, 2015. Students investigate a staged crime in the classtoom. Photographs by Glenn Minshall.
21 January 2013. Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction. A free exhibition in the Folio Society Gallery at the British Library, St. Pancras, London, England, UK.
A Year in Pictures image 21 of 365.
Hammett had a mexican switchblade and he was swingin' around while swiggin' on some weird tequila with a scorpion floating in it. I was scared straight. But then Kerry King came in and he was wearing a vest made entirely out of living scorpions. I was like, "nu-unh." and I knew right away, reality tv or a breast cancer survivor's group, this was intense. I burped three times, and this yuppie lesbo gave me a dirty look, and I said, "lot's of bitches are jealous of man's ability to burp, and no man is jealous he can't lactate." That was it, the lesbo was on me, like a puma on a crippled baby deer. She sunk her liberal fangs in my throat and I was puking up last year's blood. gangster. Oh yeah, the clouds were lookin' creepy and lecherous all day, like a bad ginsberg poem recited by a phillipino nun with three teeth. I'm serious.
I kept hearing somebody with a bad muffler cruising around our neighborhood just before midnight and then saw a truck make several whodunnits in our cul-de-sac. I headed up the drive to mainly to be seen as a crazy ol' fool best left alone when I saw a second car pull up behind the noisy one. My first thought was, "oh crap, there's 2 of them" when the red & blue lights came on and the deputy blipped their siren. Next thing I see from my hilltop perch is the noisy-ass truck leaving for good. Thank you, deputy!
Led by the University of Buckingham, this event series included workshops and events around Dickens’s last unfinished novel, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’. These events contributed to an ogoing international project which explores this unfinished work through a reading group and blog developed from a digital re-release of Dickens's original monthly instalments, becoming a crowd-sourced whodunnit inquiry into which character the public believe committed the murder of Edwin Drood.
Illustration by Alys Jones | Part 3 of The Drood Enquiry
Photo of Ideal's Electronic Detective game, taken from TV Cream Toys www.tvcreamtoys.co.uk - more photos, plus write ups, at the web site.
'POLICE INNER CORDON DO NOT CROSS'. An old crime scene in local woodlands. What, when, and whodunnit unknown.
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 169. Photo: Paramount. Roland Young and Leila Hyams in Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935).
Balding and highly distinguished Roland Young (1887-1953) was an American film and theatre actor of British origin. He was best known for the role of Cosmo Topper in the three Topper film comedies.
Roland Young was born in 1887 in London, England. He was the son of an architect. Young enjoyed his school education at Sherborne College and later at London University. He decided to become an actor. Young acquired the necessary skills at the renowned Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). In 1908, at the age of 21, Young appeared on stage in London for the first time in 'Find the Woman'. Four years later, he made his Broadway debut in 'Hindle Wakes' (1912). Until the mid-1910s, Young was still taking on engagements in England, which meant that he alternated between New York and London. Young became an American citizen in 1918 and then served briefly on the American side as a soldier in the First World War. In 1921, he married his first wife, Marjorie Kummer, to whom he remained married until 1940. Young made his debut as a film actor as Doctor Watson in Sherlock Holmes (Albert Parker, 1922), alongside John Barrymore as Holmes and Gustav von Seyffertitz as Moriarty. On Broadway, Young performed equally well in droll farces and classic drama. His standout credits included productions of 'Hedda Gabler' (1923) and 'The Last of Mrs. Cheyney' (1927). He signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and made his talkie debut in the murder mystery The Unholy Night (Lionel Barrymore, 1929) with Ernest Torrence and Boris Karloff. He was loaned to Warner Bros. to appear in the drama Her Private Life (Alexander Korda, 1929), with Billie Dove and to Fox, winning critical approval for his comedic performance as Jeanette MacDonald's husband in Don't Bet on Women (William K. Howard, 1931). He was again paired with MacDonald in the romantic comedy Annabelle's Affairs (Alfred L. Werker, 1931). He appeared in Cecil B. de Mille's Western The Squaw Man (1931), and played opposite Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Guardsman (Sidney Franklin, 1931). His final film under his MGM contract was Lovers Courageous (Robert Z. Leonard, 1932), opposite Robert Montgomery. He had a starring role in a risqué comedy for Fox entitled Pleasure Cruise (Frank Tuttle, 1933) alongside Genevieve Tobin.
Roland Young's roles were mostly limited to British characters, in which he embodied the stereotypical image of the aristocratic Englishman. He appeared with Jeanette MacDonald, Genevieve Tobin and Maurice Chevalier in One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932). Alexander Korda invited him to return to Britain to make his British film debut in Wedding Rehearsal (1932). His best-known film was the screwball classic Topper (Norman Z. McLeod, 1937). Young played the bourgeois bank manager Cosmo Topper, whose orderly life is shaken up by the ghosts of his clients, Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. It was one of the most successful films of the year, and Young received an Oscar nomination for his role in the Best Supporting Actor category in 1938. He also starred in the sequels, Topper Takes a Trip (Norman Z. McLeod, 1938) and Topper Returns (Roy Del Ruth, 1941). Young is also known for his role as the villain Uriah Heep in the Charles Dickens adaptation David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935) and for the British fantasy film The Man Who Would Change the World (Lothar Mendes, 1936) based on a short story by H.G. Wells. He often played eccentric characters, such as the inebriated Earl of Burnstead, who loses his valet Charles Laughton in a poker game, in Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935) or the rich uncle of Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940). He continued working steadily through the 1940s, playing small roles opposite some of Hollywood's leading actresses, such as Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Paulette Goddard and Greta Garbo in her final film, Two-Faced Woman (George Cukor, 1941). In 1945, he began his radio show and appeared in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic whodunnit And Then There Were None (René Clair, 1945). By the end of the decade, his film career had declined, and his final films, including The Great Lover (Alexander Hall, 1949), in which he played a murderer opposite Bob Hope, and Fred Astaire's Let's Dance (Norman Z. MacLeod, 1950), were not successful. Roland Young found his second wife, Dorothy Patience May DuCroz, in 1948, with whom he spent the last years of his life. Roland Young had no children. In 1953, he died in New York of natural causes at the age of 65. He was honoured with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his film and television work.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 756a. Photo: Paramount.
Balding and highly distinguished Roland Young (1887-1953) was an American film and theatre actor of British origin. He was best known for the role of Cosmo Topper in the three Topper film comedies.
Roland Young was born in 1887 in London, England. He was the son of an architect. Young enjoyed his school education at Sherborne College and later at London University. He decided to become an actor. Young acquired the necessary skills at the renowned Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). In 1908, at the age of 21, Young appeared on stage in London for the first time in 'Find the Woman'. Four years later, he made his Broadway debut in 'Hindle Wakes' (1912). Until the mid-1910s, Young was still taking on engagements in England, which meant that he alternated between New York and London. Young became an American citizen in 1918 and then served briefly on the American side as a soldier in the First World War. In 1921, he married his first wife, Marjorie Kummer, to whom he remained married until 1940. Young made his debut as a film actor as Doctor Watson in Sherlock Holmes (Albert Parker, 1922), alongside John Barrymore as Holmes and Gustav von Seyffertitz as Moriarty. On Broadway, Young performed equally well in droll farces and classic drama. His standout credits included productions of 'Hedda Gabler' (1923) and 'The Last of Mrs. Cheyney' (1927). He signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and made his talkie debut in the murder mystery The Unholy Night (Lionel Barrymore, 1929) with Ernest Torrence and Boris Karloff. He was loaned to Warner Bros. to appear in the drama Her Private Life (Alexander Korda, 1929), with Billie Dove and to Fox, winning critical approval for his comedic performance as Jeanette MacDonald's husband in Don't Bet on Women (William K. Howard, 1931). He was again paired with MacDonald in the romantic comedy Annabelle's Affairs (Alfred L. Werker, 1931). He appeared in Cecil B. de Mille's Western The Squaw Man (1931), and played opposite Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Guardsman (Sidney Franklin, 1931). His final film under his MGM contract was Lovers Courageous (Robert Z. Leonard, 1932), opposite Robert Montgomery. He had a starring role in a risqué comedy for Fox entitled Pleasure Cruise (Frank Tuttle, 1933) alongside Genevieve Tobin.
Roland Young's roles were mostly limited to British characters, in which he embodied the stereotypical image of the aristocratic Englishman. He appeared with Jeanette MacDonald, Genevieve Tobin and Maurice Chevalier in One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932). Alexander Korda invited him to return to Britain to make his British film debut in Wedding Rehearsal (1932). His best-known film was the screwball classic Topper (Norman Z. McLeod, 1937). Young played the bourgeois bank manager Cosmo Topper, whose orderly life is shaken up by the ghosts of his clients, Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. It was one of the most successful films of the year, and Young received an Oscar nomination for his role in the Best Supporting Actor category in 1938. He also starred in the sequels, Topper Takes a Trip (Norman Z. McLeod, 1938) and Topper Returns (Roy Del Ruth, 1941). Young is also known for his role as the villain Uriah Heep in the Charles Dickens adaptation David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935) and for the British fantasy film The Man Who Would Change the World (Lothar Mendes, 1936) based on a short story by H.G. Wells. He often played eccentric characters, such as the inebriated Earl of Burnstead, who loses his valet Charles Laughton in a poker game, in Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935) or the rich uncle of Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940). He continued working steadily through the 1940s, playing small roles opposite some of Hollywood's leading actresses, such as Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Paulette Goddard and Greta Garbo in her final film, Two-Faced Woman (George Cukor, 1941). In 1945, he began his radio show and appeared in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic whodunnit And Then There Were None (René Clair, 1945). By the end of the decade, his film career had declined, and his final films, including The Great Lover (Alexander Hall, 1949), in which he played a murderer opposite Bob Hope, and Fred Astaire's Let's Dance (Norman Z. MacLeod, 1950), were not successful. Roland Young found his second wife, Dorothy Patience May DuCroz, in 1948, with whom he spent the last years of his life. Roland Young had no children. In 1953, he died in New York of natural causes at the age of 65. He was honoured with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his film and television work.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
"Nobody rests
This one constantly shifts his eyes
Hangs them on his head
And whether he wants it or not starts walking
backwards
He puts them on the soles of his feet
And whether he wants it or not returns walking
on his head
This one turns into an ear
He hears all that won't let itself be heard
But he grows bored
Yearns to turn again into himself
But without eyes he can't see how
That one bares all his faces
One after the other he throws them over the roof
The last one he throws under his feet
And sinks his head into his hands
This one stretches his sight
Stretches it from thumb to thumb
Walks over it walks
First slow then fast
Then faster and faster
That one plays with his head
Juggles it in the air
Meets it with his index finger
Or doesn't meet it at all
Nobody rests"
~ Vasko Popa, 1922-1991 ~
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1234. Photo: Gabriel Pascal Prod. Publicity still for Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, 1938).
Dame Wendy Hiller DBE (1912-2003) was an English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. She is best remembered as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (1938). Despite many notable film performances, she chose to remain primarily a stage actress.
Wendy Margaret Hiller was born in Bramhall, near Stockport, England in 1912. She was the daughter of Frank Watkin Hiller, a Manchester cotton manufacturer, and Marie Hiller-Stone. In a situation similar to her Doolittle character, Wendy's parents enrolled her in speech and refinement at the Winceby House School in Sussex in the hopes of disguising her humble Lancashire roots and receiving upperscale marriage proposals for her. Such hopes were vanquished when the highly determined Hiller set her career sights on the theatre. Hiller began her professional career as an actress in repertory at Manchester in the early 1930s. She first found success as slum dweller Sally Hardcastle in the stage version of Love on the Dole in 1934. The play was an enormous success and toured the regional stages of Britain. In this play she made her West End debut in 1935 at the Garrick Theatre. She married the play's author Ronald Gow, fifteen years her senior, in 1937. That same year as she made her film debut in the comedy Lancashire Luck (Henry Cass, 1937), scripted by Gow. The huge popularity of Love on the Dole took the stage production to New York in 1936, where her refreshingly frank performance attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw. Shaw recognized a spirited radiance in the young actress, which was ideally suited for playing his heroines. He and his wife, who were childless, took a pronounced and parental liking to the budding, youthful star. Shaw cast her in several of his plays, including Saint Joan, Pygmalion and Major Barbara and his influence on her early career is clearly apparent. She was reputed to be Shaw's favourite actress of the time. At Shaw's insistence, she starred as Eliza Doolittle in the film Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, 1938) with Leslie Howard as Professor Higgins. The film won the 1939 Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay, and also received nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Howard) and Best Actress (Hiller). This was a first for a British actress in a British film. She was also the first actress to utter the word ‘bloody’ in a British film, when Eliza utters the line "Not bloody likely, I'm going in a taxi!". She followed up this success with another Shaw adaptation, Major Barbara (Gabriel Pascal, 1941) with Rex Harrison and Robert Morley. It was again both a critical and financial success. Powell and Pressburger signed her for The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), but her second pregnancy led to Deborah Kerr being cast instead. Determined to work with Hiller, the film makers later cast her with Roger Livesey again for I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1945), another classic of British cinema. Joel Hirschorn described her in Rating the Movie Stars (1984) as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took command of the screen whenever she appeared on film".
In the early 1940s, Wendy Hiller and husband Ronald Gow moved to Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where they brought up two children, Ann (1939–2006) and Anthony (1942). Despite her early film success and offers from Hollywood, Hiller returned to the theatre full-time after 1945 and only occasionally accepted film roles. In the course of her stage career, she won popular and critical acclaim in both London and New York. She excelled at rather plain but strong willed characters. After touring Britain as Viola in Twelfth Night (1943) she returned to the West End to be directed by John Gielgud as Sister Joanna in The Cradle Song (1944). The string of notable successes continued as Princess Charlotte in The First Gentleman (1945) opposite Robert Morley as the Prince Regent, Pegeen in Playboy of the Western World (1946) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1946-1947), which was adapted for the stage by her husband. Unlike other stage actresses of her generation, she did relatively little Shakespeare, preferring the more modern dramatists such as Henrik Ibsen and new plays adapted from the novels of Henry James and Thomas Hardy among others. In 1947, Hiller originated the role of Catherine Sloper, the painfully shy, vulnerable spinster in The Heiress on Broadway. The play, based on the Henry James novel Washington Square, also featured Basil Rathbone as her emotionally abusive father. The production enjoyed a year-long run and would prove to be her greatest triumph on Broadway. On returning to London, Hiller again played the role in the West End production in 1950. She did a two year run in N. C. Hunter's Waters of the Moon (1951–52), alongside Sybil Thorndike and Edith Evans. In the 1950s, Hiller returned to film. She portrayed an abused colonial wife in Outcast of the Islands (Carol Reed, 1952), with Robert Morley and Trevor Howard. She played mature, supporting roles with Sailor of the King (Roy Boulting, 1953) and a memorable victim of the Mau Mau uprising in Something of Value (Richard Brooks, 1957) starring Rock Hudson. In 1959, she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958), as a lonely hotel manageress and mistress of Burt Lancaster. On stage. a season at the Old Vic in 1955–56 produced a notable performance as Portia in Julius Caesar among others. In 1957, Hiller returned to New York to star as Josie Hogan in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, a performance which gained her a Tony Award nomination as Best Dramatic Actress. British stage work included The Night of the Ball (1955), the Robert Bolt play Flowering Cherry (1958), and Toys in the Attic (1960).
Wendy Hiller received a BAFTA nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the domineering, possessive mother in Sons and Lovers (Jack Cardiff, 1960) with Trevor Howard and Dean Stokwell. She reprised her London stage role in the southern gothic Toys in the Attic (1963), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination as the elder spinster sister in a film which also starred Dean Martin and Geraldine Page. In the West End she appeared in The Wings of the Dove (1963), A Measure of Cruelty (1965), A Present for the Past (1966), The Sacred Flame (1967) with Gladys Cooper, The Battle of Shrivings (1970) with John Gielgud and Lies (1975). Her final appearance on Broadway was in 1962 as Miss Tina in Michael Redgrave's adaptation of The Aspern Papers, from the Henry James novella. She received a third Oscar nomination for her performance as the simple, unrefined, but dignified Lady Alice More, opposite Paul Scofield as Thomas More, in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966). As she matured, she demonstrated a strong affinity for the plays of Henrik Ibsen, as Irene in When We Dead Awaken (1968), as Mrs. Alving in Ghosts (1972), Aase in a BBC TV play of Peer Gynt (1972) and as Gunhild in John Gabriel Borkman (1975), in which she appeared with Ralph Richardson and Peggy Ashcroft. Later West End successes such as Queen Mary in Crown Matrimonial (1972) proved she was not limited to playing dejected, emotionally deprived women. Regarded as one of Britain's great dramatic talents, she was created an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1971 and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1975. Her role as the grand Russian princess in the Whodunnit star ensemble of Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974), won her international acclaim and the Evening Standard British Film Award as Best Actress. This Agatha Christie adaptation starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot was a huge commercial success. Other notable film roles included a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi Germany with her dying husband in Voyage of the Damned (Stuart Rosenberg, 1976) and the formidable London Hospital matron in The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980). On stage she revisited some earlier plays playing older characters, as in West End revivals of Waters of the Moon (1977-1978) with Ingrid Bergman and The Aspern Papers (1984) with Vanessa Redgrave. She was scheduled to return to the American stage in a 1982 revival of Anastasia with Natalie Wood, until Wood's death just weeks before rehearsals. In TV she played in BBC dramatizations of Julian Gloag's Only Yesterday (1986) and the Vita Sackville-West novel All Passion Spent (1986), in which she was the quietly defiant Lady Slane. This performance earned her a BAFTA nomination as Best Actress. Hiller made her final West End performance in the title role in Driving Miss Daisy (1988). Her last appearance, before retiring from acting, was the title role in the TV film The Countess Alice (Moira Armstrong, 1992), with Zoë Wanamaker. Her husband Ronald Gow died in 1993, but Hiller continued living at their home until her death a decade later. Despite a busy professional career, throughout her life she continually took an active interest in aspiring young actors by supporting local amateur drama societies, as well as being the president of the Chiltern Shakespeare Company until her death. Chronic ill health necessitated her eventual retirement from acting in 1992. She spent the last decade of her life in quiet retirement at her home in Beaconsfield, where she died in 2003 of natural causes at the age of 90.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
TED: "Dad likes Agafa Christy so it's not serprizin' that 'e chose to do this pussel wot shows covers frum 'er books. The peeces wuz ever so thin so it wuz 'ard to pick 'em up. I found sum of Dad's books to show yew - they mostly come frum charity shops so 'e ain't paid much for 'em - the ole meanie!"
2019 piece count: 70785
Puzzle 86
Have you listened to the Serial podcast yet? I started it within the last week, and I love it. It's a rather tense whodunnit (and what the heck happened?!) story, concerning the real-life murder of a high school student in 1999. Lots of people on the internets are discussing the show and the case, so this is my contribution.
This non-sequitur appeared in episode 5. As the host Sarah Koenig and show-intern Dana Chivvis drove around town, discussing the case, Dana saw a sign alongside the road. "There's a shrimp sale at the Crab Crib," she remarked, the "Crab Crib" being a seafood market. I've had this phrase stuck in my head since I first heard it, and I immediately knew I needed to stitch it.
This piece of cross stitch was done on white 14-count aida fabric. I couldn't make a decent-looking shrimp-shape, so I only managed a crab. The anchors were added to help divide the quote from the information at the bottom. I designed and made this stitch just today, so it's still in the embroidery hoop.
British postcard by Film Weekly in the Film Shots Series. Photo: Fox. Roland Young, Minna Gombell and Genevieve Tobin in Pleasure Cruise (Frank Tuttle, 1933).
Balding and highly distinguished Roland Young (1887-1953) was an American film and theatre actor of British origin. He was best known for the role of Cosmo Topper in the three Topper film comedies.
Roland Young was born in 1887 in London, England. He was the son of an architect. Young enjoyed his school education at Sherborne College and later at London University. He decided to become an actor. Young acquired the necessary skills at the renowned Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). In 1908, at the age of 21, Young appeared on stage in London for the first time in 'Find the Woman'. Four years later, he made his Broadway debut in 'Hindle Wakes' (1912). Until the mid-1910s, Young was still taking on engagements in England, which meant that he alternated between New York and London. Young became an American citizen in 1918 and then served briefly on the American side as a soldier in the First World War. In 1921, he married his first wife, Marjorie Kummer, to whom he remained married until 1940. Young made his debut as a film actor as Doctor Watson in Sherlock Holmes (Albert Parker, 1922), alongside John Barrymore as Holmes and Gustav von Seyffertitz as Moriarty. On Broadway, Young performed equally well in droll farces and classic drama. His standout credits included productions of 'Hedda Gabler' (1923) and 'The Last of Mrs. Cheyney' (1927). He signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and made his talkie debut in the murder mystery The Unholy Night (Lionel Barrymore, 1929) with Ernest Torrence and Boris Karloff. He was loaned to Warner Bros. to appear in the drama Her Private Life (Alexander Korda, 1929), with Billie Dove and to Fox, winning critical approval for his comedic performance as Jeanette MacDonald's husband in Don't Bet on Women (William K. Howard, 1931). He was again paired with MacDonald in the romantic comedy Annabelle's Affairs (Alfred L. Werker, 1931). He appeared in Cecil B. de Mille's Western The Squaw Man (1931), and played opposite Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Guardsman (Sidney Franklin, 1931). His final film under his MGM contract was Lovers Courageous (Robert Z. Leonard, 1932), opposite Robert Montgomery. He had a starring role in a risqué comedy for Fox entitled Pleasure Cruise (Frank Tuttle, 1933) alongside Genevieve Tobin.
Roland Young's roles were mostly limited to British characters, in which he embodied the stereotypical image of the aristocratic Englishman. He appeared with Jeanette MacDonald, Genevieve Tobin and Maurice Chevalier in One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932). Alexander Korda invited him to return to Britain to make his British film debut in Wedding Rehearsal (1932). His best-known film was the screwball classic Topper (Norman Z. McLeod, 1937). Young played the bourgeois bank manager Cosmo Topper, whose orderly life is shaken up by the ghosts of his clients, Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. It was one of the most successful films of the year, and Young received an Oscar nomination for his role in the Best Supporting Actor category in 1938. He also starred in the sequels, Topper Takes a Trip (Norman Z. McLeod, 1938) and Topper Returns (Roy Del Ruth, 1941). Young is also known for his role as the villain Uriah Heep in the Charles Dickens adaptation David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935) and for the British fantasy film The Man Who Would Change the World (Lothar Mendes, 1936) based on a short story by H.G. Wells. He often played eccentric characters, such as the inebriated Earl of Burnstead, who loses his valet Charles Laughton in a poker game, in Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935) or the rich uncle of Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940). He continued working steadily through the 1940s, playing small roles opposite some of Hollywood's leading actresses, such as Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Paulette Goddard and Greta Garbo in her final film, Two-Faced Woman (George Cukor, 1941). In 1945, he began his radio show and appeared in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic whodunnit And Then There Were None (René Clair, 1945). By the end of the decade, his film career had declined, and his final films, including The Great Lover (Alexander Hall, 1949), in which he played a murderer opposite Bob Hope, and Fred Astaire's Let's Dance (Norman Z. MacLeod, 1950), were not successful. Roland Young found his second wife, Dorothy Patience May DuCroz, in 1948, with whom he spent the last years of his life. Roland Young had no children. In 1953, he died in New York of natural causes at the age of 65. He was honoured with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his film and television work.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
1 jun
The Archivist by Martha Cooley
"An insightful look at the psyche of an institutionalized woman, her husband and her family, interspersed with beautiful poetry, jazz and bossa nova.
Mathias, a Christian, gets his Jewish wife committed to a mental asylum soon after the end of WWII. Judith commits suicide while in the asylum, and leaves behind a journal. The book looks at how various characters deal with their grief, guilt and fears, and find a way to go on."
3 jun
Riot by Shashi Tharoor
"A broad look at the hows and whys of communal strife in the behemoth that is India, this book is as relevant today as when it was first published in 2001, a few after the Babri Masjid demolition. A fictional account of a Hindu-Muslim riot in a small town in India, this book is largely based on facts, containing stories within stories - of a bereaved Sikh grandfather who never loses courage, of a lonely educated IAS officer who fights with himself to retain his integrity, a Muslim woman who discovers the courage that comes from utter desperation, an American woman who comes to India to work for a social cause she believes in, a Hindu fundamentalist who acts on his convictions.
In today's India, with its aggressive Hindutva, its divisive politics and its legacy of horrors committed in the name of religion, Tharoor maintains an impartial and non-judgemental attitude in his writing. This is a splendid book, and the author is now on my to-read list."
4 jun
Strange Bedpersons by Jennifer Crusie (e-book)
Started out as a fun chic lit… and then rapidly degenerated into a mill & boons type romance.
13 jun
Devices and Desires by P D James
Really good, in fact much better than most of the other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries. Most of the characters come to life and catch hold of the reader's emotion and imagination.
15 jun
The Proposition by Judith Ivory (e-book)
"Ugh!
What at first glance promised to be a gender reversal of Shaw's Pygmalion, turns out to be an insipid magical happy ending Regency romance. A lady professor of phoenetics catches hold of a professional rat catcher and turns him into a cardboard ""gentleman"", then proceeds to fall in love with him. And the happy ending was clearly written more for the convenience of the writer than for the entertainment of the reader. Not a book I'd ever want to read again."
18 jun
The Alchemy Of Murder by Carol McCleary
Another good whodunnit. Old Paris comes alive in McCleary's writing. The intrepid lady investigative journalist gets a bit monotonous at times, but this is a good mystery novel nonetheless. And no, I didn't guess who the murderer was.
19 jun
Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World by Louis de Bernieres
Lovely! Adorable! Horridly short. Just 50 pages or so. But I fell in love with all the characters, and actually felt homesick for the neighbourhood.
23 jun
The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver
Definitely not one of Deaver's best. True, there are twists in the tale. But the tale itself is very very monotonous most of the time. I mean, the leading characters spend almost the entire novel chasing each other in a forest, with guns. Way too long for a chase-catch-and-kill sequence, Deaver!
30 jun
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (librarywala.com)
My second Picoult novel. And I really loved this one. Could actually feel a lot of sympathy for all the characters. And since the novel is in the form of chapters in the voice of all the main characters, it never gets monotonous.
My niece decided to have a murder/mystery whodunnit affair for her birthday. Yours truly played the role of Wing Commander Jerry Basher..... it wasn't me wotdunnit!
Most of the regalia came from one of the militaria shops on Bristol's Lower park Row; leather flying hat (1980's rather than 1940's), goggles (more WW1 rather than WW2) and the rather splendid leather jacket (a snip at £30). The handlebar face fungus was £2.99 from the Joke shop!
Commentary.
These two cottages have become iconic, National Treasures, almost legendary.
The one on the left was “Tom’s Cottage” in the superb
film, “Goodnight, Mr.Tom,” that chronicles the experiences
of a young boy, William Beech, when he is evacuated from London to Weirwold, in the country, and billeted to stay with
the apparently irascible widower, Tom Oakley during World War Two.
Both have had difficulties in their lives and the story explores very honestly and graphically the struggles they must bear to adapt to yet another immense challenge.
Several Junior classes, I taught over the years, studied this story as part of their History and English curriculum.
They then watched the film version starring John Thaw as Tom and Nick Robinson as William.
They were set the task to do a Critic’s comparison of the two.
The overwhelming consensus was that they preferred the book because it inevitably painted a fuller, more detailed picture.
However, they were totally absorbed by some of the emotional drama in the film version.
Quite a number of the pupils enjoyed buying their own version of book and film, by choice.
The cottage on the right was the Vicarage of Dibley’s new female Vicar, Geraldine Granger, played by Dawn French in the hilarious hit B.B.C. Sitcom. “Vicar of Dibley.”
The crazy idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of the characters making up the Parish Council of this English village is little short of a masterpiece.
On the chalky Chiltern Hill above and to the north of the village stands Cobstone Windmill.
This featured in the film “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang” starring Dick Van Dyke.
Turville was also the setting for another World War Two film, “Went the Day Well.”
Television Crime “Whodunnit” dramas like “Midsomer Murders,” “Jonathan Creek” and “Marple” have also used Turville as the archetypal English village.
And that is it, that is why it has been used as a setting for so many filmed stories.
It has the essential qualities and features set in a gorgeous, lush green Chalk valley.
Hills, fields, windmill, old half-timbered rose-covered cottages,
the classic towered Parish church and graveyard, the ubiquitous village pub, “The Bull and Butcher,” the Village Hall, school, Post Office and grocer’s and Village Square or to be more exact, Circle.
If a first-time visitor to the U.K. said to me:-
“Show me a typical, classic English village.”
Turville would be high, if not first, on my list!
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is Presented by Cold Theatre 7 in Special Arrangement with Samuel French Ltd. Written by Agatha Christie & Directed by Kevin Cruze.
In this superlative mystery comedy statuettes of little soldier boys on the mantel of a house on an island off the coast of Devon fall to the floor and break one by one as those in the house succumb to a diabolical avenger. A nursery rhyme tells how each of the ten “soldiers” met his death until there were none. Eight guests who have never met each other on their apparently absent host and hostess are lured to the island, along with the two house servants, marooned.
A mysterious voice accuses each of having gotten away with murder and then one drops dead – poisoned. One down and nine to go! The excitement never lets up and the search for the murderer never ceases which keeps the audience at the edge of their seat.
This gripping 'whodunnit' will feature an alternate ending in each performance!
Special Guest Performance by members of The Old Joes' Choir
Co-Sponsor : Singer
In Association with : Cargills & Commercial Bank
Community Support Partner : KPMG Sri Lanka
Beverage Partner : Elephant House
Office Solutions Partner : Fellowes
Print Media Sponsor : The Sunday Times
Radio partner : Lite FM
!IMPORTANT:
- License: Creative Commons
- Please obtain permission form Cold Theatre 7 for distribution permission
- DO NOT DISTRIBUTE without permission!!!!!!
A cozy whodunit, spiced up with characters from the nineteenth century Boston literary world. Pearl draws heavily on his own academic research and experience at Harvard, and most of the time his atmospheric narration appears true to life.
[SPOILER ALERT]
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is translating Dante Aligheri’s The Divine Comedy with the help of his friends as a means of coming to terms with losing his beloved wife in a tragic accident. His friends, most of them members of the real life Fireside Poets of the time, are Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, T. J. Fields, George Washington Greene, who are all members of the fictitious Dante Club.
Canticle One opens with the horrific accident / murder of Chief Justice Healey, who is found naked and writhing with maggots, wasps and insects, near his home. Healey dies after surviving four days of this torture and Widow Healey is demanding police investigation. Patrolman Nicholas Rey, Boston’s first mulatto policeman, and Police Chief John Kurtz are investigating, without success.
Next, Reverend Talbot is discovered half buried in the ground, with his feet put on fire. Boston police continues to be clueless, but Dr Holmes realizes the points of similarity between the two murders, and the punishments of hell described in Dante’s Inferno.
Pearl goes into too much detail about the petty jealousies and rivalries between the various members of the Dante Club, and his unnecessary literary name dropping often smacks of gimmickry throughout Canticle One.
In Canticle Two the members of Dante Club have taken their courage in their hands and have decided to investigate into the murders independent of the police. The reason for this is partly to protect the reputation of The Divine Comedy, and partly to ensure no suspicion falls on themselves regarding the murders.
The third murder that the Dante Club fails to prevent is of Phineas Jennison, Boston millionaire, patron of literature, and a personal friend of James Russel. Jennison is found cut in half, and once again the motive is suspected by no one outside the Dante Club.
Canticle Three gradually brings the Dante Club to the answer to the Dante riddles, and to the name of the murderer. The second climax is somewhat predictable and unnecessary.
However, Pearl, as a first time author, has to be admired for making sure that the murderer is someone the reader is already acquainted with, and various clues come together to form answers in the time honored tradition of all good murder mysteries.
Altogether a satisfying and rather atmospheric read, where the suspense part of the story could stand on its own merit even without the at times gratuitous preponderance of Boston literary figures who would otherwise have little to contribute to the main plot.
Photo published in: artuccino.com/index.php/the-dante-club-by-matthew-pearl/
This is what is left from a heavy recycled rubber mulch ring. I gathered the pieces for this photo as they were spread everywhere. Whatever tore this apart was large. There are no large dogs in this neighborhood, only a couple of cats. Maybe mountain lion, coyote or was it the ellusive Chupacabra.
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is Presented by Cold Theatre 7 in Special Arrangement with Samuel French Ltd. Written by Agatha Christie & Directed by Kevin Cruze.
In this superlative mystery comedy statuettes of little soldier boys on the mantel of a house on an island off the coast of Devon fall to the floor and break one by one as those in the house succumb to a diabolical avenger. A nursery rhyme tells how each of the ten “soldiers” met his death until there were none. Eight guests who have never met each other on their apparently absent host and hostess are lured to the island, along with the two house servants, marooned.
A mysterious voice accuses each of having gotten away with murder and then one drops dead – poisoned. One down and nine to go! The excitement never lets up and the search for the murderer never ceases which keeps the audience at the edge of their seat.
This gripping 'whodunnit' will feature an alternate ending in each performance!
Special Guest Performance by members of The Old Joes' Choir
Co-Sponsor : Singer
In Association with : Cargills & Commercial Bank
Community Support Partner : KPMG Sri Lanka
Beverage Partner : Elephant House
Office Solutions Partner : Fellowes
Print Media Sponsor : The Sunday Times
Radio partner : Lite FM
!IMPORTANT:
- License: Creative Commons
- Please obtain permission form Cold Theatre 7 for distribution permission
- DO NOT DISTRIBUTE without permission!!!!!!
Crime Does Not Pay / Heft-Reihe
> Who Dunnit? / The Case of the Murdered Bathing Beauty
art: Fred Guardineer
Lev Gleason Publications / USA 1947
Reprint / Comic-Club NK 2010
ex libris MTP
Audience and tech crew shots just before Burlesque: Death Aboard the ICS Golden Thong — The captain and her crew thought it was a wonderful day to start another trip to Seti Ralpha V aboard the prestigious interstellar cruise ship, the Golden Thong. And it was, until someone got themselves murdered. If that wasn’t bad enough for our intrepid captain, it threatened to blossom into a galactic scandal! Will Captain Smirk figure out who the murderer is before the quadrant erupts into war? Will Ensign Crusher ever get the respect she deserves? Will the rubber headed alien look even remotely convincing? Will Security Officer Starbooty look good on set? Answers to these questions and more at Death Aboard the ICS Golden Thong, a burlesque whodunnit set upon the final frontier, an homage to every bad mystery trope, complete with a butler droid! Morgan La May stars at Captain Smirk, Bella La Blanc as Ambassador Lube-wanna Troi, and Nikolai Knight as Security Officer Starbooty! Also staring Sophie B. Fawkins, Candy Apples, Mandy Flame, Tawdry Quirks, Lola Moondust, Whisper De Corvo, Wicked Scarlett, and special guest star Lilith Van Dyke. Restricted to Norwescon members 18 years of age and older. Doors open at 9 p.m. (Photo by Michael Hanscom for Norwescon)
115 Pictures in 2015. #83 Addiction.
Taken at The Regency, Laguna Woods, California. © 2015 All Rights Reserved.
My images are not to be used, copied, edited, or blogged without my explicit permission.
Please!! NO Glittery Awards or Large Graphics...Buddy Icons are OK. Thank You!
I see these books and their neighbors near the computer in the library when I play Solitaire. I'm reminded of a short short story
I wrote entitled Buried in a Book. I'm copying the story into the first comment box. If you have time to read it, you will find out why I think this image expresses Addiction!
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is Presented by Cold Theatre 7 in Special Arrangement with Samuel French Ltd. Written by Agatha Christie & Directed by Kevin Cruze.
In this superlative mystery comedy statuettes of little soldier boys on the mantel of a house on an island off the coast of Devon fall to the floor and break one by one as those in the house succumb to a diabolical avenger. A nursery rhyme tells how each of the ten “soldiers” met his death until there were none. Eight guests who have never met each other on their apparently absent host and hostess are lured to the island, along with the two house servants, marooned.
A mysterious voice accuses each of having gotten away with murder and then one drops dead – poisoned. One down and nine to go! The excitement never lets up and the search for the murderer never ceases which keeps the audience at the edge of their seat.
This gripping 'whodunnit' will feature an alternate ending in each performance!
Special Guest Performance by members of The Old Joes' Choir
Co-Sponsor : Singer
In Association with : Cargills & Commercial Bank
Community Support Partner : KPMG Sri Lanka
Beverage Partner : Elephant House
Office Solutions Partner : Fellowes
Print Media Sponsor : The Sunday Times
Radio partner : Lite FM
!IMPORTANT:
- License: Creative Commons
- Please obtain permission form Cold Theatre 7 for distribution permission
- DO NOT DISTRIBUTE without permission!!!!!!