Scott Simon, the host of NPR's Weekend Edition, recently did a fifteen-minute segment in which he interviewed the novelist Thomas Mallon about his latest book, Up With the Sun (Knopf, 2023).
The book is a biographical novel about Dick Kallman, a closeted gay former TV and movie actor-turned-antiques dealer, who was murdered along with his life partner Stephen Szladek in February 1980 in their Manhattan apartment by three burglars. (Both men were gunshot victims.) The trio stole paintings, jewelry, and other items from the apartment. They were later caught and convicted but the stolen items were never recovered.
When Mallon mentioned that Kallman was the star of the short-lived sit-com called Hank (1965-1966), it didn't ring any bells for me until I read a description of the show on Wikipedia and IMDb.com. Kallman played Hank Dearborn, a young man thirsting for higher education, who illegally audits college classes by assuming the identity of absent students, with the help of a professor, played by Lloyd Corrigan.
In 2010, an anonymous commenter on the website datalounge.com, which ran a brief mention of the murders and theft, asked, "Was there ever a book written on the crime?" The answer now is an emphatic yes, although the book is a fictionalized story. Maybe Up With the Sun will inspire someone to do a true-crime retelling. In the meantime, I'm hoping the book, described by the publisher as "part crime story, part showbiz history, and part love story," will be as enjoyable as other fictional Hollywood books such as When the Stars Come Out by Rob Byrnes (Kensington, 2006) and Father of Frankenstein (later renamed Gods and Monsters when it became a film) by Christopher Bram (Dutton, 1995).
No comments:
Post a Comment