Richard Matheson - The Original Stories: The Playboy Years

As you might have guessed (or will guess soon enough), the topics Peter and I tend to write about the most are those near and dear to our hearts. So while Peter will sing sweet music to those of you who love digests of years gone by, I'll jump in for the occasional piece on a passion of my own. In this case, Richard Matheson. 

Having been a devoted fan since that summer Saturday years ago when I sat down and read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend in a single sitting, I've gone on to amass a near complete collection of his body of work. This includes a library of his first edition hardcovers (save the Chamberlain Press Born of Man and Woman... oh yes, one day you will be mine), all of his US paperbacks, what I claim to be the largest collection of editions (100+) of I Am Legend from around the world (at least until someone steps forward and proves me wrong), and a near complete collection of the first appearances of his original short fiction. That is what I plan to focus on in this series of articles.

My goal is to include basic bibliographic information, cover shots and interior illustrations where possible, and a listing of the subsequent Matheson collections in which the stories appeared. I plan to interject other bits of trivia along the way, and if there's anything in particular you'd like to see, please let me know by posting a comment. -John Scoleri

The Original Stories - Part One: The Playboy Years

While Matheson's first published short story ("Born of Man and Woman") appeared in the Summer, 1950 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, I have decided to kick things off with Matheson's nine contributions to Playboy.

Matheson was a regular contributor to Playboy during two separate eras.  Five stories were published between 1956-1960, when author Ray Russell was executive editor. Matheson returned with four more more stories between 1969-1971, when Robie Macauley was the fiction editor.

"The Splendid Source"
May 1956, Vol. 3 No. 5

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock!, Collected Stories TP v2

Playboy Editorial Comment:
Ever wonder where dirty jokes come from? The rich humor that is too blue for any printed page? A fellow tells you a joke some other fellow told him. But who told that other fellow? And if you could trace the joke all the way back to its source — what would you find? That's the fascinating puzzle Richard Matheson sets himself to solving in his highly amusing story, "The Splendid Source." And having traced the bawdy jest back to its beginnings (surely a noble endeavor), Dick is now busying himself counting the cabbage he recently made by converting his forthcoming novel, The Incredible Shrinking Man, into a motion picture script.

Illustratror unknown

Notes: Matheson's first appearance in the magazine was alongside his longtime friend and collaborator, Charles Beaumont, whose story "The Monster Show" also graces this issue.

"A Flourish of Strumpets"

November 1956, Vol. 3 No.11

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock II, Button, Button, Collected Stories TP v2 

Playboy Editorial Comment:

Richard Matheson — the guy who traced dirty jokes to their origin in "The Splendid Source" (Playboy, May, 1956) — leads off this issues with "A Flourish of Strumpets," a story of the day after tomorrow, when the oldest profession adopts the newest of sales techniques. 

Illustrator unknown

Notes: Matheson's author photo appears for the first time this issue.

"The Distributor"
March 1958, Vol. 5 No. 3

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock!, The Shrinking Man & Others, Darker Places, Duel & The Distributor, Collected Stories TP v2

Playboy Editorial Comment:
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Not only The Shadow: Richard Matheson knows, too, and has set it all down in this month's disturbing lead-off story, "The Distributor," illustrated by Robert Christiansen. Matheson (who authored "The Splendid Source" and "A Flourish of Strumpets" in previous Playboys) has just returned from England where he wrote a film script based on his own haunting novel, I Am Legend.

Illustration by Robert Christiansen

Notes: F. Paul Wilson wrote an interesting sequel ("Recalled") to this story for the recently released Matheson tribute anthology, He Is Legend. Matheson once again had his photo included amongst the contributors.

"No Such Thing As A Vampire"
October 1959, Vol. 6 No. 10

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock II, Bloodlines, Button, Button, Collected Stories TP v3

Playboy Editorial Comment:
Fiction, this month, is in the hands of Playboy favorites. Richard Matheson, author of "The Distributor" (it copped the annual $1000 Best Fiction Bonus and appears in the forthcoming The Permanent Playboy), offers the grim and Gothic "No Such Thing As a Vampire." Matheson may well be considered an authority on vampires, having written a modern classic in the genre, the novel I Am Legend. 

Illustration by Jurgens

Notes: The story was adapted in 1968 for the first episode of the BBC show Late Night Horror. Dan Curtis also included Matheson's own adaptation in his pilot for  a proposed anthology TV series, Dead of Night. The version on DVD includes footage deleted from the broadcast version. It's interesting to note that The Permanent Playboy is favorably reviewed in this very issue.

"First Anniversary"
July 1960, Vol. 7 No. 7

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock III, Collected Stories TP v3

Playboy Editorial Comment:
No newcomers are Playboy-favorites William Iverson, T.K. Brown III, Richard Matheson and John Wallace, all represented this month by top-drawer writing.

Illustration by Rothkin

Notes: This story was adapted by Matheson's daughter Ali for the 90s incarnation of The Outer Limits.

"Prey"

April 1969, Vol. 16 No. 4

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock Waves, I Am Legend & Others, Collected Stories TP v3

Playboy Editorial Comment:
A regular contributor to filmdom is Richard Matheson—represented herein by "Prey," a macabre fable about a fetish doll that refuses to play dead. Matheson wrote the screenplay for DeSade (you'll have an advance look at it in the June Playboy), which was recently filmed in Berlin.

Illustration by Martin Hoffman

Notes: One of Matheson's greatest short stories, and certainly one of the most memorable thanks to the effective adaptation by the author for Dan Curtis' Trilogy of Terror (with Karen Black facing off against the terrorizing Zuni fetish doll). Infamous in that it was the only segment Matheson adapted  for the show (the other two were written by William F. Nolan, who had his chance—and blew it—when he wrote the (un)original He Who Kills segment for Trilogy of Terror II). Joe R. Lansdale contributed a sequel of his own ("Quarry") to He Is Legend. What sounded like a perfect pairing—Lansdale's unique style and everyone's favorite Zuni—unfortunately didn't have much to add to the mythos.

After a 9 year absence, Matheson also got a new author photo.

"By Appointment Only"
April 1970, Vol. 17 No. 4

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, The Shrinking Man & Others, Collected Stories TP v3

Playboy Editorial Comment:
Master of the macabre Richard Matheson wrote his voodooistic yarn "By Appointment Only" in one sitting, after a visit to his local babershop. Matheson's last spellbinder for Playboy, "Prey," (April 1969), is included in his forthcoming collection of stories, Shock IV.

Illustration by John Craig

Notes: Shock IV was ultimately released as Shock Waves. Matheson also got another new photo.

"Button, Button"
June 1970, Vol. 17 No. 6

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, The Shrinking Man & Others, Button, Button, Collected Stories TP v3

Playboy Editorial Comment:
Two rather far-out tales round out June's fiction offerings—Richard Matheson's "Button, Button" and Patrick McGivern's "Number Eight." The former concerns a couple tempted by the moral-philosophy paradox of getting rich by willing the death of an unknown person.

Illustration by Gene Szafran

Notes: "Button, Button" was adapted for the 1980s incarnation of The Twilight Zone, where the bounty was raised from $50,000 in 1970 dollars to $200,000. The stakes were raised to $1,000,000 for the 2009 Richard Kelly film The Box, however no sum warrants sitting through that particular adaptation of Matheson's story. Gary Braunbeck wrote an interesting follow up to the story ("Everything of Beauty Taken from You in This Life Remains Forever") for He Is Legend.

The author photo this time out appears to be another shot from the prior photo session.

"Duel"
April 1971, Vol. 18 No. 4

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, The Shrinking Man & Others, Duel & The Distributor, Duel: Terror Stories, Button, Button, Collected Stories TP v3

Playboy Editorial Comment:
Even eerier than telepathy is the perception that dawns gradually—and terrifyingly—on the hero of Richard Matheson's "Duel," who is pursued by a mysterious adversary seemingly bent on highway homicide.

Illustration by Bill Arsenault

Notes: Brilliantly adapted by Matheson for Steven Spielberg's excellent TV movie starring Dennis Weaver. Stephen King and his son, the incredibly talented Joe Hill, contributed their own riff on Matheson's classic tale ("Throttle") to He Is Legend. Not surprisingly, it's one of the standout stories in the book.

Matheson's latest author photo, again from the same shoot as the prior two.

This is only the beginning... stay tuned for future installments of Richard Matheson - The Original Stories!

SHARPSHOOTER Part Two!!

Picking up right where he left off... if you missed Peter's first installment of The Sharpshooter, you can read it here.

#5: Night of the Assassins (March 1974)

Johnny Rock heads to Florida to straighten out the Miami Mafia. There’s really no plotline to this, so I won’t try to fake it: Rock kills lots of people. He’s dispensed with make-up and resorts to simply barging in on crowds of bad guys and mowing them all down without drawing any of his own blood. Obligatory “not such a bad guy” death scene: Two hookers who hang with the mob are brutally gunned down by a Rock in a motel room. The girls are unarmed and Rock bears no guilty conscience for the act. Could Bruce Willis pull this off?

GRADE: C-

#6: Muzzle Blast (April 1974)

I picture Dr. Phil taking over as Men’s Adventure Series editor at Leisure Books in early 1974, reading the first five books in the "Sharpshooter" saga, crying, and then proclaiming that this violence must come to an end…or at least has to become a “happier kind of bloodshed.” That’s the only reasoning I can conjure up for the relatively bloodless Muzzle Blast.

In the opening chapter, Rock finds himself involved with the New England Mafia. Posing as a drug dealer, he infiltrates the second-hand store run by O yi-Po, a heroin importer helped along in his trade by the beautiful but deadly Mai-Lin. We know she’s Rock’s kind of girl because she never wears undergarments (“Many eyes at the bar followed the attractive Chinese girl’s cute wiggle, admiring the saucy bouncing of her ripe breasts naked under a soft white sweater.”) and because she can handle herself in a fight (“…Mai-Lin wasn’t at all unaccustomed to sexual attack or rape itself… probably she welcomed it.”). Rock finds himself doing something he’s not done in his previous five adventures: getting to know someone without killing them. That’s not necessarily a good thing, we come to find out. Long, tedious expository scenes lead to… even longer, more tedious expository scenes until the reader looks up from his copy of Muzzle Blast and screeches: “HOLY CHRIST, I’M A DEMOCRAT AND LOVING FATHER OF TWO, BUT I WANT TO SEE SOMEONE DIE ALREADY!!”

There’s not a lot going for this particular entry. The violence is fairly tame until the obligatory “climactic showdown.” If you’re looking for sex, you’re out of luck. What you’re left with is the unique writing style of “Bruno Rossi” (this particular Rossi has to be the same ghost who penned Blood Oath as he continually makes the same mistake of calling Rock “Magellan”):

And now, as Rock planned the next skirmish in his most sacred and private crusade against the unholy New England Mafia, 73 men, all dues-paying members of the conventioneering North American Alliance For Explorative Computer Ideology (NAAECI) were feasting their pop eyes on an extravaganza of debauchery, so wanton, so bawdy, so vulgar, obscene, perverse, corrupt and depraved that the riotous and licentious carryings-on of the sex circus on the wide stage was embarrassing to even Nick Kang’s wife who produced and directed the wicked spectacle.

I didn’t miss any periods in that sentence, by the way.

Try this one on:

Quite close by and puncturing the ear drums of all assembled, came an excructiating, reverberating blast! As if pandemonium meant a cage of angry lions and famished jungle panthers sprung lose (sic), the above described participants were literally lifted out of their seats and some flung bodily across the table they surrounded. A second ferocious, even colossal explosion followed the first. Men were lurching, staggering, pitching forward, gasping for air, tipping over and rolling on the carpeted floor. All the lights blew out. The brute force of the second bellowing detonation sounded like two thousand tons of TNT earthquaking in a vacuum!

Both passages are perfect examples of what I call the “Mad-Lib style of 1970s Executioner-style Series Writing” (or M-LSo1E-SSW for short). Writer has hit a brick wall, and presents his wife with a manuscript chock-full of “fill-it-ins” and asks her for help. Example:

Rock hit the man with a large __________(noun), after which his nose ___________(verb). Seeing four other Mafia hit men approaching, Rock fed his _____________(weapon) with lots of ____________(pl. noun). The men died a _____________(adjective) death. Rock smiled a(n) __________________(adjective) smile.

GRADE: D-

#7: Headcrusher (June 1974)

Johnny Rock heads back to New York, where he receives info on Don Salvatore, who contracted the hit on Rock’s family. Going undercover as “Mafia bastard hitman” Burt Laganello, Rock infiltrates and gains the trust of the family and does what he does best. With glee, he takes on assignments to murder rival gangmen, killing two birds with one stone” gaining trust and killing “Mafia bastards” at the same time. The man, literally, is a pig rolling in shit.

Where to begin? I’m not an optimist, so I don’t picture a behind-the-scenes board meeting at Leisure where the CEO demands a marked increase in the quality of “The Sharpshooter” series, and yet that’s exactly what we get. Headcrusher is so obviously better than any of its predecessors that I have to believe it was penned by a new ghost-writer. Sure, there are the usual lapses in logic (Rock, sprayed with machine-gun fire, lives to tell the tale) and editing (at one point, one of the Don’s henchmen addresses the undercover hitman as “Rock” rather than Burt), but the gripping narrative more than makes up for it.

But for the final chapter, Rock’s tale this time almost seems to be a wrap-up, as though the series would be winding down. At one point, Rock contacts his lawyer and draws up a will, believing that he may not survive the final hit. When Rock undergoes his transformation into “Mafia scum,” he realizes, not without some remorse, that he’s beginning to like these guys. This plot twist would show up years later in Stephen Cannell’s excellent TV series, Wise Guy, in which undercover cop Ken Wahl would ease himself into a Mob family and befriend a vicious mobster.

The evidence that this is indeed still our old friend Johnny Rock comes at the climactic showdown with Don Salvatore. Believing “Burt Laganello” to be a dedicated (and very productive) henchman, Salvatore invites him to dinner. There, Rock is introduced to the Don’s wife and beautiful granddaughter (who makes no bones about her affection for Rock). The four sit down to a pre-dinner chat when, abruptly, Rock stands and emptied his clip into the Don and his wife. He then turns to the petrified girl, proclaims that she’s about the age of Rock’s sister when Gramps sanctioned her kill and pops her in cold blood. A nasty scene even for this nasty series.

GRADE: A-