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V
By Ann SiAck
Movie Critic
It’s man meets mail, and Ah-nold’s
going down.
Just in time for the Christmas sea
son, the comedy “Jingle All TKeWtfy,”
with Arnold Schwarzenegger (“Termi
nator”) and Sinbad (“Houseguest”) hit
the silver screen Friday. * f s'
The plot is pretty simple to figure
out — two fathers fighting over the
same toy, a “Turbo Man” action figure
(hat happens to bejthe hottes|ihingp©^
the market.
Of course, the doll sold out months
ago, but wonder-pops Howard
Langston (Schwarzenegger) and
Myron Larabee (Sinbad), both of
whom waited until Christmas Eve to
do their shopping, don’t know that.
Things are already strained in the
Langston household, with fast-track
businessman Howard constantly miss
ing family events and then making lame
excuses for it. When he misses his son’s
karate awards ceremony, that’s the last
straw — he’s in the doghouse unless
he can produce the Turbo Man doll his
Wife Liz (Rita Wilson, “That Thing
You Dol^asked him to do two weeks
before.
So Howard embarks on the mission
of a lifetime at the Mall of America in
is to find the doll, compet
Iprker Myron.
tfablaiaKlae^ s he
tries to sell him a phony Turbo Man, a
jerky police officer who’s got bad luck
when it comes to running into Howard
Mid a pint-sized mall-rat with an atti
tude.
• Sinbad is an absolute caricature of
Film: “Jingle All The Way” '
Director: Brian Levant
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad,
RitaWilson
Grade: A- *
Five Words: Holiday hilarity makes
movie must-see
postal employees, and provides the
funniest moments in the movie. It’s
unfortunate his character wasn’t devel
t- h
his sec
Directed
Flintstones”), this a hilarious, action
filled misadventure in Christmas shop
ping, packed with just enough cool
special effects to keep the kids inter
ested and enough heart-warming mo
ments for the sappy Hallmark crowd.
Project aims to save pulp fiction
Syracuse University
plans to preserve
publishing archive of
wom-and-tom dime
novels, comics, scripts.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) —
Hard-boiled detectives ducked bul
lets to fight crime another day. Cow
boys in peril were saved by their
trusty horses. The Shadow vanished
from the sight of men with evil lurk
ing in their hearts.
Pulp fiction heroes, often the
creations of famous writers using
phony names, were invincible.
Now, half a century later, they
face oblivion. The villain this time?
The cheap paper used to print the
dime novels mid escapist periodi
cals of another generation is liter
ally crumbling away.
But at least some of the once
popular literature is now being res
cued by unlikely heroes: librarians
armed with microfilm.
The National Endowment for
the Humanities has granted
$250,000 to Syracuse University to
begin preserving the Street & Smith
publishing archive, a unique but
worn 820,000-page trove of old
periodicals, dime novels, comics
and radio scripts dating from 1855
to 1962.
When the project is completed
in 1998, researchers believe the
now-guarded pages will open a win
dow to what popular entertainment
was like before television.
Through World War II, millions
of people would snap up the
brightly-covered titles at news
stands and drugstores. They were
today’s TV soap operas or cop
shows or gossip sheets.
There were romance-and-angst
tales, such as “Love
StoryMagazine;” escapist serials
featuring detective Nick Carter or
The Shadow; the latest on Norma
Shearer and a host of now-forgot
ten starlets in “Picture-Play
Weekly.”
Also included in the archive will
be corporate records, radio scripts
from “The Shadow,” Horatio
Alger’s rags-to-riches stories, and
watercolor paintings of the first
comic strip character, The Yellow
Kid, by R.F. Outcault.
“It shows what was popular at a
particular time and how it might
have reflected the dreams and aspi
rations and the illusions of the pub
lic,” said J. Randolph Cox, editor
and publisher of Dime Novel
Round-Up.
Street & Smith was one of the
largest pulp-fiction producers, op
erating out of a Manhattan office
building. A lot of now-famous writ
ers passed through the headquarters:
Jack London, Upton Sinclair,
Theodore Dreiser.
But they generally wrote under
pseudonyms. That may have been
because Street & Smith was re
nowned as a “fiction factory” —
editors dictated plots to writers, who
were expected to stick closely to
formulaic plots and character types.
Mark F. Weimer, curator of spe
cial collections at Syracuse Univer
sity, said much of the writing is no
table not for its content, but as a clue
to past popular culture. While
Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy”
is still in print, Weimer said his pulp
tales were read by many more
people.
“Universities are finally figuring
this out. More people were reading
this literature,” Weimer said. “It was
a barometer of taste of literature.”
Martha Hanson, preservation
administrator for the library, said
Street & Smith writers gave up all
rights to their work. Editors would
“milk each manuscript,” trying it in
different niche publications.
“They just recycled, rehashed,
and people ate it up with a spoon,”
Hanson said.
And when titles sold poorly? No
problem. Editors just tweaked the
content. “Bill Barnes, Air Adven
turer,” debuted as a fiction title in
1934, but had metamorphosed by
1956 into “American Modeler,” a
hobbyist’s magazine. %
Sometimes the tweaks didn’t
work. “Old Broadbrim Weekly,” a
serial about a gun-toting Quaker
detective, lasted for just a year af
ter its 1902 debut. (“He said ‘Thee’
a lot,” Hanson noted.) Perhaps sens
ing the title’s problem was only age
related, editors replaced it with
“Young Broadbrim Weekly.”
It didn’t last either.
But, in general, Street & Smith’s
hypersensitivity to the market
helped it thrive. In the 19th century,
Please see PULP on 14
Letters depict Einstdnfe daik side
NEW YORK (AP)—A collec
tion of letters from Albert Einstein
that show him as both a tender and
cruel husband sol (fat auction Mon
day for nearly $900,000, twice as
much as a manuscript on relativity,
(Hie of the fundamental theories of
the universe.
“You will expect no affection
from me,” he wrote to his first wife,
Mileva Marie, in 1914. “You must
. leave my bedroom or study at once
without protesting when I ask you
to."
That note, sold with two others
. for $20,700, was one of more than
400 Einstein letters fd fatally vaid
friends that, with the scientific
manuscript, were anctiOtteld by
Christie’s. -
Only 28 of the 116 lots offered
Monday were sold, for a total of
$1.28 million, including commis
sions of 10 percent to 15 percent.
Presale estimates valued each lot—
anywhere from one to 43 letters—
at $1,500 to $35,000, for a total of
$2 million.
The highest price, $442,500
from an anonymous bidder, was
paid for the 43 love letters Einstein
wrote to Marie after they met as stu
dents in turn-of-the-century Swit
zerland. Scholars believe Marie,
herself a scientist, was a sounding
board for the theory of relativity that
established Einstein’s genius.
Einstein divorced Marie in 1919
and married his cousin and mistress,
Elsa Einstein Lowenthal, after
choosing her oyer her 21-yearnold ?
daughter.
t « $16.6
$2.7'
SOURCE: AJr
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