old Merry Bloody Christmas thread & "An Actor of Parts"

[toff]

vaultofevil.proboards.com/post/19889/thread

Any idea of the origin of the story by "P. S." titled "An Actor of Parts"?  It's in the 1965 anthology A Chamber of Horrors edited by John Charles Heywood Hadfield (1907-1999), but prior to that:

P.S. "Oh, what a Horrid Tale!" The Christmas Companion, edited by John Hadfield. E. P. Dutton, 1939.
P.S. "Oh, What a Horrid Tale!" The Fireside Book of Christmas Stories, edited by Edward Wagenknecht. Bobbs-Merrill, 1945.

However, searching on "Ernie the actor" from within the story turns up something earlier:

Hadfield, John, 1907-
Ernie the actor, a seasonable tale. n.p., 1937.
7p. 19cm.
"With Christmas greetings, from John and Anna Hadfield."
archive.org/details/nationalunioncat225libr/page/126/mode/2up?q=%22ernie+the+actor%22

Maybe Hadfield had included the story as a postscript to a Christmas letter, and thus assigned the pseudonym "P.S."?

I've been lucky as far as DIY Christmas horror anthologies go, but a couple they wouldn't let me publish (yet) include one involving a ghost boot kicking people in the ass, and another where the traumatized narrator's identity is drifting between a young mother, a child, and a demon imagined from a then-new painting.

[dem bones]

Thanks for that, Christopher. No surprise it never occurred to me that An Actor of Parts had a history prior to A Chamber of Horrors. We once included it as a stocking filler on a Vault Ad Calendar (very R.I.P.).

[toff]

It is a fun story, I'm glad you had mentioned it!

[dem bones]

Wallace Morgan. Oh, What a Horrid Tale!, Edward Wagenknecht [ed.], Fireside Book of Christmas Stories, 1945.

Wonder if we can find an anthologies worth of panto-themed supernatural/ horror stories?

Mostly dead obvious, and much crossover with The Stage. Think there may be another in Haining's compilation of 'lost' W. S. Gilbert stories.

Bram Stoker - The Star Trap: (Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party, 1908. Peter Haining [ed.], Greasepaint and Ghosts, 1982, & Co.)

J. B. Priestley - The Demon King: (The Strand, Jan. 1931: Peter Haining [ed.], Greasepaint and Ghosts, 1982, & Co.)

Eleanor Smith - Whittington's Cat: (Satan's Circus, 1934: Richard Dalby [ed.], Virago Book of Ghost Stories: Vol 2, 1991, & Co.).

Ruth Rendell - Loopy: (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Feb. 1983: Graham Masterton [ed.], Scare Care, 1989, & Co.).

Ian Taylor – Behind A Painted Smile: (Darrell Buxton [ed.], 5th BHF Book of Horror, 2021).

[toff]

Fair question, though my understanding of English theatre traditions is limited. Pantomime, burlesques, harlequinades - all a bit of a blur to me. I've wanted to explore the role of theatre in the Christmas ghost tradition, though. It's clear it's had one.

I'd found a Christmas ghost story involving a performance of Shakespeare play, different kind of thing though.  Also found a number of Christmas poems mentioning both Christmas ghosts and Clown, Harlequin, or Pantaloon (I can share though people generally haven't so much cared for a lot of the poetry I'd included, it's seemed).  No stories involving pantomime that I recall offhand. But there are a bunch of stories I downloaded from newspaper databases on the basis of promising keyword hits that I still have to go through.

[dem bones]

Clark Fay

William Templeton - Nobody Loves a Fairy: (The Bystander, 29 November 1939). Thisbe Boxton the pantomime fairy inflicts bizarre onstage revenge upon her callous husband, the Demon King, and his chorus girl floozie.