Award Winners

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Lassie Come Home (1943)

You’ll be surprised at which cast member earned the biggest bucks on this set.
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2. Red River (1948)

Two of this film’s principal stars almost weren’t cast due to fears they wouldn’t get along—which turned out to be true!
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3. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

One of the most popular Westerns ever made—and it could have happened without John Wayne!
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4. The Quiet Man (1952)

A famous actress broke her hand while slapping away her co-star’s advances during the production of this film.
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5. Lili (1953)

Though it predates the age of email, this movie is credited with the first use of a popular emoticon.
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6. The Sand Pebbles (1966)

You’ll never guess what famous movie this director was working on at the same time he made Sand Pebbles.
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7. Death on the Nile (1978)

Sometimes filming on location is a treat … and sometimes, it’s a cramped, sweltering ordeal.
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8. Fail Safe (1964, 2000)

This movie might have been more successful if it hadn’t been for a poorly timed satire with a strikingly similar plot.
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9. True Grit (1969, 2010)

Two famous actresses turned down the role of Mattie Ross in the 1969 adaptation.
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Popular Films

1. Call of the Wild (1935)

You’d never know this story was supposed to be about the dog, thanks to this wildly popular debonair male lead.
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2. And Then There Were None (1945)

Perhaps one of the most copied plot lines of all time, you’d be surprised at which popular TV shows have retold the tale.
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Oscar Winners Inspired by the Post The Saturday Evening Post

© RKO

“Command” by James Warner Bellah was fist published by the Post in June of 1948 and tells the story of Capt. Nathan Brittles, who is forced to evacuate the commanding officer’s wife and their niece, Olivia Dandridge, from the fort after the fall of Custer and the 7th Cavalry. Olivia catches the eyes of two young officers, and when she starts to wear a yellow ribbon in her hair—a sign that she has a beau in the Cavalry—but refuses to reveal who she’s wearing it for, trouble ensues.

The story was adapted for the big screen in 1949 under the name She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Directed by John Ford, the film starred Joanne Dru, John Agar, Harry Carey Jr., and John Wayne as Captain Nathan Brittles. It has become one of the most popular westerns ever made, and on a $1.6 million budget, one of the most expensive. TCM’s Leonard Maltin rated it 3 and a half out of four stars.

It’s also one of Wayne’s most popular westerns, although ironically, Ford only cast John Wayne in the lead after seeing his performance in another western—and another Post original—1948’s Red River. Ribbon won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1950.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) The Saturday Evening Post

© Paramount Pictures

Written by author Charles Portis, “True Grit” appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968 as a three-part serial, was published as a novel in 1969, and then adapted to film in the same year. Starring John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, Robert Duvall as “Lucky” Ned Pepper, Glen Campbell as La Boeuf, and Kim Darby as heroine Mattie Ross, the film garnered a Golden Globe win for Best Motion Picture, two Oscar noms, and one Best Actor win for John Wayne—his only Academy Award.

Sallie Field and Mia Farrow were both considered for the role of Mattie Ross but turned it down, a decision Farrow later called the worst mistake she ever made.

In 2010, the Cohen brothers’ remake, starring Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, Matt Damon, and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, grossed more than $100 million and earned ten Academy Award nominations, but failed to take home an Oscar.

True Grit (1969, 2010) The Saturday Evening Post

© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Widely considered one of Agatha Christie’s best who-dunnits, “The Ten Little Indians” first appeared in the Post on May 20, 1939, and ran as a six-part serial before it was published in book form in 1940.

The murder-mystery tale featuring ten strangers who are slowly picked off, one by one, by a mysterious killer made a gripping story for the big screen. Starring Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, and Louis Hayward, the film adheres to the ending of the Ten Little Indians play rather than the novel, which had a considerably darker ending that audiences disliked, and which Christie re-wrote herself to include a romance and a happier resolution. In fact, only the 1987 Soviet film version kept the novel’s original ending.

The 1945 incarnation is the most true to the book, however, and is typically the most popular film adaptation, earning a four-star rating from Leonard Maltin and Turner Classic Movies.

While none of the seven film versions has ever attracted Academy attention, the story’s plotline has been referenced more than fifteen times in popular media, including episodes of Gilligan’s Island, Golden Girls, Supernatural, and in horror flick Friday the 13th.

And Then There Were None (1945) The Saturday Evening Post

© Distributed by Paramount Pictures

The Post first ran Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile” on May 13, 1937, and completed the series in eight parts. In 1978, John Guillermin directed the highly successful film adaptation starring Mia Farrow, Lois Chiles, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, and Peter Ustinov in the first of his six appearances as the deductive hero, Hercule Poirot. Cybill Shepherd was originally offered the role of the ill-fated Linnet Ridgeway but she turned it down.

To ensue the film’s authenticity and adherence to Christie’s storyline, it was shot on location in Egypt for seven weeks, four weeks entirely on a riverboat steamer. The mid-day heat often rose to more than 130 degrees, halting production until temperatures cooled off. Due to the size of the boat, no one was allowed to have their own dressing room, so all five leading actresses had to share a single room (how that went over, one can only speculate.)

The film was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film (England), one BAFTA for Best Actor (Ustinov) and two for Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury and Smith), and it won an Oscar and a BAFTA for Best Costume Design.

Death on the Nile (1978) The Saturday Evening Post

© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Drawing on his own experience aboard a Yangtze gunboat in the 1960s, author Richard McKenna set the time of his oriental tale a decade earlier, during the Northern Expedition in China. The three-part story first appeared in the Post in November 1962 and made its film debut in 1966.

Pat Boone had campaigned hard for the role of protagonist Jake Holman, but director Robert Wise’s first choice was Paul Newman. In the end, the role went to Steve McQueen.

Initially slotted for nine weeks of filming, the production took seven months to complete thanks to a series of unfortunate delays, including a capsized camera boat which ruined the soundboard, monsoons in Taipei, an abscessed molar that caused McQueen to fall ill, and rumored “hostage taking” of several cast member passports by the Chinese government until additional taxes were paid from filming. At the studio’s insistence, Wise reluctantly occupied the downtime with a “fill in” project he had originally rejected for being “too saccharine”—1965’s The Sound of Music.

For its troubles, Sand Pebbles was nominated for eight Golden Globes, including a win for Richard Attenborough for Best Supporting Actor, and eight Oscar nods, including Best Supporting Actor, Best Picture, and Best Actor—the only Academy Award nomination of Steve McQueen’s career. Wise was said to be so proud of the film that he held annual parties with surviving cast members to commemorate its completion.

The Sand Pebbles (1966) The Saturday Evening Post

© Columbia Pictures

The first film adaptation of Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s “Fail-Safe,” which was serialized in the Post in October 1962, was released in 1964 and starred Walter Matthau, Frits Weaver, and Henry Fonda as the American president. While it failed to gain much critical acclaim, the 2000 made-for-TV remake lured several award nominations, including a Golden Globe for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, three Emmy nods, and two Emmy wins.

Set during the Cold War, the remake stared Walter Cronkite, Noah Wyle, Brian Dennehy, George Clooney, and Richard Dreyfuss as the president scrambling to avert World War III when the United States accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on Moscow. Filmed in black and white, the mini series was actually broadcast live to television audiences, a feat since the set took up two sound stages on the Warner Brothers lot. Harvey Keitel was often running between the two stages just to make his cue.

Despite its positive critical reception, the mini series didn’t do so well with audiences, who had seen Columbia Pictures’ Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove, earlier the same year. With its strikingly similar plot, audiences assumed Fail Safe was equally ridiculous and stayed away.

Fail Safe (1964, 2000) The Saturday Evening Post

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Hailed as “one of the all-time great family films” by Turner Classic Movie’s Leonard Maltin, Lassie Come Home was the first film adaptation of Eric Knight’s story by the same name, which ran in the Post on December 17, 1938.

The first of seven Lassie movies produced by MGM, the film starred Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty, and a young Elizabeth Taylor, who replaced Maria Flynn in the role of Priscilla. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1944, though it failed to win a statue.

Fans may know that while the Lassie of Knight’s stories was in fact female, the dogs who played her on screen were always male, the first being Pal. For his debut film, Pal earned a salary of $250 a week—more than any of his two-legged cast mates. Every collie that has since been used in a Lassie movie has been a direct descendant of Pal.

Lassie Come Home (1943) The Saturday Evening Post

Starring Mel Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Leslie Caron as “Lili,” this admittedly strange musical—about a man who can only express himself through his puppets and a runaway French girl who sees nothing abnormal about talking to them as if they’re real people—was based on Paul Gallico’s short story “The Man Who Hated People,” published by the Post on October 28, 1950.

The movie was nominated for a Golden Globe, two BAFTAs, and six Oscars, including an Academy win for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. It earned a four-star rating from TCM’s Leonard Maltin, and in 2004 The New York Times included Lili in their Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.

Perhaps more accomplished is the fact that the first known appearance of the “smiley” emoticon occurred on March 10, 1953 in an ad for the movie that was placed in the New York Herald Tribune. It read: “Today You’ll laugh :-) You’ll cry :-( You’ll love <3 ‘Lili’.”

Lili (1953) The Saturday Evening Post

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Bordon Chase’s “The Chislom Trail” was a six part series that first ran in the Post in December 1946. Brought to the silver screen in 1948 under the name Red River, the movie starred John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, and Harry Carey. Director Howard Hawks had initially offered the role of Thomas Dunson to Gary Cooper, who turned it down for fear that the character’s ruthless nature would damage his screen image.

The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Writing, and was officially preserved by the National Film Registry and the Library of Congress in 1990 for its cultural, historical, and aesthetical significance. In 2008, it ranked fifth on the American Film Institute’s list of the 10 greatest films in the “Western” genre.

Despite its moderate success, fans might never guess at the behind-the-scenes tension between Wayne and Clift that almost prevented the actors from being cast together. The two were polar opposites politically, and despite a rumored pact to avoid all discussion of politics on set, the actors eventually disliked each other so much that they avoided one another when not filming. Co-star Walter Brennan didn’t mesh well with Clift either—so much so that Clift later turned down the role of “Dude” in Rio Bravo to avoid the two actors. The role eventually went to Dean Martin.

Red River (1948) The Saturday Evening Post

©Republic Pictures

“The Quiet Man” originally appeared in the Post on February 11, 1933, and was written by Maurice Walsh.

Director John Ford tapped “River” castmate John Wayne to play Sean Thornton, an Irishman returned home to escape his past who falls in love with Mary Kate Danaher, played by Maureen O’Hara, earning the ire of her ill-tempered brother Will, whose antics to keep the lovers apart form the main plot.

Earning four stars from Leonard Maltin and TCM, it’s a fan favorite for its sweeping shots of the Irish countryside and an intense—although comical—fist fight between two principal characters. Little known is that O’Hara filmed most of the movie with a broken hand. During the wind-swept cottage scene, an indignant Mary Kate slaps Thornton for a brazen kiss, but O’Hara’s hand landed incorrectly against Wayne’s open palm, breaking a bone. Unlike most movies today, Quiet Man was being filmed in sequential order, and O’Hara was unable to wear a cast until after filming had finished.

The film grossed $3.8 million in its first year, and garnered two Golden Globe nominations and seven Oscar nods, including two Academy wins for Best Cinematography and Best Director. It’s even referenced in the 1982 movie E.T., when the eponymous alien discovers the television.

The Quiet Man (1952) The Saturday Evening Post

© United Artists

Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” was first serialized in the Post in 1908. Later published as a novel, it’s now an American classic that has been adapted to film no less than seven times since 1908.

The 1935 adaptation, starring Clark Gable as Jack Thornton, Loretta Young, and Frank Conroy, is widely considered the best adaptation thus far, despite its broad interpretation of London’s original story, and earns a 3.5 out of 4 stars from Turner Classic Movie’s Leonard Maltin. Gable is portrayed as the story’s protagonist, relegating Buck, the sled-dog-turned-St. Bernard, to a minor character who does little more than help Jack win a lucrative bet and serve as the catalyst for a romance between Gable and Young’s characters. Despite its popularity, the movie was never nominated for a single award.

In an ironic twist of life imitating art, Gable and Young had an affair on set, resulting in a hidden pregnancy and the birth of their much-speculated about love child, Judy Lewis, who confirmed the long-standing rumor in a 2004 memoir.

Call of the Wild (1935) The Saturday Evening Post

What we found was more Poe than we’d expected, including some surprises and a few mysteries—which would have pleased Mr. Poe.

One of the surprises was a short story—“A Succession of Sundays”—about a young man who is refused permission to marry his fiancé until, as her guardian puts it, “three Sundays come together in a week.” (This is eventually accomplished, as you might have figured, with some business with the International Date Line.)

The Post also printed one of Poe early poems, “To Helen.” (“Helen, thy beauty is to me/ Like those Nicean barks of yore…”) When it appeared on May 21, 1831, Poe was so little known that the editors felt obliged to give him an introduction:

We extract the following poetry from a small 18mo [octodecimo, i.e., 4” by 6”—ed.] volume of poems, by Edgar A. Poe, a part of which was published in a former edition. The author is, we believe, a member of the U.S. Corps of Cadets, as the volume is dedicated to that body.

Poe had dedicated his book to the cadets of West Point because many of them had loaned him money to have the book printed. By the time of it appeared, Poe was long gone from the Academy.

There’s also mystery of unsigned pieces that might be the work of Poe. One is a short story entitled “A Dream” from 1831. The Post gives no more identification of the author than the letter “P.”

The narrator of the story tells of his dream, in which he imagined he was a Pharisee who has just helped to crucify Christ.

I turned away, and wandered listlessly on, till I came to the centre of Jerusalem…… A feeling of conscious pride stole over me, as I looked over the broad fields and lofty mountains which surrounded this pride of the eastern world. On my right rose Mount Olivet, covered with shrubbery and vineyards; beyond that, and bounding the skirts of mortal vision, appeared mountains piled on mountains; on the left were the lovely plains of Judea; and I thought it was a bright picture of human existence

A perfect loveliness had thrown itself over animated nature.

But…… I felt a sudden coldness creeping over me. I instinctively turned towards the sun, and saw a hand slowly drawing a mantle of crepe over it……

I heard a muttered groan, as the spirit of darkness spread his pinions over an astonished world.

Unutterable despair now seized me. I could feel the flood of life slowly rolling back to its fountain, as the fearful thought stole over me, that the day of retribution had come…

I saw a light stream from a distant window, and made my way towards it… A widow was preparing the last morsel she could glean, for her dying babe. She had kindled a little fire; and I saw with what utter hopelessness of heart she beheld the flame sink away, like her own dying hopes.

Darkness covered the universe………

It’s a short work complete with unutterable dread, gloom, and a corpse rising from a grave. If Poe didn’t write this, he would have wanted to meet the author who did.

There are also the mysterious “Edgar poems,” which appeared in 1824-25, when Poe was living in Richmond, VA. The Post gives no clue to the poet’s identity other than what happens to be Poe’s first name.

Why  bury thy charms, lovely maid,

So long in a lone rural glen?

Ah! fly from obscurity’ shade,

And shine to advantage again.

How charming the Empress of Night

Appears from a cloud as she breaks,

And rolling so splendidly bright,

All the soul to wild ecstasy wakes……… etc.

[To Miss M. C. S. of Darby]

The use of “Edgar” might be simply the choice of some poet. (Someone with a better ear for poetry will have to tell us if Poe might have any of these pieces.) But there’s another piece of coincidence connected with a poem that begins

I will bend o’er the tomb of the virtuous and brave;

His deeds of the past I will silently number,

And think, while I pensively view his one grave,

How blest is his couch, and how peaceful his slumber…… etc.

Barnaby Rudge and his pet raven, Grip

This “Edgar” poem is entitled “La Fayette At the Tomb of Washington“ and it appeared in 1824, shortly after young Edgar Allan Poe was lieutenant of the youth honor guard that was reviewed by Lafayette when he visited Richmond.

The Post also printed Poe’s 1841 review of a novel by Charles Dickens. “Barnaby Rudge” was then appearing, by installments, in American magazines. In the review, Poe praised Dicken’s ability to convey “horror” and “terror”—literary matters he could appreciate. He was particularly impressed by the character of “Grip,” a talking pet raven that belongs to the title character.

[His] croakings are to be frequently, appropriately, and prophetically heard in the coarse of the narrative and [his] whole character will perform, in regard to that of the [protagonist], much the same part as does, in music, the accompaniment in respect to the air. Each is distinct. Each differs remarkably from the other. Yet between them there is a strong analogical resemblance; and, although each may exist apart, they form together a whole, which would be imperfect, wanting either.

This is clearly the design of Mr. Dickens — although he himself may not at present perceive it. In fact, beautiful as it is, and strikingly original with him, it cannot be questioned that he has been led to it less by artistical knowledge and reflection, than by that intuitive feeling for the forcible and the true, which is the sixth sense of the man of genius.

If Dickens didn’t know what a great literary device he’d stumbled on with his talking raven, Poe could certainly appreciate its potential: just three years later, it became the heart of his most famous poem.

To read “A Dream” and judge for yourself if it’s by Poe, go here.

Undiscovered Poe? Early Works Before ‘The Black Cat’ The Saturday Evening Post

Susanna was a bit-part actress in the summer theater near the village, and she rented a room over the firehouse. She was a part of village life all summer, but the villagers never got used to her. She was forever as startling and desirable as a piece of big-city fire apparatus.

Susanna’s feathery hair and saucer eyes were as black as midnight. Her skin was the color of cream. Her hips were like a lyre, and her bosom made men dream of peace and plenty forever and ever. She wore barbaric golden hoops on her shell-pink ears, and around her ankles were chains with little bells on them.

She went barefoot and slept until noon every day. And, as noon drew near, the villagers on the main street would grow as restless as beagles with a thunderstorm on the way.

At noon, Susanna would appear on the porch outside her room. She would stretch languidly, pour a bowl of milk for her black cat, kiss the cat, fluff her hair, put on her earrings, lock her door, and hide the key in her bosom.

And then, barefoot, she would begin her stately, undulating, titillating, tinkling walk—down the outside stairway, past the liquor store, the insurance agency, the real-estate office, the diner, the American Legion post, and the church, to the crowded drugstore. There she would get the New York papers.

She seemed to nod to all the world in a dim, queenly way. But the only person she spoke to during her daily walk was Bearse Hinkley, the seventy-two-year-old pharmacist.

The old man always had her papers ready for her.

“Thank you, Mr. Hinkley. You’re an angel,” she would say, opening a paper at random. “Now, let’s see what’s going on back in civilization.” While the old man would watch, fuddled by her perfume, Susanna would laugh or gasp or frown at items in the paper—items she never explained.

Then she would take the papers and return to her nest over the firehouse. She would pause on the porch outside her room, dip her hand into her bosom, bring out the key, unlock the door, pick up the black cat, kiss it again, and disappear inside.

The one-girl pageant had a ritual sameness until one day toward the end of summer, when the air of the drugstore was cut by a cruel, sustained screech from a dry bearing in a revolving soda-fountain stool.

The screech cut right through Susanna’s speech about Mr. Hinkley’s being an angel. The screech made scalps tingle and teeth ache. Susanna looked indulgently in the direction of the screech, forgiving the screecher. She found that the screecher wasn’t a person to be indulged.

The screech had been made by the stool of Corporal Norman Fuller, who had come home the night before from eighteen bleak months in Korea. They had been eighteen months without war—but eighteen months without cheer all the same. Fuller had turned on the stool slowly, to look at Susanna with indignation. When the screech died, the drugstore was deathly still.

Fuller had broken the enchantment of summer by the seaside—had reminded all in the drugstore of the black, mysterious passions that were so often the mainsprings of life.

He might have been a brother, come to rescue his idiot sister from the tenderloin; or an irate husband, come to a saloon to horsewhip his wife back to where she belonged, with the baby. The truth was that Corporal Fuller had never seen Susanna before.

He hadn’t consciously meant to make a scene. He hadn’t known, consciously, that his stool would screech. He had meant to underplay his indignation, to make it a small detail in the background of Susanna’s pageant—a detail noticed by only one or two connoisseurs of the human comedy.

But the screech had made his indignation the center of the solar system for all in the drugstore—particularly for Susanna. Time had stopped, and it could not proceed until Fuller had explained the expression on his granite Yankee face.

Fuller felt his skin glowing like hot brass. He was comprehending destiny. Destiny had suddenly given him an audience, and a situation about which he had a bitter lot to say.

Fuller felt his lips move, heard the words come out. “Who do you think you are?” he said to Susanna.

“I beg your pardon?” said Susanna. She drew her newspapers about herself protectively.

“I saw you come down the street like you were a circus parade, and I just wondered who you thought you were,” said Fuller.

Susanna blushed gloriously. “I—I’m an actress,” she said.

“You can say that again,” said Fuller. “Greatest actresses in the world. American women.”

“You’re very nice to say so,” said Susanna uneasily.

Fuller’s skin glowed brighter and hotter. His mind had become a fountain of apt, intricate phrases. “I’m not talking about theaters with seats in ‘em. I’m talking about the stage of life. American women act and dress like they’re gonna give you the world. Then, when you stick out your hand, they put an ice cube in it.”

“They do?” said Susanna emptily.

“They do,” said Fuller, “and it’s about time somebody said so.” He looked challengingly from spectator to spectator, and found what he took to be dazed encouragement. “It isn’t fair,” he said.

“What isn’t?” said Susanna, lost.

“You come in here with bells on your ankles, so’s I’ll have to look at your ankles and your pretty pink feet,” said Fuller. “You kiss the cat, so’s I’ll have to think about how it’d be to be that cat,” said Fuller. “You call an old man an angel, so’s I’ll have to think about what it’d be like to be called an angel by you,” said Fuller. “You hide your key in front of everybody, so’s I’ll have to think about where that key is,” said Fuller.

He stood. “Miss,” he said, his voice full of pain, “you do everything you can to give lonely, ordinary people like me indigestion and the heeby-jeebies, and you wouldn’t even hold hands with me to keep me from falling off a cliff.”

He strode to the door. All eyes were on him. Hardly anyone noticed that his indictment had reduced Susanna to ashes of what she’d been moments before. Susanna now looked like what she really was—a muddle-headed nineteen-year-old clinging to a tiny corner of sophistication,

“It isn’t fair,” said Fuller. “There ought to be a law against girls acting and dressing like you do. It makes more people unhappy than it does happy. You know what I say to you, for going around making everybody want to kiss you?”

“No,” piped Susanna, every fuse in her nervous system blown.

“I say to you what you’d say to me, if I was to try and kiss you,” said Fuller grandly. He swung his arms in an umpire’s gesture for “out.” “The hell with you,” he said. He left, slamming the screen door.

He didn’t look back when the door slammed again a moment later, when the patter of running bare feet and the wild tinkling of little bells faded away in the direction of the firehouse.

That evening, Corporal Fuller’s widowed mother put a candle on the table, and fed him sirloin steak and strawberry shortcake in honor of his homecoming. Fuller ate the meal as though it were wet blotting paper, and he answered his mother’s cheery questions in a voice that was dead.

“Aren’t you glad to be home?” said his mother, when they’d finished their coffee.

“Sure,” said Fuller.

“What did you do today?” she said.

“Walked,” he said.

“Seeing all your old friends?” she said.

“Haven’t got any friends,” said Fuller.

His mother threw up her hands. “No friends?” she said. “You?”

“Times change. Ma,” said Fuller heavily. “Eighteen months is a long time. People leave town, people get married….”

“Marriage doesn’t kill people, does it?” she said.

Fuller didn’t smile. “Maybe not,” he said, “But it makes it awful hard for ‘em to find any place to fit old friends in.”

“Dougie isn’t married, is he?”

“He’s out west, Ma—with the Strategic Air Command,” said Fuller. The little dining room became as lonely as a bomber in the thin, cold stratosphere.

“Oh,” said his mother. “There must be somebody left.”

“Nope,” said Fuller. “I spent the whole morning on the phone, Ma. I might as well have been back in Korea. Nobody home.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Why, you couldn’t walk down Main Street without being almost trampled by friends.”

“Ma,” said Fuller hollowly, “after I ran out of numbers to call, you know what I did? I went down to the drugstore, Ma, and just sat there by the soda fountain, waiting for somebody to walk in—somebody I knew maybe just even a little. Ma,” he said in anguish, “all I knew was poor old Bearse Hinkley. I’m not kidding you one bit.” He stood, crumpling his napkin into a ball. “Ma, will you please excuse me?”

“Yes. Of course,” she said. “Where are you going now?” She beamed. “Out to call on some nice girl, I hope?”

Fuller threw the napkin down. “I’m going to get a cigar!” he said. “I don’t know any girls. They’re all married too.”

His mother paled, “I-I see,” she said. “I-I didn’t even know you smoked.”

“Ma,” said Fuller tautly, “can’t you get it through your head? I been away for eighteen months, Ma—eighteen months!”

“It is a long time, isn’t it?” said his mother, humbled by his passion. “Well, you go get your cigar.” She touched his arm. “And please don’t feel so lonesome. You just wait. Your life will be so full of people again, you won’t know which one to turn to. And, before you know it, you’ll meet some pretty young girl, and you’ll be married too.”

“I don’t intend to get married for some time, Mother,” said Fuller stuffily. “Not until I get through divinity school.”

“Divinity school!” said his mother. “When did you decide that?”

“This noon,” said Fuller.

“What happened this noon?”

“I had kind of a religious experience, Ma,” he said. “Something just made me speak out.”

“About what?” she said, bewildered.

In Fuller’s buzzing head there whirled a rhapsody of Susannas. He saw again all the professional temptresses who had tormented him in Korea, who had beckoned from makeshift bed-sheet movie screens, from curling pin-ups on damp tent walls, from ragged magazines in sandbagged pits. The Susannas had made fortunes, beckoning to lonely Corporal Fullers everywhere—beckoning with stunning beauty, beckoning the Fullers to come nowhere for nothing.

The wraith of a Puritan ancestor, stiff-necked, dressed in black, took possession of Fuller’s tongue. Fuller spoke with a voice that came across the centuries, the voice of a witch hanger, a voice redolent with frustration, self-righteousness, and doom.

“What did I speak out against?” he said. “Temptation.”

Fuller’s cigar in the night was a beacon warning carefree, frivolous people away. It was plainly a cigar smoked in anger. Even the moths had sense enough to stay away. Like a restless, searching red eye, it went up and down every street in the village, coming to rest at last, a wet, dead butt, before the firehouse.

Bearse Hinkley, the old pharmacist, sat at the wheel of the pumper, his eyes glazed with nostalgia—nostalgia for the days when he had been young enough to drive. And on his face, for all to see, was a dream of one more catastrophe, with all the young men away, when an old man or nobody would drive the pumper to glory one more time. He spent warm evenings there, behind the wheel—and had for years.

“Want a light for that thing?” he said to Corporal Fuller, seeing the dead cigar between Fuller’s lips.

“No, thanks, Mr. Hinkley,” he said. “All the pleasure’s out of it.”

“Beats me how anybody finds any pleasure in cigars in the first place,” said the old man.

“Matter of taste,” said Fuller. “No accounting for tastes.”

“One man’s meat’s another man’s poison,” said Hinkley. “Live and let live, I always say.” He glanced at the ceiling. Above it was the fragrant nest of Susanna and her black cat. “Me? All my pleasures are looking at what used to be pleasures.”

Fuller looked at the ceiling, too, meeting the unmentioned issue squarely. “If you were young,” he said, “you’d know why I said what I said to her. Beautiful, stuck-up girls give me a big pain.”

“Oh, I remember that,” said Hinkley. “I’m not so old I don’t remember the big pain.”

“If I have a daughter, I hope she isn’t beautiful,” said Fuller. “The beautiful girls at high school—by God, if they didn’t think they were something extra-special.”

“By God, if I don’t think so, too,” said Hinkley.

“They wouldn’t even look at you if you didn’t have a car and an allowance of twenty bucks a week to spend on ‘em,” said Fuller.

“Why should they?” said the old man cheerfully. “If I was a beautiful girl, I wouldn’t.” He nodded to himself. “Well—anyway, I guess you came home from the wars and settled that score. I guess you told her.”

“Ah-h-h,” said Fuller. “You can’t make any impression on them.”

“I dunno,” said Hinkley. “There’s a fine old tradition in the theater: The show must go on. You know, even if you got pneumonia or your baby’s dying, you still put on the show.”

“I’m all right,” said Fuller. “Who’s complaining? I feel fine.”

The old man’s white eyebrows went up. “Who’s talking about you?” he said. “I’m talking about her.”

Fuller reddened, mousetrapped by egoism. “She’ll be all right,” he said.

“She will?” said Hinkley. “Maybe she will. All I know is, the show’s started at the theater. She’s supposed to be in it and she’s still upstairs.”

“She is?” said Fuller, amazed.

“Has been,” said Hinkley, “ever since you paddled her and sent her home.”

Fuller tried to grin ironically. “Now, isn’t that too bad?” he said. His grin felt queasy and weak. “Well, goodnight, Mr. Hinkley.”

“Goodnight, soldier boy,” said Hinkley. “Goodnight.”

As noon drew near on the next day, the villagers along the main street seemed to grow stupid. Yankee shopkeepers made change lackadaisically, as though money didn’t matter any more. All thoughts were of the great cuckoo clock the firehouse had become. The question was: Had Corporal Fuller broken it or, at noon, would the little door on top fly open, would Susanna appear?

In the drugstore, old Bearse Hinkley fussed with Susanna’s New York papers, rumpling them in his anxiety to make them attractive. They were bait for Susanna.

Moments before noon, Corporal Fuller—the vandal himself—came in to the drugstore. On his face was a strange mixture of guilt and sore-headedness. He had spent the better part of the night awake, reviewing his grievances against beautiful women. All they think about is how beautiful they are, he’d said to himself at dawn. They wouldn’t even give you the time of day.

He walked along the row of soda-fountain stools and gave each empty stool a seemingly idle twist. He found the stool that had screeched so loudly the day before. He sat down on it, a monument of righteousness. No one spoke to him.

The fire siren gave its perfunctory wheeze for noon. And then, hearse-like, a truck from the express company drove up to the firehouse. Two men got out and climbed the stairs. Susanna’s hungry black cat jumped to the porch railing and arched its back as the expressmen disappeared into Susanna’s room. The cat spat when they staggered out with Susanna’s trunk.

Fuller was shocked. He glanced at Bearse Hinkley, and he saw that the old man’s look of anxiety had become the look of double pneumonia—dizzy, blind, drowning.

“Satisfied, corporal?” said the old man.

“I didn’t tell her to leave,” said Fuller.

“You didn’t leave her much choice,” said Hinkley.

“What does she care what I think?” said Fuller. “I didn’t know she was such a tender blossom.”

The old man touched Fuller’s arm lightly. “We all are, corporal—we all are,” he said. “I thought that was one of the few good things about sending a boy off to the Army. I thought that was where he could find out for sure he wasn’t the only tender blossom on earth. Didn’t you find that out?”

“I never thought I was a tender blossom,” said Fuller. “I’m sorry it turned out this way, but she asked for it.” His head was down. His ears were hot crimson.

“She really scared you stiff, didn’t she?” said Hinkley.

Smiles bloomed on the faces of the small audience that had drawn near on one pretext or another. Fuller appraised the smiles, and found that the old man had left him only one weapon—utterly humorless good citizenship.

“Who’s afraid?” he said stuffily. “I’m not afraid. I just think it’s a problem somebody ought to bring up and discuss.”

“It’s sure the one subject nobody gets tired of,” said Hinkley.

Fuller’s gaze, which had become a very shifty thing, passed over the magazine rack. There was tier upon tier of Susannas, a thousand square feet of wet-lipped smiles and sooty eyes and skin like cream. He ransacked his mind for a ringing phrase that would give dignity to his cause.

“I’m thinking about juvenile delinquency!” he said. He pointed to the magazines. “No wonder kids go crazy,”

“I know I did,” said the old man quietly. “I was as scared as you are.”

“I told you, I’m not afraid of her,” said Fuller.

“Good!” said Hinkley. “Then you’re just the man to take her papers to her. They’re paid for.” He dumped the papers in Fuller’s lap.

Fuller opened his mouth to reply. But he closed it again. His throat had tightened, and he knew that, if he tried to speak, he would quack like a duck.

”If you’re really not afraid, corporal,” said the old man, “that would be a very nice thing to do—a Christian thing to do.”

As he mounted the stairway to Susanna’s nest. Fuller was almost spastic in his efforts to seem casual.

Susanna’s door was unlatched. When Fuller knocked on it, it swung open. In Fuller’s imagination, her nest had been dark and still, reeking of incense, a labyrinth of heavy hangings and mirrors, with somewhere a Turkish corner, with somewhere a billowy bed in the form of a swan.

He saw Susanna and her room in truth now. The truth was the cheerless truth of a dirt-cheap Yankee summer rental—bare wood walls, three coat hooks, a linoleum rug, two gas burners, an iron cot, an ice- box, A tiny sink with naked pipes, a plastic drinking glass, two plates, a murky mirror, a frying pan, a saucepan, a can of soap powder.

The only harem touch was a white circle of talcum powder before the murky mirror. In the center of the circle were the prints of two bare feet. The marks of the toes were no bigger than pearls.

Fuller looked from the pearls to the truth of Susanna. Her back was to him. She was packing the last of her things into a suitcase.

She was now dressed for travel—dressed as properly as a missionary’s wife.

“Papers,” croaked Fuller. “Mr. Hinkley sent ‘em.”

“How very nice of Mr. Hinkiey,” said Susanna. She turned, “Tell him….” No more words came. She recognized him. She pursed her lips and her small nose reddened.

“Papers,” said Fuller emptily. “From Mr, Hinkley.”

“I heard you,” she said. “You just said that. Is that all you’ve got to say?”

Fuller flapped his hands limply at his sides, “I’m-I-I didn’t mean to make you leave,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”

“You suggest I stay?” said Susanna wretchedly. “After I’ve been denounced in public as a scarlet woman? A tart? A wench?”

“Holy smokes, I never called you those things!” said Fuller.

“Did you ever stop to think what it’s like to be me?” she said. She patted her bosom. “There’s somebody living inside here, too, you know.”

“I know,” said Fuller. He hadn’t known, up to then.

“I have a soul,” she said.

“Sure you do,” said Fuller, trembling. He trembled because the room was filled with a profound intimacy. Susanna, the golden girl of a thousand tortured daydreams, was now discussing her soul, passionately, with Fuller the lonely. Fuller the homely. Fuller the bleak.

“I didn’t sleep a wink last night because of you,” said Susanna.

“Me?” He wished she’d get out of his life again. He wished she were in black and white, a thousandth of an inch thick on a magazine page. He wished he could turn the page and read about baseball or foreign affairs.

“What did you expect?” said Susanna. “I talked to you all night. You know what I said to you?”

“No,” said Fuller, backing away. She followed, and seemed to throw off heat like a big iron radiator. She was appallingly human.

“I’m not Yellowstone Park!” she said. “I’m not supported by taxes! I don’t belong to everybody! You don’t have any right to say anything about the way I look!”

“Good gravy!” said Fuller.

“I’m so tired of dumb toots like you!” said Susanna. She stamped her foot and suddenly looked haggard. “I can’t help it if you want to kiss me! Whose fault is that?”

Fuller could now glimpse his side of the question only dimly, like a diver glimpsing the sun from the ocean floor. “All I was trying to say was, you could be a little more conservative,” he said.

Susanna opened her arms. “Am I conservative enough now?” she said. “Is this all right with you?”

The appeal of the lovely girl made the marrow of Fuller’s bones ache. In his chest was a sigh like the lost chord. “Yes,” he said. And then he murmured, “Forget about me.”

Susanna tossed her head. “Forget about being run over by a truck,” she said. “What makes you so mean?”

“I just say what I think,” said Fuller.

“You think such mean things,” said Susanna, bewildered. Her eyes widened. “All through high school, people like you would look at me as if they wished I’d drop dead. They’d never dance with me, they’d never talk to me, they’d never even smile back.” She shuddered. “They’d just go slinking around like small-town cops. They’d look at me the way you did—like I’d just done something terrible.”

The truth of the indictment made Fuller itch all over. “Probably thinking about something else,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” said Susanna. “You sure weren’t. All of a sudden, you started yelling at me in the drugstore, and I’d never even seen you before.” She burst into tears. “What is the matter with you?”

Fuller looked down at the floor.

“Never had a chance with a girl like you—that’s all,” he said. “That hurts.”

Susanna looked at him wonderingly. “You don’t know what a chance is,” she said.

“A chance is a late-model convertible, a new suit, and twenty bucks,” said Fuller.

Susanna turned her back to him and closed her suitcase. “A chance is a girl,” she said. “You smile at her, you be friendly, you be glad she’s a girl.” She turned and opened her arms again. “I’m a girl. Girls are shaped this way,” she said. “If men are nice to me and make me happy, I kiss them sometimes. Is that all right with you?”

“Yes,” said Fuller humbly. She had rubbed his nose in the sweet reason that governed the universe. He shrugged. “I better be going. Good-bye.”

“Wait!” she said, “You can’t do that—just walk out, leaving me feeling so wicked.” She shook her head. “I don’t deserve to feel wicked.”

“What can I do?” said Fuller helplessly.

“You can take me for a walk down the main street, as though you were proud of me,” said Susanna. “You can welcome me back to the human race.” She nodded to herself. “You owe that to me.”

Corporal Norman Fuller, who had come home two nights before from eighteen bleak months in Korea, waited on the porch outside Susanna’s nest, with all the village watching.

Susanna had ordered him out while she changed, while she changed for her return to the human race. She had also called the express company and told them to bring her trunk back.

Fuller passed the time by stroking Susanna’s cat. “Hello, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” he said, over and over again. Saying, “Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” numbed him like a merciful drug.

He was saying it when Susanna came out of her nest. He couldn’t stop saying it, and she had to take the cat away from him, firmly, before she could get him to look at her, to offer his arm.

“So long, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” said Fuller.

Susanna was barefoot, and she wore barbaric hoop earrings, and ankle bells. Holding Fuller’s arm lightly, she led him down the stairs, and began her stately, undulating, titillating, tinkling walk past the liquor store, the insurance agency, the real-estate office, the diner, the American Legion post, and the church, to the crowded drugstore.

“Now, smile and be nice,” said Susanna. “Show you’re not ashamed of me.”

“Mind if I smoke?” said Fuller.

“That’s very considerate of you to ask,” said Susanna. “No, I don’t mind at all.”

By steadying his right hand with his left, Corporal Fuller managed to light a cigar.

Miss Temptation The Saturday Evening Post

Vonnegut’s Typewriter: Vonnegut used this Smith-Corona Coronamatic 2200 during the 1970s to write books such as Breakfast of Champions and Jailbird. A bit of a technophobe, he never switched to word processors or computers, preferring the tactile nature of the typewriter instead.

Vonnegut’s Purple Heart: Vonnegut sardonically wrote in his final novel, Timequake, “I myself was awarded my country’s second-lowest decoration, a Purple Heart for frost-bite.”

A Pack of Vonnegut’s Pall Mall Cigarettes: Throughout his life, Vonnegut was a smoker, a habit he dubbed “a classy way to commit suicide.” His children found this unopened pack of Pall Malls, his preferred brand, behind his bookcase after he died.

An Unopened Letter from Vonnegut’s Father: Vonnegut’s father, Kurt Sr., wrote this letter to his son during World War II, but it was lost in the mail for quite some time. When Vonnegut finally did receive it, he never opened it—and it remains sealed to this day.

Ceremonial Nazi Sword: Vonnegut wrote in Chapter 1 of Slaughterhouse-Five, “O’Hare didn’t have any souvenirs. Almost everybody else did. I had a ceremonial Luftwaffe saber, still do.”

Rooster Lamp: Vonnegut always wrote by the light of this red rooster lamp. It originated in Indiana, traveled to the east coast with with the writer, and has now returned home to “roost.”

Alplaus Volunteer Firemen Reminder Card: In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the title character obsessively joins fire departments, spurred on by a horrific experience in World War II. Vonnegut did the same. He wrote in Slaughterhouse-Five that after the war he became “a volunteer firemen in the village of Alplaus, where [he] bought [his] first home.” This postcard from the Alplaus fire department, dated April 4, 1949, was sent as a reminder for a volunteers’ meeting.

Portrait of Kurt Sr.: This framed photograph of Vonnegut’s father hung on the wall of the writer’s work space for years and years.

Rejection Letter: The library has quite a few of Vonnegut’s rejection letters—he liked to save them—which are periodically rotated. This one from The Atlantic Monthly is dated August 29, 1949.

To learn more about the life and work of Kurt Vonnegut, visit the KVML at 340 N. Senate Avenue in Indianapolis. The library is open noon to 5 p.m. daily except Wednesdays (closed on Wednesdays). Admission is always free.

Treasures of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library The Saturday Evening Post