Denis Plimmer (1914-1981)-Part Two

Denis Harcus Plimmer was from a well-known family in New Zealand. His uncle, William Harcus Plimmer (1875-1959), was a theatre critic. William's grandfather and Denis' great-grandfather was John Plimmer (1812-1905), an early settler in New Zealand and a prominent businessman and booster. Denis Plimmer's father was the actor Harry John Plimmer (1867-1947), subject of the first part of this series. Harry Plimmer was married at least twice, first to (Mary) Josephine Thynne (?-1910), on June 13, 1894, in Sydney, Australia. Harry's second wife and Denis Plimmer's mother was Josephine "Ena" Shanahan Plimmer (1892-1940). Harry and Ena were married on October 27, 1913, in Victoria, Australia. They may have renewed their vows in New York City.

Denis Plimmer was born on September 27, 1914, in Melbourne, Australia, and arrived in America with his parents in January 1918. The family settled in New York City. Harry Plimmer traveled throughout the United States with Ethel Barrymore's acting company beginning in 1918. After that ten-year stint was up, Plimmer acted with the Broadhurst Theater in New York. He retired from acting in 1946.

Denis Plimmer attended college, possibly Columbia University, for four years. His army career, June-September 1943, was cut short by his crosseyed condition. For his part, he became a journalist, writing for the Overseas News Agency during the mid to late 1940s. He was also on the radio with a regular program, Europe This Week/The World This Week, also during the World War II years. He spent more than half of his life in England, from the late 1940s until his death in September 1981 in Westminster. Plimmer had been a pacifist in the 1930s. In 1964, he served as a campaign worker for Americans Abroad for Johnson.

Here is a partial list of Denis Plimmer's works, some of which were with his second wife, Charlotte Plimmer:

• In Heaven and Earth (play, 1938)
• "The Meeting" in American newspapers (short short story; syndicated by McClure's Syndicate, 1939) 
• Land's End (play, 1940) with John Garfield in the cast
• "Eleven Years" in The American Magazine (vignette, Jan. 1941)
• "I Love You Ermintrude" in Writer's Digest (article, Nov. 1941)
• "Death Over Galleon Hall" in Daredevil Detective Stories (novel, Feb. 1942)
• "Trail’s End" in Dynamic Western Stories (short story, June 1942)
• "Mr. Potter Finds a Clue" in Daredevil Detective Stories (short story, Aug. 1942)
• "Mr. Potter and the Prophet Isaiah" in Daredevil Detective Stories (short story, Oct. 1942)
• "It's Safer in Murmansk," with Stanley Postek, in Free World (article, Aug. 1942)
• An article in The New Republic (Oct. 29, 1945)
• "The Harp of David ap Gwylam" in Bluebook (short story, Apr. 1953)
• "The Man in the Black Coat" in This Week (short story, July 12, 1953)
• "The Expatriate" in Cosmopolitan (short story, Oct. 1953)
• "See London for 11 Cents," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The American Magazine (article, Apr. 1954)
• "We Rediscovered the Rhine," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The American Magazine (article, June 1954)
• "Separate Rooms" in Cosmopolitan (short story, July 1954)
• "I Pronounce You" in Esquire (short story, Feb. 1955)
• "We Discovered Paris Through Its Markets," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The American Magazine (article, Aug. 1955)
• "Soliloquy on an Autumn Day," with Charlotte Plimmer, in Esquire (short story, Nov. 1955)
• "Strangers from a Barren Paradise," with Charlotte Plimmer (article)
• "London's Casbah: Soho," with Charlotte Plimmer, in Esquire (Feb. 1, 1957)
• "The Royal Home Afloat," with Charlotte Plimmer, in John Bull Illustrated (article, Jan. 24, 1959)
• "Marching as to War," with Charlotte Plimmer, in Reader's Digest (Nov. 1961)
• "Tempest in a Riviera Teapot," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The Saturday Evening Post (article, July 14/July 21, 1962)
• "Storm Over a Royal Love Affair," with Charlotte Plimmer), in Redbook (article, Oct. 1963)
• "The Man Who Understands Hobbits," with Charlotte Plimmer, in London Daily Telegraph Magazine (Mar. 22 1968, pp. 31-32, 35; published previously in The Telegraph; reprinted in Weekend Magazine, Aug. 31, 1968, for distribution with Canadian newspapers)-An article based on an interview with J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Damn'd Master: An Authentic Account of an Eighteenth Century Slaver, with Charlotte Plimmer, (history, 1971)
• Slavery: The Anglo-American Involvement, with Charlotte Plimmer, (1973)
• London: A Visitor's Companion, with Charlotte Plimmer, (travel, 1977)
• A Matter of Expediency: The Jettison of Admiral Sir Dudley North, with Charlotte Plimmer, (history, 1978)

I'll have more on Charlotte Plimmer in the next part of this series, including radio and television scripts she co-authored with her husband.

Denis Plimmer's career as an author of genre stories was short, running from November 1940 to September-October 1943. In those three years, Plimmer had nine stories and a poem in Weird Tales, Uncanny Stories, and Uncanny Tales (Canada)--enough to make a book if someone had the mind to put it together. See his Western and detective stories from the same period in the list above. I don't think it's any coincidence that Plimmer's genre fiction career came to an end at around the time he was in and out again from the army. With war on, other things--more important things--were calling.

To be continued . . . 

Denis Plimmer's Stories & Poem in Weird Tales and Other Weird Fiction Magazines

• "The Green Invasion" in Weird Tales (Nov. 1940; reprinted in Uncanny Tales, Apr. 1942)
• "Man from the Wrong Time-Track" in Uncanny Stories (Apr. 1941)
• "The Devil's Tree" in Weird Tales (poem, July 1941)
• "The Coming of Darakk" in Uncanny Tales (Dec. 1941)
• "The Stolen God" in Uncanny Tales (Jan. 1942)
• "The Channelers" in Uncanny Tales (Feb. 1942)
• "The Strange Case of Julian Rayne" in Uncanny Tales (Mar. 1942)
• "The Unborn" in Uncanny Tales (Sept. 1942)
• "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" in Uncanny Tales (Dec. 1942)
• "Louisiana Night" in Uncanny Tales (Sept.-Oct. 1943)

I should point out that there was a letter written by an H. Plimmer in Nebula Science Fiction #41 (June 1959). Can we assume that that was by (Denis) H. Plimmer?

Denis Plimmer lived long enough to see one of his weird fiction stories reprinted. His only story for Weird Tales, "The Green Invasion," from November 1940, was reprinted in Satanic Omnibus in 1973 and in this volume, Eiskalt ist die Totenhand, edited by Kurt Singer and published in 1974 by Pabel (Vampir Taschenbuch #16). The cover artist was Francisco Javier González Vilanova (1930-1995).

Thanks to The FictionMags Index and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database for lists of Denis Plimmer's stories.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Denis Plimmer (1914-1981)-Part One

Author, Poet, Actor, Playwright, Newspaperman, Travel Writer, Radio Commentator, Political Campaign Worker

Born September 27, 1914, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Died September 1981, Westminster, Middlesex, England

Blue of eye and fair of skin, Denis Harcus Plimmer was born on September 27, 1914, in Melbourne, Australia, to two actors, Harry John Plimmer (1867-1947) and Josephine "Ena" Shanahan Plimmer (1892-1940). Before getting to Denis Plimmer, the son and author, I'll write about Harry Plimmer, the father and actor.

Born in 1867 in Wellington, New Zealand, John Henry "Harry" Plimmer was a stage and screen actor who did a lot of traveling, including in troupes across early twentieth-century America. I might as well list his known acting credits because nobody else has done it to completion, or at least close to completion. There are links embedded in each heading, so be on the lookout for those.

Harry Plimmer on Stage in Australia:

• The Trumpet Call (1892)
• Harry Rickards' New Tivoli Minstrels (1894)
• The Sign of the Cross (1898-1899)
• The King's Musketeer (1899)
• Elizabeth, Queen of England (1900)
• Fedora (1900)
• La Tosca (1900)
• Ingomar, the Barbarian (1900)
• Sherlock Holmes (1902)
• Monsieur Beaucaire (1904)
• Inconstant George (1911)
• A Woman of No Importance (1912)
• The Monk and the Woman (1917)

Harry Plimmer on Film in Australia:

• The Monk and the Woman (1917)

The Monk and the Woman might sound familiar to fans of Ambrose Bierce, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same as Bierce's tale The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter (1892). The Monk and the Woman is considered a lost film.

Harry Plimmer (1867-1947), Australia's First Sherlock Holmes. Plimmer played Holmes in Perth and Adelaide in 1902 in a production by J.C. Williamson.

Harry Plimmer on Stage in the United States:

• The Off Chance (1918) with Ethel Barrymore
• Déclassée (1919-1920)
• The Blue Lagoon (1921)
• The Laughing Lady (1923)
• Antonia (1925)
• Shall We Join the Ladies (1925)
• Pickwick (1927)
• The Kingdom of God (1928-1929)
• Topaze (1930)
• The School for Scandal (1931) with Ethel Barrymore and Arthur Treacher
• Firebird (1932)
• Victoria Regina (1935-1936, 1936-1937, 1938) with Helen Hayes
• Billy Draws a Horse (1939)

Harry Plimmer (center) on the cover of Theatre Arts Magazine, September 1950, with Charles Francis and Ethel Barrymore. Plimmer acted in Ethel Barrymore's company for ten years, beginning in 1918. 

Harry Plimmer crossed an ocean to the United States at least once, in 1891, before arriving for good (I think for good) in January 1918, debarking in San Francisco from Sydney, Australia, from on board the Ventura. He had with him his young wife and their only child, the future writer Denis Plimmer, aged three years and a few months.

The Plimmer family lived in New York City in 1920, 1930, and 1940 when the enumerator of the census came around. Denis Plimmer made his declaration of intention to become a citizen on January 9, 1941, at age twenty-six and was naturalized in 1949. As of that date in 1941, he had four years of college, possibly at Columbia University. On January 31, 1941, the same month in which he declared his intention, he married Margaret Eva Partello (1920-?) in New York City. Maybe one thing was necessary for the other.

Denis Plimmer enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1943, also in New York City. He was at Camp Rucker, Arkansas, from August to September 1943 before being discharged for strabismus. (That means he was crosseyed.) Plimmer went back and forth between the United States and England in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I believe he was in England pretty much after 1947 or 1948 and until his death in 1981. His father, Harry John Plimmer, retired from acting in 1946 and died in Paddington, London, in late 1947. He was around eighty years old.

In July 1950, Denis Plimmer married again. His second wife was Charlotte (Fingerhut) Straus (1916-1991). Like him, she was a writer, and the two spent the rest of their time together collaborating on fiction and non-fiction, as well as on scripts for radio and television. Their credits will have to wait until the next part of this series. There are some interesting items in the list and some things fantasy fans will want to know about.

To be continued . . .

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales #364

There is a new issue of Weird Tales available. There isn't any date on the cover, but I think it came out in October 2020. Real print-on-paper magazines are supposed to have been sent out in December. That's according to the Weird Tales website.

For some reason, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database does not yet have a listing for this issue. I'm sure there will be one soon. Until that happens, here is a list of credits for Weird Tales #364:

• "Too Late Now" by Seanan McGuire, a California native and a very prolific author.
• "Ellende" by Gregory Frost, an instructor of English at Swarthmore College.
• "Hats" by Joe R. Lansdale, a well-known author from Texas.
• "Lightning Lizzie" by Marie Whittaker, who writes children's books and darker things
• "Last Days" by Dacre Stoker, a Canadian-American author, athlete, and conservationist, also great-grand nephew of Bram Stoker, and Leverett Butts, who teaches at the University of North Georgia.
• "The Beguiled Grave" by Marguerite Reed, a native Kansan.
• "The Last War" by Linda Addison (poem), a Philadelphian who writes verse, fiction, and non-fiction.
• "To the Marrow" by Rena Mason, a Thai-Chinese-American author.
• "Feathers" by Tim Waggoner, an author and teacher of writing at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.
• "Trailer Park Nightmare" by Gabrielle Faust, a writer and artist.
• "No One Survives the Beach" by Weston Ochse, a Westerner and an author of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and comic book scripts.
• "The Good Wife" by Lee Murray, a New Zealander about whom I have written before.   
• "The Canal" by Alessandro Manzetti (poem), an Italian author and poet.

The cover art is by Lynne Hansen, an artist, writer, and filmmaker from Illinois. If I had to give a piece of advice to the editors and publishers of the new Weird Tales, it would be this: Don't make us hunt for the name of the cover artist! She's helping to sell your magazine. Give her some credit. Anyway, I don't know whether there is any interior art, but as an artist, all I can say is that there ought to be. Why else would anyone buy a print magazine?

Anyway again, congratulations to the new Weird Tales for a second issue.

The cover of Weird Tales #364 shows a woman turning into a crow. Her transformation reminds me of what happened to David Hedison's character in The Fly (1958) (same head, same left hand) and Sharlto Copley's in District 9 (2009). All suggest a body horror that must be, I think, deep-seated in us. By the way, there have been corvids on the cover of "The Unique Magazine" before. This one is from September 1939. The cover artist was Virgil Finlay.

Original text and caption copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Weird Tales Website Is Back!

The website for the new Weird Tales magazine has returned. I don't know when it went up, but it's there for all to see. There are several pages to look at. Readers of this blog might be interested in the "Contact" page which invites inquiries from people who have "[q]uestions about old submissions" and "[p]roblems with something you bought from us." The new editor might not be responsible for the things that went on before he arrived, but I think somebody should have to account for them. At long last, somebody seems to be taking responsibility. Here's your chance to give Weird Tales an earful. 

Here is the URL for the new Weird Tales website. A link is embedded in it, so just click to go there.

https://www.weirdtales.com/

The website also has a blog portion. On the day that I write (July 30, 2020), there are two entries. The second is an interview with Jonathan Maberry, the new editorial director. (I think that means editor.) Near the start of the interview, he reveals that there will be a new issue--Number 364--out in October. That will make two new issues under his editorship. I wish him well and hope to see more issues of a magazine that isn't supposed to die.

One of the authors Mr. Maberry has lined up for October is Lee Murray. In this blog, I cover the writers and artists who contributed to Weird Tales from its beginnings in 1923 up to and including the Bellerophon issues of 1984-1985. As far as I know, no author from New Zealand was published in Weird Tales between 1923 and 1985. I believe Lee Murray will be the first. Congratulations, Lee!

Here is the URL of Lee Murray's website with an embedded link:

https://www.leemurray.info/

Here are some other URLs with links:

https://www.taurangawriters.org.nz/team/lee-murray/

https://authors.org.nz/author/leemurray/

https://www.wcl.govt.nz/blog/index.php/2019/07/10/author-interview-award-winning-lee-murray-part-1-3/

Happy reading!

Copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

George Whitley aka A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984)

Arthur Bertram Chandler
Aka Andrew Dunstan, S.H.M., George Whitely, George Whitley
Author, Poet, Essayist, Reviewer, Merchant Mariner
Born March 28, 1912, Aldershot, Hampshire, England
Died June 6, 1984, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I thought I had covered most of the authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction in previous articles, but then I find that the author called George Whitley was actually the well known Anglo-Australian author A. Bertram Chandler. I suppose I'll keep making these discoveries until I have written about all of the men and women who contributed to Weird Tales.

Arthur Bertram Chandler was born on March 28, 1912, in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He served in the merchant marine in his native country and in Australia, to which he emigrated in 1956 after the breakup of his first marriage. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his earliest science fiction story was "'This Means War!'" in Astounding Science Fiction for May 1944. His first and only story for Weird Tales was "Castaway" from November 1947, published under the byline of George Whitley. Chandler was a very prolific author. Much of his fiction has to do with life aboard ship.

You can read about A. Bertram Chandler at various websites. Just one more fact before the facts of his death: Chandler's daughter Jenny is married to Ramsey Campbell, who has also contributed to Weird Tales.

A. Bertram Chandler died on June 6, 1984, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was seventy-two years old.

George Whitley's Story in Weird Tales

"Castway" (Nov. 1947)

Further Reading

Besides Wikipedia, see the following sources (and embedded links found therein):

A. Bertram Chandler

AustLit

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Astounding Science Fiction, July 1946, the British edition with "Special Knowledge" by A. Bertram Chandler as the cover story. Cover art by William Timmins (1915-1985).

Cosmo #170, a complete science fiction novel (or, in the Italian, "i romanzi del fantascienza") by Chandler, from June 1965. The Italian title is Nelle Immense, Profondita Spaziall, in English, The Deep Reaches of Space. Cover art by Luigi Garonzi.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Binny Koras, "The Gypsy Poet" (ca. 1895-?)

Pseudonym of Alexander Rice
Psychiatric Nurse, Journalist, Teacher, YMCA Director, Public Speaker, Artist, Poet, Translator, Occultist
Born ca. 1895
Died ?

Updated on November 13, 2018

Binny Koras, known as "the Gypsy poet," was the pseudonym of a man named Alexander Rice. Rice was born in about 1895. According to a newspaper article from 1922: 

[He] grew up on the highways and byways of middle America, lived in Australia for several years, served during the war as a psychiatric nurse and since returning to the United States in 1919 has been engaged in newspaper writing, teaching and work with boys. A student of oriental languages, he has translated verses from the Japanese, Arabic, and Urdu. (1)

Alexander Rice was managing editor of the Davenport (Iowa) Tribune and a boys' secretary and director of the YMCA in Davenport. He also taught vocational school for ex-servicemen after the war. In 1922, he got a job with Neuhaus and Son of St. Louis to take paintings by important American artists on the road for exhibition. Rice, who was an artist himself, would also give lectures on these paintings.

As Binny Koras, Rice had poems in Dial, Nation, Pagan, Pearson's, Shadowland, and Survey. His poem "Growing Up," originally in the Rock Island Argus (Illinois) and reprinted in The Literary Digest, The Bookman, and Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1921, was called by the same article "perhaps the most widely printed verse of 1921." He had one poem in Weird Tales, "For Clytie," in the issue for November 1926.

Oddly enough, Koras was also an occultist and was listed in Who's Who in Occultism, New Thought, Psychism and Spiritualism, compiled and edited by William C. Hartmann, and published in 1927 by The Occult Press of Jamaica, New York. Here is the entry on Koras in its entirety:

SEVENTAN FELLOWSHIP. Based on the Book of Seveta (Arabic, Seventh Century, A.D.). Missionary for North America, Binny Koras, A.M., Ph.D.

He was evidently involved in socialist causes, too, which are, as we now know, just another form of superstition or occult activity.

Binny Koras submitted his verse to newspapers from addresses in Davenport, Iowa; Mattoon, Illinois; and St. Paul, Minnesota. His nickname, "the Gypsy poet," may have come from his wandering ways, but he also claimed Romany ancestry. Unfortunately I have not been able to find out anything more on Alexander Rice or Binny Koras, including his dates and places of birth and death.

Binny Koras' Poem in Weird Tales
"For Clytie" (Nov. 1926)

Further Reading

• "Alexander Rice Gains Fame for Writing a Poem." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Oct. 8, 1921, p. 4.
• "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.
• [Item.] The Dispatch (Moline, IL), July 22, 1922, p. 4.
• "Alexander Rice in Charge of Art Exhibit on Tour." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Aug. 16, 1922, p. 7.

Note

(1) "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.

Here are some poems by Binny Koras, perhaps his complete poems extant:

Growing Up
by Binny Koras (1921)

Gee! But I wanted to grow up.
I wanted to put on longies 
And smoke cigars, 
And be a man 
With a pay-day on Saturday. 
I wanted to grow up 
And have somebody to buy sodas for,
And take to the circus 
Once in a while. 

We all did, then: 
Pat, who could throw any kid in town, 
And Don, who went to the Advent church. 
And said the world was coming to an end 
In Nineteen-hundred, 
And Brick Top and Eppie and Skin and Spider.

We all wanted to grow up 
And become pirates and millionaires and 
Soldiers and Presidents and 
Owners of candy stores. 
And all the time we were eating home-cooking 
And wearing holes in our pants, 
And talking Hog-Latin 
And doing what two fingers in the air 
Stood for;
And saving stamps. 
And making things we read about 
In The Boys' World. 
Do you know how to play mumble-de-peg, 
And skim rocks, 
And tread water, 
And skin the cat? 
Do you know what a stick on the shoulder stands for 
And what "Commggery, wiggery, meggery" means? 

Skin is running a wheat farm, now,
Up in North Dakota. 
Pat is on the road 
Selling something or other. 
Brick Top never grew up, quite, 
And was making darts for a kid of his own 
When I saw him last. 
And Spider is yelling his head off 
About Socialism and the class struggle 
On street corners. 

Don was with the Rainbow Division when the world ended. 

Yesterday I heard a little freckle-face 
Whistle through his fingers 
And tell a feller called Curley 
What he was going to do when he grew up. 

* * *

"Smoke" from 1922, "Evolution" from 1927, and "To One Departed" from 1922.

Original text 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Two Australian Authors

If you look to the right, you will see a label for Authors of Australia and New Zealand. Right now, there are only three entries with that label. The first (chronologically) is for Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea (1915-1995), an American author who lived in Australia late in life. The second is for Thomas G.L. Cockcroft (1926-2013), a New Zealander who did not write for Weird Tales but who indexed all of the stories and poems in that magazine and its companion titles, Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine. The third is for Percy B. Prior (dates unknown), whom I speculated was the only native-born Australian to have contributed to "The Unique Magazine" or its companion titles. Now I have found two others, and I would like to write about them today.

Coutts Brisbane was the nom de plume of Robert Coutts Armour, an early and fairly prolific author of what was then called the scientific romance, later science fiction. Born on September 14, 1874, in Queensland, Australia, Armour began publishing stories in his late thirties. According to the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE), "[h]is earliest known story is 'Mixed Piggles' for The Red Magazine," (Dec. 1, 1910), while his earliest science fiction story is "Beyond the Orbit," also in The Red Magazine (Feb. 15, 1914). In addition to Coutts Brisbane, Armour wrote using the bylines Pierre Quiroule, Hartley Tremayne, Reid Whitley (or Whitly), "and other names not yet discovered," according to SFE. He contributed to Boys' Papers, Oriental Stories, Tales of Super Science, Tales of Wonder, and The Yellow Magazine. Armour was also the author of Terror Island, or, the House of Glass (London: The Amalgamated Press/Sexton Blake Library, 1921), The Secret of the Desert (London: Nelson, 1941), and Wheels of Fortune (London: Nelson, 1948). By the description of Wheels of Fortune in SFE, I would say that Armour's novel could have been a work of proto-Steampunk. Armour, who also worked as a lithographer, died in Surrey, England, in 1945. Other sources give dates of 1942 and 1956.

Coutts Brisbane's Stories in Oriental Stories

"For the Sake of Enlightenment" (Feb./Mar. 1931)

"At the Fortunate Frog" (Summer 1931)

Dorota Flatau, also known as (or had her name misspelled as) Dorotha or Dorothea Flatau, was born on December 30, 1874, in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. She was the older sister of two other writers, Hermione Flatau (1879-?) and Theodore Flatau (1886-1916). The three settled in England around 1900-1910. Theodore Flatau was killed in action in France during the Great War. You can see a list of works by all three writers in The Bibliography of Australian Literature, here. Dorota Flatau was an author of novels and children's books. The Rat of Paris (1922) is a romance involving a hunchback. Seven Journeys (1920) is listed as a genre work in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Dorota Flatau wrote one story for Oriental Stories, "Golden Rosebud" in the Winter 1931 issue. The Internet Speculative Database (ISFDb) has the year of her death as 1947.

Dorota Flatau's Story in Oriental Stories

"Golden Rosebud" (Winter 1931)

Update (Sept. 28, 2024): Below is a photograph of Dorota Flatau, from The Tatler, No. 940, July 2, 1919, page 14. D. Jones, comments below, found this photo. Thank you, D.

Text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Percy B. Prior (?-?)

Hobbyist, Author, Poet
Born ?
Died ?

Who was Percy B. Prior? Here's a start:

Percy B. Prior is an Australian writer from Sydney who is in close contact with the splendid work Rotary is doing there. (The Rotarian, Jan. 1931)

Was he the writer for Weird Tales? Well, he was interested in weird things:

Wanted snapshots of all kinds of strange, odd, or unique things, such as happenings, freaks of nature, old and historic scenes, birds and animals, etc. For these will exchange good quality postage stamps or city and beauty snapshots in return. Percy B. Prior. 15 Philpott Street. Marrickville. N.S.W. (The World's News, Nov. 28, 1928)

Maybe he was a kind of Charles Fort or Robert Ripley of the Land Down Under. So what did he write? Here's a partial list:

• "A Song of Thanksgiving" (1916)
• "It Pays To Hatch Early" (article) in American Poultry Journal (Mar. 1921)
• "A Serviceable Bench Stop" (article) in The Popular Science Monthly (Feb. 1922)
• "Getting the Garden Soil into Condition" (article) in Garden & Home Builder (1923)
• "To Our Flag" (poem) in The Newcastle Sun (Apr. 17, 1923)
• "Dreams of Youth" and "My 'El Dorado'" (poems) in The Newcastle Sun (May 8, 1923)
• "How to Photograph Moving Objects" (article) in Photo-Era (1924)
• "And--I Ain't Dead Yet" (poem), syndicated in newspapers in 1926
• "Why the Cake Fell" (article) in The Farmer's Wife (Sept. 1926)
• "Strange Farms" (article) in Complete Novel Magazine (Feb. 1927)
• "'Here Is My Heart'" (short story) in Sweetheart Stories (Feb. 28, 1928)
• "Canberra: Will It Become the Real Capital of Australia?" (article) in The Rotarian (Oct. 1928)
• "Useful Hints on Flashlight Photography for the Novice with a Camera" (article) in Camera Craft (1929)
• Four-part series on Australian Aborigines in The Afro-American (beginning July 6, 1929)
• "Concerning Ostrich Feathers" (article) in Wild West Stories and Complete Novel Magazine (Dec. 1929)
• "The Little Things" (item), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "Prison Cell Pets" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "School for Horses" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "The Wombat or Badger" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "An Interesting Letter from Australia" (letter) in Popular Aviation (Sept. 1930)
• "Cat's Lifetime Spent in Church" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1931
• "Every One Present at Indian Wedding but Bride Herself" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1931
• "All About the Jellyfish" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1932
• "Men and Their Dogs" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1934, 1937 
• "Radio Around the World" (article) in The Rotarian (Apr. 1934)
• "Christmas Again" (poem), syndicated in newspapers in 1930; also in: Anniston Star (Dec. 21, 1943); West African Advent Messenger (Dec. 1959); Australasian Record and Advent World Survey (Dec. 12, 1960)
• "Sweetheart, You Are My Guiding Star"

Prior also had a good run in Weird Tales with three stories published in less than a year in 1927-1928. And he was a hobbyist, including being a philatelist and a photographer. And that's all I know about the man who may have been the only native Australian to contribute to Weird Tales.*

* * *

Update (Mar. 29, 2026): Some bullet points on Percy B. Prior:

• In the period 1924-1930, Percy B. Prior was in Sydney, Australia.

• A newspaper article from June 29, 1938, says that Prior was a past president Optimist International and lived in Los Angeles.

• In Invisible Horizons by Vincent Gaddis (1965), Percy B. Prior is described as an American ex-sailor who settled in Australia. Thanks to Groggy Dundee, comment below, for finding the reference. My copy of Invisible Horizons is in storage, so I can't check it. Vincent Gaddis was also a teller of weird tales and a Fortean author. He and Prior had those two things in common. I wonder if they knew each other.

Percy B. Prior's Stories in Weird Tales
"The El Dorado of Death" (July 1927)
"When the Dead Return" (Dec. 1927)
"The Tree-Man Ghost" (Mar. 1928)

Further Reading

"The Tree-Man Ghost" was reprinted in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (1993). It's a fine little tale and may very well have been based on a traditional Scottish ghost story.

*Update (May 13, 2023): Prior lived in Winnipeg, Canada, so he may have been a Canadian rather than an Australian.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Fiction & Fantasy Magazines-The Cockcroft Indices

Thomas George Lawrence Cockcroft, who published under the name T.G.L. Cockcroft, was born on July 28, 1926, and lived in the suburbs of Wellington, New Zealand. By day, Mr. Cockcroft dealt in IBM punch cards. By night, he devoted himself to weird fiction and fantasy fiction. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, Mr. Cockcroft's first book was The Tales of Clark Ashton Smith (1951). Fantasy fans must forever be grateful to Tom Cockcroft for his indexes to their favorite genres: Index To the Verse in Weird Tales (1960), Index To the Weird Fiction Magazines: Index by Title (1962), and Index To the Weird Fiction Magazines: Index by Author (1964, 1967). Mr. Cockcroft's fourth index, Letters in Weird Tales, Strange Tales, Strange Stories, Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet, and Golden Fleece (no date), is available on the website of The FictionMags Index, here. (Mr. Cockcroft also published Index to Fiction in Radio News and Other Magazines [1970].) He corresponded with fans from all over the world.

Thomas G.L. Cockcroft died this year, on April 12, 2013. He was eighty-five years old. We should all take a moment to remember him and the fine work he did.

* * *

Thomas Cockcroft compiled indexes to a number of magazines under the heading of weird fiction. In alphabetical order, they are:

• Golden Fleece Historical Adventure
• The Magic Carpet Magazine
• Oriental Stories
• Strange Stories
• Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror
• Strange Tales of the Mysterious and Supernatural (British)
• The Thrill Book
• Weird Tales

In his introduction to the index by title, Mr. Cockcroft recognized that only Weird Tales, Strange Stories, and the two magazines entitled Strange Tales are "true 'weird fiction' magazines." But in the interest of carrying on his work, I will include the other titles in this series on weird fiction and fantasy fiction magazines. I have already covered Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine. The Thrill Book is next.

Collector, fan, author, indexer, and publisher Thomas G.L. Cockcroft (1926-2013).

Text copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea (1915-1995)

Aka Millen Cooke, Millen Belknap, Millen le Poer Trench, Millen Trench
Poet, Author, Occultist

Born March 17, 1915, Dilley, Oregon

Died May 21, 1995, Mill Park, Victoria, Australia

Born on March 17, 1915, in Dilley, Oregon, Wilma Dorothy Millen Vermilyea lived in Multnomah and Washington counties as a child and attended Forest Grove High School outside Portland. From an early age, she was interested in theology and philosophy and later became a follower of Tibetan Buddhism.  I know nothing else about her early life except that her poem, "Fear: A Fantasy," was published in the February 1936 issue of Weird Tales under her own name. Wilma, who preferred to be called Millen, also wrote a number of letters to The American Theosophist magazine during the early 1940s. More importantly for science fiction and fantasy fans, she began submitting stories to pulp magazines.

Pen names and house names were common among writers of the pulp fiction era. Wilma Vermilyea used at least two names in her career as a science fiction writer. Her pen name, "Millen Cooke," was a combination of her preferred first name and her husband's last name. "Alexander Blade," used by a number of writers (including Millen), was a house name for Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, both of which were published by Ziff-Davis and edited by Raymond A. Palmer. A blog called "Dark Worlds" by G.W. Thomas lists the men and women who shared the name "Alexander Blade." Unfortunately, Mr. Thomas' list does not indicate which of "Blade's" stories were the work of Millen Cooke. In any case, she was in good company, for Edmond Hamilton, Robert Silverberg, and John Jakes were among the many authors who masqueraded as Alexander Blade in the years 1941 to 1958.

According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), Millen Cooke's science fiction was limited to three magazines of the 1940s and '50s: Amazing Stories, Fantastic Fiction (as by Alexander Blade), and Other Worlds Science Stories. ISFDB's list of her work is short enough to repeat here. All stories and essays are as by Millen Cooke unless otherwise indicated:

Stories

• "The Affair of Matthew Eldon" (Amazing Stories, May 1946)
• "M-m-m-m-m-m!" (Amazing Stories, Oct. 1946, reprinted in Science Fiction Adventure Yearbook, 1970)
• "I, John Cotter" (Amazing Stories, Apr. 1947, available as a download on the Internet)
• "The Egg of Time" (Amazing Stories, Mar. 1948)
• "Descent from Mera" (Other Worlds Science Stories, Jan. 1950)
• "Edmund Latimer's Milking Machine" (Other Worlds Science Stories, May 1950)

Essays

• "A Champion for Tibet" (Amazing Stories, May 1946)
• "The Truth About Tibet" (Amazing Stories, Nov. 1946)
• "Son of the Sun" as by Alexander Blade (Fantastic Adventures, Nov. 1947)

If the list is complete, then Millen Cooke's entire body of published science fiction appeared in four short years, between May 1946 and May 1950. Her first marriage, to a man deeply interested in the occult, was inclusive of those years. Also during that period, two new real-world beliefs, Dianetics and flying saucers, began to evolve out of the work of science fiction writers. Millen Cooke would be involved in both.

Millen Cooke's first husband, John Starr Cooke, was born into a wealthy and prominent family in Honolulu, Hawaii, on March 9, 1920. He became interested in the occult early in life and used a Ouija board to make important decisions, including the decision to marry. Cooke and Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea married in 1943 and divorced in 1951. In the course of their marriage, Millen Cooke had a series of visions which formed the basis of her husband's "Atlantean Tarot," one of three original Tarot decks he created. (Cooke pronounced Tarot to rhyme with carrot.) She also wrote science fiction, which remains as a large part of her legacy today. An actor and dancer, Cooke appeared on stage and in movies (as an extra) during the early 1940s and was involved in theosophy, Scientology, and the Bahai faith. He also claimed to own Aleister Crowley's own crystal ball.

Cooke lived in North Africa for many years before returning to the United States in the late 1950s. According to a blog called "Doctrine Wars" (doctrinewars.blogspot.com), he was revered by members of the Sufi sect, claimed he could activate "shakti" and "Kundalini" energies, and made an additional claim that he could induce a spinal seizure by touching people on the forehead. (Maybe he was the inspiration for the character of Professor Robert Orwell Sutwell in Beach Party (1963). Played by Bob Cummings, Professor Sutwell is a master of "The Himalayan Suspender," otherwise known as "The Finger," frequently used to render Eric Von Zipper helpless.) Cooke became involved in the counter-culture movement in the San Francisco area during the tumultuous '60s. After many years living in Mexico, John Starr Cooke died of cancer on August 21, 1976.

Millen's second husband was William Burke Belknap, Jr., a friend and associate of her first. Like Cooke, Belknap was the scion of a prominent family. Born on December 30, 1923, in Goshen, Kentucky, he graduated from Yale University and worked as a chemical engineer.  He became interested in L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics and served as president of the Freudian Foundation of America, Inc., a Scientological organization dating from the early 1950s. He and Millen were married for a brief period during which she was also involved in Scientology. Their marriage ended in divorce, after which he remarried, in 1960. Burke Belknap lived and worked in Oceanside, California, and died on November 26, 2010.

On June 16, 1961, Millen topped off her marriages to fringe figures when she walked down the aisle with (take a deep breath) The Right Honourable William Francis Brinsley Le Poer Trench, 8th Earl of Clancarty, 7th Marquess of Heusden. Le Poer Trench (1911-1995) was an Irish peer, a member of Dutch nobility, and a member of the House of Lords. He was also a believer in ancient astronauts, a hollow earth, and flying saucers. Editor of the Flying Saucer Review from 1956 to 1959, Le Poer Trench wrote several books on the subject, including The Sky People (1960), The Flying Saucer Story (1966), Operation Earth (1969), and Secret of the Ages (1974). Millen, who had been investigating aliens and UFOs for a quarter century, provided some of the concepts and content for Le Poer Trench's first book. Unfortunately, he did not give her credit when The Sky People was published. According to an anonymous source, part of his second book, Men Among Mankind (1962), was hers as well.

Wilma Dorothy Millen Vermilyea lived in many places the world over during her long life. Her marriage to Brinsley Le Poer Trench ended in divorce in 1969, but by an almost occult coincidence, they died in 1995 within days of each other, though half the globe and many years apart separated them.

Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea's Poem in Weird Tales

"Fear: A Fantasy" (Feb. 1936)

Further Reading

Biographical information on Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea and her husbands is relatively easy to find. If you want to read more about John Starr Cooke, you might start with a website called "The Royal Maze," here.

A page from The Optimist, the yearbook of Forest Grove High School, 1929. Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea is there, second from the right in the third row from the bottom, looking very boyish.

Millen and John Starr Cooke, 1943, the year in which they were married. Photograph courtesy of an anonymous source.

John Starr Cooke (1920-1976), actor, occultist, artist, and the first husband of Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea. Photo from the website, "The Royal Maze."

In Beach Party, Bob Cummings played Professor Robert Orwell Sutwell. . .

And here he is (in the seersucker suit) as Eric Von Zipper gives himself "The Finger." Could Cummings' character (or at least his talent) have been inspired by John Starr Cooke?

The Flying Saucer Story from 1966, a peak year for popular culture in America. Written by Brinsley Le Poer Trench, the book was one of hundreds concerning visitors from outer space published during the 1950s and '60s. Le Poer Trench was Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea's third husband.

A photograph of a UFO, taken by Millen Belknap, April 10, 1958, in Vista, California.

Note: This is a revised version of the original posting. Thanks to an anonymous source for confirmation of certain information, and for corrections and clarifications.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley