Reviews

Old movie review: ‘Haunted Honeymoon’

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=vjaNdZCIvPc

After I reviewed Dorothy L. Sayer’s Busman’s Honeymoon the other day, I recalled that a movie had actually been made of it, starring Robert Montgomery. Miss Sayers hadn’t liked it much, by all accounts. I checked to see if the film might be on YouTube, and behold it was. Obviously I had to watch and review it. (The YouTube version is called Busman’s Honeymoon, like the book, but in America it was released as Haunted Honeymoon.)

It was an interesting experience. I find I have to review it on two levels – one, as a fan of the Lord Peter Wimsey books, and second, as a “dispassionate” movie viewer.

First of all, as a Wimsey movie, it’s pretty weird. Not to say disappointing.

Robert Montgomery (a matinee idol in his day and father of Elizabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched”) looks nothing at all like Lord Peter. He doesn’t even wear a monocle. He’s an American, and speaks with that old mid-Atlantic accent that sounds British to Americans but doesn’t fool Brits.

Harriet Vane is played by Constance Cummings, another American actor, with a somewhat more convincing English accent (at least to my ear). But she’s far too pretty and… how shall I put it? dewy-eyed to be Harriet Vane.

Bunter is played (quite disappointingly) by Sir Seymour Hicks. I am sorry to report that he’s a somewhat farcical character – not as farcical as Arthur Treacher playing Jeeves in the awful film Thank You, Jeeves with David Niven, but far below the level of dignity Bunter demands.

Also oddly, Inspector Kirk, a rather innocent local policeman in the book, has now become a shrewd Scotland Yard man sent in from London. He’s played by Leslie Banks. At first I thought he’d somehow acquired Lord Peter’s monocle, but on closer examination I found that’s just the way his right eye looks.

Crutchley, the sinister handyman, is played by Robert Newton, who some years later would achieve immortality as the archetypal Long John Silver. (When you Talk Like a Pirate on Talk Like a Pirate Day, you’re imitating Robert Newton.)

In short, little attempt has been made to incarnate Miss Sayers’ beloved characters. That strikes me as a poor business decision, but it’s classic film industry procedure.

On the other hand, when I look at the film purely as cinema, I have to admit it’s not bad. And in many ways superior to the originals.

First of all, the writers have added an obstacle to the story. Lord Peter and Harriet have agreed, we are informed, to give up detecting now that they’re married. They exchange pieces of jewelry to seal the deal. This adds a nice element of conflict, as Inspector Kirk keeps tempting them with clues.

Secondly, in “opening out” the original play, the film makers have added action. Miss Sayers’ book version was also opened out from the play, but she spent most of that time in dialogue, which sometimes got repetitive. The movie gives us a manhunt on the moors and an auto accident, which up the pace and add excitement.

All in all, it’s a pretty good movie of it’s kind. It’s just not Wimsey.

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‘Thunderstruck,’ by Erik Larson

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The London Times said, “There was something intensely thrilling, almost weird, in the thought of these two passengers traveling across the Atlantic in the belief that their identity and their whereabouts were unknown while both were being flashed with certainty to all quarters of the civilized world.”

There was a time when “Crippen the Poisoner” was as famous as Jack the Ripper, largely because he was the first murderer whose arrest could be followed in “real time” by the public, through wireless telegraph reports. His story, along with the story of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless, entwine to form the narrative of Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck. He performed a similar trick in his fascinating book, The Devil in the White City.

Hawley Harvey Crippen came from a respected Methodist family in Michigan. Though known as “Dr. Crippen,” he was in fact a homeopath. But he was respected by all who knew him – a tiny, balding, pop-eyed, bespectacled man, unfailingly polite and endlessly patient with everyone. Especially with his wife Cora, who was bubbly and social and domineering. She was, in descending stages, an aspiring opera singer, an aspiring Variety performer, and finally a popular hostess with the theatrical set, first in the US, then in London. She was an extravagant shopper and treated her husband as a house servant. Until…

Until he hired young Ethel Le Neve as a typist in his office, and fell in love with her. One day he announced to Cora’s friends that she’d left suddenly for America. And not long after, he told them she had died. This struck them as preposterous – gregarious Cora leaving without saying goodbye? Leaving all her clothes and jewelry behind? (Especially when they spotted Ethel wearing one of her necklaces.)

Some of them called the police, and Inspector Dew (who would become a celebrity because of this case) interviewed Crippen, who seemed plausible. But when a body was found buried in the basement, and Crippen and Ethel vanished, the hunt began.

A hunt that would have been impossible except for a brand-new invention, Wireless telegraphy, a new technology that wasn’t even perfected yet.

The other thread of this book is the story of the inventor of the Wireless, Guglielmo Marconi. Today we’d classify Marconi as someone on the autistic scale – obsessive in his interests, clueless in dealing with people. He wasn’t really a scientist – he was a tinkerer, an experimenter who followed his instincts rather than scientific principles. This annoyed real scientists, and together with his disregard for their feelings, made him a lot of enemies.

It’s an irony of this story that the murderer is nearly the most sympathetic character in it. I’m glad that author Larson chose to tell it in a dispassionate manner – it could have been maudlin.

If you like history and lots of interesting details, Thunderstruck is a fascinating book. I recommend it.

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Norway Journal, Day 9

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June 19: Today was not as exertive as the day before, but quite satisfactory. I slept the sleep of the just, and woke feeling OK except for the congestion I’ve been having. I doubt this is Covid, as there’s no headache and no particular sore throat, not to mention no change in my sense of taste.

My hosts were kind enough to wash my dirty clothes, and to hang them to dry.

Then we headed for the Stavanger Archaeological Museum, where they’re having a special Viking exhibition for the Hafrsfjord Jubilee. I’ve been to the museum before, and like it very much. The exhibition turned out to be free, because of the festival.

We saw a fascinating collection of Viking artefacts, many of them from the Stavanger area, though a number of them were carted off to Bergen, where they remain, in the old days before there was a museum here. We saw three fine Viking swords…

…and some of the gullgubber, mysterious images on gold foil, thought to be votive offerings to the old gods…

I’d never guessed they were as tiny as they are.

Also gold arm and neck rings, and various pieces of silver treasure.

And a piece of a ship’s dragon head, recovered from a bog, something I never knew existed. And displays of various kinds.

A piece of a dragon head.

Other rooms showed area history from other ages, back to the stone age. Of particular interest was a loop of projected video of a young blonde woman doing a sort of haka dance, wearing the famous bronze age string skirt, often depicted in history books. She was very lovely and quite topless, and I liked her right off.

The gift shop had many tempting items, but I restricted myself to a blue glass ring.

The afternoon was quiet, and we said goodbye to the nephew at last, as he was picked up for his flight back home to England.

Tomorrow I must get up early to catch my bus for the first leg of my trip to Hardanger.

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Norway Journal, Day 8

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View of Hafrsfjord from Yterroy. You’ve read about the Hafrsfjord in my Erling books.

June 18: A big day for me. I got up in good time to get going to put my Viking togs on and get some breakfast before we headed out for a fjord cruise. It was raining as predicted, but clear skies were obviously coming on. We caught a big motorized catamaran doing a circular course through the Hafrsfjord. Our first stop was Ytterøy, an ancient peninsula where there’s a “bygdeborg” (a hill fort for local defense). We debarked and took a walking tour that involved a lot of climbing to the top of the hill, where there was a performance of Haraldskvadet (the skaldic poem about the Battle of Hafrsfjord) by a singing group (quite nice). Further on, a group with lurs (long, wooden traditional Norwegian horns) did an instrumental/performance piece that meant nothing at all to me. Perhaps it’s the sort of thing the Vikings really listened to, but to me it seemed postmodern and atonal. Our trip back down the hill was rather rugged, and involved some very steep descents. Some of the people around me were watching to make sure the old man in Viking clothes didn’t fall, which I have to admit was reasonable. The final descent had no handrails at all and seemed to me genuinely too dangerous for public use.

Another one of those plexiglass installations to spark the imagination.

Then there was a long walk along the shoreline (sometimes on top of half-submerged rocks). Happily, I came through neither broken on the rocks nor soaked. Finally we made it back to the quay, and caught another catamaran to Møllebukta, where the Viking market was being held. We walked around, and then my hosts left me by myself. I assumed they would take the further legs of the boat tour, but I guess they actually spent their time at the market. Their nephew the Viking enthusiast was with them, so it may have been to please him as much as me.

One of the Viking ships on the Hafrsfjord.

It was quite a deal. I’m told it’s far from the largest Viking market in Norway, but it was the biggest this American had ever seen. Hundreds of reenactors with their tents and sales stands ranged along several paths through an area around a brook. All kinds of goods for sale, artisans demonstrating their skills, the odd fight show or Viking game. We had a brief spot of rain, but the day had cleared up essentially. Beautiful weather, crumb-hungry seagulls swooping around, and in the distance the unforgettable Sverd I Fjell monument.

Viking battle.

I found my friends from Vikingklubben Karmøy, and they generously offered me a stool, where I took my seat. Except for a walk around to see what there was to see at one point, I stayed there, happy to be playing Viking in Erling Skjalgsson’s personal domain. The Karmøy people were good to talk to, and I was quietly and serenely happy. I’d been waiting for this day since I was 12 years old.

Me with the leader of Vikingklubben Karmoy.

At 4:30 my hosts began to leave, and so we went to Sola for pizza (I like to think of it as feasting at Sola), and then home to wind down.

A great day in my life. I will not demean it with a joke. I feel very happy.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Busman’s Honeymoon,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Dorothy L. Sayers initially intended to end her Lord Peter Wimsey series of mystery novels with Gaudy Night, in which Harriet Vane finally succumbs to Peter’s charm and agrees to marry him. But later she collaborated with Muriel St. Clare Byrne on a Wimsey play, called Busman’s Honeymoon. In the play, the honeymoon is interrupted by the discovery of a murdered body, to the couple’s frustration and some interesting character revelation.

Later Sayers turned the play into a novel. It’s not considered one of the best of the series, but it has virtues that make it well worth reading.

The story opens with a series of letters written by various characters, describing the wedding and its initial aftermath. Harriet has confided to Peter’s mother that she always wanted to live in a particular house she used to visit as a child, in a village in Hertfordshire. Peter has delightedly bought it for her, and he and his man Bunter have arranged for the house to be ready for their occupation when they show up on the wedding night.

However, they find the house locked and uninhabited, and none of the servants were expecting them. At last they get in, make shift to set up in spite of inconveniences like blocked chimneys, and consummate their marriage. The next morning the missing former owner is found – bludgeoned to death in the cellar.

The local police superintendent takes to Wimsey immediately, being, like him, devoted to collecting literary allusions for insertion into conversation. Lord Peter can’t resist involving himself in the mystery. They will encounter a collection of local eccentrics, all with various motives for wanting the victim dead, but with either insufficient motivations or solid alibis. The final solution will prove to involve a genuine scoundrel and a baffling murder weapon.

The story gets slow in some stretches, especially in what I assume (it’s been a while since I read it) the added scenes not found in the play. The great virtue of the book, in my opinion, is the section at the end where Peter suffers a PTSD reaction as the murderer’s execution hour approaches, and Harriet comforts him.

Recommended. I also think some Christian college ought to stage the original play some time. I wish I’d gotten the chance to play Lord Peter when I was young and thin.

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Norway Journal, Day 7

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June 16: Mari Anne and her husband Michael drove me out to Bø farm, near Randaberg, north of Stavanger, where Cousin Sigve lives (turns out he’s not actually a cousin, but a relation by marriage. But he’s had trouble finding relatives in America, and has settled for me). He’s retired, but used to be a farmer and was be involved in scientific breeding programs for hogs and cattle.

He told me he had a chest that had belonged to the grandmother of Prof. Sven Oftedal of Augsburg College, one of the people we study in the Georg Sverdrup Society, whose journal I edit. Oftedal’s mother, he explained, was born on a neighboring farm and he had acquired the chest.

Me sitting on the Oftedal chest. I’m happy to report I did not crush it.

He took me up to Hodnefjell on Moster Island (not to be confused with Moster on Bomlø, which I visited the other day). Some of my ancestors lived there and were converts to the Moravian movement. They heard about Hans Nielsen Hauge, the Lutheran lay evangelist, and invited him to visit them there. It was with them Hauge stayed when he first visited the Stavanger area. They became followers (“friends”) of his. One of their community was John Haugvaldstad, who went to Stavanger and became a prominent Haugean leader and businessman. He established several businesses, always with the goal of employing the poor and supporting mission work. I understand he was considered the de facto head of the Haugeans after Hauge’s imprisonment for leading meetings while not ordained. My relatives were friends and supporters of Haugvaldstad. There is a bust of him in Stavanger, outside the mission school.

Hodnefjell farm, home of my ancestors, in the background.

We visited Utstein Kloster, the only medieval monastery in Norway that remains standing. Smaller place than I expected, but very interesting. A chance to get in out of the rain, which was pretty steady all day.

We went to another medieval church, whose name I forget. But it is well preserved (or restored) and quite beautiful in a simple, Romanesque way. We visited a German coastal installation from World War II along the coast, which included gun emplacements and a tunnel through the rock.

On the island of Finnøy, we saw the replica of the sloop “Restauration,” in which Cleng Peerson led the first organized group of Norwegian immigrants to America. 52 people (53 on arrival, as a baby was born) traveled on this tiny vessel, which authorities later declared inadequate for the purpose and seized (after it had arrived). These people were mostly Quakers, along with some Haugeans, fleeing religious pressure from the state church. Finnøy was Cleng Peerson’s home.

The replica of the “Restauration”

Sigve also drove me past the one place he has found in the area where (he’s personally satisfied) Hans Nielsen Hauge set up a sea salt refinery. (After several years in solitary confinement, the pressures of the Napoleonic Wars induced the government to grant Hauge temporary parole so he could set up sea salt refineries to relieve the salt shortage. After he had performed this service well, the conditions of his imprisonment were eased a little.)

Plausible site of Hauge’s sea salt refinery.

Back to Sigve’s house and a lovely dinner with his wife and daughter. We talked quite a long time about Vikings and other matters. Then back to Sandnes and my hosts. I am stimulated but tired. I hope I’m not coming down with a bad cold.

Sigve and I.
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Life’s Just a Bowl of Beer-soaked Skittle Cherries

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Here’s a bit of English idiom trivia I came across recently. The phrase “life’s just a bowl of cherries” is the title of a 1931 Broadway number. “Life is just a bowl of cherries. It’s not serious. It’s too mysterious.” I link to an Ethel Merman recording here because she’s the one who inflicted this song on the inmates of New York’s theater trade.

This phrase clashes a bit with the British saying, “life’s not all beer and skittles.” Some readers among us may assume that’s a reference to candy, and I would like to know how many people, if any ever, would drink beer while eating Skittles. (Wait. Since I hamstring myself through perpetual research while blogging on trivia, I found a 2020 report of a beer brewed with Trix and Skittles, which goes to show, children, that if you believe in something hard enough, even a very bad idea can become a real boy.)

But life, as they say, is not all beer and skittles, meaning it’s not the intoxicating wonderland of your local pub wherein you can procure a brewed beverage and play a game of nine-pins–the ancient and venerable game called skittles!

The Gardens Trust did some research and writes, “Amongst the earliest references I could find are a couple of 14thc manuscripts which show a skittles game in which one skittle is bigger, differently shaped, and in most cases positioned so as to be the most difficult to knock over.  According to a specialist website . . . the throwers in the pictures are about to throw a long club-like object at the skittles underarm.”

Life, having been around for as long as it has, gets credit for a lot of things. Oliver Wendell Holmes gave us these two:

Samuel Johnson tells us, “Life’s a short summer,” and you can imagine where the killjoy goes with that idea.

Let’s bring it back around with this suggestion from Joseph Addison. “I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.”

Life is much sweeter with birdsong. I’ve offered my neighborhood aviators club blackberries, and I’ve seen a few takers this summer. Maybe they prefer cherries.

Photo by Engin Akyurt/Pexels

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‘Area of Suspicion,’ by John D. MacDonald

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It’s very good news in my world that the Murder Room Series is bringing out John D. MacDonald’s old stand-alone novels, and at a reasonable price. I flee from postmodern literature to these books like a cockroach from a kitchen light.

Area of Suspicion was published in 1954, long before MacDonald’s Travis McGee character was conceived. But it looks as if the setting of the opening must have stuck with him, because it’s right out of that series. Gevan Dean lives the life of a beach bum in Florida, in a community of beach and boat people who make a lifestyle of partying and casual sex. He doesn’t live on a houseboat like McGee, but the ambience is familiar. Gev used to run the family business, a manufacturing company, but he fled after he found his brother Ken in the arms of his fiancée, Niki. He went to Florida to forget. Lately, though, the party life has palled on him, and he’s been pulling back from his neighbors.

Then he gets word that his brother Ken is dead, murdered, apparently by a random robber. By the time he gets the news, it’s too late to attend the funeral. But there is time to attend the meeting of the company’s board, where the next CEO will be chosen. He’s going to go to that.

Back at home, in a fictional city, he is reunited with Niki, who’s as beautiful and seductive as he remembers. She tells him she made a mistake. It’s Gev she loves. All he needs to do is vote his shares for the current CEO, rather than for the old employee his uncle supports, and they can run off together and live happily ever after.

But Gev is suspicious. Something doesn’t smell right. The CEO Niki supports is a little too smooth, a little too ingratiating. And why has he fired all the best men Gev hired back when he was in charge? And was his brother’s murder really just wrong place, wrong time? When he starts asking awkward questions, Gev soon find himself facing physical threats. And a plot that’s deeper and more devious than he could imagine.

John D. MacDonald studied business at Harvard, so he writes about it with understanding and sympathy – something that’s rare in popular literature. He also had, even at this early date, an excellent way with his characters – they’re well-rounded and sympathetic, even the bad ones. Our hero Gev is smart enough to leave town for his own safety when the police suggest he do that(!) And the writing is evocative and spare, all at the same time.

Highly recommended. Cautions for sex scenes, though they’re pretty tame by today’s standards.

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Norway Journal, Day 6

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June 15: I experienced a certain measure of distress this morning, when I found that the zipper on my jeans had broken. Einar convinced me that there was no shame in wearing my Viking pants, so that’s what I did. I greatly missed my pockets, however.

We used Einar’s girlfriend’s car, and they drove me to Stavanger. We left right on time. It was a pleasant drive, interrupted by several tunnels of varying lengths (under fjords) and a ferry ride. We arrived in Sandnes, home of Mari Anne, a local historian, and her family, precisely on schedule. We were treated to a tasty lunch. To my amazement, we had buns to make sandwiches with, and no knives or forks. So everybody ate their sandwiches with their hands. You’d have to know Norwegians to know how surprising that was to me. In my experience, Norwegians always cut sandwiches up with a knife and fork. I can only assume they were going the extra mile to make me feel at home. (Only the same thing happened everywhere I went. I can only conclude it was a conspiracy. The idea that I’m mistaken about Norwegian eating habits is obviously absurd) I got to meet their nephew who is staying with them, and who is keenly interested in Vikings. This gave me ample opportunity to hog the conversation.

They took me to a store called Dressman (“Dress” in Norwegian means “suit,” so don’t get the wrong idea). There, in spite of the fact that you rarely see a Norwegian as fat as I am, we were able to find a pair of black chinos that fit me. This was a great comfort to me in my old age.

Then they took me on a tour. We saw the ancient stone circle popularly called Erling Skjalgsson’s Thingstead, though it’s certainly much, much older than Erling. A sort of Stonehenge thing, but the stones are much smaller and there are no capstones. Its original purpose is a mystery, but it provides plenty of scope for speculation.

“Erling Skjalgsson’s Thingstead,” as it’s called.

We went to Sola Ruin Church, which can plausibly be considered the site of the place where Erling worshiped (though not in this building, which must be later). If this is where Erling’s church stood, I’d wager he must be buried under the floor. Nearby, I assume, his farm lay, though no archaeological evidence has been found in that well-worked soil. So I greeted Erling again on his home ground.

The Sola ruin church. The Germans actually dismantled it during the war, but thoughtfully numbered the stones. So after the war it was simply reassembled, like an Ikea kit.

Then they showed me the two stone crosses at Tjora, whose age is uncertain but which are certainly among the earliest memorials of Christianity in Norway. There were originally four, but now only two stand, and their location has been moved a bit. Still and all… they are unquestionably early medieval.

The stones at Tjora. Unquestionably Viking Age. Certainly dating to Erling’s time; perhaps to Haakon the Good’s.

We also saw a weathered petroglyph near a farm fence.

Then back home for a delicious supper. They brought out a bunch of books about Vikings to discuss. And I tried to book bus tickets to Haugesund on the Norwegian mass transport web page, with great frustration, as I discovered that my credit card, which I made sure to be acceptable in Norway, is not usable over the internet (validation issues). A resolution was found, but not one that pleased me greatly.

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‘But Mr. Adams!’

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On this Independence Day, I interrupt my celebration of the Old Country to share this clip of my favorite number from the musical “1776.” William Daniels and Ken Howard were wonderfully paired as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and Howard Da Silva milked the Benjamin Franklin part for all it was worth. Fun and educational. Holds up well.

Cautions for some mild (by today’s standards) profanity.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture