Now for something a bit closer to type. This year has seen me show off my love of Lon Chaney Sr., and while it is not strongly remembered today, one of Chaney's big hits was a movie called The Unholy Three. Well, technically two of his big hits were movies called The Unholy Three: Todd Browning directed a silent version in 1925, while a talkie remake was shot in 1930 by Jack Conway, both starring Chaney as the ventriloquist Professor Echo. The films were based off of a 1917 novel by Clarence Aaron "Tod" Robbins, who also wrote "Spurs," the short story which Todd Browning would adapt as Freaks. I found both versions of the movie to be an awesome showcase of Lon Chaney's talents, but the story always threw me. It's a confusing tale, not because of any particular complexity, but because the character's personal decisions are...weird. As it happens, it looks better on paper. The Unholy Three is a surprisingly good crime pulp with enough idiosyncrasies to it that it overcomes some of its notable flaws. It's a great book to continue our Bookvember reading experience with.
We open at a circus, where a performance is being held starring Tweedledee the midget, Hercules the strongman, and Echo the ventriloquist. Tweedledee is a genius but prone to a violent temper, and when he is insulted for his height too many times he attacks his heckler, and the three are forced to escape. Tiring of an existence as sideshow freaks, the three decide to pool their unique talents as Mind, Body, and Voice to take life by the horns and be free. This amounts to them opening a pet shop supposedly owned by Echo, who disguises himself as an old woman named Irene Blake. Tweedledee poses as her infant grandson Willie, but actually runs the show, while Hercules takes care of tasks around the shop as Cousin Harry. They make a small fortune selling cheap birds that seem to be talking parrots, thanks exclusively to Echo's ventriloquism. However, Tweedledee also has a practice of encouraging families to adopt him so that he can kill them and take their valuables. Such is what befalls the family and family-to-be of Hector McDonald, a young man who earns the Little Person's ire by blowing cigar smoke in his face. First he attacks Tommy, the nephew of Hector's fiance Dorothy Arlington; then, he frames Hector for the murder of his Uncle Tobias. In the end, Echo has had enough--this life of crime is not the adventure promised to him. He betrays his Master and calls upon the Voice of God Himself to save the day.
This is basically a Villain Pulp--see the Valley of the Zombies review for what I mean by that. We have our title characters, and they are evil, and the book sympathizes with them just as surely as it does with their victims. The Three are indeed very interesting. Tweedledee suffers from a rather stereotypical case of Little Man Syndrome, but at the same time he really does live up to his title of "the Mind." The film makes it clearer that the plot the trio undertake is eccentric primarily because such a scheme would be unbelievable in the eyes of the police; I suspect that's why Tweedledee chooses the modus operandi that he does in the book as well. He goes back and forth between a cold, philosophical predator and a manic storm of raw emotion--while his body is far from helpless, he is most unfettered in the mental realm. It's fascinating to me that he is the mastermind in the novel, while the two films place leadership of the trio on Echo's shoulders--probably because Echo was played by Lon Chaney, who is much more believable as a master villain than the high-pitched/German-accented Harry Earles. Echo is reduced to an almost child-like role as Tweedledee's servant, and he may be intended to be mentally disabled in some way. His ventriloquist dummy, "with legs like a goat and a face like an old man," apparently talks to him. (This may be one of the earliest "demonic" ventriloquist dolls I know of, as it predates Hugo from Dead of Night by almost thirty years; even if Echo's doll probably isn't really possessed.) The idea of a ventriloquist using their talents to impersonate God is a great idea and I'm disappointed I didn't think of it first. This is a pretty clever deus ex machina, in a rather literal sense. Book!Echo is also much more sympathetic than movie!Echo, who is much more sinister but still gets off easy. Really, a lot of the issues I had with the plots of the films come from the fusion of Tweedledee's character with Echo's. Hercules is the least fleshed-out of them, which is also a fact in the movies, but he presents some interesting enigmas. He's extremely loyal to Tweedledee almost to the point of seeming child-like, as Echo does, but he's also well-spoken. His idealism, the source of his loyalty to his Master, contradicts the brutal nature of his base strength. In some ways you can feel bad for him, because he's the one Tweedledee scams the most.
Unfortunately, the middle third of the book doesn't focus on its eponymous figures as much as we'd like, meaning that their confusing plan becomes even more random-seeming due to the fact that we see it from the perspective of their victims instead. It doesn't help that Hector, his uncle, and the Arlingtons are not particularly interesting characters compared to the Three. They also don't really possess any unique skill or trait that helps them overcome the Three--it takes Echo turning on Tweedledee to secure the victory of our "heroes." Fortunately, the entire book is very well-written. Robbins busts out the finest pulp purple prose to produce bombastic and memorable imagery. It gets a little cloying at times, much in the same way that you can get poisoned from too much Lovecraft, but it's hard to dislike the long description near the beginning of Tweedledee viewing his body as a grotesque cocoon, hoping that someday he will climb out of himself as a giant, with the strength to destroy his foes. We also get some pithiness through Echo's parrot-ventriloquism in a long bit which contains such gems as, "The worms are our fondest friends even when we are cold to them." Despite the complexity of his metaphors at times, Robbins leaves the plot very easy to follow, so it seems a little unnecessary that The Events Thus Far are summarized by Echo at the end.
There is racism in the book. There are a few descriptions of Jewish characters which might be antisemitic. In the early carnival scenes, too, the Wild Man of Borneo is described as a "half-wit Negro," which highlights the fact that these sorts of carnival shows were hugely exploitative. We need look no further than Nightmare Alley for this, but the low-budget nature of these shows meant they had to cut corners, which meant enslaving, abusing, or otherwise taking advantage of their performers. Hiram W. and Barney Davis, the two Little People who are the most famous historical examples of people exhibited as "Wild Men of Borneo," were mentally disabled--whether or not their act under P.T. Barnum and other show heads was exploitative is open to debate. In any case, the book's racial politics are uncomfortably dated, but there is nothing shriekingly hateful compared to what I've read recently.
The Unholy Three is definitely an imperfect book. It's a pulp, so I'd expect no different. But if you are a pulp fan and/or an enthusiast for extremely unusual crime thrillers, this will not let you down. Plus, you can probably get a kick out of the movies, as well, which differ substantially from the book. I'll return to this book somewhat when I finally get to Todd Browning's movie The Devil-Doll, as you'll see an echo of Professor Echo in that film's lead. This book once left powerful ripples in pop culture--maybe it's due for rediscovery.
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