Category Archives: The Uninivted

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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Lee Library Author Event: A Walk on the Noir Side in Shades of Autumn

1940s mystery, All Through the Night, Always Play the Dark Horse, Autumn, Bait and Switch, Bait and Switch, book signings and readings, Ella Raines, Fall, Film Noir, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, Lee Library, massachusetts, mystery, New England, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, Smart-Talking Gals, Starving, Starving Artist Cafe, suspense, The Uninivted, Val Lewton, writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Since some of the Covid issues have waned, I’ve started going back to doing in-person author readings.  Friday, October 14th, I had the good fortune to do an event at the Lee Library in Lee, Massachusetts.  What a wonderful day!  Lee is in the western part of Massachusetts, so my husband and I had an exciting drive through all the gorgeous fall foliage to arrive at our destination.  Lee is a neat little town with a main street of equally neat shops, and in an antique store I found a 1940s movie magazine with pictures of favorite stars.  The main street has lots of  tasty restaurants.  We had our lunch at The Starving Artist Cafe, where they craft the yummiest sandwiches and
crêpes. They made a pumpkin latte that was absolutely perfect – not all sugary and fake whipped cream, but good coffee, the flavor of pumpkin spice, and steamed milk.  We sat outside at the street seating on a warm October day and enjoyed the small-town scenery, great food, and trees dressed in their autumn flames and oranges.After a stroll amongst the shops and a peek at some of  the gorgeous Victorian houses in town, we went to the library for my talk.  You can see what a beautiful old building the library is.  When visiting the town earlier, I was taken with the building and thought, “I’d like to do a talk here.”  Well, I contacted Jodi Magner at the library, and she was tremendously welcoming and enthusiastic at the prospect of my doing an event.  She told me that they loved mysteries in that town!

That day, Jodi and her daughter Megan made me so welcome and helped my husband and I set up.  I was delighted that my friend, mystery writer, Leslie Wheeler could join us, as well as other women whom I’d never met before.  We were a small group, but we had a great time.  I got so many intelligent questions, and people seemed interested in my inspiration from film noir and haunting movies of the 1940s like Val Lewton’s films and The Uninvited.  They seemed to get a kick out of the excerpts that I read from Bait and Switch, Letter from a Dead Man, and Always Play the Dark Horse to illustrate how the dark, dreamy elements of noir and the smart talking gals of the 1940s influenced my writing!  One of the women even said that a friend, sometime earlier,  had been suggesting she read the Jessica Minton series.  I’m getting a fan base! And now you can read all three Jessica Minton novels through the Lee Library.

Say, how do you like the pin-stripe black suit and the black fedora?  I thought the gold blouse was just right to add fall color. Should I have brought along a gat?

I’m hoping to go back in the summer, after the fourth novel comes out:  Shadows of a Dark Past.  Maybe I’ll see you there!

Halloween Reading Treats!

1940s mystery, Autumn, Dorothy Mcardle, Film Noir, Gene Teirney, Gothic, Gothic literature, Halloween, Jessie Douglas Kerriush, Mary Wollstonecraft, mystery, suspense, The Sign of the Ram, The Uninivted, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

Every October, I like to have some bedtime reading that suits the season.  I just finished two new books:  Midnight Fires and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  The first is a mystery by Nancy Means Wright that features Mary Wollstonecraft as its intrepid detective.  marywollstonecraftaWollstonecraft is a great choice for the role, as anyone who has read her Vindications would agree that she has all the nerve, smarts, and wit to boldly ask the questions and dig the dirt necessary for an investigator.  Her being cast in this role makes perfect sense. The novel is set during Wollstonecraft’s tenure as governess to the aristocratic Kingsborough family in Ireland and does a neat job of characterizing “the troubles.”  We also get good views of the workings of the Kingsborough family, as well as how contemporary views of women have stunted and warped them – right in line with MW’s own writings.  The descriptions of the landscapes are a pleasure to read as well.  Not least of all, the mystery has some neat twists and turns.

 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was a pleasantly amusing visit with the supernatural – a low key, smile-inducing progress of Lucy/Lucia Muir’s liberation from oppressive Edwardian propriety to become a mischievous, independent woman – with a little help from a frank and fiery sea captain’s ghost – though she was already well on her way to freedom before they met at Gull Cottage.ghost-tierney-really-good  There are some significant changes from book to film, but both work equally well.  I do think that Gene Tierney gives Lucia Muir a bit more power than the character in the book.

 

 

There are four books that I usually return to once I finish any new prizes for the month:  The Uninvited (Dorothy Mcardle), The Sign of the Ram (Margaret Ferguson), The Undying Monster (Jessie Douglas Kerriush), and  Redeeming Time (me, unpublished – yet!).  What I admire in the first three (and try to emulate in the fourth), is the depth of characterization, the creation of a powerful mystical/eerie atmosphere, the vividness of the landscapes, and the intelligence of the storylines. signoftheram What makes them such a pleasure to read is their authors’ deftness with language:  there’s enough detail to savor and shape your imagination but no excess or filler.  Right now, I’m working on The Uninvited.  I review it and The Sign of the Ram on this web site, under Golden Age Mysteries.  The Undying Monster is part of the psychic detective genre, with a woman psychic brought in to help a scientist uncover the nature of the beast that has ravaged an ancient British family for centuries and now threatens to destroy his two close friends.  The novel deftly captures the post WWI fascination with psychic phenomenon and leads characters and readers into the dark depths of ancient ruins, crypts, and family history to reach a final, mystical resolution – and it’s a fun ride!

What’s Redeeming Time about?  Think H. P. Lovecraft meets film noir meets Indiana Jones meets Val Lewton.

Image of Gene Tierney from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir copyright 1946, 20th-Century Fox (http://classicbeckybrainfood.blogspot.com/2010/08/just-thought.html)