Guy de Maupassant in Old-Time Radio!

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a prolific author of short stories whose works were frequently adapted to the radio. I've blogged many times about adaptations of his short story "the Horla" (including Ernie Colon's adaptation in Inner Sanctum and Guillaume Sorel's Le Horla). "The Horla" adaptation on radio's Mystery in the Air was my introduction to Maupassant. I wound up reading English translations of all of his short stories based on how much I'd enjoyed "the Horla." Very little of his work could be considered horror; there was a lot of dark comedy in his writing and his works tended to be rather cynical. How faithful, then, could radio adaptations of his works truly be? I recently re-listened to all the old-time radio adaptations that are available of his works.

"The Coward" (1867) A man eager to fight a duel faces his own cowardice.

• Sleep No More (February 6, 1957) with Nelson Olmsted
• The World's Greatest Short Stories (November 12, 1940) with Nelson Olmsted

Nelson Olmsted had one of those voices that could make the telephone book seem dramatic. Both of these dramatic readings are good and faithful to the original story.

"The Hand" (1883) A man keeps a severed hand chained to a wall - for his own good!

• The Weird Circle (October 14, 1943)

The Weird Circle was not very faithful in adapting stories - their adaptation of "the Hand" is pretty faithful to the horror of the original story but lacks the dark humour of Maupassant's original text.

"The Horla" (1887) The story of a man haunted by an invisible presence.

• Columbia Workshop (November 7, 1937) with Alfred Shirley
• Inner Sanctum Mysteries (August 1, 1943)
• Mystery in the Air (August 21, 1947) with Peter Lorre
• The Weird Circle (October 24, 1943)

Peter Lorre's performance on Mystery in the Air remains an utter delight and it's impossible to top a man whose range had no top, but the other adaptations tried their best. The Weird Circle and Inner Sanctum Mysteries both made the mistake of having the Horla speak; it's a heckuva lot more frightening without a voice. The Columbia Workshop has music by Bernard Herrmann that's very similar to the compositions he used in the Mercury Theater on the Air's adaptation of Dracula a year later.

"Little Louise" (1867) A postman finds the remains of a murdered child.

• Theatre Royal (January 16, 1954) with Laurence Olivier

This is a decent adaptation, although it negates the bleak ending of the original text, which is disappointing.

"Mademoiselle Fifi" (1882) A lone Frenchwoman stands up to German invaders.

• Family Theater (September 14, 1949) with Wendell Corey

Although this obviously had nothing to do with World War II when it was written, in 1949 it would have been on everyone's minds. It's an okay adaptation, but the original text is a bit too naughty for Family Theater.

"The Necklace" (1884) A woman borrows her friend's valued necklace and loses it, then ruins her life trying to replace it.

• Family Theater (June 29, 1949) with Edgar Barrier
• Favorite Story (October 7, 1947) with Hans Conreid
• Hollywood's Open House (June 17, 1948) with Martha Scott
• Railroad Hour (July 14, 1952)
• The Unexpected (1948) with Gerald Mohr
• Your Playhouse of Favorites (April 22, 1948)

This is easily the most beloved of Maupassant's stories and the adaptations are very faithful. I have to really highlight that Railroad Hour production as something different - the entire drama is sung as though it were an opera (music by Cesar Franck)!

"A Piece of String" (1883) A man pauses to claim a lost piece of string, setting in motion his downfall in society.

• Favorite Story (September 21, 1948) with Herb Butterfield
• Hollywood's Open House (August 12, 1948)
• Radio Hall of Fame (March 18, 1945) with Claude Rains
• Radio Reader's Digest (October 30, 1947 with Claude Rains

A very good story; the Favorite Story version is a bit padded but Claude Rains' two adaptations are very good as he covers the protagonist's mounting desperation perfectly.

"The Rope of Hair" (1884) A man searching for a diary encounters a ghost.

• The Weird Circle (May 5, 1944)

Some doubt whether Maupassant was the author of this story (as it wasn't published under his name) but it's widely considered to be one of his. This Weird Circle adaptation is okay, but takes such pains to explain everything that the supernatural goings-on are robbed of suspense.

My major take away from these adaptations is that Maupassant was a bit too saucy for the conservative radio shows of the 30s-50s. Still, most of the adaptations of "the Horla," "the Necklace" and "a Piece of String" were very faithful to the original text. I think Maupassant came off well more often than not in his adapted works.

Review: Le Horla

Guy de Maupassant's 1887 short story "The Horla" was my introduction to the author; I heard a production of the radio series Mystery in the Air with Peter Lorre in the lead role of a man being haunted by an invisible presence (here) and it made an immediate impression. Certainly the adaptation featured Lorre at the top of his range, closing with him in the midst of a ranting breakdown to beat all breakdowns.

I read a lot of Maupassant's short stories (possibly all of them, I haven't found a decent bibliography that takes into account all the variant English titles his stories have had). "The Horla" wasn't Maupassant's only supernatural tale but such themes are rare in his work. "The Horla" remains his most famous work.

The concept of an invisible presence isn't necessarily ideal for adaptation in a visual medium - perhaps why radio suited it so well - but it has been done. You might recall that in 2012 I reviewed an adaptation of "the Horla" in Ernie Colon's Inner Sanctum graphic novel. But that adaptation played pretty loose with the original work.

Perhaps Maupassant's work requires a fellow Frenchman to do it justice. Guillaume Sorel adapted the short story in a full-length 2014 graphic novel. I've looked at a few French graphic novels on the blog recently and I suppose I should reiterate - I don't read French. My Portuguese helps a little; exposure to French in my bilingual homeland helps a little; but what helped me the most in Sorel's Le Horla is that dialogue isn't what drives his adaptation of this familiar story. Most of the atmosphere and terror is visual in nature.

Sorel has a few means to make the invisible menace visible. One is by demonstrating the effects of the creature's presence upon the hapless protagonist, such as in this scene where it simply breaks a flower by the stem. It's eerie and suspenseful, taking good advantage of the Horla's unseen nature.

Sorel's second means is to simply depict the Horla; it appears as an outline of a figure when it hovers over the protagonist at night. I'm not sure how I feel about those scenes - Sorel's Horla is terrifying, but giving the creature even an outline makes it somewhat comprehensible. I feel some of the terror of the story is in the creature's unreality.

Maupassant suffered from mental illlness (namely, syphilis) and it's hard to avoid seeing that in the story of the Horla - that the protagonist's increasingly unhinged rants were coming from a place that Maupassant knew all to well. Sorel's interpretation of the protagonist is a bit more restrained and keeps the ranting to a minimum. Still, Sorel's Le Horla is the most faithful adaptation I have found of Maupassant's story and I do strongly recommend it to fans of Maupassant.

Old-Time Radio Theme Month, Day 17: "the Horla"

Returning to Peter Lorre's program Mystery in the Air, we have an episode from August 21, 1947: an adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's "the Horla." You may recall this as one of the tales Ernie Colon adapted into comic book format in his Inner Sanctum graphic novel, as I blogged here.

This episode's story of a man haunted by an invisible presence was my first exposure to Maupassant and led to my reading two collections of his short fiction; he didn't write much in the supernatural vein and I found his cynicism to be overwhelming at times, but I was fascinated by the notion of a man who wrote tales of madness, then ultimately succumbed to madness himself. Many of his stories are quite clever, like a subdued Saki. I recommend investigating his bibliography.

There's an anecdote about how during one broadcast of Mystery in the Air, Lorre's performance became so intense that he accidentally flung his script away and had to ad-lib the rest of the program; I don't know which episode it would be, but based on the intensity of this program's finale and his sudden closing apology, this may be the show in question.

You can download a copy of this radio show from archive.org here.

Great Short Stories: #21-30

21. "The Phantom Rickshaw" (1885) by Rudyard Kipling. In this ghostly yet whimsical story, a man is pursued by the phantom image of a woman he spurned, following him everywhere in her rickshaw. It seems to be a manifestation of his own guilty conscience, believing he drived her to her death, but no amount of psychoanalysis seems able to drive the phantom away.

"The Phantom Rickshaw" can be found in The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories. You can read the text online here.

22. "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Again delving into novellas, this is Stevenson's great tale of Jekyll letting out his other side, but discovering that the more exercise he grants his baser self, the more powerful it becomes and he faces the threat of losing out to himself.

"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" can be found in Three Tales. You can read the text online here.

23. "The Horla" (1887) by Guy de Maupassant. This is easily Maupassant's best-remembered story, one which has been given particular attention because of his own descent into madness (Maupassant suffered from syphilis). A man is haunted by an invisible...something. A Horla. As he becomes more and more convinced of the reality of his premonitions, his actions seem more and more like madness to those around him.

"The Horla" can be found in The Complete Works of Guy de Maupassant. You can read the text online here.

24. "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" (1888) by Rudyard Kipling. This is a sad story about a young boy from India sent to be raised in England. The boy encounters difficulties, partly due to culture shock, but he also develops a horrible persecution complex and when he finds himself punished regardless of whether he does good or ill, he sees no point in trying to be good.

"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" can be found in The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories. You can read the text online here.

25. "The Man Who Would be King" (1888) by Rudyard Kipling. This is Kipling's great story of two men who seek to carve out a kingdom for themselves and, against all odds, succeed; the problem is that having become kings by setting themselves up as gods, the fiction can only hold for so long...

"The Man Who Would be King" can be found in The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories. You can read the text online here.

26. "Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior" (1889) by Guy de Maupassant. This is a strangely cynical yet affecting work by Maupassant. As he lies dying from a hunting accident, Hautot tells his son his shameful secret: he kept a mistress. The son sets out to put things right with his father's woman, but discovers she is now like a part of his family.

"Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior" can be found in The Complete Works of Guy de Maupassant. You can read the text online here.

27. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1890) by Ambrose Bierce. This is Bierce's best-known tale, told with simplicity and forcefulness. During the US Civil War, a man is sentenced to be hung over a bridge. He survives the hanging and a pursuit begins, but...well, as you may already know, the escape occurs only in his mind and the entire tale comprises the hopes of a man at the moment of his death.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" can be found in The Spook House. You can read the text online here.

28. "The Five Orange Pips" (1891) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is one of the most remarkable of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, memorable because it's the story in which the villains are the Klu Klux Klan and that it's one of the few times Holmes solves a mystery, but fails the case!

"The Five Orange Pips" can be found in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. You can read the text online here.

29. "The Graveyard Sisterhood" (1891) by Guy de Maupassant. Another cynical romance by Maupassant; a man comforts a woman weeping over the grave of her beloved and is drawn into a relationship with her; he realizes just a little too late that he's being played.

"The Graveyard Sisterhood" can be found in The Complete Works of Guy de Maupassant. You can read the text online here.

30. "The Red-Headed League" (1891) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is a great Holmes story about a red-haired man who is hired for a job seemingly because of his hair color. After losing the unusual job he asks Holmes to investigate and it turns out the man wasn't wanted for the color of his hair, but for the proximity of his home to the bank!

"The Red-Headed League" can be found in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. You can read the text online here.

Great Short Stories: #11-20

11. "Ethan Brand" (1851) by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this tale, a man seeks to learn what the "unpardonable sin" could be. Tackling the problem as an experiment, he makes test subjects of several people, deceiving them into committing murder and other terrible acts, but in each case he can see how they could be forgiven. The ultimate revelation of his actions is this: intentionally drawing others into evil is the unpardonable sin.

"Ethan Brand" can be found in Twice-Told Tales. You can read the text online here.

12. "A Terrible Night" (1856) by Fitz-James O'Brien. In this disturbing tale, two men go hunting in the woods somewhere in northern Canada. After becoming lost they chance upon a cabin and the reclusive but proud inhabitant allows them to spend the night. However, the two begin to fear that their host has plans to rob and kill them, so they sleep in shifts to keep an eye on him. The ultimate horror of the evening is much worse than they could have imagined.

"A Terrible Night" can be read online here.

13. "The Phantom Coach" (1864) by Amelia B. Edwards. I first encountered this story in a filmstrip back in junior high school and it left quite a mark upon me; bereft of the film's illustrations, I don't think it's as terrifying, but Edwards still weaves what is to my mind the best of the "phantom coach" style of tales, of which there were many in the 19th century (her colleague Dickens wrote a couple). In this tale, a man lost in the snow accepts a lift from a mysterious coach. There's something not quite right about his fellow passengers...

"The Phantom Coach" can be found in Classic & Victorian Ghost Stories. You can read the text online here.

14. "The Trial for Murder" (1865) by Charles Dickens. In this story, a juror finds himself strangely compelled by the case he's been made to sit in on. He never knew the victim, he does not know the defendant. How is it that he seems possessed of the full details of the crime and is assured of the defendant's guilt? And is there really a 13th juror?

"The Trial for Murder" can read online here.

15. "The Signal-Man" (1866) by Charles Dickens. This eerie story relates the plight of a railway line signal-man who has premonitions of disaster and lives in perpetual fear that his premonitions will come true; the story's protagonist tries to convince him that his fears are groundless, yet he unwittingly has a part to play in the man's future.

"The Signal-Man" can be found in Three Ghost Stories. You can read the text online here.

16. "Green Tea" (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu is not a well-known name but he's well-regarded by those who know him and stories like "Green Tea" exhibit the reason why. It's a psychological ghost story written in an open, conversational style that may even make you laugh...until the story's phantom monkey appears.

"Green Tea" can be found in Green Tea and Other Strange Tales. You can read the text online here.

17. "Sire de Maletroit's Door" (1877) by Robert Louis Stevenson. In this story, a young cavalier fleeing from his enemies steps inside an open door; he soon has cause to regret this action when he finds himself in the home of a wealthy man determined to find the person who impregnated his daughter. As a criminal, the cavalier cannnot expose his motivation without incriminating himself and so is given a choice: marry his daughter or die.

"Sire de Maletroit's Door" can be found in New Arabian Nights. You can read the text online here.

18. "The Suicide Club" (1878) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Here's where I'm fudging the definition of "short story" just a little. "The Suicide Club" is more properly a novella or even a mini-anthology; it is essentially three short stories which together tell one great story. However, it's mainly the first of these stories which I'm enamored with - "The Young Man With the Cream Tarts." It's this part of the story which is really about the titular Suicide Club. In it, a young prince out to enjoy himself in secrecy joins a club where suicidal people unable to kill themselves play cards every night to choose from amongst their ranks a killer and a victim. The prince's problems really begin when he is chosen to be a victim! This was a story I first encountered on the radio show Escape, but protagonist Prince Florizel turned up in a few more of Stevenson's works.

"The Suicide Club" can be found in New Arabian Nights. You can read the text online here.

19. "A Ruse" (1882) by Guy de Maupassant. Really, this is an awful, tasteless, cynical and terrible story. And yet, it's told with such zest and audacity that I do rather like it. A physician relates a story about an evening where he was called to aid a married woman whose lover had unexpectedly died. He must contrive a means to get the body out of her home before her husband returns. It's all a build-up to an awful punchline, but so far as cynical humour goes, this is one of Maupassant's best.

"A Ruse" can be found in The Complete Works of Guy de Maupassant. You can read the text online here.

20. "Markheim" (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a great crime story telling the desperate actions of a killer trying to escape the scene of the crime but plagued by self-doubts and fears of capture. His own conscience stirs against him as he comes closer and closer to discovery.

"Markheim" can be found in Three Tales. You can read the text online here.