In response to Forrest J Ackerman suffers heart attack, we received the following letter from Reg Hartt.
If someone were to ask, “Which man, outside of your father, was the most important man in your life?” I would have to answer, “Forrest J Ackerman.”
If I were to be asked, “What is the most important book you have read?” I would have to reply. “It was not a book. It was a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland.”
I am writing this this morning because the best friend of my childhood has but moments, days, at most just a few months before Prince Sirki takes him to join Lon Chaney, father and son, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Fritz Lang, and so many more.
I grew up in a small town in New Brunswick, Canada, called Chipman. There was not much there beyond what nature provided.
One day two women opened a drug store. Now we had a drug store already: it was old, stale (even the sealed bags of potato chips tasted stale) run by an old, stale man. He carried a few magazines and a handful of paperback books. These two women had a soda fountain where they offered giant cones of ice cream for 25 cents. People came from miles around for the ice cream.
They also had a huge rack filled with magazines and newspapers and a huge display of paperback books. One day I walked in and saw a magazine that caught my eye at once. On the cover was a color picture of Oliver Reed as a werewolf. It was called Famous Monsters of Filmland. It was issue number twelve. The year was 1961.
Inside its pages I discovered fascinating pictures from movies I had never heard of but was sure I had to see. I also found the first half of the story, “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, which was the basis for the science fiction film classic, The Thing from Another World. Part two was to come out in Famous Monsters #13, but that issue did not appear.
Issue number 14 appeared, and all the issues after that. To read the end of the story, I had to order issue 13 from the publisher. I ordered all the back copies as well.
Mr. Ackerman always wrote his name as Forrest J Ackerman, with no period after the J. I started writing my name as Reginald W Hartt, with no period after the W. My English teacher docked me marks.
I did not know it then but that was the beginning of becoming my own person, an act for which we always pay a penalty. If we are content to get with the program, go with the flow, we don’t get docked, but the only fish that go with the flow are the dead ones.
I always loved to read. Thanks to Forry and Famous Monsters my reading accelerated. I began to read modern fantasy, horror, and science fiction. I discovered Judith Merril, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, James Blish, Philip K. Dick, and a host of others.
I went to the guy who ran the local movie house and tried to get him to show The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). He looked at me as if I was a one-kid Communist plot bent on putting him out of business.
Famous Monsters had ads for all kinds on neat stuff from a place called “Captain Company”. This included back issues of the magazine, 8mm digests of movies and the best masks ever. In addition to the back issues, I ordered the 8mm movies and the masks. I was, in the eyes of everyone but myself, wasting my hard-earned newspaper boy money.
That Halloween, Hollywood’s most famous monsters terrorized Chipman, and I mean terrorized. It being Halloween, I figured everyone would get the gag.
Well, they did not.
My friends and I shuffled around the town dressed as Frankenstein’s monster, the wolfman, the mummy, the hunchback, the man with the melted face, and Death. We scared the beejeezus out of the town.
For months afterward, all people could talk about was the monsters that had scared the urine out of them. My friends and I had a hard time keeping a straight face.
Years passed.
In 1968, some kids came to one of my shows from a place called Rochdale College. They told me about a woman there named Judith Merril. I rushed over to meet her. I was skinny, pre-punk punk dressed head to foot in black and, she told me years later, I scared the feces out of her.
But…
I had 8mm prints of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Battleship Potemkin Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and more. Judy sponsored me as a resource person at Rochdale.
Into my life that year also came Jane Jacobs and her family. They had seen a flyer for a showing of Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). I knew them for two years before I found out who she was.
I could go on but the point is simple. When I opened the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland that first time, I was also opening a door into a new world I had not dreamed existed.
Forry’s favorite film is Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. I am sure he is as excited about seeing the complete version of this film that was discovered in Argentina as the rest of us who love this film and who discovered it because Forry told us about it. But he may not live to see the official release. The people who have it have offered copies to established institutions with a seal.
Well, I am not one. I wrote asking them to send a copy to Forry saying I would cover the cost. But they are the dull machine people. They have not replied.
So, somewhere out there, there must be a film teacher who has a seal who grew up as I grew up, with Forrest J Ackerman as the best friend of our childhood. Can you get a copy so that FJA the Ackermonster can view this film his friend Fritz Lang told him no longer exists. It does. Let’s get a copy to Forry while he exists.
Sincerely,
Reg Hartt
Reg also included links to this page describing the film and this pdf order form for it.