Weird Tales
Weird Tales published literally hundreds of stories over its original thirty-one year run. It should be no surprise that some of these stories would be adapted to other media. I’ve already discussed some of the Radio adaptations here. Comic books also used stories, often without permission or credit. This series of posts is going to look at the tales used in television. Terence Hanley over at Tellers of Weird Tales listed many of them but didn’t dive into any particular tales. That’s what I’m going to do. Let’s look at the stories, the productions and what remained the same and what was changed.
The first story I could locate (and this might change with more research) was Manly Wade Wellman’s “School For the Unspeakable”, which appeared in Weird Tales, September 1937. It was adapted on Lights Out, a very early TV program (1946-1952) based on the Radio show. It was broadcast on July 9, 1951. There are no versions of this broadcast surviving, so we will acknowledge the program and move onto the second item.
The Cheaters
“The Cheaters” by Robert Bloch was the second Weird Tales story to be used. It appeared in Weird Tales, November 1947. The title refers to reading glasses, which were nicknamed ‘Cheaters’ because they helped you cheat your poor vision. Dorothy McIlwraith gave Bloch’s novella the cover with: “How the world really looks through…”The Cheaters”by Robert Bloch.”
Bloch tells his story in a set of four jumping narratives. The first belongs to junkman, Joe Henshaw. Henshaw bids twenty dollars for the right to strip a house set for demolition. At first it looks as if his wife, Maggie, may have been right: there is little of value. When Joe breaks into a sealed room, things change. The room is library with many rotten books but some in iron bindings are still good. One of these is a copy of De Vermis Mysteriis, Bloch’s Mythos tome in the tradition of Lovecraft’s The Necronimcon. This is the first Cthulhu Mythos reference but the focus of the story. In a side table, Joe finds a pair of antique “cheaters” in a secret drawer. Inscribed into the frames is the word “veritas”, Latin for truth.
He wears the glasses home since he is starting to get a little near-sighted. When he sees Maggie and his employee, Jake, Joe can hear their true thoughts. The pair have been fooling around for a year and plan to kill Joe. The junkman goes to his trunk, grabs a tire iron and beats both Maggie and Jake to death. The cops arrest him and he wishes he could go on wearing the spectacles until they hang him.
Miriam Olcott
The second owner is Miriam Spenser Olcott, an invalid who resents her daughter Olive and son-in-law, Percy Dean, who live with her. Miriam ducks out during a social afternoon and goes shoplifting. She enters the used store once owned by Joe Henshaw, now belonging to a Mr. Burgin. She tries to steal something but Burgin catches her. She quickly grabs anything and pays a quarter for it. Her purchase is the cheaters, of course.
Miriam returns home. Olive and Percy are going out for the evening. Doctor Cramer is expected to look in on her. Miriam wears the glasses and knows that the physician, who is making tea, is there to kill her. Plotting with the Deans, Cramer will get a third of the inheritance. Miriam distracts Cramer by asking for a napkin. She switches the tea cups and Cramer dies. To celebrate, Miriam gets a plate of food and a decanter of brandy. The alcohol kills her.
Percy Dean & Sebastian Grimm
Percy Dean is the next to use the glasses. Now in the money after the inheritance, the couple throw a house-warming/costume party. Percy, who is fat and balding, goes as Benjamin Franklin. The men at the party decide to play poker. Olive finds her mother’s old glasses and gives them to her husband to finish off his costume. Percy realizes he can read the other players minds. He had planned to lose magnanimously, to gain favor with his important guests, but goes all in instead. When he realizes Old Man Harker is cheating, the whole plan goes sideways. Percy tries to strangle him.
The final owner is a writer who was invited to the party, Sebastian Grimm. He pockets the glasses during the fight then does research on them. He is right in thinking that the glasses had belonged to Dirk Von Prinn, ancestor of the famous Ludwig Von Prinn who wrote the De Vermis Mysteriis. He knows the lenses were ground in Hell. He decides to try them while looking at himself in a mirror. After seeing his true nature, he decides to destroy the glasses with a pistol. To destroy them while he is wearing them.
It is always difficult to say where an author got his or her ideas, but two stories come to mind. The first is the prologue to “The Great God Pan” (1895) by Arthur Machen, which features a scientist named Dr. Raymond. He does an operation on his housemaid, making her eyes able to perceive the world as it really is. She goes stark raving mad. The other story is H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Other” (Weird Tales, April 1926), where a mysterious intruder sees a ghoul, then realizes he is looking in a mirror. The character of Sebastian Grimm is a self-portrait of Bloch himself.
Thriller
“The Cheaters” was the first story from Weird Tales to appear on Boris Karloff’s Thriller, where many WT stories were used. The show broadcast on December 27, 1960. It was adapted by Donald S. Sanford and was directed by John Brahm. The adaptation is fairly accurate with some intriguing small differences. First, we get to see Dirk Von Prinn (Henry Daniell) create the glasses then get snooped on by his landlady, Mrs. Ames (played by Molly Glessing). He puts the devil’s lenses on for the fist time and has a Lovecraft level san roll that he fails.
The love triangle section is pretty similar, with Joe Henshaw (Paul Newlan) and Maggie (Linda Watkins) at each other. One difference is Maggie gets a letter from a building project that wants to buy the house for big money. She has no intention of sharing that with Joe. (Jake, for some reason, became Charlie, played by Ed Nelson. Charles is the one who reveals “veritas” means truth. In the Bloch story it is at the end with Sebastian Grimm.) I was surprised at the level of violence shown when Joe takes the pry bar to Maggie and Charlie. He attempts to destroy the glasses, which a cop misunderstands and shoots him.
The last section, with the author Grimm, has an added character in his wife. TV doesn’t work so well when you have no one to talk to. Sebastian (Harry Townes)and Ellen Grimm (Joan Tompkins) go back to the old house from the beginning of the story. Sebastian looks in a mirror left by the Von Prinn family. He gets a Lovecraftian brain-jolt like Von Prinn, but this time we get to see what he sees. The ending comes with Ellen banging on the door. This last scene and the entire story more than suggests J. K. Rowling’s Mirror of Erised.
Conclusion
It didn’t surprise me that Robert Bloch would show up so soon. Like Ray Bradbury, Bloch worked in Hollywood and often used his own material when writing TV and movies. Of all the Weird Tales writers, these two were the most adapted. As I said, they had a direct link to TV and movie production but I think there is more. Bloch and Bradbury’s idea may have been more easily filmed. H. P. Lovecraft was the king of Weird Tales but his brand of cosmic horror was not great on a low budget set. Another author who has this filmability (and a member of the “California School”) was Richard Matheson, who also worked in TV. Matheson was younger and only sold one story to WT, “Wet Straw” (Weird Tales, January 1953). Had he been born sooner, there is no doubt he, too, would have been chosen from the Weird Tales backlog. Instead, the Matheson stories appeared elsewhere, and so won’t be featured here.
Next time… August Derleth’s “The Extra Passenger”!
A nice article!