The Best American Noir of the Century

1923 TOD ROBBINS SPURS

Clarence Aaron “Tod” Robbins (1888-1949) graduated from Washington and Lee University in Virginia and soon became an expatriate, moving to the French Riviera. When World War II erupted and the Nazis occupied France, he refused to leave and was put into a concentration camp for the duration of the war.

He wrote mostly horror and dark fantasy fiction for the pulps, publishing two collections of these stories, Silent, White, and Beautiful and Other Stories (1920) and Who Wants a Green Bottle? and Other Uneasy Tales (1926). Among his novels, the most successful was The Unholy Three (1917), twice adapted for films of the same title: a silent directed by Tod Browning in 1925 and a sound version in 1930 directed by Jack Conway, both of which starred Lon Chaney. Robbins’s earlier novel, Mysterious Martin (1912), was about a man who creates art that can be deadly; he later rewrote the enigmatic story and published it as The Master of Murder (1933). He also wrote In the Shadow (1929) and Close Their Eyes Tenderly (1947), published only in Monaco in a tiny edition, an anti-Communist novel in which murder is treated as comedy and farce.

“Spurs” was the basis for the classic noir film Freaks, which was released by MGM in 1932. It was directed by Robbins’s friend Tod Browning, who enjoyed enormous success with Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, which was released the previous year. Freaks used real-life carnival performers for most roles, horrifying audiences so much that it was banned in England and the studio cut the ninety-minute film to sixty-four minutes. Public outrage led to the swift end of Tod Brownings career as a director. It featured the midget Harry Earles, who had also appeared in The Unholy Three.

This very dark film retained little of the equally dark story on which it was based. It remains the story of carnival people and a midget, Jacques Courbé (Hans in the film), who falls in love with the bareback rider Jeanne Marie (Cleopatra in the film), a beautiful tall blonde.

“Spurs” was first published in the famous pulp magazine Munsey’s (February 1923) and first collected in book form in Who Wants a Green Bottle? and Other Uneasy Tales (London: Philip Allan, 1926).

I

Jacques courbé was a romanticist. He measured only twenty-eight inches from the soles of his diminutive feet to the crown of his head; but there were times, as he rode into the arena on his gallant charger, St. Eustache, when he felt himself a doughty knight of old about to do battle for his lady.