Abridged 1904 Dracula, Byrds and Buzzcocks, A.M. Burrage's "One Who Sees," The Great Gildersleave's Mr. Peavey, Double Indemnity rip-off, and more art

Wednesday 5/13/26

The Great Gildersleeve has quickly become one of my favorite classic radio programs. The character was spun off from the Fibber McGee and Molly show, and tweaked and given a different back story and life situation. On his own program, he's the "parent" to his orphaned niece and nephew.

You have to give it some time to pull you in, to get to know these people and how they know and care about and interact with each other. The show is all about the relationships, the neighbors, their quirks, manners of speaking, the in-jokes they have with each other.

I especially like the judge and Mr. Peavey ("I wouldn't say that"). They both kind of sound like Howard McNear, too, but neither is played by McNear. The actors are Earle Ross and Richard LeGrand respectively.

I like how Mr. Peavey always calls Gildersleeve Mr. Gildersleeve. I would have gotten along well with Mr. Peavey. A world like the one these people live in no longer exists. The show has a bit of a Cheers aspect to it. I downloaded the entire series the other day, though I'm really only interested in the episodes with Harold Peary as Gildersleeve. But that's about nine years' worth.

I found a pdf copy of the 1904 abridged version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Normally, I wouldn't touch an abridged anything. I don't even want the abridged version of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. But this case is different. Stoker himself performed the abridgement at his publisher's request. Could the 1897 novel do with some tightening?

When I go through things I've written, I'm looking to take out what I can take out. Clause, line, sentence, qualifier, words. Now, as I'm working, I may be adding to that manuscript, so this can sound a little confusing. How can something, for instance, like "Fitty," which I'm revising again, get both 900 words longer in a week and shorter? I'm doing both simultaneously. If I add, I might also still be pruning. And pruning from what I've added.

You don't want to trip a reader. The theoretical reader. You have places to help them get to, to just flat out get them to, and it's better to remove what bumps in the road there may be. If that's a pebble, get rid of the pebble.

It's like Echo and the Bunnymen advised--do it clean. I'm curious if this is how Stoker's abridgement of Dracula reads.

I mentioned finishing "Still Good," which I did a couple Saturdays ago. I wrote pieces on the films The Boarded Window (1973) and Deathdream (1974), which totaled about 1800 words, and a 3400 piece looking at four spring horror films: The Birds (1963), An Untitled Film (1964), Night of the Living Dead (1968), and The Halfway House (1944).

This morning I've been working on "Boom the Ball" and "You're Probably Just Tired." Was supposed to have the former done on Sunday morning, but I ended up concentrating on "The Ghost and the Flame" instead.

I really need to crank some music and additional opinion pieces and do a fresh batch of Beatles pieces.

I read A.M. Burrage's "One Who Sees." He could have done more with it. The setting of the courtyard on the raised ground in the open middle of the hotel--which is a big part of the whole set-up--works well, though.

The hedge over which the narrator of the Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket" can never see is one of those details endemic to the best writing, in which the "ordinary" and "everyday" is revealed as something of much greater significance on account of the seeing, the understanding of what is really there to be seen, and the rendering of those truths in language that has to be what it is to do what it does.

The Twilight Zone is the best middle of the night show. Programming realities aside, it would have been fitting for it to come on at 1 in the morning. Then again, syndication has taken care of that.

When it comes to the debut LPs of the Animals, Rolling Stones, and Beatles, the mono versions really sock you in the jaw (in a good way).

My favorite film villain is a villainess: Kathie Moffat as played by Jane Greer in 1947's Out of the Past. Director Jacques Tourneur told her to be a "good girl" in the first half of the film and a "bad girl" in the second. We're talking a very bad girl. Her face is suggestive of one in orgasm as she watches Mitchum's character fight his ex-partner. That's when you really know.

When I read Graham Greene and James Agee’s then-contemporary movie reviews, I am much more interested and invested in the writing than the judgments. The writing is the show. Agee, for instance, thought Robert Mitchum was a snooze in Out of the Past, which is probably my second favorite film. But I love his review of the movie. I feel like we’re less inclined than ever to be this way in our tribalism times and we miss out on much as a result.

People think he was a buttoned-down don, but M.R. James wrote some of the trippiest fiction you’ll find. “After Dark in the Playing Fields” is a good example, and there is no weirder children’s book (and delightfully so) than The Five Jars. James could be every bit as out there as, say, William Hope Hodgson.

He’s underrepresented on record, so one would do well to check out drummer Big Sid Catlett on Louis Armstrong’s Satchmo at Symphony Hall from here in Boston in 1947. A highlight of Armstrong’s discography, Catlett was as important to this music as clarinetist Johnny Dodds was to the Hot Fives.

"I Don't Mind" is to the Buzzcocks as "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" is to the Byrds. Songs of introspection, a measure of wisdom even if it's not the level of wisdom that the narrator would like to possess, or thinks he does, and there's a wishful wisdom thinking aspect, and also highly tuneful affairs that are more so than the more famous cuts ("Ever Fallen in Love," "Mr. Tambourine Man") that are generally regarded as each band's hookiest numbers.

Watched PRC's Apology for Murder from 1945, which is a full-on ripoff of Double Indemnity with pre-Ward Cleaver Hugh Beaumont in the Fred MacMurray role and Ann Savage of that same year's Detour playing the Barbara Stanwyck part. I like it better than Double Indemnity. At least Beaumont's character doesn't start doing the "baby" thing until closer to the end when his goose is as good as burnt to a crisp. I like Poverty Row and when I'm able to find a worthy, beat up little nugget there.