Cover Cavalcade

 JANUARY IS FRANK R. PAUL MONTH!

A Paul cover from 1926.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Frontier Town: "Valley of the Varmints" 2/6/53

Someone wants to buy two neighboring ranches and might just be willing to kill to get them.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Beaver Cleaver Goes Catatonic!

 

Pretty much the first thing that happens in the 1957 film noir Shadows on the Window is a small boy (Jerry Mathers) who witnesses a murder while looking through the window of a house.

The murdered man was employing the boy's mom (Linda Atlas, played by Betty Garrett) as a temp stenographer for the day. So when the boy runs off and then is found by two truckers wandering in a daze down the road, no one knows for sure where he came from. In the meantime, the three killers (who had come to the home to rob the man's safe) are now holding Linda hostage and debating whether they need to kill her as well. The bad guys are in over their heads and simply don't know what their next move should be.

It's a great set-up for a legitimately suspenseful movie. The boy's dad (Tony Atlas, played by Phil Carey) is a cop. When the boy ends up at the police station, another cop recognizes him. But the boy is zoned out, unable to answer any questions, even from his dad. It's soon apparent that Linda is in some sort of trouble. Or dead. Tony knows she was taking temp work, but the two are estranged and he doesn't know where she was going that day.

There's a small glitch in the logic of the movie as the cops investigate. The truckers had taken the boy to their dispatch office, from where the police were called. But as Tony and the other cops investigate, they have to start from scratch, with no idea who originally found the kid. Apparently, no one bothered asking the truckers who they were when they turned him over to the cops? That seems unlikely. 

Despite this, the investigation progresses in a logical and suspenseful fashion. The cops follow leads through the night and into the next morning. 

In the meantime, Linda is doing what she can to play up to the one bad guy who seems reluctant to commit another murder. She even manages to vamp another of the guys and create an opportunity to knock him on the head and make a break for it. But she's caught and it seems more and more likely she'll be killed.

She's also, of course, worried sick about her son. From her point-of-view, he's simply disappeared.

The interconnected story threads involving Tony (trying to find Linda) and Linda (trying to stay alive) intertwine nicely and come together at the end for a strong conclusion. Shadows on the Window is worth 73 minutes of your time.

Willy Schultz -- The Final Chapter

 It took nearly a half-century, but when the Willy Schultz stories were collected into a hardback last year by Dark Horse Books, writer Will Franz was finally able to wrap up the series. Sadly, Sam Glanzman is no longer with us, but Wayne Vansant stepped in and did an excellent job drawing the story.

I normally don't cover recent comics, but this is an obvious exception. Franz does a magnificent job of bringing the saga to a close. He had only 20 pages to do so and when this chapter suffers, it is because Franz has only a couple of panels to cover aspects of Schultz's story that might have taken up multiple chapters had Charlton stuck with the series back in the 1970s. The story is undeniably rushed. But its a case where it would be unfair to criticize a writer for working within the space he'd been given. It's great to have an end to the story and Franz, as I said, does a magnificent job.

The chapter opens with a shocking scene--Elena (the girl who was falling in love with Willy) has been captured and hanged, along with several other partisans. In addition, Willy is forced to acknowledge that the pardon he'd been promised was never going to happen--even if the murder conviction was thrown out, he had literally fought for the Germans while in Africa. He was going to be considered a traitor no matter what.

Soon, Willy is found by the Germans. But he's wearing a German uniform himself so is once again able to pass himself off as a Wermacht officer, claiming his papers were taken when he was captured by partisans. He ends up fighting on the Russian Front.

It's here that I most regret that Franz had only 20 pages to work with. Moral dilemmas facing Willy are mentioned, but glossed over without the indepth dialogue that Franz was so good at giving his characters to express those dilemmas. Willy is forced to fight Russian partisans who are really no different that the Italian partisans he had fought with. Later, he's forced to realize that he (and, in fact, every German) has been fighting to keep the death camps operating--there is simply no turning away from that responsibility. 

All of this deserves more than a passing reference and I have no doubt Franz would have handled these issues brilliantly had he been able to do so in the '70s. It's no fault of his that he has to rush through all this when he did get a chance to bring the saga to an end. But it will always be a regretful "what could have been."

Willy gets a chance to surrender to American troops just before a random artillery shell wounds him and leaves him scarred. While he recovers, Germany surrenders. But Willy has to run when someone recognizes him. He joins the French Foreign Legion and ends up fighting in Vietnam.

After the French are defeated, the story skips ahead to 1969. Willy now owns a plantation in South Vietnam. He's married to Ilse, the German nurse he had met in North Africa. She has her own scars--her family had been executed after the July 1944 atttempt to assassinate Hitler and she had been tortured by the Gestapo. But the two are together and have made peace with the world.

It's a satisfying ending, though I can't help but spoil it a little in my mind by wondering what happened to Willy and Ilsa after South Vietnam fell five years later. 

But I really am complaining too much. It's is cool that "The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz" was finally brought to a strong conclusion by the saga's original writer. 

Next week, Captain Marvel Jr. deal with a conspiracy of shape-shifting aliens.

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DETECTIVE COMICS BEFORE BATMAN MONTH!

Another 1938 cover by Creig Flessel. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 You Are There: "Signing of the Magna Carta" 1/18/48

CBS News is on the scene at Runnymede on the day King John has agreed to sign the Magna Carta. 

Click HERE to listen or download.

CHRISTMAS BREAK

 

No Wednesday or Thursday posts this week. We'll be back to our regular schedule next week.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DETECTIVE COMICS BEFORE BATMAN MONTH!

A 1938 cover by Creig Flessel. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Inner Sanctum: "Death out of Mind" 12/29/47

A man is convinced his own conscience has taken human form and is trying to kill him.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Blowhard or Hero? Or Both?

 

Between 1894 and 1903, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 17 short stories about a Napoleanic soldier with a tendency to brag about his accomplishments. The stories have an older Gerard, long after Waterloo, describing his adventures as a young officer and mentioning multiple times per story how he always conducted himself with courage and cunning. He's a great storyteller, though, so the tales he tells are enthralling.

I see two possible ways to interpret the Gerard stories. Either he was an unexceptional soldier (or perhaps not a soldier at all) who tells tall tales about a fictional version of himself. OR he was an exceptional and brave warrior who had the chops to back up his ego. In this latter case, the stories he tells are true.

I enjoy taking the second option. Gerard's stories are a lot more fun if (in the context of Doyle's fictional world) really happened. He can be a bit of a blowhard, but earned his bragging rights several times over.

"How the Brigadier Came to the Castle of Gloom" was published in the July 1895 issue of The Strand. Gerard tells a story from 1807, when he was a captain serving in Poland. While on a mission to bring fresh horses back to his unit, he meets the young Sub-Lieutenant Duroc, who is looking for the man who murdered his father during the bloody days of the revolution.

Gerard and Durac end up at the castle of Baron Straubenthal, the man who commited the murder. Durac challenges the Baron to a duel, but the villain is without honor and tricks them into walking into a supply cellar. The two soldiers are locked inside while the Baron sends a messenger to a nearby unit of Cossack raiders. 

So an escape needs to happen quickly. I don't want to give away too much, because there's a link below to find the Gerard stories and read them for yourself. But it involves an unhappy stepdaughter smuggling them a key, a gunpowder bomb, a fight with a dog, and a sword duel. 

It's great stuff. Whether Gerard is telling a "true" story or if he's inventing/exaggerating his exploits, he (or rather Conan Doyle) is one of the best storytellers ever. 

The stories were eventually collected into two volumes. You can find the first one HERE and the second HERE.