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Classic Ghost Stories

S02E54 The Girl With The Hungry Eyes by Fritz Leiber

Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.9 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story of a female vampire, a femme fatale, a girl who just one day walks into a photographer's studio and wants to do some modelling.Get my audiobooks at an insane deal. London Horror Stories https://mailchi.mp/tonywalker/london-horror-stories (https://mailchi.mp/tonywalker/london-horror-stories)If you want to say thank you for all the stories please don’t buy me a coffee (I’m wired enough), buy a book! Get an ebook here: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-haunting-of-tullabeg (https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-haunting-of-tullabeg)Get a paperback here: https://www.bookdepository.com/Haunting-Tullabeg-Tony-Walker/9798736978946 (https://www.bookdepository.com/Haunting-Tullabeg-Tony-Walker/9798736978946)Join my mailing list and get a download: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback (https://bit.ly/somecomeback)Fritz LeiberFritz Reuter Leiber Jr was born in 1910 in Chicago, Illinois and died in San Francisco, California in 1992 when he was 81. His parents were actors and when he was a child he toured with them when they were acting. He got his degree in 1932 in psychology and then after graduating went to be a minister in the Episcopal Church. But didn’t finish and went back to do postgraduate studies in philosophy.He is best known for his fantasy, horror and science fiction stories but he was also a chess master. He was one of he fathers of the Sword & Sorcery genre along with Robert E Howard and Michael Moorcock and it was Leiber who coined the term.His early career was as an actor, following in his parents’ footsteps. But he did write some stories. His literary career seems to have been spurred on when he entered into correspondence with H P Lovecraft in 1936 (Lovecraft died in 1937) and he published his first Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser sword and sorcery story in 1939 in a pulp magazine. He had been a pacifist but when the Second World War broke out he was convinced that the struggle against fascism was worth fighting and he went to work for Douglas Aircraft corporation but still wrote fiction.He married Jonquil Stephens in 1936 and she died in 1969. Leiber had a life-long battle with alcoholism and long period of addiction to barbiturates was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Despite the success of his novels he was extremely poor and lived in a down at heel hotel surrounded by bookshelves with a manual typewriter. Things looked up towards the end of his life when he began to get royalty checks from TSR who were the publishers of the successful Dungeons & Dragons games and who had licensed his work.Leiber died in 1992 of a stroke but he married Margo Skinner in the last year of his lifeThe Girl With The Hungry EyesLieber published this story in 1949 and it was made into an episode of The Night Gallery in 1972 and has been made into a film twice, once in 1967 and then in 1995. It was also the title of a. Son by Jefferson Starship in 1979 on their album Freedom at Point Zero.Our protagonist is a down at heel commercial photographer when The Girl seeks him out. Is this an act of philanthropy? In fact as deadly as she is to all other men who covet her she seems to have a soft spot for our photographer and let’s him live, repeatedly rebuffing his attempts to engage in fatal lovemaking. This seems a very male story. It is uncomfortable to read after the #MeToo revelations because it suggests that slapping the chops off The Girl would be an appropriate and even positive thing to do and that making a pass at a girl in an empty office is exactly what all men would and should do.She is the only female in the sSupport the showVisit us here: www.ghostpod.orgBuy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerIf you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcudMusic by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Everybody dies, don't think?

0:10.0

Everybody come back.

0:12.0

Isn't that so?

0:14.0

You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?

0:18.0

How do the dead comeback, mother?

0:20.0

What's the secrets of dead come back? The girl with the Hungry Eyes by Fritz Lieber.

0:27.9

Oh right, I'll tell you why the girl gives me the creeps,

0:32.0

why I can't stand to go downtown and see the mob slavering up at her on the tower

0:36.7

with that pop bottle or pack of

0:39.2

cigarettes or whatever it is beside her. Why I hate to look at magazines anymore, because I know

0:45.8

she'll turn up somewhere in a brassiere or a bubble bath. Why I don't like to think of millions

0:51.5

of Americans drinking in that poisonous half-smile.

0:56.2

It's quite a story.

0:59.0

More story than you're expecting.

1:01.9

No, I haven't suddenly developed any long-haired indignation at the evils of advertising

1:07.4

and the national glamour girl complex.

1:12.8

That'd be a laugh for a man in my racket,

1:17.4

wouldn't it? Though I think you'll agree that there's something a little perverted about trying to capitalise on sex that way. But it's okay with me. And I know we've had the face and the

1:24.2

body and the look and whatnot else. So why shouldn't someone come along who sums it all up so completely that we have to call

1:32.1

her the girl and blazing her on all the billboards from Times Square to Telegraph Hill?

1:40.2

But the girl isn't like any of the others. She's unnatural. She's morbid.

1:48.0

She's unholy.

...

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