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Post by dem bones on Oct 9, 2019 8:07:26 GMT
The co-star was a phantom killer in beautiful actress Gale Bond's final scene Dan Ross - Fogbound (MacFadden-Bartell, 1969) Blurb: Terror had the starring role.
Jack Henderson held Gale close and kissed her. She felt herself responding to his touch and his nearness. He was a handsome screen-writer and she was a beautiful star, and an exciting future stretched ahead of them both.
Yet, even as they kissed, a mad killer watched and waited ...Final voyage of luxury liner The Britannia before she is consigned to the scrapyard. The ship has been chartered by Hollywood producer-director Mervin Hawley as ready-made set for his next smash mystery feature, this one loosely based upon the mysterious death of a screen legend. Thirty years have passed since Hedda Grant allegedly drowned during a party aboard The Britannia. Popular wisdom has it that she took her own life, though this seems as open to question as, despite several "well attested" sightings, the legend that her ghost still walks the decks. Tragically, Jerry Hall, Hedda's husband-agent, survived her by only six months before he was killed in a plane accident. Hedda is to be played by newcomer Gale Bond, 23, who, we're informed, is blandly pretty as opposed to knock-out beautiful. Even so, the publicity department think it's Christmas come early on account of Miss Bond happens to be the late Hedda Grant's niece. Needless to say, her co-stars, veteran heavyweights Jane Fair and Steve Benson, are less than thrilled to receive second billing to a talentless no-mark. Two days before the ship sets sail from New York, Joseph Holland, the legendary Hollywood artist, escapes from an up-state mental hospital. Holland, one in a long line of Hedda's male sexual conquests, was aboard the Britannia on the night of the fatal party. Other passengers include "thin, crabbed, elderly" François Mailot, make-up artist; Kate Paxton, an aging star whose career is in decline. She'll be promoted to take over as lead female support if Jane Fair can get Gale dismissed from the project; and Jack Henderson, screenwriter and acknowledged authority on all things Hedda Grant. Jack confides over a drink that, adored by millions she may have been, but offscreen Hedda Grant had a terrible reputation. Far from being offended, Gale replies that she had already gathered as much from her mother (yet another actress). They're joined by Steve Benson, the handsome male lead, who, recalling an earlier voyage aboard this same trip in his youth, relates his encounter with the phantom Hedda. Gale returns to her allegedly "haunted" cabin to find the room smelling of roses ..... and someone waiting for her in the dark! An old woman steps out from the darkness, introduces herself. "Maggie Dever. Your maid." Maggie has served in this capacity since the doomed liner first set to sea. She attended Hedda - who, uniquely, she was fond of - on several occasions, only to be inexplicably replaced by a mystery "Nasty thing with glasses" on the fatal voyage who vanished soon as the ship reached home. Maggie believes that this so-called maid encouraged Hedda's drinking while she and Jerry Hall got it on in another cabin. Maggie is yet another who swears to have seen Hedda's "ghost." We are already beginning to wonder if it might have been more helpful for someone to have seen her corpse. Gale suffers herself to attend Mervin Hawley's dinner for cast and crew, an awkward evening for sure even if she and the hunky screenwriter are now almost on snogging terms. Back down to earth with a bang when she discovers that, once again her privacy has been violated. There on the floor lies the shredded remains of her script, and lying across the pages, a glistening wet strand of seaweed. What can it all mean?Which takes us to P. 42 of 144. So far, so film crew in peril thrills at their camp and suspenseful best! To be continued ....
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Post by helrunar on Oct 9, 2019 16:14:36 GMT
This sounds like fun. And very much in the style of "Marilyn" Ross. I had no idea he ever published under his own name, but I shouldn't be surprised. A friend sent me a list of the pen names used by "Dorothy Daniels" which was the real life name of a lady who was a professional writer in the Sixties and Seventies, as was her husband. The two collaborated but also wrote many books each on their own, and there was quite the list of author names under which all this was printed.
I can't even imagine how people make a living as professional writers in this day and age. Presumably a lot of them "blog" and do "coaching."
cheers, Hel
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Post by dem bones on Oct 9, 2019 18:53:01 GMT
This sounds like fun. And very much in the style of "Marilyn" Ross. I had no idea he ever published under his own name, but I shouldn't be surprised. A friend sent me a list of the pen names used by "Dorothy Daniels" which was the real life name of a lady who was a professional writer in the Sixties and Seventies, as was her husband. The two collaborated but also wrote many books each on their own, and there was quite the list of author names under which all this was printed. According to this impressive checklist - FictionDB: Dan Ross booklist/ psuedonyms - it is indeed the same Dan Ross, something that those who've sampled a Barnabus - Quentin - Dark Shadows paperback would likely figure within a few pages of Dan-Marilyn's trademark fabulous cliches, ropey dialogue and masterly set pieces. A quick g**gle turns up a Manor Books edition with Gothic Romance cover artwork - entirely appropriate from what I've read to date. It's also glaringly apparent that Fogbound so should have been filmed as a TV movie or whatever they call them.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 9, 2019 20:26:50 GMT
Even at a glance, that's an incredible list. It seems as if there were periods where Ross was cranking out a full length "novel" each week.
Some crazy-ass publisher put out PR a few weeks ago stating that they're going to do reprints of all 32 of Ross's Dark Shadows novels. Who on Earth will buy them? The only point of those books was their interest as period collectibles. I suppose they might be of interest to insomniacs as sleeping aids.
It's been decades, but as I recall the typical Marilyn Ross effusion went like this:
A damp sea mist spread a veil of gathering grey gloom over the stately towers of Collinwood. Victoria Winters shivered and pulled the drawing room window shut as she stood looking out towards the cliffs of Widow's Hill, the sound of the waves crashing below the jagged rocks rumbling mournfully from afar. Vicki moved closer to the fire. Even the flames seemed to flicker with a sullen lack of warmth in the old fireplace.
Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, regal and composed, glanced at Vicki with a look of concern. "Aren't you feeling well, Vicki?" the mistress of Collins House queried.
Vicki mustered a bleak smile with an effort. "No, I'm fine, Mrs. Stoddard," she told the older woman. "It's just that it gets dark so early on these November nights."
Lather, rinse and repeat for 110 pages and you're done.
H.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 10, 2019 17:48:12 GMT
Even at a glance, that's an incredible list. It seems as if there were periods where Ross was cranking out a full length "novel" each week. Some crazy-ass publisher put out PR a few weeks ago stating that they're going to do reprints of all 32 of Ross's Dark Shadows novels. Who on Earth will buy them? The only point of those books was their interest as period collectibles. I suppose they might be of interest to insomniacs as sleeping aids. It's been decades, but as I recall the typical Marilyn Ross effusion went like this: A damp sea mist spread a veil of gathering grey gloom over the stately towers of Collinwood. Victoria Winters shivered and pulled the drawing room window shut as she stood looking out towards the cliffs of Widow's Hill, the sound of the waves crashing below the jagged rocks rumbling mournfully from afar. Vicki moved closer to the fire. Even the flames seemed to flicker with a sullen lack of warmth in the old fireplace.Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, regal and composed, glanced at Vicki with a look of concern. "Aren't you feeling well, Vicki?" the mistress of Collins House queried.Vicki mustered a bleak smile with an effort. "No, I'm fine, Mrs. Stoddard," she told the older woman. "It's just that it gets dark so early on these November nights."Lather, rinse and repeat for 110 pages and you're done. H. Heh! Spot on. I only read one or two of the Dark Shadows novels in an abridged form and only remember them as especially limp stuff. A few Gothics of Ross were better, competent stuff, but nothing earth shattering. Writers like D.Daniels, Virginia Coffman or Sandra Shulman with her Satanic Gothics were much more interesting. One of the strength of the Gothic was that everything was possible. But Ross always went the safe way.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 10, 2019 19:23:34 GMT
Hi Andreas, I really like Dorothy Daniels' Strange Paradise tie-in novels. The third one, Raxl, Voodoo Priestess is particularly interesting. I do not think these were ever distributed outside North America because they were tie-ins for a Gothic serial that wasn't ever shown in Europe or Down Under, so far as I am aware. In general, Daniels' writing seems a bit more nuanced and thoughtful than Dan Ross but I think he produced a lot more. Dorothy Daniels and her husband were both writers, as I think I noted previously, and sometimes they collaborated and sometimes each worked solo. I don't think Dan Ross's wife, the real life Marilyn, ever wrote anything. I read somewhere that he copyrighted everything in her name so she would get residuals in the event of his death.
Best wishes, Steve
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Post by andydecker on Oct 11, 2019 10:11:05 GMT
Hi Andreas, I really like Dorothy Daniels' Strange Paradise tie-in novels. The third one, Raxl, Voodoo Priestess is particularly interesting. I do not think these were ever distributed outside North America because they were tie-ins for a Gothic serial that wasn't ever shown in Europe or Down Under, so far as I am aware. In general, Daniels' writing seems a bit more nuanced and thoughtful than Dan Ross but I think he produced a lot more. Dorothy Daniels and her husband were both writers, as I think I noted previously, and sometimes they collaborated and sometimes each worked solo. I don't think Dan Ross's wife, the real life Marilyn, ever wrote anything. I read somewhere that he copyrighted everything in her name so she would get residuals in the event of his death. Best wishes, Steve Hi, Steve.
As it happens, I actually read Raxl, Voodoo Priestess. It was one of those inexplicable puchases done by a German publisher, marketed as a horror novel. I reviewed it for an overview of the edition. Of course there was not one bit of informationen for the reader that this was a: a novelisation of a tv-soap which never aired in this country and b: it was a limp pseudo gothic and no.3 of a tie-in series. But the series was already on its last leg at the time, I guess, they just emptied the drawers. It was quite comman at the time, to market Gothics as Horror. the same happened to Dark Shadows which was published under a similiar ruse. Called Barnabas the Vampire there were ten or so abridged translations. (Also without any information of the tv-series which also never aired here.)
According to my notes I thought the writing actually better than the episodes of Strange Paradise, which I found on Youtube. Awful, almost laughingly bad. A castle on an island in the Caribbean, but you never see the ocean or the Caribbean. The ideas were wacky, which sure was amusing, but the shoestring budget killed them dead.
Still the novel didn't work for me. The Love Boat formula was too evident, an A story - the strangers come to an island - married to the B story - the island with its ghosts and the frozen bride - and hilarity ensues. In this case it was the mafia, which didn't worked well imho. But with the static concept it sure was a thankless task to write such a book.
Still I was interested enough to buy some more of Daniels, one of her Gothics.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 11, 2019 10:27:11 GMT
Here are two of the many Ross'. This is "Barnabas, Quentin and the Avenging Ghost" This is "Cellars of the Dead"
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Post by helrunar on Oct 11, 2019 12:08:52 GMT
Thanks, Andreas! That Barnabas cover is wild. Looks more like an issue of the Tomb of Dracula comic book of the same era in the US (I don't know if you have heard of that one--I read it, for a while).
The German translations might have actually improved on Dan Ross--I have no idea. I imagine the writers involved had to churn them all out very quickly.
Best, Steve
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Post by andydecker on Oct 11, 2019 13:27:47 GMT
Thanks, Andreas! That Barnabas cover is wild. Looks more like an issue of the Tomb of Dracula comic book of the same era in the US (I don't know if you have heard of that one--I read it, for a while). The German translations might have actually improved on Dan Ross--I have no idea. I imagine the writers involved had to churn them all out very quickly. Best, Steve I don't think Marvel's cover editor has ever used such a garish colour palette. But this was a trademark of artist Lutohin, who did hundreds of them.
I was - and still am - a big fan of Tomb of Dracula. I still have it in more editions including the b/w magazines I like to admit One of the few comics of the time I still re-read now and then. Wolfman and Colan captured the Count better then so many novelists. At least for a time. At the end it often was rubbish. And you are right. the translation may have imroved the novels.
Here are two more Ross. His work was everywhere at the time. These two belong to a short-lived so-called "Horror Edition" from 1976 which consisted mostly of Gothics. Covers were randomly bought The first is "Ghost of Dark Harbor" If the cover seems familiar, it is from the sf novel Gwen, in Green painted by Jim Burns. the writer was Zach Hughes. The second one is A Hearse for Dark Harbor. Frankly I never read them, it may be a series. Which of course wasn't advertised as such. Back then nobody cared or didn't have the informations. And this imprint by publisher Ullstein, back then one of the big guns, had a couple of genuine horror novels, to be fair. The godawful Druid Stone by Simon Majors (Gardner Fox) and The Dark Below by Michael T. Hinkemeyer, who also wrote his version of Tryon's Harvest Home under the title Summer Solstice. (You know, the american version of The Wicker Man, which Stephen King re-imagined as Children of the Corn) But the rest were purebred Gothics.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 11, 2019 15:15:25 GMT
Hi again Andreas, those are cool to see! I was not even aware of "Clarissa Ross" until looking at that link with all the Ross aliases. He really churned this stuff out.
And I know this seems quite odd, but I'd completely forgotten that Tomb of Dracula was a Marvel book. I'm so out of touch with the comics world now, and I find what has happened with it--how corporate and bloated it has all become--really distasteful and it makes it all very boring to me. I guess at some point maybe we'll hear about a Tomb of Dracula film with a bloated budget starring Benedict Cumberbatch and the latest hot ingenue actress as Jessica van Helsing. (I think they got the idea for that character from either Dracula AD 72 or Satanic Rites of Dracula but I have never bothered to find out if that's so; it was just what I assumed at the time). I think I still have a couple of the old issues in one of my boxes. I am not at all a collector--I just like pre 1980 pop culture because it was what I grew up with, and the quality just seemed more interesting and truly character driven. The current idea of character just seems like an endless farrago of cliches. But I'm on the soap box again and I should stop.
I presume there were European language editions of all the Marvel comic books in the 70s. Lots of work for the translators back then.
cheers, Steve
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 11, 2019 16:06:47 GMT
I guess at some point maybe we'll hear about a Tomb of Dracula film with a bloated budget starring Benedict Cumberbatch You seem to forget that Cumberbatch is already Dr Strange. No, it will have to be Tom Selleck.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 11, 2019 16:15:35 GMT
LOL! Thanks for the laugh, JoJo. I needed that.
Best, Hel
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Post by helrunar on Oct 11, 2019 17:32:36 GMT
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Post by andydecker on Oct 11, 2019 18:55:40 GMT
I will remain off topic, so be warned :-)
Marvel was – and is – very present in Europe. Like DC. From 1966 to 1973 an outfit called BSV published 238 issues. There were not chronological, more like an anthology. The no.1 for instance was Spider-Man 29, no.2 was Fantastic Four 43 and so on. Later they expanded the line up to series like Iron Man or Captain Marvel. Also they were in black and white. In 1974 BSV underwent a transformation and became Williams. (This is rather complicated, as these publishers were a subsidiary of an American outfit called Williams Communications Group which in turn was a daughter of Warner.) Everything got re-tooled. They started with 7 series chronologicaly, so this time the reader got Fantastic Four 1 or Avenger 1.
Tomb of Dracula and Frankenstein were part of this. ToD was cancelled with issue 33 to my regret. I read the Stoker novel as a young lad and became a life long fan. So everything Dracula was of interest. ToD was a relevation with its great art by Colan and the adultish story-telling. Especially compared to the early superhero work. Even in 74 the early Lee/Kirby books were old-fashioned and seemed poor to my 14 year old taste. While Frankenstein became later an unreadable mess, the first issues with their rather faithful adaption of the novel inspired me to read the book.
The same publisher also did a anthology series called Horror which published material of DC's mystery line, from House of Mystery to Ghosts and so on. 148 monthly issues from 72 to 85. But to my regret I never collected these :-) In hindsight these were so well done, they chose the best covers, among them all the Kaluta or Wrightson works.
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