Liberace’s “Protégé” Scott Thorson Was Witness To Wonderland Murders

     “Scott Thorson was a teenage runaway bouncing around West Hollywood’s ‘Boystown’ in 1977 when he met Liberace—the profoundly flamboyant, deeply closeted piano prodigy who at the time was the highest-paid entertainer in the world. Liberace was 57, while Scott had just turned 18 and was reeking of parental neglect after a childhood spent in and out of foster homes and orphanages. He was in search of a father, and Liberace wanted a son.”

     That’s how Air Mail’s Spike Carter sets the stage for his new book on the young man who, since his arrival in L.A., came to be known as “The Zelig of Awful.” Over the years he became the famed pianist’s companion, televangelist, drug runner for the Mob, and supplier to the crack-obsessed porn star John Holmes. He also was a direct ear-witness to the Wonderland murders, in which five people were targeted to be killed after the notorious drug gang sold a pound of baking soda disguised as cocaine for $250,000. Organized crime figure and nightclub owner Eddie Nash, his alleged henchman Gregory Diles, and porn Holmes were at various times arrested, tried, and acquitted for their involvement in the murders.

     Speaking with Carter all these years later, Thorson recalls how he was in the living room of the murder house and heard every sound of the beatings that were taking place in an adjacent room. “’You think you can f**kin’ steal from me, donkey d**?!,’ someone was yelling, followed by the unmistakable sound of a hard fist raining down a bone-crunching blow to the face. “I’ll kill you and your whole f**kin’ family! I trusted you! We were brothers! You f**ing stab me in the back like this?!’”

     But wait…there’s so much more…

Can You Really Run On Top

Of A Train, As In The Movies?

     Just because you see something done in a movie, that doesn't mean you should try it yourself. Take, for example, a human running on top of a moving train. For starters, you can't be sure it's real. In early Westerns, filmmakers used moving backdrops to make fake trains look like they were in motion. Today there's CGI [computer-generated imagery], or a director might speed a camera up to make a real train look faster than it really is.

     Recently, Wired’s Rhett Allain posed the question: Is it actually possible to run on a train roof and leap from one car to the next? Or will the train zoom ahead of you while you're in the air, so that you land behind where you took off? Or worse, would you end up falling between the cars because the gap is moving forward, lengthening the distance you have to traverse? If for no other reason, this is why it’s important for everyone—especially stunt actors—to study physics and calculus in high school.

     The answer isn’t as simple as you might think. In a practical world, if you're running at 10 mph [according to a reference frame centered on the rail car], but the train is moving at 40 mph, your horizontal velocity [according to a stationary frame] is 50 mph. Piece of cake, right? Actually, no. And this is why you need to read all the way to the end of the article. Spoiler alert: it’s really rather fun stuff.

Humphrey Bogart Walked A Fine Line

Between Good And Evil In High Sierra

     Prior to 1941, Humphrey Bogart was primarily known as a supporting actor, but in the classic noir film High Sierra, he took on a significantly darker role as celebrity bank robber Roy Earle. The portrayal was a departure from his usual tough guy with a heart of gold roles, and audiences were transported to a glitzy and decadent California, wherein the typically gritty life of the genre was replaced with , glitz, glamour, easy living, a stark contrast that adds depth to the narrative. As Jordan Todoruk recently wrote for Collider, Earle is an aging gangster who is sprung from jail prematurely and finds himself embroiled in an ill-fated heist of one of California's most popular health spas.

     “Bogart's portrayal of Earle is complex and nuanced, showing his vicious side as a ruthless criminal in High Sierra, which also starred Ida Lupino as Marie Garso and was directed by Raoul Walsh,” Todoruk says. “Bogart brings his hard-boiled sensibilities to the role of Roy Earle, whose love for the little guy and desire for freedom make him the quintessential American anti-hero. Bogart is misty-eyed, and the longing for the pastoral splendor of rural life dances just behind the actor's eyes, melancholy because he can never go home again, being who he is now. Roy wants to be loved, to love, take his ill-gotten gains, and live a quaint country life, and it is this complexity, this balance between good and evil, that Bogart brings to the role…and gives Hollywood exactly what it didn’t expect.”

How Fleming’s “Bond Girls” Are More

Than Gratuitous Symbols Of Sex(ism)

     The Bond Girl. The phrase itself is a source of celebration, contention, and alleged sexuality. Few other thriller writers before Ian Fleming placed such emphasis on creating well-rounded female protagonists with their own backgrounds, motives, and agency. Likewise, few other action films attract such attention with the question of who will play the next female lead. At the same time, the word “girl” rather than “woman” suggests a childlike, even subservient helplessness.

     As Kim Sherwood recently observed in Crime Reads, Bond would never be described as a “boy” rather than a “man.” “A possessive apostrophe seems to hover nearby in invisible ink,” she writes. “'Bond’s Girl,' defining these women by their relationship to a man. Such duality reflects both the sexist reputation of James Bond and the often-overlooked legacy of women in the world of 007. As a lifelong Bond fan and feminist myself, I am often asked how both can be true at the same time. It’s not hard to find moments of sexism across the novels and films, [but] to dismiss Bond on these terms would be not only to deprive ourselves of something rare in culture—a character who lives beyond the page or screen in popular imagination, an elite rank shared with the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Peter Pan—but also to deprive ourselves of the opportunity to examine the culture that produced such a character."

     On top of that, we’d miss out on Ian Fleming’s inimitable style—his uncanny imagery, vivid and journalistic eye, taut suspense next to exquisitely flowing sentences, wit and wisdom.

Netflix Picks Up The Thursday Murder

Club, Produced By Spielberg’s Amblin

     Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley have snapped up three of the four leading roles in the big-screen adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling crime novel The Thursday Murder Club. As reported by Variety, Netflix has picked up Amblin Entertainment’s adaptation of what has become the "the fastest-selling adult crime debut in recorded history. The 2020 book tells the story of four friends who live in a retirement community and take on cold cases for fun. When a shady property developer is found dead, the four find themselves in the middle of their first live crime.

     Mirren will play ex-spy Elizabeth, Kingsley will play ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim, and Brosnan will play former union activist Ron. Chris Columbus, whose previous credits include Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire, is set to direct the movie, which begins filming this summer in locations throughout England.

     The novel sold 45,000 copies in its first three days of release in 2020 and has spawned three more novels—The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet That Missed, The Last Devil to Die. A fifth book is planned for publication next year.

Now Available!

Beyond All Doubt

[Reed Bunzel writing as Hilton Reed]

“Beyond All Doubt is an edge-of-your-seat fast-moving thrill-ride, kicked off by the reappearance of a dead man and propelling the reader along to the final bullet—and beyond.”— S.J. Rozan, best-selling author of The Mayors of New York

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“Beyond All Doubt is a taut, smart, and emotionally rich thriller. Reed has a sharp eye for character and a screenwriter's feel for action. This tale is sleek as a mink and fast as a bullet.”— T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Rescue

“Beyond All Doubt is not a 'who done it,' but a twisty, compelling 'who did what.' Cameron Kane is a sympathetic, yet unrelenting bulldog in his pursuit of the truth about his wife's death. Intriguing and intense, Beyond All Doubt is a winner!”—Matt Coyle, bestselling author of the Rick Cahill crime novels

“In this action-packed and engrossing thriller, Reed masterfully balances between a husband’s drive to uncover the truth about his wife’s death and a father’s instinct to protect his family at all costs. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down!”— Matthew Farrell, bestselling author of The Woman at Number 6

“Beyond All Doubt has plenty of thrills—deadly snipers, false identities, shocking deaths—but at its heart, this book is about a grieving single father whose desperation propels the plot like a speeding car with its brake lines cut.”— Cayce Osborne, author of I Know What You Did