Down the Rabbit Hole with Seven Keys to Baldpate

Why do we keep retelling this story?

For my Birthday Eve celebration, my partner surprised me with a movie I had not only never seen but never heard of, House of the Long Shadows.¹ Reading the description on the back—a young writer spends the night in a Welsh manor to win a bet that he can write a gothic novel, a genre he disparages, in 24 hours — and then learning that the writer is visited, Christmas Carol-style, by Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing, I knew I was in for a good time. And reader, a good time was had.

Price, Lee, and Cushing make a feast of the scenery playing off and with their well-earned reputations by this point (1983) as titans of gothic horror, and the supporting cast (including Desi Arnaz, Jr. and John Caradine) are great just at getting out of their way. I won’t reveal too much of the plot, except to say that fans of Murder by Death² will also enjoy this film. It is both aware and respectful of the power of gothic storytelling, even as the characters hilariously call out the conventions as they’re appearing on the screen.

I was intrigued by the closing credit attributing “inspiration” to a novel entitled Seven Keys to Baldpate, so off to Wikipedia I went, and discovered that this film has a long and complicated lineage reaching back to the early twentieth century, including a play, at least six previous cinematic adaptations, and an honest-to-God magic trick! So come on, Alice, let’s jump down the rabbit hole.

The novel

Earl Derr Biggers, American novelist and playwright, is best known for his Charlie Chan series of mystery novels, but his first book was Seven Keys to Baldpate, published in 1913. The novel also features a young novelist who retreats to a gothic locale to write a story in a 24-hour period, in this case a snowed-in mountain resort in upstate New York.³ Over the course of the night, he is visited by seven stock types from crime fiction (a corrupt politician, a plucky reporter, a corrupt cop, etc.), all of whom have a key to the Baldpate Inn, hence the title!⁴

The hotel

The novel was so popular that an actual hotel called The Baldpate Inn (later the Seven Keys Lodge) opened in 1917 in Estes Park, Colorado.⁵ You can book a stay there today!

The play

It seems almost immediately after the novel’s publication it was adapted into a stage play by George M. Cohan, which was recorded and broadcast on the radio. If you were getting your novel adapted as a play in the early twentieth century, it seems like Cohan was who you wanted to do it. He was known as “the man who owned Broadway”⁶ and the father of the American musical, composing standards like “Give My Regards to Broadway” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” The James Cagney flick Yankee Doodle Dandy is based on his life!

The movies

People cannot stop making this story into movies. There’s a 1916 silent version out of Australia, and another silent film that stars Cohan himself in 1917. There’s a missing version from 1925, a talkie from 1929, and a Golden Age version from 1935. The adaptations picked up again post-war in 1947 with Joan Crawford’s husband playing the writer.⁷ Then we have House of Long Shadows in the 80s.

The magic trick

There’s also a mentalist illusion named after the novel that involves the magician guessing which spectator holds a particular key. Several filmed performances of the trick⁸ are on YouTube. I’m fascinated by good analysis of magic, because magic tricks are often hyperbolized and literalized manifestations of sociocultural fantasies and desires.⁹ One of the best texts that captures this interplay is The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery by Adam Gopnik. For no other reason than it’s a gorgeous piece of writing, here’s one of my favorite passages:

Friendships, flirtations, even love affairs depend, like magic tricks, on a constant exchange of incomplete but tantalizing information. We are always reducing the claim or raising the proof. The magician teaches us that romance lies in an unstable contest of minds that leaves us knowing it’s a trick but not which one it is, and being impressed by the other person’s ability to let the trickery go on. Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities. The trick is to renew the possibilities, to keep them from becoming schematized, to let them be imperfect, and the question between us is always “Who’s the magician?” When we say that love is magic, we are telling a truth deeper, and more ambiguous, than we know.

So good!

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I’m always fascinated by stories we can’t stop retelling. What is it about this story—a writer under deadline, unexpected visitors, being roped into mysteries and crimes not of our making—that resonated with audiences for decades, and I would argue could be retold successfully today? And if it were, what would that look like? For one thing, I guarantee you the writer would be live-streaming the whole thing.

1. As my birthday fell on a Sunday this year, our television schedule for the day itself was already set: the one, the only, 90 Day Fiancé.

2. R.I.P. to the iconic Dame Maggie Smith. Her turn as Dora Charleston in MbD is just one in a unparalelled career of witty, brilliant, and devastating performances that, though spanning eight (!) decades, was somehow not nearly long enough.

3. Did you just think of The Shining? I did too.

4. The name of the manor is changed to Bllyddpaetwr in the film to reflect its Welsh provenance, and the difficulty the American writer has pronouncing it is a running joke.

5. Hey, guess what! There’s another historic hotel located in Estes Park, Colorado, called The Stanley, but you might know it better as The Overlook. I wasn’t kidding about this rabbit hole.

6. Here’s a deep dive into my personal biography as a reader: a lyric from this song gave the title to one of my favorite books growing up, Remember Me to Herald Square by Paula Danziger.

7. These middle three are available as a triple feature on Amazon, which you best believe I have purchased.

8. “It’s an illusion, Michael.”

9. I have a whole thing about Houdini and capitalism in my dissertation.