Twelve men from the Soviet Union on a scientific expedition to the remotest part of planet Earth, Antarctica, in 1961, found themselves on the horn of an incredible dilemma. One of their number, the expedition doctor, suddenly became acutely stricken with appendicitis. What to do? No one else was medically trained and outside medically help was thousands of kilometres away, the patient couldn’t be transported there and waiting would prove fatal. So the surgeon, Leonid Rogozov, did the only thing he could do to try to save his own life…as mind-numbingly inconceivable as it sounds he operated on himself!
Novolazarevskaya Station, Antarctica, in winter (Photo: Sky News/Getty Images)
Auto-appendectomy was virtually unheard of, let alone performing such an impossibly dangerous procedure in a non-hospital environment, but Dr Rogozov rolled the dice. Firstly, he planned the operation systematically and meticulously (despite being in agonising pain), choosing two members of the expedition to be his surgical assistants, their roles were to hand him surgical instruments and hold a mirror to avail him of a view of his abdomen. The degree to which he prepared the operation exceptionally well can be seen in that he had the foresight to assign a third man to be present in the makeshift operating “theatre” in the event that one of the assistants fainted. As Rogozov needed to stay conscious he submitted only to a local anaesthetic and proceeded slowly in excruciating pain. Finding the inverted view of the mirror more a hinderance than an aid he dispensed with it and operated instead by touch with his bare hands.
The Soviet Union’s pioneering auto-appendectomy (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)
Somehow after nearly two hours the doctor succeeded in removing the offending appendix (while noting that its gangrenous appearance indicated it in all likelihood would burst the following day). Operation successfully completed, Rogozov stitched up his gaping wound and even had the presence of mind to instruct the assistants on how to wash the instruments properly and hygienically clean the room, before finally allowing himself a dose of antibiotics and sleeping tablets to induce sleep. After just two weeks rest the extraordinary doctor was, true to form, back at work. Truly remarkable, real Ripley’s “believe it or not” sort of stuff! [Sara Lentati, “The man who cut out his own appendix”, BBC, 05-May-2015, www.bbc.com].
Dr Rogozov recuperating after the operation (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)
The Antarctic ordeal wasn’t entirely over for Dr Rogozov. Mission completed, the expedition was meant to be picked up by a Soviet vessel about 12 months after the doctor’s self-appendectomy, however exceptionally bad weather and thick sea ice prevented it from getting close enough. Consequently there was a further lengthy delay before all the explorers were eventually evacuated by single-engine aircraft, a distinctly hairy manoeuvre in the treacherous polar conditions. Back in the USSR Leonid Rogozov was hailed as a hero of the Motherland and honoured with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, although the good doctor did his utmost to shun the huge publicity focused on him, preferring simply to return to his medical clinic work in Leningrad.
Leonid I Rogozov in happier times during his Antarctic stay (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)
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Footnote: As a consequence of the 1961 Soviet expedition’s medical quasi-catastrophe, several countries including Australia made appendectomies mandatory for Antarctic explorers about to embark on an expedition to the farthest southern continent.
The popularity of Earl Derr Biggers’ Chinese detective creation Charlie Chan triggered a demand for this kind of Asian–American mystery crime fiction, paving the way for a spinoff into a profitable movie series. Biggers’ early death in 1933 after publishing just five Chan books left a void in fiction that other writers were not slow to try to fill. Encouraged by the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, which had serialised the Charlie Chan books, author John P Marquand created his notion of an Asian “detective” hero who triumphs in white society, Mr Moto. Mr Moto is Japanese, quiet, small and seemingly meek of nature, like Charlie Chan he roams the globe solving crimes and exposing murderers. Unlike Chan he uses ju-jitsu as well as brains to overcome and apprehend the bad guys.
Marquand eventually completed six novels centring around the Japanese secret agent/sleuth – Your Turn, Mr. Moto, Thank You, Mr. Moto, Think Fast, Mr. Moto, Mr. Moto is So Sorry, Last Laugh, Mr. Moto (all in the 1930s) and Right You Are, Mr. Moto (1957). 20th Century Fox bought the films rights (as they had with the Charlie Chan novels), and casting Hungarian-American actor Peter Lorre as the Japanese spy Moto🅐, rapidly made eight publicly well-received B-features in two years – Think Fast, Mr. Moto, Thank You, Mr. Moto,Mr. Motor’s Gamble, Mr. Moto Takes a Chance, Mysterious Mr. Moto, Mr. Moto’s Last Warning, Mr. Moto in Danger Island and Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (the series was variously set in Hawaii, Mongolia, Peking, Cambodia/Siam, Egypt, Devil’s Island, Puerto Rico, at sea, San Francisco and other locations in the US).
Your Turn, Mr. Moto: Book and movie The film is only loosely based on the original novel, retaining only some of the key characters like American Tom Nelson and Prince Tung, introduces new characters and makes the quest for the ancient Chinese scrolls a more central element than in the novel where it is subordinated to the question of Japo–Chinese relations🅑.
Apart from some overlap of titles there are big differences between the books and the movies. One of the most conspicuous is Mr Moto’s presence in the stories. In Marquand’s novels, the character of Mr Moto goes missing for large parts of the books (though he’s always actively working towards his objectives “off-stage”)…meanwhile attention switches to the male (American) protagonist who finds himself in trouble of some kind or other🅒. Moto returns to intervene at a crucial moment, the American is saved and finds redemption (which is the key to the plot). In the films by contrast, Mr Moto tends to “fill the screen and animate the whole series”. In the books Moto is “I.A. Moto”, a secret agent working for the imperial Japanese government, but in the films he is presented as “Kentaro Moto” (as his printed business card states), an Interpol agent. Moreover the two mediums craft quite different types of crime stories, the novels were international espionage adventures which Hollywood turned into formulaic detective stories on the screen, [Schneider, Michael A. “Mr. Moto: Improbable International Man of Mystery.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 22, no. 1, 2015, pp. 7–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43898402. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024].
Marquand’s No Hero (1935)
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Mr Moto’s talents don’t stop at crime solving. He’s also a polymath, polyglot, art connoisseur, a graduate of Stanford University, amateur archaeologist and importer–exporter on the side. In some of these roles he demonstrates his special flair for effecting disguise, a ploy he uses to deflect suspicion from himself, blending in to exotic locales while undertaking dangerous spying assignments [‘Observations on Film Art: Charlie, Meet Kentaro’, Kristin Thompson & David Bordwell; David Bordwell’s website on cinema, 16-Mar-2007, www.davidbordwell.net; “‘Asian Detectives’. An Overview’, Philippa Gates, Crime Culture, www.crimeculture.com].
Mr Moto in clownface (“Mr. Moto’s Last Warning”)
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The Charlie Chan nexus: With two highly bankable screen detectives at its disposal Fox recognised the value of cross-promotion when the opportunity arose. The 1938 Moto movie Mr. Moto’s Gamble was originally meant to be a Warner Oland-starring Charlie Chan feature, however Oland’s ill-health and untimely death squashed those plans. Fox substituted Mr. Moto’s Gamble for the canned Chan movie and the producers kept Oland’s co-star Keye Luke in his No. 1 son role opposition Lorre this time, even allowing Mr Moto to politely inquire with Lee Chan (Luke) as to his honourable father’s health.
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Moto, genial but ruthless: Irrespective of the connexions and references between Charlie Chan and Kentaro Moto, Lorre’s off-centre sense of humour ensures that on screen Moto is “no Chan clone”. Although Moto, like Chan, employs logic and deduction in his policing methods and is quiet, meek exceedingly polite in public dealings (and a milk drinker no less!), he is also very much a man of action, disposing of physical threats to him with his uncompromising ju-jitsu prowess…in the case of the story’s murderer, once revealed, Moto customarily dispenses with the need for trial, having no qualms about liquidating him with 007-like utter ruthlessness, something Chan with his high moral code would never contemplate (Gates).
Moto’s alpha side (“Think Fast, Mr. Moto”)
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Mr Moto‘s personal side is as shadowy as his profession, to the audience it’s a blank slate. He has no family and no love life and his only companion is his cat. The only hint of a possible romance is his liaison with Lela (or Lotus) Liu (Lotus Long) in Think Fast, Mr. Moto and Mysterious Mr. Moto, but she turns out to be an agent like him and their attachment seems to be more a matter of working together to solve the case. Moto is a “lone wolf” when investigating cases, working solo without assistants. Occasionally he does ally with a self-appointed sidekick—usually a naive or gormless American or English idiot—who sometimes inadvertently unearths crucial evidence but as always it’s Mr Moto who unravels the mystery.
”Them Nipponese sure are peculiar birds”: Mr Moto, a Japanese man in 1930s America, is inevitably exposed in the stories to the casual racism of various people he meets, but the prejudice he cops seems more overt than the more subtle racist slurs DI Chan is subjected to. Possibly, this was a reflection of growing pro-Chinese feelings in America then in the wake of unremitting Japanese aggression against China in Manchuria. Moto, unfazed by the jibes, manages to turn the racism back on the perpetrators without their realising it…though he speaks perfectly fluent English he sometimes pretends to indulge their expectations of the stereotypical Asian: “Ah, so!!! Suiting you?”, he mocks in his singsong repartee manner 🅓 (Thompson & Bordwell).
Versatile Mr Moto turns his hand (and voice) to ventriloquism (Mr. Moto’s Last Warning)
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What makes Lorre’s star turn as the mysterious Japanese secret agent so good is that he plays the role absolutely tongue-in-cheek and with considerable charm [‘A Guide to the Mr Moto Films’, Charles P. Mitchell, Classic Images,www.webarchive.org]. Although I wonder if Moto’s ever-smiling, ultra-polite, insufferable smugness with gleaming teeth while correcting lesser mortals as to the error of the misconceptions didn’t start to grate with some movie-watchers after a while?
“Mr Moto…the foxiest detective of them all!!!“
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As the series continued the film storylines and situations predictably became more formulaic. After eight features Peter Lorre called it quits, seeking a release from his Mr Moto contract. The Moto sub-genre was still very popular at the box office but it’s probable that Lorre’s concern was that he was being typecast again as Moto (having previously been stereotyped as a psycho killer), which he felt was limiting his choices of different parts (Gates).
Footnote: Where did Marquand get his inspiration for the character of Mr Moto? Marquand undertook a research tour of the Orient in 1934 to gather material for his Asian detective project. While in Japan he aroused the suspicions of a short, exceedingly polite police detective who started shadowing the American author on his journeys. Eventually the Japanese detective, realising that Marquand was no threat to the country, stopped tailing him. This chance encounter provided Marquand with the spark for the character of Moto.
Pearl Harbour effectively killed off novels for the American market about Japanese spies but Marquand did write a final “Mr Moto” after a lapse of nearly 20 years: a Cold War espionage thriller “Right You Are” with American agents hunting down communist infiltrators in Tokyo
🅐 leaving the series and Lorre open to retrospective criticism for engaging in “Yellowface”, although Moto hasn’t attracted the ire of modern critics to the same extent as the Charlie Chan series has for the steady stream of white actors who have portrayed the Chinese super-detective up until as recently as 1981 – see previous post ‘Charlie Chan, Murder Mystery-Buster Extraordinaire: A Positive Asian Stereotype or an Oriental “Uncle Tom”?’, (29 October 2024)
🅑 Marquand’s focus in the books is on the clash of cultures, European/American vs Oriental (Japanese/Chinese), to a much greater degree that the films
🅒 the first book, Your Turn, Mr. Moto, was originally titled No Hero, a reference to another character, not Moto
Wadi: valley; stream; watercourse drying up in summer; oasis[from Arab. wādī, (“river” or “watercourse,”)]
Wadi in Jordan
Wanion: unluckily, due to the waning of the moon [from MidEng. waniand, from wanien, wanen (“to wane”)]
Withershins: in an unfortunate direction [from MidHighGer. wider (“against”)+ –sin (“direction”)] Witling: a petty smart Alec; a mere pretender to wit (Bowler)[conjunction of wit + -ling]
<word meaning & root formation>
Xenium: a present given to a guest [from Gk. xenial (pertaining to hospitality or relationship between host and guest) (cf. Xenodochium: a building for the reception of strangers; a caravanserai)
Caravanserai in Fars, Iran
Xenogenous: due to an outside cause; of foreign origin [from Gk. xeno]
word meaning & root formation
Yaul: to deviate from a stable course because of oscillation about the longitudinal axis (Rocket science)(Origin unknown)
Yegg: a burglar of safes; safecracker (Origin obscure: one (dubious) suggestion is from German jäger (“hunter”))
The challenge of the Yegg (Chubb advertisement)
Yemeles: negligent; careless; heedless [OldEng. from Germ.]
Yisse: desire or covet (Origin unknown)
word meaning & root formation
Zeigarnik: (Psych.) the theory that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks; the tendency to remember an uncomplicated task [named after Lithuanian-Soviet psychologistBluma Zeigarnik(ZeigarnikEffect]
Zoilism: carping; destructive criticism [from Zoilus, ancient Greekgrammarian andliterary critic… was hyper-critical of Homer (Zoilus the “Homeromastix”)]
Zoilus of Ephesus
Zooerastia: (–asty) the practice of a human engaging insexual intercoursewith ananimal; bestiality [from Gk. zoo + -astia]
Zoopery:experimentation on animals [from zoo + L. –operārī(“to work, labor, toil, have effect”)]
Zugzwang: a state of play in chess where the player is at a disadvantage as hisor her next move will worsen their position in the game (cf. snookering) [fromGer. (“compulsion to move”)]
If you could travel in the Tardis back to my primary school days, you’d find me most lunchtimes in the school library with my head in the fiction section habitually combing through the shelves for any books from my favourite series of reads for kids that I hadn’t yet wolfed down. Precisely I’d have my nose in the ‘C’ section – ‘C’ for Richmal Crompton, the author of the “Just William” series of books. From about the age of nine or ten I was hooked on the rebellious juvenile role model William, a 1920s–1960’s version of Harry Potter in his all-consuming cult appeal🄰…William became as integral to my childhood as Classics Illustrated comics, plasticine and chocolate malted sundaes. With more energy than I could ever summon for my obligatory school home work, I dedicated myself with missionary zeal to reading every single Just William book I could lay my hands on! Fortunately for me there was plenty of scope for that ambition, Crompton having written 39 Just William books in all. In the end I’m not sure if I actually read all of them (did the library hold the entire collection?), but I was certainly exposed to enough of them to become a vicarious member of “The Outlaws”.
The popularity of the Just William books prompted multiple other media spin-offs, including several television series—the 1962 series cast Denis Waterman (above) as William—as well as films and radio serials
William (Brown) is 11, and like Peter Pan he doesn’t age, despite the Just William entries in the series stretching over a period of nearly half-a-century!🄱 William in appearance is scruffy-haired and untidy, in nature straight talking, anarchic and rebellious – which generally lands him and his own small gang of school friends “The Outlaws” in hot water. Guy Mankowski attributes the series’ success (12 million books sold in the UK alone) to the English love of the rebel. My own recollection of the general tenor of mainstream Western society circa 1965, before the societal ripples of the Counterculture and Vietnam were felt, was still very conformist and strait-jacketed. I delighted in the character of William, his rebellious free spirit and sense of fun, constantly waging a war against the rules of adults which stop children like him enjoying the fun things in life (like unlimited ice cream). What also endeared me was William’s sheer inventiveness, constantly coming up with sometimes zany, always hilarious schemes to make money or to teach grown-ups a lesson or two, and the like. And I might add just quietly, William’s loud anti-school rhetoric didn’t diminish his appeal in my books as well.
Early volumes
Two things I only found out about Just William in my adulthood…I had from the start assumed that the author of the William books was a man, he had to be a man to write about a mischievous albeit good-natured boy with such knowing authority, I thought (plus, though “Richmal” was a weird first name, it sounded more like an upper-class toff’s name than a women’s name). Wrong on both counts! Miss Richmal Crompton Lamburn was in fact a school mistress (ironically – in an all-girls school!) who contracted polio and spent the rest of her life writing the William series of books as well as 41 separate adult novels (which she rated as her real true literary work)🄲. The second discovery was that John Lennon also harboured an all-consuming passion for the Just William stories growing up in Forties and Fifties Liverpool. Had I known at the time that no less a global cultural luminary of the Sixties than Beatle John hero-worshipped the fictional rebel William, my own cup of infatuated fandom for “Britain’s favourite naughty boy” may have runneth over even more than it did🄳.
Miss Crompton with juvenile “proofreaders” (photo: Keystone/Getty Images)
Something else that slipped under the radar of my 11-year-old self was the topicality (and sometimes controversial nature) of the William stories. In the 1940s in William and the Brains Trust William responds to the publication of the Beveridge Report—the blueprint for radical social policy change that profoundly affected postwar UK—with a list of his own child-centred demands. William the Dictator reflected the Western world’s concern with the rise of fascism and National Socialism. The US/USSR space race in the Fifties inspired the Just William titles William and the Moon Rocket and William and the Space Animal. Occasionally Crompton strayed onto edgy and even highly controversial turf. In the 1934 short story ‘William and the Nasties’ William and his Outlaws copy Hitler’s jackbooted Nazis by harassing and persecuting a local Jewish sweet-shop owner…passages such “There came to William glorious visions of chasing Jew after Jew out of sweetshop after sweetshop” definitely wouldn’t pass the politics or ethical pub test in our avowedly PC times. The anti-Semitic tone of ‘William and the Nasties’ has ensured its exclusion from modern editions of the William series.
William the Lawless, the final book in the series, published in 1970, the year after Crompton’s death
🄰 perhaps a better analogy is with Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole character although Adrian is way too timid and wimpishly sensitive juxtaposed to William
🄱 2022 was the centenary of the publication of the first Just William book in the series, although William’s debut in print was in a 1919 magazine story
🄲 Crompton Lamburn apparently based the character of William on a combination of her younger brother Battersby and her nephew Tommy
🄳 in William the Lawless (1970) William receives as a present, a Beatles’ LP
word meaning & root formation
