Sad Chicken Ranch news

July has not been a kind month for Chicken Ranch alumni. Specifically, those folks connected to the famed brothel through the mega-successful Broadway musical, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Carlin Glynn, who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Miss Mona Stangley (which was based on real-life madam Edna Milton Chadwell) died on July 13 at the age of 83 after battling dementia and cancer.

That's Glynn on the right, facing Edna Milon (left). This was a publicity shot Milton gave me from the musical. The production wanted to promote the fact that Glynn and Milton looked similar. They really don't look very similar but I suppose when the alternative Miss Mona is Dolly Parton, this bit of trivia becomes much more plausible.

Obituaries have led with the fact that she played the mother to Molly Ringwald's character in the 1980s John Hughes teen film "Sixteen Candles." She's also the real-life mother to actor Mary Stuart Masterson, who she had with husband Peter Masterson--who co-authored the book to Whorehouse on Broadway and shared background information on that whole experience with me for my book (Peter Masterson died in 2018). Glynn's first film role was in "Three Days of the Condor" but what jumped out at me was that she played First Lady Meg Tresch in the 1987-88 Fox sitcom "Mr. President" opposite George C. Scott in the title role. I remember watching this at a teen and liking it quite a bit, but also realizing that the series was never as good as it should've been with all the talent involved.

The other big loss is that of Pamela Blair, who originated the role of Angel in "The Best Little Whorehouse..." If you've seen the play, you'll know the role is much more substantial than the blink-and-you'll-miss-her role from the movie. Angel shows up at the Chicken Ranch early on, a jaded sex worker who's cynical and has abandoned any effort at nuance (that's her in the center of the image to the left). She undergoes a significant character arc through the play and by the end leads the cast through the finale of "Hard Candy Christmas," vowing at the end to leave prostitution behind her for good. Here's a fun bit of trivia for you: Angel was originally named Amber in the script, but the name was changed at Edna's insistence. Masterson and co-author Larry L. King hand found some discarded letters in the trash pile at the Chicken Ranch and used the names from those letters for the characters in the play. Edna thought that an invasion of the women's privacy and would have none of it.

Despite the success of Angel in "Whorehouse," Blair is better known for originating the role of Val in "A Chorus Line" two years prior. Her other Broadway credits include "Mighty Aphrodite," "Of Mice and Men" and "A Few Good Men." She also had stints on the daytime soap operas Ryan's Hope and All My Children.

Blair died July 23 from complications related to Clippers disease. She was 73.

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Peter Masterson (1934-2018)

Actor, writer and director Peter Masterson has died. A versatile and talented man, Masterson had roles in The Stepford Wives, The Exorcist and directed The Trip to Bountiful. He was married to Tony Award-winning actress Carlin Glynn and was father to actress Mary Stuart Masterson. Despite that grand track record, he's probably best known for co-writing and co-directing a little musical play by the name of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Masterson was very generous with his time as far as I was concerned. I reached out to him via mutual acquaintances when I first started researching Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch and had several conversations with him via phone from his home in Kinderhook, NY, in 2010. He was friendly and forthcoming, and supportive of my project. He gave me a lot of good material, including some entertaining stories about Miss Edna's brief stint as a Broadway performer. One quote from him stood out for me, and I used it to close chapter 14, encapsulating how a strange, regional story blew up and became an international sensation:

"One of the things when we made the show, a number of people--including Universal Pictures--wanted us to change the title because they wouldn't take out ads at first, the newspapers and television. On buses in New York. They wouldn't put out ads in the tube stations in London," Masterson said. "I said, 'That's a deal-breaker. I'm going to make whorehouse a household word.'

"And we kinda have."

Peter Masterson was one of the Good Guys. He will be missed.

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Harlan Ellison (1934-2018)

"I almost died and it's all your fault!"

Harlan Ellison's phone calls are legendary. For a brief period, I received them on a regular basis. Some went well, some, like the one the quote above came from, went not-so-well. But they were always interesting. Harlan died yesterday at the age of 84. There will never be another Harlan phone call.

I never knew him well enough to call him a friend, but I think he might allow me to claim acquaintanceship. There are a lot of strong opinions about the man held by many. I experienced a bit of his cantankerous side. I never witnessed the boorish behavior he could be accused of. I did witness a masterful amount of self-control on his part when attendees at a convention one time went out of their way to attempt to provoke him. I once saw him instantly become gentlemanly and deferential when Ardath Mayhar walked into the room. That was nice. I'll never forget the respect he showed Ardath.

I first fell into Harlan's orbit in 1997. I'd published my first story or two, and casting about for a way to keep my name in print as the rejection slips continued to pile up, I hit upon the idea of conducting interviews. Worldcon was coming up in San Antonio that year, so I went down the list of author guests and fired off letters asking if Writer X might find an hour of their time to sit down with me for a conversation. A week later, my phone rang.

"Jayme? Harlan Ellison here..."

That was the first of many times I'd hear that phrase. The Wife heard it quite a bit, too. Turns out, Harlan wouldn't be in San Antonio. He'd had a falling out with the convention.

"Tell ya what, kiddo," he said. "Think up some questions I haven't been asked a million times before, and call me back in a week. I'll talk to you then."

It had not been my intention that Harlan be my first professional interview. I was terrified. Intimidated would be a huge understatement. But in the interim I read every interview of his I could get my hands on, and vowed not to ask any of those questions. Which meant no "Last Dangerous Visions" questions, of course. I called him back a week later, and we started slowly, with... maybe not questions he'd never been asked before, but variations on certain themes, coming at them from different angles. Then I hit him with the following, which stopped him dead in his tracks. The pause doesn't come through in print, but he hadn't been asked this before, and it made him think:

What's the worst thing you've ever done?

There are things that I have done that would stun a police dog if I spoke of them, so obviously I'm not going to speak of them. My friends know, and my wife knows, and they seem to forgive me. That's the interesting thing. The things that I would pillory myself for having done, where I would say "Shit, I never really should have done that," they will all say "But you had to do that because blah blah blah..."

Yes, I put him on the spot. Made him uncomfortable, for just a little bit. But it made for a distinctive interview. Still, he'd challenged me, hadn't he? Put me on the spot? So I played dirty. That question, good as it was, still fell within Harlan's wheelhouse. My follow-up, he outright stumbled over: Let's balance the karma: What's the best thing you've ever done?

By then, I knew I had control of the interview. It wasn't going south, it was going where I wanted. I had Harlan's buy-in. He wasn't bored. This was huge for me--I'd interviewed hundreds of people as a journalist for newspaper stories, but this was different. It gave me a shot of much-needed confidence that resulted in 40-plus additional interviews over the ensuing decade. By the time we approached the end of the interview, I was ready with the question that, I believe, encapsulates the interview overall:

When did Harlan Ellison the writer become Harlan Ellison the event?

I don't know. I've studied the lives of a number of different writers -- Emile Zola, Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway. These were people who wrote important things, but when you talk about them, people know that Scott Fitzgerald sort of was the king of the Roaring 20s and danced his way through that whole period of bootleg gin and his wife wound up in a madhouse. People know Hemingway was a great adventurer who lived at the peak of his macho ability and then finally blew his brains out with an over-and-under shotgun in Wyoming. And Zola is only known for the Dreyfuss case. But and I think there are some writers, as there are some politicians there are some adventurers there are some scientists whose lives apart from their achievements, their lives themselves are eventful. They live life more fully, they live life with a greater commitment. Now I am not extending that to me. Please be careful when you write this. I do not want people to think I am demonstrating that kind of hubris. I'm trying to answer your question as honestly as I can, and I don't think I can get any closer to it than that.

Harlan Ellison was very much like a singularity in our field. His presence and influence was undeniable. Even people who'd never met him, or didn't like him, still felt his pull. He was massive. And now he's gone, just like that. A sudden void that was once so intensely, ferociously occupied. The universe is a little smaller today.

My complete interview with Harlan Ellison may be read at SFSite.com.

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Gary Cartwright (1934-2017)

Well, hell. Legendary Texas writer and hellraiser Gary Cartwright died today following a fall in his home. An Arlington native, he attended the University of Texas briefly before transferring and graduating from TCU. He went into newspapers, but didn't stay there. A decades-long contributor to Texas Monthly, he wrote all sorts of fantastic magazine articles and books, but specialized in true crime. His Cullen Davis trial work is the stuff of legend.

More personally, he talked with me quite a bit when I was working on Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch. Truth be told, he tried to discourage me from the project for a time, telling me that Larry King had already written all there was to know about that topic, and that nobody could ever top King. I respectfully disagreed. Thinking my Chicken Ranch research amounted to tilting at windmills didn't stop Cartwright from sharing some great stories with me, however.

Growing up between Dallas and Fort Worth, Cartwright was no stranger to brothels. The lower end of Fort Worth had more brothels than anyone could shake a stick at, with a handful of prostitutes working each of the old flophouse hotels that dominated that part of the city. The big thing to do for boys in high school in Arlington was to drive over to Fort Worth and pay the going rate of three dollars to spend a few quick minutes with one of the flophouse whores.

“It seems like nothing now, but at the time three dollars was fairly dear. At La Grange the price was five dollars, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, my God, this must really be a classy joint!’” Cartwright said. “This one girl came over and started talking to me. Her name was Patsy, and she was from Highland Park in Dallas. Highland Park was kind of the ritzy, silk stocking area of Dallas, so I was impressed. Here was this hooker from Highland Park! That added a little cachet to the situation.

“She was skinny, blond, not particularly attractive but not unattractive. The other girls in the room were about the same—no real knockouts but no dogs, either. Eventually, we went to one of the rooms, and the whole thing lasted three minutes, four minutes, then it was over,” he said. “I went back and sat in the waiting room. The socializing in the living room section was probably more memorable than the actual sex, which, as I said, lasted almost no time.”

Cartwright's literary archive is curated by the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

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Terry Pratchett (1948-2015)

Sir Terry Pratchett died yesterday after a battle with early-onset Alzheimers. People far more eloquent than I have eulogized him elsewhere, and the hundreds of obituaries provide far more detail and understanding of the man and his life than I could hope to compete with. So I will just stick to what I know.

I didn't enjoy Pratchett's books. This disappointed me greatly. I remember getting The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic via the Science Fiction Book Club not all that long after they became available in the U.S. and being distressingly unmoved by them. I'm not sure I laughed even once. It's not that I couldn't see what he was doing or the tropes he gleefully lampooned--that should've been catnip for me, and indeed, was what caused me to seek them out in the first place--but the prose lay lifeless upon the page for me. Over the years, as I grew more widely read and Pratchett's Discworld satires grew progressively more sophisticated and cast an ever-expanding net, I revisited his work. Strata, Interesting Times, a handful of others I can't quite recall (Mort? The Fifth Elephant?) remained stubbornly closed to me. I could see the jokes. I could see the biting commentary. I understood what he was accomplishing, and saddened by the fact I could not participate no matter how many of his books I read.

I have exactly one Terry Pratchett story.

Back in 2000, at Aggiecon 31, Pratchett was guest of honor and I was a regional guest. I hadn't been able to get close to him because of the swarms of fans that followed him everywhere, but we had one panel together. Fate conspired to seat me right next to the man. As we introduced ourselves, I said, "I'm Jayme Lynn Blaschke, and I write short fiction because I don't have the discipline to write novels."

Without blinking an eye, Pratchett said, "I'm Terry Pratchett, and I write novels because I don't have the discipline to write short fiction."

He was a witty, friendly and effortlessly funny man in person. I could not help but like him immediately, and count myself fortunate I had the opportunity--however brief--to make his acquaintance.

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Happy Trails, Trigger

Trigger is gone.

I cannot express how much this sucks. As near as I can tell, William Rogers was rehabbing from back, and complications set in. He passed away March 16 at the age of 47.

March has been a very difficult month for me, with too much death and dismay. It's been hard to process. Hard to function, really. Trigger's death was the coup de grace, so to speak, which is why it's taken me so long to write this remembrance. He's one of the few college friends I've stayed in touch with. We last spoke in October, trading insults as always. He was from La Grange, I was from Columbus, two small Texas towns just 20 miles apart, so we had a built-in rivalry we never failed to capitalize on. He was a few years older than me, so we never actually competed against each other in high school, but really, that was just a technicality.

I took my family to his wedding at the Texas Renaissance Festival. My daughters played peek-a-book with fairies in the chapel. That was a fun wedding. And to tell the truth, The Wife and I were jealous--we'd briefly considered getting married at a renfaire, but gave up on the idea because we knew our respective parents (not to mention our priest) would throw a fit (we were somewhat less assertive back then).

Facebook, in it's infinite wisdom, decided I didn't need to see his update feed sometime in November, so I was completely unaware of his growing medical issues. Word of his death blindsided me. Thanks a lot, Zuckerberg.

I remember the day he found out I was writing a book on the Chicken Ranch. He called me up and bellowed into the phone, "What makes you think a Columbus PUNK has any right to write about the La Grange Chicken Ranch?"

"You La Grange slugs had 40 years to get it done, and didn't," I answered. "I figured it was time the professionals took over."

He paused a moment, then answered, "Good point."

Few people supported my book projects as enthusiastically as he did. He shared stories, pointed me toward potential local sources and loaned me some of his family's photos of the place. It breaks my heart that he joins the growing list of people who never got to see the book in print.

Lest I get too maudlin, I shall now share the True Story of How Trigger Got His Name.

It happened this way: In 1989, William Rogers arrived at a Cepheid Variable meeting at Texas A&M eager to meet like-minded genre-oriented folks and make friends within the tribe. All members of the tribe sported Delta Names, which are generally nicknames of a vaguely demeaning, silly or embarrassing nature. When it came to Will's turn for Delta Name discussion, one of the committee officers suggested "Buck," for as all good science fiction fans know, the biggest pulp hero of the 25th century is Captain William "Buck" Rogers. Which would've been fine and dandy, if someone in the crowd hadn't half-remembered that there was once a cowboy singer who had the last name of Rogers, nevermind that his first name was Roy. "Trigger!" someone shouted. I wish I could say that I was the shouter, but alas, I wasn't so clever. "Trigger!" others picked up the cry (I was amongst these folks--never look a gift bandwagon in the mouth, that's my motto). And thus, by the end of the meeting, Trigger was firmly ensconced as his Delta Name.

We harassed each other consistently from that point on. Trigger ran dealers room for the Aggiecon I ran in 1991, and did a mighty fine job of it. He co-directed Aggiecons in 1992 and 1993, simultaneously running the dealers rooms for those cons as well (the dealers rooms were great, but the overall conventions weren't as good as mine--he did pretty good for a La Grange guy, tho).

What bothers me most is the blatant unfairness of his untimely death. I know life isn't fair, but damn. Trigger was probably the most earnest person I've ever known. He was goofy as hell and could go out of his way to be annoying as all get-out, but he was earnest. He was profoundly rude to go see Billy Joel in Houston on the Stormfront tour without me. He was a big fan of Jim Henson's Dinosaurs and could readily be counted on to provide a quote from that show at a moment's notice--"Not the momma!" more often than not. He was an organ donor, so even in death, he's still helping people. He was a fun guy, and we are all diminished by his passing.

His extended hospitalization left his wife and son facing a mountain of medical debt. If anyone is so inclined to help out, donations to the family may be made at www.gofundme.com/for-will-rogers.

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Patricia Anthony (1947-2013)

This morning a terrible message from Gordon Van Gelder awaited me in my inbox: Locus Online was reporting that Patricia Anthony had died Aug. 2. It's bad enough that she's gone, but for it to take more than a month for her passing to be noticed is unconscionable. She was a writer of immense talent. Unfortunately, she had little interest in continuing to write traditional science fiction, and this did not sit well with her publisher, Ace. Her work grew progressively non-SF, moving into slipstream and what is now popularly known as the "New Weird." Her career, which had started out so strongly in the early 90s with Cold Allies and Brother Termite foundered later in the decade with the publication of God's Fires and Flanders, two books that were more metaphysical historicals than science fiction, but much more sophisticated and engrossing novels than her earlier efforts. Flanders tanked so badly that Anthony actually bought back her next novel, which she'd already delivered to Ace, rather than let the publisher cast it adrift with no support.

By Anthony's own account, Mercy's Children is a real departure, set in a Puritan colony in the New World and narrated by a gossipy guardian angle in faux Elizabethan English. "It is definitely not [science fiction] genre at all," she told me. "It's 843 pages of 'What was I thinking?' It's an outrageous book. I wanted to show that there are always other perspectives."

I'd encouraged her to seek out a publisher for Mercy's Children in 2006, feeling there's been enough editorial turnover at various publishers, along with a general shift in genre publishing that made the market more receptive to her envelope-pushing style, but she wasn't convinced. She indicated she'd been working on another book--along with some screenplay collaborations--but didn't go into details. I sincerely hope her estate pursues publication of her unpublished work, but as she was divorced with no children, I'm not sure who her heirs are.

In the years since, we stayed in contact until recently. When I published "The Makeover Men" on HelixSF back in 2007, she honored me with the following appraisal of the piece: "Oooooooooo. NICE and sick! Good writing, sneaky story." It wasn't until Gordon's letter this morning that I realized it'd been 2011 since I heard from her.

As fiction editor of RevolutionSF, I had the good fortune to publish two of Patricia's thought-provoking short fiction pieces: "Good Neighbor" and "Eating Memories". She was also the second author I ever interviewed. The original interview appeared in Interzone and has since been reprinted at SF Site: A Conversation with Patricia Anthony. I invite you to read them all, and gain a bit of insight on the extraordinary writer Patricia was.

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