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The Great Merlini
The Great Merlini is a fictional detective created by Clayton Rawson. He is a professional magician who appears in four locked room or impossible crime novels written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as in a dozen short stories. "His chronicler, free-lance writer Ross Harte, notes that Merlini hates the New York City Subway system, beer, inactivity, opera, golf, and sleep. He is, on the other hand, highly partial to surf bathing, table tennis, puzzles, circuses, and Times Square, where he operates a magic shop. Merlini's friendly rival is Inspector Homer Gavigan of Homicide, an intelligent man who is, nonetheless, amazed by the magician's feats."Penzler, Otto, ''et al.'' ''Detectionary''. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1977. Bibliography Novels * Death from a Top Hat (1938) * The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) * The Headless Lady (1940) * No Coffin for the Corpse (1942) Short stories Twelve short stories featuring Merlini were published in Ellery Queen's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death From A Top Hat
''Death from a Top Hat'' (1938) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. It is the first of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist. In a poll of 17 detective story writers and reviewers, this novel was voted as the seventh best locked room mystery of all time. Plot summary "As the story opens, free-lance writer Ross Harte is writing a magazine article on the modern detective story, and most of this article-to-be is included in the first chapter."Roseman, Mill ''et al.'' ''Detectionary''. New York: Overlook Press, 1971. When a magician is found dead inside his locked and (thoroughly) sealed apartment, the police call in Merlini to help explain the impossible, "perhaps on the theory that it takes a magician to catch one." All the suspects, however, are accustomed to producing the impossible. They include a professional medium, an escape artist, a couple of magicians, a ventriloquist, and two people who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Young (actor)
Robert George Young (February 22, 1907 – July 21, 1998) was an American film, television and radio actor best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father character, in ''Father Knows Best'' (CBS, then NBC, then CBS again) and the physician Marcus Welby in ''Marcus Welby, M.D.'' (ABC). Early life Born in Chicago, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father, Thomas E. Young, and an American mother, Margaret Fyfe. While Young was a child, the family moved to various locations within the U.S., including Seattle as well as Los Angeles, where Young was a student at Abraham Lincoln High School. After graduation, he studied and performed at the Pasadena Playhouse while working odd jobs and appearing in bit parts in silent films. While touring with a stock company producing "The Ship", Young was discovered by a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scout who signed the fledgling actor to a contract. Young made his sound-film debut for Fox Film Corporation in the 1931 Charlie Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook (October 25, 1927 – August 8, 2017) was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals ''Plain and Fancy'' (1955), ''Candide'' (1956) and ''The Music Man'' (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid-1970s, when she began a second career as a cabaret and concert singer. She also made numerous recordings. During her years as Broadway’s leading ingénue, Cook was lauded for her excellent lyric soprano voice. She was particularly admired for her vocal agility, wide range, warm sound, and emotive interpretations. As she aged her voice took on a darker quality, even in her head voice, that was less prominent in her youth.Howard Goldstein: "Barbara Cook", ''Grove Music Online'' ed. L. Macy (Accessed December 4, 2008)(subscription access)/ref> At the time of her death, Cook was widely recognized as one of the "premier interpreters" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerome Thor
Jerome Thor (January 5, 1915 — August 12, 1993) was an American actor of the stage and screen. He is best known for his work in Broadway plays from 1935 through 1946, and on American television during the 1950s. He starred as Robert Cannon in ''Foreign Intrigue''; a role which popularized the trench coat-wearing detective in public consciousness. His costume is part of the collection at the Smithsonian Institution. Early life Born in Brooklyn, New York, Thor began his career as a stage actor. Career Thor made his Broadway debut in 1934 at the 46th Street Theatre in Emmet Lavery's ''The First Legion''. He appeared in numerous Broadway plays through 1946, including Anton Chekhov's ''The Marriage Proposal'', William Saroyan's ''Get Away Old Man'', Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov's ''My Sister Eileen'', Clifford Odets's '' Golden Boy'', and Leonid Andreyev's ''He Who Gets Slapped'' to name a few. Thor transitioned into working as a television actor in the late 1940s and early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Post
Theodore I. Post (March 31, 1918 – August 20, 2013) was an American director of film and television. Highly prolific, Post directed numerous episodes of well-known television series including '' Rawhide'', ''Gunsmoke'', and ''The Twilight Zone'' as well as blockbuster films such as ''Hang 'Em High'', ''Beneath the Planet of the Apes'' and ''Magnum Force''. Biography Early life and career Born in Brooklyn, NY, Post started his career in 1938 working as an usher at Loew's Pitkin Theater. He abandoned plans to become an actor after training with Tamara Daykarhanova, and turned to directing summer theatre, where Post began his lengthy association in the director's chair. Upon returning home from his service with the United States Army Special Services in Italy during World War II, he resumed his experience in theater and when the new medium of television was born, his career took off. Post taught acting and drama at New York's High School of Performing Arts in 1950. He persuade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brett Halliday
Brett Halliday (July 31, 1904 – February 4, 1977) is the primary pen name of Davis Dresser, an American mystery and western writer. Halliday is best known for the long-lived series of Michael Shayne mysteries he wrote, and later commissioned others to continue. Dresser also wrote westerns, non-series mysteries, and romances under the names Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Peter Field, and Anderson Wayne. Biography Dresser was born in Chicago, Illinois, but mostly grew up in West Texas. Here he lost an eye to barbed wire as a boy, and thus had to wear an eye patch for the rest of his life. At the age of 14, he ran away from home and enlisted in the U.S. 5th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss, Texas, followed by a year of Border Patrol duty on the Rio Grande. After his service, he returned to Texas to finish high school. In search of adventure, Dresser traveled throughout the Southwest working at various odd jobs, including that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Shayne
Michael "Mike" Shayne is a fictional private detective character created during the late 1930s by writer Brett Halliday, a pseudonym of Davis Dresser. The character appeared in a series of seven films starring Lloyd Nolan for Twentieth Century Fox, five films from the low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation with Hugh Beaumont, a radio series under a variety of titles between 1944 and 1953, and later in 1960–1961 in a 32-episode NBC television series starring Richard Denning in the title role. Character biography Shayne debuted in the novel ''Dividend on Death'' first published in 1939, written by Dresser as Halliday. Fifty Shayne novels were published in hardcover written by Dresser (until 1958) and a variety of ghost-writers. Twenty-seven more were published as paperback originals for a total of seventy-seven. There are also 300 short story, short stories (although many of these are condensed from, or were expanded into, published novels), a dozen films, radio programs and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lloyd Nolan
Lloyd Benedict Nolan (August 11, 1902 – September 27, 1985) was an American film and television actor. Among his many roles, Nolan is remembered for originating the role of private investigator Michael Shayne in a series of 1940s B movies. Biography Nolan was born in San Francisco, California, the youngest of three children of Margaret, who was of Irish descent, and James Nolan, an Irish immigrant who was a shoe manufacturer. He attended Santa Clara Preparatory School and Stanford University, flunking out of Stanford as a freshman "because I never got around to attending any other class but dramatics." His parents disapproved of his choice of a career in acting, preferring that he join his father's shoe business, "one of the most solvent commercial firms in San Francisco." Nolan served in the United States Merchant Marine before joining the Dennis Players theatrical troupe in Cape Cod. He began his career on stage and was subsequently lured to Hollywood, where he played mai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1942 Film)
''The Man Who Wouldn't Die'' is a 1942 Mystery film, Mystery directed by Herbert I. Leeds, starring Lloyd Nolan and Marjorie Weaver. This movie is the 5th of a series of seven of the Michael Shayne movies produced by Twentieth Century Fox between 1940-1942. Plot summary Cast * Lloyd Nolan as Michael Shayne * Marjorie Weaver as Kay Wolff Blake * Helene Reynolds as Anna Wolff * Henry Wilcoxon as Dr. Haggard * Richard Derr as Roger Blake * Paul Harvey (actor) as Dudley Wolff * Billy Bevan as Phillips - the Butler * Olin Howland as Chief of Police Jonathan Meek (as Olin Howlin) * Robert Emmett Keane as Alfred Dunning * LeRoy Mason as Zorah Bey * Jeff Corey as Coroner Tim Larsen * Francis Ford (actor), Francis Ford as Caretaker References External links * * * * 1942 films American black-and-white films Films set in 1942 American mystery drama films American detective films Films based on American novels American crime drama films 20th Century Fox films Films dire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miracles For Sale
''Miracles for Sale'' is a 1939 American mystery film directed by Tod Browning, and starring Robert Young and Florence Rice. It was Browning's final film as a director. The film is based on a locked-room mystery novel by well-known mystery writer Clayton Rawson, ''Death from a Top Hat'', which was the first to feature his series detective The Great Merlini. In this film, Merlini's character has been changed into Michael Morgan (The Amazing Morgan) as portrayed by Robert Young. Don Diavolo, another series character in Rawson's work under his pseudonym, Stuart Towne, appears here as Dave Duvallo. Plot In the late 1930s, inactive New York magician Michael "Mike" Morgan exposes fraudulent magicians and psychics who prey on the unsuspecting. When demonologist Dr. Sabbat is mysteriously murdered, Mike assists the police in developing suspects which include Tauro and Dave Duvallo - two magicians last seen with Sabbat; a couple named La Claire who perform tricks by telepathy; a psychic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
No Coffin For The Corpse
''No Coffin for the Corpse'' (1942) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. It is the last of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist. Merlini would however, continue to appear in some short stories. Plot summary Ross Harte, newspaperman and friend to The Great Merlini, has finally fallen in love—with Kathryn Wolff, daughter of irascible millionaire Dudley Wolff. Dudley decides to put huge obstacles in the path of Kathryn's romance, including disinheriting her. But most of his life is taken up with his investigations into the nature of death. To that end, he's filled his country estate with his second wife (a former medium), an experimental biologist, and a number of other odd characters. When a private detective decides to blackmail Wolff, he won't stand for it; he strikes the man, who falls to the floor dead. Wolff forces his hangers-on to help him bury the little man—who comes back to haunt Wolff, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Headless Lady
''The Headless Lady'' (1940) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. A character in the novel, a detective story writer named Stuart Towne, has the same name as a pen name of Rawson. This is the third of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist. Plot summary Beautiful young Pauline Hannum, daughter of the late Major Hannum and a performer with his circus, enters The Magic Shop run by The Great Merlini and is suspiciously willing to pay much more than the going price for the immediate delivery of a "Headless Lady" illusion. Merlini and his writer friend Ross Harte decide to investigate, drawn by Merlini's love of circuses. They soon learn that Major Hannum's death was probably a murder, and that the killer seems to have unfinished, and deadly, business that involves a real headless lady whose head has disappeared. Merlini, Harte and a new associate, detective writer Stuart Towne, soon learn a number of i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
