In 1895, 16-year-old Talbot Mundy fled the strait-laced Victorian upbringing of his native England for a life of adventure. He crossed the entire northern frontier of India, toward Tibet, spent four years in Africa, and traveled the Middle East in the wake of World War I.
Colonial odysseys of the time led most writers to echo Rudyard Kipling's support of British imperialism, Sax Rohmer's "yellow peril," or Joseph Conrad's bleak "heart of darkness." Not Mundy. His fantasy-adventure books challenged assumptions of Western cultural superiority.
Mundy's writing was based in Eastern religious teaching, informed by his membership in the Theosophical Society in San Diego, California. There he wrote OmThe Secret of Ahbor Valley, Tros of Samothrace, and Queen Cleopatra.
Radio won him an audience of millions of daily listeners in the 1930s. Such classic Mundy novels as Kingof the Khyber Rifles have also been adapted for the screen.
Mundy immigrated to the United States in 1909, and on his very first day in New York City was savagely beaten and robbed of his small capital in an incident that was widely reported in newspapers around the country. Destitute, he found a friend in one of the reporters who had covered his mugging, and invited him to share lodgings with several other young journalists so he could try writing. By the beginning of 1911, Mundy was publishing in pulp magazines. During 1912, eighteen stories and four articles by Mundy appeared, and by the middle of that year, his stories began to be reprinted in British magazines. Mundy's growing success as a popular author was also demonstrated that year by the fact that two of his short stories were adapted to motion pictures. The two films, FOR VALOUR and THE FIRE-COP, represented opposite poles of Mundy's writing--yet remain the most faithful screen versions of his stories ever produced.
The second of the 1912 films, THE FIRE COP, released November 30, was based on one of the tales written for The Scrap Book a year earlier. "The Fire Cop," appearing in the October 1911 issue, resembled many of Mundy's early military stories with its emphasis on courage and how a man who fears that he may be a coward finds redemption. The rescue of two women won tall, handsome Mike Brannigan respect and the adulation of a press hungry for a story. Only Brannigan himself, and his shrewish, taunting wife, know the truth--he never actually faced physical danger. A tenement fire finally gives Brannigan another opportunity, and initially he reacts bravely, saving several panic-stricken people. But when he discovers there is one more to rescue, via a slipping ladder, he briefly panics. Finally, believing the crowd's cheers are actually jeers, anger forces him to action and he crawls across. Throwing the woman to safety, a shifting wind traps Brannigan, and he is horribly burned and taken to the hospital, barely alive.
Just before he dies, Brannigan's wife rushes to his side and tells him she now loves him, making him happy at last. She proudly tells a newspaperman that she is the fire cop's widow. However, he is only a cub reporter, and since there is an abundance of other news in the city at the moment, Brannigan's real achievement will be overlooked by the press.
In late 1912, the Selig Polyscope Co., turning out five films a week, produced a series with narratives including fire scenes. In the movie, the fat wife of fire cop Andrew Brannigan throws his medal into the oven, telling him in one of the few intertitles, "There now, you that's not afraid of fire, go fetch it out"--a line taken verbatim from Mundy's prose. THE FIRE COP combines incidents from the two fires in the story, only showing the climactic one. Two women appear at a window, hysterical, and Brannigan goes to the rescue, taking them to the roof. He employs a ladder to make a bridge to an adjoining building, and carries one woman across. Looking back to get the other woman, he pauses, sees the peril, and is almost paralyzed with fear. Finally he is able to crawl across the ladder, throwing the woman to a waiting net, then jumps himself to safety. The boy goes to tell Mrs. Brannigan, who takes her baby to the hospital to find her husband bandaged from head to foot.
The film avoids the tragedy of Mundy's original for the conventional cinematic "happy ending;" soon, Brannigan is home once more, rocking the cradle. However, while the Brannigan of the movie lives, unlike the story he never gains his wife's respect. THE FIRE COP offers some real tension in the fire scenes, and manages to convey, if with less force, the crisis of courage that Brannigan undergoes. As the earliest surviving Mundy movie (preserved at the Library of Congress), it holds up well nearly a century later, and is a reasonable approximation of the story.
Colonial odysseys of the time led most writers to echo Rudyard Kipling's support of British imperialism, Sax Rohmer's "yellow peril," or Joseph Conrad's bleak "heart of darkness." Not Mundy. His fantasy-adventure books challenged assumptions of Western cultural superiority.
Mundy's writing was based in Eastern religious teaching, informed by his membership in the Theosophical Society in San Diego, California. There he wrote OmThe Secret of Ahbor Valley, Tros of Samothrace, and Queen Cleopatra.
Radio won him an audience of millions of daily listeners in the 1930s. Such classic Mundy novels as Kingof the Khyber Rifles have also been adapted for the screen.
Mundy immigrated to the United States in 1909, and on his very first day in New York City was savagely beaten and robbed of his small capital in an incident that was widely reported in newspapers around the country. Destitute, he found a friend in one of the reporters who had covered his mugging, and invited him to share lodgings with several other young journalists so he could try writing. By the beginning of 1911, Mundy was publishing in pulp magazines. During 1912, eighteen stories and four articles by Mundy appeared, and by the middle of that year, his stories began to be reprinted in British magazines. Mundy's growing success as a popular author was also demonstrated that year by the fact that two of his short stories were adapted to motion pictures. The two films, FOR VALOUR and THE FIRE-COP, represented opposite poles of Mundy's writing--yet remain the most faithful screen versions of his stories ever produced.
The second of the 1912 films, THE FIRE COP, released November 30, was based on one of the tales written for The Scrap Book a year earlier. "The Fire Cop," appearing in the October 1911 issue, resembled many of Mundy's early military stories with its emphasis on courage and how a man who fears that he may be a coward finds redemption. The rescue of two women won tall, handsome Mike Brannigan respect and the adulation of a press hungry for a story. Only Brannigan himself, and his shrewish, taunting wife, know the truth--he never actually faced physical danger. A tenement fire finally gives Brannigan another opportunity, and initially he reacts bravely, saving several panic-stricken people. But when he discovers there is one more to rescue, via a slipping ladder, he briefly panics. Finally, believing the crowd's cheers are actually jeers, anger forces him to action and he crawls across. Throwing the woman to safety, a shifting wind traps Brannigan, and he is horribly burned and taken to the hospital, barely alive.
Just before he dies, Brannigan's wife rushes to his side and tells him she now loves him, making him happy at last. She proudly tells a newspaperman that she is the fire cop's widow. However, he is only a cub reporter, and since there is an abundance of other news in the city at the moment, Brannigan's real achievement will be overlooked by the press.
In late 1912, the Selig Polyscope Co., turning out five films a week, produced a series with narratives including fire scenes. In the movie, the fat wife of fire cop Andrew Brannigan throws his medal into the oven, telling him in one of the few intertitles, "There now, you that's not afraid of fire, go fetch it out"--a line taken verbatim from Mundy's prose. THE FIRE COP combines incidents from the two fires in the story, only showing the climactic one. Two women appear at a window, hysterical, and Brannigan goes to the rescue, taking them to the roof. He employs a ladder to make a bridge to an adjoining building, and carries one woman across. Looking back to get the other woman, he pauses, sees the peril, and is almost paralyzed with fear. Finally he is able to crawl across the ladder, throwing the woman to a waiting net, then jumps himself to safety. The boy goes to tell Mrs. Brannigan, who takes her baby to the hospital to find her husband bandaged from head to foot.
The film avoids the tragedy of Mundy's original for the conventional cinematic "happy ending;" soon, Brannigan is home once more, rocking the cradle. However, while the Brannigan of the movie lives, unlike the story he never gains his wife's respect. THE FIRE COP offers some real tension in the fire scenes, and manages to convey, if with less force, the crisis of courage that Brannigan undergoes. As the earliest surviving Mundy movie (preserved at the Library of Congress), it holds up well nearly a century later, and is a reasonable approximation of the story.
