Category Archives: Shadows of a Dark Past

Casting Shadows, Part Two

1940s mystery, character development, Claude Rains, Film Actors, Film Noir, Gothic, Horror films, Murder, mystery, Shadows of a Dark Past, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, supernatural, suspense, Val Lewton, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Casting Shadows,  Part Two”

 

Philip Carlyle –  The master of the Carlyle Estate where the Wellstone Mystery Hour is making its remote broadcast, Philip Carlyle has opened his home and the secrets of its past to answer the mystery behind the disappearances of Felicia Blasko and his brother Bill Carlyle.  An engineer and businessman by profession, Philip still nurses the soul of a poet and musician, while holding secrets of his own concerning Felicia.  Embodying Philip requires a man of power, incisive wit and vision, as well as a sympathetic sense of artistry ‒ someone whose fascination with Jessica Minton rings more sad than creepy.  Claude Rains is my choice.  Think of the urbanity and authority of his Victor Grandison in The Unsuspected and the sly, mordant humor in Casablanca’s Inspector Renault.  Then there’s his incisive and forthright authority as Now Voyager’s Dr. Jaquith, tempered by his wry humor and genuine, though never soppy, compassion. Also think about the vulnerable passion of Paul Verin in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, a quality that burns beneath the wall of authority in Job Skeffington of Mr. Skeffington. That’s the complexity of Philip Carlyle.

 

Jeanne Rivers and Madame Wanda are two ladies who may or may not be whom they seem.

 

Jeanne Rivers is the housekeeper for Philip Carlyle in the mansion that Felicia haunts.  She’s a top sergeant making the place run like clockwork, even managing to banish the indomitable Liz Minton from kitchen gossip fests with the help. Her wit can be acerbic, but she can show warmth and good humor when she’s helpful ‒ a woman of practical advice.  She also has ties to the mansion’s tragic past that could open up its secrets. ­A fine choice to inspire Jeanne is Jean Brooks, leading lady of the RKO B-division.  Brooks has demonstrated a dry and clever wit in such films as The Leopard Man, The Falcon in Hollywood, and The Falcon and the Co-eds. Falcon Tom Conway can’t get by without her popping up somewhere! Further our Ms. Brooks is no stranger to a cinematic world of shadows.  A veteran of Val Lewton’s dark tales, in addition to playing a smart-talking gal in The Leopard Man, Brooks also portrayed the haunted Jacqueline in The Seventh Victim.

 

Madame Wanda – Wanda Hendrix brings more than a first name to Shadows’ medium.  Apple-cheeked and merry-eyed, Hendrix played comedy deftly in films like Miss Tatlock’s Millions and The Admiral Was a Lady.  Thus, Madame Wanda shatters the stereotypes of film mediums as otherworldly, mysterious, and at times even sinister.  Our stylishly outfitted Madame Wanda is quick with a quip to challenge and defeat skepticism about her capabilities, especially from the suspicious Liz Minton and Gerry Davis.  Still, Wanda’s description of her powers and her conjuring of a voice from beyond the pale demonstrate her bona fides for connecting with the supernatural.  Preparing her for the darkness of Shadows, in My Own True Love and Ride the Pink Horse  Hendrix moves through a post-war world now darkened by bitterness, vengeance, and corruption.

Next entry, a look at more of Jessica’s colleagues from the Wellstone Mystery Hour.

Casting Shadows, Part One
Shadows of a Dark Past
Jessica Minton Mysteries
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Images

-Claude Rains  Photo from John Engstead. Star Shots: Fifty Years of  Pictures and Stories by One of Hollywood’s Greatest Photographers. New York:  EP Dutton, 1978. p. 185.

-Jean Brooks in white trenchcoat:  Wikipedia public domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Brooks#/media/File:Jean_Brooks_1940s_fan_photo.jpg

-Jean Brooks in plaid jacket public domain:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_Brooks_in_The_Falcon_in_Danger_1943.png?uselang=en#Licensing

-Wanda Hendrix photo, Author’s collection

 

October Thrills and Chills with Shadows of a Dark Past!

1940s mystery, book signings and readings, Jean Grant, Jessica Minton, New England, Shadows of a Dark Past, Sisters in crime New England, , , , , , , , , , , ,

October Thrills and Chills with Shadows of a Dark Past!

I had quite the busy Halloween month meeting people and getting the word out about my latest Jessica Minton novel, Shadows of a Dark Past.  October kicked off  when I joined authors Jean M. Grant and Janet Raye Stevens at the Horseshed Fair in Lancaster, MA.  Some friends showed up expressly to get their copy of Shadows hot off the press.  I also sold copies to new readers as well. It was a beautiful sunny and warm day, setting Jessica and Company’s ghostly adventures off to an exciting start.  Here I am with one of my friends from the Shakespeare Club of Worcester, Becky Spanagel.  It was great of Becky and her husband David to drop by to say hello.  By the way, Yang made that purple blouse with the stars and moons that I’m wearing!

Next on the agenda was a Sisters in Crime New England Mystery Making Night at the West Boylston Library, also in Mass.  I had the privilege of working with two good buddies, Janet Raye Stevens and Carol Goodman Kaufman.  I joked to them that with me (Sharon Healy Yang) joining them, it looked as if it was a requirement to have three names to be on the panel .  We had a ball weaving the suggestions of our audience into a tale of murder on a cruise ship involving an ice pick, secret identities, and ice cream.  You had to be there.  I decided to combine the holiday ambience with my 1940s fashions to wear a black and white pin-striped suit, autumn gold blouse, and peaked chapeau that is two-parts wicked witch and two parts 1943 fashion!

I traveled south of the (Mass,) border to Connecticut to do another Sisters in Crime Mystery Making event, this time with Kate Flora.  It ended up just the two of us; however, you can see from the picture that our audience inspired us to a complex and exciting tale.

Later in the month, I joined Janet Raye Stevens and three other writers of the supernatural for “Tales Told in Darkness” in a Lowell Library sponsored event.  We had a good audience, including two of my best buddies from as far back as grammar school, Mary Lou and Kathy.  We all did a reading and I had the thrill of seeing people put down their phones and listen when I read of Jessica’s night time peregrination to a haunted room in the Carlyle manse. Did she dream or did she wake?

 

 

Probably my favorite event was the Book Launch and Reading I did at TidePool Books in Worcester.  It was the night I’d been waiting for!  Would you believe that people from all aspects of my life came?  My teaching years, my writing colleagues, my church, the Shakespeare Club, my old friend from years back!  I was so happy.  And I got to talk about the  films and books from the first half of the 20th century that influenced me with  imagery and atmosphere that was dreamy, eerie, haunting and their tales of obsession, vengeance, and sometimes forgiveness.  People were really interested in the three readings I did:  Jessica’s meeting in a cemetery with the husband of the alleged ghost; the reading I also did in Lowell; and a séance gone horribly wrong. My audience also had great questions about writing, about my characters and research, my writing process.  It was a dream.  One of my former students said that it was like being back in the classroom – and she meant it in a good way!  And it did feel like the good parts of teaching:  sharing ideas, getting people to think,  hearing what they thought.  You can see that I definitely dressed for the occasion.

 

So, this positive note is where I will wrap up.  On to November and December are a little less harried.  If you haven’t already dropped by to say hello and catch Jessica, Liz, and James’s latest adventures, you can come see me at the Narragansett Craft Festival at Narragansett Middle School, Baldwinville, MA on 11/9; the Auburn Holiday Craft Fair at Auburn High School, Auburn, MA (12/14); or Tatnuck Bookseller, Westborough, MA (12/15),  Check my web site here for deatils.  See you then!

Click here for the Shadows web page to see more details on the book and some fun bonuses!

Casting Shadows, as It Were

1940s mystery, Bela Lugosi, Dracula, Film Noir, Gail Russell, Gothic, Halloween, Horror films, Jessica Minton, Murder, mystery, New England, radio, radio drama, radio dramas, Shadows of a Dark Past, supernatiral films, supernatural, suspense, The Black Cat (1934), The Uninivted, Vitus Werdegast, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Casting Shadows, as It Were”

In the past, I’ve posted on how “casting” characters as if they were played by (mostly) classic era actors in my earlier Jessica Minton mysteries helped me  flesh out their characters.  Now  that Shadows of a Dark Past is out, I thought you might enjoy reading about the inspirations for the folks Jessica, Liz, and James encounter on the mysterious Birdsong Island.  So, let’s begin!
When you’re writing a ghost story à la Val Lewton/Edgar Ulmer/ Joseph Lewis, it only makes sense that some of your characters be inspired by star players from those films.  So, with whom to start?  Why not the inspiration for the haunted scientist/widower of Shadows, Vitus Blasko?
Who is a prime prospect to play a man whose obsession with his work cost him his wife and child many years ago?  My choice was one of the premiere players of 1930s/40s horror, especially at Universal:  Bela Lugosi.    “What?!” you exclaim.  “The guy who played those Machiavellian vampires in Dracula (1931) and Return of the Vampire (1945), as well a plethora of sinister scientists?” “You bet!” I reply.  Lugosi also played the tortured and highly sympathetic Dr. Vitus Werdegast in 1934’s The Black Cat.  Here, he’s a doctor who had been sent to a death camp at the end of WWI, costing him his wife and daughter, through the betrayal of Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar  Poelzig.  (Now those are names!)  His intellectual battles with Poelzig may seem sinisterly to threaten a young married couple caught in the middle at Hjalmar’s Frank-Lloyd-Wright-on-LSD designed mansion.  However, Werdegast’s grief over what he has lost and his protection of the couple reveal a sympathetic tenderness in Lugosi’s acting.  In honor of the sensitivity of Lugosi’s performance, I opted to select Vitus for the first name of my haunted scientist from Lugosi’s character in The Black Cat and the last name from Lugosi’s actual family name.

Jamie Blasko:  Jamie, Vitus and the ghostly Felicia’s daughter, has terribly suffered through her mother’s murder (or abandonment?), a broken engagement, and living in a shadow-shrouded manse looking after a father broken by the mistakes of his past.  With a cast member of The Wellstone Mystery Hour offering her the life saver of romance, Jamie has a chance for happiness.  Dare she take it?  The radio program will broadcast shows focusing on that most terrible time: the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.  Can Jamie bear a revival of that scandal and pain?  Will the program provide the answers she needs?  Will she and her father be able to bear those answers?
Soulful-eyed Gail Russell is the natural inspiration of my creation, Jamie Blasko.  In such roles as the haunted daughter determined to embrace the ghostly touch of her mother in The Uninvited or the young woman struggling against the psychic prediction of her death at a fast approaching appointed hour in The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Russell’s gentle demeanor threaded with flashes of piercing anguish embodies the spirit of the Blasko girl.

 

Gerry Davis:  A WWII vet who lost a leg at Anzio, Gerry is a true radio trouper on The Wellstone Mystery Hour, not only playing most of their romantic leads but a host of other parts as the need arises.  Handsome with wavy blondish brown hair and a twinkle in his eye, Gerry’s kind heart and impish wit may be just the ticket to save Jaime Blasko from the darkness shadowing her life.  However, Gerry must overcome the antipathy between Vitus Blasko and the Carlyle family sponsoring these broadcasts of a past tearing apart both families.  For Gerry, I’ve turned to a more modern player for inspiration: Geraint Wyn Davies.  The humor, passion, and intelligence Davies has brought to roles ranging from Shakespeare to the conscience-stricken vampire detective of Forever Knight makes him an ideal choice to inspire Gerry’s good nature and passion  to protect Jamie Blasko.
If you haven’t already, check out my blogs on casting characters in the first three novels of the Jessica Minton Mysteries
Bait and Switch
Letter from a Dead Man
Always Play the Dark Horse

Image Credits
Bela Lugosi images screen shots from The Black Cat (1934), © Universal Pictures.
First Gail Russell Image:  Screen Shot from The Uninvited (1944) © Paramount Pictures.
Second Gail Russell Image Public Domain from Wikkipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gail_Russell_postcard_photo_circa_1950s.jpg
Geraint Wynn Davies image a portion of Lady Vamp’s Forever Knight Site, http://www.foreverknight.org/LadyVampKnight1228/home.html

If any violation of copyright has been inadvertently committed by my posting or re-posting these images, let me know and I will remove them.
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