Through the persona of Bette Davis, the film offers contradictory ways of understanding a woman’s desire for independence, and the novel—whether read through the film or for the first time—offers a vivid portrait of a woman struggling to live her own life. Charlotte Vale learns how to “play the part” of an attractive woman, but she also learns how to tell her own story, and how to embrace the multitude of stars instead of the single entity of the moon.
Judith Mayne
The Ohio State University
June 2004
Thanks to my research assistant, Clarissa Moore; and to Terry Moore. Thanks also to Jean Casella for her thoughtful editing.
1. Influential feminist analyses of the film include those by Britton, Doane, Jacobs, Kaplan 1992, LaPlace, and White.
WORKS CITED
Allen, Jeanne Thomas, ed. Now, Voyager, Wisconsin/Warner Brothers Screenplay Series. Madison, Wisconsin and London, England: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Beam, Alex. Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital. New York: Public Affairs, 2001; rpt. 2003.
Behlmer, Rudy. Inside Warner Brothers (1935–1951). New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.
Britton, Andrew. “A New Servitude: Bette Davis, Now, Voyager, and the Radicalism of the Woman’s Film.” CineAction 26/27 (1992): 32–59.
Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Hauser, Marianne. “Fortunate Cruise.” Book Review. New York Times Book Review. November 30, 1941.
Jacobs, Lea. “Now, Voyager: Some Problems of Enunciation and Sexual Difference.” Camera Obscura 7 (1981): 89–109.
Kaplan, E. Ann. Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
———. “Mothering, Feminism and Representation: The Maternal Melodrama and the Woman’s Film 1910-1940.” Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. Christine Gledhill. London: British Film Institute, 1987, 113–37.
LaPlace, Maria. “Producing and Consuming the Woman’s Film: Discursive Struggle in Now, Voyager.” Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. Christine Gledhill. London: British Film Institute, 1987,138–66.
Mayne, Judith. Cinema and Spectatorship. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.
Meyers, Erin. “How to Get Bette Davis Eyes: Star Performance and the Construction of Femininity.” Seminar paper. Dept. of Women’s Studies, Ohio State University, 2004.
Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. New York: Methuen, 1982; rpt.1984.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Bantam Books, 1971; rpt 1972.
Prouty, Olive Higgins. Pencil Shavings. Worcester, MA: Commonwealth Press and The Friends of the Goddard Library, 1961; rpt. 1985.
Ross, Mary. “Fiction of the Winter Season.” Book Review. New York Herald Tribune, October 26, 1941.
Van Dyne, Catharine. “Now, Voyager.” Library Journal 66, October 1, 1941.
Wallis, Hal, and Charles Higham. Starmaker: The Autobiography of Hal Wallis. New York: Macmillan, 1980.
White, Patricia. Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-twentieth century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.
SKYSCRAPER
Faith Baldwin
Afterword by Laura Hapke
eISBN: 9781558617872 | ISBN: 9781558614574
Lynn is an ambitious young woman who loves her job in a gleaming new Manhattan skyscraper. Soon, Lynn falls in love with Tom, the young clerk down the hall. They are so in love that if they don’t get married, something improper is bound to happen…. But her company has a strict new policy: Any woman who marries will be immediately fired. First published in 1931 as a serial in Cosmopolitan—the same year the Empire State Building opened its doors—Skyscraper marks the advent of a new kind of romance, and a new kind of heroine. This Sex in the City for its time was made into a pre-Code Hollywood movie starring Maureen O’Sullivan.
“With its sexual bargains and betrayals, insider trades and financial maneuvers, Skyscraper is pulp fiction at its best.”
—Maria Dibattista, author of Fast-Talking Dames
“A captivating and quietly subversive novel, featuring a spunky young working woman struggling to make it on her own. Skyscraper declares that despite all challenges, women should insist on their right to have it all.”
—Alicia Daly, Ms.
FAITH BALDWIN (1893–1978) was one of the most prolific mid-twentieth century authors of popular fiction. She published eighty-five books between 1921 and 1977, many of them focused on women juggling family and career, including White Collar Girl, Men Are Such Fools!, and An Apartment for Peggy, which was made into a Hollywood film in 1948.
BEDELIA
Vera Caspary
Afterword by A. B. Emrys
eISBN: 9781558616486 | ISBN: 9781558615076
Long before Desperate Housewives, there was Bedelia: beautiful and “adoring as a kitten.” An ideal housekeeper and lover, she wants nothing more than to please her insecure new husband, who can’t believe his luck. But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake. Caspary builds this story to a peak of psychological suspense when her characters are trapped together in a blizzard. The true Bedelia—the woman who escaped a life on the street—is revealed.
“You must read Bedelia to see just how slick Miss Caspary’s technique of soft-shoe terror can be—how frightening she can make the chatter at an innocent dinner party, the lure of a lady’s deshabille, the glimpse of a black pearl in a dresser drawer.”
—New York Times
“A sinister entertainment, especially for admirers of the psychological horror story.”
—New Yorker
“Vera Caspary’s gift is perhaps more subtle and deadly than Jim Thompson’s, David Goodis’s, and Charles Willeford’s.”
—Robert Polito, author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson
“A tour de force of psychological suspense, Desperate Housewives meets Double Indemnity in Caspary’s Bedelia.”
—Liahna Armstrong, President Emerita, Popular Culture Association
LAURA
Vera Caspary
Afterword by A. B. Emrys
ISBN: 9781558615052 (print only)
Meet Laura Hunt, a “modern woman”—ravishing, elegant, ambitious, and utterly unknowable. No one can resist her charms, not even cynical NYPD detective Mark McPherson sent to track down the killer who has turned Laura into a faceless corpse. By day McPherson interrogates the men who loved her; by night, he combs her apartment for clues, gazing at her portrait, smelling her lingering scent. One stormy night, the door opens to an electrifying plot twist.
Laura is a work of riveting psychological suspense, earning Otto Preminger’s 1944 film adaptation an Academy Award, and lasting renown as one of the greatest film noirs.
“An intriguing melodrama . . . A top-drawer mystery.”
—New York Times
“Everyone loves the movie, of course, but it is now possible again to read this stunning novel with one of the great surprise moments in the history of mystery fiction. Brava!”
—Otto Penzler, owner, The Mysterious Bookshop
“Laura continues to weave a spell . . . achieving a kind of perfection in its balance between low motives and high style.”
—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times
“Laura will beguile and unsettle readers: a love story with a sinister underside . . . it remains a compelling original.”
—Liahna Armst
rong, president emerita, Popular Culture Association
VERA CASPARY is the author of many books, plays, and screenplays. Her film credits include The Blue Gardenia and A Letter to Three Wives.
THE BLACKBIRDER
Dorothy B. Hughes
Afterword by Amy Villarejo
eISBN: 9781558617742 | ISBN: 9781558614680
For three years Julie Guilles, the daughter of wealthy American expats, has navigated Nazi-occupied Paris as an agent of the French Resistance. Caught in a web of political intrigue, Julie flees to New York in secret, where an acquaintance from the old world turns up dead on her doorstep. Once a sheltered socialite, Julie must rely on raw nerve and a smuggled diamond necklace to find the legendary Blackbirder, a trafficker who flies refugees to freedom across the Mexican border.
“One of crime fiction’s finest writers of psychological suspense.”
—Marcia Muller, author of the Sharon McCone novels
“Dorothy B. Hughes was such a mistress of dark suspense, I always had to read the end of her books first to keep from biting off all my fingernails.”
—Margaret Maron, author of the Deborah Knott novels
IN A LONELY PLACE
Dorothy B. Hughes
Afterword by Lisa Maria Hogeland
eISBN: 9781558617223 | ISBN: 9781558614550
Postwar Los Angeles is a lonely place where a strangler is preying on young women. Dix Steele, a cynical vet with a chip on his shoulder, is the LAPD’s top suspect. Dix knows enough to watch his step, especially since his best friend is on the force, but when he meets the sultry Laurel Gray, something begins to crack. Hughes’s brilliant portrayal of American masculinity and the fine line between danger and desire became the classic film noir by Nicholas Ray, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. In a Lonely Place is an unforgettable thriller.
“If you wake up in the night screaming with terror, don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
—New York Times Book Review
“A tour de force laying open the mind and motives of a killer with extraordinary empathy. The structure is flawless, and the scenes of postwar LA have an immediacy that puts Chandler to shame. No wonder Hughes is the master we keep turning to.”
—Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I. Warshawski novels
“A superb novel by one of crime fiction’s finest writers of psychological suspense . . . What a pleasure it is to see this tale in print once again!”
—Marcia Muller, author of the Sharon McCone novels
“This lady is the queen of noir, and In a Lonely Place is her crown.”
—Laurie R. King, author of the Mary Russell novels
DOROTHY B. HUGHES (1904–1993) was the author of several crime novels, many of which were made into major motion pictures. Her books include The Blackbirder, In a Lonely Place, Ride the Pink Horse, and The Fallen Sparrow.
BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING
Evelyn Piper
Afterword by Maria Dibattista
eISBN: 9781558617759 | ISBN: 9781558614741
Blanche Lake, a young mother, arrives to pick up her daughter at nursery school. But Bunny Lake has vanished, and soon everyone suspects that she is merely a figment of her mother’s female imagination. Searching desperately for her daughter, with no help from the police, Blanche needs every trick in the book to navigate a world that distrusts and disowns her. This psychological thriller was made into a classic motion picture in 1965 by Otto Preminger.
“The distraught, gutsy, and hip mother I played in Bunny Lake Is Missing is my all-time favorite role.”
—Carol Lynley
“A brilliant tale of psychological suspense, Bunny Lake is Missing is a classic thriller—a riveting revisit to the dark side of the 50s, where the tension beneath the calm surface has an undertow that drags the reader into its grip. Prime pulp—pure pleasure.”
—Linda Fairstein, author of The Bone Vault
“A beautiful job . . . Frantic scenes of action, contagious terror, and near hysteria.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
EVELYN PIPER was the pseudonym of Merriam Modell (1908–1994), whose novels include The Lady and Her Doctor, Hanno’s Doll, and The Nanny (1965), which was made into a film starring Bette Davis.
NOW, VOYAGER
Olive Higgins Prouty
Afterword by Judith Mayne
eISBN: 9781558616332 | ISBN: 9781558614765
A soaring romance and one of the greatest makeover stories in literature, Now, Voyager, first enthralled readers in 1941 and became a screen phenomenon the following year. Bette Davis triumphantly portrayed heroine Charlotte Vale, the shy, dowdy Boston heiress who blossoms into a defiant, sexually liberated woman. After a nervous breakdown releases her from the tyranny of her mother and blueblood society, Charlotte embarks on an ocean cruise where her fabulous new wardrobe and burgeoning charm lead to a love affair with a married man. Charlotte’s transformation has just begun. . . .
“At last we have the moon and the stars: at last, that is, the public can read the novel on which one of Hollywood’s most stirring melodramas is based.”
—Tania Modleski, author of Loving With a Vengeance
“Like the film it inspired, Olive Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager is as striking for the conventions it bucks as for the ones it embraces: a vivid reminder of a time when people crossed the ocean in liners and wore hats, and a hymn to an American ideal of social, moral, and emotional independence.”
—David Leavitt, author of The Man Who Knew Too Much
OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY (1882–1974) is the author of many books including Stella Dallas (1923), which was adapted into three films and a long-running radio serial. Later in her life, Prouty became patron and mentor to Sylvia Plath, and the inspiration for Philomena Guinea, the meddlesome character in Plath’s The Bell Jar.
THE G-STRING MURDERS
Gypsy Rose Lee
Afterword by Rachel Shteir
eISBN: 9781558617612 | ISBN: 9781558615038
A mystery set in the underworld of burlesque theater in 1941, The G-String Murders draws from the larger-than-life experiences of the legendary queen of the striptease. When one performer is found strangled with a g-string, no one is above suspicion. The cops face off with the theater’s tough-talking guys, and it’s clear that Gypsy will have to crack the case herself. The basis of the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck, The G-String Murders was the first of two murder mysteries written by Gypsy Rose Lee.
“Recommended for the readers who feel better when their eyebrows are raised.”
—New Yorker
“A rich and lusty job, brimming over with infectious vitality and a hilarious jargon of her own.”
—Life
“Lurid, witty. . . rich show business vocabulary and stage door gags make her book almost a social document. The G-String Murders builds up to a hair-raising climax.”
—Time
MOTHER FINDS A BODY
Gypsy Rose Lee
Foreword by Erik Lee Preminger
eISBN: 9781558618022 | ISBN: 9781558618015
A sexy, hard-boiled murder mystery by America’s most famous burlesque entertainer, this steamy sequel to The G-String Murders, Gypsy Rose Lee’s noir thriller, reads as if it’s ripped from her own diary pages. When her mother finds a dead body in Gypsy’s honeymoon trailer, Gypsy realizes that no one is who they seem to be and everyone is worthy of suspicion.
“Pure ozone to those tired of ordinary oxygen.”
—New Yorker
“One of the greatest mysteries ever written.”
—Philadelphia Daily News
“Our most famous burlesque queen may raise the temperature with a strip tease, but she chills the blood when she goes into her detective routine.”
—Boston Post
GYPSY ROSE LEE (1911–1970) was the most famous burlesque performer and striptease artist of her day, renowned as much for her witty repartee as for removing her clothes. Born Louise Hovick in Seattle
, Washington, Lee first performed with her sister on the vaudeville circuit, eventually landing star billing at a top New York City burlesque theater. In 1937 she moved to Hollywood and went on to appear in twelve films and her own television show. A regular contributor to the New Yorker, Lee published two novels, and her memoir, Gypsy (1957), which became the inspiration for the hugely popular Broadway musical, Gypsy: A Musical Fable and the 1962 film starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood.
THE GIRLS IN 3-B
Valerie Taylor
Afterword by Lisa Walker
eISBN: 9781558617629 | ISBN: 9781558614567
Annice, Barby, and Pat are the girls in 3-B, three young women straight out of high school who leave their hometowns and land in the big city. In 1950s Chicago, they find refuge and danger. Encounters with predatory beatnik men, workplace drama, and lesbian trysts—the girls grow up quickly in this explosive melodrama about sexual identity and female friendship.
“The Girls in 3-B will give you a sense of the dangers and delights of passion between women in another era. . . . Valerie Taylor’s much-loved story has achieved well-deserved classic status in the lesbian pulp canon.”
—Ann Bannon, author of Odd Girl Out
“A remarkable slice of bohemia, Valerie Taylor gives ‘pulp’ a good name and weaves a wondrous tale of love, lesbianism, poetry, and sex around three young women who leave their small town for the allure of the big city.”
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