The people of the South Sea Islands of the Captain Cook drama were always eating possum and sweet potatoes and fried chicken (a misconception) and twanging on little banjos (another misconception) and talking southern U.S. Darky Dialect (but these ghost voices were not intended to be heard on the television presentation).
The complete libretto for The Voyages of Captain Cook has survived, which makes us grateful for those that have not survived for several of the dramas. The story is replete. It is better to disregard the libretto with its simultaneous curses invoked by the Shark God, the Volcano God, and the God of the Walking Dead, and to give oneself over to the charm of the scenery, which is remarkable, considering that it was all “filmed,” or “selenium-matrixed,” in the salt swamps of New Jersey.
The anomalous intrusive voices are in this drama again, as they will be in all the subsequent dramas.
“A ‘South Sea Bubble,’ yes, that’s what I want, Aurie, one that can’t burst. Use your imagination (you have so very much of it) and your finances (you have so very much of those) and come up with something that will delight me.”
“I swear to you, Clarie, as soon as my finances are in a little better order, I will buy any island or group of islands in the Pacific Ocean for you. Do you hear me, Clarie? I will give you any island or group you wish, Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji. Name it and it is yours.”
“So many things you promise! But you don’t promise them on paper, only on air. Maybe I will find a way to make the air retain the promises you make.”
“Not on paper, not on air, Clarie, but in real life. I will make you the real and living Queen of Polynesia.”
The essence of the South Sea appeal is just plain charm. It may be that this Bentley drama, The Voyages of Captain Cook, was the original charm bush whence many things bloomed. No, in things of this sort, it is not necessary that a scion ever be in contact with its source or even know its source. Without the Voyages would there ever have been a Sadie Thompson, would there have been a Nellie Forbush? Would there have been a Nina, daughter of Almayer? Well, they wouldn’t have been as they were if Clarinda Calliope hadn’t, in a way, played them first. Would there have been a White Shadows of the South Seas if there hadn’t first been The Voyages of Captain Cook? No, of course there wouldn’t have been.
5. Crimean Days was the fifth of the Aurelian Bentley television dramas. In this, the multitalented Clarinda Calliope played the role of Florence Nightingale, of Ekmek Kaya, a Turkish lady of doubtful virtue who was the number-four wife and current favorite of the Turkish admiral, of Chiara Maldonado, a young lady camp follower with the army of Savoy, of Katya Petrova, who was a Russian princess as well as a triple spy, and of Claudette Boudin, a French lady journalist. Clarinda also masqueraded as Claudette’s twin brother, Claude, a colonel with the French forces, and as such she led the French to a surprising victory over the Russians at Eupatoria. The unmasqueraded Claude himself was played by Apollo Mont-de-Marsan, a young actor making his first appearance in the Bentley dramas.
The Crimean War was the last war in which the field officers of all sides (Leslie Whitemansion was a British field officer, Kirbac Fouet was a French, Jaime del Diablo was an officer of the forces of Savoy, Torres Malgre was the Turkish admiral, Inspiro Spectralski was a general of the Czar, X. Paul McCoffin was a special observer of the Pope), after their days of tactical maneuver and sometimes bloody conflict, would dress for dinner and have formal dinner together. And it was at these dinners that Clarinda Calliope, in her various guises, shone.
There was a wonderful and many-leveled table intrigue, and I believe that more and more of it will come through every time the drama is replayed. And it was here in this drama that one of the most strange of the Bentley-effect phenomena first appeared. There is unmistakable evidence that some of the subvocalizations (thoughts) of the people were now to be heard as “slow sound,” which was really selenium triggered “slow thought.” Some of these manifestations were the role thoughts of the actors so strangely vocalized (Clarinda Calliope, for instance, could not speak or think in any tongues except English and her own Pennsylvania Dutch in normal circumstances: but in her triple spy roles we find her thinking out loud in Turkish and Greek and Russian); and other of the vocalizations are the real thoughts of the actors (the amazingly frank intentions of Leslie Whitemansion and of the new Apollo Mont-de-Marsan as to their lady loves of the evening after they should have received their two-dollar actors’ fee for the day).
It was a wonderful play and too intricate to be described. This one, above all, has to be seen. But again there was the anomalous intrusion of voices that were not a part of the scenes of the play: “Get rid of that Greek Wop kid, Clarie. I told him he was fired, and he said that he would stick around and work for nothing. He said he loved the fringe benefits. What are fringe benefits? I told him I’d run him off, and he said that this was the free state of New Jersey and that no one would run him off. I won’t have him around.”
“Oh, Aurie, there isn’t any Greek Wop kid. That was me playing that role too. Am I not talented to play so many roles? And you will not fire me from this role. I will continue to play it, and I will be paid for it. It isn’t the principle of the thing either: it’s the two dollars.”
“Yes, I understand that much about you. But you say that was you playing the part of that smart-mouth Apollo Dago Greek? That couldn’t be. I’ve seen you both at the same time. I’ve seen you two together too many times. I’ve seen you smooching each other.”
“Ah, Aurie, that was quite an advanced technique and illusion, not to mention double exposure, that I used there. What other actress could play both roles at once and get away with it?”
“Your techniques and illusions are becoming a little bit too advanced, Clarie. And do not be so sure that you are getting away with it.”
All through Crimean Days, there was some tampering with history going on for dramatic effect. The Light Brigade, for instance, was successful in its famous charge and it won a great victory. But the final outcome of the war was left in doubt. Aurelian Bentley had somehow become a strong partisan of the Russians and he refused to show them being finally defeated by the allies.
6. Ruddy Limbs and Flaming Hair is the sixth of the Bentley television dramas. In this piece, the dramatic Clarinda Calliope plays the part of Muothu, the Maid of Mars, for the Ruddy Limbs and Flaming Hair are on the planet itself. There are some fantastic elements in this piece, as well as amazing scientific accuracy. There is, in fact, a technical precocity that is really stunning. Aurelian Bentley has foreseen circumstances that even the scientific community did not then see, and he has dealt with those circumstances.
He posits, for instance, an atmosphere composed mostly of an eno-magnetized, digammated, attenuated form of oxygen. Being eno-magnetized, that atmosphere would naturally cling to its planet even though the gravity would not be strong enough to retain it otherwise. Being digammated, it would produce no line in the Martian spectrum, would have no corona or optical distortion effect, and could in no way be detected from Earth. And yet a human Earthly would be able to breathe it freely.
This was a good-natured utopian drama of total realization and happiness. The Ruddy Limbs and Flaming Hair apply both allegorically to the planet Mars and literally to the highly dramatic Clarinda Calliope as Muothu. Muothu displayed rather more of the ruddy limbs than were ordinarily shown on Earth, but it was explained that customs on Mars were different.