Books: Nancy Clue / Cherry Aimless / the Hardly Boys by Mabel Maney
From the 1930s until at least the 1990s, some of most popular children's books in the US were the Nancy Drew mystery series (1930-present), the Hardy Boys mystery series (1927-present), and the Cherry Ames nurse stories (1943-1968).
Until 1979, the first two series were produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Founded by Edward Stratemeyer in 1905, the Syndicate created characters and outlines for juvenile series books; the outlines would be turned into finished novels by a number of different ghost writers. Stratemeyer died in 1930, just a few months after the launch of the Nancy Drew series; the Syndicate was taken over by his daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who sold it to Simon & Schuster publishers upon her retirement in 1979. S & S still produces revamped versions of both series today.
The Cherry Ames books were written by two different women, Helen Wells (1910-1986; she wrote vols. 1-7 and 17-27) and Julie Tatham (1908-1999; she wrote vols. 8-16). The series began as World War II adventure stories and then morphed into nursing/mystery stories. Cherry seemed to take every job going (different volumes show her as Veterans' Nurse, Boarding School Nurse, Department Store Nurse, Camp Nurse, Mountaineer Nurse, and on and on); in each book, she usually met a handsome young doctor, though she always managed to evade any serious romance.
The Hardy Boys (Joe and Frank) were sons of a "famous detective," Fenton Hardy; the boys end up solving local crimes in their hometown of Bayport (apparently a bastion of small-town lawlessness; every counterfeiter and forger and car thief in the US seems to make Bayport their hub). Nancy Drew, we're repeatedly told, is the "motherless" daughter of an attorney, Carson Drew; she and her sidekicks, ultra-feminine Bess Marvin and dykey George Fayne (no, it's not short for anything, as George has to tell people in every volume), solve all sorts of crimes in all sorts of places. No one ever got shot or seriously hurt (though Nancy did get tied up several times, and George was always falling into water).
In short, the Hardys, Cherry, and Nancy were all squeaky-clean, white, middle-class characters (or upper-middle-class in the case of Nancy) who never aged (the Hardys and Nancy were about 18; Cherry was in her early 20s) and whose formulaic stories upheld conservative white, het, middle-class American values.
And of course, there was NO SEX. Nancy and her perennial boyfriend Ned might exchange a chaste kiss occasionally, but mostly, Ned existed primarily to help Nancy chase crooks (who, especially in the early books, were usually horribly stereotyped as "swarthy" and "lower"-class and vulgar and gaudy and ungrammatical.)
These books are so wide-eyed, naive, and sex-free that you just KNOW readers aren't getting the whole story. In fact, you won't be surprised to hear that each chapter practically drips with subtext. (I mean, check out the cover of Cherry Ames, Dude Ranch Nurse. There's a hell of a lot of slashiness behind all this relentless het flirting, n'est-ce pas?)
Luckily for us, there's Mabel Maney, an author and satirist who finally gave us the REAL story -- in three volumes written in the early 1990s, she shows us Nancy Clue, Cherry Aimless, and the Hardly Boys as they have a gay old time. Literally.
• The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse (1993)
• The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend (1994)
• The Ghost in the Closet (1995)
These hilarious, campy parodies/spoofs capture with spot-on perfection the breathless naiveté of the original books, as our clueless heroes and heroines are introduced to an entire world of sex and adulthood. In the process, Maney manages significant commentary on (among many other things) the ways in which alternative sexualities are erased and/or constructed in popular culture. The books are sharp, savvy, and spit-take funny.
Until 1979, the first two series were produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Founded by Edward Stratemeyer in 1905, the Syndicate created characters and outlines for juvenile series books; the outlines would be turned into finished novels by a number of different ghost writers. Stratemeyer died in 1930, just a few months after the launch of the Nancy Drew series; the Syndicate was taken over by his daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who sold it to Simon & Schuster publishers upon her retirement in 1979. S & S still produces revamped versions of both series today.
The Cherry Ames books were written by two different women, Helen Wells (1910-1986; she wrote vols. 1-7 and 17-27) and Julie Tatham (1908-1999; she wrote vols. 8-16). The series began as World War II adventure stories and then morphed into nursing/mystery stories. Cherry seemed to take every job going (different volumes show her as Veterans' Nurse, Boarding School Nurse, Department Store Nurse, Camp Nurse, Mountaineer Nurse, and on and on); in each book, she usually met a handsome young doctor, though she always managed to evade any serious romance.
The Hardy Boys (Joe and Frank) were sons of a "famous detective," Fenton Hardy; the boys end up solving local crimes in their hometown of Bayport (apparently a bastion of small-town lawlessness; every counterfeiter and forger and car thief in the US seems to make Bayport their hub). Nancy Drew, we're repeatedly told, is the "motherless" daughter of an attorney, Carson Drew; she and her sidekicks, ultra-feminine Bess Marvin and dykey George Fayne (no, it's not short for anything, as George has to tell people in every volume), solve all sorts of crimes in all sorts of places. No one ever got shot or seriously hurt (though Nancy did get tied up several times, and George was always falling into water).
In short, the Hardys, Cherry, and Nancy were all squeaky-clean, white, middle-class characters (or upper-middle-class in the case of Nancy) who never aged (the Hardys and Nancy were about 18; Cherry was in her early 20s) and whose formulaic stories upheld conservative white, het, middle-class American values.
And of course, there was NO SEX. Nancy and her perennial boyfriend Ned might exchange a chaste kiss occasionally, but mostly, Ned existed primarily to help Nancy chase crooks (who, especially in the early books, were usually horribly stereotyped as "swarthy" and "lower"-class and vulgar and gaudy and ungrammatical.)
These books are so wide-eyed, naive, and sex-free that you just KNOW readers aren't getting the whole story. In fact, you won't be surprised to hear that each chapter practically drips with subtext. (I mean, check out the cover of Cherry Ames, Dude Ranch Nurse. There's a hell of a lot of slashiness behind all this relentless het flirting, n'est-ce pas?)
Luckily for us, there's Mabel Maney, an author and satirist who finally gave us the REAL story -- in three volumes written in the early 1990s, she shows us Nancy Clue, Cherry Aimless, and the Hardly Boys as they have a gay old time. Literally.
• The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse (1993)
• The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend (1994)
• The Ghost in the Closet (1995)
These hilarious, campy parodies/spoofs capture with spot-on perfection the breathless naiveté of the original books, as our clueless heroes and heroines are introduced to an entire world of sex and adulthood. In the process, Maney manages significant commentary on (among many other things) the ways in which alternative sexualities are erased and/or constructed in popular culture. The books are sharp, savvy, and spit-take funny.