The Glorious Pool: Bottoms up!

The Glorious Pool by Thorne Smith

In Ron Howard’s 1985 film Cocoon, a group of seniors becomes rejuvenated as a result of taking a dip in a swimming pool whose waters had been infused with “life force” by some extraterrestrial visitors. But as it turns out, this was not the first time that some aged adults had discovered a Fountain of Youth of sorts in such a place. Thus, over half a century earlier, we find a similar setup – although with a completely different explanation – in Thorne Smith’s remarkably madcap fantasy The Glorious Pool.

The Glorious Pool was originally released in 1934 as a $2 Doubleday hardcover. It was Smith’s final completed novel, his 14^th out of 15; sadly enough, the Maryland-born author would die of a premature heart attack later that year, at the age of 42. (Smith’s final novel, The Passionate Witch, would be released posthumously in 1941, after being completed by Norman Matson. It would serve as both the inspiration for the 1942 Veronica Lake film I Married a Witch as well as the television sitcom classic Bewitched.) The 1934 first edition of The Glorious Pool featured comedic illustrations by Herbert Roese, and the book would see almost a dozen incarnations over the years. I believe the most current edition is the one from Camp Press from 2013, although several ebook editions are available today, if that’s your thing. The edition that I was happy to experience was the 1945 volume from Sun Dial Press called The Thorne Smith Three-Bagger, which not only includes the novel in question, but also Smith’s first comedic fantasy, Topper (1926), and his 13^th novel, Skin and Bones (1933, and which I just read last year). And, even better, that 1945 edition includes the same Herbert Roese illustrations that had graced the original over 10 years earlier; a worthy investment, if you can find it online today.

Now, as for The Glorious Pool itself, the book introduces us to one of Smith’s constantly bickering couples, Rex Pebble and Spray Summers. But unlike Tim and Sally Willow in the author’s Turnabout (1931) and Quintus and Lorna Bland in Skin and Bones, Rex and Spray are not a married couple, but rather, a 60-year-old man and his 45-year-old mistress. When we first encounter them, the two are celebrating the anniversary of their 25^th year as an item together, in the home that Rex has provided for her. Sadly enough, however, it’s hardly a festive occasion. The two have lately begun to feel their years, to put it mildly. Spray, although still randy enough, suffers from terrible foot problems, while Rex has some unspecified heart ailment and what I suppose we would today call erectile dysfunction. But things begin to, uh, pick up before long. Spray’s Japanese houseboy Nockashima keeps plying the pair with drinks, as is his wont, and before long, Rex, walking by the swimming pool in the moonlit backyard and contemplating the seminude naiad statue that resides in the pool’s center, sees that statue come to life! The naiad, who he has long called Baggage, engages him in lustful conversation and then practically rapes the poor man, before running off to have her way with the neighbor’s chauffeur! Not a little startled, Rex nevertheless suggests a midnight swim to Spray, and you might imagine the results. After a few laps in the pool, a full 25 years seem to fall from their bodies, leaving the two celebrants standing in the night air in their naked, physical prime!

And that is just the beginning of what turns out to be one of the wildest nights of drunken revelry on record. Before long, an oven mishap in Spray’s kitchen brings the entire fire department to the scene, all the men of which promptly join in the bacchanalia with Rex, Spray, Nocka, the French maid Fifi, and an elderly gentleman named Major Lynnhaven Jaffey, a conman and swindler who’d been recommended to Rex by a friend for possible employment in his ad agency. (Thorne Smith, it will be remembered, was also at one time an adman, as was Quintus Bland, and Darrin Stevens in Bewitched.) As the drunken shenanigans continue, Rex, Spray, Nocka, the Major, and Gus, one of the firemen, decide to steal one of the hook and ladders and go for an inebriated spin. More wackiness ensues, leading to our sodden heroes being chased through a darkened department store by the cops. As the long night continues, our band encounters a pair of young muggers, who decide to join the party. Back at the house again, in the wee hours of the morning, the revelers are startled by the arrival of Rex’s wife, Sue, in tow with his nephew, Kippie, the spitting image of Rex when he was 35; in other words, as Rex is now. Mistaken-identity hilarity thus ensues, and the loopiness continues when Spray’s hard-of-smelling bloodhound Mr. Henry takes a few drinks himself and jumps into the magical pool. And when Baggage, the lustful naiad, returns to the scene and convinces Sue to take a nighttime swim also, well, that’s when things really start to get interesting! But just when the reader begins to think that Smith cannot possibly pull any more zaniness out of his hat, kerplop goes the swizzled Rex into the pool again, to emerge as an infant … but one with a foul temper, a gutter mouth, and a decided taste for more of Nockashima’s cocktails…

Now, I have already used such words as “madcap” and “wackiness” in describing the contents of this particular Thorne Smith outing, and indeed could easily have taken things further. This book, in truth, is just screwy, crazy, wild, insane, nonsensical, wackadoodle … well, you get my drift. Back in the 1930s there was a cinematic genre known as the “screwball comedy,” featuring unlikely characters in outlandish situations that kept piling up at a breakneck pace – some outstanding examples of the screwball comedy would be Bombshell (1933), Twentieth Century (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936) and Bringing Up Baby (1938) – and it seems to me that The Glorious Pool might have been made into the screwiest screwball comedy of all time! (“This is better than a musical comedy. It’s more like a burlesque,” the Major understandably remarks at one point.) It might also be Smith’s most booze-drenched novel of any of the four that I’ve read, and that’s really saying something, as all four have featured staggering amounts of liquors consumed. The book can almost be seen as a giant raspberry at hated Prohibition, which had just been repealed several months earlier. Here, practically every single character that we encounter is something of a dipsomaniac … including, as mentioned, the pet dog! (“Very intoxicating evening. Stimulating to all concerned,” Nockashima drunkenly opines. “The morals of this family would tax the English language,” as Kippie puts it.) Indeed, after our leading characters’ impressive consumption of “whisky and highballs and gin and brandy,” this reader couldn’t help but think of Number 6’s famous bar request for “Brandy. Whisky, vodka, Drambuie. Tia Maria, Cointreau, Grand Marnier” in a classic hour of the TV show The Prisoner. Had the entire contents of this book turned out to be just an episode of the DT’s on the part of Rex Pebble, it would not have surprised me. But no. One can almost imagine Thorne Smith, himself reportedly an alcoholic, half in his cups while chortling his way through the writing of this book. Did Smith know where he was going when he penned this affair, or was he just winging it? It really is impossible to say, and the book, to its great credit, is completely unpredictable from one page to the following one. (“One does not know what to expect next,” declares the Major toward the end of a very long night.)

The Glorious Pool is often undeniably silly but still often very funny. How amusing it is when Spray tells Rex “I think you should be chloroformed,” and when baby Rex starts sounding tough (“You get me a drink, you pop-eyed, evil-minded old wreck, or I’ll batter your face to a pulp…”). Nocka’s mangling of the English language is a perpetual source of amusement, as are the book’s numerous puns and misunderstandings. Here’s a typical example:

“Say, officer,” continued the voice, “let’s waive the dog for a moment.”

“Don’t see what good that’s going to do,” grumbled the sergeant. “It certainly won’t help the dog any to go waving him about. He’d hate it more than sitting on a nail.”

“I don’t mean to wave the dog like a flag,” protested the voice. “I mean, let’s drop the dog.”

“If you want to drop your dog,” said the sergeant impatiently, “go right ahead and do it, but damn me if I’m going to help you…” 

And on and relentlessly on. At times, the humor can feel forced, and at other times dated (as when Baggage makes a reference to “Nurmi” … Paavo Nurmi being a Finnish Olympic runner in the 1920s), but most of it works quite well even today. Smith, on the other hand, also provides his readers with several passages featuring quite lovely prose, as well as scattered words of wisdom here and there. Thus, Rex’s assertion that “birth … is a demoralizing transition. Much more so than death, which has at least the dignity of something definitely accomplished.” And oh … speaking of dogs, which I believe we were just a moment ago, all canine lovers should certainly get a kick out of the unfortunate Mr. Henry in this book; a poor bloodhound with an inferiority complex due to his inability to smell. How wonderful it is, thus, when the revitalized animal – comparable in a way to the dopey dog Busy in Skin and Bones – is finally able to sniff the world around him!

So yes, the book is undeniably funny, occasionally wise and assuredly entertaining, and yet, it does not seem nearly as clever as the other three Thorne Smith titles that I’ve experienced, or as focused. I suppose the reason for this is that here, the fantasy element at the core of the book takes a backseat to the drunken escapades; the concept of a Fountain of Youth seems to operate as a mere vehicle to get on with the party. In The Night Life of the Gods (1931), the coming to life of the Roman gods from their statue prisons was at the heart of the novel, and the seeming miracle explained by an invention of Hunter Hawk. In Turnabout, an Egyptian idol had definite reasons for putting the souls of Tim and Sally Willow into each other’s body. In Skin and Bones, another fantastic invention caused Quintus to become an animated skeleton. In those three fantasies, the amazing central occurrence was explained, farfetched as it may have been, and all the following events flowed logically as a result. Not so here. In The Glorious Pool, we never learn how Baggage escapes from her statue prison, or what her back story is. And once Rex and Spray quickly recover from their initial surprise at being young again, they leap unthinkingly, and with no self-reflection, into party mode. In addition, Smith’s story here concludes with matters still very much up in the air, unlike the wholly satisfactory denouements of those other three books. Yes, Baggage does ponder humans’ inability to fully enjoy their youth toward the book’s final pages, but still, the whole matter of rejuvenation here seems to boil down to a greater ability to simply party all night long.

I should probably set down my other beef with Thorne Smith’s work here, and that is the unrelenting un-P.C. treatment (by today’s standards, anyway) of the Nockashima character. Yes, the following lines are uttered mainly for laughs, but still, constant references to the houseboy as a “Jap” will grate. Spray calling him “an hysterical high school girl with a case of yellow jaundice” and a “wizened yellow idiot,” Sue calling him a “slant-eyed Fu Manchu,” and Smith himself describing Nocka as having “the agility of a monkey” and as a “little yellow man” will likewise cause modern-day readers to wince. Still, Nockashima is also probably the most resourceful and shrewdest character in the book, which does tend to redeem matters somewhat. At bottom, I suppose, The Glorious Pool is a somewhat lesser Smith affair, and one that will likely exude a whiff of familiarity for anyone who has read several of the author’s previous works. But you know what? This book also provided me with some genuine laughs when I was struggling through another case of COVID-19, and for that I will be forever grateful…