Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney

by Jack Seabrook

  Back at the same meeting point, a little boy points out Brick to a policeman, and he is caught. Brick identifies Al, who manages to escape and tries to leave town with Tina in a taxicab. The alert cabbie signals a police car, however, and the newlyweds are arrested, taken to the police station, and interrogated. The plan failed because a nine-year-old boy had written his name in the dust on the trailer in Salt Lake City. He was then able to identify Brick as the driver for the police after the robbery.

  Al and Tina are taken to an office, where they learn that Brick had given everyone's names to the police. Al agrees to tell them where the money is in exchange for Tina's freedom. After the money is recovered, Al gets a lecture and the club decides not to prosecute anyone in order to avoid bad publicity. Al flies home that evening and never sees Brick again. The story ends with Al holding Tina's hand and realizing that "now I knew what is important and what life is for..." (190)—he has matured in the course of the story and now realizes that love matters more than money.

  The three-part serial in Good Housekeeping was successful enough for Jack Finney to turn it into his first novel, which was published by Doubleday the next year, in February 1954. The novel is not significantly different than the serialized story, and all of the major plot twists are unchanged. Minor revisions abound, though, often adding expletives or salacious details to scenes that were more innocent in the family magazine.

  In chapter seven of the novel, background details about Guy's family are added, as are more details to strengthen Jerry's motivations for robbery. This chapter also deletes the details of the plan to go cross-country in a trailer; this is held back from the reader until chapter eleven, when the five friends actually make the trip. This method of creating suspense mirrors that used by Finney in holding back the details of the actual robbery from the reader.

  Finney would use this same technique in his other three caper novels, The House of Numbers, Assault on a Queen, and The Night People, with varying degrees of success.

  The main change in the middle part of the novel concerns a dream that Tina has while they are driving to Reno; she has a nightmare that Al will be killed in the robbery, and this leads him to try to back out of the scheme. The latter part of the novel has few differences from the serialized version.

  Reviewers at the time were supportive of Jack Finney's first novel. Anthony Boucher, writing in the New York Times, called Finney "the admirable short-story writer," remarked that "the elaborately ingenious gimmicks with which the raid is carried out would stir the admiration of Raffles or even of Arsène Lupin," and concluded that "the high enterprise and dazzling execution of the crime itself will stay with you." James Sandoe of the New York Herald Tribune called 5 Against the House a "pretty sad work" but admitted that "the essential gimmick is worth a look for its preposterous ingenuities and Mr. Finney gives the events some nice panic-striking swerves." Sergeant Cuff of the Saturday Review added that "implausabilities abound, but story is well paced."

  Perhaps even more important to Jack Finney's life was the sale of 5 Against the House to Columbia Pictures; it was made into a motion picture of the same name and released in May 1955. A paperback edition of the novel was issued by Pocket Books in July 1955 to coincide with the film. Stirling Silliphant, John Barnwell, and William Bowers wrote the screenplay and Phil Karlson directed it. Finney was said to have disliked the film (Bosky 173).

  Viewed today, it is a disappointing adaptation of the novel that turns Brick into a psychotic Korean War veteran and Tina into a glamorous lounge singer. The climax is utterly different and clichéd — Brick steals the money and runs for it; he is cornered in a parking garage by Al and the police and talked out of using his gun. The film is most interesting when it follows the novel closely, in the trip to Reno and the robbery of Harold's Club. The film is discussed in more detail in chapter nineteen.

  5 Against the House is a mediocre novel that has not been reprinted in America since 1955. Its chief value is that it set Jack Finney's career as a novelist in motion and set the scene for the series of caper novels that he would write over the next twenty-five years. His second novel would be much more memorable.

  FOUR

  The Body Snatchers

  Jack Finney's next published work came in the November 26, 1954 issue of Collier's, the bi-weekly magazine that had published so many of his early short stories. He had not published anything since 5 Against the House, which had been issued as a novel in February of that year, and his last story for Collier's had appeared on October 18,1952 ("Diagnosis Completed").

  "The Body Snatchers" was billed as "a new three-part serial," and would appear in three consecutive issues of Collier's (part two was published in the December 10, 1954 issue, followed by part three in the December 24, 1954 issue). Little did readers know that this would eventually become Finney's best-known tale, a story that would work its way into the cultural mind-set of the latter half of twentieth-century America.

  The story is told in first-person narration by Miles Bennell, a 28-year-old doctor in the small town of Santa Mira, California. His former girlfriend, Becky Driscoll, arrives at his office just before closing time on a Thursday to report that she is worried about her cousin Wilma, who has come to believe that her Uncle Ira is an impostor.

  After going to see Ira and finding him unchanged, Miles refers Wilma to a psychiatrist named Mannie Kaufman in nearby Valley Springs. On Friday, another patient tells Miles that her husband is not himself. By Tuesday, he has referred five more patients to Dr. Kaufman for the same problem.

  On Wednesday night, Miles and Becky go on a date to the movies but are summoned by Jack Belicec, who takes them to his home and shows them a strangely unformed body that has appeared on the billiard table in his basement. Miles examines the body and decides that it is somehow not yet alive. He, Becky, Jack, and Jack's wife Theodora agree that they do not want to call the local police. Miles notices that the body appears to be a model of none other than Jack Belicec.

  At three a.m. on Thursday morning, Jack and Theodora arrive at Miles's house and Miles has to sedate Theodora. She is frantic because she had trouble waking Jack after he fell asleep. On a hunch, Miles runs to Becky's house, breaks into her basement, and finds a double of Becky there. He takes Becky home and meets Jack, Theodora, and Mannie Kaufman. They return to Jack's house, only to find the body gone from the basement.

  In part one of "The Body Snatchers," Finney sets the stage for a tale of horror and moves the story along quickly. All of the main characters are introduced and the small town setting is depicted quite well. The ending is a cliffhanger that is sure to make readers anxious for the arrival of part two.

  The second part of the serial begins with Mannie Kaufman providing a logical explanation that the people of Santa Mira are suffering from mass hysteria. Jack produces a file he has amassed of clippings reporting unusual events (much like those found in the books of phe-nomenologist Charles Fort), including a local story about seed pods from outer space.

  After Miles and Jack finally report the body in Jack's basement to the police, the tide in Santa Mira starts to turn. First a patient tells Miles that all is well, then he hears the same story from Wilma. That night, however, Jack finds four giant seed pods in Miles's basement. Miles and Jack recall the news clipping about seed pods from outer space as they watch the pods begin to take human form before their eyes. Miles destroys the pods and attempts to telephone the FBI in San Francisco, but the lines are tampered with and the call is unsuccessful.

  Miles, Becky, Jack, and Theodora pile into Jack's car and drive out of Santa Mira, traveling eleven miles on Highway 101. They stop and check the trunk of the car, where they find two more pods that Miles destroys. They decide to return to Santa Mira to get help.

  Jack drops off Miles and Becky back in town, and they walk the streets, noticing that everything around them seems dead. There is nothing happening, homes are in disrepair, and lawns have not been maintained. They are shocked to realize that they had no
t noticed the gradual change in Santa Mira. Returning to Becky's house, they stand outside a window and hear Becky's relatives make fun of Becky's concerns. Miles and Becky realize that the voices they hear do not belong to human beings. They run, calling Jack Belicec along the way to tell him what's happening.

  Miles and Becky visit the home of Professor Budlong (an appropriate name for someone who has been replaced by a seed pod), who discusses how long it might have taken spores to drift through space toward Earth and then admits that he's one of them. Having been replaced by a space seed, he no longer feels emotion and explains that the pods' only goal is the survival of their species.

  Budlong remarks that life "'takes any form necessary'" (124), including copying a pattern from human bodies. The pods plan to take over the world but can only survive on Earth for five years, after which they will move on into space, having used up this planet. As part two ends, Miles and Becky leave Professor Budlong's house and see Jack, chased by police and driving frantically through Santa Mira. Miles and Becky climb into the hills on the edge of town, tiring, realizing that nowhere is safe.

  In part two of the serial, Finney methodically disposes of any reasonable explanation for what is happening and ratchets up the terror that Miles, Becky, and the reader feel as the characters come to realize that they are up against a seemingly unbeatable foe.

  The conclusion of the three-part serial begins on Saturday, just over a week after the story began. Miles and Becky return to Miles's office, where they are soon trapped by Mannie Kaufman, Professor Budlong, and two other pod people. Miles and Becky use their wits to defeat the first attempt to replace them with pods and escape by attacking their captors as they try to transfer them to a jail cell.

  Miles and Becky head for the hills and hide in a field until darkness falls. They walk toward Highway 101 and see pods growing in a field. They fill the field's irrigation ditches with gasoline and set the pods on fire, burning them as they grow. A crowd catches Miles and Becky but lacks emotion, almost as if uncertain about what to do with the humans.

  At the last minute, Jack Belicec arrives with FBI agents to rescue Miles and Becky. Everyone watches as the remaining pods drift off into space, leaving a clearly inhospitable planet behind. As the serial ends, Miles recalls the incident from a vantage point years later, recalling how the pod people eventually died off and Santa Mira came to life again. He and Becky are together and he can hardly believe it ever happened.

  But this much I know: once in a while, the orderly, immutable sequences of life are inexplicably shifted and altered. You may read occasional queer little stories about them, or you may hear vague distorted rumors of them, and you probably dismiss them. But — some of them — some of them —are quite true [73].

  The editors of Collier's must have known that they had something special on their hands, because Jerome Beatty, Jr., wrote, in an editor's note in the December 24, 1954 issue, that

  Mr. Finney's realistic tale scared the devil out of us. For reassurance, we showed it to Dr. Harry A. Charipper, chairman of the department of biology of New York University, and asked him about the "transmutation" of "substance" from one form of life to another, which is how the body snatchers are taking us over. He says: "Readers need not be reminded that twenty-five years ago that which is real now was but fantasy. The scientific analysis on which this story is based is most intriguing and certainly within the realm of possibility." Gulp.

  Movie producer Walter Wanger also seems to have purchased the rights to the story by the time it appeared in Collier's-, William Relling, Jr., notes that Wanger traveled to Jack Finney's home town of Mill Valley, California, "just after New Year's Day in 1955" with screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring and director Don Siegel to talk about the story and to scout filming locations (63). Kevin McCarthy, who would star in the film, recalled that he was living in New York in 1955 when Siegel telephoned him from California '"about a story that had been recently serialized in Collier's, the popular weekly magazine.'" McCarthy told an interviewer that '"I guess Siegel sent me the pertinent issues of the mag or I dug 'em up myself!'" (McCarty 233).

  Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the film that was made from the original story, has become a cult classic among cinema enthusiasts. What was it about the three-part serial in November and December 1954 that excited a movie producer and led to countless articles in scholarly journals and books?

  When asked about the many theories that have been advanced by critics, Jack Finney replied that he intended "The Body Snatchers" to be a good story and nothing more. '"I have read explanations of the 'meaning' of this story, which amuse me, because there is no meaning at all; it was just a story meant to entertain, and with no more meaning than that'" (King 290).

  At the same time that Daniel Mainwaring and Don Siegel were getting ready to film the story, Finney was working on an expanded version, which would be published as Dell paperback first edition number 42 in 1955. This is the version of the story that has received a great deal of critical attention, and it is interesting to note the changes made in the transformation from magazine serial to paperback novel.

  Unlike the novel 5 Against the House, which has few significant changes from the prior serialized version, the novel The Body Snatchers has major revisions that change the focus of the story and alter its conclusion.

  Chapter one of the novel is expanded, with entire paragraphs and many details added. Among the details are male and female skeletons (the male named Fred) that Miles keeps in his closet (11-12). These skeletons play an important role later in the novel, but Finney's light-hearted introduction of them in the early part of the book gives no hint of their later purpose. Finney also may be suggesting that Miles has psychological skeletons in his closet that will later be revealed.

  Wilma's character is filled out in chapter two with an anecdote from her childhood that she shares with Miles —she recalls going to a hardware store with her Uncle Ira and wanting a tiny door in a frame-that she saw there (16). This hint that Wilma is about to enter an Alice in Wonderland-like situation is strengthened by her other recollection, when she tells Miles of another time that she saw a cloud "'shaped like a rabbit'" (16).

  Miles's intelligence and trustworthiness are highlighted by a passage added to chapter three, where he recalls diagnosing Theodora Belicec with Rocky Mountain spotted fever the year before. It was an unusual diagnosis, but Miles was certain and Jack believed him (27). This story helps to create a bond of trust between Miles and the Belicecs that will serve to bolster their confidence in each other when strange things start to happen.

  Among the passages in chapters four and five that are added, expanded, or reworked is one which has been cited by critics as a key moment in the novel. In the middle of the night, Miles is awakened by his telephone ringing. He answers, but there is no one on the other end of the line. In the novel, the following section is added:

  A year ago the night operator, whose name I'd have known, could have told me who'd called. It would probably have been the only light on her board at that time of night, and she'd have remembered which one it was, because they were calling the doctor. But now we have dial phones, marvelously efficient, saving you a full second or more every time you call, inhumanly perfect, and utterly brainless; and none of them will ever remember where the doctor is at night, when a child is sick and needs him. Sometimes I think we're refining all humanity out of our lives [43].

  Miles thinks of the new telephone system as "inhumanly perfect," foreshadowing the alien pod people he will encounter later in the novel.

  Chapter six expands the search of Becky's basement and adds two full pages of description of Becky's pod and its resemblance to the real person (52-54). Two more paragraphs added at the chapter's end remove the cliffhanger that had concluded part one of the serial, as Mannie prepares a rational explanation for Miles.

  The next eight chapters expand the portion of the story that had appeared as part two of the serial. In chapter seven, Finney adds a story told
by Mannie Kaufman of a bizarre character known as the Mattoon Maniac; in chapter eight, additional Fortean stories are added to flesh out Jack's collection of clippings reporting unusual occurrences (71). Two more paragraphs are added later in chapter eight that feature Miles talking to his reflection in the mirror as he shaves. Miles's comments have also been cited by Glen M. Johnson in his insightful comparison of the novel and film (8). Miles says to himself:

  "You can marry them, all right; you just can't stay married, that's your trouble. You are weak. Emotionally unstable. Basically insecure. A latent thumb-sucker. A cesspool of immaturity, unfit for adult responsibility" [76].

  Once again, a passage that has been cited as central to understanding the themes of the novel is one that was absent from the original serial. Another important passage is added to chapter nine, where Miles walks along Main Street and observes that "it seemed littered and shabby" (77). He thinks that it's just due to his mood, however, and attaches no significance to the run-down appearance of downtown Santa Mira.

  Chapter ten begins with another passage that is not present in the serial and that has a similar effect. Here, Miles goes up to his attic and looks out of the window at the town below. He recalls all of the places and friends he has known since he was a boy, thinking "I knew them all, at least by sight, or to nod or speak to on the street. I'd grown up here...." He contrasts what he has always known with the present Santa Mira and thinks "And now I didn't know it any more" (89). The formerly friendly faces and places have become menacing and now menace Miles.

  Another big change in chapter ten occurs when Miles, rather than Jack, attempts to call the outside world for help. In the serial, Jack tries to call the FBI in San Francisco (119). In the novel, Miles calls old school friend Ben Eichler at the Pentagon (92-97) and only when this conversation fails does Jack try the FBI.