Nightmare Alleys

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Undated paperback.

My reading this week has been William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley, a novel I’d been intending to read for some time after becoming familiar with the story from the first film adaptation. (I haven’t seen the recent version.) Whenever I’m reading a novel that’s been around for a while I have to see how it was presented in the past by designers and illustrators. Nightmare Alley was published in hardback originally, and the book today is marketed as a literary classic, but Gresham’s account of cheap carnivals and fraudulent mediums is sufficiently lurid enough to warrant a variety of different treaments, including pulp excess. The paperback at the top of this post is an extreme example but the cover could easily be applied to any number of noirish thrillers, there’s nothing in the artwork to suggest the carny world or the Spiritualism that the novel’s protagonist, Stanton Carlisle, mercilessly exploits.

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First edition, USA, 1946.

The first edition isn’t a great design but it happens to be faithful to the core storyline, more so than many of the covers that follow. In the film we’re left to guess what the “nightmare alley” of the title might be but in the novel this is a symbol that recurs throughout the story, a literal nightmare of Carlisle’s in which he dreams he’s being chased down a dark alleyway towards a light that remains continually out of reach. The dream weighs enough on Carlisle’s mind for him to regard it as a symbol of the human condition, or at least his soured perception of the same. The cover of the first edition combines this image with the Tarot trump of The Hanged Man which Carlisle turns up in a reading as a signifier of his destiny. Tarot scholars may quibble with this detail—The Hanged Man isn’t as doom-laden or negative as the novel suggests—but Gresham makes good use of Tarot as a structural element, with each chapter named after one of the trump cards, and with elements of the story reflecting the Tarot imagery. Given all this you’d expect cover artists to use Tarot symbolism much more than they do.

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First paperback edition, USA, 1948.

Another odd omission is the colour of Carlisle’s hair which the novel repeatedly tells us is blond. When Carlisle begins his career as a phony preacher and medium his blue-eyed “golden boy” persona is one of his tools for charming and deceiving wealthy widows. Gresham reinforces this in the chapter named after The Sun trump card by having Carlisle identified with the god Apollo. The film adaptations and almost all of the book covers ignore this detail.

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Film tie-in, USA, 1948.

The 1947 film adaptation was directed by Edmund Golding from a screenplay by Jules Furthman. The storyline is condensed and inevitably sanitised for the screen but it’s still one of the best film noir entries from the prime noir decade.

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Art by James Avati, USA, 1949.

James Avati was one of the great paperback illustrators yet even he gives Carlisle dark hair. I suspect by this point everyone expected as much after Tyrone Power’s memorable performance.

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USA, 1986.

And Power’s saturnine features are still providing the dominant image forty years later.

Continue reading “Nightmare Alleys”

Maskelyne and Cooke at the Egyptian Hall

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The Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, circa 1896.

The Egyptian Hall, the front of which forms one of the most noticeable features on the southern side of Piccadilly, nearly opposite to Bond Street, was erected in the year 1812, from the designs of Mr. G. F. Robinson, at a cost of £16,000, for a museum of natural history, the objects of which were in part collected by William Bullock, F.L.S., during his thirty years’ travel in Central America. The edifice was so named from its being in the Egyptian style of architecture and ornament, the inclined pilasters and sides being covered with hieroglyphics; and the hall is now used principally for popular entertainments, lectures, and exhibitions. Bullock’s Museum was at one time one of the most popular exhibitions in the metropolis. It comprised curiosities from the South Sea, Africa, and North and South America; works of art; armoury, and the travelling carriage of Bonaparte. The collection, which was made up to a very great extent out of the Lichfield Museum and that of Sir Ashton Lever, was sold off by auction, and dispersed in lots, in 1819.

Here, in 1825, was exhibited a curious phenomenon, known as “the Living Skeleton,” or ‘the Anatomic Vivante,” of whom a short account will be found in Hone’s “Every-Day Book.” His name was Claude Amboise Seurat, and he was born in Champagne, in April, 1798. His height was 5 feet 7½ inches, and as he consisted literally of nothing but skin and bone, he weighed only 77¾ Ibs. He (or another living skeleton) was shown subsequently—in 1830, we believe—at “ Bartlemy Fair,” but died shortly afterwards. There is extant a portrait of M. Seurat, published by John Williams, of 13, Paternoster Row, which quite enables us to identify in him the perfect French native.

Of the various entertainments and exhibitions that have found a home here, it would, perhaps, be needless to attempt to give a complete catalogue; but we may, at least, mention a few of the most successful. In 1829, the Siamese Twins made their first appearance here, and were described at the time as “two youths of eighteen, natives of Siam, united by a short band at the pit of the stomach—two perfect bodies, bound together by an inseparable link.” They died in America in the early part of the year 1874. The American dwarf, Charles S. Stratton, “Tom Thumb,” was exhibited here in 1844; and subsequently, Mr. Albert Smith gave the narrative of his ascent of Mont Blanc, his lecture being illustrated by some cleverly-painted dioramic views of the perils and sublimities of the Alpine regions. Latterly, the Egyptian Hall has been almost continually used for the exhibition of feats of legerdemain, the most successful of these—if one may judge from the “run” which the entertainment has enjoyed—being the extraordinary performances of Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke.

From Old and New London: A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places, Vol. 4 (1887) by Walter Thornbury

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Previously on { feuilleton }
Martinka & Co. catalogue, 1899
Learned Pigs and other moveables of wonder
Magicians
Hodgson versus Houdini

Weekend links 758

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Monstrum in animo (1955) by Yves Laloy.

• This week’s obligatory Bumper Book of Magic links: Alan Moore World has more of my ongoing comments about the creation of the book, while Séamas O’Reilly talked to Alan about the book itself and its connections with The Great When. The latter piece lowered my already low opinion of the late Genesis P-Orridge.

• At Timeless: A reprint of Bright Lights and Cats With no Mouths by John Balance. Still in print is The Cupboard Under the Stairs, a selection from JB’s notebooks.

• If you enjoy sleight-of hand magic—and I most certainly do—then Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants (1996) is 58 miraculous minutes by a master of the art.

• Mixes of the week: Winter Solstice 6 at Ambientblog; a mix for The Wire by Rafael Toral; and Reflection on 2024 at a Strangely Isolated Place.

• “Whatever the reason, there is something sorrowful about the disposal of art, whatever the perceived quality,” says Steven Heller.

• New music: The Path Of The Elder Ones by Nerthus.

Bright Lights (1959?) by Wade Curtiss & The Rhythm Rockers | Bright Lights, Big City (1961) by Jimmy Reed | I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (1974) by Richard & Linda Thompson

The Magic Shop, a film by Ian Emes

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An illustration by Arthur Wallis Mills from The Strand Magazine, June, 1903.

I had not thought the place was there, to tell the truth—a modest-sized frontage in Regent Street, between the picture shop and the place where the chicks run about just out of patent incubators—but there it was sure enough. I had fancied it was down nearer the Circus, or round the corner in Oxford Street, or even in Holborn; always over the way and a little inaccessible it had been, with something of the mirage in its position…

Despite writing about an HG Wells adaptation only a week ago I hadn’t gone searching for more of them when this one turned up anyway, rather like Wells’ mysterious shop. I’d actually been looking at the filmography of the late Ian Emes, a director best known for the short animations he made for Pink Floyd’s concerts, although his career encompassed animated shorts like The Beard as well as longer films for television and the cinema. The Magic Shop, which was made in 1982, looks as though it might have been another of those shorts that used to be programmed as supporting titles for first-run features in British cinemas. Andrew Birkin’s Sredni Vashtar was one of these, a film which is also under 30 minutes in length and an adaptation of a popular piece of Edwardian fiction.

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HG Wells’ story was first published in The Strand Magazine in June 1903 then collected in Wells’ Twelve Stories and a Dream a few months later. It’s been one of my favourite Wells stories since I first read it at the age of 11, as I mentioned in this review of the 1964 TV version. Wells’ fantasy reached me just as I was beginning to get very interested in conjuring tricks. I’d also been reading Victorian ghost stories in the reprint collections being published by Puffin and Lion, so a story about a shop that sold magic tricks, where the premises and proprietor had a slightly sinister quality, was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to read.

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Ian Emes’ adaptation is a more successful Wells film than The Door in the Wall, and a much better adaptation of the story itself than the attempt to update the tale for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, but Emes still doesn’t really capture the spirit of the story. The main flaw is that the actor playing the boy who wants to explore the shop is too old for the role. The narrator’s son in the story is around five or six years old, and much of the tension in the telling comes from the way that the boy sees everything that’s happening as delightful and magical while the father experiences rising alarm at the unfolding events and the situation in which the pair find themselves. The second half of the story, in which father and son are led by the shopowner into the labyrinthine warehouse behind the shop, is also lacking. Emes’ production may have been compromised by its budget but there’s no sign of the surprises that you might have expected to be filmed by a former animator. Derek Jarman regular Karl Johnson plays the father, Ron Cook is the shopowner, and there’s a cameo near the beginning from William Rushton as the man whose whining son is denied admittance to the shop. (Rushton had earlier provided the voice of the afflicted shaver in The Beard.) At the end of Emes’ film father and son find themselves teleported to what looks like a back street somewhere near the river instead of being returned to a busy London street. This reminds me that the first time I visited Regent Street myself at the age of 13 I had half a mind to go looking for the “Genuine Magic Shop”—or to try and identify the place where it might have been. The elusive nature of Wells’ establishment makes it the forerunner of the chemist shop owned by the malevolent Grail-seekers in Charles Williams’ War in Heaven, which makes me wonder now whether Williams borrowed the idea from Wells.

Ian Emes’ film may be seen at his Vimeo channel (log-in required, or you can use the Vimeo app). The story can be found in a collection of fifty-four of Wells’ short stories at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The Door in the Wall, 1956
Claude Shepperson’s First Men in the Moon
The Beard, a film by Ian Emes
Uncharted islands and lost souls
Doctor Moreau book covers
The Island of Doctor Moreau
Harry Willock book covers
The Time Machine
The Magic Shop by HG Wells
HG Wells in Classics Illustrated
The night that panicked America
The Door in the Wall
War of the Worlds book covers

Weekend links 729

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Phosphorus and Hesperus (1881) by Evelyn De Morgan.

• Mix of the week, or possibly the entire year: The Deep Ark, 167 tracks (over 8 hours of music), most of which are from the electronic deluge of the early 1990s. The download link may not work for all browsers—it didn’t for one of mine—but it is active. Via Simon Reynolds who has more about the Deep Ark project.

• At Nautilus: Betsy Mason on the use of stage magic to investigate animal behaviour. “By performing tricks for birds, monkeys, and other creatures, researchers hope to learn how they perceive and think about their world.”

• At The Daily Heller: Mad and the Usual Gang of Idiots. Meanwhile, Mr Heller’s font of the month may prove useful for this election season, a Jonathan Barnbrook design named Moron.

Looking back, you can see a pattern in those eras in which interest in telepathy boomed. Coined by Myers and his fellow psychical researchers in the 1880s, telepathy gained traction because it was formulated inside a moment of scientific and technological revolution, where uncanny transmissions proliferated across the visible and invisible spectrum, seeming to collapse the natural and the supernatural together. In the 1970s, telepathy returned, if under different names, as part of another moment of crisis. The Cold War arms race was an essential part of this, feeding a strange supplemental world of fantasy technologies, from mind control to brainwashing, and playing on an all-too-widespread psychological paranoia around being seen, infiltrated and manipulated by invisible agents.

Roger Luckhurst looks back at a century of psychic research

• New music: Portable Reality Generator by Field Lines Cartographer, and Sublime Eternal Love by Chrystabell and David Lynch.

• Coffee and Chocolates for Two Guitars: Robert Fripp interviewing John McLaughlin in July, 1982.

• Paintings by Ithell Colquhoun currently showing at the Ben Hunter gallery, London.

• At Public Domain Review: Eye Miniatures (ca. 1790–1810).

ESP (1965) by Miles Davis | ESP (1990) by Deee-lite | ESP (2002) by Comets On Fire