This Is the Night (1932)

This Is the Night by #FrankTuttle starring #CaryGrant and #ThelmaTodd, "The performances are remarkable",

FRANK TUTTLE Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBBB USA, 1932. Paramount Pictures. Screenplay by Benjamin Glazer, George Marion Jr., based on the play by Henry Falk, Avery Hopwood, René Peter. Cinematography by Victor Milner. Produced by Benjamin Glazer. Music by Ralph Rainger, W. Franke Harling, John Leipold. Costume Design by Eugene Joseff. Cary Grant is instantly a matinee idol in his film debut,…

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Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins, and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charles Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Greig. Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson, Grover Jones, based on a play by Aladar Laszlo. Cinematography: Victor Milner. Art direction: Hans Dreier. Music: W. Franke Harling. Costume design: Travis Banton.

If you want a good example of the damage done to American movies by the enforcement of the Production Code, look no further than Trouble in Paradise. Ernst Lubitsch's comic masterpiece could not have been made two years later, when the Code went into effect. It could not even be re-released or shown commercially until the death of the Code in the late 1960s. The loss to the art of cinema is incalculable, even though filmmakers including Lubitsch went on to find other ways of being witty and sexy. On the face of it, Trouble in Paradise sounds trivial: Con artists Lily (Miriam Hopkins) and Gaston (Herbert Marshall) fall in love when each tries to filch the other's belongings: a wallet, a brooch, a watch, a garter. So they team up and go off to Paris where their target becomes the wealthy and beautiful Mariette Colet (Kay Francis), owner of a leading parfumerie. What will happen to Lily when Gaston falls in love with Mariette? What makes it work is Lubitsch's unflagging wit: A film that will soon be wafting the scent of Mme. Colet's perfume opens with a Venetian garbage man dumping the contents of a can into a loaded garbage scow and punting off into a canal singing "O Sole Mio." It's only the first of the many Lubitsch touches. But perhaps the greatest touch of all is the casting: Hopkins was never funnier or sexier and Francis never more radiant. I have to admit that on my first viewing I was initially put off by the casting of Marshall: a sad-eyed, somewhat slumped middle-aged man with a wooden leg. (The scenes in which Gaston sprints up and down Mariette's staircase are probably the work of a body double.) But Marshall turns out to be perfectly charming in the role, credibly wooing both leading ladies. A heartthrob like Cary Grant would have wrecked the chemistry, becoming the apex of what needs to be an equilateral triangle. William Powell would have been too vivid in the part, echoing his previous teamings with Francis. Fredric March had a touch too much of the ham -- Marshall succeeds by underplaying the role. There are some other nice surprises: Those peerless character actors Charles Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton were usually used as comic relief, but Trouble in Paradise is a comedy that needs no relieving; Ruggles and Horton are there to do their own thing and they do it well. The ending, which flouts a key commandment of the Code, is suitably bittersweet, but paradise needs a little trouble to make you appreciate it the more.

 #ProyeccionDeVida

🎥🎼 La Música en el Cine, presenta:

🎬 “EL DESFILE DEL AMOR” [The Love Parade]

🔎 Género: Comedia / Romance / Musical

⌛️ Duración: 107 minutos

✍️ Guión: Guy Bolton y Ernest Vajda

📘 Obra: Jules Chancel y Leon Xanrof

🎶 Música: W. Franke Harling, John Leipold, Oscar Potoker y Max Terr

📷 Fotografía: Victor Milner (B&W)

🗯 Argumento: Por sus deshonrosas aventuras en París, el agregado militar, conde Alfred Renard, es devuelto a su país de origen Sylvania, justo en los días en que los miembros del Consejo de Estado andan preocupados porque la reina Louise I no consigue casarse con ninguno de sus pretendientes... pero al ser llevado ante su presencia a la espera de recibir su castigo, Renard conseguirá seducirla y Sylvania va a tener a un príncipe consorte que ha jurado ante la iglesia ser dócil y obediente.

👥 Reparto: Maurice Chevalier (Alfred Renard), Jeanette MacDonald (Queen Louise), Lillian Roth (Lulu), Eugene Pallette (Minister of War), Virginia Bruce, Jean Harlow (Woman in Opera Box), Ben Turpin (Valletto Strabico), Lionel Belmore (Prime Minister), E. H. Calvert (Sylvanian Ambassador) y Edgar Norton (Master of Ceremonies) y Winter Hall.

📢 Dirección: Ernst Lubitsch

© Productora: Paramount Pictures

🌏 País: Estados Unidos

📅 Año: 1929

📽 Proyección:

📆 Sábado 23 de Marzo

🕚 11:00am.

🏪 Sala Azul del Centro Cultural PUCP (av. Camino Real 1075 San Isidro)

⭐ Organiza: Sociedad Filarmonica de Lima

🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️ Ingreso libre

NOTE: This review is based on the English-language version of One Hour with You. A French-language version, entitled Une heure près de toi, was shot simultaneously with the English-language production. Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald appear in both; Lili Damita plays Mitzi and Pierre Etchepare is Adolph in the French-language version. The availability and status of the French-language cut is unknown.

One Hour with You (1932)

There are certain words in the English language that make my blood boil for no rational reason. But one of those personally despised words is the first word that comes to mind when I think of One Hour with You, directed by Ernst Lubitsch “with the assistance of” George Cukor. The word is “chic” – give me a moment to clench my fists. For those who are not familiar with Lubitsch’s work (Cukor’s contribution to the film’s final cut is minimal, but more on that later), the German-American director is best known for a succession of sophisticated comedies from the silent era to the 1940s. The wit in these movies often alluded to things that the director, because of the Hays Code (a censorship guideline for American films not stringently enforced until 1934, later replaced by the MPAA ratings system in 1968), could not show. One Hour with You is among the funniest of Lubitsch’s talkie comedies and evidence that the director had successfully managed the transition from silent film to sound.

Dr. Andre Bertier (Maurice Chevalier) is a Parisian, hopelessly dedicated to his wife, Colette (Jeanette MacDonald). He wants you to know about their happiness and his faithfulness by breaking the fourth wall multiple times. If this sounds grating, you probably have never seen a Maurice Chevalier movie. Their nuptial joy is troubled when Colette’s best friend, Mitzi Olivier (Genevieve Tobin), unhappy with her marriage to the similarly dissatisfied Adolph (Charles Ruggles), takes a gander at the doctor. She begins to flirt – realistically and, dare I say it, racily – with Andre. Relations between the four leads come to a scandalous, yet hilarious, head as Colette plans and throws a dinner party for her friends.

One Hour with You was Lubitsch’s final musical romantic comedy (many of which starred Chevalier) working for Paramount. Compared to the film’s predecessors among Lubitsch’s filmography, it is the least beholden to fidelity. With a screenplay by Samson Raphaelson (1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, 1941’s Suspicion) paints the institution of marriage – or, at the very least, the idea of monogamous fidelity – the most cynically of all those films. Marriage itself is constricting, the film says, and this is even more so when the married couple have lost the romantic spark. As doting and puppyish as Andre is to Colette, the film depicts him as almost prudish when he is on the receiving end Collette’s suggestive “come hithers” – “Madame! You may think I’m a coward. I am!” Dialogue about Mitzi and Adolph considering divorce would have been stricken from the film because of the Hays Code if this film was released a few years later. But even in this pre-Code romantic comedy, the attitude towards their doomed marriage is jocular, as if both Mitzi and Adolph have intuited the silliness of their situation and have accepted the other’s flagrant adultery. It is at once refreshing to witness One Hour with You’s sexual freedom frankness as well as shocking to see two characters unfazed about adultery with a committed married person – yes, even in a pre-Code film.

This is not to describe One Hour with You as a searing of married life, arguing that the institution must be destroyed. One Hour with You is foremost an upper-class farcical comedy, akin to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. And like Wilde’s play, One Hour with You satirizes romantic pursuits – how easy it is to be infatuated despite your better senses, human fickleness, marriage’s fragility, and the performative nature of romantic and marital relations. Not one character is chastised in the film’s point of view; never is this any more obvious in the final moments, where Colette and Andre address the audience directly, asking what they might have done in their situations. Paris seems to bring this out in its residents and its visitors, as the rhyming police chief will tell you. Where modern comedies might easily veer into graphic, unimaginative dialogue, the grace of the film’s dialogue is delightfully subtle:

POLICE OFFICER: Come on, come on. Where do you think you are? What are you doing? What’s going on here? ANDRE BERTIER: The French Revolution! [resumes kissing Colette] POLICE OFFICER: Hey, you can’t make love in public. ANDRE BERTIER: I can make love anywhere! POLICE OFFICER: No, you can’t! COLETTE BERTIER: Oh, but officer, he can! ANDRE BERTIER (joyously): Darling!

Damn. The above is just one minor example of what is known as the “Lubitsch touch” – a bit of dialogue or visual technique that seems, on the surface to modern viewers, in keeping the supposed puritanism of classic American cinema but is anything but. For those unfamiliar with Lubitsch’s films, his touch might not be obvious at first. But if one keeps paying attention, Lubitsch’s naughtiness is bound to raise an eyebrow or inspire a blush. Another notable of the Lubitsch touch in One Hour with You comes as Andre and Colette engage in pillow talk, suggesting with darkened lights and a shared bed (the latter would not be permitted in American movies in a few years’ time). The entirety of Colette’s party is an example of the Lubitsch touch, especially the lively escapade in the garden.

How can someone resist the charm of Maurice Chevalier’s signature smile, his unevenly-placed hat, that rhyming scheme, and that ridiculous French accent? Chevalier is his usual charming self here, his face belying his character’s disbelief in the love triangle (or square) he is attempting to prevent. Briefly the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, he signed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) shortly after One Hour with You, only to be frustrated by a star-billing dispute, and leaving the United States for his native France to resume his stage career there. Jeanette MacDonald’s voice, which lends itself to operas and operettas, might be irksome to some viewers – especially those who cannot suspend their disbelief with film musicals – but her performance as Colette captures a mix of jealousy and a desire to forgive needed for this role. With her Paramount contract nearing expiration, she also left for MGM – teaming up with Chevalier once more for The Merry Widow (1934) and soon to forge her more famous working partnership with Nelson Eddy. Genevieve Tobin makes it evident her character wants some of that world-renowned French cooking in the form of Andre. Tobin has the best comedic moments of One Hour with You and makes her lines drip with desire. Charles Ruggles is operating on middle-aged id, somehow making his character’s social awkwardness and legitimately creepy lines somewhat funny.

Those expecting show-stopping musical numbers are bound to be disappointed. The songs by composers Oscar Straus (better known for his Viennese operettas, 1931’s The Smiling Lieutenant) and Richard A. Whiting (“Hooray for Hollywood” from 1937’s Hollywood Hotel) and lyricist Leo Robin (“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, immortalized by Marilyn Monroe in 1949’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) are in the style of a Viennese operetta, rather than the splashy, occasionally mass-choreographed, musicals being made at Fox Film Corporation (soon to be 20th Century Fox), MGM, and Warner Bros. at this period. Lubitsch’s musicals always resembled Viennese operettas (this does not mean these musicals were sung-through like actual operas and operettas): songs have limited orchestration and harmonic interest, function primarily to progress the plot or reveal character insight, and are jaunty in tone and tempo. None of the film’s song act as a drag on the action, but the title track (sung by all four lead actors, but I could not find this version anywhere) and “Oh That Mitzi!” are the standouts. Like the film’s dialogue, the soundtrack is engrossed in love and romance – matching the wit of non-musical scenes.

For unknown reasons at Paramount, a project that should have been Ernst Lubitsch was assigned to George Cukor. Cukor, a Broadway director who was only beginning to direct under contract to Paramount, had yet to establish himself at the studio. The Philadelphia Story (1940) and My Fair Lady (1964) were still some ways off. Lubitsch, given his résumé, was more idoneous for One Hour with You. Early in production, Lubitsch (who was “supervising” Cukor) and Raphaelson heard claims from the cast that Cukor was approaching the material incorrectly. Viewing the rushes, both men agreed that Cukor was filling the movie with overwrought, excessive moments that were sapping the piece of its hilarity. Gradually, Lubitsch began to insert himself in the process to the point where Cukor was fully sidelined. Internal Paramount documents claim that Cukor’s remaining contributions to One Hour with You are brief reaction shots and a moment with walking feet. After Lubitsch’s attempts to eliminate Cukor’s credit and a lawsuit by the latter, an out-of-court settlement resulted in Cukor being credited as dialogue director. Cukor immediately left Paramount, landing at RKO to work with David O. Selznick.

The Hays Code and the introduction of splashy, mass-choreographed musicals from Fox, MGM, and Warner Bros. soon rendered musicals like One Hour with You out of vogue. With the silent era already becoming a distant memory less than a decade after the introduction of talkies, audiences flocked to musical with booming numbers and lavish production values – the image of Maurice Chevalier standing square at the camera, singing double entendres and smiling, no longer would cut it. Audiences wanted Busby Berkeley’s hallucinatory choreography of women in Footlight Parade (1933) or Fox’s stars swinging to Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938). But those musicals owe much to the likes of One Hour with You. In the awkward transitional years between silent film and synchronized sound, the Ernst Lubitsch musicals starring Maurice Chevalier represented one of the rare havens for cinematic innovation. Lesser filmmakers in those years were too often using sound as a gimmick, leaving the mesmerizing aesthetics of the silent era aside. For the Lubitsch-Chevalier musicals, including One Hour with You, they envisage film as a symphony of visual splendor and aural delight.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

Hollywood’s Best Year and the films that beat GONE WITH THE WIND (’39) by Jessica Pickens

The year 1939 is often cited as Hollywood’s best year. And when it came to the 12th Academy Awards, the competition was stiff for the films nominated in the 20 award categories.

But one film swept the awards with a record eight wins, including Best Picture—GONE WITH THE WIND (’39). In total, this epic film was nominated in 13 categories.

The eight wins broke the record of the most award wins in one night, which was originally held by IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (’34) with five Academy Awards. This record has since been broken by BEN-HUR (’59), TITANIC (’97) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (’03) which each received 11 awards.

Though GONE WITH THE WIND was the star of awards night on Feb. 29, 1940, a few movies did beat out David O. Selznick’s film in four categories (the fifth category that GONE WITH THE WIND lost was Actress in a Supporting Role for Olivia de Havilland; the winner was Hattie McDaniel).

Here are the awards that competed with GONE WITH THE WIND and won:

Best Actor: Robert Donat for GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS

In GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, a long-time and beloved teacher, Mr. Chipping, reflects on his teaching career and life. Starting out as a stuffy young man, his wife helps bring him out of his shell and shows him how to be a better teacher, which endears his students to him.

Robert Donat plays the teacher who reminisces on his life from 1870 to 1933. Donat does a fabulous job of showing how a young man transforms during his career. And you also have to give kudos to Jack Dawn, the makeup artist who effectively aged Donat from 25 years old to 88 years old. This was the only film Donat acted in that was released in 1939, and he was not present at the awards ceremony. Director Victor Saville accepted the accolade on his behalf.

Best Effects, Special Effects: Fred Sersen (photographic) and Edmund H. Hansen (sound) THE RAINS CAME

The 12th Academy Awards ceremony was the first-time special effects received an official category, and when I think of special effects in a classic film, THE RAINS CAME is one of the first to come to mind. The rain in this film is really a main character and is the antagonist. The downpour of rain is an issue, but an earthquake follows, which breaks a dam. Water rushes through the streets, washing away people and structures and the city of Ranchipur, India is left flooded. This catastrophic astonishing sequence will leave you gasping and biting your fingernails. It is one of the most impressive (non-CGI) special effects that I have seen in a film.

Best Music, Original Score: Herbert Stothart for THE WIZARD OF OZ

Of the 12 films nominated for Best Music, Original Score, composers Max Steiner, Victor Young and Alfred Newman received more than one nomination that year. However, it was Stothart’s whimsical score for THE WIZARD OF OZ that took home the prize.

This is one win I am surprised by, as Max Steiner’s score for GONE WITH THE WIND is so memorable that it is often still referenced. This was Stothart’s only Academy Award win.

Best Sound, Recording: Bernard B. Brown for WHEN TOMORROW COMES

With Best Sound, Recording first awarded in 1930, Bernard B. Brown was only the ninth person to be recognized with this Academy Award. This category is harder than some of the accolades to describe. You can’t see or visualize it as well as you can something like a performance or score. However, sound recording is how the audience hears the film and is an important aspect for any talking picture.

This award no longer has this title and is now Best Sound Mixing.

Winners GONE WITH THE WIND did not compete against:

Best Writing, Original Story: Lewis R. Foster for MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Best Supporting Actor: Thomas Mitchell for STAGECOACH

Best Black-and-White Cinematography: Gregg Toland for WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Best Music, Original Song: Harold Arlen (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics) for the song "Over the Rainbow" in THE WIZARD OF OZ

Best Music, Scoring: Richard Hageman, W. Franke Harling, John Leipold, Leo Shuken in STAGECOACH

I was tagged by @sweet-sugar-sunsets and @caseyk112 to spell out my username with songs! Get ready for a long friends. Thanks for tagging me you lovely ladies! 🖤I can’t ever memorize songs so I’m shuffling all of my saved shit until I find ones that work lol

S: “SICKO MODE” by Travis Scott

H: “Heavy Eyelids” by Danny L Harle

E: “Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks

W: “When You’re Gone” by VÉRITÉ

H: “HUMBLE.” by Kendrick Lamar

O: “Overcome (feat. Potato Potato)” by Tora

T: “Time to Rise” by Meels

H: “Hello” by Allie X

E: “Easy Nothing” by Youngblood

R: “Revolution” by The Score

I: “I Know” by Aly & AJ

V: “Volcanic Love” by The Aces

E: “Electric Love - Oliver Remix” by BØRNS

R: “Riot” by Paris Carney

C: “Chained to the Rhythm” by Katy Perry, Skip Marley

O: “One Dance” by Drake, WizKid, Kyla

U: “Ultraviolet” by Dagny

L: “Little Bit” by Babeo Baggins 

D: “Diamonds on the Sole of Her Shoes” by Paul Simon

N: “No Light, No Light” by Florence + The Machine

O: “Oooooh” by Future, Young Scooter

T: “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck 

H: “Howlin’ For You” by The Black Keys

O: “Open Your Eyes” by STRFKR

L: “Lost” by Frank Ocean

D: “Dnynasty - Elphante Remix” by MIIA, Elephante

Tagging: @janes-mike, @thezoomermax, @captainwilldameron, @tabatharich, and @elizabthturner!

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okasdjhs arent we all a sl*t for harls??? bc i know i am a complete ho for her !!!!!!! (pls do nt vote 600 times tho i think you can ? ? idk) (ily to the mooon)

url: i dont get it | p good | cool cool cool | amazing | i cri everytim | who did you kill?! (hmu w the hitman’s number) | ELEKTRA NATCHIOSicon: idk who dat | okay | pretty | where did u find this ?? and where can i get one?? | KAZ BREKKERmobile theme: default | okay | good | p good | great colour scheme x infinite!! | ho w u do that?? | MATT MURDOCKdesktop theme: default | not my thing but it’s okay | good | pretty pretty x1010101 !!!! | omw to steal it | JASON TODDcontent: not my fandoms/stylez | cool cool cool | i luh it!! | so pretty i cry | mmmmmystars how does one simply do That?? ho W | JAKE PERALTAoverall: needs a little work (ily) | cool | pretty | pretty xinfinite ver. 2 | so like i am up for trading?? | HARLEY QUINNfollowing: no, but ily ♡ | not my fandoms but maybe one day | not yet! | how was i not following u before wtf?? +f | yes | always and forever, sugarplum ♡

i am calling the popo on you bc i am pretty sure you have committed shit tons of murders to get all these amazing urls?? luck has nothing to do with this !!!! it was a direct hit and assassination !!!!!!!!! yknow while spying on your blog i got a lil worried when i saw the ‘daddy’ tag but now i am just like “yup thats totally deena” kjdshs HO IT UP, SON !!! your tagging system is goals (i have over 4k pages with untagged posts okay im useless) everything about your blog SCREAMS perfection !?? ? the updates tab, the colour scheme, the content itself???  oof a blog after my holo black heart, i see. your desc is so simple and pretty, i cried a frank ocean. AND YOUR ABOUT PAGE !!!!! HOW ????? i am just gay and in love, folks 

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Souls at Sea **** (1937, Gary Cooper, George Raft, Frances Dee) - Classic Movie Review 9182

Souls at Sea **** (1937, Gary Cooper, George Raft, Frances Dee) – Classic Movie Review 9182

‘Men Against The Sea! Stark Drama No Fiction Can Equal!’

Producer-director Henry Hathaway’s 1937 Souls at Sea is a popular Gary Cooper high seas action adventure about the American navy battling slave traders in the 19th century. It was nominated for three Oscars: Best Art Direction (Hans Dreier and Roland Anderson), Best Assistant Director (Hal Walker) and Best Music, Score (W Franke Harling,…

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<strong>"Monte Carlo" 1930. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjdonovan/">by Michael Donovan</a></strong> <br /><i>Via Flickr:</i> <br />Monte Carlo is an 1930 American musical comedy film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It stars Jeanette MacDonald as Countess Helene Mara. The film is notable for the song "Beyond the Blue Horizon", which was written for the film and was performed by Jeanette MacDonald. The film was also hailed by critics as a masterpiece of the newly emerging musical genre. The screenplay was based on the Booth Tarkington novel "Monsieur Beaucaire."

Plot: Countess Helene Mara is engaged to be married to Prince Otto Von Liebenheim but leaves him at the altar. She flees on a train to Monte Carlo and checks into a hotel. When she arrives at the casino a count named Rudolph Falliere takes a liking to her and poses as a hairdresser whom she hires and falls in love with but could not marry if he is a commoner. Her fiance later arrives and takes her to an opera and she sees Rudolph there in one of the expensive seats indicating he is too wealthy to be a hairdresser. When he reveals to her that he is a count, she realizes she can marry him.

Cast: Jack Buchanan as Count Rudolph Falliere / Rudy. Jeanette MacDonald as Countess Helene Mara. Claud Allister as Prince Otto Von Liebenheim. ZaSu Pitts as Bertha. Tyler Brooke as Armand. John Roche as Paul. Lionel Belmore as Duke Gustav Von Liebenheim. Albert Conti as Prince Otto's Companion. Helen Garden as Lady Mary in Stage Opera. Donald Novis as Monsieur Beaucaire in Stage Opera. Erik Bey as Lord Windorset. David Percy as Herald.

Music: The songs in the film were written by Richard Whiting and W. Franke Harling, with uncredited music by Karl Hajos, Herman Hand, Sigmund Krumgold, and John Leipold. The best-known song in the film is "Beyond the Blue Horizon" by Richard A. Whiting and W. Franke Harling with lyrics by Leo Robin. The song became an immediate hit record for Jeanette MacDonald on the film's release and again in the 1970s when it was covered by Lou Christie.

Other songs in the film are:

"Give Me A Moment Please." "Always in All Ways." "She'll Love Me and Like It." "Days of Days." "Trimmin' the Women." "Whatever It Is, It's Grand."

Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette, Lawrence Grant, Louise Closser Hale, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Emile Chautard. Screenplay: Jules Furthman, based on a story by Harry Hervey. Cinematography: Lee Garmes. Art direction: Hans Dreier. Film editing: Frank Sullivan. Music: W. Franke Harling There's something claustrophobic about Shanghai Express: Its characters are always enclosed -- in train cabins, in interrogation rooms, even in crowds of other people. Even the titular train gets itself into a tight spot, navigating the narrow passage through the streets of what the film calls "Peking." Which makes it all the better for Lee Garmes's camera, tasked as it is with making the most of Marlene Dietrich's face. Garmes (with director Josef von Sternberg looking over his shoulder) always finds ways to frame that face with veils and feathers and furs, with the actress's own hands, with misted windows, and when nothing else will do, a simple shaft of light caressing those eyelids, cheekbones, and lips. Fortunately, the movie is more than glamorous poses: There's a good deal of snappy dialogue and some wily character acting from the likes of Eugene Pallette, Louise Closser Hale, and -- in a role that seems to have been a kind of audition for his most famous one, Charlie Chan -- Warner Oland. I only wish that a leading man more attractive, or less plummily British, than Clive Brook had been provided for Dietrich. The story is nonsense, of course, and it verges dangerously on colonialist poppycock in its treatment of the Chinese, though even there it pulls back somewhat by turning Anna May Wong's Hui Fei from a stereotypical dragon lady into a genuinely heroic figure. It must also be said that Shanghai Express was made at the right time: A couple of years later, the sexual adventurism of its women would have been taboo under the Production Code and Hui Fei would have been made to pay for murdering her rapist.

Three gears are lined up against a starlit background. The gear on the left bears the word “fact”; the gear on the right, “theory”. Attached to the central gear is an implement half test-tube and half fountain pen, which writes a single word on the yellow surface below: “Scientifiction”. It was September 1928, and Amazing Stories had found its symbol.

In his editorial “Our Amazing Universe”, Hugo Gernsback takes aim at scientists who dismiss the idea of human-like lifeforms existing on other planets; as a rebuttal he points out, not entirely convincingly, that other stars and planets are made from the same elements as our sun. He then moves on to discuss how the vast distances in space would affect communication:

If we assume the existence of intelligent beings on Alpha Centauri; and if we had a radio transmitter and receiver and if the people on Alpha Centauri had the same equipment that could bridge this space, we would have the following strange experience:

We would call up a friend in Alpha Centauri on January 1, 1928, and the message traveling by radio—which has the same speed as light, i.e., 186,000 miles a second—would take four years and three-tenths to get to Alpha Centauri. It would, therefore, arrive sometime early in 1932. The friend would promptly answer over his radio telephone!, and his answer would be received by us sometime in 1936. And remember, this is our nearest star-neighbor in space. It is only a little over four short light-years away. The overwhelming greater portion of stars are thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of light-years away from us.

Yet all of this is merely a trivial distance as far as the visible universe is concerned — and as Gernsback reminds us, “the entire visible universe most likely is a very small speck of matter after all. He ties all of this to that favourite topic of his, the issue of believability in science fiction:

If we could imagine for a second that there is no such thing as our universe, and then read an account of a number of important facts about it, written like a story by a clever scientifiction writer, perhaps, instead of by an astronomer, we would probably greet the volume with jeers and disbelief.

The issue’s cover, meanwhile, is the winning entry for the April issue’s $300 contest to design a symbol for scientifiction. “There was a time when a Scientifiction book or novel was a scarcity”, runs the contest announcement. “Now, with Amazing Stories Monthly and Amazing Stories Quarterly championing the cause, Scientifiction has excited the attention of hundreds of thousands of people who never knew what the term meant before. More than that, it is a distinct departure from the sex-infested novels and books that are so prevalent today.” The rise of interest in the genre, so the magazine’s reasoning goes, meant that a symbol was needed.

The winning entry was that of Mr. A. A. Kaufman of Brooklyn, who came up with the idea of a gear to represent science alongside a pen to represent fiction. The contest organisers melded Kaufman’s design with the ideas pitched by the first two runners-up, Clarence Beck and A. J. Jacobson, to create the more complex image seen on the cover:

In substance, Mr. Kaufman’s prize-winning design is preserved in the strictest sense, except for a few additions. It was our aim to incorporate as much science as possible in the design, so the frame of the design, representing structural steel, suggests more machinery. The flashes in the central wheel represent Electricity. The top of the fountain pen is a test tube, which stands for Chemistry; while the background with the moon and stars and planet, give us the science of Astronomy. We believe you will agree with us, that this makes an ideal trade-mark for Scientifiction, and we also admit that we are happy to have had solved for us a difficult problem.

The magazine printed the entries of the winner, runners-up and honourable mentions:

  The final design would begin appearing on the cover in smaller form with the November 1928 issue, before disappearing with the April 1928 instalment (Hugo Gernsback’s final issue). Whether science fiction ever really needed a logo is debatable; and Amazing‘s complex design, although no less intricate than some of the other logos from the era (consider Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, for one) was never to have stood the test of time. Ironically, the Gernsback-Paul eye cover from earlier in the year has achieved a more lasting iconic status – being used on reprint volumes and the like – despite being intended only as a rough idea to inspire readers’ entries.

With the symbols covered, let us turn to the stories being symbolised…

“The Ambassador from Mars” by Harl Vincent

Frank Chandler is leading a successful career as an architect, but is tired of his demanding clients. While relaxing one day he is caught in a seeming explosion, and wakes up to find himself in a strange room. There, he encounters “a huge figure of a man, stripped to the waist, and with skin that glistened with the color of burnished brass” who “had the dignity of poise and the features of a Greek god”. This man introduces himself as Ky-lin, and explains that he and his people kidnapped Frank to save him from a breakdown.

Frank is also reunited with an old friend, Jack Conway, who reveals that Ky-lin and the other giants are an alien race called the Neloia, and that the two earthmen are currently on a vessel headed to the Neloia’s home world of Mars – or Uldar, as they refer to it. Jack has spent the last six years on Mars, and has grown to admire the Neloia, finding their civilisation superior to those of Earth (a planet known to the aliens as Visin):

They are a marvellous race; intellectually millions of years ahead of our most civilized races on earth; physically most beautiful, as you have observed in Ky-lin. Contrary to the popular superstition on Visin, they are most peaceful and kind. Of course there are other dwellers on the doomed planet, but these need hardly be considered as a race. We shall speak of them later.

It was Jack’s idea to abduct Frank, and while he was asleep, to give him a medical treatment that will condition him to life on Mars. Frank, having grown weary of Earth, has no objection to this plan.

The travellers arrive on Mars in time to see Ky-lin’s father, the Randenat (king) of the Neloia, die. This fits in with the general atmosphere, as Mars is a dying planet:

The landscape was seamed and scarred; bare; arid. Towering crags, of coppery hue, seemed about to crumble and fall. River beds and canals, long since dry, exposed strata of vari-colored rock—colors foreign to nature on earth. Not a sign of life or of vegetation was in evidence. Ruins of habitations which had once been pretentious in size and architectural beauty appeared here and there. Long unused roads, which had in past ages been smooth and heavily traveled, were now broken and twisted by the sub-surface convulsions of a planet in its death throes. Soon they approached the ruins of a large city, passed directly over it. This city had been walled, and still showed signs of a former high degree of organized civilization. Outlines of public squares, ruins of tall skyscrapers similar to those on earth, still remained. Some of the stone among the ruins gleamed with the myriad hues of mother-of-pearl. Over everything brooded the mystery of ages. The winds whipped up and sent into swirling clouds the dust of decay.

But not all of the threats faced by Ky-lin’s people are geological in origin The Neloia are menaced by a race of subterranean beings called the Breggia – the Morlocks to the Neloia’s Eloi:

He learned of the Breggia, the loathsome creatures who were the product of their underground environment, through ages of living near the sub-surface sea, where their ancestors, who had originally been Neloia, had fled in terror during an ancient period of quakes, landslides and other widespread surface disturbances which had, at one fell swoop, killed off half of the inhabitants of the planet. These creatures had degenerated through eons of time into amphibian monsters, retaining some of the features and brain capacity of the Neloia, but with bodies of reptiles and with eyes that could see only in darkness. Carnivorous they were, of necessity, feeding upon the fish and other creatures that abounded in the inner recesses of their realm. The Neloia feared them not in sunlight, but in darkness the raids of the Breggia were frequent and sometimes of serious consequence in the number of Neloia killed and in the destruction of considerable areas of the farm lands in the valley surrounding the city.

The Martians prepare Frank to serve as an ally, passing their scientific knowledge on to him using “mental impression laboratories”. Frank wants to help them fight the Breggia, and Jack looks on with admiration: “He had not spoken of this to Frank, but whenever memories came to him of the old days when his friend had led the Varsity eleven to victory time and again, stubbornly fighting against odds which would have discouraged anyone but Frank, he cheered up at once. Good old Chan, he thought, he seemed to be getting back to his old fighting form.” It is just as well that he is eager, as when Frank comes face to face with his first Breggia, he finds it a fearsome sight: “The creature was fully forty feet in length and its body reminded Frank of some of the antediluvian monsters he had seen in reconstructed skeleton form in the museum back in New York. This was a huge scaly lizard with a horrible and ferocious human head.”

The Breggia appear to be indestructible, but while exploring their caverns, Frank hits upon a discovery: he finds that the monsters can be poisoned with a particular weed. The Neloia go about weaponising this plant, and eventually succeed in routing the Breggia. However, they are still left with the issue of the planet itself dying.

Frank is sent back to Earth; landing on the same park bench from which he was taken in the first place, he wonders of his adventures on Mars were a dream, but then realises that he is carrying photographs of his time with the Neloia. He spends two years preparing to help the Neloia evacuate to Earth, and in the process is named Ambassador Extraordinary to the Martians. But it is too late: Mars explodes, and all Frank can do is watch from Earth as Ky-lin, Jack and his other friends on the red planet are killed.

However, the story’s narrator remarks that this may have been for the best, as it ensured that the Martians never saw “the terrible war of 1963 to 1966” as “the horrible slaughter and devastation wrought in that period would have caused a great deal more agony among them than did their sudden and quick destruction in their own homes.”

“The Ambassador from Mars” is a rather Burroughs-like tale, and one that demonstrates how a Burroughs-like tale really needs a Burroughs-like knack for romance and fantasy to work. Harl Vincent never really pulls it off, leaving his Mars a dull world populated by generic utopians and generic monsters. One of the story’s few surprising moments comes when Frank explores the cave of the Breggia and hears one of the monstrous beasts tending to its dying child, a moment that serves to humanise what were previously just mindless beasts:

Two voices were all that he heard, and when he caught the drift of the conversation, he thrilled with excitement. Evidently one voice was that of a mother Breggia and she was wailing her grief and berating a dying son for his carelessness. The son gasped excuses and apologies and was obviously suffering intensely.

However, the main purpose of this scene is simply as a means for Frank to learn about the poisonous weed and its effects on the Breggia, and any depth that it lends the story is seemingly accidental.

“The Invisible Bubble” by Kirk Meadowcroft

Dr. Sylvester, a brilliant physicist who became something of a recluse after the mysterious disappearance of his fiancée, gets in touch with an old aquaintance. He announces that he has been continuing the research of Curie, Ramsey and Rutherford, and invites his friend to see the fruits of his work.

After some musings about the cyclical nature of scientific enquiry (“The latest investigations into the structure of the atom have brought us perilously close to the old Greek doctrine of the essential identity of all matter. Our latest studies of electro-magnetic waves have brought us to repeat, with only the change of phrase, what Akhenaten nearly a thousand years before the Greeks, had known and felt in his worship of the Aten”) Dr. Sylvester unveils his invention, which bears a passing resemblance to a large x-ray tube. Using this device, the physicist creates a bombardment of rays (which “very nearly approach the magnitude of the ‘cosmic rays’ of Millikan”) with intriguing results:

As we approached the tube we saw forming in its centre a small bubble, black and with no trace of lustre. No light could pass the etherless space that had been blasted apart under such tremendous force. As we watched, it grew until it nearly filled the tube.

“What is it?” I exclaimed.

“You might call it the ‘Quintessence of Nothing,’” he replied. “It is a Hole in the Universe. Let us return to our shelters while I shut off the current.”

The tube remained dark. No flickering fluorescence passed over the room. Whatever rays were generated in the dark heart of the bubble were powerless to pass the space that was other than the space we know, and perhaps their titanic and struggling insulation hastened the disintegration of that three-foot portion of what had been our three-dimensional world.

The next day, the two scientists find a crowd gathered around Dr. Sylvester’s house, looking for a local boy: his voice can be heard, but he is nowhere to be seen. The crowd believes that he has simply crawled into some unseen cranny of the house — but Dr. Sylvester, having previously witnessed his fiancée vanish into thin air, has less mundane possibilities in mind…

Heading back to the invention, the scientists create another bubble, this time with additional safety precautions:

At its release the bubble, now only a shadowy gray, flattened suddenly,—assumed an amoebic form and motion and with a queer flowing, undulating movement, sent out strange pseudopodia (a sort of extension of the central mass) that seemed to feel and grasp.

Dr. Sylvester took a small tube of radium, fastened to a glass rod, and with this he drove, as it were, the strange, shapeless thing about the floor. Once he thrust the rod into its center and for a moment it assumed again its rounded shape and clung to the rod.

They experiment on the bubble by feeding it rabbits, only to find that they are unable to retrieve the unfortunate animals — although a photograph of the bubble reveals “a thing of horror—bizarre—contorted, grotesquely and agonizingly misshapen—writhing forms that filled the whole space of the bubble”.

As the narrator concludes, “I saw that the transfusion of objects into the strange universe was a reaction that could proceed in that one direction only—that some strong balance favored the unknown side.”

Disturbed by the implications of their discovery, the two scientists agree to destroy the apparatus and all papers. It is the narrator who finally does so — Dr. Sylvester having disappeared himself shortly beforehand.

Based on the idea “that the boundary lines, of space and hyper-space may not be so rigidly drawn as we have supposed”, the story fits in alongside Amazing’s other trans-dimensional stories such as Francis Flagg’s “The Blue Dimension” and George Paul Bauer’s “Below the Infra-Red”. “The Invisible Bubble” is more horrific than these, the ambiguity of the phenomena it depicts making it both more disturbing and more convincing. It is still a rather slight story, however, lacking the full-bloodedness that an author like H. P. Lovecraft might have brought to the subject matter.

“Unlocking the Past” by David H. Keller

This story deals with a scientist who is researching the theory of inherited memory:

“The psychologists have contended for years that there is such a mental process as inherited memory. Yet, since the days of Jung of Vienna, many of us have believed that everything a man and woman know is transmitted to their children and grandchildren and so on through the generations, increasing in intensity, as each pair of parents add their specific acquired knowledge to the previous store of inherited intelligence.”

The scientist and his colleagues have made a breakthrough by finding that the seemingly senseless noises made by babies are actually fragments from ancient languages such as old Coptic, Semitic, Grecian, early Latin and Chaucerian English. They take this as evidence that infants are born with ancestral memories which are obscured as their conscious minds develop; and if it were possible for the children to retain these memories, then they may be able to provide accounts of historical events. What’s more, the discovery could lead to evidence of inherited talents: “The son of an Edison or Ford could simply continue where the father had stopped when the child was created.”

All that is needed for this is “some method of tearing down the tremendous barrier between the past memories and the present consciousness”. The researchers have already had some success, by prompting an illiterate man to reproduce his grandfather’s signature, and now hope to experiment on a baby. “And after we had shown what we could do with one baby, with a dozen, we should be able to have a law passed that would give us the right to give every child such a treatment the day it was born.” He finds a suitable child in one Angelica Howes, and although Angelica’s mother is initially reluctant to consent to the experiments, despite the promise that they will benefit the girl (“Of course the child will be rather unusual for a few years, but when it reaches maturity it will at once assume a position of renown in a scientific and educational world”) the scientist wins over her and her husband by offering a pension to alleviate the family’s poverty.

After a process involving masks and tubes, the baby begins conversing fluently about a Spanish ancestor:

“Something happened to me and now it seems I can remember everything. I was her daughter and somehow I was great-great- grandmother also and a lot of other people I am just beginning to remember. But I remember her well. She was born in Sweden and her husband met her while he was Ambassador from Spain. She was a lovely lady though she always sighed for the snow-clad mountains of her native land.”

The baby turns out to have inherited the knowledge of a dictionary-writer and the speech patterns of a poet (“every year and every moment of the past comes vividly to me on the crest of the waves like driftage from the Sargasso Sea”). Meanwhile, the mother — who underwent the same process — becomes similarly perplexed by her memories:

Another psychic phenomena that puzzled her was her sex, for in some generations she had been a woman and in other periods a man, and as she tried to evaluate this, she realized that she was as much male as female, only for the time being her spirit was in the body of a woman, and stranger yet, there seemed to be a time when she was both sexes in the same body, only then she was some peculiar kind of reptile, and she prayed in her despair.

Together, mother and daughter discuss the anxieties that come from their newfound memories. They are forced to recall all manner of woes from war to poverty, and even their most peaceful recollections are filled with day-to-day arguments and annoyances. “There was no golden age in the past”, says the baby. “Our race is climbing heavenward but there is still mud on our feet and blood on our hands. I wish, Mother Dear, that I was just a little ignorant baby once more.” All the mother can do is pray:

She stole back to her bed and tried to sleep, and as she lay there she prayed for the thing she wanted most, and as she prayed she saw an enormous blackboard in front of her and on it was written all that her ancestors had ever known and done and thought, and as she saw the record, she closed her eyes and refused to look, yet through the closed lids the images burned into her mind.

Finally she looked again, and now the board was clean save only in one little corner, and she knew that record to be her own life; yet here and there on the board were little remnants of past centuries. Knowing that her prayer had been answered, she fell asleep.

“Unlocking the Past” is a story with an unusual premise and an effective execution. The result is an original, inventive and genuinely eerie science-gone-wrong narrative.

“The Great Steel Panic” by Fletcher Pratt

Authorities in New York are perturbed to find that the cables of Brooklyn Bridge have been severed: “It looked like the work of a maniac or some superior bit of Bolshevik frightfulness”, remarks the police commissioner. Officers are put on duty to guard the bridge, but somehow the cuts still keep occurring. And so the commissioner hires Walter Weyl, a consulting biologist who had previously helped the New York police to tackle a giant rodent problem, to look into the matter.

Weyl is sceptical about the commissioner’s talk of politically-motivated sabotage (“Hert thinks it’s radicals, but Hert sees red flannel bogies under every bush”) despite the police receiving a crank letter expressing support for the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti – who, in real life, had been executed the year before the story was published. Meanwhile, disasters pile up across New York: falling elevators, subway crashes and chunks of buildings tumbling onto people below.

Finally, Weyl comes forward with the results of his analysis. He reveals that iron and steel objects have been damaged throughout the city, leading not only to major disasters but also to smaller mishaps such as broken typewriters or faulty cellar-gratings. Examining a specimen of the affected metal under a microscope, he found “a perfectly extraordinary number of a hitherto uncatalogued type of bacteria, ladder-like in form and perfectly amazing in activity.” He blames the police for being too caught up in hunting terrorists to notice a tell-tale sign of this metal-eating bacteria: that the metal continues to deteriorate even after the initial severance.

Furthermore, Weyl finds a possible way of dealing with the metal sickness. Noting that power cables, telephone wires and live subway rails are unaffected, he realises that the bacteria can be fought off using electricity.

“The Great Steel Panic” (which, like Fletcher Pratt’s previous story for Amazing, is co-attributed to Irvin Lester, actually a pseudonym of Pratt) is a strong variation on the scientific detective theme. Pratt keeps the mystery-solving structure but completely does away with issues of human motive, with successful results: this is a short but engaging story, let down only by a rather abrupt ending, where the characters brush away the question of where the bacteria came from in the first place.

The Skylark of Space by Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby (Part 2 of 3)

After the earthbound instalment of the previous issue, the second part of The Skylark of Space takes flight as its colourful characters – both good and evil – begin a spacefaring voyage.

Richard Seaton and Martin Crane have succeeded in building their spacecraft, the Skylark, and powering it with the mysterious element known as X. However, the corrupt World Steel Corporation has built its own ship using stolen plans. Piloting this vessel, the amoral scientist DuQuesne and the burglar Perkins kidnap Seaton’s fiancée Dorothy, along with Margaret Spencer – daughter of a businessman swindled by the World Steel Corporation.

The ship has the capability of going faster than light (the characters show cavalier disregard for Einstein’s theories) and the high speed causes the villainous crewmen to lose their bearings, ending up adrift in space. Making the best of a bad thing, the captive women tuck into a zero-gravity meal. But then the ship gets sucked into the orbit of a dead star, and begins getting tugged towards its surface…

Fortunately, DuQuesne is planted with a tracking device, and so the heroes are able to fly the Skylark up to the villains’ ship and save the occupants – with the exception of Perkins, who is killed by DuQuesne during a scuffle. They are still left with the problem of getting back home, however.

The mismatched band of two heroes, two heroines and one villain begin to examine the uncharted planets around them, in the hopes of finding copper to use as fuel. The crew land on a world with plants and conclude that it exists in an equivalent to Earth’s Carboniferous age, too young to have evolved anything like humans. The planet is, however, home to an alien beast with four legs, a body a hundred feet long, and an extended neck culminating in a large mouth, like some sort of cross between a diplodocus and a lamprey. As the Skylark tries to escape it is attacked by various other alien dinosaurs, along with a tree that lashes them with barbed, tentacle-like vines.

The next planet the crew visit is inhabited by a psychic being that can control matter with its mind. It shapeshifts first into a clone of Seaton, then into Dorothy, and concludes that the Earthlings are too primitive to be worth hosting on the planet. It tries to kill them, but they fight back with an X-powered explosive that shocks the alien into its true form as a fanged, clawed creature. After a mental battle the alien is persuaded to let the travellers on their way.

Coming to the third planet on its voyage, the Skylark encounters an aerial battle between aircraft and winged, tentacled monsters. Seaton and crew help the latter to fight off the former, and are welcomed by the planet’s race: statuesque humanoids with green skin. At least, their skin appears to be green, although this may be a trick of the light, as the planet has a range of weird colours unknown on Earth. In what is possibly a piece of social commentary on Smith’s part, the skin colours of these people reflect their class: the elites have dark skin; the servants medium skin; and the slaves light skin. The instalment ends with the protagonists preparing to spend the night in the home of an alien chief, undecided as to whether they are guests or prisoners…

Poetry

The issue also includes another poem by Leland S. Copeland, “Life”:

Dear Life, you come so very dear

To give your boon to me,

From primal cell and ancient worm,

And fish that ruled the sea;

Through saurian that drowned at noon

And mammal lodged in tree;

Through apish wight and troglodyte

You come so far to me.

Dear Life that came so very far

You must not leave too soon,

For I who find your presence sweet

Am loath to lose the boon.

But, Life, because your creatures fill

The earth and air and sea,

Too well I know that when you go

You cannot grieve for me.

Discussions

In this month’s letters column, Ted Cameron objects to the magazine’s prophetic pretensions:

I am college trained, and so perhaps have acquired the unusual idea of obtaining my facts directly rather than second-hand. For instance, William Lowell is a far more instructive authority on Mars than is Baron Munchhausen. And Edgar Rice Burroughs is certainly more entertaining.

I read scientifiction, not as a prophecy of the future, but as entertainment. Why not stress that side of it more. Your present attitude smacks too much of attempting to justify yourself because your stores are not chronicles of fact. You aren’t conducting a personal tour through the pages of Euclid or anything of that sort. So please stop telling us to look upon these stories as prophesying the future and permit us to enjoy them as fiction.

The editorial response pleads of the magazine’s stories that “if you will look a little further, you will find a prophetic value in some of them, and we are sure that ten years from now many of them wdll be read like true prophecy.”

19-year-old John J. Kelly derides Amazing’s detective fiction (“it has no place in a publication which claims to be THE magazine of scientifiction”), calls for the title to be changed to Scientifiction Magazine (“Upon asking for a copy of Amazing Stories at the news stand, I was informed that it had not yet been received, and the newsdealer promptly told me that he bad Weird Tales and Ghost Stories. I was mortified. If there is anything that humiliates me, and I think that is typical of many people, it is anything that tends to give the impression that I am stimulated by superstitious hair-raising ghost stories, et cetera”) before listing a few more suggestions relating to the magazine’s formatting.

Also on the critical front, George Sanders (not, presumably, that one) splutters that “The editing and proofreading of your scientifiction magazine is simply fierce, misprints on every page, bad grammar, and worst of all, the most ridiculous contributions”; as examples of the last problem, he lists a number of self-contradictory statements from the June edition of Baron Munchhausen’s New Scientific Adventures.

16-year-old Harold Scott offers a set of “bouquets and cabbages”. His objections draw heavily upon the periodic table, as he complains about authors who invent imaginary elements.

14-year-old George Hudson says that Wells “is classed with Scott and Shakespeare” and disagrees with those who criticise the magazine’s covers: “The covers are masterpieces, of genius and imagination on the part of Mr. Paul – The one in the April 1928 issue should have a place in the Art Gallery”. Howard Campaigne is another who praises Paul’s artwork, even asking for additional illustrations (“At least one to every two pages”).

One letter praises Verne and Wells while disparaging A. Merritt (“I think that some of A. Merritt’s, such as The Moon Pool and The Face in the Abyss run a trifle too strong on the impossible order, with little or no science, and without even the redeeming feature of a happy ending”) before discussing the March 1928 issue, pointing out scientific implausibilities in Geoffrey Hewelcke’s “Ten Million Miles Sunward” and passing thought on Gernsback’s editorial on insect intelligence (prompting the editorial reply to recommend The Ant People by Franz Ewers and The Life of the White Ant by Maurice Maeterlinck) The long letter goes on to reply to another correspondent in the same issue:

Commenting on the letter of T. A. Netland of Oakland, California, published in the March edition—I believe that most of our fiction writers aim to make their stories true to life as they see it, and in line with public opinion. The spirit of selfishness and other inhuman characteristics which still seem to dominate the human race are traits inherited from our animal ancestors, without which evolution would have been impossible. The continual struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, resulted -in the weeding out of the unfit, and was the means of bringing man up to the present standard. The human race is still far from true civilization. The martial spirit and other inhuman traits are relics of barbarism, and may take thousands of years yet to eradicate. The “Towers of Humanity” Mr. Netland mentions, such as Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, etc. were, I believe, born thousands of years ahead of their time, and may be considered as forerunners of what the human race may be in time to come; with the exception that superstition and fanaticism will he replaced in the new civilization by logic and good sound sense.

S. N. Moberley raises the question of how the ambulant bread in Keller’s “The Yeast Men” ended up marching in the right direction when the story indicates that their initial movements would have been random. Jacob Schwartz writes on a similar matter, asking why the enemy army didn’t simply turn the Yeast Men around. The editorial response suggests that there were simply too many for this to be viable.

Schwartz also praises the work of A. Merritt, as does Robert C. Schaller in the next letter:

I know not how your other readers may feel about it, but for myself, in view of his lyric and epic masterpiece, The Moon Pool—for it is evident to any who read it intelligently that Merritt has Miltonic visions, vast shadowy splendors, which he has the power to express in undeniably poetic prose with dashes of Keats and Shelley—as I say, in view of that achievement, as well as The Metal Monster, a pure epic poem, ’tis clear that if he is encouraged, he will produce an abiding contribution to the literature of imagination in the promised sequel to The Face in the Abyss.

14-year-olds Vivian Chudom and Lottie Pitman provide what is headed “A Charming Letter From Two Young School Girls”. “We read your Discussion section as well as the rest of the magazine with great interest every month, and have not noticed letters from many girls in the teen age”, they say. “This certainly cannot be because girls do not read Amazing Stories. Whenever we bring our magazine to school, everyone wants to borrow it at once.” They go on to question the scientific merit of “Pollock and the Porroh Man” (while also acknowledging it as “more interesting than most of H. G. Wells’ stories” and express interest in the often-discussed science club. M. M. Perelstein also brings up the science club, and outlines a possible way of structuring it.

Yet aother reader interested in the science club is 15-year-old Thaddeus Whalen, who praises the magazine for offering information as well as entertainment: “I think now that I can look the world more in the face and say “I know you and your secrets, and if you have secrets unsolved I will try and solve them in some of my wild dreams.” Indeed, as he goes on to say, “if my parents and neighbors call me crazy, ‘goofey’ and any other popular nickname I know some people that will stand by me, they arc the devout readers and editors of Amazing Stories. I feel no enmity or fear toward them because the age is fast coming where truth will dominate.” Meanwhile, a 14-year-old reader writes that “In my classes Amazing Stories has received severe comment. I uphold the magazine and can, always quiet a scoffer by asking him to prove ‘impossibilities’ in the stories or by showing — that the story under comment is written by some famous author”.

The topic of travel through other dimensions – including time – is a recurring one in the column. 16-year-old James Phelan enquires about the dimensional physics depicted in Bob Olsen’s “Great Four-Dimensional Robberies” and “The Blue Dimension” by Francis Flagg, and states that he wold like explanation from the magazine “because there is no one in my town that has the required knowledge to do so.”

Lester A. Maple hails David H. Keller as the magazine’s best writer (“I believe, are written by Dr. David H. Keller. He has the knack, which very few of your writers possess, of combining science, romance and pathos, all in the same gripping story”) and goes on to defend Wells and Verne from their detractors (“I like both, and anybody who doesn’t is probably not on a high enough intellectual plane to understand them with sufficient clarity”) before expounding — at considerable length — his contempt for time travel as a concept, although he acknowledges that it can make entertaining stories. The editorial response counters Maple’s criticisms with an excerpt from the book Gravitation- vs. Relativity by Charles Lane Poor.

Replying to an earlier letter disparaging time travel stories, Albet J. Hadvigar notes that “Glancing through the advances made in science, of electricity, chemistry and physics within the past few years, one is really dumbfounded at the rapid strides that have been taken. For just an example, The electron. It exists, it has almost no mass, its life defies all conception of time as we know time. It is there. Indisputably there. Unharnessed energy. What is it? It is there. It has been measured into our third dimension as far as its molecular construction is concerned. But the plane that it moves in has not been; when that is done I am sure that we shall be a great step nearer to the fourth dimension.”

13-year-old Leonard May also writes about the fourth dimension. “If you insist on there being a fourth dimension, why pick on time? You might as well use weight, temperature, and hardness, etc., all of which would be a lot of ‘bunk.’ True, all are factors, but they are not dimensions. Dimensions are concerned with linear measure.” He then moves on to a different topic — that of telepathy:

Mental telepathy is not impossible, as you think. Another boy and I came to talking about the subject. and we decided to give it a tryout, I closed my eyes and made my mind as complete a blank as I could, while the other tried to transmit a thought to me. I received the same thought that he sent, and that was a picture of a Yeast Man! We tried this out on each other about twenty times, using different thoughts, and six trials were successful. Try it out yourself, some day.

The editorial response to May’s comments on the fourth dimension once again includes an excerpt from Gravitation versus Relativity by Charles Lane Poor. As for telepathy, the editors are unimpressed: “Amazing Stories‘ sister magazine, Science and Invention, maintains that there is no such thing and that mental telepathy has never been proved. The magazine is willing to pay a large cash prize for absolute proof of mental telepathy.”

17-year-old Don H. Nabours takes the time travel discussion a step further, as his letter (run under the dubious header “A Very Amusing Letter; Suicide Threatened!”) is actually an impromptu piece of fiction on the topic. Don describes his science class being visited by an elderly professor who purported to be Don’s future self, outlining hoiw he invented a time travel process:

[B]eing an ardent reader of Amazing Stories my thoughts kept turning to time-traveling as the most worthwhile adventure of them all and so I set my talents along this line. I wasted six years trying to build a fourth dimensional machine but failed, then turned my attention to drugs. I have now developed a drug which does not kill the body, but allows the soul or spirit, that is, the intelligence which functions through the brain, to go free and leave the body completely, and as space and time are only encumbrances of the mortal, physical body, I can go any place and get there any time I wish.

Upon arriving in 1928, the professor’s spirit took over the body of “a healthy Idiot in the state asylum”, allowing him to visit his younger self in physical form. Young Don, however, is left distraught by the knowledge that he will become a chemistry teacher: “Now Mr. Editor, I have always planned to be an artist and thought I would be too, but it seems that I am to be a school teacher, and, as I have an artistic temperament and the weather is warm today, I think I’ll commit suicide as soon as I finish this letter.”

“Don’t you think that instead of committing suicide”, suggests the editorial reply, “you’d better form a partnership with your old friend and take a nice trip into the hereafter, and then come back and tell the readers of Amazing Stories what happened?”

15-year-old Kenneth R. Johnson argues that the controversy arising from “The Astounding Discoveries of Doctor Mentiroso” by A. Hyatt Verrill is evidence of the story’s merit: “Any story that induces so much original and constructive thought certainly deserves a place in your magazine”, defends humorous stories, praises Wells (while also deriding “Pollock and the Porroh Man” as insufficiently scientifictional), champions Baron Munchhausen’s New Scientific Adventures as the magazine’s best story to date, and wraps up by questioning the publication’s title and cover illustrations (“At present, these give the impression that the magazine is of the purely sensational type and therefore does not appeal to the better class of people.”)

C. H. Osbourne notes similarities between Cecil B. White’s “The Return of the Martians” and the second instalment of Baron Munchhausen’s New Scientific Adventures, before rambling about coincidences in general.

J. B. Dixon gives a personal ranking of the stories in the June issue, topped with Wells’ The Invisible Man (the, sequence of events is orderly, logical, and lifelike”) and tailed with David H. Keller’s “A Biological Experiment” (“Sex is one of the largest causes, of crime, and if it could be eliminated the race should be much happier instead of the opposite. As the author seems to advance the argument that it is God’s will, I refer him. to the words, of the Master, that “There will be neither marriage, nor giving in marriage in Heaven.”) The letter prompts a sardonic editorial response: “Your quotation about marriage, you will observe applies to Heaven. In spite of prohibition, the earth is far from being a heaven. If sex could, be eliminated, as you say, whether the race would be happier or not, it certainly would dwindle very rapidly.”

Amazing Histories, September 1928: A Symbol for Scientifiction Three gears are lined up against a starlit background. The gear on the left bears the word "fact"; the gear on the right, "theory".

There is a very big elephant in the room when it comes to the South African Naval fraternity’s commemoration and remembrance undertakings.  Very often in veteran fraternity and South African Navy circles there’s a raging argument – why does the South African Navy and SANDF only commemorate the sinking of the SS Mendi during World War 1 when scant attention is given to the sinking of the SAS President Kruger?  It’s ‘political’ is the universal chant of disbelief and failed honour, a travesty of the African National Congress’ (ANC) rhetoric of constantly vanquishing the ‘old’ navy and SADF statutory forces.

But they are ignoring a very big ‘elephant’, something that began as a travesty long before the ANC came to power in 1994.  It’s an elephant that sits squarely at the door of the old Apartheid Nationalist government and is entirely their doing.  When they came to power they began vanquishing anyone who supported ‘Britain’ during World War 2 as some sort of traitor, made worse because the South African Navy was so intrinsically tied to the Royal Navy via the Simonstown agreement that they never really instituted memorials or commemorations to them.  To the old Afrikaner nationalists this was ‘Britain’s problem’ to remember them.

As a result the scope of our World War 2 sacrifice barely gets a mention in the ‘Mendi vs. President Kruger’ argument.   In fact the scope, the size of this sacrifice will come as a surprise to many South Africans – including our Naval veterans fraternity and current Navy personnel.

The ‘elephant’ of sacrifice 

To give you an idea of just how BIG this ‘elephant in the room is, lets cover the Honour Roll – it far outstrips any South African Naval sacrifice in the post world war era.  Yet the South African Navy and the current government gives absolutely no attention to it, not at all – not one single official South African Navy (SAN) parade or ceremony.  Not even a dedicated Naval memorial is given to these men.

We start with South Africa’s own ship’s lost in World War 2, all of them minesweepers. (Note on the honour roll when reading it SANF means the member was part of the ‘South African Naval Forces’ and MPK means ‘Missing Presumed Killed’).

The first South African ship lost in the Mediterranean near Tobruk was the HMSAS Southern Floe with its remarkable tale of a single survivor (see this link for a full story – click here: The HMSAS Southern Floe was the SA Navy’s first ship loss & it carries with it a remarkable tale of survival.).

HMSAS Southern Floe

The Honour Roll of sacrifice on the HMSAS Southern Floe as follows:

ANDERS, John, Steward, 69637 (SANF), MPK BOWER, Robert, Stoker 1c, 69935 (SANF), MPK BRAND, Leslie A, Able Seaman, 69828 (SANF), MPK CAULFIELD, Patrick, Steward, 69802 (SANF), MPK CHANDLER, Charles R D, Cook (S), 69613 (SANF), MPK CHENOWETH, Richard, Stoker 1c, 67420 (SANF), MPK FAIRLEY, Alexander E, Sub Lieutenant SANF, MPK FRIEDLANDER, Cecil A, Able Seaman, 114703 (SANF), MPK GARDINER, Elliott, Able Seaman, 67260 (SANF), MPK GREENACRE, John H, Leading Seaman, 69677 (SANF), MPK HEASMAN, Gratwicke E E, Engine Room Artificer 4c, 69784 (SANF), MPK HOGG, Roy S, Sub Lieutenant, SANF, MPK INNES, Ian Mck, Sub Lieutenant, SANF, MPK LEWIS, John Edward Joseph, :Lieutenant, 70019 (SANF), MPK MARSH, Reginald H Y, Able Seaman, 69911 (SANF), MPK MITCHELL, William N, Able Seaman, 69787 (SANF), MPK NEL, Eloff R, Able Seaman, 69635 (SANF), MPK NICHOLSON, Douglas O, Able Seaman, 66833 (SANF), MPK PUGH, John R, Able Seaman, 66877 (SANF), MPK RYALL, David R, Able Seaman, 69999 (SANF), MPK SHIMMIN, William, Leading Stoker, 69661 (SANF), MPK SIENI, Joseph F, Able Seaman, 69788 (SANF), MPK SNELL, Harold W, Leading Telegraphist, 69827 (SANF), MPK STANLEY, Gordon J, Able Seaman, 66963 (SANF), MPK WALTON, Dudley N, Sub Lieutenant, SANF, MPK

The second ship lost was the HMSAS Parktown, which went down fighting during the Fall of Tobruk in Libya, with the HMSAS Bever fighting at her side out the port (see this link for a full story – click here: The feisty South African minesweeper that went down fighting – HMSAS Parktown).

HMSAS Parktown

The Honour Roll of sacrifice when the HMSAS Parktown sank on 21 June 1942 as follows:

BROCKLEHURST, Peter S, Able Seaman, 70457 (SANF), MPK COOK, John A, Stoker 1c, 70256 (SANF), MPK JAGGER, Leslie J, Lieutenant SANF, 70016 (SANF), MPK MCEWAN, William A, Steward, 69686 (SANF), MPK TREAMER, Arthur P, Petty Officer, 71109 (SANF), MPK

The third ship to be lost was the HMSAS Parktown’s sister ship, the HMSAS Bever which went down later in the war during the liberation of Greece when it struck a mine, and carries with its story a tale of miraculous survivors (see this link for a full story – click here“Under a hail of shells”; Recounting the bravery and loss of HMSAS Bever).

HMSAS Bever

The Honour Roll of sacrifice on 30 November 1944 when the HMSAS Bever sank as follows:

ARMERANTIS, Sideris, Stoker 1c, 282953 V (SANF), MPK DE PACE, Luigi S, Petty Officer, 66539 V (SANF), MPK DE REUCK, Leslie B, Telegraphist, 75320 V (SANF), MPK DREYER, Peter, Leading Cook (S), 585236 V (SANF), MPK HIGGS, George E, Stoker 1c, 562712 V (SANF), MPK HUSBAND, Charles A, Stoker 1c, 280098 V (SANF), MPK KETTLES, John D, Engine Room Artificer 3c, 562458 (SANF), MPK LAWLOR, Robert J, Act/Chief Motor Mechanic 4c, P/KX 127225, MPK LINDE, Carl M, Able Seaman, 71194 V (SANF), MPK LYALL, John D R, Stoker 1c, 562179 V (SANF), MPK MATTHEWS, William R, Leading Wireman, 562794 V (SANF), killed PHILLIPSON, Joseph H, Signalman, 181160 V (SANF), MPK RODDA, Harold J, Stoker 1c, 70451 V (SANF), (served as Harold J Andresen), MPK SCRIMGEOUR, Quintin, Petty Officer, 69691 (SANF), MPK TRUSCOTT, E (initial only) W, Able Seaman, 585184 V (SANF), MPK WHITE, Claude, Leading Seaman, 586420 V (SANF), MPK WILLIAMS, Desmond, Able Seaman, 70433 V (SANF), killed

The final minesweeper to be lost was the HMSAS Treern, it was tragically lost right at the end of the war with only one single survivor, and it remains the last South African vessel to be lost in action, even to this day, yet hardly anyone is aware of her history (see this link for a full story – click hereThe last South African Navy ship to be lost in action; HMSAS Treern).

HMSAS Treern

The Honour Roll of sacrifice on the 12 January 1945 when HMSAS Treern sank follows:

ANDERSON, Robert D, Engine Room Artificer 2c, 71067 V (SANF), MPK BARKER, Ronald E, Sub Lieutenant, SANF, MPK BLAKE, Robert E, Petty Officer, P 6572 (SANF), MPK BROWN, Ian H, Able Seaman, 71719 V (SANF), MPK BYRNE, Patrick, Lieutenant, SANF, MPK DAVIE, William, Stoker 1c, 70681 V (SANF), MPK ENGELBEEN, Leslie C, Able Seaman, 562235 V (SANF), MPK JACOBZ, Frank H, Stoker 1c, 70374 V (SANF), MPK MATTHEWS, George A, Stoker 1c, 70728 V (SANF), MPK MCINTYRE, William G, Cook (S), 585360 (SANF), MPK MCLARTY, William D, Leading Stoker, 562246 V (SANF), MPK MCLEAN, Godfrey, Able Seaman, 562455 V (SANF), MPK NILAND, St John E, Able Seaman, 209905 (SANF), MPK PERRY, Desmond A, Petty Officer, 71211 (SANF), MPK REID, Kenneth H, Signalman, 562143 V (SANF), MPK SALCOMBE, Francis R, Stoker 1c, 58589 V (SANF), MPK STAPELBERG, Willem J, Steward, 562221 V (SANF), MPK SUTTON, Donald A, Able Seaman, 70426 (SANF), MPK SUTTON, George A M, Leading Seaman, 586403 V (SANF), MPK TRAFFORD, William O, Able Seaman, 71222 V (SANF), MPK VILJOEN, Dennis A, Telegraphist, 70984 V (SANF), MPK WHITE, Charles W, Petty Officer, 562200 V (SANF), MPK WULFF, Emil F, Leading Seaman, 562466 V (SANF), MPK

Then there is the loss of Rear Admiral Guy Hallifax, the most senior South African Naval Officer to be lost during World War 2, he counts himself as one of the founders of the modern South African Navy and yet he is hardly remembered at all. (see this link for a full story Guy Hallifax, the most senior African Naval officer lost during WW2).  He is recorded here:

Director of South African Forces

HALLIFAX, Guy W, Rear Admiral, SANF, air accident, killed

Then, consider these South African Naval Force casualties on other South Africa ships and in other South African operations during the war:

LUCAS, E W R, Chief Engineman, 66756 (SANF), died 4 October 1939 NICOLSON, Andrew, Cook, 63827 (SANF), died 13 October 1939 BESTER, A T, Leading Stoker, 6640 (SANF), died on the HMSAS Africana HUGHES, T J, Stoker, 71383 (SANF), died 10 May 1941 CASSON, William, Able Seaman, 252935 V (SANF), died on the HMSAS Tordonn HOLT, Albert E, Telegraphist, 69576 (SANF), killed on the HMSAS Southern Maid VAN NOIE, Norman, Able Seaman, CN/72134 (SANF), died 20 September 1941 ST CLAIR-WHICKER, Willie H, Able Seaman, 67292 (SANF), died on 21 September 1941 SMITH, P, Able Seaman, CN/72263 (SANF), died 7 April 1942 RUITERS, Walter, Stoker, CN/72081 (SANF), died 21 July 1942 MURPHY, J, Able Seaman, CN/72256 (SANF), died 16 August 1942 FROST, M L, Able Seaman, CN/71804 (SANF), died on the HMSAS Receiffe PETERSON, W J, Able Seaman, CN/72184 (SANF), died 4 September 1942 REHR, Cecil, Able Seaman, 69877 (SANF), died on the HMSAS Roodepoort CARLELSE, Frederick, Able Seaman, CN/72004 (SANF), died on the HMSAS Soetvlei PETERS, Norman, Leading Stoker, 66847 (SANF), died 3 January 1943 DELL, Rodney, Able Seaman, 68866 (SANF), killed 24 March 1943 HENDERSON, Alexander P, Chief Engine Room Artificer, 562099 (SANF), killed at Benghazi, Libya JAMES, H, Steward, CN/72252 (SANF), died 9 May 1943 ORGILL, C B, Able Seaman, CN/71947 (SANF), died 14 May 1943 LA CHARD, Edwin, Lieutenant Commander, SANF, died 20 May 1943 LUCAS, A W, Able Seaman, 152875 (SANF), died 28 May 1943 BATEMAN, T, Chief Engine Room Artificer, 71627 (SANF), died 30 June 1943 ROBBERTS, Kaspar, Petty Officer, P/5285 (SANF), died 1 July 1943 BOSHOFF, Christofel J, Able Seaman, 70339 (SANF), killed on HMSAS Blaauwberg LENZ, William, Able Seaman, 69544 (SANF), died on 29 August 1943 BESTEL, Emmanuel A N M, Lieutenant, SANF, died on 21 September 1943 HARLE, Paul A, Petty Officer, 71796 (SANF), died on 3 October 1943 STEELE, Ewen, Able Seaman, 71272 V (SANF), killed on HMSAS Southern Sea BETTS, Robert, Able Seaman, 68900 (SANF), died 18 November 1943 PAGE, Robert, Sub Lieutenant, SANF, died 29 November 1943 MCLEAN, Richard, Stoker, 562567 (SANF), died 29 November 1943 HARRIS, R H, Telegraphist, 330488 (SANF), died 16 December 1943 NICHOLLS, John, Yeoman of Signals, 66824 V (SANF), died 19 December 1943 FLORENCE, John, Stoker, CN/71982 V (SANF), died 18 January 1944 DANIELS, Adam, Stoker, 72034 (SANF), died 28 January 1944 RAVENS, Albert, Able Seaman, CN/72213 V (SANF), died 31 March 1944 DE KLERK, John, Ordinary Seaman, 585868 V (SANF), died 4 May 1944 BOTHA, Herkulas, Cook, 562093 V (SANF), died 8 May 1944 BISSETT, Alexander, Lieutenant, SANF, died 16 June 1944 JENKINS, Edward G, Engine Room Artificer, 66720 V (SANF), died 14 September 1944 KEMP, Thomas, Able Seaman, CN/71015 V (SANF), died 20 September 1944 WATSON, George, Lieutenant, SANF, died 15 October 1944 BOSWELL, Louis F W, Chief Engine Room Artificer, 69756V (SANF), MPK on the 14 November 1944 on the HMSAS Treern ABRAHAMS, Henry, Able Seaman, CN/719204 (SANF), died 19 November 1944 BERMAN, Nicholas, Ordinary Seaman, 616728V (SANF), died 22 November 1944 DIXON, Robert, Able Seaman, CN/584276 (SANF), died on 11 January 1945 TREISMAN, Gerald, Steward, 584730 V (SANF), died on 10 February 1945 LAMONT, J, Steward, 71402 (SANF), died 24 February 1945 HORNE, P D, Chief Petty Officer, 66661 V (SANF), died 31 March 1945 POVEY, Leonard, Able Seaman, 71182 V (SANF), died 31 March 1945 PFAFF, C E, Petty Officer Stoker, 562721 V (SANF), died 20 April 1945 CHRISTIAN, J W, Able Seaman, CN/71965 (SANF), died 5 May 1945 SIMON, Frederick, Stoker, CN/72046 V (SANF), died 8 May 1945 VAN AARDT, S, Stoker, CN/721490 (SANF), died 22 May 1945 CLARE, Frederick W, Chief Petty Officer, 69599 V (SANF), died 3 June 1945 KEOWN, R J, Able Seaman, CN/71845 (SANF), died 9 June 1945 WELCOME, J J, Able Seaman, CN/72270 (SANF), died 19 July 1945 VAN WYNGAARDT, F A, Able Seaman, 585610 V (SANF), died 21 July 1945 HEARD, George A, Lieutenant, SANF, died on the HMSAS Good Hope COOK, W, Leading Stoker, 70527 V (SANF), died 8 August 1945

As if the above loss of South African Navy personnel is not large enough and the lack of recognition by the Navy not bad enough, there is an even bigger ‘elephant in the room’, a key factor completely overlooked by the South African Naval fraternity and the navy itself, and that’s the South African Navy personnel seconded to the British Royal Navy and lost in the Royal Navy’s ships and shore facilities during the Second World War.

South African Naval personnel were lost on the following significant British vessel losses. Consider this very big ‘elephant in the room’ for a minute, because its getting BIGGER.  The losses of these Royal Navy ships carries long lists of South African sacrifice.

We start with all the ships containing South African Naval Forces personnel sunk during the Imperial Japanese Air Force ‘Easter Sunday’ raid on the British fleet in Colombo (this is regarded as the British ‘Peal Harbour’ just off modern day Sri Lanka) and it’s the darkest hour in terms of losses for South African Navy, yet it is neither recognised as such nor is it remembered.  (See this link for more depth:  The South African Navy’s ‘darkest hour’ is not recognised and not commemorated)

During this attack Japanese airman flying Japanese  D3A-1 ‘VAL’ dive bombers flying from the Japanese Imperial fleet, dropped their bombs on the HMS Dorsetshire, who had a very large contingent of South African Naval personnel, she simply blew up when a  detonated an ammunition magazine and contributed to her rapid sinking.  Click here for a full Observation Post report on her sinking: “They machine gunned us in the water”; Recounting South African Sacrifice on the HMS Dorsetshire

HMS Dorsetshire

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 5 April 1942 when HMS Dorsetshire sank follows:

BELL, Douglas S, Ty/Act/Leading Stoker, 67243 (SANF), MPK BRUCE, Alexander M, Stoker 2c, 67907 (SANF), MPK CONCANON, Harold Bernard, Surgeon Lieutenant (Doctor) EVENPOEL, Albert, Stoker 2c, 67909 (SANF), MPK GEFFEN, Sender, Stoker 1c, 68035 (SANF), MPK HOWE, Horace G, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 68680 (SANF), MPK KENDRICK, George, Stoker 2c, 67910 (SANF), MPK MCINTYRE, Norman G, Able Seaman, 67446 (SANF), MPK MCLELLAN, Robert, Ordinary Telegraphist, 67897 (SANF), MPK MILNE, Lawrence Victor, Able Seaman MORROW, Douglas E, Able Seaman, 67989 (SANF), MPK ORTON, Charles P, Able Seaman, 68009 (SANF), MPK REDMAN, Roland A, Leading Stoker, 67406 (SANF), MPK SCOTT, William J, Able Seaman, 68007 (SANF), MPK SEVEL, Harry, Stoker 1c, 68100 (SANF), MPK VAN ZYL, David Isak Stephanus, Stoker 1st Class WILLETT, Amos A S, Stoker 1c, 67240 (SANF), MPK WILLIAMSON, Walter N, Able Seaman, 67803 (SANF), MPK

The second British ship in this particular Japanese air attack, on the same day and within range of one another was the HMS Cornwall, also stuffed full of South African Naval personnel seconded to her. The HMS Cornwall was hit eight times by the same dive bombers who sank the Dorsetshire and sank bow first in about ten minutes.

HMS Cornwall

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 5 April 1942 when HMS Cornwall  sank follows:

BESWETHERICK, Hedley C, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 86671 (SANF), MPK BOTES, John S, Stoker 2c RNVR, 68924 (SANF), MPK COMMERFORD, Noel P, Able Seaman RNVR, 66493 (SANF), MPK CRAWFORD, Cecil E, Act/Engine Room Artificer 4c RNVR, 67922 (SANF), MPK DU PREEZ, Charles P H, Able Seaman, 68175 (SANF), MPK DUTTON, Charles C, Stoker 2c RNVR, 68949 (SANF), MPK HANSLO, Raymond F, Able Seaman RNVR, 68295 (SANF), MPK KEITH, Kenneth I B, Able Seaman RNVR, 66742 (SANF), MPK KENYON, Graeme A B, Able Seaman RNVR, 68002 (SANF), MPK KIRSTEN, Monty G W, Able Seaman RNVR, 68917 (SANF), MPK LAW, Edward, Act/Engine Room Artificer 4c RNVR, 66760 (SANF), MPK MCDAVID, William K, Stoker 2c RNVR, 69138 (SANF), MPK MITCHELL, William A, Stoker 1c RNVR, 68796 (SANF), MPK PALMER, Walter A, Able Seaman RNVR, 68344 (SANF), (rescued, aboard HMS Enterprise), Died of Wounds SPENCE, Noel W, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 68732 (SANF), MPK SQUIRES, John E, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 68728 (SANF), MPK STEPHEN, Eric B, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 68861 (SANF), MPK SWANN, Lawrence T, Stoker 1c RNVR, 68710 (SANF), MPK THORPE, Maurice, Stoker 2c RNVR, 69140 (SANF), MPK VERSFELD, Peter H S, Able Seaman RNVR, 68859 (SANF), MPK VINK, Benjamin F, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 68860 (SANF), MPK WILLSON, Gerald F, Stoker 2c RNVR, 69006 (SANF), MPK WRIGHT, Thomas H, Able Seaman RNVR, 68039 (SANF), MPK

In earlier incidents on HMS Cornwall two South Africans lost their lives they are also remembered here:

AINSLIE, Roy, Petty Officer, 66382 (SANF), died on 5 September 1940 HAWKINS, Reginald D, Able Seaman, 66700 (SANF), died of illness 4 March 1942

The Easter Raid later offered a great prize for the Japanese, an aircraft carrier, the HMS Hermes, this massive aircraft carrier was sunk a week later by the Japanese near Colombo (now Sri Lanka), the pride of the British Pacific fleet became an inferno after it was dived bombed a number of times.  It too had a long association with South Africa and a very big contingent of South African Naval Personnel. (see this link for a in-depth article on the South African Navy sacrifice abound her “Dante’s Inferno”; Recounting South African sacrifice on the HMS Hermes).

HMS Hermes

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 9 April 1942 when HMS Hermes  sank follows:

BRIGGS, Anthony Herbert Lindsay Sub-Lieutenant (Engineer) Royal Navy (South African national), MPK BRYSON, Neil W, Ordinary Telegraphist, 69147 (SANF), MPK BURNIE, Ian A, Able Seaman, 67786 (SANF), MPK CLAYTON, Frederick H, Act/Engine Room Artificer 4c, 68102 (SANF), MPK DE CASTRO, Alfred T, Stoker 1c, 67914 (SANF), MPK KEENEY, Frederick W, Able Seaman, 67748 (SANF), MPK KEYTEL, Roy, Able Seaman, 67296 (SANF), MPK KIMBLE, Dennis C, Act/Engine Room Artificer 4c, 67600 (SANF), MPK KRAUSE, Frederick E, Able Seaman, 68321 (SANF), MPK RAPHAEL, Philip R, Able Seaman, 67841 (SANF), MPK RICHARDSON, Ronald P, Able Seaman, 67494 (SANF), MPK RILEY. Harry Air Mechanic 2nd Class, Fleet Air Arm, Royal Navy (South African national), MPK TOMS, Ivanhoe S, Able Seaman, 67709 (SANF), MPK VICKERS, Colin P, Able Seaman, 68296 (SANF), MPK VORSTER, Jack P, Able Seaman, 67755 (SANF), MPK WHITE, Edward G, Stoker, 68026 (SANF), MPK WIBLIN, Eric R, Able Seaman, 67717 (SANF), MPK YATES, Philip R, Supply Assistant, 67570 (SANF), MPK

Included is also a South African who served with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm on the HMS Hermes.

RILEY, H, Air Mechanic, Fleet Air Arm, HMS Hermes, died 9 April 1942

Next on the list of ships lost during the Easter Raid which contained a high number of South African Naval personnel on board was HMS Hollyhock, sunk on the same day as the HMS Hermes by the same Japanese Dive Bombers on the 9th of April. Click here for a full Observation Post report on her sinking  “She immediately blew up”; Recounting South African sacrifice on the HMS Hollyhock

HMS Hollyhock

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 9 April 1942 when HMS Hollyhock sank follows:

ANDERSON, Henry G, Able Seaman, 67501 (SANF), MPK BASTON, Douglas T, Act/Engine Room Artificer 4c, 68600 (SANF), MPK BUITENDACH, James M, Stoker 2c, 69223 (SANF), MPK JUBY, Kenneth J, Ordinary Seaman, 69211 (SANF), MPK LEACH, Peter A D H, Stoker 2c, 69225 (SANF), MPK

It was not just the Japanese Imperial Fleet, the German Navy also took its toll on the Royal Navy, and once again we find South African Naval Personnel seconded to serve on these famous ships sunk during the war.

We start with the HMS Gloucester lost on the 22 May 1941 during action off Crete. They HMS Gloucester, along with HMS Greyhound and HMS Fiji were attacked by German “Stuka” Dive Bombers. The Greyhound was sunk and Gloucester was attacked and sunk while they attempted to rescue Greyhounds survivors in the water (see this link for a full story – click here A “grievous error”; Recounting South African Sacrifice on the HMS Gloucester).

HMS Gloucester

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 22 May 1941 when HMS Gloucester sank follows:

ANGEL, Walter J H, Able Seaman, 67351 (SANF), MPK AUSTIN-SMITH, John R, Ordinary Seaman, 67336 (SANF), MPK BAGSHAW-SMITH, Philip R, Ordinary Seaman, 67337 (SANF), MPK BAGSHAWE-SMITH, Sydney Q, Able Seaman, 68454 (SANF), MPK BARBER, Edgar F, Able Seaman, 67302 (SANF), MPK BRUCE, John, Able Seaman, 67355 (SANF), MPK CARTER, Frederick G, Able Seaman, 67345 (SANF), MPK CHILTON, Ronald H D, Ordinary Seaman, 67335 (SANF), MPK EDWARDS, Ronald E, Ordinary Seaman, 67384 (SANF), MPK ELLIOT, Edward R, Leading Seaman, 66584 (SANF), MPK GERAGHTY, Herbert C, Able Seaman, 67338 (SANF), MPK GROGAN, Graham B, Able Seaman, 67343 (SANF), MPK JAMES, Victor F, Ordinary Seaman, 67303 (SANF), MPK JENSEN, Niels P, Able Seaman, 67347 (SANF), MPK MCCARTHY, Henry F, Ordinary Seaman, 67223 (SANF), MPK MOORE, Albert, Able Seaman, 67416 (SANF), MPK SLATER, Bryan M, Able Seaman, 67358 (SANF), MPK SMITH, Matthew S, Able Seaman, 67359 (SANF), MPK SONDERUP, Arthur W, Able Seaman, 67356 (SANF), MPK STADLANDER, Rowland C, Stoker 1c, 67400 (SANF), MPK STOKOE, Cyril A M, Act/Leading Seaman, 67264 V (SANF), MPK SYMONS, Maurice M, Able Seaman, 68245 (SANF), MPK THOMPSON, Walter E H, Able Seaman, 67360 (SANF), MPK VAN DYK, Cecil H, Able Seaman, 67404 (SANF), MPK WEBBER, Reginald, Able Seaman, 67361 (SANF), MPK WILLIAMS, Dastrey S, Leading Seaman, 67047 (SANF), MPK WRIGHT, Gerald V, Act/Ordnance Artificer 4, 67375 (SANF), MPK

The HMS Gloucester was involved in earlier combat on the 8 July 1940 when it was bombed, the South African casualties are remembered here:

ALLISON, Oswald H, Able Seaman RNVR, 67349 (SANF), killed NOWLAN, Francis C, Able Seaman RNVR, 67409 (SANF), DOW

Tragedy struck the South African Naval Forces seconded to the HMS Barham when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-331,  Three torpedoes hit HMS Barham’s port side causing it to list heavily and spread fire towards the ammunition storages. Only 2 and a half minutes passed from the torpedo impact until the ship rolled onto its side and capsized as the aft magazine exploded in an almighty explosion (see this link for a full story – click here “She blew sky high”; Recounting South African sacrifice on the HMS Barham!)

HMS Barham

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 25 November 1941 when HMS Barham sank follows:

BAKER, Dennis E W, Ordinary Seaman, 68617 (SANF) GLENN, Paul V, Ordinary Seaman, 68906 (SANF) HAYES, Richard T, Ordinary Seaman, 68499 (SANF) MORRIS, Cyril D, Ordinary Seaman, 68932 (SANF) UNSWORTH, Owen P (also known as R K Jevon), Ordinary Seaman, 69089 (SANF) WHYMARK, Vivian G, Ordinary Seaman, 69024 (SANF)

The Italians also took a toll of British shipping, again with ships with a South African contingent and this is brought to home on the 19 December 1941, when the HMS Neptune, struck four mines, part of a newly laid Italian minefield. Neptune quickly capsized (see this link for a full story – click here South African sacrifice on the HMS Neptune).

HMS Neptune

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 19 December 1941 when HMS Neptune sank follows:

ADAMS, Thomas A, Able Seaman, 67953 (SANF), MPK CALDER, Frank T, Ordinary Seaman, 67971 (SANF), MPK CAMPBELL, Roy M, Able Seaman, 67318 (SANF), MPK DIXON, Serfas, Able Seaman, 67743 (SANF), MPK FEW, Jim, Able Seaman, 67744 (SANF), MPK HAINES, Eric G, Able Seaman, 67697 (SANF), MPK HOOK, Aubrey C, Able Seaman, 67862 (SANF), MPK HOWARD, Harold D, Signalman, 67289 (SANF), MPK HUBBARD, Wallace S, Able Seaman, 67960 (SANF), MPK KEMACK, Brian N, Signalman, 67883 (SANF), MPK MERRYWEATHER, John, Able Seaman, 67952 (SANF), MPK MEYRICK, Walter, Ordinary Signalman, 68155 (SANF), MPK MORRIS, Rodney, Ordinary Signalman, 68596 (SANF), MPK RANKIN, Cecil R, Signalman, 67879 (SANF), MPK THORP, Edward C, Signalman, 67852 (SANF), MPK THORPE, Francis D, Able Seaman, 67462 (SANF), MPK WILD, Ernest A, Able Seaman, 67929 (SANF), MPK

Other South Africans who had enlisted into the Royal Navy were also lost on HMS Neptune, these include (and by no means is this list definitive) the following:

OOSTERBERG, Leslie W, Stoker 1c, D/KX 96383, MPK TOWNSEND, Henry C, Stoker 1c, D/KX 95146, MPK

On the 30 April 1942, on her return leg from Murmansk, the HMS Edinburgh was escorting Convoy QP 11 when a German Submarine U-456  torpedoed into her. The Edinburgh was carrying gold in payment by the Soviets for war equipment and she is the subject of a remarkable gold salvage after the war.  Again, she had a compliment of South African Naval Personnel (see this link for a full story – click here “Gold may shine; but it has no true light” South African sacrifice on the HMS Edinburgh).

HMS Edinburgh

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 30 April 1942 when HMS Edinburgh sank follows:

DRUMMOND, Valentine W, Able Seaman, 68043 (South African Naval Forces), Missing Presumed Killed VAN DORDRECHT, William H, Able Seaman, 67851 (South African Naval Forces), Missing Presumed Killed

On the 12 November 1942, the HMS Hecla was torpedoed by a German submarine, U-515 hitting her in the engine room. The U-boat then hit the ship with three coups de grâce sinking the vessel west of Gibraltar.  Again there is South African Naval casualty list (see this link for a full story – click here “Every man for himself” … South African sacrifice and the sinking of HMS Hecla).

HMS Helca

The Honour Roll of South African Naval sacrifice on the 12 November1942 when HMS Helca sank follows:

BENNETT, John F, Act/Engine Room Artificer 4c, 330351 (SANF), MPK LLOYD, George H, Act/Engine Room Artificer 4c, 330353 (SANF), MPK PEERS, Charles V, Able Seaman, 562653 (SANF), MPK SMITH, Ian R, Electrical Artificer 4c, 68478 (SANF), MPK

And there’s more ,,,,, many South Africans served on a variety of Royal Navy ships and many were lost, here’s an indication which just captures South African Naval Forces personnel alone, let alone those who volunteered directly for the Royal Navy, the Honour Roll follows:

ANDERSON, Richard W N, Able Seaman, 86082 (SANF), killed 21 May 1941 on HMS Syvern WESTON, Grant E, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 68498 (SANF), killed 27 August 1941 on HMS Phoebe RASMUSSEN, Victor J S, Leading Telegraphist, 66920 (SANF), MPK 24 November 1941 on HMS Dunedin ADAMSON, William D, Ordinary Seaman RNVR, 69001 (SANF), MPK 10 December 1941 on HMS Repulse  BECKER, Stanley H, Able Seaman, 67474 (SANF), road accident, killed 5 January 1942 on HMS Carnarvon Castle DRURY, Frederick, Ordinary Seaman, 68315 (SANF), MPK 29 January 1942 on HMS Sotra SCOTT, Clifford, Ordinary Telegraphist, 66973 (SANF), MPK 26 March 1942 on HMS Jaguar BUCHANAN, Alexander, Able Seaman, 67934 (SANF), died 20 April 1942 on HMS Birmingham COMMERFORD, Terence, Ordinary Seaman, 330258 (SANF), died 21 June 1942 on HMS Express PRICE, David, Able Seaman RNVR, P/68529 (SANF), MP 6 July 1942 on HMS Niger TROUT, A (initial only) N, Able Seaman, CN/72133 (SANF), died 4 August 1942 on HMS Stork JOHNSTONE, Henry N, Lieutenant Commander (E), SANF, 66727, died 18 August 1942 on HMS Birmingham BAWDEN, Wilfred R, Stoker 2c RNVR, 330425 (SANF), DOWS 16 September 1942 HMS Orion NIGHTSCALES, Norman, Writer, 68148 (SANF), MPK 30 December 1942 on HMS Fidelity GITTINS, Victor L, Ordinary Seaman, 69325 (SANF), died 27 January 1943 on HMS Assegai (training base) PLATT, Ronald M, Petty Officer, 67160 V (SANF), accident, killed 26 February 1943 on HMS President III (shore establishment) CROSSLEY, Alfred H, Sub Lieutenant, SANF, MPK 7 March 194 on HMS Saunders DE KOCK, Victor P De C, Ty/Lieutenant, SANF, MPK7 March 194 on HMS Saunders LOUW, Joseph, Stoker, CN 72175 (SANF), illness, died 2 December 1943 on HMS Stork ATKIN, William B, Lieutenant SANF, illness, died 26 January 1944 on HMS Northern Duke SHIELDS, Eric E M, Lieutenant, SANF, died 12 April 1944 on HMS Pembroke IV HOWDEN, Russell K, Ty/Sub Lieutenant, SANF, MPK 4 January 1945 HMS ML 1163, Harbour Defence Motor Launch CLARKE, Reginald E, Ty/Lieutenant Commander, SANF, air crash, MPK 24 July 1945 on HMS Adamant LIDDLE, John, Lieutenant, SANF, MPK 8 August 1945 on HMS Barbrake

Then lets consider the South African Naval Personnel serving in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm (the Royal Navy’s own Air Force separate to the Royal Air Force), and here the following South Africans are on the FAA Honour Roll (excluding Air Mechanic Riley from the Fleet Air Arm, recorded on the HMS Hermes loss).  For a full story of these South Africans lost in the FAA see this link – click here South African sacrifice in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm

BOSTOCK, R S, Lieutenant, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm 800 Squadron, HMS Ark Royal, died 13 June 1940 BROKENSHA, G W, Lieutenant, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm 888 Squadron, HMS Formidable, died 11 August 1942 CHRISTELIS, C, Sub/Lieutenant, Royal Navy Reserve FAA 803 Squadron, HMS Formidable, died 1 August 1942 JUDD, F E C, Lieutenant Cmdr, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm 880 Squadron, HMS Indomitable, died 12 August 1942 LA GRANGE, Antony M, Sub Lieutenant (A), SANF, Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy)1772 Sqn HMS Indefatigable, air operations, MPK 28 July 1945 MACWHIRTER, Cecil J, Ty/Sub Lieutenant (A), Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy) 851 Squadron HMS Shah, air crash, SANF, MPK 14 April 1944 O’BRYEN, W S, Sub/Lt Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm 762 Squadron, HMS Heron, died 26 November 1942 WAKE, Vivian H, Ty/Lieutenant (A), FAA Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy) 815 Squadron HMS Landrail, air crash, SANF, MPK 28 March 1945

Finally there are South African Naval personnel found in the Merchant Navy, to which they were also seconded and again the Honour Roll lists:

SS Tunisia, ship loss ADAMS, Douglas E H, Act/Able Seaman RNVR, 66378 (SANF), (President III, O/P), MPKST La Carriere, ship loss DORE, Frank B, Act/Able Seaman RNVR, 67218 (SANF), (President III, O/P), MPKSS Laconia, ship loss ROSS, Robert, Stoker 2c, 69119 (SANF), (Victory, O/P), DOWS SS Llandilo, ship loss CRAGG, Ronald F, Able Seaman (DEMS), 66488 (SANF), (President III, O/P), MPK SS Ceramic, ship loss MOSCOS, John G, Leading Writer, 66786 (SANF), (SANF, O/P), MPK SS Empress of Canada, ship loss COCHRANE, Joseph, Engine Room Artificer 3c, P 68947 (SANF), (Pembroke, O/P), MPK SS Empire Lake, ship loss FLINT, John M, Act/Able Seaman (DEMS), P 562749 (SANF), (President III, O/P), MPK

More names…

Now consider this, we have not even begun to scratch properly at the honour roll, this above list is still highly inaccurate with many names missing.  We have no real idea of the thousands of South Africas who volunteered and died whilst serving in The Royal Navy Reserve and the Royal Navy itself, in fact we’ve barely got our heads around it.  Fortunately a handful of South Africans are working on it, almost daily, but it’s a mammoth task as these names are found on Royal Navy honour rolls and it’s a matter of investigating the birthplace of each and every British casualty.  The records of South African volunteers joining the Royal Navy lost to time really.

In conclusion

The only other ship the South African Navy has lost since the HMSAS Treern at the end of the Second World War in a more modern epoch was the SAS President Kruger, and unlike the Treern, whose loss was in combat, the Kruger’s loss was due to a tragic accident at sea (see “Out of the Storm came Courage” … the tragedy of the PK).

These combat losses were one thing, however the same erasing of history is currently happening with the accidental loss in more recent times of SAS President Kruger (the PK), the ‘old’ SADF were very embarrassed by the loss (in effect by tragedy and circumstance we sank our own flagship) and the SADF never really got around to undertake a National Parade to commemorate and remember it.  Also in comparison to the bigger picture the loss of 16 South African Navy personnel on the PK is very small indeed, however no less important – and here’s the inconvenient truth, they were ‘swept under the rug’ by the old SADF and remain conveniently swept under the rug by the new SANDF.

On the World War 2 losses, the incoming ANC government from 1994 have fared no better than the old Nat government – they have merely lumped all the wartime combat losses of the HMSAS Southern Floe, the HMSAS Parktown, the HMSAS Bever and the HMSAS Treern into a ‘colonial’ issue not of their history or time, and as for the SAS President Kruger that was part of the ‘Apartheid’ forces in their minds, and as such to be vanquished.

The net result is the South African Navy simply does not have any national parades to commemorate or recognise any of its major losses at sea.  The South African Army at least has the Delville Wood Parade (the South African Army’s biggest singular combat loss, a WW1 incident), the South African Air Force has the Apline 44 Memorial Parade (the SAAF’s biggest tragedy, a WW2 incident), the South African Navy …. nothing!

Instead the South African Navy (SAN) focuses on the loss of the Mendi as a SAN Maritime loss, even though the Mendi was under commission to the Royal Navy, and rather inconveniently the South Africa Navy did not really exist in World War 1, it was only really created just before World War 2.  Then again, the SS Mendi was also carrying South African Army troops in the form of the South African Labour Corps, not South African Navy personnel (the SAN didn’t exist in any event).

The Mendi is a both a wartime and political tragedy,  The silence and subsequence recognition is a National healing one (see Let us die like brothers … the silent voices of the SS Mendi finally heard ).  As such it’s now a National Memorial Parade, part of ‘Armed Forces Day’ and one for the entire SANDF to commemorate and remember – and rightly so.  But is it a SA Navy specific commemoration – not really – no.

In all this the Navy still dogmatically refuses to host its own National Commemoration to its own naval actions and tragedies, it’s just too politically inconvenient, and wouldn’t it be nice if South African Navy can see past it and see its Naval sacrifice on its own ships, and those of SAN personnel on Royal Navy ships and finally just institute an ‘All at Sea’ Naval Memorial Parade in Remembrance or erect a full Naval memorial (similar to the erected by the Royal Navy in Portsmouth)?

Very small ‘All at Sea’ commemorations are done by the odd South Africa Legion branch and off MOTH Shellhole, on a very local basis – driven by a tiny group of individuals.  Nobel in their undertakings no doubt, but these remain very small private initiatives attended by only a handful and is it really enough?

As demonstrated, The South African Navy’s honour roll for World War 2 is a staggering and very long list – it’s an elephant, a very big one at that and it’s a growing elephant, even to this day.  It’s well time we seriously look at ourselves, examine our values as to what constitutes sacrifice for the greater good of man and acknowledge it properly.

Written and Researched by Peter Dickens.  The honour roll extracted from ‘Casualty Lists of the Royal Navy and Dominion Navies, World War 2’ by Don Kindell.  Additional names gleaned from honour rolls published by Col Graham Du Toit (retired).

  The South African Navy’s ‘elephant in the room’ There is a very big elephant in the room when it comes to the South African Naval fraternity's commemoration and remembrance undertakings.  

MY TOP 188 SONIC RELEASES OF 2017

(NOTE: I ATTEMPT TO LIMIT TO ONE RELEASE PER ALIAS)

000. Charli XCX - Number 1 Angel (also Pop 2 & "Boys"!!) 001. LCD Soundsystem - American Dream 002. Various Artists - Mono No Aware 003. Jesse Osborne-Lanthier - Unalloyed - Unlicensed - All Night 004. Bjork - Utopia 005. STILL - I 006. SZA - CTRL 007. Oneohtrix Point Never - Good Time...Raw 008. Arca - Arca 009. Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me 010. I Hate Models - "Eternal Loneliness" 011. Perfume Genius - No Shape 012. M.E.S.H. - Hesaitix 013. Kelman Duran - 1804 KIDS 014. Bernard Parmegiani - Rock (Bande Originale Du Film) 015. Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure 016. Frank Ocean - "Chanel" 017. Radio Slave - Another Club - Feel The Same 018. MAXIMUM JOY - I Can't Stand It Here On Quiet Nights (Singles 1981-82) 019. Zuli - Numbers 020. Niña de la Puebla - I'm Always Crying 021. Sophie - It's Okay To Cry 022. Félicia Atkinson - Hand In Hand 023. Migos - Culture 024. Blawan - Nutrition 025. Julia Brouk - Hearing Music 026. Neil Young - Hitchhiker 027. TML - No Memory 028. Om Alec Khaoli - Say You Love Me (2017 Reissue) 029. Regal - Acid is the Answer 030. Arttu - Walking on a Fine Line 031. Yung Lean - Stranger 032. Coby Sey - Whities 010 033. Laszlo Hortobagyi - Transreplica Meccano 034. Pharmakon - Contact 035. Various Artists - Klockworks 20 036. Chino Amobi - PARADISO 037. Lorenzo Senni - XAllegroX - The Shape Of Trance To Come 038. Ryuichi Sakamoto - async 039. Second Woman - S-W 040. Sote - Sacred Horror in Design 041. DJ Bone - "Shut the Lites Off" 042. Moniek Darge - Sacred Balinese Soundies, Mauro's Song 043. Jaap Vink - Jaap Vink 044. Danny L Harle - 1UL 045. J.G. Biberkopf - Fountain of Meaning 046. Jim Coulter - Haar 047. Caterina Barbieri - Patterns of Consciousness 048. Animal Collective - Meeting of the Waters 049. Ploy - Unruly 050. Bonebrokk - Hollow Systems 051. Pan Daijing - Lack 052. RAMZi - Pèze-Piton 053. ASDA - The McDonald's Prayer 054. Mark - Here Comes a Fucking Startup Campus 055. Samuel Kerridge - "Ascension" 056. Vanligt Folk - Palle Bondo 057. Koehler & Stabudown Productions - Jim v Dan 058. Mhysa - fantasii 059. Volte-Face - Murmuration 060. POBBLES - "POBBLES" 061. Yaeji - "Last Breath" 062. Joda Clément - TIME + PLACE 063. Lanark Artefax - Whities 011 064. Errorsmith - Superlative Fatigue 065. John Wiese - Escaped Language 066. Various Artists - Contemporary Dance 067. Autechre - JNSN CODE GL16 - spl47 068. Young Thug - Beautiful Thugger Girls 069. ROD - Klockworks 19 070. Florian Hecker - A Script For Machine Synthesis 071. Roland Kayn - A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound 072. Klein - Tommy 073. Bruce - HEK027 074. The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time, Stage Two 075. Dean Blunt & Joanne Robertson - Wahalla 076. Cadans - 1 Bar FU 077. Demdike Stare - Circulation 078. Antigone - Ostinato 079. Leafar Legov - Family 080. Gaika - The Spectacular Empire I 081. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. 082. Deep’a & Biri - Basic Cycle 083. Judith Wegmann - Le souffle du temps - X (Rétro-) Perspectives 084. Architectural - Elastic Layouts 085. Fatima Yamaha - "Araya" 086. Burial - Pre Dawn - Indoors 087. Helm - Rawabet 088. Inland - Coriolis 089. Marcel Dettmann & Ben Klock - Phantom Studies 090. Various Artists - Decon-Recon #2 091. Jan St. Werner - Spectric Acid 092. Lag – All The Children Are Insane EP 093. AFX - "4x Atlantis take1" 094. Coucou Chloe - Halo 095. Havah - Contravveleno 096. Lucy - Blawan Remixes 097. Bruce Ditmas - Visioni Sconvolgenti 098. Dedekind Cut - Expanding Domain 099. Deapmash - Halcyon EP 100. Litüus - 2236 S Wentworth Ave 101. Serena Butler - Konstrukt 007 102. Deepbass - Gateway To Hyperspace EP 103. Various Artists - Where The Mountains Meet The Sky - Folk Music Of Ladakh 104. Various Artists - Collective Endeavours 01.2 105. Grouper - Children 106. Elemnt - Elemnts 107. X-Static - My Inspiration 108. Mica Levi - Delete Beach 109. DJ Deep - "New Horizon (Roman Poncet Steps Remix)" 110. Basil Kirchin - Is My Friend 111. Kelela - "LMK" 112. Arcade Fire - "Creature Comfort" 113. Honzo - Distopia "Un Mondo Indesiderabile" 114. Vanessa Rossetto - Rocinante 115. Cosmin Trg - Sportiv 003 116. Bambooman - Shudder EP 117. Stephen Brown - LF RMX 002 118. Konrad Sprenger - Stack Music 119. N.E.R.D - "Lemon (feat. Rihanna)" 120. Annea Lockwood - Tiger Balm Amazonia Dreaming Immersion 121. Yak - "Mido" 122. Sufjan Stevens - Tonya Harding 123. Justin Bieber & Bloodpop - "Friends (Remix)" (Feat. Julia Michaels) 124. Ursula Bogner - Winkel Pong 125. Borderland - "Transport (Carl Craig Remix - DJ Deep & Roman Poncet Rework)" 126. Joe - "MPH" 127. Niki Istrefi - Euromantic001 128. Bjarki - Geothermal Sheep EP 129. Fis & Rob Thorne - Clear Stones 130. Oto Hiax - Oto Hiax 131. Finn - Sometimes The Going Gets A Little Tough 132. Hodge & Peder - All My Love 133. NH - Nihil 134. Kalla - Enter The Sponk EP 135. Juxta Position - Failsafe 01 136. Reeko – La Mala Educacion 137. Mella Dee - Warehouse Music 001 138. F Ingers - Awkwardly Blissing Out 139. D. Glare - 4 oscillators & 130 samples at 130 bpm 140. Sigha - Metabolism Remixes 141. Manse - MNSWHT001 142. KYO - I Musik 143. Grey Branches - Neuroclaps 144. Abdou El Omari - Nuits de Printemps avec Abdou El Omari 145. Native Instrument - Camo 146. Dj Normal 4 & Bufiman - The 5 Elements EP Pt. 1 147. EJECA - Dance Trax, Vol. 7 148. Nahid Akhtar - I Am Black Beauty 149. John Maus - Screen Memories 150. H4L - Wild Hunt EP 151. JASSS - Weightless 152. Mr. G - 50-50 EP 153. Dario Zenker - Trivin Fields 154. Kobosil - 105 155. Sampha - Process 156. Not Waving - "Where Are We" (feat. Marie Davidson) 157. N1L - Mud Diver 158. Various Artists - ÆX002 159. PTU - A Broken Clock Is Right Twice A Day 160. Future - FUTURE 161. Donato Epiro - Rubisco 162. Alpha Tracks - Blue 163. Restive Plaggona - Leaving the Body 164. Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold 165. Basic Rhythm - The Basics 166. Rrose - The Ends of Weather 167. Hiver - Air Castles EP 168. Timothy 'Heretic' Clerkin - Serenade EP 169. Charlotte Gainsbourg - "Rest" 170. WK7 - Rhythm 1 171. Jasmine Guffond - Traced 172. Unknown Archetype - Tripp EP 173. Kara-Lis Coverdale - Grafts 174. Prayer - I/II 175. Kamaiyah - Before I Wake 176. Killawat - 47010 177. Nina Kraviz - Pochuvstvui 178. Joachim Nordwall - The Ideal Black 179. Mike Dunn - DJ Beat That Shhh - Move It, Work It 180. Bicep - "Glue" 181. The Body & Full of Hell - Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light 182. Alderaan - The Idea Of Having A Soul 183. Hyph11e - "Unknown Number 未知 (M.E.S.H. Remix)" 184. Obscure Shape & SHDW - Himmel Und Erde 185. Machine Woman - When Lobster Comes Home 186. Paradon't - Thrd Mpct 187. Bullion - Whities Dubplate 04

JOHN MCELROY: Fighting In - And Against - Spitfires

(Volume 24-02)

By Jon Guttman

During the Second World War Canada produced a healthy surfeit of Supermarine Spitfire pilots who distinguished themselves against such redoubtable counterparts as the Messerschmitt Me 109 and the Macchi MC.202. John McElroy stands out in one respect, however, because the last two planes he claimed while flying a Spitfire were Royal Air Force Spitfires.

Born in Port Arthur, Ontario in 1920, John Frederick McElroy had served in the North Battleford Light Infantry and the Rocky Mountain Rangers before entering the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. Commissioned in September 1941, he was shipped to Britain in November and, after further instruction at an operational training unit (OTU), was posted to No. 54 Squadron RAF in April 1942. In June, however, he embarked on the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle as one of 32 airmen flying Spitfire Mark VCs to the besieged Mediterranean isle of Malta. Pilot Officer McElroy’s Spitfire BR388 damaged its tail during takeoff on June 9, and the consequent crash landing resulted in McElroy being grounded and almost reposted to the Middle East. Finally, though, he was assigned to No. 249 Squadron at Takali airfield on Malta.

By spring 1942, Malta’s situation was critical. General Erwin Rommel had defeated the British Eighth Army at Gazala, had taken Tobruk and was driving on Egypt. Malta remained a thorn in the side of the Axis seaborne supply routes, but its own stocks of aircraft, ammunition, fuel and food were in short supply — the only thing in abundance were aircraft of the Italian Regia Aeronautica and German Luftwaffe, coming almost daily in their effort to neutralize the island. George F. Beurling, Malta’s — and Canada’s — highest-scoring ace of the war, cockily proclaimed it a fighter pilot’s paradise, but its air commander, Air Vice Marshal Hugh P. Lloyd, gravely declared it as “no place for beginners.”

On July 1 the Axis began a series of strikes at Malta’s airfields and the next day McElroy damaged an Me 109 (actually an MC.202), followed on the 4th by a “probable” claim on a Reggiane Re.2001. On the 7th McElroy scored his first confirmed success, shooting down a C.202 while “borrowing” a No. 601 Squadron “Spit,” BR301 UF-S. On the 9th he and Flight Sergeant John D. Rae shared in destroying a Junkers Ju 88A of Kampfgeschwader 77.

The Germans attacked Luqa airbase on July 13, but McElroy, again in BR301, claimed an Me 109 destroyed and another damaged, though they were actually MC.202s of the 151a Squadriglia, 20o Gruppo, 51o Stormo. He and Pilot Officer Leslie W. Watts shared in a probable Me 109 and a second damaged on the 23rd. McElroy damaged an Re.2001 and an Me 109 on the 28th. In August he was dispatched to lead the ferrying in of more replacement Spitfires, taking off from the carrier HMS Furious on the 17th.

By October the tide was turning in both North Africa and the Mediterranean, with Malta holding its own against a final succession of Axis aerial onslaughts. During a fight 15 miles north of Gozo Island on October 10, McElroy, in EP708 “U,” shot an Me 109 off his wingman’s tail and damaged another. His bag on the 12th was an Me 109, probably killing Gefreiter Georg Gunkel of 4th Staffel, Jagdgeschwader 53, and a Ju 88 destroyed and a Messerschmitt damaged, but his own plane was damaged in the fight.

The next day, he downed an Re.2001 and damaged an Me 109. On the 15th he and Flying Officer Leonard Cheek of No. 185 Squadron destroyed a Ju 88A of 3./KG 77 piloted by Unteroffizier Herbert Gross and damaged another, but McElroy was bounced by fighters — possibly credited to Maggiore Luigi Borgogno of the 352a Squadriglia, 20o Gruppo, 51o Stormo. He was slightly wounded in one leg and crash landed at Takali. He damaged a Ju 88 of KG 77 the next day, but again his plane was hit, this time by an Me 109G-2 of I Gruppe, JG 53, and crash-landed.

In spite of this mixed run of luck, McElroy and Pilot Officer Joseph Lowery shared credit for an Me 109 downed five miles north of Grand Harbour on October 22, and he damaged an MC.202 on the 27th. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and promoted to flight lieutenant, he was posted back to Britain. He served as an instructor at 57 OTU until December 5 and, after some leave in Canada, he also did a stint in No. 276 Air-Sea Rescue Squadron and returned to instructing at 56 OTU in July 1943.

In January 1944 McElroy returned to combat with No. 421 Squadron RCAF, participating in the Allied landings at Normandy on June 6. During an encounter with I./JG 27 over Caen on the evening of June 15, he damaged an Me 109G before it escaped into a cloud, but his Spitfire Mark IXB was also shot up and crash-landed in Allied lines (this hit was possibly credited to Oberfähnrich Max Winkler of 1./JG 27). Flying Officer Lorne F. Curry was also killed by Feldwebel Gustav Sturm of 2./JG 27, but No. 421 claimed nine victories in the fight and JG 27 acknowledged the loss of six, with at least three pilots killed.

McElroy downed a Focke-Wulf Fw 190A over Le Merlerault on June 23 and an Me 109 over Caen on the 28th. In July, he was put in command of No. 416 Squadron and shot down an Fw 190 northeast of Alençon on the 27th. On September 30 he and Flight Lieutenant David W. A. Harling shared in the destruction of an Me 109 over Nijmegen, and McElroy received a bar to his DFC in October.

With nine lone and three shared victories to his credit, McElroy returned to Canada and spent the rest of the war on the Pacific Coast. He was released from service on September 24, 1945, but remained in the Auxiliary Air Force as an instructor with No. 422 Squadron.

In May 1948 McElroy was living in Vancouver, no longer flying and evidently missing it sorely, when two Jewish acquaintances asked if he knew any flyers willing to fight for the newly founded state of Israel, which had immediately come under attack by five Arab states. McElroy contacted 40 pilots, of whom some went. After the police visited his wife to ask about his activities, McElroy decided to leave Canada and fly for Israel himself. Along the way, he met two fellow volunteers: Clifford Denzel Woodrow Wilson and Joseph “Jack” Doyle.

After making their way to Israel, all three Canucks ended up in No. 101 Squadron, Israel’s sole fighter unit, which since May had been operating Avia S-199s, Czechoslovakian-built Me 109Gs with Junkers Jumo engines that were inferior in performance and less safe to fly then the Daimler-Benz powered originals. On December 18 McElroy and other pilots were sent to purchase and ferry in war surplus Spitfire Mark LF Mark IXs from Czechoslovakia.

On December 30, “Jack” Doyle reported that “Johnny McElroy and I were doing a recce of Bir Hama when I saw two enemy aircraft strafing our troops.” These were two Macchi MC.205Vs — improved versions of the MC.202 — of No. 2 Squadron, Royal Egyptian Air Force (REAF). Elements of the Israeli 9th Regiment had raided their airbase at Bir Hama the previous day, and were in the process of withdrawing when the Macchis attacked.

“I cut into their circuit and shot down the leader,” Doyle continued. “The second one broke and ran with Johnny on his tail. In a short while he finished him off and we returned to base.”

Squadron Leader Mustafa Kemal Abd al Wahib was killed by Doyle, while McElroy killed Flight Lieutenant Khalil Jamad al Din al Arusi. On the same day, the RAF’s 205 Group, based at Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone, received orders to monitor the Israeli offensive in the Negev Desert and pass on the information to United Nations Truce Supervision teams. The first such sortie was flown by six Spitfire LF Mark 18s of No. 208 Squadron RAF, guided to the battlefield by three bomb-armed REAF Spitfire LF Mark IXs.

On January 7, 1949, four Spitfires of No. 208 Squadron were ordered on a tactical reconnaissance of the Israeli–Egyptian frontier, also escorting two deHavilland Mosquitos of No. 13 Squadron, photographing heavy fighting along the Al Auja-Rafah road. Taking off at 1115 hours, the four Spitfires swept over the battle area, unaware that five Spitfires of No. 2 Squadron REAF had just strafed an Israeli armoured column, setting three trucks afire. Two Spits, flown by Flying Officer Geoffrey Cooper and Pilot/III Frank Close, flew toward the column of smoke to investigate and take pictures, only to come under fire from the Israeli troops. Hit in the engine, Close bailed out at 500 feet, caught his foot on his parachute rigging and came down on his head, breaking his jaw.

At that point McElroy arrived at the scene leading Chalmers Goodlin, a newly arrived volunteer with previous service in the RCAF, U.S. Army Air Forces and as a test pilot for the Bell Aircraft Company. Some 3,000 feet below them were two Spitfires, still observing the crash of their comrade. “John took after the one on the left, with guns firing,” recalled “Slick” Goodlin, “while I tried to get into position to shoot at the other.”

“We were right on top of them,” McElroy reported. “They pulled up right in front of us and I blasted one, I guess from about 200 yards, and saw many explosions all around engine and cockpit; I knocked quite a few pieces off his wings.”

Possibly killed by McElroy’s first volley, Pilot/II Ronald Sayers power-dived into a sand dune. “I looked over and saw another aeroplane off about two o’clock to me, just off to my right and slightly below,” McElroy continued. “It wasn’t one of ours, so I just dropped my sights on him — it was 400 yards — and let fly. I got strikes all over him. Right down the fuselage and the engine. I broke off, looked around, but couldn’t see ‘Slick.’”

The first that Flying Officer Timothy McElhaw knew of what was going on was a radio-telephone call of “Look out, there’s one behind you!” The next was the sight of a Spitfire behind him, before being shot down and bailing out. Nearby, Cooper engaged Goodlin in a series of scissors manoeuvres — a mistake, since it conceded the advantage to the slower but nimbler old Mark IX. Goodlin finally got some hits in the cowling and saw his opponent bail out 10 miles south of El Arish.

Wounded in the leg, Cooper was found by Bedouins who turned him over to the Egyptian army, which treated his injuries and put him on a train to Ismailia. McElhaw and Close were picked up by Israelis and eventually sent to Tel Aviv for questioning. Meanwhile, McElroy and Goodlin did victory rolls over their airfield at Hatzor, after which everyone wondered whether there would be retaliation. Britain did not retaliate and suspended reconnaissance flights, but demanded compensation from Israel for the losses in men and equipment, and warned that the Air Ministry would “regard as hostile any Jewish aircraft encountered over Egyptian territory.”

On January 8, certain pilots of No. 101 Squadron sent a message to No. 208: “Sorry about yesterday, but you were on the wrong side of the fence. Come over and have a drink sometime. You will see many familiar faces.”

“I was visited by McElroy whilst I was a POW in Tel Aviv,” Tim McElhaw later said. “I can only recall that we had a perfectly civil conversation, whilst both being on guard not to reveal anything of operational significance; I think he said he had been ‘involved.’”

In March 1949 the Canadians were shipped home. Any concerns McElroy may have had on the consequences of his actions were settled during the Korean War and the concurrent expansion of the RCAF. He rejoined as a flying officer in April 1951, instructed and flew Canadair Sabres with No. 421 Squadron in Europe, and became a flight lieutenant in January 1956. He finally left the RCAF in November 1964 and became a real estate salesman in London, Ontario.

John McLeod, Canada’s only Spitfire ace with Spitfires to his credit, died in Victoria, British Columbia on October 24, 1994.

Penny Serenade (George Stevens, 1941) Cast: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Beulah Bondi, Edgar Buchanan, Ann Doran, Eva Lee Kuney, Leonard Willey, Wallis Clark, Walter Soderling, Jane Biffey. Screenplay: Morrie Ryskind, based on a story by Martha Cheavens. Cinematography: Joseph Walker. Art direction: Lionel Banks. Film editing: Otto Meyer. Music: W. Franke Harling. Penny Serenade was released in April 1941, which explains the cozy japonaiserie of the scenes set in the country that would be vilified by Americans after Pearl Harbor, only eight months later. The idyllic sojourn of the Adamses in Japan would be brief, however, cut short by an earthquake that brings on Julie Adams's miscarriage, complications of which leave her unable to bear the children she so longs for. But that's only the beginning of their misfortunes, which left many moviegoers holding soggy handkerchiefs. The phrase "they don't make 'em like this anymore" comes to mind, except that they do: Millions of people tuned in every week to follow the fortunes of the Pearson family on This Is Us. It's easy to dismiss this kind of cathartic cinema and its TV descendants, but it serves a need that shouldn't be dismissed cynically. We may prefer the Irene Dunne and Cary Grant of The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937) and My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940), but their starry presence helps lift Penny Serenade out of the vale of tears. Grant earned one of his two Oscar nominations -- the other was for None But the Lonely Heart (Clifford Odets, 1944) -- for this film. The Academy always prefers acting that shows over acting that naturally arises out of a performer's established persona, and while his performance is by no means one of Grant's best -- there are dozens more that could be cited as essential for their Cary-Grantness -- it does make Penny Serenade more watchable than it might be today. Dunne is less challenged by her role: Noble suffering was her forte in most of her films; comic giddiness was the exception. But she doesn't overdo it here. Everything else, however, is overdone: the chubby moppets who play the Adamses' adopted daughter at different ages; the motherly rule-bending adoption agency head played by Beulah Bondi; the gruff but tender chum known as Applejack and played by Edgar Buchanan; the sentimental old songs that key each flashback. It comes as a shock to learn that so much of this tearjerking was done by screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, who got his start writing gags for the Marx Brothers and was the screenwriter for Gregory La Cava on the screwball My Man Godfrey (1936) and the acerbic Stage Door (1937).

Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932) Cast: Marlene Dietrich. Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette, Lawrence Grant, Louise Closser Hale, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Emile Chautard. Screenplay: Jules Furthman, based on a story by Harry Hervey. Cinematography: Lee Garmes. Art direction: Hans Dreier. Film editing: Frank Sullivan. Music: W. Franke Harling. There's something claustrophobic about Shanghai Express: Its characters are always enclosed -- in train cabins, in interrogation rooms, even in crowds of other people. Even the titular train gets itself into a tight spot, navigating the narrow passage through the streets of what the film calls "Peking." Which makes it all the better for Lee Garmes's camera, tasked as it is with making the most of Marlene Dietrich's face. Garmes (with director Josef von Sternberg looking over his shoulder) always finds ways to frame that face with veils and feathers and furs, with the actress's own hands, with misted windows, and when nothing else will do, a simple shaft of light caressing those eyelids, cheekbones, and lips. Fortunately, the movie is more than glamorous poses: There's a good deal of snappy dialogue and some wily character acting from the likes of Eugene Pallette, Louise Closser Hale, and -- in a role that seems to have been a kind of audition for his most famous one, Charlie Chan -- Warner Oland. I only wish that a leading man more attractive, or less plummily British, than Clive Brook had been provided for Dietrich. The story is nonsense, of course, and it verges dangerously on colonialist poppycock in its treatment of the Chinese, though even there it pulls back somewhat by turning Anna May Wong's Hui Fei from a stereotypical dragon lady into a genuinely heroic figure. It must also be said that Shanghai Express was made at the right time: A couple of years later, the sexual adventurism of its women would have been taboo under the Production Code and Hui Fei would have been made to pay for murdering her rapist.