LITERARY LICENSE… REVOKED!

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH

(GREGORY WILLIAM MANK, JAMES T COUGHLIN, DWIGHT D FRYE; 320 pages; LUMINARY PRESS/MIDNIGHT MARQUEE PRESS; 1997)

I grew up watching (and loving) the Universal Monsters movies; a very vivid memory was seeing ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEETS FRANKENSTEIN (sort of a 1948 Monsters-adjacent free-for-all with Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Junior and Glenn Strange co-starring with Bud and Lou) on a Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t such a big leap to THE WOLFMAN, THE MUMMY, THE INVISIBLE MAN and the dynamic duo that launched Universal’s monster franchise, DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN. Then, of course, there were the numerous sequels. Many of those films featured a manic young man named Dwight Frye; I was fascinated by Dwight’s characters and he became an instant favorite. Why? Was it the four-note laugh that his DRACULA character, Renfield, used to chill the marrow? Was it the fact that my favorite band, Alice Cooper, featured a six-and-a-half minute tune on their third album, LOVE IT TO DEATH, called “Ballad of Dwight Fry?” (Fry, by the way, was Dwight Frye’s real name… the “e” was added by Dwight early in his acting career to give it a more continental, distinguished flair.) Whatever the reason, Dwight Frye became “The Man” for me, at least as far as horror movies were concerned. I didn’t know anything about the man himself and found that there wasn’t really a lot of information out there about him (this was the pre-internet, “dinosaurs-still-roamed-the-Earth” late 1960s and early 1970s). The fascination waned, as it is wont to do, and I moved on to other things. Oh, I still watched DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN and the rest any chance I got and Dwight’s Renfield and Fritz were still fun to watch. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that I heard about a book co-written by Dwight’s son, Dwight David, that my interest was once again piqued. And so, I started haunting (pun fully intended) various book stores and other venues for a copy… with no luck! It wasn’t until very recently that – after watching DRACULA for, maybe, the millionth time that I renewed my quest to acquire DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH. Things have become so much easier now, with search engines like Google and a website called ThriftBooks to find those hard to find items. So, now, thanks to that very same ThriftBooks, I have my very own copy of DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH. Was it worth the wait, the time and trouble to hunt down? Absolutely!

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (DRACULA, 1931: Helen Chandler, Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye) (UNIVERSAL STUDIOS promotional photo)

To call the book exhaustive is sorta like saying that there’s some water in the Pacific Ocean. The second book review I ever wrote was a critique of Fred Kaplan’s THE SINGULAR MARK TWAIN, a 655 page biography with an additional 70 pages of notes and explanations of the main body of work. I was not a fan! The same cannot be said of DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH; it is filled with minutia, but it’s presented in such a way that you really don’t mind. The biography portion of the book ends with Chapter 10 (even though Frye dies in Chapter 8). Those eight chapters are chock full of minutia regarding Dwight’s early life, his stage career – from stock productions in Denver, Spokane, Seattle and Pittsfield, among other towns and cities with theaters (the most common form of entertainment in the 1910s and ‘20s, just about every small city or medium-sized town had one) to his successes on Broadway – where he met Laura (using the stage name Laurette) Bullivant, whom he would marry. Chapter Five, titled “Dreams To Nightmares: The Horror Classics of 1931,” begins the chronicle of Frye’s career in the relatively new film industry and his eventual downfall. As Renfield in DRACULA and Fritz in FRANKENSTEIN, his over-the-top, rather psychotic performances led to Dwight being typecast as lunatics, with hunchbacks and wild eyes. Soon, he found himself relegated to bit parts (often uncredited) in a variety of B movies of varying quality. No matter how small the role, Dwight threw himself into the character as if his part was the most important. FRANKENSTEIN director James Whale was so taken with his portrayal of the sadistic, hunchbacked dwarf, Fritz, that in later years, he reached out to Frye, offering him roles in nearly every movie he worked on throughout the actor’s lean years in the ‘30s and ‘40s up to Dwight’s death in 1943; For THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Whale famously combined three separate roles into one for his to-to ghoul; the actor delivered a tour-de-force performance as Karl, another in a string of hunchback dwarfs.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (THE MALTESE FALCON, 1931: Dudley Digges, Ricardo Cortez, Dwight Frye) (WARNER BROTHERS STUDIOS promotional photo)

Between DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, Dwight portrayed Wilmer Cook in the first film version of THE MALTESE FALCON, a grittier, pre-Code offering that wasn’t as pretty as the 1941 version with Humphrey Bogart; when Warner Brothers tried to re-release the flick in 1935, the request was denied by the office of the Motion Picture Production Code for “lewd content.” It may have been Dwight’s last big role in which he wasn’t typecast as some sort of twisted, maniacal, deviant toady for whatever the Monster-du-jour was for a particular film (the vampire, Count Dracula, or the man-who-would-be -God, Henry Frankenstein). DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH mentions numerous occasions where the studio would severely edit or completely cut the actor’s performances. As he struggled to provide for his family, he took on any role offered, no matter how small (or how ludicrous). Dwight Frye was the consummate actor, but first and foremost, he was the consummate family man.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (THE VAMPIRE BAT, 1933: Dwight Frye, Maude Eburne) (MAJESTIC STUDIOS promotional photo)

By the fall of 1943, Dwight Frye had been working an overnight shift at Douglas Aircraft (it was his way of contributing to the war effort, as he was too old to serve) for a year or more, looking for movie roles during the day. He had heard about a new movie being produced by 20th Century-Fox called WILSON, a biography of President Woodrow Wilson. With the help of a friend at the studio, he tested for and was given a fairly important, meaty role in the film, Secretary of War Newton D Baker. To celebrate the part, Dwight took Laura and their son, Dwight David, to a double feature. After the movie, the family caught a bus; before the bus even pulled away from the curb, the actor had collapsed in the aisle. He died about an hour later, at 11:15, of coronary thrombosis.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, 1935: Dwight Frye, Valerie Hobson) (UNIVERSAL STUDIOS promotional photo)

Chapter 9, titled “Milestones,” highlights turning points (mostly deaths) in the lives of the people in the life of Dwight Iliff Frye, everyone from Tod Browning to Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill and James Whale to Boris Karloff. “Immortality” called in Chapter 10, as the authors recount the efforts of – not only Dwight’s son, Buddy (his father’s nickname for Dwight David) – but leading members of fandom like Warren Publishing’s James Warren and Forrest J Ackerman, publisher and editor, respectively, of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND (as well as the comic magazines CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA), who invited Dwight David, Sara Karloff (Boris’ daughter), Ron Chaney (grandson of Lon Chaney Junior) and Bela Lugosi Junior as guests of honor to the 1993 Famous Monsters Convention. The chapter ends with the death of Dwight David Frye on March 27, 2003. Until that time, he worked tirelessly to keep the memory of his father alive to new generations of fans.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (Laura Bullivant Frye, Dwight David Frye, Dwight Frye) (family photo, 1933)

The actual biography of Dwight Frye – including a lot of great pictures and a couple of pages of notes – ends on page 202. The remainder of the book’s 320 pages features four appendices listing all of Dwight’s acting credits (“Filmography,” 60 pages with production information, cast and notes regarding Frye’s work; “Early Theatre Work: Stock, Vaudeville, Repetory,” 20 pages with much of the same information as Appendix A; “Broadway Plays,” 20 pages of his work there; “Regional Theatre,” 8 pages, including his last role, reprising Renfield in a stage production of DRACULA) and more photos. A bibliography and biographies of the authors make up the last few pages.

MILLENNIAL NASTIES: ANALYZING A DECADE OF BRUTAL HORROR FILM VIOLENCE

(ARIEL POWERS-SCHAUB; 182 pages; ENCYCLOPOCALYPSE PUBLICATIONS; 2024)

There are many books out there about horror films; it’s an immensely popular genre. So it’s a perfectly reasonable proposition to put together a new volume that focuses on horror cinema of the new millennium. But this new MILLENNIAL NASTIES tome startles by zeroing in on the most violent and nihilistic films, comprising the so-called “torture porn” genre and the films that followed in its wake. It’s doubly startling by being written by a female author, that being Ariel Powers-Schaub. Maybe it’s narrow-minded of me to even SAY that; after all, women ARE a big part of the horror-loving audience. But girls don’t do so well in horror films (excepting the whole “final girl” trope that we are all familiar with); killing off “helpless” or naive females is a staple of the genre, so I simply wouldn’t have predicted a woman serving up a comprehensive look at this popular phenomenon. What is most startling of ALL, however, is that this book ends up being insightful, comprehensive, thorough and absolutely a blast to read… I would call it “required reading” for fans of “brutal horror films,” which the title makes clear it sets out to examine. We’re talking the SAW franchise, many of the works of director Eli Roth (HOSTEL, CABIN FEVER, et cetera), and chapters dealing with specific thematic areas like “Fucked Up Families” (ex: Rob Zombie’s THE DEVIL’S REJECTS), “You Can’t Cheat Death” (the FINAL DESTINATION franchise) and the comically titled “The Locals Run This Town” (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE HILLS HAVE EYES, two films discussed in a rather large section of the book titled “The Era of Remakes: Nasti-fication For a New Generation”). Powers-Schaub clearly has an abiding interest in modern bloody horror films, but she does those of us who are fascinated by this genre (but not obsessive) a real favor by comparing original films to remakes, first films in a series to subsequent sequels, and most importantly, WHAT exactly stands out, plot-wise, acting-wise and “memorable kill”-wise in each film. That takes real ambition, and an ability to contextualize the appeal of films that, for a large number of people out there, are just too SICK and stomach-churning to ever go near.

In the Foreword, editor Zoe Rose Smith praises Powers-Schaub thusly:

“I could intrinsically sense just how passionate and dedicated she (Ariel) was to not only the horror genre, but to certain niches and even certain films like SAW. It didn’t take long before Ariel began to show just how committed to horror she was; with such a wonderful way of delivering her thoughts on different topics and really expanding her voice across all things from slashers with THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE to found footage with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT to torture porn with HOSTEL… ”

MILLENNIAL NASTIES (author ARIEL POWERS-SCHAUB) (publicity photo)

Some people may view films where people are tortured or carved up creatively as nothing but abominable trash (and I KNOW some of those people), but after all, it’s a violent world, and films have always reflected that. Any genre of cinema that is enduringly popular deserves to be taken seriously, and I can’t imagine ANY writer doing a more balanced and entertaining analysis of the SAW franchise, THE STRANGERS, HOSTEL, WOLF CREEK, WRONG TURN (that film and its sequel are part of a very entertaining section titled “Original Slashers”), THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (remake), et al, than what Ms Powers-Schaub gives us here. I smiled repeatedly as I read her prose, and sometimes felt my jaw drop as I read her pithy and memorable assessments. Some examples:

“Most of the academic writing about torture porn and similar films has been analyzing the impact of 9/11. America’s sense of security from the 1990s was shattered. Suddenly, Americans were fearful of The Other, The Outsider. Bigotry made a huge comeback, though it never really left. And American attitudes became both very sad and angry, stuck in an ‘us versus them’ mentality. This book is not focused on 9/11, but it is mentioned when relevant to the analysis. Horror films always reflect the world around them, and these films were born from global trauma.”

SAW Franchise artwork (image created by: JOSHUA WILLIAMS)

“Throughout the SAW franchise, each film tackles multiple themes, and offers just as much plot and character development as it does blood and guts. The films in the SAW franchise all have similar setups, and a formula that gets more strongly entrenched as the decade progresses. The main villain (or anti-hero, depending on who you ask), is a man named John Kramer, a successful engineer and entrepreneur. After he suffers some personal tragedies, he begins trapping and testing victims of his choice, and makes them confront their own will to live. The press calls him Jigsaw because he always takes a piece of skin, shaped like a puzzle piece, as a trophy when his victims die. It was possible to keep strong plot threads in each film because of creative consistency. Members of the cast and crew worked on multiple movies, most notably Tobin Bell, the actor who played John Kramer/Jigsaw. The themes explored in the franchise that are the most consistent throughout all have to do with family and loyalty. Jigsaw is particularly interested in fatherhood, and what it means to be a good father. The films in the franchise also offer an exploration of systems meant to help people, specifically the police and medical care… ”

“Much like the phenomenon that occurred with THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (Director: Hooper, 1974), people remember SAW being more violent and gruesome than it is. Most of the torture and violence is implied, or kept partially hidden, most likely due to budget constraints of the debut film makers. Part of SAW’s signature look is the frantic editing, sometimes giving the film a feeling similar to a music video. The editing style trend happened accidentally, because the film makers didn’t have the time or the budget to shoot enough takes of all the scenes they needed and decided to make up for it in the editing. That style of editing became a hallmark of the decade and torture porn genre, seen in many other MILLENNIAL NASTIES in this book.”

“During the Millennial Nasty decade, American characters were often portrayed as afraid of the world. In America’s reality, it was becoming clear that people in other countries didn’t necessarily trust us, as global citizens watched America’s involvement in war. That feeling of mistrust led to a trend in filmmaking where some vacationers – usually young and beautiful tourists – went off to an unfamiliar area and didn’t make it home. Tourists, especially white tourists, in these movies are hunted and killed for their physical and national characteristics. This wasn’t strictly an American fear, however. An excellent example from Australia, WOLF CREEK, explored similar themes. CABIN FEVER fits in this chapter, as well, although the fear is domestic and biological, as campers and a small town are picked off by a disease. However, the fear of the disease leads to person-on-person violence and represents the nastiness that can happen when Americans fear for their safety and try to protect themselves. In each of these films, vacationers are hoping to rely on the kindness of strangers for help, and they are let down in the worst ways…”

“HOSTEL is supposed to be making fun of Americans, highlighting the ways we can move about the world in boorish ways, anticipating everyone to meet our needs. And HOSTEL could have made this point, but it just misses. By focusing on the male characters who are victimized, and keeping the story tightly centered on their experience, HOSTEL does not take time to comment on human trafficking and exploitation or American exceptionalism. In fact, the film has the opposite effect, making people angrier at Americans. Slovakian officials decried the film and said it was offensive to depict their culture in such a way.”

“The focus on men’s experiences in HOSTEL is a unique one. Men are crying and begging for their lives in this film. That did not fit the macho portrayal of masculinity that was so prevalent in this era. It also subverts a trope that relies on purity being a saving grace in horror films. Drawing on our knowledge of the Final Girl, the audience may think Josh will be the lone survivor, because he resists the temptations of Amsterdam the most, though he is not perfect. But in fact, Pax is the Final Boy, who has been trying to influence Josh the whole time. Josh ending his night early is what gets him caught before Pax. HOSTEL succeeds in flipping a horror trope on its head to surprise audiences with a Final Boy who loves sex and partying. That was surprising and refreshing at the time… ”

“HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES is a staple of the Millennial Nasty era, and also somehow apart from it, because Zombie started the film in an earlier era. Production wrapped in 2000, but the film had to go through many cuts to be considered suitable for audiences. And then 9/11 happened, and many horror films were significantly cut and/or delayed as the world reacted to the tragedy. This combination of events adds up to a film that was released into an era that was ready and waiting for violence and nihilism on screen, but created in an era where that was a fresh take on horror. That makes HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES feel timeless, in a way some other films discussed in this book will not.”

“In my 2021 review for GHOULS MAGAZINE, I describe what puts this film snugly in its era:

“Rob Zombie used this movie as a conduit to talk to the audience, and to challenge us. Though this movie would later be called torture porn, there is no sexual violence. However, there are many close-up shots of faces and bodies of dead women, which, even if not explicitly sexualized, are very clearly on display more than men. And there is a lot of overlap in sexiness with horror imagery. For example, images of women stripping while also playing with toy skeletons. There are several shots where characters are talking directly to the camera, in a way that can make the audience feel exposed. In the opening, when Captain Spaulding is being robbed and not backing down, the last thing he says to the robbers is ‘and most of all, fuck you,’ and shoots a gun at the camera. This tells the audience that Zombie does not care about our boundaries, and we are in his world now. Later, when the danger is obvious and we are worried for our main characters, the local cops find one of the cheerleaders, dead and in the trunk of a car. She is naked, and has the words ‘trick or treat’ carved into her skin. As the camera lingers on her body, we hear Otis in a voiceover, saying over and over again, louder and louder ‘hope you like what you see!’ The audience is forced to sit with the horrifying image, and question why we may, in fact, like what we see. Near the end of the film, as Denise and Jerry are dressed and bound for sacrifice, Otis speaks to Jerry, but looks directly into the camera and tells the viewer, ‘It’s all true, the boogeyman is real and you found him.’ I hear this as Zombie claiming to be Hollywood’s new boogeyman, a hopeful statement when this was filmed. This film means to push your boundaries and have you question your own comfort with what’s on screen… ”

“What makes this film (WRONG TURN) a sign of things to come throughout the decade is how brutal and violent it is. The cannibals’ house is covered in filth, and the lighting in the interior scenes makes it appear even grimier than it is… The house is by far the nastiest part of the film – very different from the clean homes and good schools of the ‘90s slashers. The kills are nasty for a slasher – that is to say, compared to some other films discussed in this book, these kills are nothing special. But compared to the history of slashers, in which teenagers were often stabbed, sometimes off screen, WRONG TURN offers more gore. For example, Francine is garroted by barbed wire and Carly’s head is chopped in half. And, of course, the family of cannibals. As WRONG TURN became a franchise, the lore around the cannibals and where they came from expanded. But the first movie doesn’t explain much, and in it the cannibals don’t speak, so both the characters and the audience are left with no understanding. The cannibals communicate by making clicking sounds and cackling, and they move through the woods quickly and stealthily. They are three men, all dressed in dirty clothes and missing fingers, teeth, and hair. The cannibals do not care how they are perceived by other people, possibly because they see others as food, and we don’t normally care what our food thinks of us. There is no attempt to hide their crimes. They are not shy about the graveyard of tourists’ cars they have on their property, or the personal items collected from their victims. Because we cannot understand the cannibal family’s motives or communication, they are ‘othered’ by default. WRONG TURN is a franchise about fear of The Other; fear of what we don’t understand. That has always been a topic ripe for exploration through the horror genre, and especially in the early 2000s when America was so distrustful of anyone we considered The Other.”

I could continue to quote many other passages at length from this fascinating book, but ultimately your level of interest in it will depend on how much you watch or care about the horror movies the author discusses. I personally found it fascinating how she divides up roughly a decade’s worth of dark horror films into meaningful categories, such as “home invasion” stories (y’all remember that very disturbing entry THE STRANGERS, where the bound victims ask WHY the merciless killers are doing what they’re doing, and the quick answer is “because you were HOME”?), Americans on vacation overseas, “fucked-up families,” et cetera. It reveals how recurring themes and tropes in horror films are used both to give the audience what they want, and to find refreshing variations for the often eager young filmmakers to explore. Powers-Schaub does a terrific job in the remakes section of comparing disturbing and legendary ‘70s horror classics like THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, to its edgy millennial update, discussing both villains and victims (and the revenge part of each story) with gusto. She provides a personal and intellectual throughline that gives this whole volume far more creative and contemplative HEFT than you might think in such a project. Do you have to be familiar with the genre written about to appreciate this book? Well, the author doesn’t necessarily think so, although she points to the original Tobe Hooper classic THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE as being somewhat of a granddaddy to what followed. She writes:

“If I can suggest watching one film before reading, let it be Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. That may come as a surprising recommendation, since it’s not a Millennial Nasty. It is, in fact, one of the original Video Nasties, and it has influenced horror ever since it hit drive-in theater screens. It is referenced throughout this book, as its influences impact the analysis of Millennial Nasties. Three characters are mentioned by name throughout this book, and I will credit them here:

Sally Hardesty: the final girl, played by Marilyn Burns

Pam: Sally’s best friend, played by Teri McMinn

Leatherface: the chainsaw-wielding killer, played by Gunnar Hansen.”

What’s fascinating about the influence of TTCM is that for all its shocking depravity at the time in the mid-’70s, there was very little blood or guts shown on the screen. The suspense came from the buildup and the careful editing. But the films the author talks about in detail here are generally explicit, depicting depraved human cruelty and sadism that show us all the things we have nightmares about or read in violent crime stories here and there. She does a superb job of providing context, giving us a clear idea of WHERE the themes of these films come from and even whether there is some sort of moral foundation in evidence. And far from being films made by hacks looking to earn a quick buck from a known formula, many of these films were produced by thoughtful directors such as James Wan, Eli Roth, Bryan Bertino and Roland Joffe, who have all done significant work in different genres. Powers-Schaub was attentive to the evolution and influence of horror films from a younger age, and she’s consistently interesting in what she has to say here. In her intro, she writes that she “couldn’t remember a time in her life before horror stories,” and wrote about the SAW franchise as a way to “process my feelings about the Covid-19 pandemic,” which led to the opportunity to write for GHOULS MAGAZINE. Of MILLENNIAL NASTIES, a culmination of sorts of her interest in the topic, she tells us:

“This book is a series of essays analyzing specific horror films in a specific time period… It includes some personal opinions and some of my own observations of the world around me. There aren’t many books written yet that analyze this decade and subgenre, which is exciting, and a bit daunting. On a very personal note, this book has been inside of me for years, and I needed to get it out. I am so thankful that I got to. This is not an academic text. I wanted to write my own analyses of these films, make my own points, not gather points made by others or slow down the reader with lots of citations. It’s not a behind-the-scenes or a making-of text, either. Sometimes, production details are included when they were relevant to my analysis, but analysis remained my primary goal. It is not an exhaustive list of every film that could be explored, but rather the most important films to analyze for trends and themes in this time period… ”

Mission accomplished, Ariel! I just don’t think many other books will appear that have as much to say about certain trends in horror for a decade-plus, than MILLENNIAL NASTIES. From discussing what “torture porn” does or does not mean, to the recurring themes and franchises that draw ongoing interest from horror audiences, to how changing times and social events affect both filmmakers and their genre fans, this book has plenty to say from an enormously gifted, thoughtful writer. Yes, there’s some disgusting things portrayed in these films, and Powers-Schaub is not at all above taking some directors and writers to task when they sink into misogyny, racism, et cetera. But I am truly impressed with her ability to keep the reader entertained and stimulated, with a focus here that makes sense and stirs the emotions. I would argue that this book is actually culturally significant, a survey of one grouping of modern horror films that you might think would only appeal to fans of the gross-out and hardcore bloodletting of a HOSTEL, WRONG TURN, WOLF CREEK, et cetera. But the author is taking a much bigger view of all this in her book, telling us something about humanity (or lack of it), fear and the changing nature of vulnerability and ANGST in the modern world. As such, MILLENNIAL NASTIES has something interesting to say about the importance of therapy and making creative choices. She’s made a good one here, in a truly unique book that I think I will be reading multiple times.

HEY, MA! WATCH THIS LITERARY LICENSE... REVOKED! Movies Non-Fiction Book Reviews | Kevin Renick | October 1, 2024 | Analysis Ariel Powers-Schaub Books CABIN FEVER Eli Roth Encyclopocalypse Publications GHOULS MAGAZINE Horror Horror Movies HOSTEL HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES James Wan MILLENNIAL NASTIES Non-Fiction Rob Zombie Roland Joffe SAW THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT THE STRANGERS THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE Tobe Hooper Tobin Bell WOLF CREEK WRONG TURN

RETURN TO SALLIE HOUSE

CHILLS AND SPILLS IN ATCHISON’S MOST HAUNTED LOCATION

It’s been almost a year since my first visit to Sallie House. Other than meeting some very nice (and enthusiastic) people, nothing paranormal or supernatural happened… which is exactly what I was expecting. While I love all things creepy and spooky, I am an avowed skeptic. If the ghost of a zombie alien Bigfoot walked up and introduced himself, I’m gonna take a little bit of convincing before I say that I believe in zombie alien Bigfoot ghosts. Anyway… the house and the history is so compelling that I decided it warranted another trip to Kansas’ most famous haunt. This time, my cousin (and new Mule scribe), Kasey, was along for the ride. Rather than exploring the home with a couple of other tour groups, it was just the two of us and… well, things were not as quiet as my first visit, as Kasey will explain below. I’m still skeptical, but am intrigued enough by what took place that I plan on going back for an overnight investigation. Stay tuned!

THE SALLIE HOUSE (Sallie’s circle of toys) (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

Visiting the Sallie House in Atchison, Kansas, was an experience that surpassed all expectations of a haunted location. The adventure began with a curious and unexpected moment: As Darren made a light-hearted joke, the EMF reader displayed the word “Smile.” This eerie coincidence set the tone for the visit, hinting at the unusual and possibly supernatural phenomena that were to come. Known for its chilling history and paranormal activity, the Sallie House truly lived up to its eerie reputation. Equipped with an EMF reader and recording devices, we set out to document any unusual occurrences. From the moment we entered, the atmosphere felt palpably heavy and oppressive. The EMF reader immediately detected spikes in electromagnetic activity, particularly in areas known to be the most haunted, such as the nursery. In the nursery, the EMF reader showed sharp increases in electromagnetic fields, which coincided with a sudden drop in temperature despite it being a warm summer day. Reviewing the footage later revealed faint whispers and unexplained noises that seemed to respond directly to our questions.

THE SALLIE HOUSE (DEBRA AND TONY PICKMAN, victims of the House) (uncredited picture)

While discussing the most well-known previous tenant, Tony, and his reported experience of being pushed into the railing upstairs, the EMF reader began to spike dramatically. The intensity of the spikes was so pronounced that it felt almost tangible, and chills rolled down my back as the EMF reader displayed words correlating to the story, such as “Push” and “Fall.” This unsettling response added a significant layer of credibility to the story and intensified the eerie atmosphere.

THE SALLIE HOUSE (Upstairs bedroom closet and playroom) (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

While I was downstairs, Darren saw a dark figure in the hallway upstairs. This sighting added a chilling layer to the experience, heightening the sense of the supernatural presence in the house. After this unsettling sighting, I went back upstairs to move a ball that had rolled into the hallway, intending to return it to the nursery. As I navigated the stairs, I was tripped up, and the EMF reader simultaneously displayed the word “Race.” This incident added a startling dimension to the visit, amplifying the sense of being interacted with by something otherworldly. Standing near the basement, we also experienced an overwhelming sense of eerie presence. The atmosphere around the basement was unsettling, creating a feeling of unease even though we didn’t descend into it.

THE SALLIE HOUSE 2 (Early 20th Century doll carriage with occupant) (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

Overall, the visit to the Sallie House was both thrilling and unnerving. The evidence of paranormal activity, from the spikes in electromagnetic fields to the intriguing audio anomalies and Darren’s sighting of a dark figure, suggests that the supernatural presence reported by others is indeed real. For any paranormal enthusiast, the Sallie House is a must-visit destination.

Haunted Houses HEY, MA! WATCH THIS LITERARY LICENSE... REVOKED! | Kasey Lehmkuhl | September 3, 2024 | Amateur Paranormal Investigation Atchison Chamber of Commerce Atchison Kansas Haunted Atchison Haunted House Historic Buildings Paranormal The Sallie House Tony Pickman Unexplained Phenomenon

DISCONNECTED FROM DEATH

(APRIL SLAUGHTER/TROY TAYLOR; 228 pages; AMERICAN HAUNTINGS INK, 2018)

This is one that totally flew under my radar for six years, but when it popped up in a “based on past purchases” list at ThriftBooks, DISCONNECTED FROM DEATH – which is subtitled THE EVOLUTION OF FUNERARY CUSTOMS AND THE UNMASKING OF DEATH IN AMERICA – immediately found its way into my order basket. I guess that says something about how my taste in literature (and movies and television and comics and music and life) runs. Aside from the striking, haunting cover image, co-authors Slaughter and Taylor (whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple of times) dig deep (sorry…couldn’t resist!), uncovering the history and often gruesome truths about dying, death and what happens after… and why.

EARLY AMERICAN TOMBSTONE (uncredited photo)

As with all good stories, DISCONNECTED FROM DEATH starts at the beginning. Just kidding! It’s death! We’re starting at the very end and working our way forward. But, of course, traditions do start somewhere… even ghoulish ones. Most of us have come to accept death as inevitable but… I say thee, “Nay!” I fully intend to live forever and so far, so good. Steven Wright quips aside, at some point (if we live long enough), we each must face our own mortality. Oddly enough, as you will discover in the first chapters of this book, that was much easier to do before certain events in American history took place: the unheard of brutality of the Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. These two tragedies take up one third of DISCONNECTED FROM DEATH (77 pages – 31 and 46 pages, respectively) and changed the way Americans looked at death. They gave birth to modern embalming practices and, in the president’s case, the need to present a “good looking” corpse to a grieving nation.

Before the Civil War (and, in most cases, after), death was a family affair. The family of the deceased was solely responsible for preparing the body for viewing (washing and dressing the corpse, sending out invitations for a wake where the family members would sit with the body in a room… ostensibly to ensure that their loved one was REALLY dead) until the burial (the grave was dug by a family member, usually on the family’s property; the casket – if one was used – was lowered into it and the hole was filled). Each family member would take part in this death ritual. The tradition of sitting with the body on the off chance that the person was merely unconscious and not dead came over from Europe, a remnant of the various plagues that ravaged the continent off-and-on for centuries. As embalming was not really a thing, that a person may actually wake up was, while rare, a very real possibility. The embalming procedure started to become popular among the elite class during the Civil War. While the rank-and-file soldiers on both sides of the conflict were usually of the lower class, the officers came from the more well-off families of the era. When a soldier died, unless their family had some type of connection to wealth, they were very rarely returned to their home state and their loved ones… quite often, they were either left on the battlefield or buried with their fallen comrades in a mass, unmarked grave; if they were “fortunate” enough to be found by a member of their unit, they may have been buried in a quickly dug grave and a marking with their name was placed there. Generals, colonels and higher ranking members of both armies would be taken care of quite differently; the body would usually be embalmed, their families would be notified and the government would ensure that the body was placed in a casket, put on a train and delivered to the family’s home town for a “proper” burial. Then, like today, money and position counted.

GETTYSBURG, 1863 (A HARVEST OF DEATH) (photo credit: TIMOTHY O’SULLIVAN)

The assassination of President Lincoln came as a complete shock to the nation, both North and South. Though the news hadn’t reached a lot of people – especially those in rural areas or those directly in the path of the fighting – on the night of April 14, 1865, Confederate General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Union General Ulysses S Grant at the court house in Appomattox County, Virginia five days earlier; in fact, the surrender wasn’t even made official until some sixteen months later, on August 20, 1866. There was a sudden frenzy to display the fallen president and a bidding war of sorts regarding his final resting place. He “belonged” to the people, so surely he would be laid tom rest in the nation’s seat of power, Washington DC; Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd, wanted the body enshrined in Chicago while the citizens of Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln lived and practiced law before ascending to the White House lobbied for his body to be buried in his “home.” Many other cities just wanted to say farewell to the President. All of this led to a two week tour of the major (Northern) cities where the casket was feted and paraded through the massive crowds of well-wishers and gawkers before being opened for a seemingly never-ending line of mourners hoping for just a peek at Lincoln’s corpse. This unprecedented trek came with a litany of unheard of problems (refrigeration was not an option at that time, remember), chief among them was keeping the presidential corpse looking as life-like and delaying the inevitable rot that even an embalmed body goes through. Under the watchful eye of Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, a plan was enacted, which saw the funeral train weave its way through the country, beginning in Baltimore, a Confederate stronghold in a Union state and, coincidentally, the hometown of Lincoln’s killer, actor John Wilkes Booth. Meanwhile, Mary Lincoln refused to vacate the White House (or her room) and refused to let the first family’s youngest son, Tad, leave either. Robert Lincoln, the couple’s oldest son would accompany his father to his final resting place, but the president and Robert would not be the only Lincolns making the journey: Lincoln’s third child, Willie, had died in 1862, while Lincoln occupied the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His remains were disinterred for reburial beside his father. Also along for the journey were an embalmer, Doctor Charles Brown, and an undertaker, Frank Sands, both there to ensure that the decomposition of the president was, at the very least, held at bay for the entirety of the “farewell tour.” This was accomplished by perfume and flowers (to somewhat cover the odor) and actor’s makeup and powder; on May 3, upon arrival in Springfield, Brown discovered that Lincoln’s face had actually turned black. Thomas Lynch, a “courtesy” embalmer was quick to offer a solution: Pancake the president’s face with rouge chalk and amber. In less than 30 minutes, Lynch had applied a thick coat of the make-up on Lincoln’s face so the grieving onlookers wouldn’t be horrified at what had become of their president. An honor guard was on 24-hour duty with the body, even on the train, and Abraham Lincoln’s friend and bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, was still on watchful duty.

VICTORIAN ERA POSTMORTEM FAMILY PHOTO (uncredited photo)

Those two chapters are quite intriguing and, I must admit (even as a Civil War and history buff), they are filled with information and little insights that were new to me. There are, of course, other chapters dealing with funerary customs and traditions. For instance: Though the practice is considered rather morbid today, postmortem photography was quite popular during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Very few people could afford to have a family photo made, but wanting to remember a loved one as they were in life sometimes meant shelling out a rather exorbitant price for one after they were gone. Some of the pictures look quite natural while others are more ghoulish than the family intended. With photographers (and possibly the family of the deceased) wanting the corpse to look as alive as possible, they would prop them up or place them in a position that made them appear to be standing or sitting with their family; some photographers would hand-paint eyes on the face of the dead onto the print. As creepy as all of that sounds, it doesn’t come close to ghost or “spirit” photography. As the story goes, in October 1861, a photographer named William H Mumler was developing some self-portraits and noticed an anomaly on one of the prints: A spectral figure that he identified as a cousin who had died when they were both children. Suddenly, everyone wanted Mumler to photograph them with the hopes of seeing their lost loved one again. As one would expect, the phenomenon didn’t always materialize; it turned out that if you couldn’t afford the exorbitant price charged by the photographer, all you had was a picture of you… no ghost or spirit. However, if you were well-known or well-heeled, amazingly, your loved one was right there with you, a spectral vision from beyond the grave. With Mary Todd Lincoln, leading the way, seances and spiritualism had made a comeback after the Civil War ended and the president was assassinated. It was no surprise, then, that the former First Lady would pay Mister Mumler a visit. Mumler’s scam was eventually discovered, but there still remains some of the earliest examples of the use of trick photography.

MARY TODD LINCOLN WITH THE “SPIRIT” OF HER HUSBAND, CIRCA 1872 (photo credit: WILLIAM H MUMLER)

Other chapters delve into the Victorian Era mourning rituals, many of which influenced how we dealt with – and, in some cases, still deal – with death and survivor’s grief; children and how they were taught to prepare for their own demise; the rise of cemeteries, first in the churchyard and then within the city limits and, finally, outside of the city as urban sprawl began to eat up real estate and the bodies began to pile up (figuratively) and the reek of the decaying flesh started to make everyone else sick (literally). There’s a chapter that covers funeral arrangements, the basic costs and what you do or do not need; for instance, I did not realize that embalming is an “extra” that isn’t really necessary – if the body is going to be planted or roasted within two or three days, most funeral homes have refrigeration units that would keep the body looking fresh until the actual funeral. Actually, there are no laws or regulations – state or federal – that requires a body to be embalmed. The final chapter deals with alternative funerals and unique ways to memorialize the deceased that most of us would never have realized. While this tome does not take death lightly, it is still quite entertaining and very informative for ghoul and non-ghoul alike. Slaughter and Taylor have exhaustively researched the subject matter and their attention to detail shows in the work. DISCONNECTED FROM DEATH is available at americanhauntingsbooks.com and the usual suspects for purchasing such stuff.

LITERARY LICENSE... REVOKED! Non-Fiction Book Reviews | Darren Tracy | June 11, 2024 | Abraham Lincoln American Civil War American Funerals April Slaughter Assassination Books Death DISCONNECTED FROM DEATH Funeral Train Funerary Customs Mary Todd Lincoln Non-Fiction Postmortem Photography Spirit Photography Troy Taylor Victorian Funerals William H Mumler

A HAUNTING IN ATCHISON

THE SALLIE HOUSE DELIVERS THE FRIGHT

THE SALLIE HOUSE (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

I don’t write a travelogue; I have written very little in the way of “Haunted Houses,” traditional or otherwise… the closest I’ve come (other than the occasional film review) was an overview of haunted attractions in Saint Louis that I wrote last century. Plus… even though I love spooky and creepy stuff and have watched more than my fair share of paranormal programming, I remain a devout skeptic. Sure, I’ve encountered things that I have no firm explanation for, but I generally put it off to too much caffeine or too little sleep. So, anyway…

THE SALLIE HOUSE (Historic and paranormal descriptions adorn the walls) (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

Somehow, the Sallie House in Atchison, Kansas has until very recently alluded my eagle eye for really (make that REALLY) haunted locations. When a cousin’s granddaughter (hi, Jameson) found out that I was into the ooky and kinda spooky, she showed me a YouTube video by a couple of guys named Sam Golbach and Colby Brock, Kansas natives who explored the house with rather frightening results. Since, I have been planning a visit there, which – naturally – led to me calling the Atchison Chamber of Commerce and the director overseeing the Sallie House, Jill Thorne. Jill told me that she, too, had been a skeptic until the deaths of her parents, when unexplained experiences began to occur around her. As for the Sallie House, she says that she has had no experiences there… primarily because she refuses to go to the location; she has been twice to the house at 508 North Second Street and, then, only because her position as director dictated that she be there. Anybody visiting the location must sign a waiver absolving the Atchison Chamber of Commerce of any liability in case of any spirit-inflicted injuries. Which begs the question… what has earned the Sallie House the title of “most haunted place in Kansas?”

THE SALLIE HOUSE (A small operating table with tools of the trade and pictures depicting Sallie) (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

Well, here’s the story: At the dawn of the 1900s, the property was occupied by a doctor – living quarters on the second floor, office and examination rooms on the first. A mother, frantic because her six year old daughter had collapsed with extreme abdominal pain, brought the girl to be treated. This is where things get a bit foggy. It was either a sunny day or a dark and stormy night (of course… aren’t they all?). The little girl’s name was Sallie or, the name belonged to the physician’s maid who answered the door. After a quick exam, the doctor determined that the culprit was an inflamed appendix ready to burst. The doctor was either groggy from being woken from a deep sleep or he was in a hurry to remove the appendix before it did burst or he was in a perpetual state of drunkenness; he either fumbled with the bottle of chloroform and dropped it, shattering the glass and losing the contents, leading him to operate on the poor child the old fashioned way (“Hold her down tight. This is going to hurt.”) or, again because of his fear that the offending organ would burst, acted in haste to try to save the youngster. Other stories indicate that the doctor had an affair with his Black maid, the result of which was a daughter; when the daughter became ill, the doctor was too ashamed to take her to the hospital and performed the surgery in his office. Regardless of which (if any) of these stories is true, it is almost a certainty that the child died on the operating table. So… does that mean that the ghost of the little girl is haunting the house, wreaking havoc on all and sundry because she’s upset that she died? Or, is there something more malevolent there?

THE SALLIE HOUSE (Upstairs bedroom where guests leave toys for Sallie to play with) (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

If reports are to be believed, I tend to lean toward the latter. The residence has remained empty since the last tenants moved out in 1993 after experiencing some of the most frightening, painful attacks ever recorded this side of the infamous Lutz home in Amityville, New York. Tony and Debra Pickman spent nearly two years at the home. During those 22 months, Tony was scratched often and tormented in near-demonic fashion the entirety of their time in the Sallie House. Debra wasn’t safe, either, but Tony experienced most of the negative effects, including being pushed down the stairs. While everyone who visits say that they “feel a presence,” most of the violent activity seems to be targeted at males, giving rise to the entity being called a “man-hating spirit.” Most of the current reports from visitors to the house seem to indicate that much of the activity occurs in the basement, where there is a dark spot on the floor that is said to be an attempt to burn off a pentagram painted there, no doubt left by a coven of witches or Satanists (or a bunch of teens perpetuating the myth that ol’ Scratch, the horned beast himself, is on the prowl for fresh souls to steal).

THE SALLIE HOUSE (Atchison Chamber of Commerce director JILL THORNE) (photo credit: DARREN TRACY)

Whether you believe the tales of the haunting of Sallie House or not, the trip and the tour is worth your time. You can visit Monday through Friday (during regular business hours) for a one-hour self tour and try to scare up a spirit or two while revisiting a little bit of Americana in the ancient house. For the truly adventurous, you can schedule an overnight paranormal investigation to really rile up the ghostly and demonic residents of 508 North Second Street. Jill did allow me to tour the house and take the pictures used here and, while she did unlock the door (and pose for the picture above), true to her word, she did not accompany me into the house; in fact, when I asked if she was coming in, her eyes widened and she gave a quick shake of her head before leaving. Did I have any experiences there? Well… no. I did, however, meet a family from De Soto, Kansas who had stories from previous trips, including scratches, unexplained voices and glithcy electronics. After their session was over, I asked Sarah to describe some of the occurrences for a video. While she was explaining some of the camera and recorder malfunctions, I noticed that my phone had stopped recording and, later, as I tried to replay the remainder of the interview, I discovered that it was nearly all gone. Was it the entity of the house messing with us or was it operator error? Either way, I do thank Sarah for taking the time to talk about her experiences and her belief in what may actually be happening in and around the Sallie House.

AMELIA EARHART BIRTHPLACE (223 North Terrace Street) (uncredited photo); SANTA FE DEPOT (200 South Tenth Street) (publicity photo)

Haunted houses (there’s also the 1889 McInteer Villa, among others) aren’t the only reason to visit Atchison. Sitting on the west bank of the Missouri River, it was where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery Expedition disembarked after their journey upriver from Saint Charles, Missouri and began the western trek across this land; if you like to hike (and can dodge traffic), you can actually walk across the river and tell all your friends that you hiked through two states in an afternoon. Atchison is also the original home of the famous Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Rail System and the birthplace of Amelia Earhart, who may or may not still reside in the house she was born in… Hey, we are talking about haunted places, right? Happy haunting, everyone.

Haunted Houses HEY, MA! WATCH THIS LITERARY LICENSE... REVOKED! | Darren Tracy | November 20, 2023 | Amelia Earhart Atchison Chamber of Commerce Atchison Kansas Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Haunted Atchison Haunted House Historic Buildings Jill Thorne Lewis and Clark Museums Paranormal The Sallie House

…AND THE REST: THE DAWN WELLS INTERVIEW

(Part Two of a Two Part Series by Kevin Renick)

Dawn Wells, circa 2014 (publicity photo)

The following interview with Ms Wells was conducted by telephone in Fall 2015 during one of her many publicity jaunts for her latest book, WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO?: A GUIDE TO LIFE. Throughout the chat, Dawn was charming, revealing, appreciative and fun, just the traits you would expect from the gal who created the iconic Mary Ann Summers character on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND. Dawn is seldom wanting for new projects… she’s an actress in multiple mediums, an author, a designer, a brilliant marketer, in demand for special appearances constantly and, as she says, kind of an “adventurer.” She appreciated the essay I wrote about her, and we talked quite a bit about the GILLIGAN days, as well as plenty of other topics.

THE MULE: Hi Dawn. Pleasure to talk to you again! We met some years before in Columbia.

DAWN: Oh, it was probably the Children’s Miracle Network thing?

THE MULE: Yes, indeed. And you were just delightful then, also.

DAWN: Well, what you wrote about me was so lovely. As a fan, you could see the depth of that character and it was really sweet, all the things you said.

THE MULE: I just felt very strongly that you were the heart of the show. You held everything together amidst plotlines that were often preposterous. Not sure anyone else could have done that.

DAWN: That’s the reason that Mary Ann has sustained for so long. And she really has. There are no Mary Ann’s today.

THE MULE: Well, one reason I knew I was onto something with my premise is because I spoke to some female friends about the show and its longevity. And to a one, they said you were their favorite character. Maybe that isn’t so surprising.

DAWN: I’d have been their friend!

THE MULE: Right. Well, let’s talk a bit about your new book, WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO?. What led you to the writing of this book?

WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO? A GUIDE TO LIFE (TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING, 2014)

DAWN: It was the fans! 80% of the men I meet say, “I married a Mary Ann.” Or, “Mary Ann would have been my partner.” You’d have to have been pretty sophisticated to say that as a young man. The grownups say that they married Mary Ann, and they have their kids with them. Which made me think, there is something to this character that still resonates. Then I went into, Why? What is it about her? As funny as it may seem, I was raised by a Mary Ann mother. In Reno, Nevada. Where there’s legal prostitution! As far away from Kansas as you can be! But it was the morality, the manners, the work ethic, that my mother raised me with. And no matter where you are, it doesn’t make any difference. It was my mother’s influence on me. And I was talking to someone recently, I asked, “Why didn’t I run away? Or go out and drink with my buddies or something like that, like the kids are doing today?” And it’s because I respected my mother. And nobody can teach respect. My parents were divorced. And that’s what I talk about in the book. I had two families that loved me. My mother and father… I never heard a negative word from either of them about each other. My dad would say, “I think your mother needs a washing machine… what do you think?” And then she would ask me something. Raising me was the emphasis in their relationship. And again, that depends on the parents. You know, if you come from a bitter home, you’re listening to what’s around you. And I never had any of that. I really was raised to be a “Mary Ann” and there’s something to be said for that. Today, everybody’s in their room with their computer, nobody knows who they’re talking to or what they’re saying. Nobody has dinner together much anymore. And this bullying? I mean, we had a bunch of kids that I’m sure you’d consider the kids you’d bully maybe. Someone wouldn’t be very good at something but… we loved him anyway. We’ve sort of lost that. I thought this book would be maybe for a mom or a dad or a grandma, to sit down with their kids and read it.

THE MULE: That’s all beautifully expressed, Dawn. I think you’ve really hit on some big things there. You’ve been traveling a lot, and I know you’ve appeared in bookstores and on talk shows and stuff. What has been the response – overall – of people, both the fans and the people who interview you?

DAWN: It’s all positive. I don’t think I have ever had a negative interview.

THE MULE: Really?

DAWN: No, I don’t think so. Well maybe, uh, I don’t know. I did an interview on the Howard Stern show years ago.

THE MULE: Oh, no!

DAWN: I always kind of trusted… and he said we’re gonna do it. And I said okay. Well, it was the most embarrassing thing in the whole world. They did a skit where the Skipper had died and (unintelligible), and Mrs. Howell was pregnant and was played by a guy with a hairy chest. Bob (Denver) and I looked at each other like, Do we walk off or do we continue? But then years later, Howard Stern asked me to be on his radio show, and I said to my PR guy yeah, let me sit down with him for an hour. And I turned him around completely. We got through all of the nonsense right at the beginning. And we ended up talking about the difference between female education and male education in school. And the nitty gritty of who Mary Ann is, which we all know…

THE MULE: Lordy, I’d be terrified to think of the kind of stuff Howard Stern COULD have asked you. (we both laugh) Can you relate an incident or two about fan enthusiasm over the years that stood out? Something more than just, “Oh, you were my favorite character.” Where it maybe surprised you in some way.

DAWN: Well, I tend to get a lot of the same reactions. Some 45-year-old guy will come up, and he’ll bring his 10-year-old daughter. And he wants her to listen to Mary Ann, I think. And they’re not gonna be embarrassed by what I would do. I’m not bra-less, wearing a low-cut gown. So I think they have this trust in what I would say… I mean, I’ve had proposals. Uh, well I did have a cute little thing happen with Nick Nolte. I was doing a show for Australia called “The Castaway Correspondent”. I was interviewing all the people in the movies and everything. And the only person who told me they liked Ginger better than Mary Ann was Robin Williams. (laughs) But Nick Nolte said, “Oh my gosh, you got me through puberty in the nicest of ways!”

THE MULE: That’s a pretty good compliment! In my essay about you, I talked about the fact that you were probably the most popular character on GILLIGAN, that both males and females like you the same, which is amazing. How do you put this in perspective, that you got the most fan mail on the show and continued to be the most popular character years after?

The cast of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (Russell Johnson, Alan Hale Junior, Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, Tina Louise, Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer) (publicity photo) — The cast of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND (Russell Johnson, Alan Hale Junior, Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, Tina Louise, Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer) (publicity photo)

DAWN: I really don’t think I was the most popular… I’m sure it would be Gilligan, maybe, or the Skipper. But, I think Mary Ann was relatable. And for you, as a young person growing up watching the show, Ginger was too much! You have to be pretty sophisticated. And Mrs. Howell could have been your grandmother. I think you identified with me because I’d have been your buddy! I’d have been your buddy if I had gone to school with you and you were a guy. I don’t mean to be too modest, but I don’t think it had anything to do with ME. I just think Sherwood Schwartz put these seven people together and took seven personalities… and I think Mary Ann was… I don’t think I carried the show, but she was the center of making everyone pitch in. Y’know, let’s not bully you and let’s get the Skipper on a diet, and make Mister Howell be a little nicer to Mrs. Howell. And I don’t know that it was really in the writing. There were no messages. I think it was the relationships between us all. And there was no jealousy between Mary Ann and Ginger at all!

THE MULE: That’s interesting… that comes up a lot, people wondering about the relationship between you two.

DAWN: I used to think (regarding Tina Louise), gosh, you’re so glamorous. I don’t know, I never had a leopard outfit on before, and I kissed Gilligan and I kissed the Professor and I thought, oh boy, I get to be a girl now. (laughs)

THE MULE: Well, you brought it up, that episode where you played Ginger… what else do you remember about that one? It’s among the most popular with fans, I think. And it showed off your acting chops.

DAWN: Well, she was very sweet, ‘cause she does that little Marilyn Monroe thing with her mouth. That kind of cute little thing… So I’d say, “Now say that again,” so I could kind of imitate her. And I tried to do that. There’s always a Ginger and Mary Ann question, so you’d assume there would be a competition between us. But Ginger… had never had a Thanksgiving dinner! And she said to me… I’m a pretty good cook and my mother is, too… and she said to me, I don’t know if it was our second or third year, but she said, “Would you mind teaching me how to make a Thanksgiving dinner?” And I said “I’d love that!” So she came to my house, and she sat on a stool with a pencil and paper, and my mother did all the shopping. We chopped all the onions and the celery… and she sat there and took notes. And I don’t know if she ever did it. Eight or nine years later, maybe even later, because she had a daughter by that point. And I met Caprice (Crane, Ms Louise’s daughter). And Caprice said to me, “You know how much I love that story about Thanksgiving, how you taught her how to do it?” And I would not have thought Tina would have embraced it that much!

Tina Louise and Dawn Wells in GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (video still) — Tina Louise and Dawn Wells in GILLIGAN’S ISLAND (video still)

THE MULE: That’s a great story! So, there wasn’t any rivalry between you and Tina on the show? Was that just a made-up thing from the fans?

DAWN: I think the fans, at a certain point, decided they had to make a choice, which was silly. Tina was a big movie star. I had just been in the business a couple of years. She’d done GOD’S LITTLE ACRE with Rock Hudson and she’d been on Broadway. She was a beauty. I remember, we started wearing false eyelashes and Tina ordered them from New York. They were $25 a pair. And they were mink. Well, I didn’t know anything about things like that! I watched her… she was very conscious of only wanting to be photographed from the left side. She was very conscious of how she looked best and everything. And I kind of learned a lot from that! She had the experience, I didn’t.

THE MULE: Did you ever get to have input about Mary Ann’s dialogue or story lines on the show?

DAWN: No. No. I don’t think anybody did… Gilligan might have, a little. But we had good writers, and you all had to just stick to the ridiculous plots. I just did what they told me to do, and read the lines.

THE MULE: There’s a particular episode different friends have mentioned, the one where you did a musical version of HAMLET, which was kind of surreal. What do you remember about that one?

DAWN: Oh, yeah. I didn’t really realize until a few years ago, Phil Silvers was our guest star, and I didn’t realize he helped finance the pilot! Sherwood Schwartz and Gladysya Productions. Not until about six months ago did I realize that Gladysya was Phil Silvers! But no, that was fun. That was quite extensive, what they did with the costumes and everything for that one.

THE MULE: I have a friend who, to this day, if I bring up that episode, she’ll break into one of the songs. They stick in your mind!

DAWN: (singing one of the tunes herself) “Neither a borrower nor a lender be!”

THE MULE: Well, you certainly created something very iconic. No doubt about it. So many memorable episodes. What about you and the other cast members? I know you got along really well with Russell Johnson. I loved you two together. You had great chemistry.

Dawn Wells with Russell Johnson and Bob Denver (uncredited photo)

DAWN: I think we did, too. And we always laughed in that first year about ” …and the rest” (the theme song for the show the first year said ” …and the rest” instead of crediting Wells and Johnson). We’d send each other cards saying “Love, the Rest” for Christmas and birthdays, stuff like that. Bob (Denver) was very private. Very private. He had a lot of children, and he’d come in looking exhausted. There was a childlike soul in Bob. I was one of the few people he allowed in his home. Um, allowed is not the right word. Alan (Hale) was the same size as my dad. So, every time Alan hugged me, he picked me up half off the floor. So there was this big robust, jovial human being there. And he was a good cook. And Natalie (Schafer) and I were very close, especially in later years. I was the least close, probably, to Jim (Backus). I think Jim and Tina were very close, I think they both had that kind of movie star/Hollywood life, which I never did. But Natalie didn’t have any children, and towards the end she confided a lot of things to me. We really were a tight knit cast, though, and I think that shows. I think the charm of the show was that you could kind of tell we all liked each other.

THE MULE: Yes, I agree. There had to be a reason why the show was so popular and never went off the air. Some people don’t realize that, that it has always been on the air, somewhere. People of a certain age still view it with such love and fondness. What’s it like to be part of something so iconic, that people feel such nostalgia for now?

DAWN: You know, it translates easily, into all these other languages. Because you don’t really have to understand any PLOT particularly. And I can’t go anywhere in the world without being recognized. My favorite story… I’m in the Solomon Islands… (she says something about a knee replacement) I’m not an athlete but, I’m an adventurer. Stephens College… went with some of my Stephens College friends to Rwanda, we climbed up to see the gorillas. And I went with five other Stephens women to the Solomon Islands, where no white women have ever been. There was no running water, and no electricity. We had a photographer who had married a Solomon Island girl, so he said, “I’ll take you around.” And, as we canoed up to an island, the chief – his family had been chief for nine generations. And they were all in huts, up on stilts. No running water, no electricity. And he had a little greeting for us. So these young kids did a little dance and as we canoed up to the island, the chief’s wife looked at me and said “I know you.” And I went “WHAT? What are you talking about?” She said “I was on the island of Honiara (capital of the Solomon Islands), in 1979, going to nursing school. And I used to come home and watch you in black and white.” In the middle of the Pacific Ocean!

THE MULE: Oh, I can’t believe it. You must have absolutely fallen over!

DAWN: I almost dropped dead! And then the other thing was, we were probably in production for four or five weeks and Sherwood came in with the Coast Guard. Six or seven big mucky-mucks from the Coast Guard. And we stopped filming for a minute or so. And he said “The Coast Guard has something to say to you all.” And I don’t know what the ranks are in the Coast Guard, but the guy said, “We have received several telegrams saying there are seven people stranded in the Pacific Ocean. Why can’t you find them?” Some people believe everything!

Dawn Wells as the giant's maid in the GILLIGAN'S ISLAND episode, V For Vitamins (video still) — Dawn Wells as the giant’s maid in the GILLIGAN’S ISLAND episode, V For Vitamins (video still)

THE MULE: Amazing, truly. Even though the show was a huge hit in syndication, you guys didn’t really get to share in the profits at all, right?

DAWN: Not a dime. I was just talking to Bob Denver’s wife recently and she said, “It just makes me so angry.” We’ve never been off the air, and in how many languages around the world. And we haven’t had one nickel from it! Sherwood Schwartz, I was told, made $90 million on the reruns of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND alone. He could have split it between the seven of us, maybe given us a million, but nope.

THE MULE: And there’s no lawyer out there clever enough to remedy the situation now, maybe?

DAWN: No, ‘cause a lot of other shows have tried that, like F TROOP and stuff like that. But it’s been tried. And that was the contract! That’s what it was. And Jim Backus used to get so angry, like “Hey, you took the part! You knew there weren’t any things along that line.” And how do you go back? You can’t be bitter, that’s stupid. We wouldn’t be known for who we were… so that’s a plus.

THE MULE: Did I read somewhere that a pair of your shorts from the show will be in the Smithsonian?

Dawn Wells as Mary Ann in that classic two-piece outfit (video still)

DAWN: They’ve asked me. They want them. And I don’t know whether to do that. I have a family foundation and we have funded a children’s museum in Reno… we are tied to the Smithsonian. So I was going to the Smithsonian a couple of years ago and he was pulling out all the costumes from THE WIZARD OF OZ, and they’re all in drawers! I mean, they come out once in a while and display them, but… I don’t know that I want my shorts to be in drawers! I think maybe some fan would rather have them. I still have them, so I don’t know what I’m going to do.

THE MULE: Well, they’re famous! Your shorts, as I mentioned in my essay, came years before the Catherine Bach “daisy dukes” from the DUKES OF HAZZARD, which got so much attention. So, I don’t think you got enough credit!

DAWN: I had to cover my navel, though. I helped design them… I tried to make my legs look longer by making them go up on the sides, and my torso looked longer so I dipped it down on the side but I still had to have that little rise in front so you wouldn’t see my navel!

THE MULE: Still a conversation piece all these years later! Can you just mention a couple of your favorite theatre roles through the years? I know you were in THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT. I think I told you that my brother Kyle produced the first version of STEEL MAGNOLIAS in New York, a show you were in elsewhere.

Dawn Wells in THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT, circa 1969 (publicity still)

DAWN: I was not in the New York production, but boy, I love that play. I played Ouiser.(in the Judson Theatre Company production in North Carolina). I did LION IN WINTER. I’m doing a play in Jacksonville, and I’ve been looking at some other things. I just asked the Dramatists Workshop if they ever thought of doing SLEUTH with two women. It took us a long time to get two women to do THE ODD COUPLE. I’m always challenged. I don’t know, THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT was about as far from Mary Ann as you could be. However, I gave her the heart of gold. I made her a nice person. I’m always up for a challenge. I’m doing LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE again in Laguna Beach. I’ve had some funny things happen. I was doing OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT at the Barn Dinner Theatre in Dallas, and we had to run down the aisle to the dressing rooms to change clothes. And some guy grabbed me around the thigh, and put me on his lap! (laughing) And of course, it’s black out… y’know, you gotta be changing costumes, and I’m trying to get his hands off me! It was quite an experience.

THE MULE: Wow, that’s a good one. And you’ve also done a fair number of movies… which one was the best experience for you?

DAWN: WINTERHAWK. Because it was so incredibly beautiful, and I had been working with such professional character actors. And we were really in the snow. I mean, I had on pantyhose over my long underwear, and I was bareback on the horse, trying to go up the Rocky Mountains. And my little horse had just a little tuft of his mane. And we started up the hill and my pantyhose would slide back towards the tail. And I tried to grab ahold of his mane. And about a week into it, I said to the director, “Charlie! All the Indians have saddles under their blankets. Why can’t I have a saddle?” He said “It’s too late now, I put ya there without one.” But you really got to have that feeling… and Michael Dante was a wonderful actor in the role… I think that was my favorite. (She also mentions the horror movie THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, which was based on a true story and conjured suspense for both the cast and viewers)

THE MULE: Anything else you are working on now that you’d like to mention?

DAWN: I’ve been looking at some plays that I could do, now that I’m more mature. I could do GIN GAME and a few things like that. I’m also in the midst of a cookbook. And, I’ve been asked to do a radio show. And I’d really, really like a radio show, so I am contemplating that… what could be my theme, what could I talk about? I like fans that call in, and having conversations. We’ll be talking seriously about that.

THE MULE: (we talk a little about growing older, and I relate the story of my song “Up In the Air” for the George Clooney movie of the same name, and how I have harbored different impulses myself.)

DAWN: See, isn’t that wonderful. That’s what I always say, you know, “why give up?” Everybody has something to offer in this world, you just gotta do something about it!”

THE MULE: Well Dawn, you have managed to create such good will and a lasting impact from what could have been a less substantial role, and I just admire that so much. Any look at the internet shows how much fans love you. And you’ve managed to stay so positive and accessible through the years. Not every star does.

DAWN: It’s not very hard to be loved. (laughs) I certainly appreciate the admiration. I mean, If you were a secretary somewhere, and somebody was saying, “You did the best job, or you wrote the best blah blah blah,” you’d sort of feel flattered. I do feel flattered, but I also feel a connection. I guess, you know, when you find that many people that… fathers with kids, and passing that down, there must be something connecting us somehow. And I love people. maybe it’s the way I was raised. I don’t know. I wouldn’t change my life.

THE MULE: You preserved something on that show for all time, creating such a lovable character. Something you did transcended the limits of a silly half-hour television show, that’s for sure.

DAWN: Well I wonder, was it the dialogue? Was it my presenting the dialogue? Was it just because I was cast as that character? I don’t know. You can’t put your finger on it..

Two of our favorite things, Dawn Wells and the Monkeemobile (uncredited photo)

Dawn Wells is currently appearing at the Fanboy Expo in Nashville, Tennessee through May 15. Her book WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO? is available in bookstores and at Dawn’s website now. You can also keep up-to-date with her upcoming appearances at the site. GILLIGAN’S ISLAND continues its syndication run everywhere, and is probably a popular show on distant planets in outer space by now.

Actor/Creator Features/Interviews Book Features/Author Interviews DVD/Blu-Ray HEY, MA! WATCH THIS Television | Kevin Renick | May 13, 2016 | Actor Feature Alan Hale Junior Author Feature Bob Denver Books Classic Television Comedy Dawn Wells DVD/Blu-Ray Gilligan GILLIGAN'S ISLAND Ginger Grant Ginger Or Mary Ann? Jim Backus Mary Ann Summers Movies Natalie Schafer Non-Fiction Phil Silver Russell Johnson Sherwood Schwartz Television The Howells The Professor The Skipper Tina Louise WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO?

DAWN WELLS: A TRIBUTE TO THE ENDURING SWEETHEART FROM, Y’KNOW, THAT ’60S SHOW

(Part One of a Two Part Series by KEVIN RENICK)

Dawn Wells as Mary Ann Summers in GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (video still) — Dawn Wells as Mary Ann Summers in GILLIGAN’S ISLAND (video still)

Ginger or Mary Ann? It’s a simple question featuring the names of two girls, and the debate behind it, along with all kinds of underlying implications, not only continues to this day but represents an utterly singular phenomenon in pop culture. The question refers, of course, to the two comely actresses who held baby boomers in their pulchritudinous grip on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, a sitcom about a “three-hour tour” in the Pacific that essentially never left the air after its three-year run came to an end in 1967. Ginger was Ginger Grant, played by Tina Louise; the character was a movie star and glamour girl patterned more than a little after Marilyn Monroe. Mary Ann (Summers) was portrayed by Dawn Wells as the definitive “girl next door” type: Sweet, approachable and down to Earth. Why did this question about the two iconic portrayals gain such traction? Why are there multiple articles about it on the net, including a hilarious point/counterpoint essay on the RetroCrush web site that goes into great detail about why EACH lady deserves to win the argument? What could be so significant about a mere question of preference for certain kinds of women that it caused almost the entire male population of television viewers to immediately take a stand, bonding with those who agreed with their choice and driven to rag on those who didn’t? There may be more intriguing or important questions out there when it comes to pop culture history, but I can’t think of another show or even ANY other entertainment medium that gave rise to such an enduring debate about two women. That deserves some recognition, for sure, in a culture that loves polls and “hall of fame” type debates.

So then, Ginger or Mary Ann? Well, I am proud to say I’ve always been completely, totally in the Mary Ann camp. As a baby boomer, GILLIGAN’S ISLAND was one of the shows I never missed growing up; it was an essential part of my childhood. Dawn Wells was the first actress I ever developed a crush on; it was a rather immediate thing, even in the first season of the show when it was in black and white. I’ve run into many guys of a certain age that said the same thing. The easygoing charm and friendliness of Wells’ Mary Ann was arguably the heart of a sitcom that stuffier critics would often ridicule because of the absurd plots. Few of us ever analyzed the plots; we just loved the good fun of the show, the chemistry of the cast, and the pleasure of watching our favorite characters do their thing in each subsequent episode. For me, that meant Mary Ann, followed by Russell Johnson’s charismatic and brilliant Professor (only in one episode did we learn that his actual name was Roy Hinkley), and then poor besotten Bob Denver as Gilligan. There was a familiarity about GILLIGAN’S ISLAND and especially watching it in endless reruns that kept you tied to a vision of simpler, happier times. The castaways became like an extended family. It may have been just an innocuous sitcom, but Dawn Wells, in particular, did something worth examining on the show – she created a female character so fetching, so warm and caring, and so REAL, that millions of fans fell in love with her. Quite early on, the fan mail coffers started filling up more for Dawn than any of her co-stars, and once the “Ginger vs. Mary Ann” debate started in earnest, Dawn almost always came out ahead (with the arguable exception perhaps being polls that appeared in a few men’s magazines). You can find polls and “lists of faves” all over the internet, but we’ll just mention one from the entertainment site, imdb.com. When the question was put to a vote (even asking for other preferences in TV gals; it was phrased as “Ginger or Mary Ann or… “), Mary Ann was the solid winner out of 3200+ respondents, with 652 votes. Barbara Eden of I DREAM OF JEANNIE, not dissimilar in her overall aesthetic, came in second place, with 418 votes. Where was Ginger? Way down in 6th place, with 218 votes.

GINGER OR MARY ANN? (Dawn Wells and Tina Louise... the debate continues) (video still) — GINGER OR MARY ANN? (Dawn Wells and Tina Louise… the debate continues) (video still)

Let’s face it, we like our stars, and we like falling in love with characters from TV shows and movies. It’s part of the escapism that’s really quite necessary to get through life. Dawn Wells became one of the true touchstones on television to embody the concept of “the girl next door.” How she portrayed the endearing Kansas farm girl Mary Ann was to bring her huge, lasting fame and launch a million fantasies and discussions about “desirability” that would utterly transcend producer Sherwood Schwartz’s initial hopes for his unpretentious little TV show. These things can’t be planned or predicted. Audiences do their own thing (especially so in the pre-internet age), and the march of time ultimately determines who wins the popularity contests. Countless actresses earned male admiration and substantial fan bases through the years, but it takes a special combination of circumstances to make someone an icon, a hall of famer, a list topper. The kind of star fans will flock to every appearance for, or write impassioned letters to, year after year after year. Dawn Wells somehow made ALL of that happen, on a TV show that critics thought would fail right away and that was never considered a classic. So, let’s take a look at how she did it, and celebrate a lovely, vibrant woman who has been able to enjoy the fruits of her achievement for many years now.

MARY ANN, THE APPROACHABLE “FRIEND”

It’s not a put-down to say that almost everyone on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND was a bit of a caricature or exaggeration. Bob Denver’s Gilligan, though well-meaning, was always messing things up and preventing rescues; NO ONE would screw up that much in real life. The Skipper, played by Alan Hale Junior, was a commanding if often blustery presence, and spent an inordinate amount of time reacting to Gilligan’s screw-ups. The Professor made too many improbable creations out of crude elements on the island and came up with all sorts of far-flung solutions to problems faced by the castaways. There was likely not much resemblance to any real life scenarios in what he did on that island week after week, but let’s acknowledge just how charismatic and energetic Russell Johnson’s performance was; he deserved more credit than he got. How patently bizarre that the first season’s theme song said “and the rest” instead of naming “the professor and Mary Ann,” something corrected in subsequent seasons. It might’ve made more sense if the lyric said “and the BEST,” since Wells and Johnson were arguably just that. Continuing, though… Ginger? Way too much of a stereotypical “glamorous actress” type, with, again, too many Marilyn Monroe-isms, even if Tina Louise was a game and devoted actress with the part she was given. The Howells? Silly, exaggerated rich people caricatures, though you can hardly fault the quirky and enjoyable acting of Jim Backus and Natalie Schaefer.

Dawn Wells in leopard skin dress, from the GILLIGAN'S ISLAND episode, "The Second Ginger Grant" (video still) — Dawn Wells in leopard skin dress, from the GILLIGAN’S ISLAND episode, “The Second Ginger Grant” (video still)

That brings us to Dawn Wells. Not only was she a totally believable character, with her earnest attempts to help her fellow castaways figure things out and her easygoing charm, she transcended the limitations of the show in almost every way by acting and talking like someone you know or would WANT to know. She was a friend to all. She was tender and caring. She was sometimes motherly, sometimes sweetly innocent, sometimes vulnerable in the most beguiling of ways. I truly think Mary Ann was the genuine heart of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND – the character who provided the most balance and real-life levity. She tended to dole out the lion’s share of reassurance and hope. Her good nature and steadfast loyalty provided forward momentum for a show based on a wacky premise. And emotionally, Mary Ann responded believably to a wide range of situations, her eyes sparkling with vitality and eager curiosity, befuddlement or straightforward concern and empathy. Dawn Wells was a fine actress to accomplish all this; if she was perhaps playing a version of herself, well, it had to take amazing discipline and yes, acting chops, to maintain that level of sweet, affable charm throughout the preposterous scenarios the castaways had to endure. And let’s also acknowledge some of the sassy, sexy moments Dawn gave us on the show. Her physical beauty may have been less showcased, or less “in your face” than Tina Louise’s, but that only made it more distinctive and subtly mesmerizing at times. Who could forget the episode where the girls create a singing group called the Honeybees to compete against fictional pop stars the Mosquitos? One of those “honeybees” generates more BUZZ than the others, and you can guess who it is. Or how about the episode where Mary Ann gets knocked unconscious and wakes up thinking she is Ginger? It’s quite a kick watching Mary Ann wear all her rival’s showy outfits. And there’s the memorable “beauty contest” episode, where the all-knowing Professor promotes Mary Ann as his candidate for “most beautiful woman on the island,” priming her in the important art of showcasing her beauty and talent in different areas. (Professor and Mary Ann ‘shippers must’ve delighted in this scenario.) For the record, Mary Ann’s leggy tap-dancing display would’ve been the most memorable thing in that contest were it not for the glue placed on stage by rivals’ supporters. Every fan can name their favorite episodes and moments, but for me, what Dawn Wells brought to the show was crucial, game-changing. I’d be willing to bet that if you went out and asked a bunch of GI fans who was the heart of the show, the majority of them would probably say Dawn Wells. That says a great deal about a show that started out with such a simple, oft-ridiculed premise.

THOSE LEGS, THOSE LEGS!

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (Dawn Wells) (publicity photo) — GILLIGAN’S ISLAND (Dawn Wells) (publicity photo)

Here’s a fun fact that is likely only meaningful to male viewers, but for a show that made such a big deal out of having a sex symbol/glamorous actress in the cast, it’s the sweet girl next door who eventually earned a permanent place in the “Legs Hall of Fame” (especially once the internet came along and allowed for endless scrutiny and analysis of, well, every star EVER). Between Sherwood Schwartz’s amiable open-mindedness and Dawn Wells’ evident desire to set herself apart from Tina Louise, the decision was made early on to feature Dawn in the shortest shorts ever to appear on a TV show at the time. They wouldn’t let her show her navel due to absurd censorship standards then in existence, but boy, they let her show her legs, in tiny shorts cut high on the thigh. I would posit that it was the combination of Mary Ann’s sweet innocence and her continual display of leggy beauty that put her over the top with male viewers. These days we don’t think that much about a star merely wearing “hot pants” or other skimpy outfits on their show. It’s commonplace. But in the mid-‘60s, this was groundbreaking stuff. If I’m not mistaken, a pair of Dawn Wells’ shorts is even headed for the Smithsonian. Sure, she also wore that omnipresent gingham dress and a handful of far more conservative outfits, but it’s the shorts that made the biggest impression with fans. And there were other leg-baring outfits such as the maid uniform she wore in the “Gilligan and the Beanstalk” episode and the short yellow dress from the above mentioned beauty contest, an outfit that she donned again in the “radioactive vegetables” episode. Remember that one? When the Professor tells everyone they need to keep walking and exercising to offset the negative effects of eating radioactive crops, Dawn starts pacing around in that hard-to-ignore outfit. At one point, she complains to the Skipper that she’s too tired and can’t keep walking. “I haven’t got your legs!” she complains. “It’s a good thing you don’t, Mary Ann, or you wouldn’t be able to fit into those shorts,” the Skipper slyly replies. That was one of the few times that Mary Ann’s attire was even acknowledged on the show. But, let it be said that, through the wonders of syndication and endless repeats, hardcore fans got to know every outfit of Mary Ann’s. Who could forget the short little white number she only wore in two or three episodes, including the infamous “vampire” episode (early syndication runs angered some fans by cutting various scenes to accommodate more commercials; one such scene featured Mary Ann and Ginger fighting off a bat until the Professor comes to the rescue. Thankfully, the DVDs and later syndication runs restored the scene). That girly-style frock was also worn by Dawn in the “Tongo, the Ape Man” episode that featured actor Denny Miller as an actor preparing for his role as, well, an ape man. So, yeah, Dawn had legs, and she knew how to use ’em. If we’re talking about the history of women on television, and the evolution of the medium in showcasing female beauty, Dawn Wells pretty much deserves an entire chapter. Giggle all you want, but she wore the shorts noticed ’round the world. Anything that’s a first has relevance and deserves to be mentioned, and appreciated. Ms. Wells gave us a first on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND. With freshness, ease and undeniable sex appeal. Take THAT, Ginger!

THIS IS HOW A STAR SHINES!

STEEL MAGNOLIAS featuring Dawn Wells (theater card for Judson Theatre's 2014 production) — STEEL MAGNOLIAS featuring Dawn Wells (theater card for Judson Theatre’s 2014 production)

The annals of stardom are littered with the cases of performers who couldn’t handle their fame, stars who became bitter due to typecasting, or who succumbed to substance abuse or other destructive behavior. Rare is the star, especially one who rose to fame on a single show or movie, that consistently handles their fame with grace and puts it to good use. Of all the “castaways” from GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, Dawn Wells seemed most grateful for her success and most determined to make it count. Professionally, she did a ton of theatre (THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT and STEEL MAGNOLIAS were among her credits in that realm), and acted in various – mostly low-budget – films such as WINTERHAWK, THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, RETURN TO BOGGY CREEK, SUPER SUCKER and CYBER MELTDOWN, as well as three GILLIGAN’S ISLAND reunion movies for television, the weirdest of which was THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS ON GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, actually quite entertaining if you’ve had a few drinks. Dawn has written two books: MARY ANN’S GILLIGAN’S ISLAND COOKBOOK, and the new WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO? A GUIDE TO LIFE, which she has been promoting with bookstore and media appearances for the past year or more. In Idaho, Dawn runs Wishing Wells Collections, an organization that makes clothing for individuals with limited mobility. She also helps her pal, Dreama Denver (Bob Denver’s wife), with the Denver Foundation charity.

Dawn Wells at a 2014 book signing for WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO? (photo credit: MICHAEL TULLBERG/GETTY IMAGES)

But you can read her career stats anywhere on the web. The more important thing to say about Dawn is that she has been fan-friendly to a fault. She has never expressed resentment or even mixed feelings about her GILLIGAN stint; instead, she’s talked about those years with gratitude and the kind of intuitive understanding seemingly beyond the ability of some stars. Dawn appreciates her fans and talks enthusiastically about meeting them all over the world (even relating the tale of a native on a remote island—imagine THAT—recognizing the actress when she was vacationing). She acknowledges the tons of fan mail she gets and answers a good deal of it. She makes autographed photos and other merchandise available on her own web site for modest prices. And, in interview after interview, the divine Ms W talks about the fun she had on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, the reasons why Mary Ann was so popular, and how grateful she was for the whole experience. She even talks about the significance of her shorts with humor and verve. I’ve met quite a few people over the years who were Dawn Wells fans and had the privilege of meeting her at some point. To a person, they state how kind and friendly she was and how appreciative of anything they shared about their fondness for her portrayal of Mary Ann. THAT’S a star. Dawn Wells may not have fully escaped the shadow of GI in terms of subsequent work in the entertainment business, but she has demonstrated, consistently, that she’s at peace with her fame from the show, continuing to work in different media through the years, charming reporters and media types any time she does an interview, and essentially using her fame to keep moving forward while giving fans an ongoing opportunity to connect with her and express their appreciation for what she did on “that show.” Honestly, there just aren’t that many stars of cult TV shows or movies who have so consistently conducted themselves with class and grace, and so openly expressed appreciation for their career path, even if tied to a show with less than stellar critical praise. It’s pretty damn impressive. Dawn Wells could give seminars to fellow celebrities on how to handle fame with true style. And it’s pretty magical how fans seem to light up wherever she goes. She knows that she made an impact with her portrayal of Mary Ann Summers. And she makes it truly FUN to be a fan. That is not necessarily the norm in the entertainment business…

The cast of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (Russell Johnson, Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Bob Denver, Tina Louise, Alan Hale Junior, Dawn Wells) (publicity photo) — The cast of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND (Russell Johnson, Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Bob Denver, Tina Louise, Alan Hale Junior, Dawn Wells) (publicity photo)

It’s strangely ironic that Dawn Wells and Tina Louise are the only surviving members of the GILLIGAN cast. With Russell Johnson’s death last year, the two rival actresses are the only ones left to talk about those halcyon ’60s television adventures, and Tina sure ain’t talkin’ much. In fact, she often sounds indignant and embarrassed when the subject of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND comes up. But to the pleasure of many, Dawn IS talking. She surfaces regularly when she has a project to promote, continues to act, and keeps providing plenty of opportunities for fans to enjoy images of the Mary Ann character and fresh insights into the cast and the show. Dawn could’ve been like so many other stars and simply shunned her past. But even into the latter years of her career, she has proved she is SPECIAL. She’s just one of those strong, confident, charming stars that handles it well. She has a good life because of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, and it hasn’t stopped her from doing a damn thing. Nope, Ms Wells is on the move, and her fans will follow her anywhere.

Mary Ann or Ginger? Personally I think it’s no contest. When you grow up loving a star, you want to believe they are genuine, caring, accessible and able to talk about their fame in a way that makes you glad you contributed to it. Dawn Wells does all that and more. She’s assured a permanent spot in the “America’s Sweetheart Hall of Fame.” Read her book. Watch those old episodes of GILLIGAN. Marvel at how composed and genuine she is when interviewed or chatting with fans. This is a gal more than worthy of admiration and boomer fan-ship. Just sit right back and you’ll hear her tales. She’s not just “the rest” (thankfully, Bob Denver helped rectify that absurdity). She’s genuinely the BEST, the girl who, in whatever capacity she affected you, was destined never to leave your memory. We all need a little Mary Ann in our lives.

Actor/Creator Features/Interviews Book Features/Author Interviews DVD/Blu-Ray HEY, MA! WATCH THIS Television | Kevin Renick | May 12, 2016 | Actor Feature Alan Hale Junior Author Feature Bob Denver Books Classic Television Comedy Dawn Wells DVD/Blu-Ray Gilligan GILLIGAN'S ISLAND Ginger Grant Ginger Or Mary Ann? Jim Backus Mary Ann Summers Movies Natalie Schafer Non-Fiction Russell Johnson Television The Howells The Professor The Skipper Tina Louise WHAT WOULD MARY ANN DO?

DOING TIME ON PLANET SLADE: THE PAUL SLADE INTERVIEW

PART ONE: THE INTRODUCTION

UNPREPARED TO DIE (Paul Slade) (photo copyright: ALEX WINN/awheadshots.com)

One look at Paul Slade’s web-site (Planet Slade) is all you’ll need to understand the author of the new tome, UNPREPARED TO DIE: AMERICA’S GREATEST MURDER BALLADS AND THE TRUE CRIME STORIES THAT INSPIRED THEM. You will see that Paul is not only one of the busiest men in the realm of journalistic endeavor, he is also one of the most inquisitive; that innate need to know has taken the man down some very dark backroads and alleys, into the sewers of London and the very bowels of England’s Parliament; that need to know has forced this gentle being to explore the warped psyches of criminals and vicious murderers. The time and effort put into researching the subject matter for his essays (which fall into three basic categories: “Murder Ballads,” “Secret London” and “Miscellany,” which Slade describes as “anything else I damn well feel like including”) is a full time job in itself; turning that research into entertaining pieces on significant or historic events is an art form. Working and living on Planet Slade led Paul to the idea of turning the “Murder Ballads” page of the site into a book on the subject. And, now, without further ado, we’re off to visit Planet Slade to discuss, among other things, Paul’s new book (the interview was conducted via e-mail; Iv’e kept intact the original English spellings from Paul’s replies)…

PART TWO: THE INTERVIEW

THE MULE: Paul, thanks for the great book and for taking the time to answer a few questions. First, let’s get into a bit of personal history. You’ve been a journalist for nearly 35 years. What led you down this path? Where did you start your journalistic career and what were the first stories you covered?

PAUL: When I finished my Business Studies degree in 1980, I had no idea at all how I wanted to make a living. The Watergate affair of the early 1970s had left me with a rather romantic view of journalism and I’d always enjoyed writing, so that was one of the very few areas that appealed to me, but I had no idea how to go about making that dream a reality. Then I stumbled across the media recruitment ads which THE GUARDIAN carried once a week and realised for the first time that it was possible to apply for entry-level reporters’ jobs on magazines and newspapers all over the UK.

I spent the next six months or so applying for any job in that section that looked remotely feasible and eventually struck lucky at CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST, a weekly trade magazine for retail pharmacists. They took me on to write a couple of pages of business news every week and that’s where I got my start. I was reporting company results, industry rows, boardroom changes and that kind of thing. The editor there drilled the basics of good journalistic practice into all his young team, so it proved a very good foundation.

I spent four years on C&D, then got a job on a new launch called MONEY MARKETING, which took off very rapidly and won several awards. That led to some freelancing for the nationals’ personal finance sections and the occasional bit of freelance music writing. Gradually, I managed to shift my output more towards the popular culture journalism I really wanted to do, and PlanetSlade followed in 2009.

THE MULE: I’ve been listening to music – including several of the songs chronicled in UNPREPARED TO DIE – for a very long time and, I must admit, the term “Murder Ballad” was unknown to me until Johnny Cash’s AMERICAN RECORDINGS version of “Delia’s Gone.” Can you give the readers a quick definition of the term and a brief history of the oral and lyrical traditions involved?

PAUL: I suppose a murder ballad would be any song which tells the story of an unlawful homicide – whether that story is fact, fiction or a mixture of the two. That’s a very wide field, though and I knew I’d have to adopt a tighter definition for my own work if I was ever going to do more than scratch the surface of any given song. Hence, I limit myself to those songs which tell the story of an identifiable real murder. I also decided to concentrate on songs which had been covered many times by many different artists, as these varying interpretations add an interesting extra dimension to the song’s history.

I always envisage this process as roping off a single square of turf in an enormous meadow and digging down as deep as I can in that one area alone. If I tried to excavate the entire meadow, I’d never penetrate more than an inch or two below the surface, which would not be very satisfying for either me or my readers.

Although the word’s used much more loosely these days, a ballad is actually a strict poetic form with its own rules – just as a sonnet or a limerick is. The basic structure is provided by alternating three-beat and four-beat lines, with the second and fourth lines of each verse rhyming. The opening verse of “Knoxville Girl” is a good example and here it is with the beats marked:

I met a little girl in Knoxville,

That town we all know well,

And every Sunday evening,

Out at her house I’d dwell.

The ballad form is fairly bursting with narrative momentum, which makes it an excellent way of telling a story. In the case of that “Knoxville Girl” verse, we’re only four lines into the song, but the story’s already well underway and we’re anxious to find out what happens next. The words’ steady rhythm means they’re half-musical already and easy to remember, so small wonder written ballad verses are so often transformed into songs. Whether used by the gutter poets of the Victorian age or by great artists like Coleridge and Wilde, the ballad form is irresistible.

Murder stories aren’t the only ones ballads tell, of course, but it’s only natural that this form should have been selected when 17th, 18th and 19th century British people had a murder tale to tell. Printed ballad sheets telling the killer’s story were sold at public hangings all over Britain until around 1850 and sometimes sung by the sellers to advertise their wares. The most popular sheets sold well over two million copies.

Folk singers have always loved the ballad form too, and are never happier than when a good juicy murder is the ballad’s subject. Traditional songs like these are polished by each new generation of singers which adopt them, constantly editing the song till only the core of the story and its most memorable images remain.

Many of the classic American murder ballads have their roots in much older British songs recording real murders. Early settlers took these songs with them across the Atlantic, later adapting them to their new surroundings. “Knoxville Girl” traces directly back to a British ballad called “The Bloody Miller,” which was written around 1683. “Pretty Polly” began life as a British ballad called “The Gosport Tragedy,” which dates back to the first half of the 19th century. In their new Americanised form, these songs retain not only their ballad structure, but also much of the language and imagery coined by their original versions – sometimes word-for-word.

Just as happened in Britain, the American songs were taken from town to town by travelling musicians. Home-grown American ballads could be used to spread news from one isolated rural community to another. This was a time long before radio, remember, when even those people who could read might have access to a newspaper only on their monthly trips to the nearest town. Ballads were sung to tell all kinds of stories, but a good sensational murder always been hard to beat for grabbing the audience’s attention. Murder songs’ appeal springs from the same quirk in human nature which makes us watch cop shows on TV or read true crime stories in tabloid newspapers.

THE MULE: How much of your previous work can be seen as a genesis for the material in UNPREPARED TO DIE and on your website, planetslade.com? Where did your interest in the murder ballad genre originate? Which song, in particular, fueled that interest?

PAUL: I’d done odd bits of writing for the music press before turning my attention to murder ballads, but nothing that involved analysing individual songs in any depth. That’s about the extent of the heritage as far as subject matter is concerned. More important were the skills and good habits I’d picked up in journalism of all kinds. This work had taught me the importance of getting my facts right, given me the research experience to chase those facts down and allowed me to hone my writing to a point where I could articulate exactly what I wanted to say in a clear, gripping and entertaining way.

I think I also benefitted from the fact that I’m old enough to have worked for many years in the pre-internet era. Where younger writers might assume any information that’s yet to be digitised simply doesn’t exist, I knew to dig deep among the dusty book shelves of Britain and America’s bricks-and-mortar libraries too. For all the convenience of Google, there are vast swathes of human knowledge which remain stored on paper alone, and my advanced age meant I was lucky enough to realise that.

I can think of three things which got me started seriously researching murder ballads and they all date from the noughties. Two of these three prompts directly involve “Stagger Lee,” so I guess I’d have to say that was the single most important song which drew me in.

It all began when I heard the radio DJ Andy Kershaw mention on his BBC Radio 3 show that he collected recordings of “La Bamba.” The idea of collecting one particular song in this way appealed to me, so I began collecting different recordings of “Stagger Lee.” I can’t remember why I settled on that particular song, but I’m sure Nick Cave’s stunning 1996 version of it played a part. Also, I already knew there were an awful lot of recordings of “Stagger Lee” to collect, which made finding as many as possible of them an intriguing challenge. The internet was then still in its infancy, so hunting out obscure records hadn’t yet become too easy to provide any satisfaction.

About a year later, I bought THE EXECUTIONER’S LAST SONGS, a 2002 Bloodshot Records compilation put together by Jon Langford of the Mekons. He’d taken the album on to raise funds for a death penalty moratorium project in Illinois. Langford’s approach was to team the best of our era’s Americana performers with classic murder ballads of all kinds: “The idea was to use death songs against the death penalty”, he told me.

The album’s highlights include Steve Earle’s version of “Tom Dooley,” the Handsome Family’s take on “Knoxville Girl” and Neko Case doing “Poor Ellen Smith.” Hearing so many great versions of these ballads on a single album got me thinking about the songs much more deeply and noticing the strands they had in common. Often, the killer’s logic seemed to be, “I love you, therefore I must kill you” and that stuck in my mind. What an odd way to look at the world.

Fast forward now to San Francisco in 2003, where I was enjoying a holiday. I spent one afternoon there mooching around in the basement music section at City Lights, the legendary counter-culture bookstore, where I found a copy of Cecil Brown’s STAGOLEE SHOT BILLY, a book telling the true story behind “Stagger Lee” itself. Reading that in a bar the same evening, I understood for the first time that many of the classic murder ballads were based on real crimes – and that those crimes were often recent enough to be researched in the newspaper archives. I started writing about murder ballads on my website a few years after that, and it’s those essays which eventually led to the book.

THE MULE: Your research into the eight ballads included in the book is painstaking. How long did the research into the true facts in this collection take? The murder ballad seems to be, primarily, a phenomenon of the American South. Did the origins of one tale prove more difficult to trace than the others? Did you discover information about these eight stories that surprised you?

PAUL: It’s hard to put a firm timescale on this. I started researching murder ballads properly in 2009, when I was getting PlanetSlade started, and finally published my book at the end of 2015. I was doing all sorts of other writing throughout those six years as well, though.

The bulk of my early work on murder ballads went into PlanetSlade’s essays (but again proved very useful when the book deal came up). Whenever I could manage a vacation trip to the US, I chose a city with links to one of my chosen ballads, where I’d spend a few days visiting the murder scene and all the relevant graves. These trips took me to Saint Louis, Cincinnati and Indiana.

UNPREPARED TO DIE (Paul Slade in the North Carolina embalming room where the Lawson family's eight bodies were dealt with in 1929, April 2015) (publicity photo) — UNPREPARED TO DIE (Paul Slade in the North Carolina embalming room where the Lawson family’s eight bodies were dealt with in 1929, April 2015) (publicity photo)

Writing the book ate up most of 2015, though I took a month away from the keyboard for one final research trip. The area around Winstom-Salem and Charlotte seems to be “Ground Zero” for the killings that inspire songs like these, so I gave myself three solid weeks in North Carolina researching “Tom Dooley,” “Poor Ellen Smith” and “Murder of the Lawson Family.” As on all my research trips, I took the opportunity to interview local historians and musicians there, as well as to walk the killers’ own streets and make them as real as I could in my own mind.

On my way down to North Carolina, I paused in New York for a meal with the country singer Laura Cantrell, who I knew was particularly interested in “Poor Ellen Smith.” Laura gave me some useful clues on the song’s origin, but I had a lot of difficulty tracing these back to the song’s birth. With the book’s deadline looming, I’d resigned myself to admitting this failure in print. I did decide on one final plunge into the newspaper archives before giving up altogether, though, and this time a lucky chance produced exactly the information I needed. A few hours later, I had not only found the 1893 article which printed this song’s first-ever lyrics, but also identified the jailbird mule thief who wrote them. That was a very satisfying moment.

UNPREPARED TO DIE (Poster for the 1966 movie, FRANKIE AND JOHNNY)

There were surprises in the research for every song. I’d had no idea how deeply the “Stagger Lee” killing was embroiled in Saint Louis’ party politics, for example, with Republicans determined to see the killer hang and Democrats lobbying for his early release. The central role syphilis played in “Tom Dooley’s” murder of Laura Foster came as a shock too, as did the revelation that “Pretty Polly’s” parent song was so closely tied to Britain’s Royal Navy. I hadn’t known that “Frankie and Johnny’s” Frankie Baker had sued two Hollywood studios over distorted adaptations of her song’s story either – let alone that she’d dragged Mae West into one of those actions.

THE MULE: Obviously, this book was not written in a day or two. From the time the idea came into your head ’til you finished it, how long did you work on this project? Did your research and work extend to other ballads? Would you be interested in working on a sequel?

PAUL: As I said above, I’d been researching murder ballads – at least intermittently – ever since 2009. The bulk of the book’s work got done in 2015, though. I started writing it in February that year and delivered the finished manuscript six months later.

UNPREPARED TO DIE (Paul Slade at Tom Dula's grave in North Carolina, April 2015) (publicity photo) — UNPREPARED TO DIE (Paul Slade at Tom Dula’s grave in North Carolina, April 2015) (publicity photo)

It was a fairly tight deadline, so I had to keep all my focus just on the eight songs covered in the book, which are “Stagger Lee,” “Frankie and Johnny,” “Knoxville Girl,” “Tom Dooley,” “Pretty Polly,” “Poor Ellen Smith,” “Murder of the Lawson Family” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” I was determined to interview at least one relevant musician for each of the songs, which gave me a good excuse to arrange conversations with favourite songwriters like Billy Bragg, Dave Alvin and the Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey.

I do have one idea for a follow-up book, this one looking at the British gallows ballads which were sold at public hangings, but it’s a bit too early to talk about that.

THE MULE: The psychology behind these acts is as interesting as the stories and historical references. Was there one story that caused you to reevaluate your stance, once you researched the psychological aspects of the parties involved?

PAUL: There was one song that really got to me, but it’s one I wrote about on my website rather than in the book. It’s called “Misses Dyer, the Old Baby-Farmer” and it tells the true story of a woman in Victorian London who took in disgraced girls’ illegitimate babies, promising to give them a home. As soon as she had the money the girl paid her for this service, she’d simply stifle the baby and dump it in the Thames. This happened at the end of the 19th century and she’s thought to have murdered more than 40 babies in all.

I spent about a week researching this squalid, nihilistic tale and writing it up. By the time I’d finished I had a very bleak view of the human race and just wanted to scrub my brain clean of the whole tale. I often wonder how spending a full year or 18 months immersed in the life of a serial killer must affect the writers of these people’s biographies. Inviting Jeffrey Dahmer into your head to write a book about him is one thing, but persuading him to leave again when the job’s done may not prove so simple.

THE MULE: I was surprised to learn that both “Stagger Lee” and “Frankie and Johnny” were based on events from just across the Mississippi from my home. The story of Frankie Baker, in particular, touched something inside me…. the fact that at least three movies have used the lyrics, or simply the song title, as a jumping off spot for their script, but her real story has never been told in any meaningful way. Why do you believe her story remains largely unknown?

PAUL: I think the fact that the song’s twice been a chart hit – once for Elvis Presley and once for Sam Cooke – has worked against the real story. Neither of these chart versions bear any resemblance to what really happened, and all the movie adaptations just create further confusion. In Presley’s version, Frankie’s a singer working the Mississippi riverboats, in Sam Cooke’s she’s rich enough to buy Johnny a sports car and in Mae West’s 1933 film she marries an FBI agent. Plus, of course, she’s always a white woman.

The real story – young black sex worker kills her pimp in self-defence – is far more interesting than any of these sanitised versions, but it’s been obscured by so many distortions over the years that the genuine Frankie Baker gets lost.

UNPREPARED TO DIE (Frankie Baker, circa 1899) (uncredited photo)

The quote from Frankie herself that lingers most strongly with me came when she was protesting yet another cavalier Hollywood treatment of her story and the unwelcome attention which these films always brought. “I know that I’m black, but even so I have my rights,” she pleaded to one reporter. “If people had left me alone, I’d have forgotten about his thing a long time ago.” The humility and resignation of that remark breaks my heart every time I hear it.

THE MULE: Aside from your very entertaining pieces at PlanetSlade, what future works can we expect to see from the mind and desk of Paul Slade?

PAUL: I’m working on a new PlanetSlade essay at the moment, which springs from a very interesting artefact I recently discovered. It was made to commemorate a real 19th century US murder of the 1880s and, like all the best objects of this kind, leads anyone researching it into some very interesting tangents and unexpected discoveries. I don’t want to say anything more about that piece for the moment, but it looks set to keep me busy for at least the next month or so. After that, who knows?

PART THREE: UNPREPARED TO DIE

(Paul Slade; 290 pages; SOUNDCHECK BOOKS, 2015)

Let me begin by stating, “What a great read!” Most of us have heard at least one version of at least one of the eight ballads discussed in UNPREPARED TO DIE, whether it be the Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” or Sam Cooke’s “Frankie and Johnny.” I hadn’t heard the term “Murder Ballad” until it was used in reference to “Delia’s Gone” from Johnny Cash’s AMERICAN RECORDINGS in 1994; I certainly didn’t know that tunes so named were based on actual killings (after reading Slade’s book, it’s kinda hard to call some of the cases “murder”). Maybe it was because songs like “Frankie and Johnny,” “Stagger Lee” and “Tom Dooley” were such fixtures on radio and television and in the movies when I was a kid that I never really paid much attention to the dark stories told through the lyrics. Whatever the reason, those tunes were simply background noise in my youth, with a melody so stunningly simple yet so immediately captivating that they ended up getting lodged in the old brainpan and tended to make their way to the top of my internal playlist at the oddest times. I now have a deeper understanding of where those songs originated and more than a passing respect for the original balladeers and the musicians who have kept the songs alive for so long… in some cases several hundred years.

UNPREPARED TO DIE (Hattie Carroll, circa February 1963) (photo credit: BALTIMORE SUN)

Slade’s writing throughout these eight essays, while scholarly in its depth, is very conversational in its delivery. In other words, he manages to get to the heart of the matter with decades (or centuries) old facts without boring the reader. As it turns out, the least compelling story is the one surrounding Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” which tells of the sadistic murder of a 51 year old barmaid in Baltimore in 1963, the year Dylan wrote the song. Miss Carroll was black, her attacker was a wealthy and arrogant white man. While reading Slade’s account and history of the brutal act, as well as the grossly inappropriate sentence meted out to her attacker, one thought that ran through my mind was, “None of this right! This should never have happened,” but, I also thought, “Let’s get back to some more of those hundred-year-old cases.” I hate to say it, but… it appears that Hattie Carroll’s murder was just too recent and too mundane to keep my interest. Obviously, though, it piqued enough interest in both Dylan and Slade to be the subject of a song and a chapter in UNPREPARED TO DIE.

UNPREPARED TO DIE ("They all were buried in a crowded grave." Paul Slade at the Lawson family's plot in North Carolina, April 2015) (publicity photo) — UNPREPARED TO DIE (“They all were buried in a crowded grave.” Paul Slade at the Lawson family’s plot in North Carolina, April 2015) (publicity photo)

The other pieces, “Frankie and Johnny” and “The Murder of the Lawson Family” in particular, really managed to keep me involved in the stories of both the victims and the killers. In the case of Frankie Baker, who was charged with murdering her boyfriend, Allen Britt, for “paying attention to another woman,” the song is far more famous than the actual Saint Louis case. The song actually led to Miss Baker leaving Saint Louis, settling first in Nebraska, then moving on to Oregon; it seems that wherever she went, the song and the rumors followed. It’s amazing that, in the nearly 120 since Frankie killed Allen, at least three different movies (one starring Mae West, another Elvis Presley) have been produced based on the “Frankie and Johnny” song, but not one has bothered to tell the real story. “The Murder of the Lawson Family” is a gruesome tale of mental illness, probable incest, a guilty conscience and – after the fact – unimaginable greed. On Christmas Day, 1929, North Carolina tobacco farmer Charlie Lawson slaughtered his wife and six of their seven children before killing himself. Slade’s examination of the case presents several possible scenarios for what led to such a very bloody Christmas present, including an earlier brain injury and an incestuous rape of the Lawson’s oldest daughter. The latter theory posits that Lawson’s wife, Fannie, had discovered that daughter Marie was pregnant and that Charlie was his grandchild’s father. These and other factors led to a perfect storm of despair in Charlie’s mind, leaving only one solution. Several moneymaking schemes from Charlie’s brother and nephew after the tragedy are nearly as grotesque as the actual killing spree.

UNPREPARED TO DIE (Dave Alvin) (publicity photo)

Along with the retelling of events for each of the eight killings (more than a few are of the jealous rage or “you done me wrong” variety), are interviews with historians and, more compelling, many of the musicians responsible for keeping the “Murder Ballad” alive as a viable musical genre. Insight into the art form and the songs themselves is offered from Dave Alvin, Billy Bragg, Laura Cantrell and others. Following each chapter is a list of ten of the most iconic versions of the song discussed therein, dating from the early 1920s through to some of the most recent versions, performed by many of the musicians interviewed for the book. And, like most good releases nowadays, UNPREPARED TO DIE includes several bonus features, which can be found here. The bonus material includes additional thoughts from the various musicians on each song, the genre in particular and much more (like Dave Alvin’s musings regarding killer bees), as well as play lists for each chapter. Whether you’re a music fan, a history fan or a true crime fan, UNPREPARED TO DIE should be right up your dark alley. UNPREPARED TO DIE: AMERICA’S GREATEST MURDER BALLADS AND THE TRUE CRIME STORIES THAT INSPIRED THEM is available directly from Soundcheck Books, Amazon or any of the usual outlets.

Book Features/Author Interviews LITERARY LICENSE... REVOKED! Non-Fiction Book Reviews Streaming Video | Darren Tracy | April 14, 2016 | "Frankie and Johnny" "Stagger Lee" "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" "The Murder of the Lawson Family" "Tom Dooley" Allen Britt AMERICAN RECORDINGS Author Interview Baltimore Billy Bragg Bob Dylan Books Charlie Lawson Dave Alvin Elvis Presley Fannie Lawson Hattie Carroll Johnny Cash Kingston Trio Laura Cantrell Mae West Marie Lawson Murder Ballads Non-Fiction North Carolina Paul Slade PlanetSlade Saint Louis Streaming Video THE EXECUTIONER'S LAST SONGS Tom Dula True Crime UNPREPARED TO DIE

THE DESCARTES HIGHLANDS

(Eric Gamalinda; 300 pages; AKASHIC BOOKS; 2014)

This story had me so confused for the first few chapters, I almost gave up on it; written in three distinct voices (and styles) and covering (at least) two different time periods on at least three continents (and an island nation or two), it took a while to get my head around what was happening, when it was happening and to whom. At some point, I noticed that the chapter titles… really weren’t; each character’s story had its own title; that’s when I went back to the beginning and figured out exactly what the heck was going on. Sometimes I can be a little slow on the uptake, but once I get on board with a concept, I can generally roll along rather nicely.

Author Eric Gamalinda (photo credit: ROME JORGE)

The story follows the paths of two young men, born just hours apart in neighboring huts in a poor village in the Philippines. Both men are unaware of the existence of the other or the reasons for their adoptions; their father, an American named Andrew Breszky, told their mothers (who didn’t know that Breszky was the other child’s father) that he was going to sell the babies for adoption and send the money back to the village to save their families the embarrassment of, not only being unwed mothers, but also giving birth to an American child. One of the boys was adopted by a woman in New York, the other by a couple from the south of France. The title of the story comes from the region of the moon where Apollo 16 landed in 1972, the year the boys were born; the mother in New York would give her adopted son letters from his father, with the return address listed as “Mister Breszky, the Descartes Highlands, the Moon.” Interspersed with his sons’ stories, the story of political prisoner Andrew Breszky unfolds, allowing the reader insight into the psyches of the two men, desperately seeking a long lost clue to who they are and why they act as they do. THE DESCARTES HIGHLANDS is a psychologically taut drama that unravels right in front of you, much like the relationships and mental stability of the two sons. Filipino author Eric Gamalinda spins a tale of lies and loneliness, of longing for the truth and for an acceptance that always seems to be at arm’s length; the acceptance is there – from parents, from girlfriends and lovers – but the pair can never quite trust their own feelings… to believe that what is being offered to them freely doesn’t come with some sort of string attached. Yeah… the story can be a bit confusing and, occasionally, mind-numbing in its intricacies but, if you stick with it, following the ups and downs, the in and outs… I guarantee that you will be richly rewarded. Gamalinda’s storytelling and bleak imagery is disturbingly realistic, his dialogue frighteningly authentic. It’s time that you put on your thinking caps and delve into THE DESCARTES HIGHLANDS.

Fiction Book Reviews LITERARY LICENSE... REVOKED! | Darren Tracy | March 7, 2015 | Books Drama Eric Gamalinda Fiction Philippines Political Thriller Psychological Mystery

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN

(Jill Lepore; 410 pages; ALFRED A KNOPF PUBLISHING/RANDOM HOUSE BOOKS; 2014)

If you’re going into THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN expecting a major discourse on some secret comic book origin story of the Amazon princess, you are definitely looking in the wrong direction. The book is more of an historical look back at the suffrage and feminist movements of the late nineteenth and the first eight decades of the twentieth centuries. It also works as, quite possibly, the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Wonder Woman’s creator, William Moulton Marston, who was – to say the least – a deeply flawed individual. Many of Marston’s flaws and foibles were at the core of the character’s creation and writer Jill Lepore’s examination of his early scripts and notes highlights his attempts to forward his fervent feminist beliefs through a series of failed teaching positions and “scientific” experiments that were – and, I’m being generous here – borderline, at best.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN (AMERICAN SCHOLAR 13 1943-44) (Art by HARRY G PETER)

Almost from birth, William Moulton Marston surrounded himself with strong, independent thinking women; he had to… he was far too lazy to have any job other than the odd “professorship” that allowed him to practice his borderline kinky experiments virtually unmolested. His aunt, his female students and lab assistants and his wives carried the financial burdens of the classroom, laboratory and household. A student aide and paramour (Olive Byrne, niece of famed feminist and trail-blazing birth control advocate, Margaret Sanger) was brought into the home as nanny to his two young sons; when she became pregnant, Marston made her wife number two, telling the two Missus Marstons that the third (and eventually fourth) child would continue under the tutelage and care of number two, while the more successful number one would be called “Mother” to all four and continue to bring in the household funds. The fact that these women didn’t kill him (or each other) must be proof that females are, indeed, the superior sex… cuz I woulda beat the guy like a baby seal.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN (DC Comics editorial meeting, 1942, with William Moulton Marston. artist Harry G Peter, editor Sheldon Mayer, publisher MC Gaines) (Publicity photo)

But, anyway, the great character of the women in his life DID give Marston the template for the first female super-hero; the fact that he was able to snow the editors and publisher of DC Comics with the concept that Wonder Woman’s strength was best exhibited by her continually being bound in some form or other (almost always by the male of the species, with chains being the favorite mode of bondage, though the Amazon was also harnessed into a straightjacket, locked in an electrified cage and hogtied with a rope) speaks volumes to the man’s mastery at the art of humbuggery. When the thought police came a-calling, he would be sure to have all of his Amazons in a row, usually in the form of one of his smitten female colleagues or some borderline-legitimate psychologist who moved in the same semi-reputable circles as Marston, ready with their own convoluted explanations of how depicting such scenes of bondage would, ultimately, empower women to become the family, political and social leaders that is their destiny; disputes and wars would cease, leading to a Utopian society with peace and love and dancing.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN (cover of WONDER WOMAN #7, Winter 1943) (Art by HARRY G PETER)

The guy musta been doing something right, however, as Wonder Woman became wildly popular. And, not just among the young boys who were the vast majority of comic book readers at that time; Princess Diana had found a new audience as young girls all across America began reading her adventures and emulating her amazing feats in their backyards and living rooms. When two members of the Justice Society of America, the Flash and Green Lantern, were awarded their own books, the editors of ALL STAR COMICS conducted a readers poll to which hero should take their place within the ranks. Wonder Woman was far and away the victor. However, Marston wasn’t writing the adventures of the JSA, so the Amazon was made official secretary of the team, in charge of holding down the fort while the men were off fighting evil and in charge of coffee and snacks during meetings. These tales were, by and large, written by legendary comic scribe, Gardner F Fox, though it has long been rumored that Robert Kanigher may have ghosted several of those JSA adventures. That would actually make some kind of since, as Kanigher hated not only Marston, but his creation, as well. This visceral dislike of the character led to the eventual dumbing down of the Wonder Woman strip, as Kanigher was named as Marston’s replacement upon the latter’s death in 1947, a post he held for more than 22 years; suddenly, Diana Prince’s alter ego became a besotted and lovelorn member of the weaker sex, falling prey to ridiculous scheme after ridiculous scheme as she pined away for her boss in Military Intelligence, Captain (eventually Colonel) Steve Trevor. Trevor ended up saving the Amazonian warrior as often – or more often – as she saved him.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN (cover of MS #1, July 1972) (Art by ROSS ANDRU and MIKE ESPOSITO)

As the turbulent sixties were coming to an enlightened end, Kanigher finally relinquished his hold on Wonder Woman in 1968 and Diana relinquished her powers to become a mortal woman, working as a secret agent to clear Steve Trevor of a bogus murder charge. The death knell for this “liberated” Wonder Woman came with the December 1972 issue, a “special Women’s Lib issue.” Denny O’Neil was gone, too, replaced by… Robert Kanigher, back for another (short-lived) round. The damage to the venerable character had been done during Kanigher’s first monumental run and, seemingly, month after month, the poor scripts and ill-conceived attempts at relevancy piled degradation upon degradation on the Amazon princess, even as a new publication from the National Women’s Political Caucus called MS featured her on the cover of their debut issue in 1972 (which may have prompted the return of the original Wonder Woman costume and powers a few months later). Wonder Woman remains a stalwart of DC Comics, considered to be an integral part of “the Trinity,” with Superman and Batman. A couple of generations of new creative teams have removed the layers of tarnish to return the character to something much closer to the character William Moulton Marston originally envisioned nearly 75 years ago. Lepore has delved deep and dissected every aspect, every historical event that has gone into the creation of the first female super-hero; likewise, she points to the many ways that Wonder Woman – and, by extension, Marston – has molded the history of the women’s movement since she first burst onto the scene in 1941. You don’t have to be comic book fan to enjoy THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN, nor do you have to be a woman or a feminist to appreciate the history and politics that led to Wonder Woman’s creation and longevity; the book is just a good, thought-provoking read.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN (author Jill Lepore) (photo credit: DARI MICHELE)

It should be noted that since the book’s publication, several descendents of the Marstons have come forward to dispute many of the assertions that Ms Lepore puts forth regarding the family and their lifestyle; for what it’s worth, much of this information has been floating around for quite awhile and I tend to support the Lepore’s version of events. I’ll leave it to you to make up your own minds.

Comics LITERARY LICENSE... REVOKED! Non-Fiction Book Reviews | Darren Tracy | February 28, 2015 | Amazons Biography Comics DC Comics Denny O'Neil Fantasy Jill Lepore Margaret Sanger Mythology National Women's Political Caucus Non-Fiction Olive Byrne Robert Kanigher Steve Trevor Suffrage Movement Super-Hero William Moulton Marston Wonder Woman

WHAT’S INSIDE