Broadsword Calling Danny Boy: on Alistair MacLean. Louis Shalako.

"Broadsword calling Danny Boy."

Louis Shalako

 

On Alistair MacLean.

I was just watching the 1979 film of Alistair MacLean’s Bear Island.

It has been said that the quality of his work was uneven. You could say that about any writer, if one compares the first thing they ever wrote against the last thing they ever wrote, along with some of the really great stuff when they were at their peak. Of course their work was variable, and so is mine and so is yours.

Author John Creasy wrote something like six hundred books, and there are a few in there, which I have read, where one wonders how it actually got published in the first place. Truth was, he was grinding them out relentlessly, at the dining room table, and trying to feed a family, when the going rate for a novel might have been a measly twenty-five pounds.

(How in the hell do you even do that? - ed.)

There is a big difference between six hundred books and twenty or thirty, that difference is the luxury of time.

I wanted to talk about Alistair MacLean due to the number of films that were adapted from his works.

First, a little background.

“In 1941, at the age of 19, MacLean was called up to fight in the Second World War with the Royal Navy, serving with the ranks of ordinary seaman, able seaman, and leading torpedo operator. He was first assigned to PS Bournemouth Queen, a converted excursion ship fitted for antiaircraft guns, on duty off the coasts of England and Scotland. Beginning in 1943, he served on HMS Royalist, a Dido-class light cruiser. There, he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting aircraft carrier groups in operations against Tirpitz, and other targets off the Norwegian coast. He took part in Convoy PQ 17 on Royalist. In 1944, Royalist and he served in the Mediterranean theatre, as part of the invasion of southern France and in helping to sink blockade runners off Crete and bombard Milos in the Aegean.” (Wiki)

Where Eagles Dare consistently ranks among the top five war adventure films of all times, and that’s pretty good company to be keeping for any writer. The Guns of Navarone is an acknowledged classic, one I have viewed many times. Force 10 from Navarone, another classic film.

Alistair at about twenty.

In terms of comparisons, River of Death is quite terrible, at least in the film version. And I have read the book, in fact I used to check for new titles at our local mall book shop, way back in the days when we had time, money, and plenty of hair on the old noggin…a leather jacket and a seventeen-hair mustache, if you really want to know.

Fear is the Key, this film has one of the best car chase scenes ever. What might have been described in the book is fully brought to life in this one. MacLean loved sending things over cliffs, for example vehicles in Where Eagles Dare and Guns of Navarone, as well as Bear Island. There are probably others, and this is one reason why they’re called action-adventure stories. Oh, yeah. In Breakheart Pass, a train goes over a cliff.

He wasn't exactly messing around, when it came time for things to go off of cliffs.

H.M.S. Ulysses, his first novel, was based on his wartime experience in the Royal Navy.

This accounts for some of the naval themes, arctic themes, for example Night without End. There are lots of ships in his novels, Golden Rendezvous for example.

The list of actors that have appeared in the films is impressive. Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Vanessa Redgrave, Harrison Ford, Robert Shaw, Rock Hudson, Charles Bronson, Christopher Lee, Patrick McGoohan, Carl Weathers, Lloyd Bridges, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Hawkins, Robert Morley, Edward Fox, Franco Nero, the list, ladies and gentlemen, goes on and on and on. Barry Newman, Ben Kingsley, John Vernon. Richard Harris and Anne Turkel, Burgess Meredith and David Janssen, John Carradine.

Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasance and Michael Dudikoff in River of Death, just to name a few more. And I know I’ve left a few out—I had to, there’s just too many films and too many names.

Gregory Peck, David Niven, Richard Widmark, Ed Lauter, Ben Johnson, Charles Durning, Richard Crenna. Gia Scala and Irene Papas. As I said, this is a very long list.

Throw in a hundred more character actors, whose faces you might recognize, and whose names may be vaguely familiar, and you start to get the idea of just how successful Alistair MacLean actually was. Patrick Wymark and Michael Hordern, in Where Eagles Dare, for example, these actors each have very long lists of credits, starring and supporting roles, in film and theatre. Barbara Bach and Michael Byrne in Force 10 from Navarone is (or are), just one more example, then there were Mary Ure and Ingrid Pitt. Jill Ireland.

These are just a few of the ‘vapid females’ (essentially, Bond Girls), in what are called stories ‘of good Englishmen and bad Germans’. Which would appear to be an entire genre in itself, at least when a good writer gets hold of it.

It’s different for everybody of course, but when I read these books and saw the films for the first time, I was a young man, impressionable, an inveterate reader above all else. I soaked it all up like a sponge.

These are the stories that make a young man’s fancy turn towards writing a few stories of his own someday…

The books that kind of stick to your ribs, like soul food for the adventurous home-boy.

When I fantasize about my own humble bookshelves, which I do from time to time, (if only we had money!), this would be one box set I might be willing to pay money for—just for the purposes of study, scholarship, and maybe even stealing a few ideas here and there as a writer myself. Maybe even just learning a little something at the knee of a master. Or maybe it’s just some kind of an escape.

It always was, an escape.

There is nothing wrong with a little escapism, at the time we probably needed it, and there are times when we still do.

In which case, we will always have someplace to go.

I have written a critique of Where Eagles Dare, and you can read it at the link below. I describe it as ‘a series of plot holes flying in close formation’, and yet I still enjoy the film, just as much as I did the book, such a very long time ago.

MacLean figured out how to make it work for him, and perhaps that is the real lesson here. I have no idea of who the reader is, I have no idea if the lesson is relevant to you, although plenty of folks write, and plenty more dream about it just as I did. I can only hope you enjoyed reading this story.

No, ladies and gentlemen, it turns out the lesson was for me.

And why not.

I’ve always needed plenty of stimulation.

END

Plenty of stimulation.

Alistair MacLean. (Wiki)

When Eight Bells Toll.

The Golden Rendezvous.

Fear is the Key.

Night Without End.

Breakheart Pass.

Where Eagles Dare: A Series of Plot Holes Flying in Close Formation.

Why I Love Louis L’Amour.

On Agatha Christie.

Louis Shalako has books and stories, ebooks and audiobooks, available from Google Play.

 

Thank you for reading. The blog is acting rather wonky today, and trying to get the text all in the same shade of black has defeated me.

#Louis

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Love Louis L'Amour. Louis Shalako.

He loved the stories.

Louis Shalako

Why I Love Louis L’Amour.

 

I love Louis L’Amour books and stories. I like the highly-romanticized version of the American West, which is only half myth. Some of it might even be real. And a lot of the rest is bullshit—

We’ll talk about that some other time.

I suppose it’s the action, the adventure, the escape into a world where the moral questions are easy enough.

It’s good versus evil, no mistaking that.

One must assume the characters are engaging, the women beautiful, the villains are clearly the villains. The landscapes in the background speak for themselves.

Louis L’Amour is one of the few authors that can regularly bring a tear to my eye. This is when the male character arrives in town, immediately goes for the most beautiful girl in town, and often noting that he’s going to have to buy a cow—for the milk, right, like when they marry, settle down, and have lots and lots of children. That’s pure romance, and even men like a little romance once in a while.

This is the character with a bag of peach pits and cherry pits and apple seeds to plant when he gets his own spread…a hard worker, someone with a dream, a story to tell, and not afraid of a fight.

Coming from an interesting background, not without its hardships, L’Amour had one hell of a resume.

From Wikipedia:

“Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, on March 22, 1908, the seventh child of Emily Dearborn and veterinarian, local politician, and farm equipment broker Louis Charles LaMoore (who had changed the French spelling of the name L'Amour). His mother had Irish ancestry, while his father was of French-Canadian descent. His father had arrived in Dakota Territory in 1882. Although the area around Jamestown was mostly farm land, cowboys and livestock often traveled through Jamestown on their way to or from ranches in Montana and the markets to the east. Louis played Cowboys and Indians in the family barn, which served as his father's veterinary hospital, and spent much of his free time at the local library, the Alfred E. Dickey Free Library, particularly reading the works of 19th-century British historical boys' author G. A. Henty. L'Amour once said, (Henty's works) enabled me to go into school with a great deal of knowledge that even my teachers didn't have about wars and politics.

After a series of bank failures devastated the economy of the upper Midwest, Dr. LaMoore and Emily took to the road. Removing Louis and his adopted brother John from school, they headed south in the winter of 1923. Over the next seven or eight years, they skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California and Nevada, and in the sawmills and lumber camps of the Pacific Northwest. It was in colorful places like these that Louis met a wide variety of people, upon whom he later modeled the characters in his novels, many of them actual Old West personalities who had survived into the 1920s and 1930s.

Making his way as a mine assessment worker, professional boxer, and merchant seaman, Louis traveled the country and the world, sometimes with his family, sometimes not. He visited all of the western states plus England, Japan, China, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and Panama, finally moving with his parents to Choctaw, Oklahoma in the early 1930s. There, he changed his name to the original French spelling L'Amour and settled down to try to make something of himself as a writer.”

Something has been said about the Social Darwinism of some of his later books. It’s not unlikely he would be a conservative, a Republican. It went with the terrain. These were hardy, independent, self-reliant people who had overcome all odds, (those who didn’t die young), which is a recurrent theme of his stories after all. The fact that they’re not preachy or beat the reader over the head with it, is what helps to make them readable in the first place. I doubt if he had much sympathy for the truly criminal or the irresponsible or the just plain no-accounts.

Louis was not a lazy man and neither am I.

One of his more popular titles is the book and film entitled Shalako.

In a kind of tribute to a writer of what was, essentially, pulp, my name is Louis Shalako. If a name has any power, and I believe that it does, this is a great name and a wonderful homage to Louis L’Amour. Louis is of course French, and the Zuni Shalako is a celebration of the winter solstice, a time of rebirth, renewal, and consequently, great magic.

It is also a tribute to myself.

It’s very symbolic, but in a sense, I have remade myself. I wanted to make a few changes and so I did. All I ever really wanted to do, was to write pulp—genre fiction, ladies and gentlemen. I doubt if L’Amour set out to sell 200 million copies, that’s a ludicrous proposition. What he said, was that he would ‘try to make something of himself as a writer’. You have to admit, the gentleman was very successful. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It’s interesting that his father Anglicized the name but Louis changed it back.

L’Amour means love in French. This is pure deduction, but this is why the man changed it back. Louis loved the world he saw around him, the people, the places, and the times he lived in. He love the land and its history. It was his own form of tribute, far more so than LaMoore, if we think about it.

In that sense, he is a kind of inspiration to us all.

As a very wise man once said, love your customer.

And if you don't love something, you're going to hate everything, and that is no way to be, which is just plain miserable.

***

A bizarre anecdote. My uncle Ed ordered a sign to go out in front of the family business. When the sign arrived, it read E.S. Ambrose, Monuments. Authorized dealer for Rock of Ages. (A brand-name of the time, from a big quarry up in Quebec. He sold tombstones.) The correct spelling was Ambroise. About as French as you can get, right. But Sarnia was an English speaking town in Ontario. Ed being Ed, instead of boxing it up and sending it back, (at his own expense no doubt), he decided to live with it, although he’d probably still have the correct name on his driver’s license and stuff like that.

I'll need three tombstones...

END

 

Louis L'Amour. (Wiki)

A Lesson For Us All. Zach Neal.

The Zuni Shalako.

John Wayne as Reactionary.

Shalako. The film.

Louis Shalako has books and stories on Amazon.

Thank you for reading.