Edgar Allan and William Wallace

Let's play a little fill-in-the-blank name game.

 

1). For one cookie, fill in the blank... The man who wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Masque of the Red Death and The Raven, is Edgar Allan ___ .

 

2. For a basket of pearls, fill in the blank... Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan ___.

 

 

1). If you said Poe, congratulations. You win a cookie.

 

2)  If you said Woolf, I take back the offer because I can't believe you got it without cheating --unless you are a crime writer, a pen & ink artist, a movie producer and a former LAPD detective named Mark Fuhrman. I would never make that offer to anyone who is likely to know everything worth knowing about The Wizard of OZ.

 

***

 

We can skip the name game with William Wallace Denslow, the pen & ink illustrator of The Wonderful Wizard of OZ. 

 

The object here is to show why the question in the first paragraph arises from comparing Mark Fuhrman's book to his movie, his movie to Mervyn LeRoy's movie and LeRoy's movie George M. Hill's book.

 

Huh?

 

Who is George M. Hill?

 

He is the book publishing equivalent of a movie producer, the man responsible for getting The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into print and promoting it with ads like the one on the left illustrated by William Wallace Denslow.

 

Mark Fuhrman said enough about another William Wallace to cast the name in bronze as a huge, Fuhrman movie (Braveheart)-history (First War of Scottish Independence)-actor (Mel Gibson) bell ringer.

Murder in Bentwood, page 290 [emphasis mine]: "We got chicken take-out and some beer, Ron and Brad came by, and we watched Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson. At the end of the movie, when William Wallace is strapped down, disemboweled, and finally beheaded, it was as if he were being sacrificed for the sins of others. Boy, did I feel a lot like William Wallace. People wanted a sacrificial lamb so they wouldn't have to deal with te fact that a popular celebrity brutally murdered two people. The jury wanted an excuse to vote not guilty. The defense wanted to cast guilt on others. The prosecution and investigating detectives wanted someone to take the blame for their mistakes.

"So I was drawn and quartered in the forum of public opinion. At least William Wallace could feel proud that he was a hero to his people."