American Women who Served in Vietnam

A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 American Women who Served in Vietnam - Keith Walker

The middle and late 1980s saw an outpouring of memoirs about the Vietnam War. Maybe people needed a decade to cool the passions of the late 1960s and early 1970s and recover from depression over the 1975 withdrawal before they felt like thinking about the war. Eager to profit from renewed interest, publishers released excellent books such as Once a Warrior King (Donovan), Bloods (Terry) and A Rumor of War (Caputo).  Oral histories about American women in Vietnam were Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam (Lynda Van Devanter), In the Combat Zone: Vivid Personal Recollections of the Vietnam War from the Women Who Served There (Kathryn Marshal), and the book under review here

About 15,000 American women served in Vietnam. Journalist and filmmaker Keith Walker interviewed nurses (14 army, one Navy and the remaining 11 represented organizations such as the Red Cross and the USO). Walker provides introductions to the women's monologues. Though only a paragraph long, expressive details include one interviewee who covered her eyes with her arm during her entire talk

Walker uses ellipses to show hesitations and silences and indicate distress so the text should be read slowly. The extended monologue gives an idea of the shared experience many veterans, male and female. The interviewees have a range of political opinions and responses to the war. Many see their experiences in a positive light and reject casting themselves as victims.

They also share the tension of never knowing where the enemy was except everywhere and being under attack. The nurses underwent repeated exposure to the injury, disability, disfigurement, and death of men who were terribly young. One nurse wanted to ask her mother to check around and see if she could find one whole 18 year old man. Women recount feeling fear, boredom, callousness, and the gradual loss of the ability to feel that prolonged stress causes.

Readers who have read more than a few memoirs of Vietnam Veterans will be struck at the common themes, like male adrenaline junkies. Some women talked of the intensity of work in-country and the tedious blandness of life back home after so much excitement. “The one thing Nam did for me was that I felt like I could walk on water,” says a nurse. The women also reported that on coming back stateside, like male veterans, they too suffered PTSD, usually called delayed stress. They dealt with alcohol and substance abuse, changed jobs and residences frequently, experienced nightmares and had trouble finding somebody who would understand them. More than male memoirists, however, the women remark on the beauty of the country.

“Obviously I had to deal with sex and sexism.” A few observed that some men treated them like madonnas and some like whores. Women felt pressured to act in multiple roles such as mother, older sister, little sister, girlfriend, wife, nurse, entertainer, and Playboy Bunny girl next door. A Red Cross worker says “Eventually when you establish trust with the men in the field they would take you aside and with great pride and joy show you the scalps and the fingers and the ears of other things they had collected. You know, I would say, ’oh isn't that nice!’ The horror that we might express would just totally destroy anyone so we were always upbeat. Our job was to be upbeat.”

 I recommend this book as readable and valuable oral history which underlines the personal and unique instead of the historical. Critics rank it among the best oral histories about the war such as Everything We Had by Albert Santoli, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There by Mark Baker and Casualties: Death in Viet Nam; Anguish and Survival in America by Heather Brandon. Anyone wishing to learn more about ordinary women who gave extraordinary service in the Vietnam War would do well to read this book.

The Ides of Perry Mason 93

Note: In the first couple of seasons (1957-58-59), the classic Perry Mason had the cool look of film noir. Granted, Raymond Burr in the title role tends to talk rapidly, lots of actors get into hambone territory, and the stories are complicated. As time passed, the stories never become more streamlined or comprehensible. From 1960 on, the plots tended to be ripped from the headlines of the day, which dates the show: ESP, JD's, open wheel race cars, corporate espionage, folk music and beatniks. By the 7th season, many of the story lines and scripts were lame compared to earlier seasons. Exhausted Raymond Burr remarked that the show should have ended after the 5th season. Gutsy, considering that he was making a million a season, amazing money for those days - William Tallman as Hamilton Burger was making only $65K.

The Best of Season 7 (1963-64)

The Case of the Nebulous Nephew. Season 7 was kicked off with this incredible episode. Two heartless scamsters aim to con two harmless old ladies. But after living with the two women for a little while, one fraud becomes fond of them and argues for abandoning the nefarious plan. But his henchman (scoundrel Hugh Marlowe of course) objects and ends up murdered. Besides the stellar acting, the long set-up is without a wasted scene or line. The writers make points about staying in touch with your values, feeling family loyalty, acting as a faithful retainer, undergoing wartime deployment and its effect on romance, and using love and faith as guides to belief, despite having little evidence. Up there with TCOT Perjured Parrot and TCOT Nine Dolls, this may be my favorite episode ever.

The Case of the Deadly Verdict. Janice Barton has played the part of the society party girl to the hilt. Her madcap antics have ended up in the death of a boyfriend who fell from the balcony of an Italian guest house and the partial paralysis of her sister in a car wreck. Now Janice was caught in a lie by DA Hamilton Burger and refuses to tell her lawyer Perry Mason the whole truth. So she has been convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. Perry and Paul pull out the stops to exonerate her. This is a somber, quiet episode with plenty of Hitchcockian moments. Perry broods and in a rare-as-hen's-teeth moment of losing his signature unflappability he throws a medicine ball into a lout’s gut. All the acting is exceptional in this episode, especially videogenic Julie Adams as the troubled accused.

The Case of the Nervous Neighbor. Charles Fuller (Richard Rust) hires the Paul Drake investigation agency to locate his missing mother, Alice Fuller Bradley (Shelia Bromley). Paul’s operatives locate her in an assisted care facility. She is suffering from amnesia, which for once has a reasonable explanation: she sustained a traumatic brain injury and in an unconscious state killed her husband with a fireplace poker. So the first court room scene is Burger waiving prosecution, sympathetic to the case of the accused. However, after the trial the son acts in an ill-considered way that leads to his mother ending up accused of killing a smarmy operator played by, in a bold casting decision, Paul Winchell (Jerry Mahoney puts in no appearance – a mercy).  William Talman’s DA Burger tears Richard Rust’s character to shreds in a great interrogation scene. Francis X. Bushman puts in a funny cameo as a nursing home Romeo and ever reliable Les Tremayne pops up too. All the actresses - Katherine Squire (the nurse) and Jeanne Cooper (of The Young and Restless fame) – put in great performances. And the tone, look and ending are as Hitchcockian as we’ll ever enjoy in the series. In my Top Five Fave Episodes.

Honorable Mention: TCOT Shifty Shoebox features the incredible Constance Ford, and overall the acting is quite good in this plausible story of adults have genuine grown-up problems. TCOT Drowsy Mosquito takes Perry and the Gang out of LA and features Arthur Hunnicutt in the crusty prospector role that he owned in scores of TV westerns and Strother Martin as a small-town main-chancer.

Happy Birthday Henry Wade

Note: Born in 1887, veteran of WWI Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, 6th Baronet KStJ CVO DSO, was Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire from 1954 to 1961. Under a pen-name, he was also one of the leading authors during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. In their classic reference book Catalogue of Crime, Barzun and Taylor said of him: “Though insufficiently known in the US, Wade is one of the great figures of the classical period. He was not only very productive but also varied in genre. His plots, characters, situations, and means rank with the best, while his prose has elegance and force.”

Lonely Magdalen: A Murder Story – Henry Wade

In this classic English detective story from 1940, a sex worker is found strangled in a park in Hampstead Heath. Scotland Yard is called in and young insightful Inspector Poole is assigned a case that is rapidly growing cold. With no clues, he inquires into the background of the victim.

So right away we depart from Golden Age mystery. Mercifully. Instead of a loathsome uncle poisoned in a library in a country house, we have a gritty urban setting, with the victim a woman of the town, worn out and in the abyss, killed brutally.  We are not treated to the usual troop of suspects gathered in a room as a climax. Wade spurns police worship, because here the cops are prone to human error and their irresponsible lack of professionalism leads to an ambiguous reveal. Uncertainty in a reveal is a rarity in mysteries up to WWII. Worry not however: in the 2013 edition Arcturus released they provided a map of the scene of the crime, a mainstay of Golden Age mysteries.

Henry Wade started his career with mainstream puzzlers and made his way over to more stimulating police procedurals and crime novels. This mystery features a middle section that is more like a flashback in that it describes the backstory of the victim (another departure: usually victims in the Golden Age were barely sketched out). Unlike Golden Age writers who want to spare the feelings of the reader, Wade assumes we can handle settings, incidents and motives without seeking out the fainting couch and sending the maid to fetch the sal volatile. Chronicling how drinking devastated the lives of the victim and her husband, Wade is ahead of his time when he theorizes about a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, a possibility today's experts are learning more about.

Wade wrote as many as 22 detective novels or story collections between 1926 and 1957. The Hanging Captain and Mist on the Saltings were published by Harper Perennial in a series of great re-issues in the Eighties.

The Nones of Perry Mason 92

Note: I have a dim view of comparisons but here I go, Cool and Lam versus Perry Mason. The Cool and Lam novels, written under the A.A. Fair pen name, are known among us happy few for their comedic elements and witty banter between Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. They are generally shorter and move through twists and turns quickly. Donald Lam, a former lawyer with a knack for getting into trouble, and Bertha Cool, a brassy and independent detective, make for an entertaining pair because they contrast: while both are tough as nails, he's quiet and insightful and she's as sensitive as a fire hydrant. These novels delve into the seedier side of life, with more emphasis on family problems and private investigation than courtroom drama, police procedures, or legal technicalities. 

Owls Don’t Blink – A.A. Fair a.k.a. Erle Stanley Gardner

The mysteries under the pen name A. A. Fair  feature the private eye partnership Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.

Like all famous whodunit partnerships ranging from Holmes & Watson to Gravedigger Jones & Coffin Ed and Nick & Nora, Cool & Lam appeal to readers because, though they are both smart about figuring out scams, they are opposites in personality. Impulsive Bertha Cool has a hair-trigger temper and has only a porous filter between her brain and her mouth. Ex-lawyer Donald Lam has a sound grip on legal matters and police procedures. Lam is a master at interrogation, making inferences, and keeping his mouth shut. He frustrates Bertha mightily by being impossible to pump for information. 

Bertha is recovering from a health scare so she doesn’t push herself away from a hearty meal. Lam has a slight build, but is skilled in boxing and jujitsu. Because they know they make a good team, they like each other enough to banter affectionately but frankly.

Owls Don’t Blink is set mainly in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Lam is on the trail of a missing woman. Bertha arrives in the Big Easy with the New York lawyer who has hired them to find an ex-model for reasons he is reluctant to explain. As Lam often does, he locates the woman very easily - too easily, in fact. Then, a corpse is discovered in the missing woman’s former apartment.

The scene shifts from New Orleans to Shreveport and from there to Los Angeles, though there is also a desert scene where Gardner can describe the landscape he loved so deeply. Plenty of action and convoluted incidents capture our attention before the conclusion, which is complicated. The scams and schemes in this novel are ingenious, but the best point is the interplay between Lam and Bertha, between Lam and the persons of interest in the case.

The time for this mystery is early 1942 (at the latest) so with the decisive Battle of Midway yet to be fought, the outcome of the war with Japan is a question mark. Bertha wants to keep Lam a civilian because he attracts big money cases. She is trying to finagle a deferment for him - maybe 4F, "not acceptable for military service" since he was a disbarred attorney.

Crime Crashes Off "The Rock"

Note: In this movie future producer of the classic TV series Perry Mason, Gail Patrick, plays an earnest and even-keeled nurse. She is cool and calm enough to be guided through long-distance abdominal surgery. She ought, however, to wear the surgical mask over her nose too. We learned such technical niceties in 2020.

King of Alcatraz
1938 / 54 minutes
Tagline: “He Changed his Prison Stripes for a Pirate's Hat!”
[internet archive]

Robert Preston and Lloyd Nolan are two radiomen on a cruise ship. They are frenemies who brawl over boop-a-doop girls named Dixie. One day in San Franciso they are almost run down by a speeding car.  It was being chased by cops because a gangster stole it to escape police custody.

The gangster J. Carrol Naish is sly enough to escape from Alcatraz by claiming he needed medical attention. He was also resourceful enough to disguise himself as an old lady to get aboard the same cruise ship to which our two sparks guys were assigned. But he impulsively kills a traitor on board ship though the victim will be soon missed. And the plan to take over the ship, change course, and then escape into the wilds of Central America seems half- baked, at best. The sailors call him “King of Alcatraz” out of contempt.

Too much time is spent establishing the rivalry of Preston and Nolan. But in short order, the movie becomes fast-moving to a fault, never giving the movie-goer’s attention a second to wander. Gail Patrick’s part is under-written and there’s no time to give her any chance to act. The climax was rushed and breathless. J. Carrol Naish does not give himself up to the dark side of the hambone as he was so often to do later in his career, which may disappoint movie-goers who are bracing themselves for when he leaves “restrained” in the rearview mirror.

The movie is still worth an hour because Robert Florey is the director.  His images of the tramp steamer make it feel as if it were in the moist grip of subtropical humidity.  A movie-goer has to respect Florey’s attention to craft, even in lowly movies like this one. No missteps at all when it comes to camera work.

Dennis Morgan and Anthony Quinn have tiny little parts. This B-movie was Robert Preston's first movie. What a voice that guy had! Ya Got Trouble!

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click on the title to go to the review

·         If I Had a Million
·         The Phantom Broadcast
·         The Murders in the Zoo
·         Death Takes a Holiday
·         The Crime of Helen Stanley
·         Murder at the Vanities
·         The Preview Murder Mystery
·         My Man Godrey
·         Murder by Pictures
·         Artists and Models
·         King of Alcatraz

The Kalends of Perry Mason 91

Note:  In the 271 episodes of the original TV series Perry Mason (1957 - 1966), many business dramas unfold. Relatable were family businesses fighting over succession and bigger companies that were bedeviled by competitors, office romances, or rivalries over promotions. Writers liked to examine the dark sides of businesses in the arts, entertainment, and high fashion.

There’s No Thief like a Bad Book

As professionals, the Mason writers were probably of two minds about the cultural phenomenon entitled Peyton Place (1956), marveling at its massive success and cultural impact but also taking jabs at the literary racket, plagiarists, and authors of bad books that become best-sellers.

The Case of the Wayward Wife (1/23/60). The premise is shaky because it would have been impossible for a prisoner to keep a journal in a North Korean POW camp. Still, author and sage Arthur Poe manages to do just that. During an escape attempt, however, he is re-captured and his journal ends up in the larcenous hands of his fellow soldier Ben Sutton. Back in the USA, Sutton publishes the journal under his own name. Ordeal becomes a best-seller, and attracts the attention of movie producers. Sutton is an all-round heel because when not reaping the fruits of plagiarism, he is blackmailing the family of his wife Sylvia. Sylvia makes the wrong choices at the wrong time and place and ends up in the dock accused of Sutton’s murder (regal Bethel Leslie played three times the murdered louse’s nice wife who ends up Perry’s client). Besides the shaky premise, Poe’s Stoicism-lite is neither consistent nor convincing. The subplot of the blackmailed family members clouds the story. But the acting is superb and the mood somber even if the writing tries to pack ten pounds of story into a five-pound sack.

The Case of the Prankish Professor (1/17/63). In a university classroom, a condescending English prof stages a shooting as the basis for a writing assignment. That the prof would traumatize at least 10% of the students in the room for the sake of a writing prompt shows that his judgement is unsound, his pedagogy dubious. He is thrown a curve ball when the sister of one of his former students accuses him of plagiarism. It seems he filched the manuscript of trashy novel L'Affaire Annabelle and published it under a pen-name. Referring to the best-selling Peyton Place ripoff, a bookstore clerk leers, “If it smells, it sells.” The prof is spared the embarrassment of a scandal when he is murdered with a letter opener to the pump. His wife, long-suffering and noble, ends up in the dock. Good acting especially from the relentless and greedy sister, played by dynamic Joyce Van Patten.

The Case of the Skeleton’s Closet (5/2/63). Richard Harris is full of rage and hostility against his ex-wife and young children because after the divorce she changed their surnames from his to her maiden name. So he writes a tell-all book called Dishonored, about the tawdry high jinks of dwellers of an upper-class LA suburb. His ex-wife is afraid the tacky book will disgrace the kids and she wants it pulled from the market. Their scenes of bitter argument hiss and sizzle, kudos to Michael Pate and Peggy McCay. In a poignant scene, a broken young woman is weaving a basket as her occupational therapy. I ask my weaving and basket-making wife if that stereotype of “basket weaver as basket case” still dogs her and her buds. “Only with narrow-minded people,” she says with a glare that adds, “like you.”

The Case of the Bountiful Beauty (2/6/64). Ryan O’Neal plays a small part as John Carew, the boyfriend of Debra Dearborn (gamine Zeme North). John has told Debra stories of his bad-girl step-mom Stephanie (Sandra Warner, a Joan Collins type). Budding writer Debra has woven these stories together into a lurid novel like – you guessed in one - Peyton Place. The book becomes a best-seller, attracting the attention of a rotten movie producer (John Van Dreelan, a George Saunders cad). This episode illustrates the tendency of this series to paint the entertainment industry in the worst colors. In an episode that features superb acting, the best character is an agent man who protests his innocence and calls our favorite lawyer “Perry baby.”

European Reading Challenge #8

Swan Song – T.J. Binyon

With the success of Gorky Park (Martin Cruz Smith) and Kolymsky Heights (Lionel Davidson) in the early 1980s, publishers were more open to mysteries, thrillers, and adventures set in the Soviet Union.

This 1982 thriller takes a quiet Russian professor of English Literature into perils. During their college days, Vanya, Tanya, Alek, and Lyuba spent their nostalgic summer of lifetime. After graduation, while Vanya steered clear of politics with a job in academe, Alek jumped feet first into a career with KGB, keeping an eye on domestic sources of trouble like nationalism and religion. Tanya became an internationally recognized film director. Idealistic Lyuba became a teacher, first in the far east, but then in Tallinn, Estonia and Suzdal, the heartland of medieval Russia.

This adventure novel touches on the mysterious ‘Russian soul.’ Also, called the “Russian heart,” it is stereotypically moral, tough, and profound but also prone to pessimism and fatalism. In the manner of her ancestors, Lyuba, who is prone to engagement and commitment, gets involved with a religious group that combines mysticism with hysterical nationalism and knee-jerk xenophobia. Also persuasive are the nods to Soviet reality in the last decade before the system keeled over of a coronary, like little food in the stores, much stair climbing due to broken elevators, and widespread apathy and cynicism about the future. The story is narrated by Vanya.

Author Binyon was a professor of Russian literature so he had the historical knowledge to write a convincing story with the background of the development of various religious groups and movements that diverged from the established Russian Orthodox Church. They were characterized by their own interpretations of scripture, practices, and beliefs. Binyon even refers to the Skoptsy, 18th-century sectarians known for practicing self-castration as a means of getting a handle on lust. 

Anyway, in a yet another of never-ending examples in the history of not only Russia, in the novel bad people hijack the sincere religious inclinations of ordinary people.