Ursula Curtiss - Mystery Writer - Biography

Deadly Climate - Ursula Curtiss

The House on Plymouth Street - Urusla Curtiss

I’m a huge fan of vintage mystery books! So a few months ago, a friend who had just returned from shopping at a local flea market loaned me a book he had purchased entitled  The Deadly Climate. The book had a wonderful dust jacket with a graphic style reminiscent of covers on pulp fiction magazines. It proved to be a fine introduction to the work of Ursula Curtiss. Her type of crime writing falls in the category called domestic malice. Some loosely define this genre as mysteries that contain no explicit sex, or violence.

In The Deadly Climate the main character Caroline Emmett takes a trip to a small New England town to escape from a romantic disappointment and to recuperate from a bout of pneumonia. Here she is a witness to murder, while taking a walk on a lonely country road at dusk. All the action takes place in the course of a single night; Caroline pursued by the murder, seeks refuge in the first house she finds. Her character is smart and resourceful, not a victim. She manages to survive several attempts on her life and get through the long night. The book has plenty of suspense and great 1950’s small town atmosphere.

I liked it enough to seek out other mysteries by Ursula Curtiss and ordered a copy of The House on Plymouth Street. The title story grabbed my attention right away with well-drawn characters and creepy atmosphere. This book is a collection of short stories with a wonderful introduction written by the authors' sister, mystery writer Mary McMullen.

In the introduction her sister Mary writes about their childhood in Westport, CT and presents an affectionate and humorous portrait of Ursula’s life as writer, mother of 5, and wife. She and Ursula came from a long line of writers; their mother Helen Reilly wrote over 40 mysteries and 3 of her uncles were staff writers employed by The New York Times.

Ursula Curtiss did not start writing books until after her marriage, but less than a year later her 1st book ''Voice out of Darkness'' won the Red Badge Award for the best new mystery of 1948.

In her lifetime she had 29 books published and two of her novels become the basis for American motion pictures (What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? and I Saw What You Did). Sadly, Ursula Curtiss passed away at the age of 61 in 1984. Still, to quote her sister "no one who has written down valuable and enjoyable words ever really say good-bye, to anyone".

1934 Beggars in Ermine - Movie Review

Finally got to see 1934's Beggars in Ermine staring Lionel Atwell and a very young Betty Furness (just 18 at the time). The plot of the movie concerns a steel mill owner and his business rival. Atwill's rival causes an "accident" that cripples him and then he steals his wife and business. Reduced to becoming a beggar who sells phamlets that contain his business ideas, he comes to see the worth and power of others like him. Atwill meets a blind man who befriends him and encounters characters like Milligan the Miner who survives by selling soap, the sign on his sales tray reads "If I had hands I'd use this soap". In time his character decides to found a national fraternal organization to empower the disabled. The only requirement for membership is that you have to have a real disability.

I won't tell the rest of the plot but the script contains some wonderful old fashioned ideas; ideas like fair treatment of workers by big business, business knowledge gained from starting at the bottom and working your way to the top, and the film had characters who showed what can be achieved by working together for a common cause. Beggars in Ermine has a running time of 72 minutes and contains good performances by all concerned. Of note is Henry B. Walthall, whose career began in the silent era, he was especially good as Marchant the Blind Man. We watched this movie via Roku on the Movie Vault channel.

Millie a Movie Review - Helen Twelvetrees, Lilyan Tashman

Our latest film find is Millie a neat pre-code film with Helen Twelvetrees as the title character. Wow, she becomes one independent gal! In the early part of the film, Millie leaves her cheating husband and swears she will never again depend on a man for financial support. She also swears off the idea of marriage.

I had never seen a film with Helen Twelvetrees and found her performance gutsy and very good. Her female friends played by Lilyan Tashman and Joan Blondel were also wonderful. It's unfortunate that the Hays code would soon quash screen portrayals of independent women and those who refused to stay in bad marriages.

The Hays Code was designed to clean up the films produced by Hollywood. Written in 1930, by former Postmaster General Will Hayes, it was not enforced until 1934. The code contained a set of rules that forbade the appearance of everything from "lustful kissing" to belly buttons. It also demanded that the "sanctity of marriage" be upheld on screen with divorce seen as generally unacceptable.

Kudos to Pub-d-Hub for making this film available on Roku. Also, please be sure to see Wikipedia's biographies of Twelvetrees and Tashman. The information is funny, surprising, and sad. Twelvetrees committed suicide at the age of 49. Tashman, whose lesbian lifestyle was an open secret in Hollywood, died of cancer at the age of 37.