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The Strange Case Of Mr Pelham
"The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham" is a 1940 short story (later expanded in book form in 1957) by English writer Anthony Armstrong about a man involved in a serious car accident. The man recovers only to find himself being stalked by a seemingly identical version of himself. It was made into an episode of ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' which originally aired December 4, 1955, under the title "The Case of Mr. Pelham", and starring Tom Ewell as the victim of his own Doppelgänger. The book was reprinted in 2021 by B7 Media, available on Amazon. Adaptations The story was also made into the theatrical film ''The Man Who Haunted Himself'' in 1970 starring Roger Moore. It was director Basil Dearden's last film, as he died soon afterwards in a car accident. Critical reception Anthony Boucher commented on the novel as "a lightly amusing tale of suspense and terror and, read as fantasy, an attractive book"; Boucher, however, also quoted another reviewer who found that, reading the nov ...
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Anthony Armstrong (writer)
George Anthony Armstrong Willis (1897–1976), known as Anthony Armstrong, was an Anglo-Canadian writer, dramatist and essayist. A humorist who contributed to ''Punch'' and ''The New Yorker'' magazines, he wrote well-plotted crime plays including ''Ten Minute Alibi'' (1933). Biography Anthony Armstrong was the son of George Hughlings Armstrong Willis and Adela Emma Temple Frere. Although his parents were both English, he was born in Esquimalt, British Columbia as a consequence of his father's career as a Paymaster Captain in the Royal Navy. They returned to England before his brother's birth in 1900 in Dorset. He was educated at Uppingham School. His brother John Christopher Temple Willis (1900–1969) was Director-General of the Ordnance Survey 1953–1957, and a watercolourist. During the First World War Willis was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1915. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1916. He married Frances Monica Sealy, and had three child ...
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Suspense
Suspense is a state of mental uncertainty, anxiety, being undecided, or being doubtful. In a dramatic work, suspense is the anticipation of the outcome of a plot or of the solution to an uncertainty, puzzle, or mystery, particularly as it affects a character for whom one has sympathy. However, suspense is not exclusive to fiction. In drama In literature, films, television, and plays, suspense is a major device for securing and maintaining interest. It may be of several major types: in one, the outcome is uncertain and the suspense resides in the question of ''who, what, or how''; in another, the outcome is inevitable from foregoing events, and the suspense resides in the audience's anxious or frightened anticipation in the question of ''when''. Readers feel suspense when they are deeply curious about ''what'' will happen next, or when they know what is likely to happen but don’t know ''how'' it will happen. Even in historical fiction, with characters whose life stori ...
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Methuen (publisher)
Methuen Publishing Ltd is an English publishing house. It was founded in 1889 by Sir Algernon Methuen (1856–1924) and began publishing in London in 1892. Initially Methuen mainly published non-fiction academic works, eventually diversifying to encourage female authors and later translated works. E. V. Lucas headed the firm from 1924 to 1938. Establishment In June 1889, as a sideline to teaching, Algernon Methuen began to publish and market his own textbooks under the label Methuen & Co. The company's first success came in 1892 with the publication of Rudyard Kipling's ''Barrack-Room Ballads''. Rapid growth came with works by Marie Corelli, Hilaire Belloc, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde ('' De Profundis'', 1905) as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ''Tarzan of the Apes''.Stevenson, page 59. In 1910 the business was converted into a limited liability company with E. V. Lucas and G.E. Webster joining the founder on the board of directors. The company published the 1920 En ...
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Alfred Hitchcock Presents
''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' is an American television anthology series created, hosted and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, aired on CBS and NBC between 1955 and 1965. It features dramas, thrillers and mysteries. Between 1962 and 1965 it was renamed ''The Alfred Hitchcock Hour''. Hitchcock himself directed only 18 episodes during its run. By the time the show premiered on October 2, 1955, Hitchcock had been directing films for over three decades. ''Time'' magazine named ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' as one of "The 100 Best TV Shows of All Time". The Writers Guild of America ranked it #79 on their list of the 101 Best-Written TV Series, tying it with '' Monty Python's Flying Circus'', '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' and '' Upstairs, Downstairs''. In 2021, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked it 18th on its list of 30 Best Horror TV Shows of All Time. A series of literary anthologies with the running title ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' were issued to capitalize on the success of the telev ...
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Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell (born Samuel Yewell Tompkins, April 29, 1909 – September 12, 1994) was an American film, stage and television actor, and producer. His most successful and most identifiable role was that of Richard Sherman in ''The Seven Year Itch'', a character he played in the Broadway production (1952–1954) and reprised for the 1955 film adaptation. He received a Tony Award for his work in the play and a Golden Globe Award for his performance in the film. Although Ewell preferred acting on stage, he accepted several other screen roles in light comedies of the 1950s, most notably ''The Girl Can't Help It'' (1956). He appeared in the film version of the musical ''State Fair'' (1962) and in a small number of additional ones released between the early 1960s and 1980s. Early life Ewell was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, the son of Martine (née Yewell) and Samuel William Tompkins. His family expected him to follow in their footsteps as lawyers or whiskey and tobacco dealers, but Ewell ...
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Doppelgänger
A doppelgänger (), a compound noun formed by combining the two nouns (double) and (walker or goer) (), doppelgaenger or doppelganger is a biologically unrelated look-alike, or a double, of a living person. In fiction and mythology, a doppelgänger is often portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal phenomenon and usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck. Other traditions and stories equate a doppelgänger with an evil twin. In modern times, the term twin stranger is occasionally used. Spelling The word ''doppelganger'' is a loanword from the German. The singular and plural forms are the same in German, but English writers usually prefer the plural "doppelgangers". The first known use, in the slightly different form ''Doppeltgänger'', occurs in the novel ''Siebenkäs'' (1796) by Jean Paul, in which he explains his newly coined word in a footnote; the word also appears in the novel, but with a different meaning. In German, the word is written (as is usual with German nouns) with ...
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The Man Who Haunted Himself
''The Man Who Haunted Himself'' is a 1970 British psychological thriller film written and directed by Basil Dearden (his final film prior to his death by automobile accident in 1971) and starring Roger Moore. It is based on the 1957 novel ''The Strange Case of Mr Pelham'' by Anthony Armstrong, and is a variation on the Jekyll and Hyde story. The story was previously filmed as a 30 minute short for television as part of the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Series 1 Episode 11: The Case of Mr Pelham. In 2011 Moore said his role in the film was his favourite. "It was a film I actually got to act in, rather than just being all white teeth and flippant and heroic." Plot While driving home from his London office in his Rover P5B, Harold Pelham, a director of Freeman, Pelham & Dawson, a marine technology company and very conservative creature of habit, seems to undergo a sudden personality change and starts to drive both fast and recklessly on his way home, imagining himself in a s ...
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Roger Moore
Sir Roger George Moore (14 October 192723 May 2017) was an English actor. He was the third actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in seven feature films between 1973 and 1985. Moore's seven appearances as Bond, from '' Live and Let Die'' to ''A View to a Kill'', are the most of any actor in the Eon-produced entries. On television, Moore played the lead role of Simon Templar, the title character in the British mystery thriller series ''The Saint'' (1962–1969). He also had roles in American series, including Beau Maverick on the Western ''Maverick'' (1960–1961), in which he replaced James Garner as the lead, and a co-lead, with Tony Curtis, in the action-comedy ''The Persuaders!'' (1971–1972). Continuing to act on screen in the decades after his retirement from the Bond franchise, Moore's final appearance was in a pilot for a new ''Saint'' series that became a 2017 television film. Moore was a ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ...
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Basil Dearden
Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director. Early life and career Dearden was born at 5, Woodfield Road, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex to Charles James Dear, a steel manufacturer, and his wife, Florence Tripp. Basil Dean Dearden graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor. He wrote ''This Man Is News'' (1938), a hugely popular quota quickie and wrote and directed a film for TV ''Under Suspicion'' (1939). He was assistant director on ''Penny Paradise'' (1938), produced by Dean and directed by Carol Reed, and two George Formby comedies directed by Anthony Kimmins: ''George Takes the Air'' (1938), produced by Dean, and '' Come on George!'' (1939). Dearden was promoted to associate producer on two more George Formby films, which he also co-wrote: ''To Hell with Hitler'' (1940) aka ''Let George Do It'' and ''Spare a Coppe ...
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Anthony Boucher
William Anthony Parker White (August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968), better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher (), was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas. Between 1942 and 1947, he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the ''San Francisco Chronicle''. In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym " H. H. Holmes", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it "Herman W. Mudgett" (the murderer's real name). In a 1981 poll of 17 detective story writers and reviewers, his novel ''Nine Times Nine'' was voted as the ninth best locked room mystery of all time. Background White was born in Oakland, California, and went to college at the University of Southern California. He later received a master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. After a friend told him that "Willia ...
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The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction
''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (usually referred to as ''F&SF'') is a U.S. fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House, a subsidiary of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Press. Editors Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas had approached Spivak in the mid-1940s about creating a fantasy companion to Spivak's existing mystery title, ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine''. The first issue was titled ''The Magazine of Fantasy'', but the decision was quickly made to include science fiction as well as fantasy, and the title was changed correspondingly with the second issue. ''F&SF'' was quite different in presentation from the existing science fiction magazines of the day, most of which were in pulp format: it had no interior illustrations, no letter column, and text in a single column format, which in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley "set ''F&SF'' apart, giving it the air and authority of a superior magazine". ''F&SF'' qu ...
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