Meador Manor

Reading & Watching Rinehart

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Granger Meador

American mystery author Mary Roberts Rinehart was described as our version of Agatha Christie. Some years ago I read most of Christie’s 66 detective novels and various short-story collections, excepting the Tommy & Tuppence ones, and at this point I’ve completed a dozen of Rinehart’s 40-odd novels.

Both Rinehart and Christie once served as nurses. Christie volunteered in the British Red Cross during World War I, becoming a paid dispenser, and again worked in a pharmacy during World War II. Her pharmaceutical knowledge of poisons was incorporated into her mystery novels.

Mary Roberts was born in 1876, fourteen years before Christie, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She trained at a hospital’s nursing school, but after graduating, she married Stanley Rinehart, a doctor she had met there, and instead of her pursuing nursing, she invested herself in raising their three sons. The Rineharts lost their savings in a stock market crash in 1903, prompting her to begin writing at age 27 to earn an income. She produced 45 short stories, and in 1907 she wrote The Circular Staircase, which was published in 1908 and would go on to sell 1.25 million copies and spawn four movies and a hit play.

Mary Roberts Rinehart in 1914 — Rinehart in 1914

I read that novel in 2020, as my introduction to Rinehart, who would re-use the character of Miss Cornelia Van Gorder in a couple of later novels. Like Christie, Rinehart had some other recurring characters in Leticia “Tish” Carberry and Hilda Adams, but while Christie relied heavily on various recurring detectives, with only about about 1/4 of her output being standalones, the situation was reversed with Rinehart, with 3/4 of her 40-odd novels not featuring recurring characters.

My readings of Rinehart have ranged from her first published novel of 1908 to one from 1945; her final work was published in 1952. Her books are more dated than Christie, often told in first person by a female character with plenty of the “had I but known” foreshadowing that can increase suspense but too often consists of the narrator keeping key pieces of evidence from the police in order to prolong the plot.

The Circular Staircase film ad — Advertisement for the lost 1915 silent movie adaptation

Back in 1915, Rinehart’s first novel, The Circular Staircase, was adapted into a silent film. She didn’t get much for the movie rights, and the film was criticized as following the novel too closely to be properly cinematic. That film is one of many from that era that are lost.

A Comedic Touch

Several of Rinehart’s books were comedies, including the latest I read on my Kindle, When a Man Marries from 1909. Its thin plot reminded me of later situation comedies on television, revolving around a group of rich Edwardians who are quarantined together for a week, with a silly deception meant only to last a few hours stretched to its breaking point by the forced confinement.

Rinehart had first written the novella Seven Days, which was adapted into a three-act play for Broadway. Being unfamiliar with script-writing, Rinehart paired up with the young playwright Avery Hopwood, who at that time had only one produced play to his credit. Their Seven Days play was a hit with 397 performances that allowed its producers to retire, although they came out of retirement in 1920 to produce a couple more Hopwood-Rinehart plays.

Rinehart expanded the Seven Days novella into the later When a Man Marries novel, and I found the connection with the play evident in the staging of various scenes in the novelization. I have a feeling I might have enjoyed the novella, or even the play, more.

If you want some comedy, I found Where There’s a Will from 1912 to be more fun. The later book had a far more relatable narrator and featured eccentric folks populating a faltering health spa. Avoid the lousy Audible version by Deavers; Paula Faye Leinweber does a much better job, while the Kindle version is only a buck and of course there’s a free version at Project Gutenberg.

Audiobooks are a mixed bag for Rinehart, since so much of her work is out of copyright and thus does not offer sufficient profit to attract the most professional narrators and producers. You can get a couple of dozen of her works in text form for free at Project Gutenberg.

Rinehart’s last name will sound familiar to some like me with a teaching background. She later helped her sons, Stanley Jr. and Frederick, co-found the Farrar & Rinehart publishing company, leaving Doubleday to have her works published with them. In 1946, John Farrar left the company to co-found Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and the sons’ firm became Rinehart & Company, which later merged with Henry Holt and Company and the John C. Winston Company to become Holt, Rinehart and Winston, a publisher of countless textbooks.

I’m also impressed that after suffering from breast cancer, which led to a radical mastectomy, Rinehart went public in an interview “I Had Cancer” in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1947, encouraging women to have breast examinations. In 1956, she appeared on Edward R. Murrows’ Person to Person television interview show, although I haven’t located a kinescope of it.

The Bat Beginnings

I decided to explore how Rinehart’s first novel was connected to a later play and its three film adaptations. The success of Seven Days early in her career led Rinehart to collaborate again with Hopwood on a musical version of it, Tumble In, in 1919, and they co-wrote two hit plays that debuted on Broadway in 1920. Spanish Love, an adaptation of a Spanish play, had over 300 performances, but it was overshadowed by the tremendous success of The Bat, which premiered a week later.

In 1916, Rinehart had asked producer Edgar Selwyn whether he thought a mystery play would be successful if it kept the mystery unresolved until the end. He said that could be a hit, and she began working on adapting The Circular Staircase. World War I distracted her, with her serving as a war correspondent for The Saturday Evening Post along the Belgian front, and by the fall of 1918 she had only written the first two acts. She asked Hopwood to help her complete it, finishing The Bat in April 1920, with Rinehart called away moments later when her daughter-in-law went into labor.

Her new granddaughter kept Rinehart away from the reading of the play to producers, as well as its rehearsals and its Broadway debut, although she did attend preview performances. It went on to 867 performances on Broadway through 1922, with six road companies touring it, and then 327 performances in London’s West End.

A novelization, The Bat, appeared in 1926. Although credited to Rinehart and Hopwood, it was actually ghostwritten by Stephen Vincent Benét…yes, the Pulitzer-prizewinning poet of John Brown’s Body and the author of The Devil and Daniel Webster and various other works.

The Silent Bat

The play was adapted into three comedy mystery films, all of which are now in the public domain. The first was a silent film in 1926 by director and writer Roland West. It was considered lost for decades until resurfacing in the 1980s and being restored.

I enjoyed the old silent movie, with Louise Fazenda looking great as the comic relief character of maid Lizzie Allen, playing well against Emily Fitzroy’s Miss Cornelia. The ridiculous huge ears on The Bat’s costume were also rather comical.

Emily Fitzroy's Miss Cornelia with Louise Fazenda's Lizzie Allen — The canny Miss Cornelia and her hysterical maid

The Bat, 1926 — The canny Miss Cornelia and her hysterical maid

Director West and cinematographer Arthur Edeson had a flair for dramatic visuals, clearly influenced by German Expressionism. Notably, this was the first film for Gregg Toland, the cinematic genius of Citizen Kane, who was a camera assistant and uncredited second director of photography.

The Bat's shadow — Best to keep that mask in shadow

Secret passage — Best to keep that mask in shadow

Bob Kane admitted that this film was a visual influence on his Batman comics. Lo and behold, in the silent version we get an obvious inspiration for the Bat Signal, although in this case the image is absurdly explained away as a miller moth stuck on a car’s headlight. However, I will add that Bill Finger was the ghostwriter for Kane, and it was Finger who was responsible for most of the defining elements of the Batman mythos, including the cowl, color scheme, chest bat emblem, the Bruce Wayne alter ego, the origin story, Gotham City, Robin, Commissioner Gordon, the Batmobile and the Batcave, and most of the iconic villains.

The origin of the Bat Signal? — The Bat Signal’s origin?

The 1926 film introduces too many characters, trying to hide the identity of The Bat. His own attempt to hide his identity was rather hideous, even with its silly ears, as testified to by the overacting of Jewel Carmen, Roland West’s wife, in what would be her final appearance in films.

I couldn’t keep up with all of the characters, given the lack of voices to help distinguish them and my being distracted by the weirdly enormous scale of many of the mansion’s rooms. A disturbing minor aspect of the film is the ridiculous facial makeup applied to Sojin Kamiyama as Billy the Butler, casually described as a “Jap” by Miss Cornelia.

Japanese butler — Who designed those doors?

Rinehart’s When a Man Marries also featured a “Jap” butler whose apparent smallpox leads to the quarantine, with the characters comedically caring very little about his welfare. The casual racism isn’t as awful as Christie’s finest book’s original title being Ten Little N******, which was later retitled And Then There Were None, but it does mar the work.

Newspaper article about attack on Rinehart

Interestingly, the phrase “the butler did it” originated from Rinehart’s 1930 novel The Door, a lingering pop culture memento of her former influence and popularity. Oddly enough, in 1947, a household employee of Rinehart’s, her Filipino chef for a quarter-century, tried to do it…to her.

In a drunken rage about not being hired as a butler, he attacked the 70-year-old novelist at her summer home in Maine, aiming a handgun at her and pulling the trigger, only for it to jam. She ran into a pantry to call for help with a telephone. He followed her, where he grabbed knives to stab her, but he was overpowered by Rinehart’s chauffeur, whose hand was slashed. The chef committed suicide in jail that night, having crafted a noose from his own clothing. No doubt Rinehart was shocked to become part of a real-life thriller.

The Bat Whispers

Roland West remade his 1926 silent film in 1930 with sound as The Bat Whispers, releasing it in both Academy ratio and widescreen prints, having shot it on both standard film as well as the early Magnifilm 2:1 ratio widescreen process using five-perforation exposures on 65 mm film, decades before Hollywood embraced widescreen formats to offer an alternative to television.

This film was also considered lost, but nitrate prints were rediscovered in 1987 in Mary Pickford’s film archives. As you might know, Pickford had been one of the founders of the United Artists film studio alongside Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith.

The 1930 film shares many setups and compositions with the earlier silent one, but the acting is generally atrocious. Grayce Hampton as Miss Cornelia is too sharp and insulting of the comedic maid character, appallingly overacted by Maude Eburne. The male actors are amateurish and stilted, although at least they are more natural than Tullio Carminati’s rigor mortis portrayal of Detective Moletti in the 1926 silent version, which had reminded me of Alfred Abel in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis…and that is not a compliment. Despite Carminati’s shortcomings, this is definitely a case of the silent predecessor being superior to its sound remake.

Alfred Abel in Metropolis — Tullio Carminati in The Bat of 1926

There are a few innovative shots in The Bat Whispers, but the terrible acting makes it almost unwatchable. As for film director Roland West, his career was overshadowed by the death in 1935 of his mistress, actress Thelma Todd. Todd was found dead in her car in the garage of West’s estranged wife, killed by carbon monoxide from the car’s exhaust. West rarely worked after that and his divorce in 1938, withdrawing into virtual seclusion, although he did marry actress Lola Lane in 1946. He had a stroke and nervous breakdown in the early 1950s and died in 1952 at age 67.

The Bat Returns

Another film adaptation in 1959 featured Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Moorehead is now best known for her portrayal of Endora in the Bewitched television series from 1964 to 1972. I remember her as Charles Foster Kane’s mother in Citizen Kane, and she received four Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress over her career. The Bat is one of only two films in which she starred as the lead. Moorehead does well in the film, despite some flaws in the script and plot, and she has some fun scenes with Lenita Lane’s comic role as her maid.

Agnes Moorehead and Lenita Lane in The Bat — Agnes Moorehead and Lenita Lane have some fun in *The Bat*

Price is his usual reliable self, and he looked forward to doing the film since the stage play had frightened him as a child. However, he was disappointed by the film’s weak script, and his other 1959 roles in House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler had far more staying power.

Vincent Price and Gavin Gordon in The Bat — The reliable Vincent Price is actually outperformed in *The Bat* by Gavin Gordon, who usually played small roles

Interestingly, Gavin Gordon stood out for me in his portrayal of a police lieutenant. Gordon’s career was filled with small and sometimes uncredited roles, but he had a distinctive voice, and for me he was often the most interesting actor in various scenes in The Bat.

The movie was quite low-budget, and it shows with a laughable model of a mansion and some cheap sets, and its wild plot is filled with misleading red herrings. However, I’ll credit director Crane Wilbur and cinematographer Joseph F. Biroc for some classic spooky shots. The throat-slashing claws of The Bat actually come across as rather menacing. However, I was disappointed that the script made Miss Cornelia less capable and intelligent than she had been in the 1926 silent version.

The film played in 1959 in a double feature with Hammer’s The Mummy starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. That would have made for a fun night at a drive-in. The Bat was only 80 minutes long, while The Mummy ran for 88. Films from 1931 to 1963 required a renewal to retain their copyright after 28 years, and The Bat wasn’t renewed, and thus it is now also public domain.

Rinehart Recommendations

The After House book cover — Yep, an axe murderer

I wouldn’t recommend reading The Circular Staircase, and I have no intention of reading The Bat having endured three film adaptations of it.

My favorite Rinehart mystery thus far has been The Window at the White Cat, which was lively, witty, and quite fun. I also enjoyed The After House, a suspenseful tale set on a private yacht in the early 1910s with an axe murderer.

I still prefer the writings of Christie, Pargeter, Penny, and Stewart, but sometimes Rinehart’s dated charms retain their magic. I think my next outing with her might be the first of her Letitia Carberry books, but I’ll enjoy some offerings from other mystery authors first.

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Bricking Books?

Posted on April 10, 2026 by Granger Meador

Back in 2008, I bought the first generation Kindle e-reader from Amazon. It was fun but somewhat awkward, with a keyboard of tiny buttons below the screen and big page turn buttons on the sides, plus an odd little scroll wheel controlling a little vertical cursor. The screen was the big appeal, requiring no power to maintain the on-screen text and being legible both indoors and outdoors.

Amazon went through various iterations of the device, reducing the complexity of its interface and making gradual improvements in the display. I have had eight of the devices over the past 18 years.

Standouts to me included my first Kindle with a touchscreen, the 2012 Paperwhite, although I didn’t mind page turn buttons. A disappointment was the 2019 Oasis: I came to hate its odd shape, with one side being much thicker.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I purchased a non-Amazon Boox Note Air with a 10.3″ e-ink screen. The big screen was nice, but it was simply too difficult to get books onto it.

Kindle Paperwhite Colorsoft Case — My Colorsoft Case

Thankfully, my latest Kindle, a Paperwhite Signature Edition I purchased in 2024, is my favorite thus far. I especially like the Colorsoft Signature Edition Case I bought for it, which has a magnet that automatically turns the Kindle on when I open it. I even like its fabric cover so much that I made a picture of it the background wallpaper on my iPad.

Since January 2025, I’ve read on my Kindle an average of 15 days each month. I’ve read a Kindle book for the past 39 weeks in a row, while my longest recorded Kindle streak was 98 weeks from November 2018 to September 2020. So I’m still a huge fan of the technology.

Even though I now just use my 2024 Paperwhite and the Kindle apps on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac Mini, it still bothered me to read that Amazon plans to cut off access to the Kindle Store on Kindles released in 2012 and earlier. Granted, that is going back 14 years so it will only affect about 3% of current Kindle users, and one would imagine that the batteries in the affected devices are in pretty rough shape by now. The various Kindle books we have bought of course still remain available in the various Kindle apps and e-readers.

I was glad to see they are not actually bricking the devices. So long as the old Kindles are not deregistered or factory reset, they will still display whatever books are still loaded on them, which seems humane enough, and I expect most of the affected devices entered landfills or were recycled long ago. To have early versions enter forced obsolescence reinforces to me that I’ve been using the gizmos for almost two decades. Egad!

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My Last Enterprise

Posted on April 8, 2026 by Granger Meador

In 1972, I flipped on our new color television one afternoon and saw a man with pointy ears appear from nowhere in a corridor and begin sneaking around. I remember thinking, “Is that some sort of ghost?”

I continued to watch, realizing that the person was on a spaceship. Later in the show, a “cloaking device” allowed another ship, that looked nothing like a standard rocketship, to become invisible. I was hooked.

My first glimpse of *Star Trek* was of a disguised Captain Kirk beaming onto a ship

It was, of course, Star Trek, the Original Series, which had originally aired from September 1966 to June 1969. By 1972, it was in syndicated reruns as 16 mm film prints that local television stations would air five days a week. I had tuned into the midst of The Enterprise Incident when Captain Kirk, disguised as a Romulan, “beamed in” to one of their ships. So the pointy-eared guy I first saw was not Mr. Spock!

There were only 79 episodes, which meant that the entire series would play through about three times in a year. So I was excited when a Saturday morning animated series debuted in September 1973, bringing new episodes to my second grade self. I was only seven years old, but I remember hoping the cartoon would not be just a “kiddie show” and being gratified when it turned out to play much like a fourth season of the original show, albeit in an abridged format with Filmation’s typical limited animation and pacing issues.

Early Models

My best friend, Gene Freeman, built an AMT model of the U.S.S. Enterprise. But he painted it red, white, and blue and by the time I saw it, the engines had already snapped off. I had no inkling before that one could build models of Star Trek ships, and it wasn’t long until I’d convinced my mother to buy me a model kit of my own.

The AMT model kit is notorious for its various inaccuracies, but it was actually used in a few shots in the original series and the two different main studio models built for and used in the original television show didn’t fully match each other anyway.

The long-lost 33″ studio model was rediscovered in 2023, and it was in rough shape

Far worse than any inaccurate details was how the engines on my model always tended to sag, despite my best attempts with glue, rubber bands, and eventually popsicle sticks. It was an early physics lesson, and I can take some comfort in how the long-neglected 33-inch studio model, when rediscovered in 2023 after being lost for decades, had droopy engines.

The 11-foot hero model, donated to the Smithsonian after the show went off the air, also suffered. I first saw that model in person in 1984, by which time it had lost its original nacelle caps and deflector dish. I took photos, with my crummy 110 camera, from various angles, including the unfilmed port side, which had tape all over it due to electrical lighting that had been added to the model in 1965 after the first pilot was filmed.

The Smithsonian moved the model multiple times over the decades, with some botched restorations. Its engines were sagging by 2012, and that helped prompt a thorough restoration that has the ship looking its best.

The restored 11′ model at the Smithsonian

In my childhood I built models of the Enterprise, the Galileo 7 shuttlecraft, the starship bridge, and a Romulan warbird. I asked my mother for help in painting the warbird and, after I’d applied the big decal to its underside, lacquering it to protect it. That model survived the longest, but eventually all of my childhood models were in rough shape and got tossed.

An old AMT model of a Romulan ship; my mother helped me paint and lacquer mine

Adult Models

In adulthood, close friends who knew of my love for Star Trek not only gave me a decent plastic communicator, phaser, and tricorder but also several ship toys manufactured by Playmates. Unlike my childhood toys, most of the items received in adulthood have survived.

My latest and final such acquisition is a diecast metal model of the U.S.S. Enterprise refit from 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It weighs about 20 pounds and is nearly a yard long thanks to its 1:350 scale. I placed it on my barrister’s bookcase that is filled with various Trek tomes and toys.

Since Andrew Probert was instrumental in the redesign of the ship for the movies, beside the model I hung his signed artwork, Past Reflections. It shows the refit suspended above a reflection of Matt Jefferies’ original design.

My last Enterprise, Probert’s *Past Reflections*, landing party devices, and more

The Bored Game

As a child in the 1970s, I had asked for whatever Star Trek paraphernalia was on offer, but at that time little was available that was truly authentic to the live-action show that had been cancelled back in 1969. What I did obtain reminded me of what Spock said in Amok Time: “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”

Witness my joy at Christmas 1973 when my 7-year-old self received the Star Trek board game he had requested.

I convinced my parents and friends into playing that game with me a couple of times. However, it wasn’t anything like watching the show, and I much preferred playing other games like Battleship.

From Pathetic to Prized Props

The lesson about being careful what you asked for didn’t take, however, and for my next birthday I received some blue walkie talkies marketed by Mego as Star Trek communicators. Gene and I played with them a bit, but they bore only a limited resemblance to a “real” communicator, and we had little use for walkie talkies, so after a few years they wound up in a garage sale. I built a crummy plastic phaser, communicator, and tricorder, but I didn’t have a decent toy communicator until I was given one in the 1990s, and in 2016 I purchased a superb version by The Wand Company that matched my childhood dreams.

My 1975 communicators versus the one I bought in 2016

In 1975, I got a Remco phaser. I wasn’t given a somewhat accurate replica phaser until the 1990s, and I managed to snag a top-quality Wand version in 2014. In 2025-2026, Wand finally offered a fantastic tricorder, but it was just too pricey for me. The Wand facsimiles look as good as or better than the original props used in the television show that I saw years ago in Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

The dud 1973 board game, 1974 communicators, and 1975 phaser failed to prevent me from asking for a ridiculous flying Enterprise toy, again from Remco, for Christmas 1976.

This toy held my interest for about 20 minutes

Fifty years later, my last Enterprise is on a completely different level. It even replicates some of the lighting features that special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull had added to the movie miniature back in the late 1970s. I’m now quite content, and my retirement from employment in 2026 also marks my retirement from collecting Star Trek items.

When I gaze upon the model, I sometimes think of the deeply flawed yet visionary Gene Roddenberry. I can hear him softly sharing, “It isn’t all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.”

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Overpowered and Underbrained

Posted on April 1, 2026 by Granger Meador

When Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster channeled youthful male wish fulfillment into the bulging muscles of Superman, clad in the costume of a circus strong man, they first gave him super strength, speed, and invulnerability.

However, he couldn’t fly when he appeared in Action Comics #1 in June 1938, although he could certainly jump. In his debut, he leaps up onto electrical wires while carrying a lobbyist, leaps with him onto the dome of the U.S. Capitol, and the cliffhanger is how he then tries but fails to make a leap across to a skyscraper.

Superman in his first appearance, able to leap, but not yet fly

However, he could fly in the Adventures of Superman radio serial in early 1940, which gave him an introduction that also graced the television series from 1952-1958:

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman!

That always bothered me when I was a kid watching reruns of the show in the 1970s. Why would he bother with leaping over tall buildings when he could just fly over them? Visuals of him in flight began with the 1941 Fleischer Superman theatrical cartoons, since animating him constantly leaping about was too time-consuming, and the custom infiltrated the comics by Action Comics #65 in October 1943.

The first Superman comic book that I owned was Superman #256 in September 1972 when I was six years old. By then, he was tremendously overpowered, able to travel faster than light to other galaxies and withstand atomic explosions. He had X-ray vision, heat vision, telescopic and microscopic vision, freezing and hurricane-force super breath, super ventriloquism and hypnotism, and so forth.

Lex Luthor had to become ever more ingenious, and magical characters like Mister Mxyzptlk and were also introduced to counteract his overpowered abilities. Kryptonite was first introduced in the radio serial in 1943 as a way to weaken him, and that made its way into the comics in 1949, where it multiplied into well over a dozen different types.

The 1950s television series used Kryptonite in a half-dozen of its 104 episodes. Reading the comics in the early 1970s, I was told that Superman possessed genius-level intelligence and an eidetic memory. However, I recently was reminded that his 1950s television persona was only as intelligent as the script writers.

Episode 100

I recently replaced the television antenna atop Meador Manor, hooking it into an HD Homerun to stream broadcasts and digital video recordings of them to devices across our home network. I wanted to test its functionality, and a quick search revealed that the 100th episode of the old Adventures of Superman show, which was the ninth installment of its sixth and final season in 1958, was being broadcast on the local MeTV affiliate that evening. I set it to record and the next day I watched Superman’s Wife.

The first two seasons of the show, filmed in 1951 and 1953, were black-and-white, with plenty of film noir influences in the early shows. The next four seasons were filmed in color, increasing productions costs such that the final four seasons had half as many episodes, with only 13 each year instead of 26.

If you marry Superman, you are guaranteed to become a damsel in distress

Superman’s Wife opened with the Man of Steel supposedly getting married to a policewoman portrayed by actress, pin-up, and nightclub singer Joi Lansing.

The plot is quite campy, but the stupidity is what interests me. The climax is when the evil Mr. X lures Superman and the Daily Planet editor Perry White and reporters Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen into a bathysphere, of all things, at “Pier 96”.

It is lowered down so far that if it were opened, Superman says the pressure would crush the humans aboard. The writing is sketchy, but if Superman breached the capsule, I expect the humans would at least drown.

Everyone is stumped for awhile, evidently unable to fathom the flying Man of Steel simply rising up and pushing on the roof of the capsule to lift it to the surface. Jimmy Olsen says, “If you were only on the outside, you could just lift the bathysphere up to the surface!”

Superman replies, “Lift it? That’s it! Jimmy, you’ve just given me an idea!”

Okay, he’s a dingbat, but now he’ll fly up and push up on the roof, right? Nope! Stupidman decides to pull a plate off the roof, which he knows is attached to the lift cable, and then rapidly pulls down on the cable while the compartment begins to flood. Pulling down on the cable might work if his body were pushing up against the roof, but he just stands on the floor and repeatedly yanks more and more cable down into the capsule, which mysteriously rises.

So he can fly through air and water, but he can’t fly up inside the capsule to push on its roof?

Uh no, that would not work. All he would be doing is playing out line from the dockside winch down into the capsule while it sat on the ocean floor. If we want to be generous, we’ll say that Superman slid his unseen feet into some sturdy metal floor straps and that is how he saved the day.

Yeah, I know it was a cheaply made kiddie show in the 1950s and Superman physics is constantly nonsensical, but did writers Robert Leslie Bellem and Whitney Ellsworth truly fail to realize the obvious solution, given his capabilities, of him just pushing up on the roof?

No doubt they wanted the dramatic footage of water spraying into the capsule while Superman yanks on the rope. I laughed out loud at poor 70-year-old John Hamilton, who played editor Perry White, getting absolutely soaked. The director and editor made the most of shots of his fedora hat redirecting some of the shower.

Poor old John Hamilton got soaked, while Lois and Jimmy stayed dry up on stands to the side

Hamilton was a veteran of stage and screen who had played hundreds of parts, but no doubt is best remembered for the Perry White role he inhabited from ages 65-70. His gruff iconic catchphrases of “Great Caesar’s ghost!” and “Don’t call me chief!” while chomping on a cigar made it into the comics. Sadly, he died less than a year after filming Superman’s Wife.

Oh yeah, as for her, she ends up as the campy damsel in distress, tied to a car bridge with dynamite about to go off beneath her. Supes unties her, leads her away, and shields her from the explosion. It all ends with the marriage being revealed as a sham to use her as bait to lure out Mr. X, as if Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen wouldn’t have already been tempting enough.

While I enjoyed the Superman comics, the old Adventures of Superman reruns, and the silly animated Super Friends back when I was in elementary school, by the time Christopher Reeve was playing him in 1978’s Superman I was a 12-year-old 7th grader who found it rather silly. I did pay for cinema tickets to endure the three increasingly awful sequel films, and even the 2006 Superman Returns with Brandon Routh, but I was never tempted to visit a cinema for the later films with Henry Cavill and now David Corenswet.

Superhero movies rose to great prominence after the 2008 Great Recession, much like comic books surged in the Great Depression of the 1930s. They certainly boast better special effects these days than in the movie serials and television series of 70+ years ago, but their scripts continue to ignore basic physics, which limits my engagement.

Posted in nostalgia, physics | 1 Comment

Buy Yourself Better JIS Screwdrivers

Posted on March 26, 2026 by Granger Meador

The English inventor John Frearson patented a screw with a cruciform socket in 1873. His design was often used in marine hardware until the 1980s. However, the cruciform screw we in the USA are familiar with is the Phillips design, which was originally patented in 1932 by John P. Thompson, an automobile mechanic in Portland, Oregon. Thompson patented a matching screwdriver a year later. His driver design had a more rounded head that self-centered more readily with power tools.

The Phillips screw system worked better with power tools than the earlier Frearson one [Source]

However, Thompson couldn’t find a manufacturer for his design, and businessman Henry Frank Phillips bought the rights to his patents, redesigned the socket to be shallower for easier mass production, and founded the Phillips Screw Company. A side effect of the tapered design was that Phillips screwdrivers cam-out, or slip out of the screw head socket, under lower torques. Contrary to some reports, this does not appear to have originally been an intended feature, although later refinements touted it in what might be regarded as putting a “positive spin” on the issue, if you’ll pardon the phrase.

I’ve always despised Phillips screws for the cam-out issue, resorting to pushing in hard on Phillips screwdrivers to try and reduce cam-outs. However, I have discovered a nifty solution, but it is not to return to Frearson’s system. Instead, use JIS screwdrivers on Phillips screws.

JIS stands for Japanese Industrial Standard, and JIS B 4633 defined a screwdriver with different geometries that reduces cam-out. There are matching JIS screws defined by JIS B 1012, some of which are identifiable by a tiny dimple in one corner of the cruciform head, and you might spot them on Japanese motorcycles and some Japanese electronics. You will be exasperated if you try to use a Phillips screwdriver in a JIS screw, as it won’t seat properly and you may strip the screw.

Three types of cruciform screws [Source]

However, while you might be hard-pressed to distinguish a JIS screwdriver from a Phillips one by sight, if you put one to use, even on a Phillips screw, you can readily tell the difference.

The different geometry of the JIS screwdriver reduces cam-out when used on a Phillips screw [Source]

A JIS screwdriver will stay locked into a JIS or a Phillips screw under higher torque, which greatly reduces my frustration when assembling items or loosening screws. When I first heard about JIS screwdrivers, I ordered a couple of impact ones from Vessel. Those have a spring hidden in the handle so that, if you encounter a very tight or rusted screw, you can seat the screwdriver in it and then pound the end of the handle with a hammer. That will produce high torque while turning the screwdriver 12 degrees.

I have yet to use that feature, but just casual use of the Vessel JIS screwdrivers convinced me to buy some more. The first Impacta ones I bought were both P2 (for Phillips head size #2), but for screws of sizes 0-1 you need a P0 screwdriver, you need a P1 for screw sizes 2-4, a P2 for screw sizes 5-9, and a P3 for screw sizes 10-16.

So I bought a less expensive four-pack of cushion-grip non-impact JIS screwdrivers from Vessel of sizes P0 through P3.

All six of the screwdrivers are magnetized to help hold onto loose screws, and they are now my go-to tools when I encounter a Phillips head screw.

There are other screwhead types, of course. We all know about the simple flat-head screw with a single slot, and there are the rare Pozidriv screws and drivers that were the result of a collaboration between the American Screw Company and the Phillips Screw Company. They also reduce cam-out, but don’t use a Phillips screwdriver in a Pozidriv screw. Heck, never use a Phillips screwdriver at all, I say.

There are also Torx screw drives, with a six-point star-shaped pattern, which I’ve occasionally encountered with electronics. Sometimes a pin is added to the center of the star as a security feature, requiring a special driver, and there are various other security fastener designs.

Our neighbors to the north are known for being pretty square with their Robertson screws and screwdrivers. Canadian P.L. Robertson invented them in 1908 after cutting his hand with a slotted screwdriver. They are also self-centering, reduce cam-out, and are easier to use one-handed thanks to the tapered socket which tends to retain the screw even when shaken, and the square socket allows the use of angled screwdrivers and trim-head screws. Henry Ford liked them, finding they saved time in producing his early cars, but Robertson refused Ford’s onerous licensing terms, so Phillips screws eventually dominated the auto industry in the USA.

If you are building something from scratch, experienced folks say to go with Robertson square drive or Torx screws and screwdrivers, rather than JIS screws. But if you are like me, you are usually dealing with Phillips screws that came with an item. For that, go buy yourself some JIS screwdrivers, and then hide the Phillips ones in the back of your tool drawer.