Draft:Jane Speed

American writer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jane Speed (born Jane Helen Krisher; January 4, 1920 – March 5, 1991)[1] was an American mystery writer, radio dramatist and actress, best known for her crime fiction,[2][3][4] published primarily in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.[5]

Born
Jane Helen Krisher

(1920-01-04)January 4, 1920
Akron, Ohio, U.S.
DiedMarch 5, 1991(1991-03-05) (aged 71)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationMystery writer, radio scriptwriter
EducationOhio Wesleyan University (1937-1939)
Quick facts Jane Speed, Born ...
Jane Speed
Born
Jane Helen Krisher

(1920-01-04)January 4, 1920
Akron, Ohio, U.S.
DiedMarch 5, 1991(1991-03-05) (aged 71)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationMystery writer, radio scriptwriter
EducationOhio Wesleyan University (1937-1939)
Alma materNorthwestern University (1939–1941)
GenreMurder mystery, screwball comedy, romantic comedy
Years active1941–1953, 1963–1980
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Early life and career

Speed was born Jane Helen Krisher in Akron, Ohio, on January 4, 1920,[1] the only child of William Chester Krisher and Helen E. Roush.[6] Her first stage assignment of note came in the fall of 1935 at Akron's First Congregational Church, where she served as prompter and assistant to the director in a production of the British anti-war play Ashes of Victory.[7] The following spring, she took part in an amateur radio program which concluded with a production of the three-act play, The Tinker.[8][9][a] After graduating from Buchtel High School in 1937, Krisher attended first Ohio Wesleyan University, where she became a member of Theta Alpha Phi,[11] and then Northwestern University's School of Speech, joining Alpha Gamma Delta and graduating in 1941 with a Bachelor of Science in Speech.[12][1][13] At Buchtel, she studied drama with Mrs. T. C. Laughlin,[14][15] and at Northwestern with Alvina Krause.[16][17] Krisher's collegiate résumé includes roles in Ayn Rand's Night of January 16th,[14] Dion Boucicault's The Poor of New York.[18], Lenore Coffee's Family Portrait[17] and H. L. Mencken's The Artist,[14] as well as the female lead in Seumas O'Kelly's The Matchmakers.[18]

Radio

Following her graduation and return to Akron, two of Krisher's original radio dramas aired locally, both of which she directed.[19][20] She also wrote a holiday-themed drama, which aired Christmas Eve on WLW.[21] Krisher also continued to perform onstage, joining Akron's Little Theater group, the Weathervane Players, in September 1941.[22][23][24] Subsequently, she worked as a copywriter and continuity writer at WFMJ in Youngstown, Ohio.[1] It was there, in the fall of 1942, that Krisher met her soon-to-be husband, James Speed, a fellow WFMJ employee.[12]

In 1946, following the birth of her first child and completion of her husband's military service, Speed relocated to New York City. On June 6, her radio drama "My Dear Aunt Caroline" aired on Elaine Sterne Carrington's anthology series showcasing new writers, The Carrington Playhouse,[1][25][26] performed live at New York's Longacre Theatre under Perry Lafferty's direction and broadcast nationally on the Mutual Broadcasting System.[27] Recounting "the near tragedy brought about by the dominance by an older woman over a young girl,"[16] Speed's narrative clearly anticipates the oppressive family relationships that would characterize her most popular mystery stories roughly 20 years later.[28][29]

The next two scripts sold were "The Perfect Wife" and "A Hard Bargain" (broadcast on Family Theater and The Whistler,[b][c] respectively), the former a gentle domestic comedy starring Spring Byington and Ralph Morgan,[33][34] while the was latter a noir-ish tale of one "small doubt, fed by growing uncertainty, grow[ing] into suspicion as lethal as poison."[35] A new production of "A Hard Bargain" aired more than 2½ years later on Murder by Experts,[36] Dave Kogan's and Robert Arthur's short-lived but twice-Edgar Award-winning series.[37]

"Farewell to Birdie McKeesler," Speed's tale of a severely typing-challenged office employee whose dismissal proves considerably easier said than done,[38] was produced three times in five years, first in 1948 on Family Theater with June Haver,[39][40] then in 1950—with "McKeesler" changed to "McKeever"—on Skippy Hollywood Theatre, with Gloria Grahame,[41] and, finally, adapted for television in 1953 on Your Jeweler's Showcase, starring Marilyn Erskine.[42] The latter production was frequently re-aired over the next decade;[43] it was shown on KCOP-TV in Los Angeles as late as August 1966,[44] and, more than three years later, on ATV in Great Britain.[45] Moreover, the film was subsequently re-released by producer Stuart Reynolds and screened as a teaching tool addressing both workplace interaction and interpersonal communication in general.[46][47] The remainder of Speed's produced output during this period includes four episodes of Armstrong's Theatre of Today[48] and her adaptation of Richard Hughes' novel A High Wind in Jamaica, which aired on NBC University Theater.[49]

Hollywood interlude

On June 16, 1947, roughly five months prior to her second nationally broadcast radio drama (and the first one produced in Hollywood), Speed, as well as veteran character actors Harry Davenport and Kathryn Card, were named by The Hollywood Reporter as late additions to the cast of Warner Brothers' Mary Hagen (ultimately released as That Hagen Girl, starring Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan).[50][51] Although whatever dialogue the film's shooting script may have assigned her character did not make it into the finished film, Speed's uncredited 14-second walk-on at the very beginning of a nightclub scene late in the film—as a cigarette girl emerging from a crowd of anonymous dancers and wending her way past seated diners towards the club's bar (tended by an uncredited Gino Corrado)—is clearly the focal point of a carefully designed traveling crane shot.[52][53][d]

Crime fiction: a new beginning

In the wake of radio drama's demise in the early 1950s, Speed's roughly 25-year transition from stage to page concluded in March 1963 with the publication of "According to Plan," her professional mystery-writing debut,[48] which thus became—by editor Frederic Dannay's reckoning—"the 247th 'first story' to be published by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine."[57] Almost without exception Speed's crime fiction, all of which debuted between 1963 and 1980, did so in EQMM, the sole outlier being "Poor Eva", which first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in 1977.[5][58] Her first two stories were included in Anthony Boucher's honor roll for detective fiction of 1963,[59][60] as were her next three, in the 1964, '65 and '66 editions, respectively.[61] Her 1969 story, "The Unhappening", was likewise honored by Boucher's successor Allen J. Hubin;[62] in addition, it appeared the following year in Ellery Queen's Grand Slam (25th anniversary annual): 25 stories from 'Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'.[63]

"The Freya of Fire Island", Speed's third published story, appeared in the September 1964 issue and shortly thereafter in Ellery Queen's 20th Anniversary Annual.[64] In his introduction, editor Fred Dannay—aka Ellery Queen—observed: "Her style gets firmer with each story, her insight deeper, her observation sharper."[65] Regarding her 1966 novelette "Sounds in the Night", Dannay's introduction—entitled "Sui Generis"—notes that Speed's latest work "is not of the fast, grating, or slam-bang school. It chooses its own inherent speed, growing, growing... warmly human, sympathetically understanding, probing with the gentle touch of a highly skilled surgeon."[66] Six years later, Speed spelled out in verse her personal mystery preferences, chief among them being "to read not of dolls pulled about by plots, but of humans tied up in their self-made knots."[67]

"End of the Day" (EQMM, March 1965), described by Dannay as "a superb character study [of] a nervous, harassed mother of two [and] wife of a demanding, sarcastic, belittling husband,"[28] appears to have created an immediate buzz; barely had the March issue hit the newsstands when Speed was contacted by noted mystery/suspense editor Joan Kahn in hopes of giving her employer Harper & Row the inside track on any upcoming novel.[68] Although the novel never materialized, more than two decades later, Kahn did include another popular Speed story, "Fair's Fair",[69] in Ready or Not, Here Come Fourteen Frightening Stories, the last in Kahn's series of wide-ranging short fiction anthologies. Speed's entry was singled out by both School Library Journal[70] and McAllen Monitor critic Wanda Koeller, who writes, "'Fair's Fair' is my favorite. [...] The author does an excellent job of doing what a frightening story should do — keep you on the edge of your seat. [...] It is written very plainly by Jane Speed, but offers a complex and sinister message."[29] More recently, Mystery.com's 2021 review of the February 1967 issue of EQMM awarded "Fair's Fair" 4 of 5 stars (as contrasted with another seven of the issue's 12 stories, which received 3 or fewer, and with the issue's overall score of 3.5).[71]

Kahn and Dannay were not alone in their regard for Speed's work. For the 1977 edition of Best Detective Stories of the Year, Edward D. Hoch selected her story "View From the Inside".[72] Five years later, two of her stories and three by Hoch appeared in Martin H. Greenberg's anthology Miniature Mysteries: 100 Malicious Little Mystery Stories. Reviewing that collection, the San Francisco Examiner Magazine singled out Speed, Hoch, and fellow contributors Kay Nolte Smith, Jack Ritchie, Francis M. Nevins and Helen McCloy as "some of the most respected names in the profession."[2] Reviewing the same book, Kiplinger's Changing Times selected an almost entirely different group to represent the best of the best, yet likewise included Speed:

Included are works by some of the best writers in the field, such as Edward Wellen, Michael Gilbert, Lawrence Treat and Jane Speed.[3]

In retrospect, "End of the Day" may be Speed's most enduring work; aside from numerous subsequent printings,[73][74][75] it almost singlehandedly resurrected the author's previous career in the form of radio dramatizations and readings in South Africa, Italy, and, in Germany, by RAI Bozen, Radio Bremen and Sender Freies Berlin.[76] One production, starring Elisabeth Wiedemann and Henning Schlüter, debuted on July 3, 1976.[77] In addition, a reading of Speed's "Poor Eva" was aired by SFB in 1979 and again in 1981.[78][79] In 2018, more than half a century after its publication, "End of the Day" was performed live for the benefit of Seattle Central Library patrons[80][4] (part of that library's longstanding program, "Thrilling Tales! A Story Time for Grownups"[81]).

Personal life and death

From April 1943 until her death in 1991, she was married to musician/computer programmer James Edward Speed, with whom she had three children.[82][12][83] Following the appearance of her last published story in 1980, much of Speed's time was taken up in managing the affairs of her aging father in Akron and, following his death in 1988, successfully contesting a fraudulent will which, ironically, would have left her a considerably larger sum than did the actual document drawn up by her charitably inclined father almost a decade earlier.[84]

On March 5, 1991, Speed died of natural causes, survived by her husband and children,[82] as well as her son-in-law, poet John Curl, and her granddaughter, Grammy-winning film and video producer Rachel Curl.[83]

Works

Radio

Television

Short stories

Except where otherwise indicated, information is derived from Galactic Central.[5]

Notes

  1. [a]
    This was almost certainly the then already widely performed three-act, religious play penned by the Ohio-born and educated Fred Eastman, longtime Professor of religious drama and literature at Chicago Theological Seminary.[10]
  2. [b]
    Although initially purchased for Suspense, "A Hard Bargain" found its way to The Whistler when the former series expanded from a 30 to a 60-minute format.[30]
  3. [c]
    The Whistler's production of Speed's "A Hard Bargain" aired on its 'east of the Rockies'—i.e. Household Finance Corp.—edition only,[31] while the rest of the country heard "What Makes a Murderer," a new production of the show's like-named 8/13/45 episode[32]
  4. [d]
    The party responsible for Speed's presence here is most likely the film's dialogue director, Herschel Daugherty, who, as of June 23, 1941, had been a longtime faculty member at the Pasadena Playhouse.[54] It was approximately one week later that Jane Krisher—who, as evidenced by her Northwestern résumé, was at that time at least as much focused on acting as on writing or directing[14][55]—embarked with three fellow Northwestern graduates on a three-part California road trip, the first stop being Pasadena.[56]

References

Further reading

External links

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