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You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up
Book by Knight, Eric, Hallas, Richard
134 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1938
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269 people want to read
About the author
Eric Knight
68 books50 followersAn author who is mainly notable for creating the fictional collie Lassie.
He was a native of Yorkshire in England, and had a varied career, including service in the Canadian Army during World War I and spells as an art student, newspaper reporter and Hollywood screenwriter.
His first novel was Song on Your Bugles (1936) about the working class in Northern England. As "Richard Hallas," he wrote the hardboiled genre novel "You Play The Black and The Red Comes Up" (1938). Knight's "This Above All" is considered one of the significant novels of The Second World War.
Knight and his wife Jere Knight raised collies on their farm in Pleasant Valley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His novel Lassie Come-Home (ISBN 0030441013) appeared in 1940. It was adapted into a movie in 1943 and has been reprinted several times since then.
In 1943, at which time he was a major in the United States Army - Special Services, Knight was killed in an air crash in Dutch Guiana (now Surinam).
He was a native of Yorkshire in England, and had a varied career, including service in the Canadian Army during World War I and spells as an art student, newspaper reporter and Hollywood screenwriter.
His first novel was Song on Your Bugles (1936) about the working class in Northern England. As "Richard Hallas," he wrote the hardboiled genre novel "You Play The Black and The Red Comes Up" (1938). Knight's "This Above All" is considered one of the significant novels of The Second World War.
Knight and his wife Jere Knight raised collies on their farm in Pleasant Valley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His novel Lassie Come-Home (ISBN 0030441013) appeared in 1940. It was adapted into a movie in 1943 and has been reprinted several times since then.
In 1943, at which time he was a major in the United States Army - Special Services, Knight was killed in an air crash in Dutch Guiana (now Surinam).
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January 21, 2023
You Play the Red…
You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up, first published in 1938, later republished by Black Lizard for a new generation of readers, was written by Richard Hallas writing as Eric Knight. The title itself comes from the lead character Dick playing at roulette trying purposefully to lose a bundle of ill-gotten cash that cost a man his life. Dick can’t manage to lose the money no matter how he tries.
But take everything Dick says with a grain of salt because you maybe shouldn’t believe anything he says. Every guy in jail says he’s innocent and some other dude did it. Dick is singing the same tune right from the start where he says he was running a cafe with his wife when she suddenly up and left him without a word, absconding to Los Angeles, saying he was cruel. Dick says he was good to her though except for maybe the one time he slapped her so hard in her Fannie she plain hit her head on the stove and fell to the floor. But Dick can’t seem to get wise to why Lois emptied their joint savings account left him or why her relatives won’t let him see her.
Then, of course, there’s the first murder where Dick claims he was an innocent stooge, but the other guy ended up dead and Dick ended up with the bag of money. See, he’s not responsible for that one either. Or for committing bigamy with the plump matron Mame he used to hide from the police after the killing. Of course, he two-times her with a young crazy heiress and plots to kill her. But, again, none of that’s his fault, is it?
Hallas throws a few interesting bits here by making Mame a stand-in for Aimee Semple McPherson, who disappeared for five weeks while running a religious revival at the Angelus Temple. Mame s here at the heart of a religious/ political movement with thousands of followers.
Hallas also pokes fun at Tinseltown and the phony movie people who are out of touch with reality. In fact, he declares several times that once you cross into California, people just seem to loose their minds.
This is a short easy-to-read at times funny noir set in the depression years and told in a great down to earth narrative voice that makes the reader just want to trust the narrator.
You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up, first published in 1938, later republished by Black Lizard for a new generation of readers, was written by Richard Hallas writing as Eric Knight. The title itself comes from the lead character Dick playing at roulette trying purposefully to lose a bundle of ill-gotten cash that cost a man his life. Dick can’t manage to lose the money no matter how he tries.
But take everything Dick says with a grain of salt because you maybe shouldn’t believe anything he says. Every guy in jail says he’s innocent and some other dude did it. Dick is singing the same tune right from the start where he says he was running a cafe with his wife when she suddenly up and left him without a word, absconding to Los Angeles, saying he was cruel. Dick says he was good to her though except for maybe the one time he slapped her so hard in her Fannie she plain hit her head on the stove and fell to the floor. But Dick can’t seem to get wise to why Lois emptied their joint savings account left him or why her relatives won’t let him see her.
Then, of course, there’s the first murder where Dick claims he was an innocent stooge, but the other guy ended up dead and Dick ended up with the bag of money. See, he’s not responsible for that one either. Or for committing bigamy with the plump matron Mame he used to hide from the police after the killing. Of course, he two-times her with a young crazy heiress and plots to kill her. But, again, none of that’s his fault, is it?
Hallas throws a few interesting bits here by making Mame a stand-in for Aimee Semple McPherson, who disappeared for five weeks while running a religious revival at the Angelus Temple. Mame s here at the heart of a religious/ political movement with thousands of followers.
Hallas also pokes fun at Tinseltown and the phony movie people who are out of touch with reality. In fact, he declares several times that once you cross into California, people just seem to loose their minds.
This is a short easy-to-read at times funny noir set in the depression years and told in a great down to earth narrative voice that makes the reader just want to trust the narrator.
September 23, 2021
This is a brilliant novel of a drifter who arrives in Depression Era Los Angeles in search of his runaway wife who wants to be in the movies. She's left him and their diner back in Oklahoma and taken their young child with her.
He hops freights and hitches rides to get to California without a penny to his name. One afternoon he's sleeping on the beach and he's approached by a character who asks him if he wants to make a little dough on the side.
The gist of the idea is our hero, Richard, is to pretend to be a strong arm hooligan and steal this satchel of money containing the gambling house winnings of that evening this stranger on the beach is carrying to make the night deposit for his brother who runs the casino. Later, Richard and the stranger will split the proceeds from this lame brain pretend-heist.
You can tell how well this is going to work out for our hero, a mere
Okie babe lost in the Hollywood Hills.
Cops shoot and kill the stranger, Richard has to outrun the cops carrying the briefcase full of money. He tosses the briefcase up into a tree and bursts into a nearby bar and grabs the first seat in the first booth he comes to. Cops are right on his heels. There's a frowsy dame at the booth but he doesn't care at this point. He sees the pitcher of beer on the table and starts guzzling it down right there, he's so thirsty.
The dame takes to him. She’s that kind of dame.
The cops grab a young Mexican who ducks out a side door when the cops bust in. They figure they have their man.
From there on Richard enters an Alice In Wonderland world of phony religious rackets, crazy, drugged out film directors and actors and actresses and bar room floozies who just want to take care of this great big muscular Adonis. The booze and money flow.
You just know it’s all going to turn into fairy dust.
This is one of the greatest Noir novels I've ever read. It places easily up there with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and Nightmare Alley
It's one hair-pin turn after another. One double cross after another.
This is my second or third time reading this classic. I can't praise it enough.
By the way - the author, Eric Knight, is most famous for having created the character of Lassie in Lassie Come-Home
He hops freights and hitches rides to get to California without a penny to his name. One afternoon he's sleeping on the beach and he's approached by a character who asks him if he wants to make a little dough on the side.
The gist of the idea is our hero, Richard, is to pretend to be a strong arm hooligan and steal this satchel of money containing the gambling house winnings of that evening this stranger on the beach is carrying to make the night deposit for his brother who runs the casino. Later, Richard and the stranger will split the proceeds from this lame brain pretend-heist.
You can tell how well this is going to work out for our hero, a mere
Okie babe lost in the Hollywood Hills.
Cops shoot and kill the stranger, Richard has to outrun the cops carrying the briefcase full of money. He tosses the briefcase up into a tree and bursts into a nearby bar and grabs the first seat in the first booth he comes to. Cops are right on his heels. There's a frowsy dame at the booth but he doesn't care at this point. He sees the pitcher of beer on the table and starts guzzling it down right there, he's so thirsty.
The dame takes to him. She’s that kind of dame.
The cops grab a young Mexican who ducks out a side door when the cops bust in. They figure they have their man.
From there on Richard enters an Alice In Wonderland world of phony religious rackets, crazy, drugged out film directors and actors and actresses and bar room floozies who just want to take care of this great big muscular Adonis. The booze and money flow.
You just know it’s all going to turn into fairy dust.
This is one of the greatest Noir novels I've ever read. It places easily up there with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and Nightmare Alley
It's one hair-pin turn after another. One double cross after another.
This is my second or third time reading this classic. I can't praise it enough.
By the way - the author, Eric Knight, is most famous for having created the character of Lassie in Lassie Come-Home
August 28, 2013
This is a noir-ish crime novel set in Depression-Era California. The protagonist, Dick, and his wife own a café in a small Oklahoma town. But he returns home one night after working his other job to discover that his wife, Lois, has left him and run away, taking with her their young son, Dickie.
Lois has long had a fascination with the movies and with acting, and Dick deduces that Lois has almost certainly headed off to Los Angeles. So he hops a freight and makes his way cross-country to track her down. Once there, however, he gets distracted from his quest when he agrees to play a role in a fake robbery. When that plan goes astray, he becomes involved with a domineering woman named Mamie and, well, you know how it goes...
In a book like this, one bad thing after another happens to our intrepid hero and he is clearly a victim of the fates that toy with him so capriciously. Dick is really a cipher; things happen to him and he seems almost totally incapable of controlling the events that sweep over him.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the social commentary. Hallas, though an Englishman whose real name was Eric Knight, has a keen eye for the social and economic realities of life in the U.S. in the late 1930s and especially for conditions in California at that time.
The book falls short of the noir classics of the era like Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice, mainly because the protagonist here doesn't measure up to the ones in those books. But readers who enjoy this sort of thing might well want to seek out this long-lost classic that has recently been re-released in this very nice edition.
Lois has long had a fascination with the movies and with acting, and Dick deduces that Lois has almost certainly headed off to Los Angeles. So he hops a freight and makes his way cross-country to track her down. Once there, however, he gets distracted from his quest when he agrees to play a role in a fake robbery. When that plan goes astray, he becomes involved with a domineering woman named Mamie and, well, you know how it goes...
In a book like this, one bad thing after another happens to our intrepid hero and he is clearly a victim of the fates that toy with him so capriciously. Dick is really a cipher; things happen to him and he seems almost totally incapable of controlling the events that sweep over him.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the social commentary. Hallas, though an Englishman whose real name was Eric Knight, has a keen eye for the social and economic realities of life in the U.S. in the late 1930s and especially for conditions in California at that time.
The book falls short of the noir classics of the era like Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice, mainly because the protagonist here doesn't measure up to the ones in those books. But readers who enjoy this sort of thing might well want to seek out this long-lost classic that has recently been re-released in this very nice edition.
February 2, 2023
This is Californian hardboiled noir, published towards the end of the Great Depression, with its opening chapters typical of the day; the protagonist hopping a ride on a freight train headed west with a group of other hoboes.
Dick Dempsey, Oklahoma born, and a deserter from the marines, is on the trail of his wife and young son, who have run out on him. Rather than the conventional hard-boiled novel of the time, this then heads in a different direction, as Dick cannot settle to life on the west coast, where work is uncertain and he finds the residents unfathomable. He moves between jobs frequently, as he rubs shoulders with the full spectrum of Californian culture, from amusement park workers to movie moguls.
Quentin Genter, a sexually ambiguous movie director who believes the whole world is a film set, clings to Dick after a chance meeting. Through him, he meets and falls in love with Sheila, an unbalanced and taciturn socialite. On a whim, he decides to kill Mamie, his current girl-friend, and comes up with a plan, to loosen a bolt on the slide he is working at in an amusement park. But this backfires badly, and he kills Sheila by mistake.
This morphs rapidly to become the hardest of boiled plots. So much so, that critics at the time thought it a parody of the genre. Some still do so.
1941, was a great time of change in hardboiled fiction though, and I prefer to see it as an experimental take on the way the genre might head.
Either way, its a fascinating piece of work.
Hallas, a pseudonym for Eric Knight, who was English, only ever wrote this one hardboiled novel, perhaps because of the lambasting he received from the critics at the time.
The book for which he is best know, incredibly, is as Eric Knight, the tearful sugar-coated Lassie Come-Home .
It is a struggle to imagine how he made the leap from the three-hanky, treacly tale of the faithful dog to one of murder, robbery, gambling, rough sex, blackmail, fraud, and suicide.
It was of course Lassie that gave Knight his fame. So castigated as he was by the media of the day, Knight and his agents preferred to pretend You Play The Black never existed.
Any subsequent promotional work for his writing saw him dressed like a lumberjack with a forest / river / mountain landscape and a trusty canine at his side.
He died in 1943, and it was only until the second reissue of You Play The Black, 29 years later, that it achieved any notoriety.
Dick Dempsey, Oklahoma born, and a deserter from the marines, is on the trail of his wife and young son, who have run out on him. Rather than the conventional hard-boiled novel of the time, this then heads in a different direction, as Dick cannot settle to life on the west coast, where work is uncertain and he finds the residents unfathomable. He moves between jobs frequently, as he rubs shoulders with the full spectrum of Californian culture, from amusement park workers to movie moguls.
Quentin Genter, a sexually ambiguous movie director who believes the whole world is a film set, clings to Dick after a chance meeting. Through him, he meets and falls in love with Sheila, an unbalanced and taciturn socialite. On a whim, he decides to kill Mamie, his current girl-friend, and comes up with a plan, to loosen a bolt on the slide he is working at in an amusement park. But this backfires badly, and he kills Sheila by mistake.
This morphs rapidly to become the hardest of boiled plots. So much so, that critics at the time thought it a parody of the genre. Some still do so.
1941, was a great time of change in hardboiled fiction though, and I prefer to see it as an experimental take on the way the genre might head.
Either way, its a fascinating piece of work.
Hallas, a pseudonym for Eric Knight, who was English, only ever wrote this one hardboiled novel, perhaps because of the lambasting he received from the critics at the time.
The book for which he is best know, incredibly, is as Eric Knight, the tearful sugar-coated Lassie Come-Home .
It is a struggle to imagine how he made the leap from the three-hanky, treacly tale of the faithful dog to one of murder, robbery, gambling, rough sex, blackmail, fraud, and suicide.
It was of course Lassie that gave Knight his fame. So castigated as he was by the media of the day, Knight and his agents preferred to pretend You Play The Black never existed.
Any subsequent promotional work for his writing saw him dressed like a lumberjack with a forest / river / mountain landscape and a trusty canine at his side.
He died in 1943, and it was only until the second reissue of You Play The Black, 29 years later, that it achieved any notoriety.
August 29, 2013
"I remember him saying that some lands were a father to a man, and beat him: and some were a mother to him, and loved him; and some were a wife, and had to be loved; but California was just a whore who dropped her pants down to the first man that came along with a watering-pot."
By turns sweet and cynical and hopeful and despairing, this is an odd novel from an English writer who created Lassie. Somewhere in the late 30s a warped muse whispered in his ear, in hard-boiled American vernacular, and this was the result.
By turns sweet and cynical and hopeful and despairing, this is an odd novel from an English writer who created Lassie. Somewhere in the late 30s a warped muse whispered in his ear, in hard-boiled American vernacular, and this was the result.
February 3, 2023
Who knew that Los Angeles in the 1930's was as screwy and degenerate as it is today?
July 29, 2008
The man who wrote the great children's classic "Lassie Come Home" also wrote the darkest noir novel of his time. One time Lynch was rumored to do a film version of this novel. Kind of hard to find book, but once you do - bingo!
September 1, 2011
Wow. This book caught me completely off guard. This was reputed to be a hard-boiled crime novel. But at a certain point I realized, this was really what today would be called literary fiction. I was shocked this had flown under the radar apparently. The allegory and symbolism has perplexed some of the reviewers. Knight does kind of give the reader a one-two punch, preparing him for gritty realism and the sliding in those elements, until the story is completely subsumed in them. I did make me want to compare it with Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust. I know I am setting myself up for a large rebuke, but I actually find this book to be superior to Locust. It's not as precious as Locust, and much more ambitious. Knight gets in his satire, but he is never boxed in. I'm impressed how he can paint his existentialist and counter-existentialist picture, without ever being, "too intellectual," about it. I'm still digesting this one, though.
December 8, 2023
review of
Richard Hallas's You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 7-8, 2023
This is yet-another bk I was directed to by reading Lee Server's Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. As it turns out, I liked it even more than I expected to. Matt Groening wrote an introduction:
"I include in this shelf of sweat and screwiness both the critically acclaimed and the dismissed trash: Paul Cain's Fast One (1933), the works of James M. Cain, particularly The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934); Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935) and I Should Have Stayed Home (1938); Nathaneal West's The Day of the Locust (1939, with Homer Simpson); Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939); Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941); Henry Kane's A Halo for Nobody (1947) and Armchair in Hell (1948); and Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (1948)." - p IX
I've read works by most of the authors above & even a fair amt of the specific works mentioned - but what really got me was the mention of Nathaneal West, an author whose work I particularly loved & an author that I've never really found anyone to be comparable to. Until now. You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up comes closer to the quality & the feel of West more than any other writer I've read - & that's definitely a compliment coming from me. There's the sense of humor, the phrasing, the slightly bizarre in a somewhat 'normal' setting.
"It was a good little place. Inside I had it all fixed up with signs like: "We Don't Know Where Mom Is But We Have Pop On Ice" and "If Your Wife Can't Cook Keep Her For A Pet And Eat Here," and things like that." - p 3
Now there's a mention of a political program in California to provide $50 a wk to every unemployed person:
"The Mex and I went down the line to a box car that was open. There was a bunch of floaters inside who were all heading for California because there was a man there going to be elected Governor who would take all the money away from the millionaires and give fifty dollars a week to every man without a job." - pp 4-5
Seem like the pipe dream of some lazy bums? Consider this:
""There is keen interest —and divided opinion as to merit —in the proposed $3O-a-week pension plan in California. To the writer it appears as a proposal which is likely to be ratified by the electorate on the theory that the "stamp tax” will work to provide enough pension money to go 'round."
""the viewpoint of Harold Finley, writing for the Los Angeles Times, follows in this article: "Of all the remarkable propositions submitted to Ihe voters since California began experimenting with direct legislation, there has been none to beat, or tie, the initiative measure titled "The California State Retirement Life Payments Act —$30 a Week for Life,”" " - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"I heard the movie director shouting. His voice was funny; like he was yelling in a whisper.
"He was saying: "He's a huge brute, officer. He's over six feet tall, and he's fully armed. He has a Tommy gun."
"And then I heard Lois's voice. She shouted:
""He's round the back, officer. Arrest him. He deserted from the Marines three years ago. He's a deserter."" - pp 15-16
The movie director was lying, no arms or tommy gun; he had only deserted b/c Lois had sd she'd only marry him if he did. In short, he's being royally screwed here.
There're things that happen in the novel like the $50 a wk & the outlandish persecution of the above that many people might think are far-fetched - &, yet, I had a friend whose wife browbeat him into joining the army who then sued him for divorce on grounds of desertion - b/c he joined the army. He was booted out of bootcamp in something like 6 wks b/c he was hopelessly inept as a soldier. That didn't stop his wife.
The protagonist's wife has left him & taken their son. He's in search of them b/c he wants to see his son again. The result is a series of misadventures including his playing a part in a fake robbery where a guy gets killed accidentally by the police who then blame it on an innocent Mexican.
"But the more I drunk the less I could think about what Gentner was saying. I got so that all I could think about was this Mex going to be knocked off maybe for murder.
"He was a Mex, all right, but some of those Mexes have been pretty decent to me, especially when I was a kid. And I couldn't think of anything except him taking the long ride when it wasn't him—or even me—that had done it." - pp 32-33
He has a conscience.. that goes away somewhat later. In the meantime, our protagonist has stumbled into the good graces of a woman who takes him in as her boyfriend & takes good care of him. Her name is Mamie. She has a best friend named Patsy. Gentner, the movie director, is back again despite his outlandish betrayal of Richard. A scheme is brewing.
"Then Gentner got Patsy talking about the Ecanaanomic Plan, and Jira listened all the time. Patsy surprised me the way she could dish it out. She had all the answers ready no matter what you asked her, and when she'd talk she'd get that holy sort of look.
""Didn't I tell you?" Gentner said to Jira. "Isn't it as good as I said?"
""It's heavenly," Jira said. "Unbelievably heavenly!"
""It's really terrific. It's Armageddon!" he said. "Don't you think Patsy's absolutely Apocalyptic?"
""If you ask me," I said, "I don't think she knows enough to spell Jesus with a little 'g' And her nut plan is as dumb as she is. Plain goofy crazy, if you ask me."
""That's it," he said. You've hit it on the head. That's why it will succeed."" - p 61
""And now, dear Sisters and Brothers," Mamie said. Tonight is good-will offering night for our dear Sister and Leader. Let us give freely and well, to show her our appreciation of her unfailing toil in our great work."
"Imagine that. I thought sure people would jump up and give her the horselaugh out loud, but they all applauded and never cracked a smile. Those people were so slap-happy they couldn't have told the difference between Thursday and a fan-dancer." - p 90
& it's precisely such expressions as that one ending the last paragraph that make the writing here so special.
""Look Gentner. I've thought and thought till my goddam mind is purple, but thinking don't change anything and wishing don't put whiskers on a statue. I can't think any more."" - p 136
The plot keeps thickening like all the fog in London stuck in one big pea-soup pot.
"We went upstairs and she showed me a room with all the walls covered with books.
""That's where I used to study," she said.
""Don't you study any more?" I asked her.
""No," she said.
""Why?"
""They made me stop," she said. "They were afraid."
"She didn't say afraid of what. She walked into a bedroom and stood there. It was all white and pretty and smelled nice like lavender. It was funny being in the bedroom of a girl like that." - p 101
""Why do men seek me as a sanctuary? They tremble, and I can't stand their suffering."
""You mean you're only sorry for me, then?" I said.
""I am sorry for all men," she said. "But the others I am sorry for and send away. You I am sorry for and I let you come. That's how I know I love you."" - p 113
Even that might seem like a situation too strange to be realistic & yet I can imagine myself being there & the author being there too. That made the bk crowded. Just kidding.
Richard Hallas's You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 7-8, 2023
This is yet-another bk I was directed to by reading Lee Server's Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. As it turns out, I liked it even more than I expected to. Matt Groening wrote an introduction:
"I include in this shelf of sweat and screwiness both the critically acclaimed and the dismissed trash: Paul Cain's Fast One (1933), the works of James M. Cain, particularly The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934); Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935) and I Should Have Stayed Home (1938); Nathaneal West's The Day of the Locust (1939, with Homer Simpson); Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939); Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941); Henry Kane's A Halo for Nobody (1947) and Armchair in Hell (1948); and Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (1948)." - p IX
I've read works by most of the authors above & even a fair amt of the specific works mentioned - but what really got me was the mention of Nathaneal West, an author whose work I particularly loved & an author that I've never really found anyone to be comparable to. Until now. You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up comes closer to the quality & the feel of West more than any other writer I've read - & that's definitely a compliment coming from me. There's the sense of humor, the phrasing, the slightly bizarre in a somewhat 'normal' setting.
"It was a good little place. Inside I had it all fixed up with signs like: "We Don't Know Where Mom Is But We Have Pop On Ice" and "If Your Wife Can't Cook Keep Her For A Pet And Eat Here," and things like that." - p 3
Now there's a mention of a political program in California to provide $50 a wk to every unemployed person:
"The Mex and I went down the line to a box car that was open. There was a bunch of floaters inside who were all heading for California because there was a man there going to be elected Governor who would take all the money away from the millionaires and give fifty dollars a week to every man without a job." - pp 4-5
Seem like the pipe dream of some lazy bums? Consider this:
""There is keen interest —and divided opinion as to merit —in the proposed $3O-a-week pension plan in California. To the writer it appears as a proposal which is likely to be ratified by the electorate on the theory that the "stamp tax” will work to provide enough pension money to go 'round."
""the viewpoint of Harold Finley, writing for the Los Angeles Times, follows in this article: "Of all the remarkable propositions submitted to Ihe voters since California began experimenting with direct legislation, there has been none to beat, or tie, the initiative measure titled "The California State Retirement Life Payments Act —$30 a Week for Life,”" " - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"I heard the movie director shouting. His voice was funny; like he was yelling in a whisper.
"He was saying: "He's a huge brute, officer. He's over six feet tall, and he's fully armed. He has a Tommy gun."
"And then I heard Lois's voice. She shouted:
""He's round the back, officer. Arrest him. He deserted from the Marines three years ago. He's a deserter."" - pp 15-16
The movie director was lying, no arms or tommy gun; he had only deserted b/c Lois had sd she'd only marry him if he did. In short, he's being royally screwed here.
There're things that happen in the novel like the $50 a wk & the outlandish persecution of the above that many people might think are far-fetched - &, yet, I had a friend whose wife browbeat him into joining the army who then sued him for divorce on grounds of desertion - b/c he joined the army. He was booted out of bootcamp in something like 6 wks b/c he was hopelessly inept as a soldier. That didn't stop his wife.
The protagonist's wife has left him & taken their son. He's in search of them b/c he wants to see his son again. The result is a series of misadventures including his playing a part in a fake robbery where a guy gets killed accidentally by the police who then blame it on an innocent Mexican.
"But the more I drunk the less I could think about what Gentner was saying. I got so that all I could think about was this Mex going to be knocked off maybe for murder.
"He was a Mex, all right, but some of those Mexes have been pretty decent to me, especially when I was a kid. And I couldn't think of anything except him taking the long ride when it wasn't him—or even me—that had done it." - pp 32-33
He has a conscience.. that goes away somewhat later. In the meantime, our protagonist has stumbled into the good graces of a woman who takes him in as her boyfriend & takes good care of him. Her name is Mamie. She has a best friend named Patsy. Gentner, the movie director, is back again despite his outlandish betrayal of Richard. A scheme is brewing.
"Then Gentner got Patsy talking about the Ecanaanomic Plan, and Jira listened all the time. Patsy surprised me the way she could dish it out. She had all the answers ready no matter what you asked her, and when she'd talk she'd get that holy sort of look.
""Didn't I tell you?" Gentner said to Jira. "Isn't it as good as I said?"
""It's heavenly," Jira said. "Unbelievably heavenly!"
""It's really terrific. It's Armageddon!" he said. "Don't you think Patsy's absolutely Apocalyptic?"
""If you ask me," I said, "I don't think she knows enough to spell Jesus with a little 'g' And her nut plan is as dumb as she is. Plain goofy crazy, if you ask me."
""That's it," he said. You've hit it on the head. That's why it will succeed."" - p 61
""And now, dear Sisters and Brothers," Mamie said. Tonight is good-will offering night for our dear Sister and Leader. Let us give freely and well, to show her our appreciation of her unfailing toil in our great work."
"Imagine that. I thought sure people would jump up and give her the horselaugh out loud, but they all applauded and never cracked a smile. Those people were so slap-happy they couldn't have told the difference between Thursday and a fan-dancer." - p 90
& it's precisely such expressions as that one ending the last paragraph that make the writing here so special.
""Look Gentner. I've thought and thought till my goddam mind is purple, but thinking don't change anything and wishing don't put whiskers on a statue. I can't think any more."" - p 136
The plot keeps thickening like all the fog in London stuck in one big pea-soup pot.
"We went upstairs and she showed me a room with all the walls covered with books.
""That's where I used to study," she said.
""Don't you study any more?" I asked her.
""No," she said.
""Why?"
""They made me stop," she said. "They were afraid."
"She didn't say afraid of what. She walked into a bedroom and stood there. It was all white and pretty and smelled nice like lavender. It was funny being in the bedroom of a girl like that." - p 101
""Why do men seek me as a sanctuary? They tremble, and I can't stand their suffering."
""You mean you're only sorry for me, then?" I said.
""I am sorry for all men," she said. "But the others I am sorry for and send away. You I am sorry for and I let you come. That's how I know I love you."" - p 113
Even that might seem like a situation too strange to be realistic & yet I can imagine myself being there & the author being there too. That made the bk crowded. Just kidding.
January 20, 2009
What can one say? Not exactly a crime novel, though there's an attempted murder and a killing . . . not exactly realistic, though it's set in very real 1930s environments . . . part allegorical . . . part fantastic . . . indeed, one might even say, part stupid . . . yet also a devastating and clever satire of James M. Cain's work . . . I'm not certain it can even properly be described as hard-boiled, though there are certainly many hard-bolied elements. This book is at turns vivid, unfocussed, dream-like, engaging and acomplete mess, yet it has a haunting quality that I will not soon forget, The whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.
November 18, 2013
This book was recommended to me while I was at Bouchercon. There were a lot of books recommended to me, but this one really stuck. I read this book in a day, and I can't remember the last time I did that.
I love the log line from amazon:
Dick is a Depression-era drifter bums who lands in Los Angeles in search of his son and runaway wife. When Dick commits one crime and plans another, the police arrest him for a crime he actually did not commit.
I highlighted a lot of passages. Noir is definitely talking to me right now. I'm trying hard to listen.
I love the log line from amazon:
Dick is a Depression-era drifter bums who lands in Los Angeles in search of his son and runaway wife. When Dick commits one crime and plans another, the police arrest him for a crime he actually did not commit.
I highlighted a lot of passages. Noir is definitely talking to me right now. I'm trying hard to listen.
February 10, 2019
Hallas’ novel opens with Richard Dempsey returning from a long day’s work at the diner to an empty house. Before he enters, he knows from the darkened windows that his wife has left him. Inside, he learns she’s taken their son and the family savings. She says he’ll never find her, but he knows she’s always dreamed of going to Hollywood.
This is Oklahoma in the late 1930’s, in the midst of the Great Depression and a crushing years-long drought. The world of glamour and sophistication that Hollywood painted on the silver screen in those days must have looked like heaven compared to the stark and pitiless world in which Richard and Lois had been living. Richard Dempsey doesn’t blame his wife for leaving. Who wouldn’t want to trade such a grim reality for a shot at one that was so much brighter?
Dempsey wants his son back, but with only two dollars and change to his name, his only chance of getting to California is to hop a freight train and ride with the hobos. Dempsey barely survives the multi-day journey, locked inside a freight car with dozens of other men by cops who want to push all the homeless out of the Western railroad towns and into California. Dempsey and his pack of fellow travelers, after being ripped off by cops and by each other, nearly roast as the sweltering box car crosses the desert, and nearly freeze as it crosses the mountains. Dempsey arrives in California exhausted, dehydrated, hungry, and broke, but still determined and full of hope.
The novel that seems to be about a man winning his family back turns out not to be that at all. Dempsey, now a drifter, winds up falling in with a number of shady characters, hustlers and survivors who are doing what they have to do in a failing economy that has no place for them.
Dempsey befriends a film director, gets roped into a scam with a con man from a gambling house, meets a couple of heavy-drinking divorcées, and then… Well, since this book is more about plot than character, I won’t spoil anything. Let’s just say the action rolls along at a very fast clip, and not always in the direction you expect.
Hallas’ book reads like a noir version of The Grapes of Wrath. Imagine Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain co-writing a condensed version of Steinbeck’s novel, and swapping out the Joad family for an inarticulate loner with an unfortunate instinct for trouble.
The populist left-leaning political movements of the era that Steinbeck portrayed with a visceral sympathy are mocked with withering satire here. And that’s not because Hallas lacks sympathy for the plight of his characters. He’s just a little less earnest than Steinbeck, and a little more cynical. In this book, the impossible promises of populist politicians merely play on the desperate hopes of the oppressed, who are willing to replace the knaves in power with fools who actually believe the utopian vision they are peddling.
Hallas’ prose is lean and spare, like Cain’s, and the mid-1930’s Los Angeles it portrays is very much like the one Philip Marlowe inhabited, with people from all tiers of society drinking and misbehaving together in a corrupt and decadent city with plenty of flash and little substance.
Hallas’ novel was published in 1938, a year earlier than Steinbeck’s, so you can’t call it derivative, though its stark portrayal of the Okie migration bears striking similarities to the journey Steinbeck portrayed in greater detail. It was also a year earlier than the first of Chandler’s Marlowe novels, The Big Sleep, though Chandler had been publishing in magazines for several years before You Play the Black appeared.
All three books bear similar themes of California as the land of promise and disappointment. One of the main characters in Hallas’ novel, the successful movie director Quentin Genter, tells Dempsey that the Southern California climate makes people foolish and delusional. They cross the mountains from the east and lose their judgment and perspective, ready to accept the most outlandish ideas and practices as sensible and normal. Genter prides himself on being the only man in Los Angeles who actually knows he’s insane.
After a series of improbable and increasingly desperate escapades lead him further and further from the life he wants, Richard Dempsey reflects:
If you like the crime and noir fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, you’ll like this book. It’s a quick read that never bogs down. It was a bestseller when it was published, and it must have captured the mood of the country. “If you prefer sweetness light,” said the review in the San Francisco Chronicle, “you’ll think this book is just horrid.”
[Notes on names: Eric Knight wrote this book under the pen name Richard Hallas. The narrator, known alternately as Richard or Dick, never gives his true surname, but his friend Smitty “always called me Dempsey right from the first because he said I was kind of built like the champ. I got used to it.” The title refers to the Murphy’s law of the roulette wheel, where the ball always seems to land on the color you didn’t pick. That metaphor works for both the main character, in whose life nothing seems to go as planned, and for the reader, who is constantly trying to predict the next plot twist, and keeps coming up wrong.]
This is Oklahoma in the late 1930’s, in the midst of the Great Depression and a crushing years-long drought. The world of glamour and sophistication that Hollywood painted on the silver screen in those days must have looked like heaven compared to the stark and pitiless world in which Richard and Lois had been living. Richard Dempsey doesn’t blame his wife for leaving. Who wouldn’t want to trade such a grim reality for a shot at one that was so much brighter?
Dempsey wants his son back, but with only two dollars and change to his name, his only chance of getting to California is to hop a freight train and ride with the hobos. Dempsey barely survives the multi-day journey, locked inside a freight car with dozens of other men by cops who want to push all the homeless out of the Western railroad towns and into California. Dempsey and his pack of fellow travelers, after being ripped off by cops and by each other, nearly roast as the sweltering box car crosses the desert, and nearly freeze as it crosses the mountains. Dempsey arrives in California exhausted, dehydrated, hungry, and broke, but still determined and full of hope.
The novel that seems to be about a man winning his family back turns out not to be that at all. Dempsey, now a drifter, winds up falling in with a number of shady characters, hustlers and survivors who are doing what they have to do in a failing economy that has no place for them.
Dempsey befriends a film director, gets roped into a scam with a con man from a gambling house, meets a couple of heavy-drinking divorcées, and then… Well, since this book is more about plot than character, I won’t spoil anything. Let’s just say the action rolls along at a very fast clip, and not always in the direction you expect.
Hallas’ book reads like a noir version of The Grapes of Wrath. Imagine Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain co-writing a condensed version of Steinbeck’s novel, and swapping out the Joad family for an inarticulate loner with an unfortunate instinct for trouble.
The populist left-leaning political movements of the era that Steinbeck portrayed with a visceral sympathy are mocked with withering satire here. And that’s not because Hallas lacks sympathy for the plight of his characters. He’s just a little less earnest than Steinbeck, and a little more cynical. In this book, the impossible promises of populist politicians merely play on the desperate hopes of the oppressed, who are willing to replace the knaves in power with fools who actually believe the utopian vision they are peddling.
Hallas’ prose is lean and spare, like Cain’s, and the mid-1930’s Los Angeles it portrays is very much like the one Philip Marlowe inhabited, with people from all tiers of society drinking and misbehaving together in a corrupt and decadent city with plenty of flash and little substance.
Hallas’ novel was published in 1938, a year earlier than Steinbeck’s, so you can’t call it derivative, though its stark portrayal of the Okie migration bears striking similarities to the journey Steinbeck portrayed in greater detail. It was also a year earlier than the first of Chandler’s Marlowe novels, The Big Sleep, though Chandler had been publishing in magazines for several years before You Play the Black appeared.
All three books bear similar themes of California as the land of promise and disappointment. One of the main characters in Hallas’ novel, the successful movie director Quentin Genter, tells Dempsey that the Southern California climate makes people foolish and delusional. They cross the mountains from the east and lose their judgment and perspective, ready to accept the most outlandish ideas and practices as sensible and normal. Genter prides himself on being the only man in Los Angeles who actually knows he’s insane.
After a series of improbable and increasingly desperate escapades lead him further and further from the life he wants, Richard Dempsey reflects:
…some lands were like a father to a man, and beat him; and some were a mother to him and loved him; and some were a wife, and had to be loved; but California was just a whore who dropped her pants to the first man that came along with a watering-pot.
If you like the crime and noir fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, you’ll like this book. It’s a quick read that never bogs down. It was a bestseller when it was published, and it must have captured the mood of the country. “If you prefer sweetness light,” said the review in the San Francisco Chronicle, “you’ll think this book is just horrid.”
[Notes on names: Eric Knight wrote this book under the pen name Richard Hallas. The narrator, known alternately as Richard or Dick, never gives his true surname, but his friend Smitty “always called me Dempsey right from the first because he said I was kind of built like the champ. I got used to it.” The title refers to the Murphy’s law of the roulette wheel, where the ball always seems to land on the color you didn’t pick. That metaphor works for both the main character, in whose life nothing seems to go as planned, and for the reader, who is constantly trying to predict the next plot twist, and keeps coming up wrong.]
January 9, 2009
Oddly episodic crime novel about a man who hops a freight train to California, chasing after the wife and son who have fled him. We meet numerous flakes in California, including a pair of women who somehow manage to turn a ridiculous Ponzi scheme (Ecanaanomics!) into a successful cross between a religious cult and a political movement. Part social satire, part noir, all from the writer who would later create Lassie.
May 23, 2018
I can't really judge this book fairly, because the audiobook narrator's presposterous performance obfuscated the author's intended tone. I'll have to read this book again, on paper, to get a better sense of what's going on here.
October 29, 2017
A completely deserved cult classic, and one of the shrewdest books ever written about California.
August 30, 2021
If you were to take equal parts of Horace McCoy, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, and Frederic Brown, combine, and then sprinkle a sprig of Kafka on top, you'd get You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up.
A macabre noir, or proto-noir, that nails America's tendency to suspend reality in hard economic circumstances along with the trappings of politics, cult of personality, and religion. Plus, it's a good crime novel.
Great primary source if you're interesting Great Depression era fiction.
A macabre noir, or proto-noir, that nails America's tendency to suspend reality in hard economic circumstances along with the trappings of politics, cult of personality, and religion. Plus, it's a good crime novel.
Great primary source if you're interesting Great Depression era fiction.
August 2, 2022
A new favorite. Can’t believe this is by the guy who wrote LASSIE.
“I thought about Genter and how he… told me about California being only a moving picture. I remember him saying that some lands were a father to a man, and beat him; and some were a mother to him, and loved him; and some were a wife, and had to be loved; but California was just a whore who dropped her pants down to the first man that came along with a watering-pot.”
“I thought about Genter and how he… told me about California being only a moving picture. I remember him saying that some lands were a father to a man, and beat him; and some were a mother to him, and loved him; and some were a wife, and had to be loved; but California was just a whore who dropped her pants down to the first man that came along with a watering-pot.”
January 28, 2019
Stunning. A straight-up noir-as-hell plot that flirts with parody, draws in California spirituality that most weren’t tuned into ‘til the 60s, and starts to hit some kinda nirvana. The first forty pages are a shotgun of plot, couldn't believe how much had already happened, but it only got stranger the more drawn out it became after that.
January 15, 2021
zzz. Good title...bad book. In my humble opinion, Good enough to keep reading but nothing exceptional about it.
There's far better crime books
And there's far better depression era books (this doesn't hold a candle to Cannery Row Steinbeck etc)
Not for me
There's far better crime books
And there's far better depression era books (this doesn't hold a candle to Cannery Row Steinbeck etc)
Not for me
June 22, 2022
At times reads as a stream of consciousness that had my mind drifting but over time it forced engagement in its quirky world of immoral characters.
December 11, 2022
Explosive, bizarre, funny, and full of the saddest and most deplorable characters in a book this size.
March 1, 2023
A truly idiosyncratic hard-boiled 1938 novel with some penetrating observations about California. Hard to believe this is from the author of Lassie-Come-Home.
Want to read
November 29, 2024Los Angeles Book Review describes this book as reading "like James Cain filtered through Thomas Pynchon". Being a huge Pynchon fan, I will have to find a copy of this one.
August 20, 2025
A true noir master piece.
Stands along Red Harvest as one of the all time greats.
Stands along Red Harvest as one of the all time greats.
December 30, 2023
This is a weird story about a man traveling through California to find his wife and child. Along the way he falls in love with another woman. The story meanders through the dark streets and seedy places until the woman is murdered. I wasn’t impressed with it.
January 23, 2014
I was running away when I read this. Running from failed friendships. A failed love. What felt like a failed life. I was running to the potential of Old Europe. The possible debauchery of Berlin. The implausible beauty of Lisbon.
I needed a book both dark enough to suit my mood, and engrossing enough that I wouldn't notice the banality of the airport or the incessant boredom of the flight. I chose this book... and it was the perfect choice. It is noir, which fit my mood: noir, which whispers of dark secrets about the corruptibility of all. From the shadows, noir tells us of the impossibility of doing anything right, of staying above the fray, of holding a course that is good or true. We all die, noir says. We all fail, and all of our grand expectations are based on shadows and fog.
This book is about a nearly thoughtless brute. A man whose wife has ran away and taken their kid. The brute drops everything to pursue her. Yes, I thought, this is what I need. And the plot was impossible to predict. Like a good noir, life gets in the way of the detective story, of the goals, of all of the plans, regardless. The brute is swayed by the rich and corrupt, the venal and messianic, the stupid and gullible, and of course, by the femme fatale. In this story, the femme comes swimming from the sea onto the beach, naked, like Botticelli's Venus erupted from a shell; a gift from the gods, but a goddess herself; one heedless to what life asks of her (and of course, she'll pay for that). And there is the Hollywood director: without feeling; amoral; a Machiavellian puppet master bored, oh so bored. There is the cult that springs up, seductive and stupid; full of promises of a richer life. There is the new lover, who is simply there, and then who looms. There is the friend; troubled, of course, and do I need to add, doomed? And more.
And it all ends badly, of course. With everyone worse off, except for the worst of people.
Exactly what I needed for my flight; both the literal flight on the plane, and the flight from all of the horrors I was hoping to put behind me.
I needed a book both dark enough to suit my mood, and engrossing enough that I wouldn't notice the banality of the airport or the incessant boredom of the flight. I chose this book... and it was the perfect choice. It is noir, which fit my mood: noir, which whispers of dark secrets about the corruptibility of all. From the shadows, noir tells us of the impossibility of doing anything right, of staying above the fray, of holding a course that is good or true. We all die, noir says. We all fail, and all of our grand expectations are based on shadows and fog.
This book is about a nearly thoughtless brute. A man whose wife has ran away and taken their kid. The brute drops everything to pursue her. Yes, I thought, this is what I need. And the plot was impossible to predict. Like a good noir, life gets in the way of the detective story, of the goals, of all of the plans, regardless. The brute is swayed by the rich and corrupt, the venal and messianic, the stupid and gullible, and of course, by the femme fatale. In this story, the femme comes swimming from the sea onto the beach, naked, like Botticelli's Venus erupted from a shell; a gift from the gods, but a goddess herself; one heedless to what life asks of her (and of course, she'll pay for that). And there is the Hollywood director: without feeling; amoral; a Machiavellian puppet master bored, oh so bored. There is the cult that springs up, seductive and stupid; full of promises of a richer life. There is the new lover, who is simply there, and then who looms. There is the friend; troubled, of course, and do I need to add, doomed? And more.
And it all ends badly, of course. With everyone worse off, except for the worst of people.
Exactly what I needed for my flight; both the literal flight on the plane, and the flight from all of the horrors I was hoping to put behind me.
August 18, 2015
The forward in the Black Lizard edition of this book describes this as a "lost classic" on the level of James M. Cain's work. That is perhaps going a bit far. The book is really a decent pastiche of the noir / hard-boiled milieu by an English author living in Southern California. On the one hand, his attempts at depicting the speech and viewpoints of an Oklahoma rough neck (Dick, the main character), don't seem very convincing. Dick's sort of a simpleton but the author periodically feels the need to use him as a mouthpiece for his own insights and wit, making him a bit like a ventriloquist's dummy at points. On the other hand, while Knight's love triangle/murder plot borrows mightily from Cain, it does so quite flatteringly. Additionally, his satire of the decadent Hollywood culture and send-up of 30's evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson is quite entertaining.
In fact, while this is technically a crime novel, it almost falls more comfortably in the category of books that overtly comment upon or criticize Hollywood and L.A. culture, along the lines of West's Day of the Locust, rather than a straight ahead crime novel like Double Indemnity, where the social commentary is more oblique.
In fact, while this is technically a crime novel, it almost falls more comfortably in the category of books that overtly comment upon or criticize Hollywood and L.A. culture, along the lines of West's Day of the Locust, rather than a straight ahead crime novel like Double Indemnity, where the social commentary is more oblique.
April 3, 2014
"I just sat there on the cot, looking out over the darkness of the ocean and now hearing the waves plain. I had got like Sheila. I was never tired of looking out there and watching the sea and the lights on the gambling ship."
Here are the questions we discussed at the Reading the Western Landscape Book Club at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden.
• Is the narrator reliable? What is the evidence for why or why not?
• Do all the pieces fit together in the descriptions?
• Why does the narrator worry over the minutiae of what Mamie knew or didn’t know?
• What do you make of his lack of engagement with the people surrounding him?
• Why did he love Sheila? And not the other women?
• Are his relationships with people indicative of the time period? Why is he so aloof with everyone but Sheila?
• Is the story straightforward? Give some examples for your answer.
• Where is the place of the golden mountain that his father had the tire flat on?
• What makes the novel seem so “surreal?”
Here are the questions we discussed at the Reading the Western Landscape Book Club at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden.
• Is the narrator reliable? What is the evidence for why or why not?
• Do all the pieces fit together in the descriptions?
• Why does the narrator worry over the minutiae of what Mamie knew or didn’t know?
• What do you make of his lack of engagement with the people surrounding him?
• Why did he love Sheila? And not the other women?
• Are his relationships with people indicative of the time period? Why is he so aloof with everyone but Sheila?
• Is the story straightforward? Give some examples for your answer.
• Where is the place of the golden mountain that his father had the tire flat on?
• What makes the novel seem so “surreal?”
July 16, 2015
Picked this up at a book fair from the Pharos table. Pharos reissues out-of-prints books with introductions from the authors/famous people who loved them, which is a fabulous idea. The synopsis of this one intrigued me - a crime novel loaded with double-crosses and backstabbing first published in the late 1930s and a bestseller of the time. On top of being dated, this is also a book written in the language of American gangster/noir by a British guy. So many linguistic layers to unpack - does the book accurately capture the voice of someone from that culture? Are my perceptions off because the book is an authentic portrayal? Could British guys convincingly pull off American gangster in the 1930s? Anyway, the book was fun enough, but no Maltese Falcon, which I kind of thought it might be. The final twists are satisfying, but hardly memorable, and the ending itself feels tacked on. Hallas notes that the narrator feels as if he's been in a dream through the whole tale, and we feel the same. Enjoyable, but the reasons this fell out of print are easy to see.
June 23, 2009
I’ve had this on the shelf for a couple of months, but I finally had the time over the weekend. I picked it up knowing nothing more than the title. Based on that, I was expecting a solid, American anti-hero experience. I was not disappointed.
It begins with our poor protagonist hopping a train to right a wrong committed against him and the ride doesn’t stop until he walks into the sunset on the final page.
Is it the best book ever? No, but it is exactly what it should be. The story offers an acceptable plot (reminiscent of “the Postman Always Rings Twice” and a subplot which captures 1930s California zeitgeist. Not bad for the English dude who wrote “Lassie.”
It begins with our poor protagonist hopping a train to right a wrong committed against him and the ride doesn’t stop until he walks into the sunset on the final page.
Is it the best book ever? No, but it is exactly what it should be. The story offers an acceptable plot (reminiscent of “the Postman Always Rings Twice” and a subplot which captures 1930s California zeitgeist. Not bad for the English dude who wrote “Lassie.”
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