The Gift Shop

This story is one of our favorites as it is action packed, has some interesting characters and a lot of human interest. The property was purchased several years after it was published in 1966, by Raystar Productions (formed by successful producer, Ray Stark). Regrettably, they never moved past writing a script, for reasons totally unknown to us or our agents. We believe that  the rights to the property may have reverted to us.

The plot: Bernie staggers off the airplane from Honolulu, a lei around his neck and blood seeping from the wound in his chest. He stumbles to the terminal gift shop, and demands the cashier point him to a payphone. . He surreptitiously inserts a small piece of paper into the slot of a ceramic piggy bank on display. As his life seeps away, Bernie calls Harry Fairchild, his old fraternity brother. Dying or not, he has a job to do.

Harry is a playboy, the scion of an oil-rich family known throughout California. Bernie was in Honolulu working for Harry’s father, and he has a message to give the old man before he expires. Baffled, Harry races to the airport, arriving just as Bernie is being taken to the hospital, where he dies on the operating table. Somehow Harry’s father is mixed up in the murder, and Harry is going to find out how, even if it means risking a knife to his own gut.

"At the core of the suspense is the fate of a little girl of seven, who has never known her biological father, widowed and ailing, who has also sired the hero and his two very successful brothers (a physician and the Governor of his state). While the plot has its complications, it essentially revolves about the quest by different groups to find the youngster before the other group does. Murder, mayhem and intrigue are the tools of the nasty side, with both members of the Romantic Pair, being at different times, searchers and victims of the hostility of the other group."*

Harry befriends the gift shop worker and gets her to go along on several trips to track down the mystery. Not surprising, a little romance seems inevitable.

We always envisioned a movie that, with many wild trips to multiple locations in Europe and the US involving a series of characters, would make a wonderful saga involving well-known actors in cameo performances, ala Around the World in 80 Days.

Personal note of coincidence: Many years later, Jerry and his wife found themselves managing a gift shop at their local performing arts center.

*Review on Amazon: 5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best of Her Generation

  Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2013

Mischief

Mischief is probably best known because of Don’t Bother to Knock, a movie made from the book that featured Marilyn Monroe in her first role where she was one of the featured actors (along with Richard Widmark). From Rich Cypert’s Virtue of Suspense, we learn of the difficulty in selling this story to leading magazines or even to a movie studio because of their ultra-caution about publishing a story about a mentally deranged babysitter. Nevertheless, persistence by Armstrong’s agents resulted in the movie, Don’t Bother to Knock, made by 20thCentry Fox and serialized in Good Housekeeping.

Cypert writes: “In Mischief, parents staying at a hotel leave their young daughter in care of a baby-sitter who turns out to be mentally unstable. The protagonist, Jed Towers, who meets the baby-sitter by chance, soon realizes, “She was not a type he knew.’ Although a cynic about the world, Towers wants a ‘touchstone,’ to believe in people the  way his mother who  mother who “talked love—was love” did. When matters get out of hand, Jed extracts himself from the situation, but in the process of leaving the hotel, he has his epiphany, asking himself, "What kind of rat did such a thing?" This epiphany eliminates Towers’ earlier rationalization of his behavior and allows him to test his true mettle.”

The book was released in 1951 and, despite difficulties in selling the plot, the movie was released in 1952, before Marilyn’s affair and marriage to Joe DiMaggio. The move had quite a cast in addition to the featured stars, such well-known actors as Ann Bancroft, in her first movie; Jim Backus, of Gilligan’s Island and Mr. Magoo fame; Jeanne Cagney, Jimmy’s sister; Donna Cochran, Make Room for Daddy; Verna Felton; Lorene Tuttle and Elisha Cook, Jr.

Despite Marilyn  and a stellar cast, the movie did not fare well to many critics and the box office, but later on more than one critic thought it to be a movie that showed Monroe really could act. Rotten Tomatoes which is the leading aggregator of movie reviews gave the movie a rare 100% positive score.

During the filming, all of Armstrong’s children had chances to meet the famous actor while filming. All agree she was drop-dead gorgeous and a very sweet person who showed more interest in their mother than any of them.

We all watched the very recent CNN program, Reframed: Marilyn Monroe, a documentary about her life. Her role in Don’t Bother to Knock was described as Marilyn basically playing herself as a mentally ill person due to early upbringing. We seriously doubt our mother wrote the story with that casting in mind as Monroe’s mental problems weren’t revealed until much later.

One sour note about the story: Many years after the film (1991), Fox decided to remake it as a movie for TV, “The Sitter.” It was an absolute disaster as they made Nell, the sitter, a deranged murderess. We were happy our mother never got to see this abomination and we almost returned the money.

 

A Little Less Than Kind

“A Little More Than Kin and Less Than Kind” are the first words uttered by Hamlet in what is perhaps Shakespeare’s best-known play. In a masterful bit of literary understatement Hamlet is referring to Claudius who is “More Than Kin” (he is both his uncle and his stepfather) and “Less Than Kind” (he murdered his father). Charlotte Armstrong was a true Shakespeare scholar even to the point of researching whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon actually wrote all of the works attributed to him.

The wonderful thing about A Little Less Than Kind is that it can be read at two completely different levels. For those unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s works it reads as one more of Charlotte’s excellent suspense stories set in 20^th Century Southern California.

Devotees of Hamlet will recognize the following characters:

Ladd Cunningham                 Hamlet
Hob Cunningham                  Hamlet’s father
David Crown                         Claudius
Abby Cunningham-Crown    Gertrude
Aaron Silver                          Polonius
Gary Fenwick                        Horatio
Felicia Lorimer                      Ophelia
Justin Lorimer                       Laertes 

The book ends up deviating substantially from Hamlet with a very different ending however the reader will pick up on scenes reminiscent of, for example,  "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King" and the struggle of the relationship between Ladd (Hamlet) and Felicia (Ophelia). In lieu of the duel that takes place in the last act of Hamlet, there is a struggle on a staircase resulting in serious injuries 

On a personal note, this is the only book for which my mother asked me for some input. She described Ladd Cunningham and asked me what kind of car he would be driving. I quickly said I thought it would be a Corvette. Imagine my delight when the book came out and there it was, a 1961 blue Corvette convertible.

Chocolate Cobweb

 This book followed closely on the heels of the successful Unsuspected. It, too, was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and was released in 1948. But unlike the former, it took more the 50 years before it became a movie. Famed French director Claude Chabrol optioned it in 2000 and the move, Merci pour la Chocolate, was released in 2003, and distributed world-wide with English sub-titles. Many years earlier, Chabrol made a movie, La Rupture, from Armstrong’s novel, The Balloon Man. We guess he may have thought that another Armstrong based movie might be a good idea. Well, it certainly was for us and we believe it has generated more revenue that any other property. The movie prompted more book sales.

Here is the Mysterious Press plot summary: For a few hours after her birth, Amanda Garth had two fathers. One was John, the kind, forthright man who would raise her. The other was Tobias Garrison, a well-known California artist who, because of a mix-up in the hospital’s nursery, briefly thought Amanda was his. The confusion was straightened out, and the misunderstanding is forgotten for twenty-three years, when questions about her birth cause Amanda to approach the Garrisons. This could prove a deadly mistake.

Someone in that poisonous family is plotting a murder, and the last thing they want is another heir to the massive Garrison fortune. The quest for truth could mean death for the girl whose birth was shrouded in secrecy.

The Chabrol movie changed the Tobias character from an artist to a musician, perhaps feeling that sound was a better movie sensation than looking at paintings. But the movie had the same level of suspense along with a little romance. The movie starred Isabelle Huppert, a fine and popular actress.

We once asked friend who was a native French person, why that book was some popular with the French. She read it in French and concluded it was the romance and intrigue that made it so compelling to them.

The Unsuspected

Dram of Poison

 

This novel is one of Charlotte Armstrong’s best. We judge that based on the fact that it received the prestigious Edgar (as in Edgar Allan Poe) Award, an annual award for the best mystery novel of the year. It is an unusual story as there is no victim and no crime. Yet, Armstrong manages to weave her magic and create a suspense-filled story how we are going to avoid a terrible accidental death from a deadly poison. It is also a story how total strangers come together and by combining their wits and skills drive to successful conclusion. It is also one of only four books that were dedicated. More on that later.

A Dram of Poison (1956), despite its serious central situation, is a comic novel, with an unlikely set of characters uniting in a common purpose and discovering in the process much that is admirable in each other.[1]

Her Edgar award winning novel A Dram of Poison (1956), about a bottle of poison that inadvertently gets left on a bus, can't really be called a crime novel as I see it (there is really no intended crime to speak of)--though it certainly is suspenseful (and it was marketed as "a novel of suspense").  Rather, I find it simply a marvelously humanistic tale about the foibles of men and women.[2]

Here is the plot synopsis as noted in Mysterious Press.

For fifty-five years, Kenneth Gibson has lived in backwaters. A former army clerk, he makes a quiet living teaching poetry to indifferent undergrads. His life is happily dull until the day he meets Rosemary, a damaged girl whose frailty compels Kenneth to try to make her well. They wed, and as Rosemary recovers from her depression, Gibson falls in love, transforming his world. But his wife will never love him.

She is smitten with their landlord, a dashing young chemical engineer named Paul. Gibson wants to let her go, but he cannot bear to be parted with the first love he has ever known. In Paul’s house is a case of poison, and this love triangle can only end in death.

In 2019, this story was optioned to Skalar, a German feature film producer. After struggling to find financing, their efforts ground to a halt in 2020 due to the COVID 19 pandemic and, in August 2021, they, reluctantly abandoned their efforts. So, now rights to the property have reverted to the author’s estate and are available to some other aspiring film producer.

The dedication of this book arose when, at the last minute, Armstrong remembered to dedicate the book to her housekeeper for her devoted service to humor and joust with Armstrong’s elderly and frail father-in-law living in the Lewi house.

 [1] Encylopedia.com

[2] The Passing Tramp, Aug 30, 2012

Charlotte Armstrong

Welcome to the Charlotte Armstrong Blog, an adjunct to the www.charlottearmstrong.org website. The purpose of the blog is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas about the life and work of this well-known and successful mystery/suspense writer of the era of the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Chief bloggers of this effort are Armstrong’s sons, Jerry and Peter Lewi, with support of their sister, Jacquelin Bynagte. These children lived through and were witnesses of the development, as well as the ups and downs of their mother’s incredible career.

Why do we want to do this? First of all, reprints and e-books of many of her books are being republished and there appears to be a significant number of readers out there interested in good old-fashioned stories that are in contrast to the more current books that depend so much on gratuitous sex  and violence.

Secondly, as we re-read the stories that we often do, we are struck even to a greater extent than when our mother was living with the fine craftsmanship, the attention to detail, the development of character of her stories. And perhaps even more significant, we  keep finding more stories that seem to have captured morals and themes way ahead of their time. We already knew that Lemon in the Basket featured a middle-eastern potentate being treated for a serious illness while American scholars were being held hostage to be sure of his safe treatment and return to him home country – a story written in 1968. And we knew of the tragic school child fatal shooting with a handgun in Ride with the Executioner, penned in 1955.

Now we realize that Girl with a Secret  makes reference to Mexican narcotic trafficking long before any of us knew about Mexican drug cartels. Story written in 1959.

So, our idea is to from time publish reviews of her full-length books and short stories with comments about how the story might have had its origins from our knowledge of her life.

We cannot close this post without acknowledging The Virtue of Suspense, by Rick Cypert that is the most definitive published biography of Armstrong’s work. All of Charlotte Armstrong’s books and books about her can be accessed elsewhere on this website.

Thus, we hope we will reach of all this writer’s fans as well those who may have known her work in some professional capacity. We promise to respond to all comments as promptly as possible.