Gore Vidal's Box Set

Vidal at 23, photographed by

Carl Van Vechten in 1948

When Gore Vidal died in July at age 86, I belatedly discovered that he had written three mystery novels in the early 1950s, under the penname Edgar Box. An inveterate mystery reader, I take particular delight in discovering mystery novels written by persons best known for other pursuits. (A favorite example is striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, who penned two mysteries in the early 1940s, the first titled, appropriately, The G-String Murders.)

Gore Vidal, aka Edgar Box, cranked out three mysteries in quick succession: Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death Before Bedtime (1953), and Death Likes It Hot (1954). They were reissued in a single volume, titled Three By Box, in 1978. All three feature a reporter-cum-p.r. man, Peter Sargeant, as the amateur detective. Sargeant is a suave, if sometimes bumbling, sexual swordsman, almost a comic James Bond without the trappings of spydom. (Fleming’s 007, however, did not debut until Casino Royale in 1953.)

Despite its heterosexual hero, the first of Vidal/Box’s trio is an unabashedly gay—in both old and new senses of that word—romp along the lines of Oscar Wilde meets Raymond Chandler. The novel is a delicious foreshadowing of later flamboyant works, such as the outrageous Myra Breckinridge (1968), the movie version of which provided a final screen vehicle for the inimitable but often imitated Mae West, and the surreal and irreverent Live From Golgotha (1992).

Death in the Fifth Position is a surprising novel for the early Fifties for its frank, often gay, sexuality. But the treatment is not so surprising for Vidal, who had published The City and the Pillar in 1948. That novel offered a coming-of-age story about a young man coming to terms, healthily, with his homosexuality. Thus it flouted convention, which at the time regarded gay as synonymous with immoral, and so caused a scandal. The City and the Pillar was only Vidal’s third novel, and one can imagine an editor, on receiving the manuscript of Death in the Fifth Position a couple of years later, counseling the author to adopt a pseudonym for the latter book’s publication. I don’t know whether that happened, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Of course, it could equally be the case of a “serious” writer not wanting to be associated with something as déclassé as a mystery novel.

By contrast, the second of the trio, Death Before Bedtime, is sadly pedestrian. It is a serviceable mystery but lacks punch and pizzazz. The third, Death Likes It Hot, regains some sparkle, rather like a second wind along about midnight after an evening of hard partying. But it doesn’t measure up to the first mystery either, and I’m inclined to think that Vidal must have felt as though, after this third effort, he had gotten mystery writing out of his system. Box was laid to rest.

Still, the three novels are entertaining and, as mysteries go, intriguing. They are worth taking up, though no one could be faulted for stopping after the first one.

June and Gypsy

When actress June Havoc died a few weeks ago at age 97, an era truly ended.

End-of-an-era labels are easily applied without justification, but this case is different. June’s long career began in vaudeville, and she was one of the few remaining performers who could make that claim. But there are other reasons that make her end-of-an-era label spot on.

Born Ellen Evangeline Horvik in Vancouver, British Columbia, she was the apple of her mother’s eye — and the root of her stage mom’s hopes for success in vaudeville. Ellen/June actually was American, her mother, Rose Thompson, having married a Swedish American named John Olaf Horvik. When Rose divorced John, it was Ellen as a child vaudeville star who, along with a sister named Rose Louise, kept income flowing for the struggling family. Ellen’s stage name was “Baby June.” The “June” stuck even after she fled her stage mother’s overbearing presence in 1928, when she was about 15.

Rose Louise, called Louise in the family, took over the “baby” franchise, which she soon outgrew. Mama Rose’s hopes could have been dashed right then, as vaudeville was in its death throes. But vaudeville was being superceded by burlesque, and it was there that Rose Louise blossomed — as Gypsy Rose Lee, the iconic stripper.

June and Gypsy’s story was immortalized in the hit stage musical Gypsy, which premiered on Broadway in 1959. It featured a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, based on Gypsy’s own 1957 self-titled memoir. Gypsy’s was the flashier story — especially with the titillation of her having been a striptease artist — and she could write it. (She also wrote mystery novels, notably The G-String Murders; I have a copy on my bookshelf.) But June’s career post-vaudeville was not without note.

As June Havoc, Ellen Horvik gained a measure of fame on Broadway in shows such as Sigmund Romberg’s Forbidden Melody in 1936 and later Rogers and Hart’s Pal Joey. In the Forties she moved to Hollywood, where she starred in Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947, see photo) and other films, continuing to play various roles well into old age, and well after her more famous sister, Gypsy, had died in 1970 at age 59.

June Havoc’s long life and career was a quintessential Hollywood tale — an overbearing mother, a more-famous sister, and a somewhat tawdry undercurrent of marriages and divorces, all overlaid by the sequin-studded success of show biz. June even wrote about it herself, a couple of times. Predictably, she used her first memoir, Early Havoc, as the basis for a stage play of her own, Marathon ’33, which played briefly on Broadway, starring Julie Harris.