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James Hadley Chase (1906-1985) - pseudonym for René Brabazon Raymond - Wrote also as James L. Docherty, Ambrose Grant, Raymond Marshall |
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London-born former children's encyclopedia salesman and book wholesaler, who was inspired by the work of hardboiled American crime writers, and wrote No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939). It became a huge success and is still claimed to be one of the bestselling mysteries ever published. Although James Hadley Chase produced around 40 thrillers and gangster stories set in the United States, he only went there on short visits. Bailey screwed his head round quickly and looked towards the entrance. Every head in the room was turned in the same direction. A bright, white spotlight picked her out as she came in, followed by a tall young man, who grinned into the haze, waving his hand to unseen friends. Bailey watched her as she came down the aisle between the tables. He had heard about her looks and had often wondered just how good she was. Now that he saw her for the first time he drew in his breath sharply. (from No Orchids for Miss Blandish, London: Jarrolds, 1948, p. 11) James Hadley Chase was born René Brabazon Raymond in London, the son of Francis Harvey Raymond, an army officer. Chase was educated at King's School, Rochester, Kent; he also went to Calcutta to write a study of hydrophobia. Against his father's wishes, Chase gave up a career in science. At the age of 18, Chase left home and then worked in several jobs before devoting himself entirely to writing. In 1933, Chase married Sylvia Ray; they had one son. After reading James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Chase decided to try his own hand as a mystery writer. He had read about the American gangster Ma Barker and her sons, and with the help of maps and a slang dictionary, he composed in six weeks No Orchids for Miss Blandish, which was based more or less on William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary (1931). Raymond Chandler accused Chase of lifting verbatim or almost verbatim passages from his books and those of Jonathan Latimer and Dashiell Hammett. The name of the villain, Raven, in Miss Callaghan comes to Grief (1941), a violent story on the white slave traffic, was taken directly from Graham Greene's thriller A Gun For Sale (1936). In 1942, Chase and his publisher, Jarrolds, were found guilty of causing the publication of an obscene book. No Orchids for Miss Blandish was said to be written in six weeks, but actually Chase worked on it for almost a year. In the story a rich young heiress, Miss Blandish, is kidnapped by a mob of depraved killers. She fells in love with a one of the kidnappers, who lives in awe of his Ma - prefiguring James Gagney's role as Codie in the Raoul Walsh film White Heat (1948). Dave Fenner, the reporter turned private eye and hero of the story (he appears relatively late), was also featured in Twelve Chinks and a Woman (1940). Chandler characterized Chase's work as "half-cent pulp writing at its worst". However,
George Orwell defended the book in his essay
'Raffles and Miss Blandish' (1944). "To begin with, its central story
bears a very marked resemblance to William Faulkner's novel, Sanctuary.
Secondly, it is not, as one might expect, the product of an illiterate
hack, but a brilliant piece of writing, with hardly a wasted word or a
jarring note anywhere. . . . It assumes great sexual sophistication in
its readers (there is a scene, for intance, in which a gangster,
presumably of masochistic tendency, has an orgasm in the moment of
being knifed), and it takes for granted the most complete corruption
and self-seeking as the norm of human behaviour." (Critical Essays, London: Secker and Warburg, 1946, p. 147) Despite the wartime paper shortages, No Orchids for Miss Blandish sold half a million copies. The book was labelled as Fascist, but it was read more than any other title by serving members, men and women, of the British armed forces. As an answer to criticism, the publisher boasted that it "was responsible for improving national morale..." In 1942 the stage version, written by the author and Robert Nesbitt with additional dialogue by Val Guest, toured Britain from 1942 until 1949. The principal players were Robert Newton, Linden Travers, Hartley Power and Mary Clare. In France, translated as Pas d'orchidées pour Miss Blandish (1946), the book was published as the third title in Marcel Duhamel's Série Noire. Chase revised the text in 1961, paying particular attention to the dialogue. His mastery of American slang improved through the decades. Get a Load of This (1941), a musical with an additional dialogue by Arthur Macrea, was staged at the London Hippodrome. Picture Post called it as "London's Most Original Wartime Show". "On the stage, the brutality and crudity of the girls-and-gangster theme loses its sordidness. The audience knows it is all make-believe, and they enjoy the entertainment and novelty of the thing." (British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950 by Rebecca D'Monte, 2015, p. 173) Music and lyrics were written by Manning Sherwin and Val Guest. The audience was given an opportunity to play a slight part in the murder mystery. During World War II Chase served as a pilot in the RAF, ultimately achieving the rank of Squadron Leader. From this period dates Chase's unusual short story 'The Mirror in Room 22', in which he tried his hand outside the crime genre. It was set in an old house, occupied by officers of a squadron. The owner of the house had committed suicide in his bedroom and the last two occupants of the room have been found with a razor in their hands and their throats cut. The wing commander tells that when he started to shave before the mirror, he found another face in it. The apparition drew the razor across his throat. "The wing commander nodded. "I use a safety razor," he said. "Otherwise I might have met with a serious accident - especially if I used an old-fashioned cut-throat." The story was published under the author's real name in the anthology Slipstream (1946), containing articles and stories contributed to the Royal Air Force journal during the war. Chase wrote some 80 books. Many of his thrillers were set in the
fictional Paradise City, about sixty miles from Miami. More than twenty
have been adapted into
films. Chase's work have attracted some internationally
acclaimed directors, including Robert Aldrich, Julien
Duvivier, Joseph Losey, Volker Schlöndorff, and Krzysztof Zanussi. No Orchids for Miss Blandish has been filmed several times. Robert Aldrich's version, entitled The Grissom Gang
(1971), was a box-office failure
and led to loss of Aldrich Studios. Aldrich had read Orwell's famous
article and thought that his comments were true. "But the Grissom Gang
should have been at the head of the nostalgia cycle, and should have
taken off. . . . . I think the timig was perfect, the style of the
picture was right. If you're asking me
why that picture wasn't a success, I haven't a clue," Aldrich said in
an interview in 1974. (Robert Aldrich: Interviews, edited by Eugene L. Miller and Edwin T. Arnold, Jackson: University Press of Missisppi, 2004, pp. 79-80) Anatole Litvak's The Night of the Generals
(1967) was made from the novel by Hans Helmut Kirst, based on the
incident written by Chase. This murder mystery revolved around three
German generals and brutal killings of prostitutes. Peter O'Toole was
cast in the role of a psychopath war criminal. "In Litvak's version the
thing ticks louder than a two-dollar alarm clock and one half expects
Der Führer to break into the briefing session and inquire, in an accent
broad enough to suit the film's prevailing style, "Vot's mit dot crazy
tick-tock,"" said Richard Schickel in his review. (Life, February 17, 1967). Joseph Losey's screen adaptation of Chase's Eve (1945)
from 1962 was cut by the producers, the Hakim brothers. The original
California-based story was moved to Venice. Stanley Baker played a
British writer, Tyvian, who is obsessed by
a cold-hearted femme fatale, Eve (Jeanne Moreau). "Do you know
how much this weekend's going to cost me?" he asks Eve. "Two friends,
thirty thousand dollars …and a wife." Losey rejected Hugo Butler's initial screenplay as "too Hollywood" -
he wanted to give the story a more personal touch. ". . . it was a film
in which I was not only working out my sexual, personal relationships,
but also working out my exile," Losey recalled. (Joseph Losey by Colin Gardner, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, p. 94) A number of Chase's thrillers, such as I'll Get You For This
(1946), have stirred criticism for their violence. Many of them
are located in the US, but Chase made only two brief visits there, one
to Miami and one to New Orleans. Most of the author's knowledge of
America was derived from encyclopedias, detailed maps, and slang
dictionaries. Chase's series characters include a corrupt ex-commando
Brick-Top Corrigan, Vic Malloy, a Californian private eye, a former CIA
agent Mark Girland, millionaire playboy Don Miclem, and Helga Rolfe.
Vic Malloy appeared in You're Lonely When You're Dead (1949) and Figure It Out For Yourself (1950), and Mark
Girland in This Is For Real (1965) and You Have Yourself a Deal (1966). Corrigan stories were written under
the name Raymond Marshall, among others Mallory (1950) and Why Pick on Me? (1951). Don Miclem had his
adventures in European setting in Mission to Venice (1954) and Mission to Siena (1955). It has been suggested, that Chase's More Deadly Than the Male (1946), which came out under the pseudonym of Ambrose Grant, was largely Graham Greene's work. It was published in London by Eyre and Spottiswoode. At that time Greene worked for the publisher. The thriller got positive reviews from his circle, Anthony Powell, John Betjeman, Elizabeth Bowen and others. Possibly Chase and Greene met through their mutual friend, H.E. Bates. Greene also introduced Chase to his own Paris agent. In 1956, Chase moved to France, where many of his books were made into feature films. While in Cannes in 1957, he met France's greatest crime writer, Georges Simenon. With another "fake American," Peter Cheyney, his novels provided the model for the new roman noir, particularly as published in the Série noire and later in the Fleuve Noir collection. For some time, Chase and Greene had in Switzerland the same off-shore tax consultant, who was arrested in 1965 – it turned out that he had been closely connected with the Hollywood Mafia. However, Chase managed to withdraw all his money before the collapse of the company. His final home Greene made in the same village, Corseaux-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, where Chase died, on February 6, 1985. In a typical Chase story the protagonist tries to find his place in the sun by committing a crime - an insurance fraud or a theft. But the scheme fails and leads to a murder and finally to cul-de-sac, in which the hero realizes that he never had a chance to keep out of trouble. Women are often beautiful, clever, and treacherous; they kill unhesitating if they have to cover a crime. There's Always A Price Tag (1956) turns inside out the old plot, in which a man commits murder and then attempts to make his crime appear to be a suicide. In the story the protagonist attempts to make a suicide appear to be murder in order to lay his hands on the victim's insurance money. But there is no escape in Chase's world: "I looked out of the car window at the traffic, the people moving on the sidewalks, the shop windows and the blue of the sky. It seemed to me that it was imperative to store up in my mind the sight of these familiar things. I had a feeling I wouldn't see them again." Anson, a gambler and an energetic insurance salesman in Tell It to the Birds (1963), knows that he has never been able to hold onto money but still thinks of a robbery: "This is it, he thought. There is a time when everyman worth a nickle must make up his mind what to do with his life. I've put off my decision long enough. I'll never get anywhere without money. With Meg to help me and with fifty thousand dollars to get me started, I'll reach up and take the sun out of the sky." (from Tell It to the Birds, London: Robert Hale, 1963, p. 48) Feminists could say much about Chase's views about sexual roles. In this respect his thrillers are typical to the generic conventions of the time and do not offer anything new: "Anson looked searchingly at her. His eyes moved over her body. He thought: you meet a woman and she starts a chemical reaction in you. You think there is no one like her in the world, the something happens, and it is finished. She means less to me now than the used plate after a good meal, and how little can that be?" (Ibid., p. 185) Chase lived a secluded life and details of his personal history are uncertain. It is known that he was an opera lover and he built complicated models with Meccano sets. Sadistic treatment of women - a trait which he shared with Alfred Hitchcock - in a number of his stories got Chase into trouble with critics and the censors. Chase's female protagonist, Helga Rolfe, was introduced in An Ace up My Sleeve (1971). Helga speaks German, French and Italian fluently, wears a mink coat, and is used to approving male eyes.
Selected bibliography:
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