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Dave Fenner (No Orchids for Miss Blandish)

kevinburtonsmith

Created by James Hadley Chase
Pseudonym of Rene Brabazon Raymond
Other pseudonyms include Raymond Marshall, Ambrose Grant & James L. Dougherty
(1906-1985)

According to legend, James Hadley Chase’s first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939) was dashed off by the former door-to-door encyclopedia salesman in just six weekends. His intention was to capitalize on the popularity in Britain of imported American hard-boiled crime fiction and to score some quick bucks.

Suffice it to say he succeeded.

The story, set in those nasty lawless United States of America revolves around the kidnapping of young American heiress Miss Blandish (and her jewelry) by a group of thugs who almost immediately lose her to a larger and better organized gang led by the sadistic, sexually impotent and mother-fixated Slim Grisson. His dear ol’ mum suggests that rape might be the answer to his impotence.

Meanwhile, Miss Blandish’s father has hired ex-journalist turned private eye DAVE FENNER (“a massively built man of thirty-three”) to rescue his darling daughter, which the cynical and utterly ruthless Fenner does–through a combination of bribery, torture and murder. Along the way there are numerous scenes of “enhanced interrogation,” murder, rape, machine guns and hand grenades, suicide and, just for good measure, passing references to Slim’s childhood pastime of cutting up small living animals with a pair of rusty scissors, and another scene where a man’s face is held over the burner on an electric stove to get him to talk.

Much like Mickey Spillane‘s similarly controversial I, the Jury which would appear just a few years later, No Orchids for Miss Blandish was a publishing sensation. It sold over half a million copies in Great Britain alone. It may have been deemed vile and sick by some, but the British, then undergoing constant bombardment by the Nazis, lapped it up; a “phenomenon, George Orwell suggested, “brought about by the mingled boredom and brutality of war.”

Despite its popularity, the book drew much hostility from critics upon its publication, not just for its violence but for being such a blatant rip-off of William Faulkner’s Sanctuary. In fact, charges of plagiarism and lifting passages verbatim or almost verbatim from other writers dogged Chase throughout his career, eventually prompting him (much later in his career) to publicly apologize to Raymond Chandler.

But the book also had its literary defenders, most notably George Orwell, who championed it in his 1944 essay “Raffles and Miss Blandish,” in which he examined crime fiction, most notably the violence and brutality of American-style pulp fiction and the growing British appetite for it, calling the book “a brilliant piece of writing, with hardly a wasted word or a jarring note anywhere.” Still, he couldn’t help but lament the society that would make such a book a best seller and worried aloud that “if such books should definitely acclimatize themselves in England, instead of being merely a half-understood import from America, there would be good grounds for dismay.”

The book was deemed so violent at the time as to be considered unfilmable, but by 1942 it had already been adapted into a play which successfully toured Britain for several years, and by 1948 had indeed been made into a British film, causing much “gounds for dismay,” drawing criticism from all corners, including from future prime minister Harold Wilson, who memorably got up on his hind legs at a film industry function to declare–to much applause–that he was glad there were “no Oscars for Miss Blandish.”

The brouhaha supposedly killed the career of many of those involved, including beloved actor Linden Travers (who played Miss Blandish) and the director St. John L Clowes. Even now, the film is rarely shown on television, and took years and years to become available on DVD.

The 1971 American remake, The Grissom Gang, starring Kim Darby as Miss Blandish, was supposedly even slimier, although that version, directed by Robert “Kiss Me Deadly” Aldrich and starring Kim Darby, Irene Dailey, Tony Musante, Connie Stevens, Robert Lansing and Ralph Waite, is a little easier to track down. Though you have to wonder who’d pay anything to get Kim Darby back…

Like all Chase’s series characters–none of whom ever appeared in more than two or three novels. Dave (and his perky, playful secretary Paula) didn’t even appear in the first sequel, the unfortunately titled The Flesh of the Orchid (1940), which followed Carol, the nineteen year-old daughter of Slim and Miss Blandish (and the heir to a fortune), who’s confined to a mental home. A considerably harder, meaner Dave did, however, reappear, in 1940’s even more unfortunately titled 12 Chinks and a Woman (“Over 150,000 Copies Sold in England” boasted the American hardcover).

But if that still isn’t enough Chase for you, the prolific author offered up a slew of other private eyes and the like, including Bart Anderson, Floyd Jackson, Vic Malloy, Ryan Nelson, Steve Harmas and Dirk Wallace. Almost all of his work was set in the U.S.A., although Chase himself only made two brief visits to that country, and then only relatively late in his career. Instead, he relied on atlases, encyclopedias and slang dictionaries — as well as other writers’ novels.

THE EVIDENCE

UNDER OATH

NOVELS

 

OTHER BOOKS OF INTEREST

PLAYS

FILMS

TELEVISION

  • EMMENEZ-MOI AU THÉÂTRE
    (1978)
    French anthology series
    • PAS D’ORCHIDÉES POUR MISS BLANDISH
      (July 1, 1978)
      Based on the novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
      Screenplay by Frédéric Dard
      Directed by Claude Barma
      Starring Robert Hossein, Candice Patou, Sophie Deschamps, Jean-Marie Proslier, Mario David, Albert Pilette, Patrick Préjean, Clément Harari, Gérard Lartigau, Jacques Bouanich

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

  • Raffles and Miss Blandish
    Essay by George Orwell that appeared in the Augst 28, 1944 issue of Horizon, wherein Orwell makes the case for No Orchids for Miss Blandish.
  • Some Orchids for James Hadley Chase
    A fascinating and well-researched collection of random thoughts, razor-sharp opinions and background info by John Fraser.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

 
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