BEAR MANOR MEDIA BOOK REVIEWS: From Dorothy McGuire to Betty Lynn

A box of books arrived on my doorstep from Bear Manor Media, a publishing house that is cranking out a number of great books, almost the equivalent of one a week. A few of them in the box warrant mention just in case these books slip under the radar. All four of these, in my opinion, are worthy of purchasing if the subjects are of interest to you.

ADAMANT: The Life and Pursuits of Dorothy McGuire

By Giancarlo Stampalia

Dorothy McGuire remains one of the most beloved stars of Hollywood. An actress of sincerity, dignity and natural beauty, she graced film, radio, television and theater for nearly half a century, delivering unforgettable performances in such classic movies as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the suspense thriller, The Spiral Staircase. Yet no biography has been written about her—until now. Adamant is intended not as a definitive biography, but rather as an attempt, which investigates, reveals and examines, with microscopic tenacity, the many facets of McGuire’s personal and professional history, drawing on a wide range of sources, including personal reminiscences of friends, colleagues and family and the author’s own frequentation of the actress.

 

The reasons for the author’s self-deprecating definition of Adamant as an attempt hinge on the definition of exactly what one is attempting when one writes a biography. The loose strands of philosophical, literary and spiritual Leitmotifs that are woven through the book’s exploration and culminate in its unusual conclusion make it less a biography than a moral, or alchemical, study of Dorothy McGuire. This loving tribute takes the metaphysical route and makes observations not only about its immediate subject but also about the art of acting, personal evolution and virtues, and, most importantly, the act itself of writing a biography.

 

 

BECOMING THELMA LOU

By Betty Lynn and Jim Clark

Long before becoming beloved by generations of Mayberry fans for her portrayal of Thelma Lou, the ever-patient sweetheart of Barney Fife, Kansas City native Betty Lynn lived a life filled with interesting adventures and fascinating people. Her role on television’s The Andy Griffith Show was cemented as a television icon because of her numerous appearances at film festivals and conventions, including her annual return visit to the Mayberry Days festival.

In her own words, augmented by 140 rare photos, Betty Lynn shares the sometimes bittersweet, often surprising, and always inspiring story of her remarkable life. From her wartime service in India and Burma to sharing the spotlight with entertainment royalty from New York to Hollywood, Betty always remained grounded in her Midwestern values and strong faith.

Her 26 appearances on The Andy Griffith Show are not the only thing documented in this book. The actress who played roles in Sitting Pretty (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), and performed on tour for the USO, is also remembered as Viola Slaughter on Disney’s Texas John Slaughter (1958-1962). This is her story. Fans of The Andy Griffith Show will want to have a copy of this book.

  

 

IDA LUPINO: Beyond the Camera

By Mary Ann Anderson

Ida Lupino did not want to be an actress; composing and writing were her major interests. The actress branched out into film directing and producing in 1949, becoming one of two women to enter the male dominated field. She was the only woman ever to direct an episode of The Twilight Zone, among other television programs. While her feature films were primarily aimed at a female audience, other films such as The Hitch-Hiker, based on the spree killer Billy Cook, written, directed and produced by Ida Lupino, has become a classic film noir. Life Magazine did a piece on the 60th Anniversary. "No one ever asked me to direct a love story!" Ida Lupino once remarked. 

 

There is not much available on the actress and this book helps contribute to her legacy. Mary Ann Anderson has written about Lupino multiple times and this book adds to that ever-growing library.

 

 

ELISSA LANDI: Cinema’s Empress of Emotion

By Scott O’Brien

I could not provide better praise for a biography than Scott O’Brien’s latest entry, a biography about Elissa Landi. If you were to ask me which Hollywood actresses needed a book documenting their personal life and screen career, Elissa Landi would have been on the top ten list. (Also on the list would be Helen Twelvetrees and Ruth Chatterton.) 

 

Cecil B. DeMille boosted the career of Elissa Landi in The Sign of the Cross (1932). Her leading men included Laurence Olivier, Fredric March, Cary Grant, and then Robert Donat in The Count of Monte Cristo (1934). After 33 films, Landi gave up on Hollywood, to focus on her career as a novelist. Did not know she wanted to write novels? Neither did I. 

 

Allegedly the actress was born the illegitimate granddaughter of the tragic Empress Elisabeth of Austria (a fact or fiction still in debate). She receive co-star billing in such films as The Masquerader (1933) with Ronald Colman, Enter Madame (1935) with Cary Grant, and After the Thin Man (1936) with William Powell and James Stewart. Because she was offered more trivial films than A-pictures during that decade of her career, Landi eventually abandoned Hollywood and returned to the stage where she starred in innumerable plays on Broadway, in London, and on tour. Far too young, she tragically died in 1948 from cancer.

 

Scott’s books have garnered positive reviews in such publications as Classic Images, Sight & Sound, and SF Gate. Three of O’Brien’s books have made the Huffington Post’s “Best Cinema Books of the Year.” And deservingly so. 

The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Restoration Project

The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, was a comedy radio program which ran on NBC from 1948 to 1954 starring Alice Faye and Phil Harris. Harris had previously become known to radio audiences as the band-leader-turned-cast-member of the same name on The Jack Benny Program  while Faye had been a frequent guest on programs such as Rudy Vallee’s variety shows. After becoming the breakout stars of the music and comedy variety program The Fitch Bandwagon, the show was retooled into a full situation comedy, with Harris and Faye playing fictionalized versions of themselves as a working show business couple raising two daughters in a madcap home. But what few do not know is that the comic adventures were – in some aspect – based on their real-life family adventures. The season opener of 1952-1953 had the narrator open with an explanation that Phil Harris had just returned from England with his new automobile and was working on the engine in the drive-way. Turns out Harris really was in England that summer and he did buy a roadster.

 

A few years ago over 2,000 photographs were scanned from an archive containing Phil Harris and Alice Faye’s family and publicity photos, including awards and achievements. We have been digitally restoring the images for a future book project. Below, for your amusement, are a few of those photos chosen at random. (Almost random. I did select the one with the roadster so you can see what it looked like.) The photos, by the way, were the initial scan and not the digitally restored renditions.

I am trying to identify the man on the far right. Help!

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Rare Old-Time Radio Photographs

Over the past two decades, I made it a habit of scanning photographs of old-time radio personalities from every archive I had access to. Recently cataloging the tens of thousands of photographs, labeling each photo accordingly, I came across a number of them that are truly rare and more than likely never seen in decades. So I wanted to take a moment to share them with you. 

Ben Bernie and Lupe Velez

Victor Moore

Virginia Jones

Hildegarde

Edgar Bergen

A young Gale Gordon.

John Houseman

Jackie Kelk

Mel Allen

Raymond Edward Johnson

Poison Gardner

Nila Mack of Let's Pretend

Shirley Temple

The "LOST" SERGEANT PRESTON OF THE YUKON Adventures

Initially titled Challenge of the Yukon, the Sergeant Preston radio program started out in 1939 as a 15-minute series with massive epics in serial format. By 1940, the series evolved into single adventures (and sometimes two-part adventures). Broadcast "live" over the Michigan Radio Network, the program could be heard in Chicago, northern Indiana and Ohio, and certain sections of Canada where radio receivership (and superb weather conditions) could allow someone with a superb radio set to pick up the broadcasts. The program never went national until 1947. It was not until 1943 that the radio broadcasts were recorded on transcription discs. All of which makes these 1940 plot summaries treasured. Over the years I have been reading those pre-1943 radio broadcasts to fill in the gaps, progressing to a complete broadcast log of each and every radio adventure. The plots below are from radio scripts where recordings do not exist. (The plots are rough draft, not final draft.)

By the way, it would not be until the broadcast of May 30, 1940, that Tom Dougall began assigning script titles. 

Episode #121 [NO TITLE LISTED]

Broadcast March 7, 1940

Copyright Registration D-69068, script received at Registration Office March 18, 1940.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Sergeant Preston and Pierre drove South on the Yukon from Lamont, on the trail of three men named Bart Hayden, Scar Reynolds and Lefty Mike who robbed a company store. Stopping at a cabin along the wide expanse of Lake Bartlett, they meet an old time named Pop Hanson. 

The old man helped guide our heroes to Windward Pass, where they could cut off the path, then asked for a favor. Mike is his son and the crime accused was the boy’s first. Mike loved a girl named Sally and her father was very ill. It was quite possible the boy stole the money to help the girl. Pop asked Preston to not hurt the lad. The criminals, however, attempted to thwart their pursuers by pushing a boulder off the cliff and starting an avalanche that roared down the steep side of the bluff. Before it reached bottom, Preston, Pierre and Pop found shelter. Risking his life, Preston climbed the bluff to reach Mike, who was alone fetching firewood. Upon learning the boy was a witness to the crime but never committed the act, and was forced to go along with the criminals, Preston handed Mike a gun to help assist with the capture. The confrontation led to a broken wrist and a wounded shoulder, but the Mountie got his men. As for Lefty Mike, he would receive the reward money – and the boy wanted to help Sally’s father.

 

Episode #122 [NO TITLE LISTED]

Broadcast March 14, 1940

Copyright Registration D-69284, script received at Registration Office March 26, 1940.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Sergeant Preston was working in Dawson for nearly six months when he returned to Beaver City, where he was assigned a new case from Inspector Conrad. Shortly after Preston left for Dawson, the Yukon Trading Company sent a new man to take charge of their post in the Lost River district. He was a crook. He robbed the company and he robbed the Indians. It was not until his assistant quit and came back to Beaver City that the Inspector learned what was going on. Miaku, the chief of the local Indians, however, did not like the idea of being cheated and the tribe went on the warpath. Manson managed to escape his post and fled, was arrested, tried and convicted. Miaku and his tribe were still on the warpath, a party of trappers were captured, and Miaku sent a warning: the next white man to cross Stormy Ridge will die. Preston and Pierre were the first white men to defy the new law. Miaku would not believe Preston’s insistence that the white man who cheated them is facing the law and our heroes are tied up. Condemned to die by fire, Preston asks for water as a last request and instead of drinking it, he used it to put out the fire. Further discussion convinced Miaku that the white man wanted to be friends. 

 

Episode #123 [NO TITLE LISTED]

Broadcast March 21, 1940

Copyright Registration D-69280, script received at Registration Office March 26, 1940.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: While stationed in Beaver City, Sergeant Preston learned that the manager of the Yukon Trading company branch roused the post. Robbers had broken into his store during the night and stole $20,000 in gold dust, waiting for shipment to White Horse. Inspector Conrad put Constable Edwards on the case, to question all suspicious characters in town, check on all the trails and way cabins, etc. Preston was sent to Bitterroot Valley to deliver supplies and a bag of mail. The Sergeant and Pierre set out on the windswept trail for the north and along the way he stopped to deliver a letter to Matt. Outside the cabin, Matt insisted no one came through in the last few days, but takes a moment to read the letter from his friend. After Preston and Pierre leave and continue on their way, Matt returns to his cabin to face the two criminals who were hiding inside. Moments later, the door was busted open and King attacked one of the men while Preston handled the other. The crooks were Canora Pete and Al Maitland, both of whom have records. Matt tipped off the Sergeant not by what he said when he read the letter, but because he was blind and could not read – an oversight the criminals were not aware of.

 

Episode #124 [NO TITLE LISTED]

Broadcast March 26, 1940

Copyright Registration D-69403, script received at Registration Office April 6, 1940.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Sergeant Preston and Pierre were on the trail from Bitterroot Valley. They were forced to take shelter in an isolated cabin during a blizzard. After a few minutes, Preston discovers the two residents of the cabin, prospectors Jerry Carr and Slim Brandon, do not acknowledge each other’s existence. It seems they lived together for so long that even a whistle or a sneeze is a deliberate intent to be annoying to the other. In an attempt to cure them, Preston creates a scenario whereby he decides to abuse his position and orders the men to decide who goes out to fend for themselves. There is not enough food for the four of them and the blizzard rages on. He suggests they settle the dispute with a game of cards. The men, panicking, insist they have the right to stay – even crediting the good each has done for the other, reinforcing their friendship. When the prospectors discover the ruse, they laugh and shake hands.

 

Episode #125 [NO TITLE LISTED]

Broadcast April 2, 1940

Copyright Registration D-69439, script received at Registration Office April 10, 1940.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Information reached police headquarters at Dawson that a criminal who was wanted for a bank robbery in Regina was somewhere in the Yukon. Sergeant Preston and Pierre were sent North to Forty Mile to investigate. One the day they arrived they rented a cabin and while Pierre made the rounds of the cafes in town, the Sergeant treated one of the dogs who had gone lame on the trail. Pierre found Dan Morgan, the man they were seeking, in the Lady Luck café. Dan admits he was wanted in Regina, but asked Preston for the opportunity to teach young Tim a lesson. The youth just married and struck it rich with a vein and is gambling. Tim is striking good fortune and Dan fears the boy will go from a miner to a gambler. Preston agrees to a parlay and lets Dan teach the boy a lesson at the table. Tim returns home penniless whiel Preston agrees with Dan that he will find a way to get the money returned, knowing Tim and Sally have a future. Dan promises to take the difference in winnings and return it to the bank he stole it from, in the hopes that the courts will be lenient.