Classic Literature Props Exploitation Horror

Still "Masters of Macabre" After a Hundred Years

There is charm in being misled. Did you know Nathaniel Hawthorne was a “horror” writer? Just like Edgar Allan Poe! I learned of both “Masters of the Macabre” at an early age, Hawthorne familiar from when Twice-Told Tales came out in 1963, and a neighbor boy showed me Dell’s comic adapt. Missed the picture, maybe a blessing, because it isn’t much good, but wonder now if the omnibus led ones of my age and stripe to explore, eventually embrace, classic literature. Did not accomplish that for me, regret to say, but at least I knew Hawthorne, Poe, plus Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, each from whom famous monsters sprang. Getting youth to read requires sugar in the spoon. Trouble was I wanted just the sugar, so would duck past century script, even with Vincent Price on a paperback cover. Belated penance of late put me to reading tales as Hawthorne-told, a pair loose fitted to the ’63 film, Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment and Rappaccini’s Daughter. I also watched House of the Seven Gables, done by Universal in 1940 (Kino has it on Blu-Ray). Price was in that, did Seven Gables again for a last forty-five minutes of Twice-Told Tales. Maybe his was penance in late-life narrating (1990), for the Seven Gables house museum, a tour through the Salem, Massachusetts site, Price an obvious choice for such a commission.

Being of the nineteenth century, during which none of their works were properly copyrighted, Hawthorne and Poe took what adulation they could in lieu of cash badly needed, Poe for instance in receipt of $15 for The Raven, otherwise a greatest hit of his. Suppose he regretted not going to blacksmith school? It was 1851 before writing supported Hawthorne (age 47 by then), while Poe, credited by many as the first American author to, if only occasionally, live off his work, knew more lean than flush times, declaring bankruptcy at a point where he should have basked off fat of the literary land. Trouble was others routinely stealing off him, plus Hawthorne, so that all the two got was initial publishing fees, then what could be earned from lectures or public readings, not unlike musicians today who perform live to compensate for recorded work pinched offline by fans who profess to admire them. Hawthorne/Poe lived in gothic times, and so often wrote gothic stories. Hawthorne had changed his name (from Hathorne) due in part to an ancestor judge who sentenced witches to hang. Poe was branded a chiller man despite but a dozen to fifteen, out of seventy tales he wrote, being what we would call horror. Hawthorne “tales and sketches” ran to a hundred, on top of novels, essays, done for meagre fee from magazines/literary journals that had begun to flourish during both writers’ lifetime. Hawthorne and Poe were contemporaries. Oft-acerbic reviewer of books and poetry Poe sized up Hawthorne on several occasions, glowingly as befits a fan. “Eddie” (some actually called him that) has been passed down as a grim visage, hard to dismantle since his passing (1849, age 40). Want an antidote to Poe as life-long drab and eternal sufferer? Read some of scathing reviews he penned, many are riotous funny. Imagine comforts to be enjoyed had Poe been around for a 1960’s peak of movie-lent prominence. Ahead of his time? I’d say by a hundred years at least.

What is that expression … lipstick on a pig? Twice Told Tales tried it on Hawthorne, not that his stuff was piggy and needed lipstick, but a “Master” of the macabre? The trailer says yes, this as a free-floating skeletal arm chokes life out of Vincent Price. Stories are altered, but Hawthorne concepts peep in. To faithfully adapt Hawthorne or Poe for cameras is a tough nut, capturing their spirit as much as translators could hope for. I do not feel robbed of Hawthorne for watching Twice Told Tales, dull as it frequently is despite jab of woke corpses and attempt to bury alive an unwanted wife. Quoth the trailer’s narration (Paul Frees): “In this garden of evil unfolds the most diabolic delineation of the most fantastic horror conceived by a distorted mind.” AIP used same verbal gymnastics for their Poe previews. Sam Arkoff must have had kittens when he saw how United Artists ripped him and Jim off. For so many saying Poe was morbidly sick (maybe Hawthorne too after Twice-Told Tales), what were we but willing watchers of stuff that would have made these venerable authors blanch, whatever their diabolic delineations. Hawthorne’s reputation at least had The Scarlet Letter in reserve so as not to be tarred with too black a brush. It was understood, at least by men of letters, that his and Poe's style was “Dark Romanticism,” definition which suggests steep grade to horror where called for, switch to latter routinely made by those spiking their punch. Universal’s House of the Seven Gables, a strictly class approach, may not be the “Towering Screen Triumph” its 1940 pressbook promised, though it towers comfortably over 1963’s tab version. I was interested to see if Universal, being Universal, sold House of the Seven Gables on scare terms, it coming at start of a second shock cycle propelled by a fresh Frankenstein and new Mummy also from the company.

Peruse of ads and publicity suggest U did not forfeit Hawthorne’s dignity. The “Millions Upon Millions” who had read “One of the Best Sellers Of All Time” (was it actually?) might well have shrank from spook overlay, Universal understanding that a monster market was a distinctly limited one. What they stressed was romance, a barest hint of mystery via ad art of the baleful house, an alternative style proposing romance “enthralling” for pictured Vincent Price and Margaret Lindsey, “Love Comes Smilin’ Through” evoking memory of tremendous success MGM had made of 1931’s Smilin’ Through, which narrative did intersect Gables in meaningful ways. A family curse theme is neutered by the casting of Dick Foran as present-day descendent of vengeance seekers, him wooing Nan Grey, a still incubating “Star of Tomorrow” for Universal. The company sought prestige they could book into theatres as a single, Hawthorne’s name at least a start toward that. Here too was Vincent Price being floated, more so than before or after, as a romantic lead, which we know would not entirely come off, a break for him as things turned out. Price and first-billed George Sanders might have commiserated in years to come re similar paths careers took. Who do you suppose was first to identify sinister, or at least untrustworthy, aspects in the Price persona?

Any name associated with good writing was coin of the realm from the beginnings of film. No Hawthorne or Poe story would show up on an expense column, thanks to their being so old, and better than that, so free to use. No telling how much by these two wound up as basis, official or not, for early silent shorts. Home viewing as 50’s-primitive found Hawthorne and Poe ideal to fill an anthology hour, or half that. I found a Suspense episode, done live (1949), Bela Lugosi in Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado, updated to post-WWII, the 1846 yarn nothing if not flexible. Cask can be viewed at You Tube, along with Feathertop, adapted from Hawthorne for a December 4, 1955 General Electric Theatre featuring Natalie Wood and Carleton Carpenter. Feathertop tells of a witch who constructs, then animates, a scarecrow. I read the Hawthorne story, 20 pages to which 35 minutes was invested, all of it easy to picture on a screen. Turns out Feathertop was adapted numerous times, mostly on television. Point I lurch toward is relevance great writers of a century before maintained, particularly during the 50’s when there was endless TV time to fill, then the 60’s with Hawthorne/Poe handy still to exploit, amended to suit needs of what serious readers would have called a debased marketplace. But debased or not, their work was out there and noticed, and maybe not so shabbily used as first impressions suggest. How many who came up in the 60’s know Poe better as Roger Corman assist than as story source predating them by a hundred years? I wonder if a literary establishment ever acknowledged the contribution movies and television made toward preserving the legacy of these authors. If not, it is time they did.