Rich dad’s ‘frame & fortune’ forgeries

Himan Brown (front) was a pioneer in radio drama and suspense at CBS in New York in the 1940s, dying last year and leaving one last mystery to his son and daughter.
From New York Post: Rich dad’s ‘frame & fortune’ forgeries
Talk about an artless exit.

A legendary Manhattan radio producer with a vast collection of paintings and sculptures has given a final, cruel sign-off to his estranged family -- from beyond the grave.

Himan Brown died last year at age 99, after an illustrious career that helped him amass a $40 million estate, including artworks intended to go to his kids after his death.

But instead of leaving his son Barry and daughter Hilda priceless paintings, Himan swapped out nearly two dozen works by Degas, Manet, Renoir and others with worthless forgeries, a new lawsuit alleges.

The deception went unnoticed until December, when Barry Brown finally got the art his father promised him.

“Had these paintings been authentic, they would have had significant value,” Barry Brown claims in a $27 million Manhattan federal court lawsuit against his own dad’s estate.

Himan and Mildred Brown were married for 34 years as he pioneered golden-age radio dramas like Grand Central Station, Dick Tracy, and Inner Sanctum Mysteries.

The couple collected art by the masters until they split in 1967. Many pieces graced the walls of their Central Park West home, and some were gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mildred got $1,500 in monthly alimony, the 1966 Corvair, and possession of 34 artworks in the divorce, including the 1921 Pablo Picasso piece “La Maternité.”

There was just one caveat, Mildred insisted: the 34 paintings and sculptures, a fraction of the overall collection, must go to the kids once Mildred and Himan were both dead.

“Throughout [Barry’s] life, his father would discuss the artwork with [Barry] and his mother,” according to court papers. “Himan Brown would review the artwork, the signatures on the artwork, and would represent unequivocally that the artworks were the authentic works of named artists and were very valuable.”

Himan retook possession of the 34 artworks, including “La Maternité” and a Renoir work titled “Paysages à Cagnes,” when Mildred died in 1974.

But the transaction did not go smoothly. In the years that followed, Barry, now 77 and living in Santa Rosa Valley, Calif., accused his dad of trying to sell off the inheritance Mildred secured for her kids. An ugly court battle ensued.

The 2002 case was ultimately dismissed.

The biggest clue: The forgeries all have the same stretchers -- the wood underneath the canvas -- which is an “inconceivable” coincidence, said lawyer Malcolm Taub.

As for what happened to the real paintings? Barry doesn’t know -- but he wants to find out where his dad hid them, or if they were already sold.

Only two significant works were real, according to court papers: The $10 million Picasso, and Armand Guillaumin’s “Rocks on Riviera,” which Barry and Hilda sold at auction last year for $120,000.

“At the end of the day, we have one painting,” Taub said.

His father’s betrayal is the final fracture in a decades-long family rift.

“There’s a lot of blood on the sand,” Taub said. “This is a tortured, tortured case.”

Peter Coke's Paul Temple radio ouvre

The serials starring Peter Coke as Temple, and Marjorie Westbury as his wife Steve (Steve being a nickname because as a journalist she'd used this name as her pseudonym.) (The earlier serials starring Kim Peacock as Temple no longer exist.)

I'll be reviewing the extant ones in chronological order.

All the serials - except the Geneva Mystery, are in 8 parts.

1. Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case (29th March to 17th May 1954). This story was remade in 1959, also starring Peter Coke and Marjorie Westbury. Both versions are available.

2. Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery Another remake of a previous serial starring Kim Peacock as Temple. (Aired in June and July of 1955).

3. Paul Temple and the Lawrence Affair. (11th April to 30th May 1956).

4. Paul Temple and the Spencer Affair. (13th November 1957 to 1st January 1958).

5. Paul Temple and the Van Dyke Affair. Remake of a previous serial, in which Peter Coke played one of the villains. (1st January to 19th February 1959).

6. Paul Temple and the Conrad Case. (2nd March to 20th April 1959).

7. Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case. A remake of the 1954 serial. (22nd November 1959 to December, 1959).

8. Paul Temple and the Margo Mystery. (1st January to 19th February 1961).

9. Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery. A remake of a previous serial. (14th October to 2nd December 1963.)

10. Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery. (11th April to 16th May 1965) (Only 6 episodes..

11. Paul Temple and the Alex Affair. A remake of a previous serial. (26th February to 21st March 1968).

Theatre Music: The 39 Steps

I have not seen Patrick Barlow's play, The 39 Steps, but I have seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie, and apparently it is an adaption of the movie, rather than John Buchan's book.

I'm also familiar with Patrick Barlow's work - I love his Theatre of Brent offerings, which you can hear on BBC Radio 4 Extra every now and again.

In his Theatre of Brent stuff, two actors play multiple roles, and it is the same with The 39 Steps - where I believe 3 actors play multiple roles - only on stage rather than on the radio.

I know the play would be a lot of fun...but I sure as heck am not going to pay $100 for a ticket to Broadway to see it... even if I lived anywhere near Broadway. If Patrick Barlow were in the cast I would, admittedly, but otherwise....

Anyway, I love this soundtrack.

The music is not all from The 39 Steps, as you can see from the cover, it is "Music From & Inspired By West End."

So we've got:
1. The 39 Steps: The 39 Steps / Highland Hotel / Mr. Memory / Finale The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra -- 4:04 minutes

2. The Lady Vanishes - Prelude The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra -- 3:04 minutes

3. Dial M For Murder - Main Title / The Telephone / The Trap / Finale The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 7:12 minutes

4. Psycho: Narrative For String Orchestra (prelude / The City / Rainstorm / Murder / Finale) The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra -- 7:24 minutes

5. The Man Who Knew Too Much: Prelude The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra -- 2:15 minutes

6. Vertigo: Scene D'amour The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra -- 5:08 minutes

7. Under Capricorn: Suite The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra -- 7:04 minutes

8. Stage Fright - Rhapsody The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 4:58 minutes

9. Alfred Hitchcock Presents - Title Theme (funeral March Of The Marionettes) The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 4:17 minutes

10. The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex: Love Theme The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 1:39 minutes

11. Coronation Scot Queen's Hall Light Orchestra 3:01 minutes. [This is the theme to the Paul Temple radio mysteries]

12. The Devil's Gallop Queen's Hall Light Orchestra 1:20 minutes

13. Embassy Stomp -- Ambrose And His Embassy Club Orchestra 2:39 minutes

14. Love Is The Sweetest Thing Al Bowlly With Ray Noble And The New Mayfair Dance Orchestra -- 3.29 minutes

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Audio Book: The Art Thief, narrated by Simon Vance

The Art Thief, by Noah Charney, 2007
8 Audio CDs (about 8 hours listening time)



Top, audio CD cover, bottom, Simon Vance, narrator.

Interestingly, if you look on Amazon.com, The Art Thief, by Noah Charney, has only a 2-annd-a-half out of 5 star rating. A lot of people (at least, a lot of people who post their opinions on Amazon) don't seem to like it.

I do.

When listening to an audio book, it doesn't matter how good the book itself is, if the narrator is lousy. A few weeks ago I checked out a Clive Cussler audio book. Can't remember the title now, or the name of the narrator, but in any event I could only listen to a couple of minutes of it before I gave up on it - the narrator's reading was that bad. No attempt to change voices depending on what character was talking, no intonation changes at all, just a dull monotone.

Simon Vance has all this stuff down pat. The Art Thief is a bit wordy, but because Vance uses intonation and inflection all the time, it's not hard to listen to - it's easy to concentrate on it.

He also does various voices...although I did find it distracting that the voices his characters use when speaking, and the voices he used when that same character was just internalizing thought, were not the same.

Anyway...what you get with The Art Thief is a very complex story, and a lot of information on art. Some of the negative reviewers on Amazon got tired of all that art info (especially since several characters would have their own point of view on the same piece of art, so we'd hear the same information several times, just articulated differently. But, the way I looked at, hearing it repeated so many times allowed me to learn and remember what was being said - and since I'm interested in art as well as in a good mystery, I enjoyed it.

This book isn't a howdunit, more of a whodunit and eventually a whydunit. (In other words, we never learn exactly how all the artwork managed to be stolen, but we learn who did it and why they did it.)

If you're interested in art at all - how it affects the human psyche - and mystery, and like listening to a good narrator, I think you'll enjoy this book.

The characters may be stereotypical, and there isn't much character development, but they're interesting and sympathetic. ANd the author has a good sense of dialog and sense of humor.

So give it a listen. You may turn it off...but I guarantee it won't be in the first five minutes!

Noah Charney bio from Wikipedia:
Noah Charney (born November 27, 1979) is an American art historian and novelist. He is the author of The Art Thief, a mystery novel about a series of thefts from European museums and churches, and is the founder of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

Early life and education
Charney was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1979. His parents, a psychiatrist and a professor of French Literature at Yale University were, in his words, “of the class of Americans who idealize Europe”, and as a youth he spent most of his summers in France.

He attended Choate Rosemary Hall, and received his undergraduate education at Colby College in Maine, where he majored in Art History and English Literature. During this period, he spent two years on exchange programs in Paris and London. Also while at Colby, he founded the Colby Film Society and wrote several plays, one of which won the Horizons New Young Playwrights Competition in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2002, the year of his graduation.

After graduating, he moved to London, where he studied at the Courtauld Institute and received a Masters for his work on seventeenth century sculpture in Rome. He subsequently attended Cambridge University, St. John's College, where he received a second Masters in History of Art writing on Bronzino's London Allegory, and began a PhD.

Current and Recent Projects
In 2006 Charney took a leave of absence from his studies at Cambridge to focus on other projects. Notable among these was writing. During the previous year he had written his first novel, The Art Thief which was published by Atria, a division of Simon and Schuster, New York,in September 2007. It has been published in 13 languages and was a best seller in Spain, Slovenia, Canada and The Netherlands. As he researched his novel he found that there was little scholarly material on the subject of art crime.

So he organized a conference on the subject in Cambridge in 2006, which attracted the heads of the art crime divisions of the FBI, Scotland Yard, and the Italian Carabinieri and was the subject of an article in the New York Times Magazine. In 2007 he joined with them, along with academics and others interested in the field, to form the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA). ARCA is a non-profit think tank based in Rome, dedicated to helping to prevent and prosecute art thefts, and to establishing the study of art crime as an academic subject.

Mr. Charney taught at Cambridge University's summer program and at Miami Dade College's program in Florence. In 2009 he taught a seminar on Art Crime at Yale University, New Haven. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Art History at the American University in Rome. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana, Slovenia .

He is the editor of Art and Crime, a collection of original essays by experts in the field, published by Praeger Press in the Spring of 2009[11]. In February 2010, geoPlaneta published a series of four museum guidebooks by Charney in Spanish and English. Called "Museum Time" (De Museos) the first books in the series provide guided tours to highlights of the collections of the leading museums of Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and the Basque Country.

His non-fiction work on the many thefts of the Ghent Altarpiece, called Stealing the Mystic Lamb, was published in October 2010 by Public Affairs. He is currently working on a second novel and other non-fiction projects.

ARCA offered its first Masters level course in art crime and security in the summer of 2009—a 12 week course in the town of Amelia, Italy. The program has been quite successful and was featured in the New York Times. Mr. Charney also edits The Journal of Art Crime, a scholarly publication on Art Crime and Security that comes out twice a year.

OTR: The Shadow

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"

The Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crime-fighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town" with psychic powers.

One of the most famous pulp heroes of the 20th century, The Shadow has been featured in comic books, comic strips, television, video games, and at least five motion pictures. The radio drama is well-remembered for those episodes voiced by Orson Welles.

Introduced as a mysterious radio narrator by David Chrisman, William Sweets, and Harry Engman Charlot for Street and Smith Publications, The Shadow was fully developed and transformed into a pop culture icon by pulp writer Walter B. Gibson.

The Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the Street and Smith radio program Detective Story Hour. After gaining popularity among the show's listeners, the narrator became the star of The Shadow Magazine on April 1, 1931, a pulp series created and primarily written by the prolific Gibson.

Over the years, the character evolved. On September 26, 1937, The Shadow radio drama officially premiered with the story "The Deathhouse Rescue", in which the character had "the power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him." This was a contrivance for the radio; in the magazine stories, The Shadow did not have the ability to become literally invisible.

Even after decades, the unmistakable introduction from The Shadow radio program, long-intoned by actor Frank Readick Jr., (as opposed to the actual actor portraying the Shadow) has earned a place in the American idiom: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh and a musical theme, Camille Saint-Saëns' Le Rouet d'Omphale ("Omphale's Spinning Wheel", composed in 1872). At the end of each episode, The Shadow reminded listeners, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay.... The Shadow knows!"

The music (from 3:23 to 4.25):


The very first Shadow episode:
Death House Rescue pt 1

Death House Rescue pt 2

Death House Rescue Pt 3

The Joy Of Audio Books

Audio books were available when I was in my teens, but to tell the truth I scoffed at them. I was, and am, a fast reader, and I can read in 3 hours a book that in audio format takes 8 hours to listen to.

But audio books have more to offer than just having someone else read a book to you. With the proper narrator, you can be transported into the world of the book, and its almost as good as a radio show. That's what "The theatre of the mind is" - using your imagination to conjure up pictures in your head as evoked by the descriptions in the book, assisted by the voice of the narrator.

So nowadays I listen to audio books in my car whenever I'm on the road, and old time radio shows at night as I'm relaxing for the evening.

Manifesto

This blog reviews audio books and old time radio programs.

There are a few blogs that review audio books -- (http://audiobookreview.blogspot.com/ being one), ours is different in that we pay as much attention to the narrator(s) as we do the book, sometimes more.

We also stick to a few genres: mystery, science fiction, non-fiction history.