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Forgotten Authors: George Griffith

Forgotten Authors: George Griffith

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George Griffith

George Griffith was born George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones on August 20, 1857 in Plymouth, England to George Alfred Jones and Jeanette Henry Capinster Jones. The family did not have roots to any specific place as his father’s role as a clergyman kept him moving from parish to parish. By the time George was seven, his father had served in at least six different parishes.

He was home-schooled by his parents and allowed to teach himself from books in his father’s library.  Following his father’s death in 1872, Griffith began attending private school , where the limitations of his home schooling became apparent, particularly with regard to mathematics. He left school in 1873 and ran away to sea, deserting in Melbourne, Australia after less than three months. By the age of 19, he had worked in various jobs in Australia and managed to travel, eventually returning to England where he began teaching English, first at Worthing College in Sussex and later at Bolton Grammar School in Manchester. He viewed his time teaching as “penal servitude.”

It was while he was teaching at Bolton that he published his first two books, Poems and The Dying Faith, both were collections of poetry and both published under the pseudonym Lara. Other pseudonyms he used over the course of his career included Levin Carnac and Stanton Morich. He also met Elizabeth Brierly, whom he married in February of 1887.  They had a daughter and two sons, including Alan Arnold Griffith, who was a mechanical engineer who helped develop the jet engine.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Terrific Little Noir – After Dark My Sweet

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Terrific Little Noir – After Dark My Sweet

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

1990 was quite the year for hardboiled and Noir on the big screen. Pacific Heights (Michael Keaton) came in as the 41st highest grossing movie of the year, with Revenge (based on the novella from the uber-talented James Harrison) was 83rd. Those are both solid Noirs.

At 107th was The Two Jakes – the long-delayed sequel to Chinatown. At 109th was Miami Blues, with Fred Ward as Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely. I’ve read the books several times, but not seen the movie.

The 135th highest grossing movie is probably second only to The Maltese Falcon in the harboiled genre for me. It’s the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing. Starring the tastefully-last named Gabriel Byrne! At 155th is a remake of a Bogart flick, Desperate Hours. Mickey Rourke delivered a pretty good Noir.

 

But today, I want to talk a bit about a little gem that was pretty much overlooked and landed at 157th: After Dark, My Sweet. Sadly, it failed to earn back even half of it’s approximately $6.5 million budget. But this is a wonderful adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel.

It starts with director and co-writer James Foley, who has a mixed resume. He directed Sean Penn (married to Madonna at the time) in the very good Noir, At Close Range. He got the gig because he was producing Madonna’s videos. Sadly, the next movie he directed was Who’s That Girl. That’s the kind of thing that can end a career.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Things I Think I Think (Gat Edition)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Things I Think I Think (Gat Edition)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

I don’t think I’ve done a Ten Things I Think I Think, for A (Black) Gat in the Hand. Huh. I guess we can rectify that today.

As I write this, all 2,000+ books which I own are boxed up. They will be moving to the house I close on later this week. They made up 55 boxes of books. There’s a loft that will be my writing room/home office, with bookcases spread out across a few other rooms.

It’s weird not being able to grab a book to read, or look something up. I feel like I’m in a book version of homelessness. Definitely strange. So, I think:

1 – PHILIP MARLOWE HAS STAR POWER

Philip Marlowe was born in 1939, when Raymond Chandler cobbled together parts from short stories featuring other detectives (I’m not exaggerating, I believe he used he word ‘cannibalized’), and wrote The Big Sleep. Marlowe novels were used for movies starring The Falcon, and Mike Shayne. But the character of Marlowe has compelled some big Hollywood names to play him. Such as Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner, Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum, Powers Boothe, James Caan, and Liam Neeson.

These are heavyweight male stars playing a character often from decades before.  For the most part they’re good, though I definitely like them to varying degrees. Sam Spade, Race Williams, The Continental Op: similar big names in hardboiled fiction don’t have nearly the ongoing screen impact of Philip Marlowe. I ruminated on various Marlowe incarnations here.

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My Favorite Martian

My Favorite Martian

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J Allen St. John 1919

Has any writer of science fiction or fantasy ever had a more fertile imagination than Edgar Rice Burroughs? Anyone acquainted with his work will have no trouble reeling off the names of exotic and outlandish planets, continents, oceans, cities, animals, plants, races, gods, kings, princesses, heroes, and villains, ad infinitum.  Perhaps his most fecund setting was the first one he created — Barsoom (or Mars, as it’s even now called by the unenlightened), the site of eleven books written between 1912 and 1943. Filled with startling and memorable creations, Burroughs’ Barsoom is one of the most captivating places in the Atlas of the Imagination, and none of ERB’s “children” have taken a firmer hold on readers than John Carter’s enemies and allies, the great Green Martians that roam the deserts and dry sea-bottoms of that dying world.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Elliot Gould’s Better Philip Marlowe

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Elliot Gould’s Better Philip Marlowe

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

– Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Back in the Summer of 2020, A (Black) Gat in the Hand looked at some screen and radio productions for Raymond Chandler’s private eye, Philip Marlowe. Two months before, I had done a separate post on Powers Boothe’s terrific series for HBO. That series was really the impetus to move me from not liking Raymond Chandler, to being a fan.

There was a second thing which brought me all the way in to being a Chandler guy. Now, I cannot abide Elliott Gould’s The Long Goodbye. My attempts to ‘try again’ inevitably lead to me quitting the re-watch. I don’t like my Marlowe in 1973, and it’s my least favorite Marlowe on screen.

However, as with Powers Boothe, I wouldn’t be a fan of Raymond Chandler if not for Gould. He recorded all the Marlowe novels, as well as several of Chandler’s non-Marlowe short stories, as audiobooks. This was way back in cassette days, and I was smart enough to pick up several of the CDs, even though I wasn’t into Chandler then.

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Saved by the Panther: Jonathan Maberry on storytelling, books, and how the Black Panther changed his life, Part 1

Saved by the Panther: Jonathan Maberry on storytelling, books, and how the Black Panther changed his life, Part 1

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Jonathan Maberry

Since the publication of his first novel Ghost Road Blues, Jonathan Maberry has been a mainstay in genre fiction circles. Whether its for one of his multiple series, comic book writing, or the numerous anthologies he’s edited over the years, audiences have come to know and love his work.

With the completion of his 57th novel right around the corner, Maberry is still going strong. The five-time Stoker Award winner joined me for a chat about the past, present, and future. From his childhood in the rough Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia to being editor of Weird Tales, here’s what Maberry had to share with Black Gate magazine in an interview so big we had to split it in two.

You’ve been writing and editing for decades, how has the industry changed since you made your fiction debut?

My first novel came out in 2006 which is just around the time that digital was rising, so a couple years from then on we saw the end of CDs and cassettes for audio books and the rise of digital downloads.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: All My Steeger Books Intros

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: All My Steeger Books Intros

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It’s mid-May, and I’ve been in something of a hardboiled mood lately. So with Summer looming, here’s a Black (Gat) in the Hand. More Pulp is coming, like a gumshoe with a gasper and a rod.

I am fortunate to be part of a star-studded roster of writers who provide intros to Pulp reprints from Steeger Books. More and more classic, and forgotten, Pulp is continually being brought back to print – and electronically as well. I just finished my tenth intro, and that will roll out with number eleven, later this year.

Below you can find links to all nine of the intros that have been printed so far. Plus a bonus one that didn’t quite make it. If you like what I had to say, you might be interested in checking out the books themselves. You’ll likely recognize at least a couple of the names below. But I cannot praise the Max Latin stories by Norbert Davis, enough. I have the audiobook, and that’s my bedtime listening multiple times a week, all year long. Love those stories.

BILL LENNOX (W.T. Ballard)

Ballard migrated West from Ohio and used his experience working for Hollywood studios by creating a studio troubleshooter, for Black Mask. These read like traditional private eye stories, with Lennox unable to resist a damsel in distress. And there are plenty of those in Tinseltown.

FAST ONE (Paul Cain)

Lead Party has all of Paul Cain’s short stories, as well as his lone novel, Fast One. Mine is one of five essays in this deluxe hardback. And I got to write about Fast One!

Raymond Chandler referred to it as “some kind of high point in the hardboiled manner.” I think this is a nearly flawless book, and it rivals The Maltese Falcon as my favorite Hardboiled novel. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out on one of the best works in the genre.

Cain had somewhat of a mysterious life, and he wrote screenplays under the name Peter Rurik. While his legal name was George Sims. He died living quietly, his past largely buried.

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Mortal Kombat II – A Movie Review

Mortal Kombat II – A Movie Review

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Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

This past Saturday, I headed out with a few of my martial arts students, past and present, to watch the second installment of the recent Mortal Kombat adaptations. I’m not going to lie, the draw for me was the involvement of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage. Cage was never a character I played, but the retired action movie star is a fun idea for this franchise, and I will generally support anything Karl Urban does. Even when it’s bad, he’s great in it. And sometimes when it’s bad, it’s good. Ask me about my love of the 2005 film Doom one day. I never said I had great taste.

The point is, I went and saw the movie, and the short review is, I loved it (see afore mentioned note about my tastes). Let’s dive in!

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Ten Things: Tubi TV Edition

Ten Things: Tubi TV Edition

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So, last week, I talked about ten movies that you can stream for free over on Tubi. I could easily list ten or twenty more. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

I’m also watching TV shows on Tubi. Of course, a multiple season show takes a lot longer to work through, than a single movie. It’s got some cool animated shows, like Pinky and the Brain, The Looney Tunes Show, and The Pirates of Darkwater. I’ll probably do a post like this on just cartoons.

But today we’ll talk about live-action shows. Now, PlutoTV is terrific for TV shows. Entire channels dedicated to Star Trek shows, mysteries, Westerns, etc.. And I’m leaning into RokuTV (also free). But let’s look at ten shows you can catch on Tubi. Some of the biggest hits are there, but I’ll try to focus on some others.

A reminder: I talked here about how I was finally fed up with all the streaming apps I needed to watch stuff. So, except for Prime (the family orders a lot of stuff from Amazon), I cut the chord on all of them. I’m missing Daredevil, and didn’t watch a single Pittsburgh Penguins playoff game (I did listen to all of them). But it’s going fine.

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